Year: 2019

This is the year when the money spent on digital advertising will finally overtake spending on traditional ads — at least according to the latest forecast from eMarketer.

The research firm is predicting that U.S. digital ad spend will increase 19.1 percent this year, to $129.3 billion, while traditional advertising will fall 19 percent, to $109.5 billion. That means digital will account for 54.2 percent of the total, while traditional will only represent 45.8 percent.

Not surprisingly, most of the digital ad money is going to Google and Facebook . However, eMarketer says Google’s share of the market will actually decline, from 38.2 percent last year to 37.2 percent this year, and Facebook’s share will only grow slightly, from 21.8 percent to 22.1 percent.

Apparently, Amazon is the main beneficiary here, with its U.S. ad business set to expand by more than 50 percent, accounting for 8.8 percent of total spend.

“The [Amazon] platform is rich with shoppers’ behavioral data for targeting and provides access to purchase data in real-time,” said eMarketer forecasting director Monica Peart in a statement. “This type of access was once only available through the retail partner, to share at their discretion. But with Amazon’s suite of sponsored ads, marketers have unprecedented access to the ‘shelves’ where consumers are shopping.”

The firm also forecasts that by 2023, digital will account for more than two-thirds of total ad spending.

Resooma, the U.K. accommodation booking platform, is entering the fintech and utilities space with the launch of Resooma Bills, a new product to help “gen rent” manage household expenditure. The Cardiff, Wales-based company’s core offering is an accommodation marketplace primarily targeting students and other renters aged 18-30.

Previously trading under the brand name of University Cribs, Resooma was founded in 2014 by Jack Jenkins, Dan Jefferys and Christian Samuel as a solution aimed specifically at the student lettings market. The company has since broadened its remit to “fix the outdated methods” of renting a home and living together in shared accommodation.

“The existing processes, much of which [are] sitting offline, was a total mess and the numbers of people who have to experience it is climbing rapidly,” says co-founder Jenkins. “With more people living in shared accommodation post University life, we aim to appeal to a time constrained user base that want instant gratification from the products and services they use. We’re building a solution for generation rent”.

As a first step, Resooma set out to eradicate the viewing process, or at least make it digital, and help facilitate bookings online. This includes rolling out “VR tours” for homes, in a bid to gain the trust of renters booking online. “Student and young professionals are time sensitive, often nomadic in choosing where they work and live and as such our platform needs to cater for this,” says Jenkins. The startup also has plans to introduce rental guarantees and “Resooma Verified” stamps for rentals.

“Interestingly, we brand ourselves as a booking platform, a relatively unused term in the market we are in. People are used to booking directly on platforms for short-term accommodation, with the rise of Airbnb and Booking.com but our goal is to make this the norm for people renting medium or longer term homes,” adds the Resooma co-founder.

Jenkins says the next problem the company wants to solve is around utilities and the splitting of household bills. “We’ve all sat there in our new home, admiring the wall paper for the first 2 weeks while we wait for the internet or Sky TV to be set up. It’s brainless really, and we’re fixing it,” he says.

“Our product journey will put utilities as part of the rental transaction, allowing users to set up their household bills directly through the platform at the time of booking. What’s more, we’ll allow you to split these bills evenly between all tenants. No more arguments because Tom didn’t pay for his share of the internet bill. Our solution will track utility payments, aim to source the cheapest deals for our customers and then automatically issue each of the housemates one single bill each month for their share of the total house bills.

“While part of the full product vision of Resooma, Resooma Bills will sit as a standalone product as well to allow users the flexibility to use the service for homes found away from the Resooma platform”.

Asked to name Resooma’s competitors, Jenkins says the likes of Spotahome or Uniplaces are probably its most direct competition from a product perspective. “We differentiate ourselves through our adaptation of the utilities, as well as our focus on working with letting agents rather than directly with Landlords,” he says.

With regards to utilities and bill splitting, London-based Acasa could also been considered a very direct competitor.

Allianz X, the venture capital arm attached to German insurance giant Allianz, has increased the size of its fund to €1 billion, around $1.1 billion, according to an announcement made today. The fund was initially €430 million, or around $490 million, when it launched in 2016.

