Month: June 2019

Three years ago, I met with a founder who had raised a massive seed round at a valuation that was at least five times the market rate. I asked what firm made the investment.

She said it was not a traditional venture firm, but rather a strategic investor that not only had no ties to her space but also had no prior investment experience. The strategic investor, she said, was looking to “get their hands dirty” and “get in on the ground floor.”

Over the next 2 years, I kept a close eye on the founder. Although she had enough capital to pivot her business focus multiple times, she seemed to be at odds, serving the needs of her strategic investor and her customer base.

Ultimately, when the business needed more capital to survive, the strategic investor didn’t agree with the founder’s focus, opted not to prop it up, and the business had to shut down.

Sadly, this is not an uncommon story as examples abound of strategic investors influencing startup direction and management decisions to the point of harm for the startup. Corporate strategics, not to be confused with dedicated funds focused on financial returns like a traditional venture investor like Google Ventures, often care less about return on investment, and more about a startup’s focus, and sector specificity. If corporate imperatives change, the strategic may cease to be the right partner or could push the startup in a challenging direction.

And yet, fortunately, as the disruptive power of technology is being unleashed on nearly every major industry, strategic investors are now getting smarter, both in terms of how they invest and how they partner with entrepreneurs.

From making strong acquisitive plays (i.e. GM’s purchase of Cruise Automation or Toyota’s early-stage investment in Uber) to building dedicated funds, to executing commercial agreements in tandem with capital investment, strategics are getting savvier, and by extension, becoming better partners.  In some instances, they may be the best partner.

Negotiating a term sheet with a strategic investor necessitates a different set of considerations. Namely: the preference for a strategic to facilitate commercial milestones for the startup, a cautious approach to avoid the “over-valuation” trap, an acute focus on information rights, and the limitation of non-compete provisions.

If AI-powered robots are ever going to help us out around the house, they’re going to need a lot of experience navigating human environments. Simulators, virtual worlds that look and behave just like real life are the best place for them to learn, and Facebook has created one of the most advanced such systems yet.

Called Habitat, Facebook’s new simulator was briefly mentioned some months ago but today received the full expository treatment, to accompany a paper on the system being presented at CVPR.

Teaching a robot to navigate a realistic world and accomplish simple tasks is a process that takes a considerable amount of time, so doing it in a physical space with an actual robot is impractical. It might take hundreds of hours, even years of real time, to learn over many repetitions how best to get from one place to another, or how to grip and pull a drawer.

Instead, the robot’s AI can be placed in a virtual environment that approximates the real one, and the basics can be hashed out as fast as the computer can run the calculations that govern that 3D world. That means you can achieve hundreds or thousands of hours of training in just a few minutes of intense computing time.

Habitat is not itself a virtual world itself, but rather a platform on which such simulated environments can run. It is compatible with several existing systems and environments (SUNCG, MatterPort3D, Gibson and others), and is optimized for efficiency so researchers can run it at hundreds of times real world speeds.

But Facebook also wanted to advance the state of the art in virtual worlds, and so created Replica, a database for Habitat that includes a number of photorealistic rooms organized into a whole house: a kitchen, bathroom, doors, a living room with couches, and everything. It was created by Facebook’s Reality Labs, and is the result of painstaking photography and depth mapping of real environments.

[gallery ids="1843686,1843683,1843682"]

The detail with which these are recreated is high, but you may notice some artifacts, especially along ceilings and inaccessible edges. Those areas aren’t a focus probably because AI vision agents don’t rely on detail in ceilings and distant corners for navigation — shapes like chairs and tables, or the way the walls define a hallway, are much more important.

Even more important, however, are the myriad annotations the team has done on the 3D data. It’s not enough to simply capture the 3D environment — the objects and surfaces must be consistently and exhaustively labeled. That’s not just a couch — it’s a grey couch, with blue pillows. And depending on the logic of the agent, it might or might not know that the couch is “soft,” that it’s “on top of a rug,” that it’s “by the TV,” and so on.

Habitat and Replica represented with a single color per semantic label.

But including labels like this increases the flexibility of the environment, and a comprehensive API and task language allows agents can perform complex multi-step problems like “go to the kitchen and tell me what color the vase on the table is.”

After all, if these assistants are meant to help out, say, a disabled person who can’t easily get around their home, they’ll need a certain level of savvy. Habitat and Replica are meant to help create that savvy and give the agents the practice they need.

