Generations ago, the internet spoke of an old saying that involved a man exhibiting excitement about hearing of a person’s love of an object, so he did favor, and put that something inside of something else. That’s what Netgear did here. Netgear heard people like the internet so much that the company put an internet modem inside a wifi router.
The Orbi WiFi System with Built-in Cable Modem is just that. It’s an Orbi wifi router with a DOCSIS® 3.0 cable modem built in. In theory this setup would make for easier setup and troubleshooting of internet issues while providing the home with great wifi.
I have an Orbi system in my house and it’s wonderful. The system does a far better job at covering my home with wifi than my previous single router setup. Including the cable modem in the setup, though, just makes sense and other networking companies would be smart to follow Netgear’s lead. Naturally, there’s a danger in including a cable modem in a router as one piece could become obsolete before the other but I would argue that most consumers upgrade their equipment every few years anyway.
This convinence comes at a cost. The router with built-in Orbi networking costs $299 and a system with an Orbi extender costs $399.
As we plunge into our baffling future, it is believed that, at some point, we will be trading in cryptographically secure kittens, monsters, and playing cards. While it is unclear why this will happen, Rare Bits and their new service, Fan Bits, is ready for the oncoming rush.
Founded by Daniel Lee, a former Zynga/FarmVille employee, the company trades in digital goods. Lee brought in a team of ex-Zynga and other digital platform creators to build a blockchain -based solution for buying and selling digital collectables. For example, on Rare Bits you can buy this monster and battle it against other monsters on the Blockchain. Further, with their new platform called Fan Bits, you can buy actual collectables that are tied to the Blockchain. For example, you can sell collectable cards and give some of the proceeds to to charity. If the new owner resells those cards then some of the resell price also goes to charity, an interesting if slightly intrusive use of smart contracts.
The team has raised $6 million in Series A. Fan Bits launches on May 17.
“To date, collectible content has only been created by developers for their own dapps – which I suppose could be considered our competition,” said Lee. “Fan Bits is the first to let anyone, especially people who are not technical, to create collectibles. It will create an abundance of supply that didn’t exist before.”
“We started Rare Bits to let people buy, sell, and discover crypto assets. We believe that assets on the blockchain mark a fundamental shift in how we own and exchange property. Our overall mission is to enable the worldwide exchange of online and offline property on the blockchain,” he said.
Lee sees this as a Trojan horse of sorts, allowing non tech-savvy creators sell digital art and designs online without having to understand the vagaries of blockchain.
“For creators, it’s a DIY platform to turn their content into unique collectibles and earn Ethereum on every sale,” he said. “For the first time, a creator can go from idea to published cryptocollectible on a live marketplace without having to have any technical knowledge.”
Given the popularity of other digital collectables – including in-game gear for many multi-player games – things look like they’re going to get pretty interesting in the next few years.
There are times where voice-driven systems don’t work all that well because of background noise or other voices. That’s because it’s hard for machines (and humans) to pull out a particular voice when there are many others speaking. This is sometimes called ‘the cocktail party problem.’ Yobe was created out of research at MIT on how to solve this issue, and today it announced $1.8 million in seed funding.
The investment comes from Clique Capital Partners, a $100 million fund created specifically to fund innovative voice technology. Yobe had previously received $790,000 in the form of a National Science Foundation SBIR grant in 2016.
Company co-founder and CEO Ken Sutton says Yobe is solving an entrenched problem identifying a particular voice in noise. That means for instance if you are at a party and you want Alexa to play a Spotify playlist, you could (in theory at least), say the wake word from across a crowded room, give the playlist command and the device would execute it in spite of the noise. That’s because Yobe can pinpoint a voice based on biometric markers, aggressively enhance the volume and then use AI to smooth it out.
As Sutton says, most of these voice interface technologies fail in this situation because they can’t distinguish your voice from the background noise, but Yobe is supposed to solve this.
Sutton made clear the research phase is done and the funding is about getting ready to go to market. “The capital raised is not to continue R&D. The capital raised is to streamline and optimize [the technology] for deployment. We will be in market with a product to sell in 30 days, and all of the usual suspects are lined up and waiting for us to call with a live demo,” Sutton told TechCrunch.
