Year: 2018

Last year I covered the launch of GraphPath, a new startup that had developed a platform that aimed to “insert AI into global corporates” by making it easy to create and manage so-called Knowledge Graphs with its “Knowledge Graph-as-a-Service” technology.

Knowledge Graphs are essentially a way to organize data in an endless network of facts and relationships. It’s similar to Facebook’s ‘social graph’ (which contains highly-descriptive data about how people are connected) but instead is about how knowledge is connected. In theory, you could use blockchain to create a knowledge graph, and in fact, that’s what the company claims to have now done. Google’s Knowledge Graph powers its search functions, and according to the company contains over 70 billion facts.

Today it’s announcing GraphOS, which is described as “the world’s first decentralized operating system for Knowledge Graphs on the blockchain, that will be enabled by the GraphOS Protocol,” according to Demian Bellumio, GraphPath’s CEO.

What does that mean in plain English?

Basically, it means GraphOS will allow for a network of Knowledge Graphs to be safely and securely be interconnected via blockchain technology. Through this network, a wide array of participants, such as Knowledge Graph owners, data providers, knowledge experts, and data scientists will be able to transact with each other. GraphPath calls this ecosystem, a Graph Operating System, as it will manage all the resources necessary to run the Network, thereby the name GraphOS.

Bellumio says that in order to really derive value from a Knowledge Graph, not only do enterprises need to master the complex technologies that are necessary to build and manage these complex semantic data systems, but they must also have access to large volumes of data.

A telco that builds a graph with just their customers’ app usage data, will never be able to draw powerful insights from that data alone, according to Bellumio. It would also need QoS data, web browsing data, and even geolocation.
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So how does an enterprise engage with other enterprises or data providers to acquire this complementary data? That’s where blockchain and smart contracts come in.

The GraphOS Protocol provides a mechanism for defining and exchanging knowledge assets, such as data, code, ownership and governance details, feeding into the complementary data.

In addition, GraphPath plans to open-source all of its tools, while making them all natively support the GraphOS protocol.

GraphPath is also planning an ecosystem around this idea. It’s also now creating the GraphOS Consortium, which will be co-chaired by GraphPath’s CEO Bellumio and Andrew McLaughlin, who has worked with ICANN, Google, the US Government and Tumblr. Consortium members include Chris Boos from Arago and Antoine Blondeau from Sentient, Carlos Domingo from Securitize and SPiCE VC and Shayne Coplan from TokenUnion, and Andrew McLaughlin from Higher Ground Labs and Michael Sarasti from the City of Miami.

As old-school industries like oil and gas increasingly network entities like oil platforms, they become more vulnerable to hacking attacks that were impossible when they were stand-alone. That requires a new approach to security and Xage (prounounced Zage), a security startup that launched last year thinks it has the answer with a concept called ‘fingerprinting’ combined with the blockchain.

“Each individual fingerprint tries to reflect as much information as possible about a device or controller,” Duncan Greenwood, Xage’s CEO explained. They do this by storing configuration data from each device and controller on the network. That includes the hardware type, the software that’s installed on it, the CPU ID, the storage ID and so forth.

If someone were try to inject malware into one of these controllers, the fingerprint identification would notice a change and shut it down until human technicians could figure out if it’s a legitimate change or not.

Whither blockchain?

You may be wondering where the blockchain comes into this, but imagine a honey pot of these fingerprints were stored in a conventional database. If that database were compromised, it would mean hackers could have access to a company’s entire store of fingerprints, completely neutering that idea. That’s where the blockchain comes in.

Greenwood says it serves multiple purposes to prevent such a scenario from happening. For starters, it takes away that centralized honey pot. It also provides a means of authentication making it impossible to insert a fake fingerprint without explicit permission to do so.

But he says that Xage takes one more precaution unrelated to the blockchain to allow for legitimate updates to the controller. “We have a digital replica (twin) of the system we keep in the cloud, so if someone is changing the software or plans to change it on a device or controller, we will pre-calculate what the new fingerprint will be before we update the controller,” he said. That will allow them to understand when there is a sanctioned update happening and not an external threat agent trying to mimic one.

