Year: 2019

Coda, which is coming out of its limited beta today, wants to reinvent how you think about documents and spreadsheets. That’s about as tough a challenge as you can set yourself, given how ingrained tools like Word, Excel and their equivalents from the likes of Google, Zoho and others are. Coda’s secret weapon is that it combines text and spreadsheet functionality into a single document, with the ability to build some basic programming into them and add features from third-party services as a bonus.

In addition to opening up the service to anyone, Coda also today launched its new mobile app for iOS (with Android following at some point in the future).

“It’s the best of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, applications — all brought into one new surface,” Coda founder and CEO (and former head of product for YouTube Shishir Mehrotra told me. “But the phrase we like to use is that Coda allows anyone to make a doc as powerful as an app.”

You’re not going to use Coda, which was founded in 2017 and received funding from VC heavyweights like Greylock, Khosla Ventures and NEA, as a full-blown low code/no code service. It’s still a bit too limited for that. But you can use it to build your own custom inventory system, for example, or to build a basic CRM or to-do app that fits your specific needs. Or you could just use it as an online text editor and then slowly add features like third-party integrations with the likes of Slack or Figma as needed. All of that is easy enough for anybody who has ever used a function in Excel or Google Sheets.

So far, about 10,000 people have used the service during its private beta. Mehrotra tells me that about 15 percent of them are from the Bay Area and that a good amount of them simply use the service as a basic document editor.

The new iOS app, unsurprisingly, mostly focuses on consuming content and using the functions that you have built in the web app. It’s unlikely that you’ll want to build a whole new experience on your phone, after all. In the demos I’ve seen, Coda nicely transforms cells and their functions into usable tables and cards on the iPhone.

Festicket, the U.K.-headquartered festival booking platform, has picked up another $4.6 million in funding, an extension of the startup’s $10.5 million Series D late last year. The new backing comes from Edge Investments, the creative industries investor that counts music industry veteran Harvey Goldsmith as a director.

Edge joins an existing roster of Series D investors that includes venture capital firm Beringea, Jaguar Land Rover’s venture capital fund InMotion Ventures, Channel 4’s Commercial Growth Fund, Lepe Partners, U-Start, and ex Spinnin’ Records CEO Eelko Van Kooten. The company has also been previously backed by Lepe Partners, Wellington Partners, PROfounders, and Playfair Capital, amongst others.

Founded in 2012, Festicket set out to make booking various festival experience across Europe as easy as booking a package holiday. The platform — or marketplace — lets you discover and book festival tickets and the related travel itinerary. Fast forward to today, the company works with over 1,200 festivals and 4,500 suppliers across 50 countries, serving more than 2.5 million customers worldwide.

Most recently, Festicket integrated with Spotify to help you discover music festivals based on the music you listen to. Dubbed “Festival Finder,” the new feature requires you to connect your Spotify account to Festicket using Spotify login. After doing so, the platform pulls in data on your favourite artists and displays 10 upcoming festivals that it deems will match your music tastes.

Meanwhile, Festicket says the additional capital will be used to support Festicket’s entrance into new markets, primarily North America and Asia. The company is also planning to invest in its underlying tech platform and grow its “community” of passionate festival fans around the world,. Notably, this will include building an exclusive membership tier with added benefits in 2019.

Apeel Sciences, the developer of a new technology that makes fruits and vegetables more resistant to spoilage, and Nature’s Pride, one of the largest vendors of avocados and mangos in Europe, are partnering to bring longer-lived avocados to market.

Subject to regulatory approval in the EU, Nature’s Pride said it will integrate Apeel’s plant-based preservation technology into its avocado supply chain — bringing avocados with double the edible shelf life to European homes.

Apeel’s technology takes the naturally occurring chemicals found in the skins and peels of plants and applies it to fresh produce, providing what the company calls “a little extra peel” that slows the rate of water loss and oxidation — which cause vegetables and fruits to spil.

The company says that its produce will stay fresh two to three times longer than untreated produce. Apeel touts that its technology can lead to more sustainable growing practices and less food waste.

Across Europe, 88 million tons of food is thrown out every year, at a cost of 143 billion euros (or roughly $163 billion dollars).