This new injection comes directly from parent Allianz SE, the 124-year-old insurer which did €130 billion ($150 billion) in revenue last year, and it makes Allianz X one of the largest active startup investment vehicles in Europe. While it is anchored in Europe, the fund’s investment thesis and focus is very much a global one.

It has made 15 deals to date with a focus on growth-stage investments in startups such as emerging market-focused microinsurance company BIMA, Southeast Asian ride-hailing unicorn Go-Jek, U.S-based capital marketplace C2FO and European challenger bank N26.

Allianz X, which initially began as an in-house incubation venture, is now looking to go after more of the same with its enlargened kitty but it also plans to get to work with its existing portfolio of companies.

“Since shifting our strategy, we have built a great portfolio in which many companies have already developed successful partnerships with Allianz’s business units. We are very excited about raising our investment budget to €1 billion and will use the funds entrusted to us to both strengthen our portfolio and build strong, global platforms that create new businesses for Allianz,” Dr. Nazim Cetin, CEO of Allianz X, said in a statement.

Beyond potentially supplying more capital to its existing investors — it isn’t clear whether Allianz X is a part of the new financing round that Go-Jek is raising, for example — the fund is keen to identify areas where its business units can add value both for the portfolio startups and the Allianz business itself. And, with a network of offices that spans more than 70 countries, there’s plenty of scope for collaboration.

In Indonesia, for example, Allianz has worked with Go-Jek to offer insurance to the ride-hailing company’s drivers that is payable at an affordable daily rate. That, both of them claim, has helped give many families health insurance for the first time whilst of course growing the Allianz Indonesia business by tapping into Go-Jek’s driver base which, the company says, covers “millions” of Indonesians. That’s one part of Go-Jek’s fintech strategy, which includes relationships with some 28 financial institutions to provide access to financial services and other products.

Indeed, Allianz X said it has developed dedicated operational capabilities to replicate that type of collaboration across its portfolio.

“Our work with portfolio companies is focused on developing mutually beneficial strategic partnerships between the portfolio company and one or more Allianz operating entities and global business lines. Each investment has a dedicated team at Allianz X that assists the company with joint corporate development initiatives and implements them alongside the Allianz business unit,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch.

French startup StarOfService has recently switched its business model and has been profitable for the month of January 2019. The company operates a marketplace for independent contractors, a sort of Thumbtack for the rest of the world.

If you’re looking for a plumber, a music teacher or a DJ for a wedding, StarOfService can help you find one. The service is now available in 80 countries in Europe and has worked with 500,000 professionals over the years. It’s unclear how many of them are active right now.

There are 6 million requests posted every year, and StarOfService currently generates $73.7 million (€65 million) in transactions per month.

Originally, you first created a request and sent in to the platform. Professionals had 24 hours to bid on your request, and clients could pick a service providers based on reviews and quotes.

StarOfService would charge contractors every time they’d see a request. It was a sort of lead generation platform for independent contractors. Depending on the conversion rate, StarOfService could have been more attractive for some platforms compared to others.

The company has shifted to a more traditional yellow pages model — even though you don’t pay to get listed. Based on your request, you get a list of potential contractors and you can then contact them through the platform. If you say that you’re interested by sending a message or clicking on the phone number button, StarOfService charges the contractor.

It’s also interesting to see that the startup is communicating about its profits & losses. It sounds like StarOfService is optimizing its bottom line for an acquisition or a fundraising round.

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, has launched an initial version of its highly-anticipated decentralized trading service (dex) today which is available now at testnet.binance.org.

The launch — which is initially a testnet as the URL suggests — has been a long time coming and it is designed to complement the main Binance exchange, which does around $1 billion in daily trading volumes according to data from CoinMarketCap.com.

That core service is centralized, like most others, meaning that the exchange manages its customers’ fiat or cryptocurrency balance for them. Centralized exchanges also set the price, pick the selection of assets on offer and make money from transaction fees. Some see that as necessary but others disagree. Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin went so far as to say that centralized exchanges should “burn in hell” for their controlling position.