Checks and balances

In this way they check the validity of every fingerprint and have checks and balances every step of the way. If the updated fingerprint matches the cloud replica, they can be reasonably assured that it’s authentic. If it doesn’t, he says they assume the fingerprint might have been hacked and shut it down for further investigation by the customer.

While this sounds like a complex way of protecting this infrastructure, Greenwood points out that these devices and controllers tend to be fairly simple in terms of their configuration, not like the complexities involved in managing security on a network of workstations with many possible access points for hackers.

The irony here is that these companies are networking their devices to simplify maintenance, but in doing so they have created a new set of issues. “It’s a very interesting problem. They are adopting IoT, so they don’t have to do [so many] truck rolls. They want that network capability, but then the risk of hacking is greater because it only takes one hack to get access to thousands of controllers,” he explained.

In case you are thinking they may be overstating the actual problem of oil rigs and other industrial targets getting hacked, a Department of Homeland Security report released in March suggests that the energy sector has been an area of interest for nation-state hackers in recent years.

“Last year was pretty hard, I’m not gonna lie” says Peter Deng, Uber’s head of rider experience. But as part of new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi’s push to rebrand Uber around safety, “we’ve seen the company shift to more listening”.

That focus on hearing users’ concerns prompted today’s change. Have a bad Uber ride when you’re busy and you might neglect to rate the driver or accidentally rush through giving them 5 stars. Forcing users to wait until a ride ends to provide feedback deprives them of a sense of control while decreasing the number of accurate data points Uber has to optimize its service.

I had just this experience last month, leading me to tweet that Uber should let us rate trips mid-ride:

Uber apparently felt similarly, so it’s making an update. Starting today, Uber users can rate their trip mid-ride, providing a star rating with categorized and written feedback, plus a compliment or tip at any time instead of having to wait for the trip to end. “Every day 15 million people take a ride on Uber. If you can capture incrementally more and better feedback . . . we’re going to use that feedback to make the service better” says Deng.

Specifically, the data will be used to “recognize top quality drivers . . . through a new program launching in June”, Uber tells me. “We’re going to be celebrating the drivers that provide really awesome service” Deng says, though he declined to say whether that celebration will include financial rewards, access to extra driver perks, or just a pat on the back.

But Uber will also now use the feedback options that appear when you give a less-than-perfect rating to tune the technology on its backend. So that way, if you say that the pickup was the issue, it might be classifed as a “PLE – pickup location error”, and that data gets routed to the team that improves exactly where drivers are told to scoop you up.

The launch follows the unveiling of Uber’s new in-app Safety Center last month that gives users access to insurance info, riding tips, and emergency 911 button. I asked if reminding users to buckle their seat belts would be in that Safety Center and Uber tells me it’s now planning to add info about buckling up.

After a year of culture and legal issues, Uber needs to win back users who deleted it. Enhanced safety and feedback could help earn their respect.

It’s finally happening. Ripple is making a push to expand the use of the XRP cryptocurrency it created into new verticals and segments beyond the payment and banking space where the company is focused.

XRP is the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency behind only bitcoin, the original breakout artist, and Ethereum, the platform that most developers pomp for. XRP has a total ‘coin market cap’ of $28.7 billion today, according to Coinmarketcap.com, and yet it is barely used beyond a handful of pilot customer deployments that Ripple has announced.

That might change soon, however, after Ripple announced a new initiative called Xpring — pronounced ‘Spring’ — which is aimed at bringing entrepreneurs and their businesses over to XRP, both the cryptocurrency and the smart ledger, to build an ecosystem. The project will use a mixture of investment, grants, and incubation to lure companies and expand the use of XRP whilst allowing Ripple to continue to focus on its financial services business.

That’s essential, and even in the short space of six months the need for variety has been clear.