As part of the agreement with Nature’s Pride, Apeel Sciences is introducing a co-branded label with the European fruit supplier.

Founded in 2012 with a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help reduce post-harvest food loss in developing countries that lack access to refrigeration, Apeel Sciences is backed by a slew of marquee investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Viking Global Investors, Upfront Ventures, S2G Ventures, Powerplant Ventures, DBL Partners, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UK Department for International Development, and The Rockefeller Foundation .

Toyota has officially launched Kinto, a company first revealed late last year that will manage a car subscription program and other mobility services in Japan, including the sale and purchase of used vehicles as well as automotive repair and inspection.

Kinto is jointly funded by Toyota Financial Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of Toyota, and Sumitomo Mitsui Auto Service Company, a member of the Sumitomo Corporation Group. Initial funding for Kinto is 1.8 billion yen, or about $16 million, according to Toyota.

The creation of Kinto marks a shift that began a couple of years ago within the automotive industry to look beyond the traditional business of producing, financing and selling cars and trucks. Other automakers have experimented with car subscription services with mixed success. Volvo’s Care by Volvo has been a standout success. While Cadillac shut its service “Book by Cadillac” down, although it has plans for a reboot.

Unlike other subscription programs, Kinto has gamified the service. The company is planning to introduce a service this fall that will award points to customers based on how they drive. Toyota doesn’t explain how safe or “ecological” driving would be tracked, but the assumption is that the vehicles would be equipped with connected-car technology that can monitor driving. Points can be applied toward payments, the company said.

“As society shifts from conventional car ownership to car usage that can be enjoyed wherever and as much as users would like, there is a growing need for a service that allows customers to freely select the car that they like or want to drive and enjoy it as they like, instead of using a car simply as a means of transportation,” Toyota said in its announcement.

Toyota’s Kinto will offer two subscription services in Japan. (The service isn’t headed for Europe or the U.S.) Kinto One will allow customers to drive one Toyota-brand vehicle over a three-year period. The service will offer access to the Prius, Corolla Sport, Alphard, Vellfire, and Crown models. The line-up will expand by fall 2019. Customers who go for Kinto One will pay between 46,100 yen ($419) and 99,000 yen ($901) a month before taxes, depending on the vehicle brand.

“Kinto Select” will give customers access to six models of Lexus -brand vehicles over a three-year period. The Kinto Select service costs 180,000 yen, or $1,638, a month.

Both services will be offered as a monthly fixed-sum service that packages voluntary insurance payments, vehicle tax, registration charges, and regularly scheduled maintenance of the vehicle.

Kinto will launch with the higher-end plan, beginning Wednesday. The Kinto One plan will be added as an option on March 1. Both services will be deployed on a trial basis through select Toyota dealers and Lexus dealers in the Tokyo metropolitan area. Kinto plans to rollout the services to the rest of Japan this summer.

French startup Lunchr is raising a $34 million funding round (€30 million) from Index Ventures, with existing investors Daphni, Idinvest and Kima Ventures also participating. The company had already raised $13 million 7 months ago (€11 million).

In France, companies of a certain size have to support employees in one way or another when it comes to their lunch break. Big companies usually build out a cafeteria while small companies hand out meal vouchers.

Lunchr focuses on meal vouchers. Originally, employees received paper vouchers at the beginning of each month. But meal voucher companies, such as Edenred or Sodexo, now also provide an alternative to paper vouchers. You can get a payment card to pay some or all of your food using a card reader.

While this is a a good idea on paper, many restaurants and supermarkets still don’t accept meal voucher cards as you have to update your card terminals. Apps also don’t work that well so it’s hard to know if you have money left on your account.

Lunchr wants to provide a better experience. And it starts with a card that works in more places. Restaurants don’t need to do anything as long as they already accept paper meal vouchers. Lunchr currently supports 200,000 places in France.

The company also takes advantage of the fact that a company is going to switch everyone to Lunchr, not just some employees. It means that everyone has a Lunchr account, the Lunchr app and a Lunchr card.

