Year: 2019

“The Breaker Upperers” kicks off with an ingenious premise: What if you could pay an agency to take care of your awkward romantic break-ups? And what if that agency was run by two longtime friends who are starting to drift apart?

The film was a big hit in New Zealand last year and is now available to global audiences on Netflix. Jackie van Beek and Madeleine Sami joined this week’s Original Content podcast to talk about writing, directing and starring in the movie together.

“I was thinking about how many conversations I’d had with people about the level of dread that they have when they realize they have to break up with their partner,” van Beek said. “I mean, nobody enjoys it. I thought, you could make a lot of money doing that for somebody or offering to do that for somebody.”

They pair also discussed shooting a sex scene with Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords, and finding room for improvisation on a relatively short, low-budget shoot.

The movie was executive produced by Taika Waititi, director of “Thor: Ragnarok,” a film that Sami credited with exposing global audiences a similar style of humor. Both filmmakers said they never expected “The Breaker Upperers” to find an audience outside New Zealand, so they’re delighted to be launching on Netflix .

“It’s fun, it’s colorful, it’s not too long, it’s just the right length,” van Beek added. “I reckon it’s the most amazing movie to watch on a chair, or on a couch, or even lying down on a sheepskin with your legs in the air. Like any kind of position, I think.”

After the interview, we’re joined by Brian Heater for to follow-up on last week’s brief review of “Russian Doll” — this time, we go deep into spoilers, discussing the twists that kept us hooked and how the “Groundhog Day”-style storyline ultimately wrapped up.

You can listen in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You also can send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)

Apple this morning announced a new partnership designed to train more people to code using its own programming language, Swift. The company says it’s now working with the Oakland-based nonprofit organization Dream Corps on the initiative, which will see Apple providing technology along with curriculum guidance, professional support and advocacy to individuals in middle and high schools, college and beyond.

The nonprofit currently operates its own learn-to-code program called #YesWeCode, which has graduated 100 people to date and placed around 60 percent in tech jobs. Its long-term goal is to help 100,000 young people from underrepresented backgrounds to be able to train for jobs in tech.

“I see Dream Corps as a peace corps for the American Dream,” said CEO Vien Truong, in a statement. Truong joined the organization in 2015, and is herself the youngest of 11 children born to an immigrant couple who migrated from Vietnam in the 1970’s, Apple also noted.

“It’s about making sure that we can help support people who lived or grew up in communities like mine. And this partnership with Apple will help unlock the untapped genius and talent within those communities, which will allow a new generation to achieve their dreams,” she added.

Dream Corps is now working with the Mayor’s Office and City of Oakland to find a location for a dedicated space to support the program with Apple and other workforce development initiatives. Apple says it’s expected to launch its program later this year in the Bay Area.

Apple’s investment in programming training and development is part of its larger Community Education Initiative. But partnerships like this aren’t the only way Apple is pushing people to learn to code with Swift.

Since the language’s introduction in 2014, Apple has rolled out several programs and tools aimed at helping introduce more people to Swift, including the 2016 launch of kids coding app Swift Playgrounds, expansions of its own “Everyone Can Code” program across the U.S. and elsewhere in the world; the addition of free coding sessions at its retail stores; and it has offered educational tools, software and curriculum for teachers.

For Apple, all of this is about ensuring there’s a new generation of developers learning its tools and Swift, in order to develop new apps for its platforms, iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS.

At last year’s WWDC event, WWDC, Apple CEO Tim Cook said there were 20 million registered developers on iOS, who collectively made about $100 billion in revenues, while the App Store saw some 500 million visitors per week.

As more of Apple’s business shifts to its growing Services business instead of just iPhone sales, it’s critical to ensure the developer pipeline remains open and accessible.

A new study study estimates that revenue-earning American Twitch streamers grew to nearly 9,800 in 2017 (a 59 percent increase from 2016) and made an estimated $87.1 million (representing a 30 percent YOY increase).

