Year: 2019

French startup Workwell has released a major update to its platform. The company now provides an app to manage as many things related to your office building as possible from your phone.

The company started with a sort of intranet replacement. You could book meeting rooms, get a map of the office, contact your coworkers from the app. Workwell now wants to create a more flexible platform that expands beyond your company and beyond a single office building.

“The goal is to become the digital layer of every building,” co-founder and CEO Marie Schneegans told me. “We consider Workwell as an infrastructure product for buildings, just like water, electricity and internet. Workwell provides an interface to interact with the building, its services and people.”

Instead of a traditional service-based interface, Workwell is now organized by actions. If you want to book something, you tap on the booking button to book a meeting room, a parking spot or a gym class for instance. Similarly, the inbox has been unified to interact with both people and services in a single messaging interface.

Each person belongs to multiple circles. For instance, you can be part of a company with multiple offices around the world, part of a building and part of a co-working space. Each entity can have its own sets of services and features. It creates a more cohesive experience for the end user. It’s like being able to sign in to multiple Slack workspaces.

This way, you can use the app to badge in when you’re traveling to another city for some meetings with colleagues working in another city.

Eventually, Workwell wants to collaborate with real estate developers to integrate its app from day one. Imagine there’s a new office tower in town. Workwell could integrate with the AC system, elevators and parking sensors to improve the experience for all the companies working in that new building.

Real estate developers can integrate Workwell for free and hand it out to companies working in the building. Companies can then choose to add their own services by becoming a paid Workwell customer. Workwell is already partnering with Hines, Mirvac and Grand Paris Aménagement for new buildings.

Target is expanding access to its new loyalty program that rewards shoppers for returning to its stores by offering 1 percent back on their next trip, among other perks. The program, called Target Circle, is still in beta testing following its initial launch in March of last year. At the time, the program was called Target Red, but the company has since rebranded it. It was also previously available only in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Starting today, Target is opening up access to the beta to six other major U.S. markets, including Charlotte, Denver, Indianapolis, Kansas City and Phoenix. This will allow the retailer to test the program on a much larger scale with millions more shoppers.

In addition to the loyalty program’s name, the company also changed the marketing around the program.

Today, Target Circle is more heavily focused on promoting the 1 percent back on purchases – the piece designed to increase foot traffic in Target stores. The 1 percent is meant to lure in those shoppers who won’t sign up for Target’s store card, REDcard. The card, which comes in both a credit and debit version, provides 5 percent back at checkout and has seen decent adoption to date. As of Target’s last quarterly earnings, REDcard penetration was nearly 24 percent.

However, that figure has remained stagnant quarter-over-quarter. It’s not growing at all, and in some cases, even declining slightly. That’s a concern.

Target Circle, then, represents a different way to reach, engage with and reward customers for shopping at Target and getting them to return time and again.

While Target REDcard members can join Circle to receive the other perks, they’ll continue get their 5 percent back instead of earning the 1 percent back, Target notes.

The Target Circle beta website also now touts two other components to the program, including the ability to vote on Target’s local community giving initiatives and a “birthday surprise” feature, which is only one aspect of the program’s larger personalized feature set.

Unlike Cartwheel discounts, which are offered to all shoppers, Target Circle aims to personalize perks to individual consumers. For example, if you shop for baby items all the time, Target will send you a personalized discount for items in that department. You’ll also get a reward of some sort ahead of your birthday.

Retailers have been personalizing their offers without loyalty programs for some time, of course. In fact, Target once famously figured out a teen girl was pregnant before her father did, and sent her coupons for baby items much to the dad’s chagrin. Now, loyalty program members will opt in to this sort of data collection instead of having to figure out how to opt out. In return, they’ll get deals and discounts they may actually want.

Unmentioned on the rebranded Target Circle website are two other notable rewards which were also available when the program launched: a 50 percent discount on customers’ first-year Shipt membership and free next-day delivery of household essentials through Target Restock.

Target confirmed with TechCrunch these rewards are still included with Target Circle, but said it’s just choosing not to promote them at this time.

The retailer says the expansion of Target Circle to the half-dozen new markets follows the successful test in Dallas-Fort Worth. The program was well-received, it claims, and millions of customer transactions ran through the program since its debut. Target shoppers also directed around $250,000 in local giving.

