Year: 2019

The Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Project has a singular focus on the blockchain, but this morning it announced a framework for building supply chain projects where it didn’t want blockchain stealing the show.

In fact, the foundation is careful to point out that this project is not specifically about the blockchain, so much as providing the building blocks for a broader view of solving supply chain digitization issues. As it describes in a blog post announcing the project, it is neither an application nor a blockchain project, per se. So what is it?

“Grid is an ecosystem of technologies, frameworks and libraries that work together, letting application developers make the choice as to which components are most appropriate for their industry or market model.”

Hyperledger doesn’t want to get locked down by jargon or preconceived notions of what these projects should look like. It wants to provide developers with a set of tools and libraries and let them loose to come up with ideas and build applications specific to their industry requirements.

Primary contributors to the project to this point have been Cargill, Intel and Bitwise IO.

Supply chain has been a major early use case for distributed ledger applications in the enterprise. In fact, earlier today we covered an announcement from Citizens Reserve, a startup building a Supply Chain as a Service on the blockchain. IBM has been working on several supply chain uses cases, including diamond tracking and food supply protection.

But the distributed ledger idea is so new both for supply chain and the enterprise in general that developers are still very much finding their way. By providing a flexible, open-source framework, The Linux Foundation is giving developers an open option and trying to provide a flexible foundation to build applications as this all shakes out.

Waymo and Magna plan to build thousands of self-driving cars at a factory in southeast Michigan, including autonomous versions of the all-electric Jaguar I-PACE and Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivan.

Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that spun out to become a business under Alphabet, announced Tuesday that the Michigan Economic Development Corporation voted to approve the company’s plan to set up a manufacturing facility in the state to build its self-driving vehicles. The MEDC approved an $8 million grant for the project.

The announcement is the latest signal that the startup is preparing to scale up its commercial operations. In December, Waymo launched a limited commercial robotaxi service in the Phoenix area, dubbed Waymo One.

The Waymo One self-driving car service, and accompanying app, still has Waymo-trained test drivers behind the wheel. The safety driver will eventually be removed from the vehicle and the service will slowly open up to more people throughout 2019.

The companies are moving quickly. The goal is to begin moving into a facility by mid-2019 and begin preparing the site for manufacturing Level 4 autonomous vehicles. Level 4 is a designation by SAE that means the vehicle handles all of the driving under certain conditions.

The location has not been determined, except that it will be in southeast Michigan. This will likely be an existing facility, and not a new build. The factory will create up to 400 new jobs, according to Waymo.

Waymo has supplier partnerships with Fiat Chrysler and Jaguar Land Rover. Last year, Waymo said up to 20,000 modified I-Pace vehicles will join Waymo’s driverless ride-hailing service in the first two years of operation. Waymo also has a deal with FCA for up to 62,000 modified minivans.

Waymo develops the hardware and software and then works with the automakers to integrate it into the vehicles at its Novi, Michigan facility. Through a partnership with Magna — the same company that is manufacturing the Jaguar I-PACE in Graz, Austria — the production and integration will now happen at a dedicated facility.

Microsoft just unloaded a whole bunch of news in time for the BETT education show. The most interesting bit of the bunch, however, is probably Code Jumper. The tethered hardware device is design to teach children who are blind or have otherwise impaired vision how to code.

The device is a continuation of Project Torino, which the company announced back in early 2017. Microsoft’s Cambridge, U.K. lab designed a “physical programming language,” which tasks kids with building programs by connecting pods.

“The project came about after the team learned the most popular path to introducing young children to coding,” the company writes, “usually called block coding, was not accessible enough because it couldn’t be read easily, not even with assistive technology such as a screen reader or magnifier.”

Microsoft is transferring both the research and tech to the American Printing House for the Blind, which is expected to make the product available to Australia, Canada, India, the U.K. and the U.S. in 2019. Additional countries will get access in the coming years.

French startup Mooncard raised a $5.7 million funding round (€5 million) from Raise Ventures, Aglaé Ventures and business angels. The company provides a service to track and manage your company’s expenses with the help of good old plastic cards.

Corporate credit cards aren’t as widespread in France as in the U.S. and other countries. That’s why fintech startups have been trying to find a way to streamline expenses for French startups.

Mooncard lets you get as many cards as you want for your team. Managers can set different kinds of rules with different limits and validation processes.

Every time you pay with your card, you get a text message with a link. When you tap on the link, you can take a photo of the receipt, add details and submit your expense. Your accounting team can see expenses in real time and share reports with accountants.

Behind the scenes, companies create a specific account for expenses and top up that account. Mooncard works with Wirecard for the banking integration.

So far, 1,000 companies are using Mooncard, such as Air France, Vinci, Virtuo, Ledger and others. Companies pay between €13 and €15 per user per month, and Mooncard plans to have 200,000 users within three years.

We’ve got a double dose of exciting news for you, startup fans. First, we’re thrilled to announce that investment firms August Capital, SV Angel and Uncork Capital have partnered with us for the 2nd Annual TechCrunch Winter Party at Galvanize on February 8. And second, today we released into the wild another fresh, though limited, batch of tickets.