Twitch is one of the fastest growing platforms for American content creators. In terms of YOY growth in number of creators themselves, Twitch falls just behind Instagram and Youtube, and ranks second behind Instagram in YOY revenue growth for those creators. (Fun Fact: Instagram’s creator-based revenue growth grew nearly 50 percent from 2016 to 2017 to $460 million, according to the study.)

Recreate Coalition says that these numbers are very conservative based on the methodology of the study and the fact that it’s limited to the U.S.

The growth of Twitch is predicated on a few obvious trends, as well as a very nuanced relationship between a streamer and his or her respective audience.

In the case of the former, ‘live’ digital experiences continue to be a fascination for startups and consumers alike. While Twitch and YouTube have offered live broadcasts for a while, social media companies have followed along with their own live streaming products. In fact, Betaworks dedicated a season of its accelerator program to ‘live’ startups, calling the program LiveCamp.

With regards to the latter, things get more interesting. The relationship between a viewer and a streamer is similar to our relationships with other famous celebrities, artists and athletes, but puts the viewer far closer to the action.

Streamers don’t just pop up briefly in articles, TV interviews, or on Twitter or Instagram. They spend hours and hours each day just sitting there, doing whatever it is they do on stream and chatting with their viewers. You can get to know their personality, talk to them, and they talk back to you!

It’s a bizarre combination that has proven financially fruitful for these streamers, especially at a time where the gaming industry itself is growing by double digit percentages YOY for the past two years.

A tier of elite, hyper-popular streamers such as Shroud, DrDisrespect, Dakotaz and of course Ninja are leading the way for others as they continue to gain followers. In fact, Ninja just partnered with Wicked Cool Toys to introduce a line of actual toys to the market. Ninja himself made nearly $10 million in 2018.

But as the gaming world explores new genres and esports grow, there seems to be plenty of room for streamers to make a name (and a pretty penny) for themselves.

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this post included a few too many zeroes, stating that U.S. Twitch streamers made $87 billion instead of $87 million. It has been corrected for accuracy with my apologies.

A new study study estimates that revenue-earning American Twitch streamers grew to nearly 9,800 in 2017 (a 59 percent increase from 2016) and made an estimated $87.1 million (representing a 30 percent YOY increase).

Twitch is one of the fastest growing platforms for American content creators. In terms of YOY growth in number of creators themselves, Twitch falls just behind Instagram and Youtube, and ranks second behind Instagram in YOY revenue growth for those creators. (Fun Fact: Instagram’s creator-based revenue growth grew nearly 50 percent from 2016 to 2017 to $460 million, according to the study.)

Recreate Coalition says that these numbers are very conservative based on the methodology of the study and the fact that it’s limited to the U.S.

The growth of Twitch is predicated on a few obvious trends, as well as a very nuanced relationship between a streamer and his or her respective audience.

In the case of the former, ‘live’ digital experiences continue to be a fascination for startups and consumers alike. While Twitch and YouTube have offered live broadcasts for a while, social media companies have followed along with their own live streaming products. In fact, Betaworks dedicated a season of its accelerator program to ‘live’ startups, calling the program LiveCamp.

With regards to the latter, things get more interesting. The relationship between a viewer and a streamer is similar to our relationships with other famous celebrities, artists and athletes, but puts the viewer far closer to the action.

Streamers don’t just pop up briefly in articles, TV interviews, or on Twitter or Instagram. They spend hours and hours each day just sitting there, doing whatever it is they do on stream and chatting with their viewers. You can get to know their personality, talk to them, and they talk back to you!

It’s a bizarre combination that has proven financially fruitful for these streamers, especially at a time where the gaming industry itself is growing by double digit percentages YOY for the past two years.

A tier of elite, hyper-popular streamers such as Shroud, DrDisrespect, Dakotaz and of course Ninja are leading the way for others as they continue to gain followers. In fact, Ninja just partnered with Wicked Cool Toys to introduce a line of actual toys to the market. Ninja himself made nearly $10 million in 2018.