The value of XRP shot up in December and January during a crypto surge which saw bitcoin reach an all-time high of nearly $20,000 per coin. The collective value of XRP was worth more than $128 billion at peak before a market crash in January walked those prices back significantly. Ripple has come under fire for a perceived lack of use for XRP, which has been marketed as a tool for banks but has attracted only cross-border payment services as customers.

Going beyond Ripple

Ripple has hired Ethan Beard, formerly director of Facebook’s developer network and an ex-EIR at Greylock Partners, to lead Xpring and more broadly Ripple’s developer program.

“The goal is to support businesses that we believe would see benefit from building upon the XRP ledger,” Eric van Miltenburg, Ripple SVP of business operations, told TechCrunch in an interview. “Support will come in a variety of ways: investment, incubation, and the potential of acquisition or grants. We’re focused on proven entrepreneurs who can use the ledger and XRP to really address their customers’ problems.”

Van Miltenburg said Ripple has been approached by entrepreneurs and companies wanting to work with XRP “for years,” but nothing came of discussions because Ripple is focused on financial services.

“There’s been enough interaction to say there’s something here [and] now is the time,” he added. “Over the last four to six months [the idea of Xpring] has really crystallized.”

If you’ve been keeping an eye on Ripple this year, the launch of the program won’t be a huge surprise.

Aside from the fact that many in the crypto space are pulling together their own funds — whether it be informally as a company, or more broadly across industries like the Ethereum Community Fund — Ripple has quietly upped its investment focus.

Initially, two Ripple executives took part in a $25 million investment in January for Bay Area-based startup Omni then in March CEO Brad Garlinghouse told TechCrunch that Ripple would “certainly partner with companies that are looking to use XRP in lots of different ways” whilst maintaining its focus as a business.

Xpring is that project.

Enter the Bieber… kinda

Van Miltenburg and Beard told TechCrunch that the kind of segments where they see the most potential for XRP are trade finance, gaming, virtual goods, identity, real estate, media and micro-payments.

When I put it to them that XRP is looking for reasons to justify its $28 billion market cap, van Miltenburg claimed that XRP is far less speculative than other cryptocurrencies.

“There’s a use case we have established for it: Ripple is one of the only enterprise solutions on the blockchain that’s out in production. We believe the XRP ledger and the asset has a performance profile that lends it to others,” he said.

He added that Ripple has seen interest from projects that “started on a blockchain that isn’t living up to their needs,” and that Xpring could focus on rehousing would-be blockchain migrants. However, it won’t be investing in ICOs, buying other tokens or hosting ICOs on the XRP blockchain, van Miltenburg said.

Aside from Omni — which said it will “soon” add XRP as currency in its marketplace service — Xpring has pulled in a couple of early names. Scooter Braun, the man best known for managing Justin Bieber, is “pursuing several endeavors that will use XRP to improve artists’ ability to monetize and manage their content.”

Neither van Miltenburg nor Beard could be specific on exactly what Braun is working on — there are already a number of blockchain-based digital rights and music streaming projects in development — but they said he isn’t one to jump on a bandwagon.

Braun said in a canned statement that he is “excited our team is among the first in the entertainment industry to lean into the blockchain movement.”

“This is only the beginning as we will continue to build out more use cases for XRP,” he added.

Other early partners being announced today include Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas who is transitioning out of his role to build micro-payment services using XRP via a new venture called Coil. In addition, Xpring has backed VC firm Blockchain Capital while Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch, raised his latest fund entirely in XRP.

Building an ecosystem

Generally, the plan for exactly how Xpring will work seems fluid at this point.

Beard spoke of the next wave of innovation coming from the blockchain, much like Facebook’s Timeline and social graph helped scale companies like Spotify, Zynga and BuzzFeed from startups into major tech names. He believes that, in turn, Xpring and XRP can help “build new businesses and change how industries function.”

Van Miltenburg was non-committal in terms of goals.

