Year: 2019

A grand mission to Mars that was always light on details has come to a decidedly terrestrial end. Mars One, a controversial space exploration project that made it as far as the “highly produced videos” stage of space colonization, has quietly filed for bankruptcy, according to a liquidation listing spotted by a Redditor on r/space.

As the post explains, the private company that spearheaded the Mars One spectacle is actually made up of two parts, a not-for-profit called the Mars One Foundation and a for-profit company known as Mars One Ventures. In 2016, Swiss financial services company nFin Innovative Finance AG picked up Mars One Ventures in a takeover bid.

In a statement on the takeover, Mars One’s leadership explained how the plan was still on track, in spite of appearances.

“The takeover provides a solid path to funding the next steps of Mars One’s mission to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars. Those steps include reducing the remaining 100 astronaut candidates to just 24, as well as continuing the mission design phase with Mars One’s technology suppliers.”

When contacted about the bankruptcy, Mars One Co-founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp told Engadget that the Mars One Foundation continues to operate but is stalled unless it receives an infusion of funds as Lansdorp works “to find a solution.”

Mars One was ill-fated from its inception, more grounded in CGI videos and marketing hype for a Mars mission reality TV show than any kind of scientific reality. And they couldn’t even get the show off the ground.

There were plenty of red flags for anyone willing to look, but the nature of its outlandish proposal allowed Mars One to prey on the intrinsic optimism and curiosity of would-be space explorers. As one finalist candidate revealed in an excellent exposé series on the company titled “All Dressed Up for Mars and Nowhere to go,” Mars One’s financial reality looked like a multilevel marketing scheme — not a scientific expedition.

“When you join the ‘Mars One Community,’ which happens automatically if you applied as a candidate, they start giving you points. You get points for getting through each round of the selection process… and then the only way to get more points is to buy merchandise from Mars One or to donate money to them.”

An MIT report in 2014 issued other telling warning’s about the project’s feasibility.

“… If all food is obtained from locally grown crops, as Mars One envisions, the vegetation would produce unsafe levels of oxygen, which would set off a series of events that would eventually cause human inhabitants to suffocate.”

Taken together, those two telling details tell you pretty much everything you need to know about a sadly small-minded company that sold the public a lucrative tale about its big red dreams.

For years, the popular accelerator program Y Combinator has interviewed applicants to its program in the Bay Area, reimbursing teams for their travel expenses. It will continue to do so, but the outfit tells us they are also hosting interviews in New York on February 23rd for the first time, and that plans to interview applicants in both Tel Aviv and Bangalore are in the works.

We were in touch yesterday with YC Partner Dalton Caldwell, who heads up admissions for the organization, to get a few more details that might be good for potential applicants to know.

TC: Remind us of what the in-person interview process involves. What are the steps to land time with one of the partners for an interview?

DC: Founders fill out an online application. The application is reviewed by YC partners. We invite select founders to meet us in-person for a 10-minute interview. We tell founders that day if they’re funded.

TC: And that application involves . . .

DC: The application asks for a one-minute video where founders can introduce themselves and their startups. There is no change from our standard application and interview process.

TC: How many people were accepted into the winter class and how many were rejected?

DC: We’re not yet announcing the stats from the Winter W19 batch. We’ll keep you posted on when those go live.

TC: When might YC revisit a team to whom it has said no?

DD: In a typical YC batch, about the half companies have applied multiple times before being accepted. If you’ve applied before and not gotten in, we strongly encourage you to apply again. Having made progress since your last application is a strong signal to us.

TC: How many times do people typically apply to yc before they are accepted?

DC: I don’t have this data handy. But roughly half the companies in a typical YC batch had a founder that applied more than once. Some teams apply once and get in, but we’ve also had teams that applied six times before they were accepted.

TC: Why is it necessary to host these interviews elsewhere?

It isn’t necessary for YC to do this, but it seems like a good thing to do. We often plan events for founders around the world and realized we could use those opportunities to interview local startups.

TC: What are you and the rest of YC looking for in these very short in-person interviews?