But as the gaming world explores new genres and esports grow, there seems to be plenty of room for streamers to make a name (and a pretty penny) for themselves.

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this post included a few too many zeroes, stating that U.S. Twitch streamers made $87 billion instead of $87 million. It has been corrected for accuracy with my apologies.

The Australia government suffered a cyber attack that it suspects is the work of a “sophisticated state actor,” according to the country’s Prime Minister.

PM Scott Morrison said today the computer network of the country’s parliament, and those belonging to Liberal, Labor and Nationals parties, were targeted by an attack which took place a few weeks ago, The Sydney Morning Herald reports. Australia is months away federal elections which will take place in May.

Morrison said there is “no evidence of any electoral interference.”

“We have put in place a number of measures to ensure the integrity of our electoral system,” he said, adding that security services “acted decisively to confront it.”

There is apparently no indication that data was accessed following the attack.

Where exactly it originated from remains unclear.

Sources told SMH that the sophistication of the attack was “unprecedented,” but nobody in the government is naming suspects. Reportedly, the incident sports “the digital fingerprints of China” but there remains the possibility that the attack was framed to look like it originated from China.

The incident recalls the hacking of the Democrat Party around the U.S. Presidential election in 2016. The attackers, who are widely suspected to be linked to the Russian government, accessed are to have accessed 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments from DNC email accounts, John Podesta, who was the campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton.

Australia itself has a history of parliamentary hacks. The national government was attacked in 2015 by a “foreign government” (later named as China) that reportedly used computers at the Bureau of Meteorology as its entry point. The incident is said to have given China the records of 14 million federal employees.

Paris-based startup Alan has raised a Series B round of funding of $45 million (€40 million). Index Ventures is once again leading the round, with partners of DST Global also participating. The company had raised a $28 million funding round only ten months ago.

Alan is a software-as-a-service startup tackling a very specific industry — the health insurance market in France — and soon across Europe. The company wants to create a well-designed insurance product with transparent pricing and policies to make healthcare more accessible. And it isn’t just a marketplace — the startup has obtained an official health insurance license and is the first new health insurance company in France in 30 years.

In France, every employee is covered by the national healthcare system for basic reimbursements as well as a private insurance company for more expensive treatments. In addition to that, legacy insurance companies have neglected those products as they usually don’t generate a lot of margins on that segment. It creates a huge market opportunity for Alan.

With today’s funding announcement, the startup has shared some numbers. In 2018 alone, the company grew from 5,000 insured people to 27,000, and revenue jumped from $4 million to $25 million (€3.5 million to €22 million). Alan has been focused on freelancers as well as small and medium companies, such as My Little Paris, Le Slip Français, Ledger and Converteo.

More interestingly, Alan is close to break-even right now with 64 employees. That gives you an idea of Alan’s margins.

Following today’s funding round, the company is going to hire a lot more people. There should be around 175 people working for Alan by the end of the year.

On the product front, the company is always looking at ways to make the experience as seamless as possible. “We’re trying to make the insurance process instantaneous, from quotes to coverage and reimbursements” co-founder and CEO Jean-Charles Samuelian told me.

But Alan has always been about healthcare at large, not just insurance products. So let’s see how they can use this influx of funding to simplify healthcare in general.

Razer is one of the dominant brands in gaming when it comes to buying equipment to play, but one of its biggest efforts to own a larger slice of digital spending hasn’t gone according to plan. After less than a year, the company announced that it will close its digital game store at the end of this month “as part of realignment plans.”

The Razer Game Store launched worldwide in April 2018 with the aim of taking a slice of a game sales business that is dominated by Steam. Razer’s offering tied into its gamer credit (virtual currency) strategy to incentivize its customers to buy hardware and digital content with the promise of discounts. The company didn’t comment on why the store is closing, but you’d imagine that it didn’t go as well as Razer had hoped.

It sure takes a lot to bite into digital game sales, but the rewards are potentially lucrative.