That’s why you can also use the Lunchr app to order food around your office. Other employees can add stuff to your order and one employee can pick up the order for everyone. Lunchr has negotiated discounts with restaurants — you unlock discount on big orders. On average, people who order food via the app get an 18 percent discount.

With today’s funding round, the company wants to attract 200,000 by the end of 2019. Redbull in France, LeLynx.fr, Spotify in France, Qonto and Payfit use Lunchr already.

While Lunchr is competing with bigger companies, 85 percent of meal vouchers in France are still paper vouchers. Companies will consider switching to payment cards in the coming years and it presents a big opportunity for Lunchr.

Teens’ aversion to Facebook jeopardizes not only the company’s feed ad revenue, but its dominance as an identity provider. The Facebook Login platform keeps people tied to the social network in order to easily access other apps without a separate username and password. But for younger users who ditch or neglect Facebook in favor of Instagram, the tech giant stands to lose one of its most powerful wedges into our lives. Meanwhile, Instagram loyalists are forced to juggle multiple sets of login credentials to manage their personal, Finsta and business accounts.

But a new feature in development could make it easy to operate multiple Instagram handles while poising the app as a successor to Facebook Login. Instagram has prototyped the “Main Account” feature that would let users set one of their profiles as a primary account and then link their other accounts to it. Logging into the main account would instantly log them in to the rest, as well. From then on, users would only need to remember a single email/username and password combo. Simpler login could get people switching accounts, posting and engaging more with Instagram.

Account linking could also power up Instagram’s existing login platform. Currently, third-party apps use it to let you compose feed posts and Stories and then share them to Instagram, or to measure the activity and mentions of business accounts. But Instagram could potentially expand the login platform to let you bring more of your identity or profile info to other apps similar to Facebook Login. That might work better if you could log in through your main Instagram account and then choose which profile you wanted to use or share back to from another app.

TechCrunch was tipped off to code for “Account Linking” in the Instagram for Android alpha version’s APK files by social media researcher Ishan Agarwal. The code explains “Quickly and securely log in to all of your Instagram accounts with one ID and password . . . Make one of your accounts your main account and use it to log in to all of your other accounts at once . . . Your accounts will remain separate but logging in will be fast and simple . . . Anyone who has the password for your main account will have access to the accounts connected to it.”

Instagram declined to comment regarding the feature. That’s standard for the company when it has prototyped something it is trying out with employees but hasn’t done any external testing. But many features first spotted in the app’s code at this stage go on to be fully rolled out, like Instagram video calling, nametags and soundtracks.

Facebook colonized the web using its login platform, scattering buttons with its logo on sites as an alternative to having to create a new account for every service. This helped grow Facebook’s user base, lock in users so it’d be harder for them to deactivate, develop new sources of feed content and gather data on what people did around the web. Many users who’ve stopped heavily posting to or reading Facebook still maintain a connection with the social network because they rely on it to log in to Spotify, Netflix and other services.

In fact, Facebook’s login platform is one of its most valuable features, where it lacks strong competition. Google runs its own identity platform, but with people increasingly using two-factor authentication and other security to protect their Gmail accounts, it can sometimes be a bit clumsy. Snapchat is trying to build up its own Snap Kit login platform with partners like Poshmark, but few mainstream apps have implemented it for account creation.

Instagram has been tinkering with other features around the concept of identity. It launched Close Friends for sharing Stories just with your besties, rolled out its own two-factor authentication option and is adding a way to syndicate your feed posts to multiple accounts you control. Getting users to establish a main account could also smooth Facebook’s plan to offer encrypted cross-app messaging between itself, Instagram and WhatsApp. Your main account might be a stand-in for your real identity as Instagram doesn’t force a real-name policy on users like Facebook does.

If you start to think of Instagram as not just a parallel social network to Facebook but as either an escape pod or heir to the throne, it’s important to consider how Facebook’s core assets will weather the transition. Recent profile redesigns have already tried to make your Instagram profile the center of your online personality. Uniting the prismatic shards of your identity through account linking could let you carry that personality with you across the web.

Hello, and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

Today we’re bringing back an old Equity format: The Shot.