The company hasn’t spoken much about the program during the testing. In November, it got a brief mention on the earnings call with investors, where Target CFO Catherine Smith (who announced her retirement earlier this year) said the program was seeing “really good sign-up and engagement.”

Customers in the newly added test markets can now join Target Circle by signing up at the website, Target.com/circle, by downloading the Target mobile app, or by giving their phone number at checkout.

Apple has released a new beta version of iOS 12.2 yesterday. While the final version isn’t available just yet, here’s what you should expect: new Animojis and a fake 5G logo if you’re an AT&T customer.

If you have an iPhone X, XS, XS Max or XR, you’ll see new animals in the Animoji collection. As 9to5mac spotted, you will be able to record video message and replace your head with a giraffe, an owl, a shark or a warthog. These Animojis will also work during FaceTime calls.

Here’s a picture from 9to5mac with the new lineup:

More interestingly, Apple succumbed to AT&T’s marketing plot to rename 4G into 5G. MacRumors noticed that some AT&T users now have a ‘5G E’ icon in the top right corner when they upgrade to the beta version of iOS 12.2. Some Android phones already show a 5G E icon after an AT&T update.

But don’t get fooled, this isn’t 5G — this icon replaces the LTE icon. AT&T has basically rebranded LTE with carrier aggregation as 5G Evolution. But it still runs on the same network.

Here’s a picture from the MacRumors forums:

The same thing happened in the U.S. during the transition from 3G to 4G. AT&T decided to rebrand its 3G HSPA+ network to 4G. It’s the reason why many carriers talk about LTE instead of 4G.

AT&T confused everyone back then, and the company is about to do the same again. It’s too bad Apple is helping AT&T with this iOS update.

Disclosure: TechCrunch is a Verizon Media company.

The search is on! We’re looking for exceptional early-stage robotics or AI companies to demo their technology onstage at TC Sessions: Robotics + AI on April 18 at UC Berkeley. Our day-long event takes a deep dive into these world-changing technologies, and features interviews, workshops, demos and networking with leading robotics and AI technologists, founders, investors and researchers.

Whether you’re looking for investors, recruiting tech talent or searching for like-minded collaborators, this is your opportunity to showcase your company’s technology in front of an august and influential audience. We have a limited number of demo times available, so complete this application form today. If you’re a student founder, don’t be shy. We want you to apply, too!

This is our third year hosting this event, and we’re not kidding when we talk about featuring the top minds focused on robotics and AI. We’ll be announcing plenty more speakers, panels and demos in the coming weeks, but take a gander at some of the speakers who will grace our stage on April 18:

Melonee Wise — CEO of collaborative warehouse robotics company Fetch, a 2018 World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer and the recipient of numerous awards, including MIT Technology Review’s TR35.

Hany Farid — Dartmouth’s Albert Bradley 1915 Third Century Professor of Computer Science focuses on human perception, image analysis and digital forensics. Farid, a recipient of the National Academy of Inventors, Alfred P. Sloan and John Simon Guggenheim fellowships, will join the UC Berkeley faculty in July.

Anca Dragan — assistant professor in UC Berkeley’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences department and head of the InterACT lab — part of the Berkeley AI Research Lab and the Center for Human-Compatible AI.

Peter Barrett — CTO of investment firm Playground Global, which has funded robotics startups such as Agility, Canvas, Common Sense, Skydio and Righthand Robotics.

TC Sessions: Robotics + AI takes place at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall on April 18, just about six short weeks away. Don’t miss your chance to pitch or demo your tech onstage in front of the best robotics and AI movers, makers and shakers. Apply to demo here. If you’re not prepared to demo but want to engage with and learn from this great community, be sure to buy a ticket while you can still get the early-bird price of $249. Students — take advantage of our deeply discounted price of $45. Join us in Berkeley!

Talia Goldberg didn’t know what venture capital was, growing up around professionals in the medical field whose favorite dinner-time game was to describe a symptom, then ask those around the table to guess the diagnosis.

Goldberg, who half-kiddingly describes herself today as a hypochondriac, says things changed during her college career at the University of Pennsylvania, where she entered into its liberal arts program but wound up spending increasing amounts of time at the business school. “I kind of recognized that business was happening at a faster pace than ever and started getting excited about the technology” driving that momentum.