“Our motivation is to ensure that the XRP ledger and digital asset reaches its full potential. We want to see an extremely healthy and robust XRP ecosystem; that benefits Ripple and all others,” he explained.

Ripple is known to incentive its partners with XRP bonuses for signing, but it isn’t talking numbers this time, either the specific incentives that it is giving to high-profile names like Braun, or the overall budget that it has put behind Xpring.

“For the right opportunities, we can be aggressive. There’s no hesitation or reluctance to make big bets with opportunities that require investment,” is all van Miltenburg would say.

You can bet a large chunk of capital (XRP) is supporting Xpring. The current system with hundreds of cryptocurrencies isn’t sustainable, those that make it through will be the ones that offer the most value, and ecosystems could well be a measure of that. XRP, as the third-largest cryptocurrency, has considerable expectations on it which, as the crash earlier this year showed, can wipe out money faster than it made crypto wealth.

You can bet that Xpring, while outside of Ripple’s core financial services focus, will be a very key focus for building a community and ultimately usage for XRP. The question is how the startup community will reach to a different kind of investment option.

Note: The author owns a small amount of cryptocurrency. Enough to gain an understanding, not enough to change a life.

Boosted Boards (now, just Boosted) is back with a skateboard that really seems to get it right. The company’s latest product is their first shortboard. It lops off 8.5 inches in length from the deck, but the differences go far beyond a big reduction in a single dimension.

The company is probably the most recognizable name in electric longboards, but the Boosted detractors would likely point to their products’ priciness as their central downfall. The $749 Boosted Mini S does a lot to increase accessibility on the price front, and while zooming around at 18mph on the shortboard might feel a bit more nerve-racking as your island of control shrinks, this board is incredibly fun.

Specs (via Boosted)

• Price: $749
• Range: Up to 7 miles
• Top Speed: Up to 18 mph
• Hill Climbing: Up to 20% grade
• Modes: 3 Ride Modes
• Wheels: Boosted Lunar 80mm
• Deck Length: 29.5 inches
• Weight: 15.0 lbs

First, the shortening of the board does do a good deal for portability. My preferred way of holding the board by its front truck just hanging down alongside my leg, with past Boosted boards if you did this you’d either be dragging the board along the ground or you’d be hoisting it up in a way that gave you a little side abs workout. Holding this while walking around indoors feels a lot less like you’re cruising through the aisles with a surfboard under your arm, it’s just way more low-key and less of a hassle to travel with. It’s also got a nice new look with its sort-of-signature orange wheels now custom-made by Boosted.

Nevertheless, the Mini S is a dense little guy. If you were hoping for an electric skateboard you could pop an ollie on, the Boosted Mini S will throw you some challenges. At 15 pounds, it’s not exactly a beast, but a big weight reduction was not part of this shortboard transformation. The board is still certainly manageable but everyone who has picked mine up has been pretty surprised at how hefty it is.

That heft feels a lot more rigid on the Boosted Mini S if you’re familiar with the Boosted boards of the past. There is very minimal flex on this shortboard which is unsurprising if you ride regular skateboards but offers a pretty major alteration to how the ride feels. Whereas hopping up and down on a Boosted longboard involves the middle bowing in and out quite a bit, the undercarriage of the Mini S is basically one big battery so there’s not much room for flexibility which means that you definitely feel bumps along the way more.

This is both good and bad. I personally think it makes the board a lot of fun to ride. The rigidity teamed with the little kicktail on the back of the board can make for some added maneuverability that means hairpin turns are well within reach. This is pretty big because the turning radius was already tighter just by virtue of the wheels being closer together so the kicktail can free you up to do most tight maneuvering as long as you aren’t maxing out throttle while doing so.

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The Mini S is fairly frightening to ride at times, there’s something a bit more comforting about the extra length and flex of the longboards. The shortboard takes away the security of a suspension system and swaps it with the freedom of being able to easily hop up onto a small curb or turn out.