That, as seasoned crypto traders will tell you, leaves customers open to loses from hacks, shutdowns or other kinds of unexpected issues. Common advice is for users to take control of their own cryptocurrency and manage it via a wallet. That’s where a dex comes into play because it allows users to trade directly from their wallet, as opposed to the cumbersome exercise of transferring tokens into an exchange to trade and then withdrawing them afterward. So the Binance dex is a direct complement to its centralized exchange and it gives customers more options.

Binace also claims that it offers speed.

“Binance Chain has near-instant transaction finality, with one-second block times. This is faster than other blockchains today,” said Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao in a statement. “With the core Binance Chain technology, Binance DEX can handle the same trading volume as Binance.com is handling today. This solves the issues many other decentralized exchanges face with speed and power.”

The Binance decentralize exchange

Zhao has also touted the dex as a new revenue driver for the company since it sits on Binance’s own blockchain with the company operating a number of nodes itself. Zhao previously told TechCrunch that when its nodes are used in transactions, the company will gain some of the network fee. Not that Binance needs help making money; a recent report from The Block suggested it made a profit of $446 million in 2018, a year that was most definitely a downer for the crypto industry across the board.

We do have one concern about the Binance Dex, however, and that is that it includes an option to unlock a wallet using a private key.

Pasting a private key into a browser is a major no-no in crypto circles. Users are encouraged to avoid this option for unlocking a wallet since there are a plethora of alternative options that include Metamask — a popular browser extension with over a million users — hardware devices such as Ledger, Trezor or Yubikey and — more recently — authentication apps from the likes of MyEtherWallet or Parity Signer.

Of those secure options, the Binance Dex currently supports Ledger (the hardware and app), but the other options are KeyStore file upload or the less-secure private key or mnemonic phrase.

While you can argue that the onus is on the user when it comes to private keys, service providers do have a responsibility.

Many, including Zhao, commonly claim that crypto adoption is in its early days while terms like ‘education’ and ‘democratization’ are repeated often by many in the space. Removing the private key, and thus limiting potential phishing attacks, would seem to be a part of educating new users and helping make crypto safe for others who join.

It may seem far fetched, but the phishing threat is very real. Leading wallet MyCrypto.com said it had been hit by attacks regularly, including a hijack on its Amazon DNS servers, while MyEtherWallet was hit at least twice last year as attackers went after its DNS and phished other users by compromising a free VPN service.

As a result, MyCrypto dropped the private key option from its primary web-based service.

“We’re removing support for private keys on the web version of MyCrypto because it’s not safe — and we encourage others to follow suit,” the company wrote in a Medium post.

But others haven’t followed, perhaps aware that removing the private key entry mechanism would mean many that users opt for alternatives were unlocking their wallet is easier.

MyEtherWallet, which competes directly with MyCrypto, has a strong warning around its private key entry option while Binance, to its credit, is warning dex users that using a private key or mnemonic phrase to unlock their wallet means there’s “a much higher chance [of losing them] due to phishing websites or applications.”

There is a positive. Binance said it plans to add the option to unlock a wallet on the dex using Trust Wallet, the mobile app it acquired last year.

“We’re working toward decentralized accessibility to cryptocurrency. We want users to have full control over their private keys, and easy access to decentralized applications, to maximize the potential and mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency. Binance DEX is one step further to realizing our vision for greater freedom of money,” Viktor Radchenko, the founder of Trust Wallet, said in a statement.

That would certainly be a major step forward for tightening security. Still, it is somewhat disappointing that Binance hasn’t taken a stand here. It certainly has the clout to send a major message out to the industry and cut down on potential phishing attacks.

ViSenze, a startup that provides visual search tools for online retailers like Rakuten and ASOS, announced today that it has raised a $20 million Series C. The round was co-led by Gobi Ventures and Sonae IM, with participation from other backers including returning investors Rakuten and WI Harper.

Founded in 2012, ViSenze has now raised a total of $34.5 million (its last round was a Series B announced in September 2016). The Singapore-based company, whose clients also include Urban Outfitters, Zalora, and Uniqlo, bills its software portfolio as a “personal shopping concierge” that allows shoppers to find or discover new products based on visual search, automatic photo tagging, and recommendations based on their browsing history. ViSenze’s verticals include fashion, jewelry, furniture, and intellectual property.