If you haven’t snagged a ticket to this Silicon Valley shindig, take heed. This is the fourth week we’ve released tickets, and they’ve been flying off the proverbial shelf. They’re strictly first-come-first-serve, so do yourself a favor: Buy your ticket today and avoid a severe case of FOMO — fear of missing out.

Our Winter Party is the perfect time to kick back and connect with your people in a relaxed fashion while enjoying delicious hors d’oeuvres and creative cocktails. It’s a celebration of the early-stage startup community, which, we might add, shows up in force. Last year, nearly 1,000 of Silicon Valley’s finest rocked Galvanize, the multi-level venue, to its roots.

No TechCrunch event would be an event without ample opportunity to network and build potentially life-changing business relationships. And who wouldn’t want the opportunity to converse with such an influential crowd — including investors and partners from August Capital, SV Angel and Uncork Capital?

Conversations flow easily in such a convivial setting, but if you want to level up on your exposure, consider buying a demo table. Only a handful of promising startups will display their wares, so book your demo table now. And bring your friends, because the $1,500 price also includes three tickets.

OK, here are the nitty-gritty party details.

When: Friday, February 8, 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

Where: Galvanize, 44 Tehama St., San Francisco, CA 94105

Ticket price: $85

Along with great food, drinks and world-class networking, you can expect plenty of games, activities, photo ops and giveaways. Come and get your TechCrunch swag and who knows, you might even win door prizes — like tickets to Disrupt San Francisco 2019.

We’ll keep rolling out tickets until they’re gone, but why take the risk? The 2nd Annual TechCrunch Winter Party goes down on February 8, and you simply don’t want to miss out on a fun night of opportunity. Buy your ticket now and cross it off your to-do list.

Twitter’s dark mode is about to get darker. In response to a customer’s complaint that Twitter’s dark theme isn’t really black, but more of a blue-ish shade, company CEO Jack Dorsey replied that’s going to be fixed. Though a seemingly minor tweak, dark mode settings for apps have become increasingly popular as a means of conserving battery life on high-end devices and making the apps we use often for long stretches easier on our eyes.

The interest in dark themes has grown steadily since Twitter first debuted its own “Night mode” back in mid-2016.

A number of apps now support darker themes, including YouTube, Google, Medium, Reddit, Wikipedia, Instapaper, Pocket, IMDb, iBooks, Kindle, Google Maps, Waze, Opera Mini, and many more. It’s even rumored that the upcoming version of the Android OS will have a system-wide dark mode setting – something dark mode users have wanted for years.

This weekend, the topic made its way to The Wall Street Journal, which made the case for dark modes becoming a standard setting across all apps and devices – not only for ease of use and battery benefits – specifically on OLED screens – but also because it may help lessen device addiction, and improve sleep.

In other words, having a decent dark mode is no longer just an aesthetic choice like skinning your Gmail with a cute photo – it’s an option that has real-world benefits. And for many, a dark mode is now their default.

Twitter’s dark mode, however, has been on the lighter end of the spectrum. (You can view a screenshot of its dark theme on Darkmodelist.com, where you can compare it to others.)

The app doesn’t go for a true black, but rather a blue-black shade.

That’s being addressed, according to @jack’s tweet.

Of course, there’s an argument to made here that Twitter is overly concerned with tweaking minor product details, as if things like a better dark mode or differently threaded conversations matter that much at a time when the company is facing significant issues with regard to how it handles extremism, harassment, doxing, spam, fake news, flat user growth, and more on its platform. (And that its CEO doesn’t seem to have good answers for how it’s handling these issues.)

But for those who are on Twitter anyway and addicted to browsing the timeline, a “blacker” dark mode will improve their use of the product.

Neither Dorsey, nor Twitter itself, has yet shared more information on when we’ll see this update, or which platforms will receive the “black” dark mode first. (Reached for comment, Twitter couldn’t offer more details). However, Twitter first launched its original dark mode on Android, so that may be a place to watch.

Varsity Tutors, the online learning platform that launched in 2011, has today announced the acquisition of Veritas Prep.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but, according to the press release, the Veritas Prep team will remain at its Calabasas, CA office and that the product will continue on as a separate brand.

Veritas Prep launched in 2002 with a suite of test prep courses. Over the years, Veritas built out its online live classes as well as a business around admissions consulting. As Varsity Tutors focuses on geographical and product expansion, the Veritas Prep acquisition allows the company to get into live online courses (alongside one-to-one tutoring).

“Over the course of its 17 years, Veritas has built up a lot of expertise in how to deliver exceptional live online classes,” said Varsity Tutors founder and CEO Chuck Cohn. “We looked at a lot of companies out there, and we saw huge potential to really accelerate our own product development cycle by buying that expertise.”