No, I haven’t started drinking again. Equity Shots are short takes on breaking news. And no news was more explosive recently than word that Slack has filed to go public confidentially. Confidentially in that we don’t get to see the numbers (yet), but publicly in that the company went ahead and told the world that it had filed, privately, with the SEC.

Which, as our own Danny Crichton points out, is open once again now that the government has reopened.

If you want to follow along with the numbers as we talk, this post is where most of my notes are, and you can read all of TechCrunch’s Slack coverage here.

We’re back in a flash with our regular weekly episode on Friday. Stay cool!

Despite delivering a Q4 earnings beat, Google parent company Alphabet’s stock is dropping. The company reported revenue of $39.3 billion, up 22 percent year-over-year with an EPS of $12.77. Alphabet stock dropped more than 2 percent in after-hours trading.

Advertising revenues were up 20 percent YoY in Q4 to $32.6 billion. “Other” revenues (Cloud, hardware) were reported at $6.49 billion, up 31 percent year-over-year. “Other Bets,” which includes ventures like Waymo, Fiber and Verily, saw losses climb sharply to $1.3 billion with revenue sitting at $154 million, short of Wall Street estimates.

A number that analysts were increasingly looking closely at, traffic acquisition costs, climbed to $7.4 billion in Q4 up 15 percent year-over-year and up 13 percent from last quarter.

We’ll have more information from the investor call.

Updating

Leap, the women’s networking group that was developed by Y Combinator, is spinning out of the company with a new name — Elpha.

Co-founded by Cadran Cowansage, Abadesi Osunsade and Kuan Luo, Elpha is designed as a professional network for women offering content and access to a directory to make it easier for women in the technology industry to connect. In a blog post, Cowansage also indicated that the company will provide access to information about companies that prioritize welcoming women. 

The idea for Elpha came to Cowansage years ago, but was launched in 2017 with the support of Y Combinator. Initially Leap was a nights and weekends project (as Cowansage puts it), but it now boasts 7,500 active members. Including its co-founders Abadesi and Kuan. Abadesi started as the first community lead for the Leap group, where she joined from Product Hunt, and was also the founder of Hustle Crew — a group focused on inclusion in tech.

Kuan, a former New Yorker, is a startup veteran who led the design team at the New York database technology development company Cockroach Labs and the architect of a retreat for women leaders in tech called “For The Women”.

While the company is no longer directly affiliated with Y Combinator, it is going through the accelerator’s winter batch and YC has come on as an investor, according to Cowansage — taking the traditional 7% ownership stake for its $150,000 investment.

A bit over a year after its release, Nest’s security alarm system is picking up a new trick: it can now double as a Google Assistant device.

Nest announced the new functionality this afternoon, saying that its being “pushed out to all Nest Secure systems both new and old” today.

This update effectively turns the Nest Secure’s keypad hub into a Google Home Mini, allowing you to do things like say “Hey Google, turn off the lights” or “Hey Google, arm the alarm” on the way out the door. It’s worth noting, though, that you can’t turn the alarm off with your voice — they don’t want people shouting through your door to disable your alarm, after all. To turn the alarm off, you’ll still need to use either the Nest app, one of Nest’s key fobs, or to punch your PIN into the hub.

Wondering how the heck the Nest Secure hears you? The current current spec page for the Nest Secure’s control hub (or “Nest Guard” as the hub is known), for example, makes no mention of a microphone. I can’t find any mention of it in the manual, either. And yet…

Turns out the Nest Guard has had a microphone all along, though it “has not been used up to this point.” That’s… a little strange, to say the least. It’s nice to be able to flip on new features when the time comes, but the spec page probably should’ve mentioned the microphone from the beginning (even just to say “There’s a microphone in there, but it’s not used for anything right now.”) There’s no shortage of Internet-connected devices with microphones built-in, but said mics are usually made a bit more obvious.

We reached out to Google for confirmation of the microphone hardware and more details on when the feature will go live. A Google spokesperson responded:

The Google Assistant on Nest Guard is an opt-in feature, and as the feature becomes available to our users, they’ll receive an email with instructions on how to enable the feature and turn on the microphone in the Nest app. Nest Guard does have one on-device microphone that is not enabled by default.