ViSenze’s latest funding will be used to develop its software through partnerships with smartphone makers including Samsung, LG, and Huawei. The company has offices in Asia, Europe, and the United States, and claims an annual revenue growth rate of more than 200 percent. Other startups in the same space include Syte.ai, Slyce, Clarifai, and Imagga.

In a statement, Rakuten Ventures partner Adit Swarup said “When we first invested in ViSenze in 2014, retailers had just started seeing the benefits of powering product recommendations with image data. Today, ViSenze not only powers recommendations for the largest brands in the world, but has helped pioneer a paradigm shift in e-commerce; helping consumers find products inside their favorite social media videos and images, as well as initiate a search directly from their camera app.”

Other participants in the round included returning investors Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) Ventures, Raffles Venture Partners, Enspire Capital, and UOB Venture Management, as well as new investors Tembusu ICT Fund, 31Ventures Global Innovation Fund, and Jonathan Coon’s Impossible Ventures.

It’s time for another hit off the juice box. Netflix announced today that it will release the remaining eight episodes of “Arrested Development’s” fifth season on March 5, ten months after the first half premiered. In the intervening time, however, the show has dealt with several controversies revolving around accusations of abusive behavior from star Jeffrey Tambor, who plays family patriarch George Bluth.

You can’t handle the Bluth. Arrested Development returns March 15 pic.twitter.com/07UA4hJlgB

— Arrested Development (@arresteddev) February 19, 2019

The Netflix installments of the show, which began in 2013 with season 4 and marked the show’s return after running from 2003 to 2006 on Fox, have received mixed reviews and failed to achieve the iconic status of the original episodes. The controversies surrounding the show’s cast has also dampened some fans’ enthusiasm, at least for the new seasons.

Tambor will appear in the upcoming episodes despite being fired from Amazon Studios’ “Transparent” last year after he was accused of sexual harassment by two of his colleagues on the series. Then Tambor’s “Arrested Development” co-star Jessica Walter said he had verbally abused her during filming. In a New York Times cast interview to promote the first half of season five, Walter said she was “over it now,” but tone-deaf responses from male castmates, including Jason Bateman, underscored how warped gender dynamics and Tambor’s misbehavior might have been enabled on set (Bateman later apologized).

Tambor has denied the sexual harassment accusations, but a year and a half after the MeToo Movement began taking off, it is likely to continue casting a pall over the latest installment of “Arrested Development.” The new season picks up story lines involving the Bluth company’s involvement in building the border wall and Buster’s murder trial.

The clean energy boffins in their labs are always upping the theoretical limit on how much power you can get out of sunshine, but us plebes actually installing solar cells are stuck with years-old tech that’s not half as good as what they’re seeing. This new design from Insolight could be the one that changes all that.

Insolight is a spinoff from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, where they’ve been working on this new approach for a few years — and it’s almost ready to hit your roof.

Usually solar cells collect sunlight on their entire surface, converting it to electricity at perhaps 15-19 percent efficiency — meaning about 85 percent of the energy is lost in the process. There are more efficient cells out there, but they’re generally expensive and special-purpose, or use some exotic material.

One place people tend to spare no expense, however, is in space. Solar cells on many satellites are more efficient but, predictably, not cheap. But that’s not a problem if you only use just a tiny amount of them and concentrate the sunlight on those; that’s the Insolight insight.

Small but very high-efficiency cells are laid down on a grid, and above that is placed a honeycomb-like lens array that takes light and bends it into a narrow beam concentrated only on the tiny cells. As the sun moves, the cell layer moves ever so slightly, keeping the beams on target. They’ve achieved as high as 37 percent efficiency in tests, and 30 percent in consumer-oriented designs. That means half again or twice the power from the same area as ordinary panels.