With a max speed of 18mph, it’s become clear that fast feels faster on the Mini S. You get the speed modes of past iterations which should help you adjust your training wheels while you get moving gradually towards expert speeds. Your guide to this speed and mode-switching is still the little Boosted controller which gets the job done and offers a nice degree of precision for accelerating and breaking with the satisfying wheel control.

The 7 mile range on a single charge isn’t that great and you won’t even hit that if you’re maxing out the speed, but if you’re buying this for a couple-mile commute or just for some short little jaunts around town, it’s a great ride — though you still might be in for an easier ride on one of the company’s lengthier boards.

With $250 separating the Mini S from the Mini X, a gray-wheeled version of the product that adds less than a couple pounds but doubles the total range from 7 to 14 miles and increases max speed by a couple of miles, there might be enough there to offer a full endorsement of making an upgrade if you want to try out the electric shortboard life.

Boosted has managed to fit an awful lot into a $749 package that has inherited most of its predecessors’ better qualities without gaining any fatal flaws. It’s a different beast and there are still plenty of people who should still be opting for a longboard, but the Mini S offers a degree of freedom and tightness that you won’t get from many of the other electric powered things with wheels out there.

As Twitter develops an ever-closer hold on how it manages services around its real-time news and social networking service, a pioneer in Twitter analytics is calling it quits. Favstar, an early leader in developing a way to track and review how your and other people’s Tweets were getting liked and retweeted by others on the network, has announced that it will be shutting down on June 19 — a direct result, its creator Tim Haines notes, of changes that Twitter will be making to its own APIs, specifically around its Account Activity API, which is coming online at the same time that another API, User Streams, is being depreciated.

Favstar and others rely on User Streams to power its services. “Twitter… [has] not been forthcoming with the details or pricing,” Favstar’s creator Tim Haines said of the newer API. “Favstar can’t continue to operate in this environment of uncertainty.”

Favstar’s announcement was made over the weekend, but the issue for it and other developers has actually been brewing for a year.

Twitter announced back in December that, as part of the launch of the Account Activity API (originally announced April 2017), it would be shutting down User Streams on June 19.

User Streams are what Favstar, and a number of other apps such as Talon, Tweetbot, Tweetings, and Twitterrific (as pointed out in this blog post signed by all four on “Apps of a Feather”), are built on. Introduced as the Twitter Streaming API for developers, the aim was to provide a way for developers to get continuous updates from a number of Twitter accounts — needed for services that either provided alternative Twitter interfaces or a way of parsing the many Tweets on the platform — in a way that did not slow the whole service down.

The newer Account Activity API provides a number of features to developers to help facilitate tracking Twitter and using services like direct messaging for business purposes:

As you can see, some of the features that the newer API covers are directly linked to functionality you get via Favstar. The crux of the problem, writes Haines, is that Twitter hadn’t given Favstar and other developers that had been working with User Streams (and other depreciating functionality) answers about pricing and other details so that they could see if a retooling of their services would be possible. (Twitter has provided a guide, it seems, but it doesn’t appear to address these points.)

The post on Apps of a Feather further spells out the technical issues:

“The new Account Activity API is currently in beta testing, but third-party developers have not been given access and time is running out,” the developers write. “With access we might be able to implement some push notifications, but they would be limited at the standard level to 35 Twitter accounts – our products must deliver notifications to hundreds of thousands of customers. No pricing has been given for Enterprise level service with unlimited accounts – we have no idea if this will be an affordable option for us and our users.”

One of the consequences is that “automatic refresh of your timeline just won’t work,” they continue. “There is no web server on your mobile device or desktop computer that Twitter can contact with updates. Since updating your timeline with other methods is rate-limited by Twitter, you will see delays in real-time updates during sporting events and breaking news.”