Goldberg says she became particularly fascinated with how the internet was changing behaviors, including how people communicate, “though i was approaching at the time from an e-con and marketing perspective.” It was around then that she discovered First Round Capital, the Philadelphia-based seed-stage firm, which had decided during Goldberg’s senior year in 2012 to open up an office on Penn’s campus. It was the site of the firm’s first Dorm Room fund, a $500,000 vehicle for 11 students at Penn and Drexel to invest in student-led startups, and Goldberg, one of founding partners, was soon hooked. Indeed, though she worked at Foursquare as a business development associate while still at school, she knew that if she could, she’d prefer to keep investing.

Luckily, an introduction to Bessemer Venture Partners followed, along with a job offer for to join the firm as an analyst. She signed on, assuming the gig would last two years, after which she would either join a portfolio company or perhaps launch her own company. But she fell even further in love with VC and, more specifically, “spending my time thinking about new ideas and meeting with some of the most talented entrepreneurs in the world and learning about the fields in which they operate.”

Apparently, Bessemer thought she had a knack for turning those learnings into interesting deals. She was paired with Jeremy Levine, a partner who joined Bessemer more than 17 years ago. and he closely mentored Goldberg while also encouraging her to learn her own style and approach, she says. “I was very fortunate that Jeremy was in the New York office and that he offered me the opportunity to work alongside him as an apprentice for years.

“That kind of mentorship is super rare, and that’s really where I learned the craft of VC.” (While once common, many firms now eschew the apprenticeship model, preferring to hire either seasoned investors or else successful founders as partners and seldom hiring graduates directly from MBA or undergraduate programs.)

In fact, fast-forward six years and Goldberg, who joined Bessemer in 2012, has been a principal with the firm and a vice principal and today, she becomes its newest partner, a move that owes to numerous deals that she has either sourced or spearheaded, including in the home services software giant ServiceTitan, Korea’s top payment app Toss, and the password management startup Dashlane.

Goldberg has also supported the firm’s investments in Pinterest, Collective Medical Technologies, and Wikia.

Asked what she has learned from being immersed in the world of VC, the list is long, including that price does matter, and so does having a prepared mind. She also notes that more than ever, she appreciates the importance of patience. “You always have to stretch for great companies, but the culture at Bessemer is that when there’s something that seems expensive, we’re not under pressure to act in any way that’s unnatural.”

Goldberg has also been in the business long enough at this point to watch portfolio companies go out of business. “I’ve definitely been involved in situations like that, and they’re never easy.” It underscores the importance of picking the right partner, she adds. “When things are going up and to the right, it’s easier for everyone to be nice. It’s during hard times, when things become more challenging, that you see people’s true colors and realize that not everyone is there to support you.”

How does she handle it personally? “When we need to, we give the hard feedback. Having an intellectually honest relationship is crucial, because when you see that things aren’t working, making changes sooner than might feel comfortable is almost always the right decision.”

Sonos is partnering with Sonance for a new lineup of passive speakers. You can now pre-order in-ceiling, in-wall and outdoor Sonos speakers.

These are weird products as you still need to connect those speakers with a Sonos Amp. In other words, you can’t control those speakers from the Sonos app without the Sonos Amp.

But if you’re building a house and you want to put Sonos speakers around the house, this lineup is a good way to make sure that everything will be optimized for the Sonos ecosystem.

The in-wall and in-ceiling speakers are designed to blend in with your walls. You can even paint on the grilles to make them disappear even more. They’ll start shipping on February 26 and you can pre-order them now — each pair of speakers cost $599.

Outdoor speakers also come as a pair. They aren’t available just yet, but they’ll cost $799 a pair whenever they ship. And they should resist to extreme temperatures, water and UV rays.

According to the company, you can plug three pairs of speakers to a single Sonos Amp. If you plan on building a giant house, you can still buy multiple Amps and stack them up.

Like other Sonos speakers, you can tune them using Trueplay. This process uses your iPhone or iPad microphone to analyze the size of your room and how your furniture affects your speaker. Sonos then adjusts speaker settings.

Amazon today is one of the biggest retailers of gear for babies and other parenting aides, and today the company is taking another two steps into that business and how it might develop in the future.

Amazon today announced that it would be launching a new Baby Skill Activity API, so that baby apps and baby care devices can get updated and checked through voice commands, by way of Alexa and Alexa-powered devices. Available initially in the US, initial skills will include the ability to track weight, sleep, diaper changes and feeding, with more to be added down the line. Hatch Baby, Baby Connect and Wildflower Health are the first three partners developing skills using the API.