Despite its advances, Habitat is only a small step along the road to truly realistic simulator environments. For one thing, the agents themselves aren’t rendered realistically — a robot might be tall or small, have wheels or legs, use depth cameras or RGB. Some logic won’t change — your size doesn’t influence the distance from the couch to the kitchen — but some will; a small robot might be able to walk under a table, or be unable to see what’s on top of it.

Habitat as seen through a variety of virtualized vision systems.

Furthermore, although Replica and many other 3D worlds like it are realistically rendered in a visual sense, they are almost completely non-functional in terms of physics and interactivity. You could tell an agent to go to the bedroom and locate the second drawer of the wardrobe — but there’s no way at all to open it. There is in fact no drawer — just a piece of the scenery labeled as such, which can’t be moved or touched.

Other simulators focus more on the physical aspect of rather than the visuals, such as THOR, a simulator meant to let AIs practice things like opening that drawer, which is an amazingly difficult task to learn from scratch. I asked two developers of THOR about Habitat. They both praised the platform for providing a powerfully realized place for AIs to learn navigation and observational tasks, but emphasized that lacking interactivity, Habitat is limited in what it can teach.

Obviously, however, there’s a need for both, and it seems that for now one can’t be the other — simulators can be either physically or visually realistic, not both. No doubt Facebook and others in AI research are hard at work creating one that can.

We’re excited to announce a special promotion for Extra Crunch. Starting today, new users signing up for Extra Crunch will get a trial rate of $2 for the first 2 months. After the trial period ends, you’ll be moved over to our monthly plan for $15 per month. This offer ends on June 21, so be sure to take advantage of it before it expires.

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The TechCrunch Hackathon is shaping up to be a huge battle royale, but we still have room for a few more creative coders, hackers and outright webmonsters to join us at Disrupt San Francisco 2019 on October 2-4 for a chance to win $10,000.

It won’t cost you a thing to come and play in the hackathon sandbox. If you have the vision, the chops and the stamina to face off against some of the world’s best devs, then stop what you’re doing and apply to compete right here.

Here’s what you need to know about the Disrupt SF 2019 Hackathon. Teams can consist of a maximum of 6 people. Don’t have a team? No problem, you can find a team member on our Devpost host site prior to the event.

Besides the $10,000 grand prize, sponsors will also offer prizes (including cold, hard cash, people) to the teams that build a great product using their platform. It won’t be easy. You’ll have roughly 24 high-pressure hours to deliver the goods using their APIs, data sets and other tools.

We’ll announce this year’s sponsors and challenges over the next few weeks, but the sponsored contests, prizes and winners from last year’s hackathon can give you an idea of what to expect.

When the dev clock runs out, it’s pencils down and time to submit your work. On the afternoon of day two, judges review all completed projects — kind of like a flashback to your science fair days. They’ll pick 10 finalists to deliver a two-minute project pitch on the Extra Crunch Stage.

The sponsors will announce their winners, and then TechCrunch will announce one grand prize winner for the best overall hack — and that team will take home a cool, $10,000 cash prize. Check out all the details and the agenda on the Hackathon website.

We’ll keep you fed, watered and highly caffeinated throughout the event — at no cost to you. Plus, you receive free Expo Only passes for the first two days of Disrupt. And if you have any energy left, you can enjoy your free Innovator pass to catch all of the content during day three of Disrupt SF. Sweet!

The entire experience is exhausting and exhilarating, grueling and gratifying. You’ll flex your mighty skills in front of influential people and build something awesome that can make a difference in this world.

The TC Hackathon takes place at Disrupt San Francisco 2019 on October 2-4. Join the battle royale and show us what you can do. Apply to the Hackathon right here.

Is your company interested in sponsoring the Hackathon at Disrupt San Francisco 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

This is it. The final call for all the mobility and transportation startuppers who want to save a solid Benjamin on their ticket to the TC Sessions: Mobility 2019 conference in San Jose, Calif. on July 10. The early-bird ticket price disappears tonight, June 14 at 11:59 p.m. (PT). Beat that deadline and buy a ticket — or pay full freight.

Get ready to experience a full day devoted to the revolution that’s taking place within the mobility and transportation industries. More than 1,000 people — the greatest minds, biggest names and influential thinkers, makers and investors — will attend a day packed with interviews, panel discussions, fireside chats, demos and workshops.