Favstar has been around since 2009 — its name a tip of the hat to the original “like” on Twitter, which was a star, not a heart. Haines writes that at its peak, it had some 50 million users and was a “huge hit” with those who realised how the network could be leveraged to build up audiences outside of Twitter — including comedians and celebrities, tech people, journalists, and so on. It’s also tinkered with its service over time, and added in a Pro tier, to make it more user-friendly.

Somewhat unusual for a popular app, Favstar appears to have always been bootstrapped.

But there have been two trends at play for years now, one specific to Twitter and another a more general shift in the wider industry of apps:

The first, regarding Twitter, is that the company has been sharpening its business focus for years to find viable, diverse and recurring sources of revenue, while at the same time putting a tighter grip around how its platform is appropriated by others. This has led the company to significantly shift its relationship with developers and third parties. In some cases, it has ceased to support and work with third-party apps that it feels effectively overlap with features and functions that Twitter offers directly.

In the case of Favstar, the service rose in prominence at a time when Twitter appeared to completely ignore the star feature. MG once described the Favorite as “the unwanted step child feature of Twitter. Though it has been around since the early days of the service, they have never really done anything to promote its use.”

Fast forward to today, and Twitter has not only revamped the feature replacing the star with a heart (I still prefer the star, for what it’s worth), but Twitter uses those endorsements to help tune its algorithm, and populate your notifications tab, and to provide analytics to users on how their Tweets are doing. In other words, it’s doing quite a bit of what Favstar does.

And if you think of how Twitter has developed its own business model in recent years, with a push for video and working with news organisations and other media brands, the same early users of Favstar as detailed by Haines (celebs, news and other media organizations, etc.) are exactly the targets that Twitter has been trying to connect with, too.

The other, more general, trend that this latest turn has teased out is the one that we’ve heard come up many times before. Building services dependent on another platform can be a precarious state of affairs for a developer. You never know when the platform owner might simply decide to pull the plug on you. Your success could lead to many users, business growth, and even an acquisition by the platform itself — but it could nearly as quickly lead to your downfall if the platform views you as a threat, and decides to cut you off instead.

Interestingly, there could be some life left in Favstar in another galaxy far, far away. We’ve reached out both to Haines and to Twitter for further comment and will update this post as and when we learn more.

Rejoice Nintendo fans: the Japanese gaming giant is bringing the NES Classic back to retail stores this summer.

Nintendo said the console go on sale again across the U.S. on June 29, with the SNES Classic also set to be available until the end of this year. It isn’t clear what the situation will be outside of the U.S., however.

The news is welcome but not entirely a surprise. Nintendo said last September that it would bring both consoles — which were originally supposed to be one-offs — back in 2018 following a positive reception and strong sales.

The company originally killed off the hit NES Classic Edition with an announcement last April and it had originally said that the SNES version would not live beyond 2017. The NES system was a surprise hit last year, but the SNES version was even more popular. Nintendo previously revealed that it sold more on launch day in August than the NES sold in the whole of last year.

“Fans have shown their unbridled enthusiasm for these Classic Edition systems, so Nintendo is working to put many more of them on store shelves,” Nintendo said last year.

The two classic systems are part of a new focus for Nintendo, which includes the top-selling Switch console and its first moves into mobile gaming via Pokémon GO and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. The company recently clocked impressive financial returns — including a 500 percent jump in annual profit — as the strategy begins to pay off.

Did you just notice a Facebook app has gone AWOL? After reviewing “thousands” of apps on its platform following a major data misuse scandal that blew up in March, Facebook has announced it’s suspended around 200 apps — pending what it describes as a “thorough investigation” into whether or not their developers misused Facebook user data.

The action is part of a still ongoing audit of third party applications running on the platform announced by Facebook in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal where a third party developer used quiz apps to extract and pass Facebook user data to the consultancy for political ad targeting purposes.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the app audit on March 21, writing that the company would “investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity”.

Apps that would not agree to a “thorough audit” would also be banned, he said then.

Just under two months on and the tally is ~200 ‘suspicious’ app suspensions, though the review process is ongoing — and Facebook is not being more specific about the total number of apps it’s looked at so far (beyond saying “thousands”) — so expect that figure to rise.