DC: YC interviews let us meet the founders and have a conversation about what they’re building. We ask questions and look at what they’ve built so far. The conversation helps us understand how founders think about the problem they’re solving.

TC: Will the interview process be any different in Tel Aviv or Bangalore versus here in the U.S.?

DC: Founders will experience the same process as the interviews we host in the Bay Area.

TC: YC  says a “small number” of interviews will be taking place in a couple of weeks. What does that mean?

DC: We don’t have an exact number of interviews in mind. We’ll see what comes in and plan accordingly.

TC: Any ideas from now regarding how many startups YC can accommodate for its summer batch?

DC: We don’t set a specific number in advance.

TC: Is this a first step toward anything else, like Y Combinator New York?

DC: We’re staying in the Bay Area for now — but we’re always looking for ways to better support founders who are based in other cities and internationally.

MGM-owned Epix is joining other premium networks like HBO, Showtime and Starz with the launch of its own over-the-top streaming service aimed at cord cutters. The service, called Epix Now, offers access to Epix’s original series and thousands of Hollywood movies and classic films for $5.99 per month, and supports offline viewing and 4K video, the company says.

Initially, Epix Now is available on Apple TV, iOS and Android devices, but Roku and Amazon Fire TV apps are arriving soon.

Epix has been working for some time to reposition its network to better compete in the streaming market.

Following MGM’s $1 billion acquisition of Epix in 2017, the company last year announced plans to enhance the service’s offerings with a variety of original series. MGM said by spring 2019, it aimed to have 50 to 60 hours of original scripted content, and 70 to 80 hours of scripted fare, in addition to its first-run theatrical and library film content, according to Deadline.

As of today’s launch of Epix Now, the network has been making good on those promises.

Its service now includes access to several new original shows, including: “Pennyworth,” the origin story of Batman’s butler, Alfred; “Godfather of Harlem,” starring Forest Whitaker; “Perpetual Grace, LTD.,” featuring Sir Ben Kingsley; the docu-series “PUNK” from Iggy Pop; and “Elvis Goes There,” with Elvis Mitchell.

Returning originals include “Get Shorty,” starring Chris O’Dowd and Ray Romano; “Berlin Station,” starring Richard Armitage, Ashley Judd and Richard Jenkins; and “Deep State,” starring Mark Strong and Joe Dempsie.

Epix also features unscripted series and films like the late-night comedy docu-series “Unprotected Sets” from Wanda Sykes; Mark Burnett’s boxing competition “The Contender;” 2018 Sundance audience award-winner “This Is Home: A Refugee Story;” and sports documentary “Serena.”

Meanwhile, the network’s film library includes both new and classic movies, like “A Quiet Place,” “Daddy’s Home,” “Transformers: The Last Knight,” “Fences,” “Barbershop: The Next Cut, “Me Before You” and franchises like James Bond, Rocky, Mission Impossible and Star Trek.

On connected TV devices, Epix Now users can also stream all four Epix linear live channels, and on mobile, they can download content to watch offline.

This is not the first time that Epix has made its content available for streaming, however.

In addition to offering a way for authenticated pay TV customers to stream its shows and movies online, the company had also offered access through streaming TV services like Sling TV and PlayStation Vue, as an add-on.

In February, Epix said it would launch a standalone subscription service at some point in the future, but had declined to share a time frame for those plans.

Though new to the standalone streaming market, the company believes there’s plenty of room for growth as more consumers cut the cord with traditional pay TV.

For example, HBO had grown its streaming service to more than 5 million subscribers, as of last year. And CBS’s streaming properties, CBS All Access and Showtime, had grown to a combined more than 5 million subscribers as of that time, as well.

Epix additionally believes its support for 4K Ultra HD streaming will help differentiate it from others.

“2019 is poised to be an incredible year of growth for our network,” said Michael Wright, Epix president, in a statement. “Launching Epix Now and providing consumers nationwide with access to our premium original programming and blockbuster movies is an exciting moment for our company and solidifies our commitment to bring high-level storytelling to as many people as possible. We look forward to welcoming new audiences to our network,” he said.