Along with TechCrunch editors, speakers will question assumptions and examine complex technological and regulatory issues. They’ll discuss capital investment concerns and look at the ethics and human factors in a future of autonomous cars, delivery robots and flying taxis.

Here’s a small sample of the programming that’s on tap. The event agenda can help you plan your day, although you may have to clone yourself to catch it all.

Building Business and Autonomy: Co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson will be on hand to talk about Zoox, an independent autonomous vehicle company. Its cars can navigate tricky San Francisco streets — including the notoriously iconic Lombard Street. We’ll hear how Zoox plans to navigate the challenging road to business success.

The Future of Freight: The trucking industry is in serious trouble, and startups and OEMs are scrambling to come up with a solution. Volvo’s Jenny Elfsberg and Stefan Seltz-Axmacher of Starsky Robotics will join us to debate whether autonomous trucks are the fix we need or if another near-term technology can pave the way to a more efficient and profitable industry.

Will Venture Capital Drive the Future of Mobility? Michael Granoff of Maniv Mobility, Ted Serbinski of Techstars and Bain Capital’s Sarah Smith will debate the uncertain future of mobility tech and whether VC dollars are enough to push the industry forward.

Today’s the last day you can save $100 on your pass to the TC Sessions: Mobility 2019 conference in San Jose, Calif. on July 10. Buy your ticket by 11:59 p.m. (PT) tonight, June 14 or kiss that early bird — and $100 — goodbye.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Mobility? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

This is it. The final call for all the mobility and transportation startuppers who want to save a solid Benjamin on their ticket to the TC Sessions: Mobility 2019 conference in San Jose, Calif. on July 10. The early-bird ticket price disappears tonight, June 14 at 11:59 p.m. (PT). Beat that deadline and buy a ticket — or pay full freight.

Get ready to experience a full day devoted to the revolution that’s taking place within the mobility and transportation industries. More than 1,000 people — the greatest minds, biggest names and influential thinkers, makers and investors — will attend a day packed with interviews, panel discussions, fireside chats, demos and workshops.

Along with TechCrunch editors, speakers will question assumptions and examine complex technological and regulatory issues. They’ll discuss capital investment concerns and look at the ethics and human factors in a future of autonomous cars, delivery robots and flying taxis.

Here’s a small sample of the programming that’s on tap. The event agenda can help you plan your day, although you may have to clone yourself to catch it all.

Building Business and Autonomy: Co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson will be on hand to talk about Zoox, an independent autonomous vehicle company. Its cars can navigate tricky San Francisco streets — including the notoriously iconic Lombard Street. We’ll hear how Zoox plans to navigate the challenging road to business success.

The Future of Freight: The trucking industry is in serious trouble, and startups and OEMs are scrambling to come up with a solution. Volvo’s Jenny Elfsberg and Stefan Seltz-Axmacher of Starsky Robotics will join us to debate whether autonomous trucks are the fix we need or if another near-term technology can pave the way to a more efficient and profitable industry.

Will Venture Capital Drive the Future of Mobility? Michael Granoff of Maniv Mobility, Ted Serbinski of Techstars and Bain Capital’s Sarah Smith will debate the uncertain future of mobility tech and whether VC dollars are enough to push the industry forward.

Today’s the last day you can save $100 on your pass to the TC Sessions: Mobility 2019 conference in San Jose, Calif. on July 10. Buy your ticket by 11:59 p.m. (PT) tonight, June 14 or kiss that early bird — and $100 — goodbye.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Mobility? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

The Vera autonomous, electric truck from Volvo’s trucking subsidiary is not what you might expect in a transport truck – it looks like a road-hugging sportscar, something emphasized by its lack of a place for humans to sit. The real reason it looks like this is that it’s totally self-driving, however – and tailor-made for use in specific situations like serving the Swedish port in Gothenburg where it’ll soon begin operations.

Vera’s inaugural job will be to move goods packed in cargo trailers from a logistics center the actual port terminal, where it’ll be ready to loaded onto boats for transport. This first commercial use of the connected, electric freight moving vehicle will be done in partnership with logistics company DFDS.

Use of the Vera will make up one part of a larger connected system to move goods from the logistics center to distribution destinations around the world. They’ll operate autonomous but be monitored by a central operator working out of a control tower, and they’ll be operating at a top speed of only around 24 mph.