Steam made $4.7 billion in 2017 (we don’t yet know its total for 2018) and Epic Games, buoyed by the runaway success of Fortnite, banked a $3 billion profit last year across its entire business, sources previously told TechCrunch.

Amazon-owned Twitch — which dominates the live-streaming space — has its own store, while Epic launched a very competitive offering at end of 2018. The Epic Games Store, though, is fairly sparsely populated at this point. It is a long-term project, but the fact that even a company of the size and influence of Epic needs time goes to show the struggle that any new entrant will face.

The Razer Game Store will close down on February 28

The Razer Game Store will close its doors at 1am PST February 28. All purchased games will continue to work and pre-ordered titles will ship as planned, according to Razer. Discount vouchers must be used before that date, however.

In a Q&A accompanying the announcement, Razer said it would “continue bringing games to gamers via other services.”

“We will be investing in other ways to deliver great content and introduce game promotions through Razer Gold, our virtual credits system,” the company said, perhaps hinting at tie-ins with other game stores in the future.

Razer went public with an IPO in Hong Kong in 2017.

China’s education authorities are about to take some burden off parents with school-aged children. A proposal posted last week by the Department of Education in China’s eastern province of Zhejiang said teachers should be banned from using WeChat, QQ or other mobile apps to assign homework or ask parents to grade students’ assignments.

As mobile internet booms in China, phones have become an extension of daily activities, including school practices. Instead of announcing homework in class or handing out notices to students in person, teachers are now dumping assignments into WeChat groups designed to interact with parents. Many teachers are keen to exercise their power through these digital channels, asking parents to help students with problem sets and even grade their homework.

The regional call to action follows a set of national guidelines released by the Ministry of Education in October directing teachers and schools to take more responsibilities rather than shift the load onto parents. “Teachers should be accountable for their job, treat teaching seriously, correct homework with prudence and help students with care.”

Not all schools abuse digital platforms to such an extent. A Shenzhen-based parent told TechCrunch that her second-grader who attends a local public school still does much of her homework in written form and parents’ involvement is moderate.

“Different schools treat technology differently and I’m not opposed to the use of it. It’s helpful, for example, to use a digital device to learn English because much of the process involves audios and videos,” the parent said. “I think sometimes media are painting teachers and schools in such a negative light just to get attention.”

Other recommendations in the national notice include limiting the amount of online homework to reduce nearsightedness, which has become a source of concerns for parents and society at large.

The new directives also come as Beijing tries to rein in what and how private technology services are infiltrating students’ lives. In one far-reaching move, the government ordered video-game publishers to cap children’s playing time, sending shares of industry leaders Tencent and NetEase tumbling. More recently, the Ministry of Education asked schools and universities to audit apps used by teachers and students on campus in accordance with guidelines set by the regulator.

Despite the government’s intent to ease stress and unplug devices for students, education apps have flourished in China. Those that help students outperform their peers have done particularly well. Yuanfudao, a startup that offers live courses, exam prep and homework help, gained a $3 billion valuation in its latest $300 million funding round in December. Its rivals Zuoyebang and Yiqi Zuoye have similarly attracted big-name investors and sizable funds to help their young users get ahead.

Compared to startups born into the frothy London fintech space as it exists today, 2011-founded GoCardless could well be considered a slow burner. However, in more recent years, the nearly 300 person company — headed up by co-founder and CEO Hiroki Takeuchi — has undoubtedly stepped on the gas in a bid to become the one stop shop globally for businesses that want to let customers pay via recurring bank payments.

A little over a year ago, GoCardless announced that it had raised $22.5 million in further funding, off the back of record annual growth in the U.K. and strong early traction in new markets. And today the fintech is disclosing another fresh injection of capital: $75 million in Series E funding, in part to fund new offices across EMEA, APAC and North America. In addition to its London HQ, the company already has sites in France, Australia and Germany, from which it says it processes transactions for 40,000 businesses worldwide.