The City of Paris first warned Airbnb and it is now taking action. Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo told the JDD that the city is suing the company for 1,010 illegal listings. The fine could be worth as much as $14.2 million (€12.625 million).

Based on current legislation, you can’t rent an apartment more than 120 days a year. If you want to rent an apartment on Airbnb in Paris, you first have to register your apartment with the city. The city then gives you an ID number so that they can track how many nights you’re listing your apartment on Airbnb.

And yet, many listings still don’t have that ID number. The Mayor’s office flagged around 1,000 apartments back in December 2017 and said Airbnb was dragging its feet. The company had little intensive to comply as hosts were responsible for their own listings.

Thanks to a new law, the responsibility is now shared between the hosts and the platform. The City of Paris can now fine Airbnb for all those illegal listings, up to €12,500 per listing.

According to Hidalgo, Airbnb has been putting too much pressure on the housing market. She thinks that 65,000 apartments are now reserved for Airbnb in Paris alone. In some areas, it has become quite hard to find an apartment because of that. Local shops also suffer because tourists have different needs. In addition to better monitoring, Hidalgo is also in favor of restricting listings to 30 nights per year.

Airbnb told the JDD that it has complied with regulation and informed all Airbnb hosts about the new rules. The company also says that regulation in Paris doesn’t comply with European regulation. It’s clear that this fight is not over.

Ask me in a couple of months what I think about the Moft. Right now, I’m actually digging it. Granted, I didn’t have particularly high hopes for a $19 (for Kickstarter early birds) fiberglass and faux leather gizmo you slap on the bottom of the laptop, but I’m into it.

The “invisible” stand is pretty silly on the face of it. It ships flat, you take it out, pull off the protective paper and stick it on the bottom of your laptop toward the rear. The company says it works with laptops up to 15.6 inches. I can only speak for the 15 inch MacBook Pro — but there, at least, it works like a charm.

The thing operates like your standard laptop/tablet origami case. It folds up flush with the system, and when you pull it out, you can adjust it to prop up the laptop from a couple of different angles. Simplicity is the best and worst thing about the Moft.

I found myself wanting some kind of magnetic latch to keep it in place when not in use. As it is, the thing kind of flaps around a bit. My MacBook goes in and out of my backpack several times a day. After a few months of that kind of use, it’s easy to imagine ripping the thing to shreds. The price is right, though — at $19 for Kickstarter backers and $24 at retail, running though a couple of these a year won’t break the bank.

Also, maybe it’s my own imperfect placement, but there’s a bit of a wobble when I type. That’s addressed pretty easily by resting my palms of the laptop — something I tend to do when typing anyway.

All in all, a pretty solid — and clever — addition to the arsenal. I like typing at an angle, so this should help with speed and comfort. There are a few qualms here, as it to be expected with any first gen crowdfunded project, but the Moft’s not a bad little buy for the price.

Aditya and Aarti Kochhar Kaji didn’t set out to start the snack food business Taali Foods when they were studying for their business degrees at Harvard.

The couple both hail from Mumbai and met at the University of Pennsylvania . They were married before starting at Harvard’s Business School and initially were interested in other areas — Aarti was exploring a career in venture capital and Aditya Kaji was looking at the food and beverage industry broadly in his classes at Harvard, Kochhar Kaji said.

Addicted to snack foods like chips and popcorn to fuel her Harvard study sessions, Kochhar Kaji started making popped water lily seeds as a snack — a food both she and her husband had grown up eating in India, she said.

The seeds, which are high in anti-oxidants, low in fat, have been a staple of Ayurvedic medicine — thank to their purported  anti-inflammatory properties and are a staple of Indian snacking traditions. Now, with American consumers on the hunt for healthier snacks, they’re becoming a big business in the U.S. as well.

Y Combinator is very on trend, with its decision to invest and accelerate Taali as part of its most recent cohort of startups. But in this instance you may call the accelerator a fast follower rather than a progenitor of this trend.

No less auspicious a food tastemaker than Whole Foods named water lily seeds as one of the top ten new food trends of 2019. With that attention competitors to Taali abound.