These are basically just heavy-duty land tugs for now, but if successful, there’s a lot of potential business to be had in providing similar services for shipping port facilities around the world.

The Vera autonomous, electric truck from Volvo’s trucking subsidiary is not what you might expect in a transport truck – it looks like a road-hugging sportscar, something emphasized by its lack of a place for humans to sit. The real reason it looks like this is that it’s totally self-driving, however – and tailor-made for use in specific situations like serving the Swedish port in Gothenburg where it’ll soon begin operations.

Vera’s inaugural job will be to move goods packed in cargo trailers from a logistics center the actual port terminal, where it’ll be ready to loaded onto boats for transport. This first commercial use of the connected, electric freight moving vehicle will be done in partnership with logistics company DFDS.

Use of the Vera will make up one part of a larger connected system to move goods from the logistics center to distribution destinations around the world. They’ll operate autonomous but be monitored by a central operator working out of a control tower, and they’ll be operating at a top speed of only around 24 mph.

These are basically just heavy-duty land tugs for now, but if successful, there’s a lot of potential business to be had in providing similar services for shipping port facilities around the world.

This year’s E3 was a bit of a mixed bag. Sony was completely absent, Microsoft was looking toward the future and Nintendo, as ever, was all about the games. The show came at an odd time in Nintendo’s release cycle.

The company recently spilled all the details about soon-to-be-released titles Mario Maker 2 and Pokémon Sword and Shield, making Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Luigi’s Mansion 3 the foundations of the company’s big Nintendo Direct unveil on Tuesday morning.

The long-awaited Animal Crossing title, sadly, came with the caveat that players are going to have to wait until even longer (2020), but the company had plenty of playable titles at the show, including the Link’s Awakening remaster and the aforementioned Luigi sequel. That featured arguably was the surprise hit of the show, Gooigi — which, as the portmanteau suggests, is indeed a gooey version of Luigi.

Absent during the event were any new hardware announcements and any new news on the fourth Metroid Prime. The company did, however, have a major surprise up its sleeve in the form of a teaser trailer for an unnamed sequel for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

We sat down with Nintendo’s Senior Director, Corporate Communications Charlie Scibetta following the big unveils to discuss the company’s take on streaming, mobile and what things look like following the departure of Reggie Fils-Aimé.

TC: I wanted to start off by talking about some broader trends. Microsoft, Sony and even Apple see streaming as being the future of gaming. Where does Nintendo come down on that, from both the point of potential hardware agnosticism and subscribing versus buying?

CS: Streaming is certainly interesting technology. Nintendo is keeping a close eye on it and we’re evaluating it. We don’t have anything to announce right now in terms of adopting that technology. For us, it’s still physical and it’s digital downloads through our eShop. Certainly a lot of downloadable content to keep the games fresh, but in terms of streaming as a way to run the games, we don’t have anything to announce on that front.

TC: Hardware’s always been a big differentiator for Nintendo. Do you think we’re moving toward a point of hardware agnosticism? Or is hardware going to be a major differentiator for Nintendo?

CS: Well, we think our games really come to life best on our hardware because our software and hardware developers work closely together to make the best performing game based off the way to bring that software to life. You go back to the Wii, for example, the way it brought tennis and bowling to life was with motion control. That really worked well for that, it was a launch title that came with every system that really sold the system because you understood the value proposition right away. Just even by walking by somebody that was playing that you understood it, and we think we caught lightening in a bottle the same way with Nintendo Switch because it’s a whole console you can play at home, enjoy on a big screen TV, and then you can take it with you.

And the market has responded. As of the end of our fiscal year which, ended in March 2019, we sold over 34 million units worldwide. Fourteen million in North America. People are buying the software. This past fiscal year extended over 70% more software than the previous year, over 23% more hardware. So, people are buying the games to play on the system. And a show like this, at E3, is all about showcasing the games that are going to power that system. So for us, it’s about unveiling games and getting people to interact with the games. They’re going to have a good time on the system.

TC: Obviously the line has softened a little bit on Nintendo’s stance when it comes to mobile. The company had taken a very hard line against that of only offering gaming experiences on first party hardware. How important is mobile? How important are iOS and Android, to Nintendo’s play going forward?