Ultimately the company hopes to license its technology to chip or phone manufacturers and others in a scenario not unlike Dolby. Sutton acknowledges there are many use cases for a solution that could identify a specific voice in noise or among other voices such as law enforcement, hearing aid manufacturers and meeting transcription services. You could even use voice as a biometric marker for authentication purposes. But the company has decided to focus its early efforts on voice-driven devices as an initial go-to market strategy.
The company was founded by Sutton and Dr. S. Hamid Nawab, an MIT PhD and researcher, whose work has focused on applying AI to signal processing. Nawab is the company’s Chief Scientist.
You can watch this video demo to see how Yobe works:
Dreamlines, which claims to be Europe’s largest online travel agency specialising in cruise-related travel, is disclosing that it has raised €45 million in series E funding. The round is led by Princeville Global, with participation from existing investors that include Holtzbrinck Ventures, Target Global, Dimaventures, Hasso Plattner Ventures, TruVenturo, and Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital.
Founded by Felix Schneider in 2012, Hamburg-based Dreamlines can be thought of as a Booking.com or Expedia but for cruise holidays and other cruise line type travel. The OTA connects customers to what it says is the largest portfolio of cruises around the world, including holiday packages exclusive to Dreamlines.
Meanwhile, unlike other forms of holiday and travel, the cruise industry is only more recently being digitised, a sentiment echoed by Emmanuel DeSousa, Managing Partner of Princeville Global, who joins the Dreamslines board.
“The cruise industry is the last sizable, global travel segment to be disrupted by a tech-focused online booking platform,” he says. “Under the leadership of its visionary founders, Dreamlines is uniquely positioned to continue transforming the cruise industry to an online model, leading in Europe and expanding around the world”.
To that end, Dreamlines says the investment will support its continued growth and international expansion. The company currently operates in 10 countries, partnering with over 100 cruise operators, and has raised around €110 million to date.
Adds Christian Saller, General Partner at HV Holtzbrinck Ventures and the Dreamlines chairman: “As an early investor, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures has seen Dreamlines grow by a factor ten since its initial investment into the European market leader. The new investment will allow Dreamlines to continue this success story”.
Follow-up acts are always hard, especially when the first product was a runaway hit beyond initial expectations, but the company is opting to tackle a problem that will appeal to many, staying powered on the go. River Bank — today’s new addition — takes the concept of the portable mobile phone charger and super-sizes it with a power bank that can handle phones, laptops, cameras and even jump start a car.
Two of the main issues with regular mobile power banks are the days-long battery life between in each charge and that they can’t be taken on planes.
While I’m not sure I need The River Bank, the fact it holds its charge for a year, covers more than just phones, and can be taken on planes — that stands out from the competition and makes it pretty darn appealing.
EcoFlow thinks it has cracked the airline issue by breaking the charge down into modules, each of which is below the FAA’s 100Wh capacity limit for carry-on battery packs.
The modular approach also means customers can tailor the pack to suit particular needs. The main pack includes two USB outlets, two USB-C outlets and Qi wireless charging. Two sub-modules connect to the main module with one catering to AC port needs, and the other dedicated to jump-starting cars. (EcoFlow says the module can perform 10 jump starts per charge.)
Aside from offering alternative functionality, the sub modules can be stacked with the main module to expand the capacity, or used to recharge the main module.
Besides smartphones, the array of modules can cover cameras, drones and laptops — well, with an AC port that really means anything. But the company is also throwing in some tech to help charge laptops without lugging the full charging cables and paraphernalia around.
“We included technical adaptor tips which retrofit to virtually any MacBook or other laptop for type-C USB charging,” Harris explained.
The units come with the same aesthetic design as the original EcoFlow product — the $600 River — but they are both more portable and cheaper. The River Bank’s main module is priced at $199, with the sub modules costing $99 each. There’s also a bundle deal for multiple pieces.
EcoFlow CEO Eli Harris said the kind of customer he sees include professionals working in photography, videography and drones, luxury travelers, parents on-the-go, and general outdoor enthusiasts.
EcoFlow is again turning to Indiegogo for the initial market release. Harris told TechCrunch that the crowdfunding helps “communicate better and get feedback” on the product.