Bohana and AshaPops are just two new snack food companies floating on the popped water lily seed movement. Bohana even managed to nab the attention of PepsiCo’s Nutrition Greenhouse competitive accelerator.

It’s no secret that technology investors are investing more heavily in consumer businesses — everything from snack foods to period products and baby formula — and startups need only point to the success of Amazon as the everything store to show that there’s always money to be made in the category.

Indeed, at $1.47 trillion, the consumer packaged goods industry dwarfs technology as a share of the nation’s economy.

As Ryan Caldbeck, the head of the consumer-focused investment firm CircleUp noted last year.

The uptick in tech VC dollars going to the CPG market is partly because tech investing is brutally competitive and saturated, and largely because these VCs are awakening to the strong historical returns in CPG, especially with the trend leaning towards small brands stealing market share.

Consumer is a massive market – about 3x the size of tech, as seen below.

Despite the size of the market, the early-stage has historically been underserved by investors due to market inefficiencies like the geographic dispersion of brands and a lack of structured information sources (i.e. there is no Silicon Valley for consumer, and certainly no Crunchbase equivalents – yet).

Strong exits are already possible for consumer brands — and not necessarily from the big ticket, headline grabbing acquisitions like Dollar Shave Club. Last week This is L — the condom and period product retailer — sold for roughly $100 million after raising seed funding from investors including 500 Startups and Y Combinator.

Taali was similarly bootstrapped before it was accepted into Y Combinator . The company is already selling its snacks through Amazon and in retail locations like Fairway in New York and Central Market in Texas. The founders expect to be in stores in California in the next few months.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here:

1. SoftBank’s next bet: $940M into autonomous delivery startup Nuro

Nuro has raised $940 million in financing from the SoftBank Vision Fund, a whopping amount that will be used to expand its delivery service, add new partners, hire employees and scale up its fleet of self-driving bots.

The autonomous delivery startup’s focus has been developing a self-driving stack and combining it with a custom unmanned vehicle designed for last-mile delivery of local goods and services. The vehicle has two compartments that can fit up to six grocery bags each.

2. Trump’s planned AI initiative includes education, but lacks key details

This weekend, the Trump administration shed more light on the “American A.I. Initiative,” a plan the president is set to sign today, in hopes of helping keep the U.S. at the forefront of innovation.

3. What to expect from Mobile World Congress 2019

2019 just might be the year that smartphones get fun again.

4. Saudi Arabia denies involvement in leak of Jeff Bezos’ private messages

In his extraordinary Medium post last week accusing American Media Inc. of “extortion and blackmail,” Jeff Bezos hinted that there may be a connection between Saudi Arabia and the publication of his personal messages with Lauren Sanchez. Now Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir has denied it was involved.

5. Dating apps face questions over age checks after report exposes child abuse

The U.K. government has said it could legislate to require age verification checks on users of dating apps, following an investigation into underage use of dating apps published by the Sunday Times this weekend.

6. Apple partners with VA to bring Health Records to veterans

The deal will allow the veterans to view their medical information across participating institutions, including the VA, organized in the Apple Health app. These health records include allergies, conditions, immunizations, lab results, medications, procedures and vitals, and will be displayed alongside other information, like Apple Watch data.

7. Monday podcast roundup

This week, Equity discussed Spotify’s big move into podcasts, Mixtape looked at Instacart’s tipping controversy and Original Content reviewed the (terrible) Netflix movie “Velvet Buzzsaw.”

Zeta Global, the well-funded marketing technology company founded by CEO David A. Steinberg and former Apple CEO John Sculley, has hired its first chief privacy officer — Ben Hayes, who was previously chief privacy officer at Nielsen.

Steinberg said the company already has a “global privacy team” and has been taking the issue “very seriously.” However, he said that by hiring Hayes, he’s hoping to make Zeta a “global thought leader.”

“We want to send a message to the world that the end users that hit our platform are important to us, your privacy is important to us,” he said. And he noted, “When we sit down with our customers — and these are very, very large customers — the first two things they always want to talk about are data security and data privacy.”