Alongside this, Amazon is is making an investment in Hatch Baby, the startup behind the Grow connected baby changing mat, the Rest children’s sleep-regulating light, and a service that offers Q&A with childcare professionals.

Ann Crady Weiss, the co-founder and CEO of Hatch Baby, said in an interview that the funding is part of a strategic partnership between Amazon and her company that will include Hatch developing content for Amazon’s Alexa voice-based interactive service — the funding is coming from Amazon’s Alexa Fund — as well as working longer-term on hardware and other initiatives.

The financial terms of Amazon’s investment are not being disclosed — the Alexa Fund, Amazon’s $200 million-or-so corporate venture fund focused on investing in startups strategic to Amazon’s ambitions in voice services and other new areas of business, generally does not disclose stakes.

Weiss did confirm that the investment was in addition to other funding that the startup has raised to date — $18.7 million to date, with its last valuation around $36.5 million — from investors that include True Ventures (where she is a partner), Shea Ventures, Geoff Ralston and Chris Sacca (who invested in Hatch after it appeared on Shark Tank). And it has come as Hatch is working on its next round of funding.

“Amazon is clearly an incredible force when it comes to everything consumer internet… so when they came calling, we were very eager to have them participate as a strategic investor,” she said.

(Weiss herself is a partner at True, and a repeat entrepreneur, having sold her previous startup, a parenting blog called Maya’s Mom, to Johnson & Johnson-owned BabyCenter in 2007.)

For Amazon, the deal with Hatch will give it a stronger link to one of the bigger startups targeting new parents. Hatch had already developed some content for Alexa — right now, its Alexa Skill includes the ability to track diaper changes, nursing sessions, bottle feeds, sleeps and a baby’s weight — and the investment will secure Hatch’s commitment to invest in and expand that functionality as part of a bigger push that Amazon is making into developing Skills specifically tailored to parents.

Smart speakers had a good holiday. Amazon already said its Echo Dot outsold all other items on its site this holiday season, which hinted toward the sizable growth for the voice-powered speaker market. Today, research firm CIRP is reporting the U.S. installed base for speakers grew to 66 million units in December 2018, up from 53 million in the September 2018 quarter and just 37 million in December 2017.

However, holiday sales didn’t have much impact on the market shares for the various speaker brands, the firm found.

Amazon Echo devices still lead the U.S. market with a 70 percent share of the installed base, followed by Google Home at 24 percent, then Apple HomePod at 6 percent, the report said.

“Holiday shoppers helped the smart speaker market take off again,” said Josh Lowitz, Partner and Co-Founder of CIRP, in a statement. “Relative market shares have remained fairly stable, with Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple HomePod accounting for consistent shares over the past few quarters. Amazon and Google both have broad model lineups, ranging from basic to high-end, with even more variants from Amazon. Apple, of course, has only its premium-priced HomePod, and likely won’t gain significant share until it offers an entry-level product closer to Echo Dot and Home mini,” Lowitz added.

Also of interest is that some portion of those buying a smart speaker for their home already own one. According to CIRP, 35 percent of smart speaker owners now have multiple devices, as of December 2018. That’s up from 18 percent in December 2017.

This figure is key to the device markers’ larger strategies, because it means that once a company is able to get that first sale, the consumer may return to buy more devices from the same vendor.

Amazon had gained an early advantage here, initially convincing more users to buy another speaker compared with Google Home users. A year ago, almost double the number of Echo users had multiple devices, versus Google Home owners. But Google is catching up, and now about a third of Echo and Google Home users have multiple devices.

It’s worth noting that CIRP data – like much that’s produced by market research firms – isn’t always going to match up exactly with other firms’ estimates and forecasts.

For example, Strategy Analytics this fall said that Amazon’s Echo market share in the U.S. was 63 percent, to Google’s 17 percent and Apple HomePod’s 4 percent. Meanwhile, eMarketer’s 2019 U.S. forecast predicts Amazon Echo will end up with around a 63.3 percent market share this year, versus Google Home’s 31 percent, with all others like HomePod and Sonos, reaching 12 percent.

That said, the broad strokes across all reports point to the same general findings – that Amazon is leading the U.S. market by a wide margin, and while that margin may be shrinking, it’s not going away soon.

There is “no evidence to date” that any foreign government had a material impact on voting machines or infrastructure during the 2018 midterm elections, according to a new classified report sent to the president.