Certainly this adds a layer or two of complexity to the current mass-manufactured arrays that are “good enough” but far from state of the art. But the resulting panels aren’t much different in size or shape, and don’t require special placement or hardware, such as a concentrator or special platform. And a recently completed pilot test on an EPFL roof was passed with flying colors.

“Our panels were hooked up to the grid and monitored continually. They kept working without a hitch through heat waves, storms and winter weather,” said Mathiu Ackermann, the company’s CTO, in an EPFL news release. “This hybrid approach is particularly effective when it’s cloudy and the sunlight is less concentrated, since it can keep generating power even under diffuse light rays.”

The company is now in talks with solar panel manufacturers, whom they are no doubt trying to convince that it’s not that hard to integrate this tech with their existing manufacturing lines — “a few additional steps during the assembly stage,” said Ackermann. Expect Insolight panels to hit the market in 2022 — yeah, it’s still a ways off, but maybe by then we’ll all have electric cars too and this will seem like an even better deal.

Porsche’s production forecast for its first all-electric vehicle may be too conservative, the company’s head of production said this week.

Porsche has targeted 20,000 Taycan electric vehicles for the first year of production. But interest in the vehicle could push those estimates higher, Albrecht Reimold, Porsche’s board member in charge of production, said in an internally produced Q&A.

Reimold didn’t provide a specific figure. In the interview, Reimold was asked about the company’s new factory for the Taycan that is being constructed in Zuffenhausen, Germany as well as production of the new 911. Reimold explained that there would be some production overlap with the two vehicles, such as using the same new paint shop, despite their marked differences.

“We have built lots of flexibility into production so that the 911 can also be produced in the Taycan assembly plant – though not vice versa,” he said.

And while the company has the technical capacity to use the designated Taycan line to build the 911, Reimold said that would be unlikely. His complete comments:

Yes, we have the technical capacity to do that; but we are absolutely certain that it won’t be required. Based on feedback from the market, the calculation of 20,000 Porsche Taycan models in the first year may be a rather conservative estimate. I’ve had the pleasure of driving the car myself, and I can only say it’s absolutely fantastic! Which is the response we’ve been hearing from all sides.

Reimold’s comments are in line with other Porsche executives who have done everything but shout from the rooftops that demand for the Taycan is high.

Porsche North America president and CEO Klaus Zellmer said in a December interview with CNET that if everyone who placed a deposit to pre-order the car actually buys it, the Taycan will be sold out in its first year of production. According to Zellmer, more than half have not owned or do not own a Porsche. More specifically, Zellmer said these potential customers are coming from Tesla.

Porsche CEO Oliver Blume told WirtschaftsWoche in November that demand for the Taycan prompted the automaker to increase production capacity without indicating by how much.

Demand could push higher as Porsche reveals more details and benefits about the vehicle in the run up to its release date late this year. For instance, last month Porsche said Taycan owners will get three years of free charging at hundreds of Electrify America public stations that are currently being installed in the U.S.

Under the leadership of its newest chairman, Jay Clayton, the SEC has for the last two years made it clear that it wants more companies to go public already.

A new proposal, revealed today, may get it closer to that objective. Specifically, the agency has proposed giving any company that’s exploring a potential IPO a chance to explore its plans privately with potential investors — both institutional and accredited — before making any public pronouncements.

It would essentially widen the net to allow every company to “test the waters” before deciding whether or not to move forward with an offering, compared with the companies that are able to test the waters today, which are “emerging growth companies.”

Per the SEC’s definition, an emerging growth company is an issuer with total annual gross revenue of less than $1 billion during its most recently completed fiscal year.

The public now has 60 days to comment on the proposal, after which the SEC will decide whether or not to move forward.

You can pretty much expect that it will. The move follows a series of steps the SEC has taken to shift over to the public market some of the liquidity sloshing around the private market. In July 2017, it made it possible for any company to confidentially submit registration documents related to shares being sold in an IPO, a benefit that only smaller companies had enjoyed previously.

Acknowledging that companies may still choose to stay private longer, Clayton separately said last August that the commission wants to give more small investors access to more privately held companies for their retirement or other needs. He said that changes toward that end could happen “pretty quickly,” though the SEC hasn’t formally revealed any related proposals yet.