For his part, Hayes said Zeta is “poised to deliver a unique value to the marketplace and, in my estimation, disrupt multiple industries in so doing.” He also said he was impressed by Zeta’s approach to protecting user data, specifically the fact that “it’s not a data broker.” In other words, even though it helps marketers target customers based on user data, it’s not selling that data to others.

I wondered whether that distinction might get lost in the broader backlash against the way online companies vacuum up personal data, but Hayes said, “I believe that paranoia grows in the shadows and the privacy backlash is largely about people feeling a loss of control over their data.”

“Explaining the value proposition to users is crucially important,” he added. “People are rational. If they understand it to be a net benefit to themselves they will like that thing.”

Last week TechCrunch reported that Reddit was raising $150 million from Chinese tech giant Tencent and up to $150 million more in a Series D that would value the company at $2.7 billion pre-money or $3 billion post-money. After no-commenting on our scoop, today Reddit confirmed it’s raised $300 million at $3 billion post-money, with $150 million from Tencent.

The deal makes for an odd pairing between one of the architects of China’s Great Firewall of censorship and one of America’s most lawless free-speech forums. Some Redditors are already protesting the funding by trying to post content that would rile Chinese’s internet watchdogs, like imagery from Tiananmen Square and Winnie The Pooh memes mocking Chinese President Xi Jinping’s appearance.

The round brings the Conde Nast-majority owned Reddit to $550 million in total funding. Beyond Tencent, the rest of the round came from previous investors potentially including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, and Fidelity. Apparently frustrated that we had disrupted its PR plan, Reddit today handed confirmation of the round to CNBC which re-reported our scoop without citation. [Update: CNBC eventually updated its article to credit TechCrunch.]

Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman has had his own problems with attribution after the exec was caught editing users’ comments to mislead viewers into thinking they were insulting their Subreddit’s moderators. Huffman managed to get off with just an apology and vow not to do it again, though he seemed to laugh off and excuse the abuse of power by saying “I spent my formative years as a young troll on the Internet.”

Reddit will have to compete for ad dollars with the Google-Facebook duopoly despite having less information about its users, who are often anonymous. Reddit sees 330 million users per month across its Subreddit forums for discussing everything from news and entertainment to niche types of pornography, conspiracy theories, and other highly brand-unsafe content. Meanwhile, users may be concerned that Reddit’s policy views could be tightened as it cosies up to Tencent.

Reddit has struggled with staff departures and user revolts over the years as it tries to balance freedom of expression with civility. The hope is the cash could help it pay for experienced leaders and more moderation staff to maintain that balance. But without proper oversight, the cash could simply scale up Reddit and its problems along with it.

Cars are now essentially computers on wheels — and like every computer, they are susceptible to attacks. It’s no surprise then that there’s a growing number of startups that are working to protect a car’s internal systems from these hacks, especially given that the market for automotive cybersecurity could be worth over $900 billion by 2026.

One of these companies is Israel’s C2A Security, which offers an end-to-end security platform for vehicles, which today announced that it has raised a $6.5 million Series A funding round.

The round was led by Maniv Mobility, which previously invested in companies like Hailo, drive.ai and Turo, and ICV, which has invested in companies like Freightos and Vayyar. OurCrowd’s Labs/02 also participated in this round.

Like most companies at the Series A stage, C2A plans to use the new funding to grow its team, especially on the R&D side, and help support its customer base. Sadly, C2A does not currently talk about who its customers are.

The promise of C2A is that it offers a full suite of solutions to detect and mitigate attacks. The team behind the company has an impressive security pedigree, with the company’s CMO Nat Meron being an alumn of Israel’s Unit 8200 intelligence unit, for example. C2A founder and CEO Michael Dick previously co-founded NDS, a content security solution, which Cisco acquired for around $5 billion in 2012 (and then recently sold on to Permira, also for $5 billion).

“We are extremely proud to receive the support of such outstanding investors, who will bring tremendous value to the company,” said Dick. “Maniv’s expertise in autotech and strong network across the industry coupled with ICV’s rich experience in cybersecurity brings the perfect combination of skills to the table.”