Harris added that the product is already in production — it has been prototyped for the past year — and it is scheduled to ship to backers from August, but the sub modules need until December to ship to some markets.
On that note, EcoFlow has put some limits in distribution this time around. The River shipped to more than 40 countries when it went on Indiegogo last year, but this time the full range of products will ship to U.S., Canada, Japan, and Taiwan only. In the case of the main module, that’ll ship to a wider selection of 20 countries which includes Australia, Germany and the UK.
That might be subject to change, however.
“The markets are where we saw the highest conversion during our last campaign so we are doubling down efforts in those geographies,” Harris told TechCrunch. “Based on the inbound inquiries and demand we receive we’ll open up to more countries as the campaign progresses.”
You can find full details on the Indiegogo page here.
The strong climate for tech IPOs at the moment is leading yet more mature startups to set up their own plans to list, and the latest development on that front is coming out Sweden. iZettle, the payments and small business financial services startup that is often referred to as the “Square of Europe,” with some 413,000 business customers, today confirmed plans to list on Nasdaq in Stockholm. The company plans to raise 2 billion Swedish kronor ($227 million at current rates), giving it an estimated valuation of about SEK10 billion ($1.1 billion).
Jacob deGeer, iZettle’s co-founder and CEO, said in an interview that the plan is to use the proceeds to “execute on our ambitious growth strategy” both by continuing to serve small and medium businesses but also by turning its focus also to larger merchants and other companies in Europe and Latin America, the two markets where iZettle is currently active.
The company is currently operating at a loss, but it’s growing quickly with that loss narrowing. In its prospectus, iZettle said it would consolidated net revenue (gross revenue less interchange and card scheme fees) growth of at least 40 percent annually, with profit — specifically, positive consolidated Ebitda — “by the year ended December 31, 2020.”
“Our growth is driven by two factors,” DeGeer said in an email interview, “an increase in the number of active users and improved user engagement. Our strategy going forward is to grow our merchant base in existing markets as well as shift the mix towards slightly larger merchants, though our focus will continue to remain on small businesses.”
iZettle notes that the listing would happen sometime in 2018 but has not yet specified an exact date.
Along with the IPO announcement, iZettle has published its most up-to-date financials, which confirm that the company is still operating at a loss, but with that margin shrinking as its revenues continue to grow. In the first three months of 2018, the company reported negative earnings before tax, depreciation and amortization of SEK73 million ($8.3 million), slightly narrower than its negative Ebitda of SEK78 million ($8.8 million). More details on its financials below.
iZettle’s announcement puts to rest IPO speculation that has been swirling around for a while now, which reached a crescendo pitch last week. It also comes less than five months after the company raised its last funding — $47 million at a $950 million valuation.
A number of strong tech IPOs so far this year point to a sympathetic climate for more to list, rather than stay private and raise more growth funds that way. “We were founded eight years ago and have grown from a start-up to a mature fintech company,” DeGeer said. “Our shareholders and board believe that it is now an appropriate time to broaden the shareholder base and list the company. We believe that the listing will support our continued growth, our strategy and provide us with improved access to capital markets.”
Similar to Square, iZettle started out life as a service for small businesses and sole traders to take card payments by turning their mobile devices into card readers, taking a cut on each transaction, before later expanding from that into a wider range of services to help those people run other aspects of their businesses, from inventory management and ordering through to accounting and taking out business loans, and most recently to helping businesses build out e-commerce operations online, beyond the physical point of sale.
Some $36 million of the funding that it has raised — around $235 million in total to-date — has also been used to look into newer areas of tech, specifically artificial intelligence, and how that can be applied both to helping iZettle run its business and develop new products for its customers.
So far, the company has been growing strong, but despite the push into multiple alternative revenue streams, the bulk of its revenues remain in payments. In the first three months of this year, iZettle reported gross revenues of SEK258 million ($29 million), versus SEK187 million for the same period a year ago. Of the SEK258 million, SEK209 million came from transactions, SEK31 million came from hardware and only SEK18 million came from software and services. “In the long term, the Company targets a consolidated Ebitda net margin (defined as Ebitda as a percentage of Net revenue) of 30-35 percent,” the company notes.