In the Cambridge Analytica instance, Facebook admitted that personal information on as many as 87 million users may have been passed to the political consultancy — without most people’s knowledge or consent.

Giving an update on the app audit process in a blog post, Ime Archibong, Facebook’s VP of product partnerships, writes that the investigation is “in full swing”.

“We have large teams of internal and external experts working hard to investigate these apps as quickly as possible,” he says. “To date thousands of apps have been investigated and around 200 have been suspended — pending a thorough investigation into whether they did in fact misuse any data. Where we find evidence that these or other apps did misuse data, we will ban them and notify people via this website. It will show people if they or their friends installed an app that misused data before 2015 — just as we did for Cambridge Analytica.”

Archibong does not confirm how much longer the audit will take — but does admit there’s a long way to go, writing that: “There is a lot more work to be done to find all the apps that may have misused people’s Facebook data – and it will take time.”

“We are investing heavily to make sure this investigation is as thorough and timely as possible,” he adds.

Where Facebook does have concerns about an app — such as the ~200 apps it has suspended pending a fuller probe — Archibong says it will conduct interviews; make requests for information (“which ask a series of detailed questions about the app and the data it has access to”); and perform audits “that may include on-site inspections”.

So Facebook will not be doing on site inspections in every suspicious app instance.

We’ve asked Facebook a series of follow up questions about the ~200 suspicious apps it’s identified, and more broadly about the ongoing audit process and will update this post with any response.

For instance it’s not clear whether the company will publish a public list of every app that it suspends or deems to have misused user data — or whether it will just notify affected individuals.

Given the likely scale of data misuse by developers on its platform there is an argument for Facebook to publish a public list of suspensions.

In case you haven’t heard yet, TechCrunch is ready to descend on Tel Aviv for a one-day conference focused exclusively on mobility — and all that it entails. Tel Aviv’s startup community is red hot and fast-growing, which makes sense considering Israeli tech stands at the forefront of mobility. TechCrunch Tel Aviv takes place on June 7, 2018, and you have only three days left before the early-bird ticket price — 265 ILS — disappears. Buy your tickets right here, right now.

Mobility’s on the cusp of a revolution. Think about it: autonomous vehicles, sensors, drones and security. Flying cars, anyone? It’s all up for discussion with an amazing roster of speakers. Here are but a few of the mobility experts and topics you’ll hear at TechCrunch Tel Aviv.

Sit down for a fireside chat with Austin Russell, inventor, applied physicist and founder and CEO of Luminar Technologies. His vision to develop a new type of LiDAR (a detection system that uses light from a laser) may finally make autonomous vehicles both safe and universal.

If you’re wondering how giant car manufacturers can stay relevant in the age of autonomous cars, well you’re not the only one. That’s why we can’t wait to hear General Motor’s Ariella Grinberg share her perspective from the main stage. The innovation manager for GM’s Advanced Technical Center in Israel, Grinberg will discuss her team’s work and GM’s overall strategy for competing with small but nimble startups.

You don’t want to miss Liad Itzhak, the head of mobility at Here Technologies, talk about using mapping data to develop self-driving technologies and services. The man knows just a thing or two about the subject from the time he spent at Waze and Google.

Cyber security plays a vital role in all things mobile. Come join Ofer Ben Noon — co-founder and CEO of Argus Cyber Security — for a fireside chat detailing the security risks associated with the cars of the future.

Don’t miss out on the chance to explore Startup Alley. Our exhibition floor will be packed with more than 200 early-stage startups that cross the tech spectrum. Discover products, platforms and services in cybersecurity, AR/VR, mobility, robotics, fintech, biotech, artificial intelligence, blockchain and more.

TechCrunch Tel Aviv takes place on June 7, 2018 at the Tel Aviv Convention Center, Pavilion 10. Now’s the time to get the best price on tickets. We can’t wait to see you there!