CS: Mobile is very important to Nintendo. You’re right that we did not participate with mobile gaming for a lot of years, but we have jumped in headfirst now and are bringing a lot of our most valuable IP to mobile — Mario Kart being the one that’s upcoming. And what we like about it is, as I was talking about with the combination of the hardware and the software, we only bring the software to mobile that we think you can really play well on a mobile device with the control speed that a phone offers, so not every single IP is appropriate. The ones that have come out are the ones that our developers have determined are appropriate for that. So people can have a good time with our IP on a mobile device.

TC: Sony’s absence looms large on the show. It’s shifted some focus and the spatial dynamic in this hall. Nintendo obviously made a shift into Direct and Treehouse, so all of the content is being fed to the general public, and us as well. How important are shows like this for Nintendo?

CS: We’ve been to many E3s. We’re a supporter of the show. We think it’s a great way for us to interact with people, like yourself, journalists, influencers who make YouTube videos, retail partners and, most importantly, most recently, with consumers. We like seeing the reactions of consumers to our games in the booth. We do interviews here and try to bring those game to life by explaining more; the Treehouse Live approach is nice because we do a Nintendo Direct the morning on the first day. Then, we go deeper on those games with people that are interested in those with our experts and with developers.

We think it’s a great way to showcase, not only our offerings and what the industry is as a whole. We’re part of the industry, so we support the show. Other companies have to make their own decisions based on what’s right for them, but for us, we like E3. We think it does a great job of helping connect us with the consumers and the people that cover the industry so they can learn about the products.

TC: Doug [Bowser] took over for Reggie [Fils-Aimé]. Any time that happens, even with a really large company, it tends to be a good opportunity to reassess things, rethink things, look at the broader context. Do you see there being any change in direction or a reassessment of the role that Nintendo is playing in the industry at the moment?

CS: Reggie was a great leader for us for a lot of years. We wish him well and he’s still a fan, in his own words. He said he’ll always be a Nintendo fan, so he’s always going to be with us. Doug is an industry veteran himself and he’d been with many companies and he’s been at Nintendo for over four years, so he’s well-grounded in the way that we do marketing. I would say that thing that hasn’t changed is that we’re a product-first company. We always like to bring our messages back to what is the game about, how does it make you feel, what is the emotion we want to generate with that game, and so Doug is really carrying on the legacy of Reggie and others that went before him.

TC: There have been a lot of rumors about a Switch Lite and Pro, having the devoted portable, and things of that nature. Does it make sense to have a Switch that is purely portable? How integral is that hybrid experience? And are we getting close to or approaching that point of the life cycle when it’s time to start thinking about new versions of the hardware?

CS: We have nothing to announce at this show in terms of new hardware. We do have over 2,000 games available right now. So we think as long as we have great games to power, the system is going to have a good life. Our developers will have to make the decision when they think that it’s time for new hardware to bring whatever their creative ideas are to life. That’s really what drives the decision on when it’s time for new hardware. Is there something that can’t be done for their creative vision with the current hardware?

Then they take it in a different direction. In the case of the Nintendo Switch, obviously we have the Wii U and our developers wanted to start thinking of gaming in a different direction where you can take it on the go, any time, or you can play at home. So, that’s why the Nintendo Switch was created. That’s why they married the software and the hardware that way. There’s nothing to announce in terms of where we want to go for the future, because right now, what we have on our hands is working really well.

TC: What happened specifically with Animal Crossing? Clearly no one’s really psyched when a game gets delayed. Is there any kind of info you can give, just in terms of why it’s being pushed back to 2020?

CS: We’re not going to put a game out before we think it’s ready to be enjoyed by fans. In the case of a franchise, like Animal Crossing, that has so many loyal fans, we’d be doing them a disservice if we put out a product that was rushed. So it’s a difficult decision for a company to make to move a ship date out. We think moving to March 20 of next year was the right decision, because we needed to give the development team enough time to make it the game we want to make. So, that’s been the Nintendo approach from the beginning and it’s something that we’re going to continue to do. We’re not going to rush a game out until it’s ready because we want to keep that quality bar high.

TC: Metroid [Prime 4] was kind of conspicuously absent. Is there any update on that end?

CS: It’s in the hands of Retro now; they certainly have a historic history with that franchise. They do a great job with it and we’re looking forward to what they do with this version of it. But there’s nothing new in terms of any ship date or any details about the game.