Leading the round are new investors Adams Street Partners, Google Ventures and Salesforce Ventures. Previous backers Accel Partners, Balderton Capital, Notion Capital and Passion Capital have also followed on.

In a call with Takeuchi late last week, he picked up on a familiar a theme, describing the collection of recurring payments for many business as “broken”. Accessing the various bank to bank payments schemes has traditionally been difficult from a commercial, compliance and technical point of view. Instead, businesses have typically relied on payment methods, such as card payments or cheques, which aren’t up to the job of recurring payments.

That’s because these payment options are designed for one-off transactions (cards, for example, expire, breaking the payment flow). Meanwhile, there’s been a rise in subscription business models and an expanding B2B market in which contractors and partners need to make regular variable payments. According to Takeuchi, this means an international recurring payments network like the one GoCardless is building is needed more than ever.

“A global network for bank debit is an absolute necessity in allowing businesses to easily collect recurring payments anywhere, in any currency,” he says. “Thanks to the support of our investors we can now open up our global network and payments platform to more businesses across the world, delivering on our mission to take the pain out of getting paid, so that businesses can focus on what they do best”.

Takeuchi also tells me GoCardless is investing heavily in its product, with a product team of around 100 members. He declined to go into much detail with regards to GoCardless’ immediate or more long term roadmap, although currency conversion is one area the company is developing new products for. It’s not clear if that will be via an FX partner, such as London neighbour TransferWise, or a more home grown solution, although the former seems more likely. Takeuchi wouldn’t be drawn on any specifics.

Other areas of development include products to help businesses boost cash flow via “instant settlement,” and smarter payment features to increase transaction success rates. The latter could include using open banking to check if funds are available before trying to process a bank debit, or to automatically set the most appropriate payment date.

An Etsy bill payment error resulted in large amounts of money being withdrawn from several sellers’ bank accounts and credit cards on Friday morning. While the company says the issue has been resolved and was not the result of fraud, the headache isn’t over for affected sellers because Monday is a federal holiday in the United States, and many financial institutions are closed.

Etsy sellers are required to have a valid credit or debit card on file with Etsy in order to have a payment account. Boing Boing reports that complaints first began emerging in Etsy’s Community Forums and Twitter on Friday morning, when sellers began noticing amounts ranging from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars had ben withdrawn or charged to those accounts.

An Etsy representative posted with a brief message in its forum stating that the company was “aware of a bill payment error affecting a small group of sellers which resulted in some cards being incorrectly charged.” Then on Sunday afternoon, Etsy sent a longer explanation to sellers. The company said it has already refunded all incorrectly charged cards and will be sending deposits on Tuesday.

“An update on recent issues affecting payment accounts

On Friday, February 15, a bill payment error affected a small group of sellers which resulted in some cards being incorrectly charged. Sellers who were affected have been notified by email, or by Etsy Conversations, and the issue that caused this has since been resolved.

As part of fixing this issue, all incorrectly charged cards have been refunded. It may take several business days for the refunded amounts to clear and settle in card accounts.  Also related to fixing the root problem, some sellers saw their scheduled deposit of funds returned to Etsy on Friday, February 15, and those deposits will now be sent on Tuesday, February 19.

For affected sellers, we are very sorry for the trouble or concern this may have caused. Our first priority has been to correct the issue. This was not a fraud issue, but instead an error related to a site change which affects a small group of sellers and is unrelated to buyers’ purchases.

This is an issue we do not take lightly. We’ve assembled a Payments task force, including senior executives across Etsy, to address any concerns or troubles resulting from this error. We will refund any undue fees associated with this incorrect charge and change in deposit schedule. We don’t expect this error to impact additional sellers going forward.”

The explanation was not enough for many sellers, who said hourly updates should have been posted for a problem of this magnitude, and that Etsy had not addressed how it will compensate them for overdraft or late fees, or if the returned deposits will appear on their 1099s. TechCrunch has contacted Etsy for comment.