How did you find Microsoft Build yesterday? We don’t really have time for your answer because Google I/O is already here! Google is kicking off its annual developer conference today. As usual, there will be a consumer keynote with major new products in the morning, and a developer-centric keynote in the afternoon.
The conference starts at 10 AM Pacific Time (1 PM on the East Cost, 6 PM in London, 7 PM in Paris) and you can watch the live stream right here on this page. The developer keynote will be at 12:45 PM Pacific Time.
Rumor has it that Google is about to share more details about Android P, the next major release of its Android platform. But you can also expect some Google Assistant and Google Home news, some virtual reality news and maybe even some Wear OS news. We have a team on the ground ready to cover the event, so don’t forget to read TechCrunch to get our take on today’s news.
Alibaba has expanded its e-commerce empire into South Asia after the Chinese internet giant acquired Daraz in an undisclosed deal.
Daraz was founded in 2012 by Rocket Internet and today it operates in Pakistan as well as Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Rocket said in a statement that Alibaba has acquired the entire Daraz business. The deal is the second time Alibaba has bought a Rocket company, the first being Lazada in Southeast Asia two years ago.
Rumors of a deal have been rife for the past couple of months, with Bloomberg reporting in March that acquisition talks were ongoing.
The deal is part of Alibaba’s second wave of international expansions which see it enter South Asia.
The company initially focused on India — where it has backed Paytm — and Southeast Asia with Lazada, but this year it has spread its wings into lower profile but hugely populous countries in South Asia. Pakistan, for example, has a population of over 190 million. The acquisition of Daraz follows a fintech investment from Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial, which runs Alipay and other Alibaba financial services.
Back in March, Ant paid $184.5 million for a 45 percent stake in Telenor Microfinance Bank, a fintech division from Norwegian operator Telenor, which operates Pakistan’s second largest telco. That one-two punch of e-commerce and fintech (particularly payments) is a common move from Alibaba-Ant, which has made similar deals in India and across Southeast Asia.
Beyond Pakistan, it looks like Alibaba is also eying nearby Bangladesh, which has a popular of over 160 million and rising internet adoption.
According to reports last month, the Chinese firm is pushing to buy a 20 percent chunk of payment firm bKash, a move that would again push its reach deeper into South Asia.
Both men are leading two Israeli companies at the forefront of innovation in drone technologies and both will be onstage with us in Tel Aviv for our inaugural event in “startup nation”.
Bash’s Flytrex claims that it was the first in the world to deploy a fully operational, regulatory approved drone delivery service. Before he began working on the drone business, he led the non-profit Lunar X-Prize entrant SpaceIL.
Airobotics chief executive Ran Krauss
Since leaving Ben Gurion University, Krauss has founded four companies including Airobotics. Bladeworx was a provider of aerial photography, imaging and processing for unmanned drones, while ParaZero looked at improving automated parachute deployment.
His first company, WiSec, provided information for opening Israel’s network of shelters in case of a bomb attack.
Early bird tickets are still on sale so don’t miss out on the chance to hear Krauss and Bash discuss what comes next for commercial drones.
TechCrunch will focus on these types of technologies and beyond, all of which are compounding to change the mobility industry as we know it. Reserve your seat on our website now.
ShopBack said today it has picked up Seedly, a fellow Singaporean startup that offers a personal finance service, in an undisclosed deal. The entire team will move over and Seedly will continue as a business under ShopBack’s management.
The ShopBack service is an e-commerce aggregator that helps online sellers reach customers and incentivizes consumers with cash-back rewards. Seedly, meanwhile, is designed to simplify finance for millennials and young people across Southeast Asia. It was founded two years ago and raised seed funding from East Ventures (also a ShopBack investor) and NUS Enterprise in 2016, it also graduated Singapore bank DBS’s “hotspot” pre-accelerator program.
The deal is a fairly rare example of a smaller startup in Southeast Asia being acquired by a larger one for more than just talent, and there seems to be plenty of potential synergies between the two services.
ShopBack aspires to have close touchpoints with how young consumers in Southeast Asia spend their money online, so helping them to manage it plays into that focus. Meanwhile, Southeast Asia isn’t blessed with many local consumer finance services — despite more than 330 million internet users — so the Seedly business can benefit from ShopBack’s regional presence for expansion.