That’s the view from the Justice Department and Homeland Security, which were commissioned to report back following an order from President Trump last year to monitor the elections for foreign interference.

According to a brief statement from acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker and Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, there is “no evidence to date that any identified activities of a foreign government or foreign agent had a material impact on the integrity or security of election infrastructure or political/campaign infrastructure used in the 2018 midterm election.”

Although the final report remains classified and out of the public eye, the government said that the elections weren’t tampered with — or at least enough to swing an election.

That lack of distinction is likely to raise eyebrows, given that the state of election security is known for its vulnerabilities.

While much of the focus has been on foreign powers — like Russia and Iran — trying to influence elections in recent past by sowing discord using U.S. social media platforms as weapons, much less focus has been on the voting machines and election infrastructure themselves.

Security experts have long complained that the old, outdated machines can be easily hacked — either in person but also in some cases over the internet, allowing anyone — including state actors — to meddle with the results. Worse, many voting machines are electronic only and don’t print a paper confirmation, making it impossible to know if your vote was accurately counted. Security experts have long said the most secure way of counting a vote is using pencil and paper — like in the U.K. and Europe. Democratic lawmakers last year introduced a bill that would make a paper trail mandatory in future elections.

Tuesday’s statement isn’t likely to assuage fears for some — particularly those who first-hand know the risks that electronic election machines pose.

Neither Whitaker nor Nielsen said what evidence they had to say there was no direct meddling with election equipment, but said their advanced efforts to work with federal and local partners in all 50 states in the run-up to the midterm elections helped to secure infrastructure and “limit risk posed by foreign interference.”

But efforts to safeguard the 2020 elections are already underway, they said.

Facebook has finally made good on its promise to let users unsend chats after TechCrunch discovered Mark Zuckerberg had secretly retracted some of his Facebook Messages from recipients. Today Facebook Messenger globally rolls out “Remove for everyone” to help you pull back typos, poor choices, embarrassing thoughts, or any other message.

For up to 10 minutes after sending a Facebook Message, the sender can tap on it and they’ll find the delete button has been replaced by “Remove for you”, but there’s now also a “Remove for everyone” option that pulls the message from recipients’ inboxes. They’ll see an alert that you removed a message in its place, and can still flag the message to Facebook who’ll retain the content briefly to see if its reported. The feature could make people more comfortable having honest conversations or using Messenger for flirting since they can second guess what they send, but it won’t let people change ancient history.

The company abused its power by altering the history of Zuckerberg’s Facebook’s messages in a way that email or other communication mediums wouldn’t allow. Yet Facebook refused to say if it will now resume removing executives’ messages from recipients even long after they’re delivered after telling TechCrunch in April that “until this feature is ready, we will no longer be deleting any executives’ messages.”

For a quick recap, here’s how Facebook got to Unsend:

-Facebook Messenger never had an Unsend option, except in its encrypted Secret messaging product where you can set an expiration timer on chats, or in Instagram Direct.

-In April 2018, TechCrunch reported that some of Mark Zuckerberg’s messages had been removed from the inboxes of recipients, including non-employees. There was no trace of the chats in the message thread, leaving his conversation partners looking like they were talking to themselves, but email receipts proved the messages had been sent but later disappeared.

-Facebook claimed this was partly because it was “limiting the retention period for Mark’s messages” for security purposes in the wake of the Sony Pictures hack, yet it never explained why only some messages to some people had been removed.

-The next morning, Facebook changed its tune and announced it’d build an Unsned button for everyone, providing this statement: “We have discussed this feature several times . . . We will now be making a broader delete message feature available. This may take some time. And until this feature is ready, we will no longer be deleting any executives’ messages. We should have done this sooner — and we’re sorry that we did not.”

-Six months later in October 2018, Facebook still hadn’t launched Unesned, but then TechCrunch found Facebook had been prototyping the feature.

-In November, Facebook started to roll out the feature with the current “Remove for everyone” design and 10 minute limit

-Now every iOS and Messenger user globally will get the Unsend feature

So will Facebook start retracting executives’ messages again? It’d only say that the new feature would be available to both users and employees. But in Zuckerberg’s case, messages from years ago were removed in a way users still aren’t allowed to. Remove for everyone could make messaging on Facebook a little less anxiety-inducing. But it shouldn’t have taken Facebook being caught stealing from the inboxes of its users to get it built.