Varsity Tutors originally launched with a platform that connected students with tutors for IRL study sessions and lessons. Over time, that product has transformed to offer fully on-demand digital lessons with tutors via live video chat, complete with whiteboard functionality, doc editing and other tools. Students can also access free online content (sans instructor) through Varsity Tutors’ Learning Tools.

Cohn says that the Live Learning platform can connect a student with a tutor and begin a session in as few as 20 seconds, and that more than 75 percent of new customers are opting for online/mobile tutoring instead of in-person.

Beyond expanding the product, Varsity Tutors is also looking to expand the number of subjects it offers to customers. Right now, the company offers more than 1000 different subjects (including traditional learning) with more than 250 subjects available for instant tutoring on the Live Learning platform.

Varsity Tutors has raised a total of $107 million from investors like Learn Capital, CZI, and TCV. This marks the company’s second acquisition, with Varsity Tutors buying First Tutors in the UK in 2018 to kickstart geographic expansion.

The 600-employee company has more than 40,000 tutors on the platform and has provided more than 4 million hours of live one-on-one instruction/tutoring since launch.

Marcus Startzel is moving from the adtech to ecommerce: He’s becoming the new CEO at Whitebox.

One of his first tasks, apparently, will be raising a Series A.

Startzel was previously an executive at AppNexus, which he joined after the acquisition of MediaGlu, where he was CEO. (He departed AppNexus after it was bought by AT&T.) He’s also had senior roles at Millennial Media and Advertising.com.

Whitebox, meanwhile, was founded in 2013 by previous CEO Rob Wray. The company helps businesses manage some of the most challenging parts of ecommerce — for example, it handles warehousing and fulfillment, while also creating and optimizing listings on Amazon, eBay and the seller’s own website.

Startzel said he was attracted to the company because it taps into broader trends around the growth of ecommerce, and because of the opportunity provided by all of Whitebox’s data around “finding the best way to get the product to the consumer.” He also said he was impressed by the recent hiring of Chief Operating Officer Rob Hahn and Chief Data Officer Andrew Bignell, both from Amazon.

And while this may seem like a big change from his previous roles, Startzel said he’s still drawing on his leadership experience, and on his approach of “just understanding the market from a customer lens, just being customer focused when you’re a brand.”

“I’m excited to sell products, not just advertise them,” he added.

Wray, meanwhile, will remain at Whitebox as its chief product officer.

“We started Whitebox because brands were getting crushed by the enormous complexity
of selling online,” he said in a statement. “Brands need a unified approach to ecommerce to scale while lowering costs. We are thrilled to have Marcus join and apply his knowledge and experience.”

Elliott Management, a NYC investment firm well known for its activist streak, released a letter today sent to eBay’s management. The letter put the company on notice that the stock needs to do better, much better. And it outlined a five-step plan, including selling StubHub, it believes can get eBay there.

Elliott is making this request as managers of funds owning more than 4 percent of eBay’s stock. It believes that with some tweaks, the company stock, which sits at $33.71 this morning (up over eight percent) could be worth substantially more. In fact, the company believes if eBay follows its advice it could increase the stock price to $55-$63 per share.

Elliott, which doesn’t tend to be subtle in its assessments of a company’s performance, didn’t pull any punches in its statement regarding the letter to eBay. “Despite its remarkable history as one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms, eBay as a public-company investment has underperformed both its peers and the market for a prolonged period of time.”

While the letter took great pains to compliment the company, pointing out that it has successfully morphed from an auction marketplace for used goods to a full-fledged eCommerce marketplace in its own right, it was clear that it believed eBay is grossly underperforming.

The firm dug into the issues, as it sees them, in the letter itself. “Over the past five years, eBay’s total return has been more than 100% lower than peers and ~35% to ~65% lower than the technology indices. Moreover, eBay has declined 20% over the past year alone relative to a roughly flat equity market,” Elliot wrote in the letter.

It went on, “Most disappointing, however, is that this significant underperformance has occurred despite strong end-market performance. As the broader internet universe has flourished, especially e-commerce peers, eBay’s stock has floundered.”

The company didn’t just complain though. It outlined a five-step plan to improve the stock. For starters, it wants eBay to look carefully at moving StubHub and eBay’s classified properties and concentrate more fully on the core marketplace, which it believes is the true gem here.

Along those same lines, the company wants eBay to revitalize that marketplace, which it believes has been mishandled badly. “eBay’s Marketplace is a strategically valuable asset that has weathered prolonged, self-inflicted misexecution. Management should turn its singular attention to growing and strengthening Marketplace,” Elliott wrote in the letter.

It also believes the company could improve its operational efficiency. “Today eBay suffers from an inefficient organizational structure, wasteful spend and a misallocation of resources,” Elliott wrote. Next, it wants more capital returned to stockholders and finally it needs a management review and greater oversight.

eBay did respond to an email request for comment on this proposal. If that changes, we will update the article.

When it comes to reaching would-be customers today, one of the biggest investments that brands and retailers will make is in advertising, to the tune of nearly $630 billion globally. Now, a startup called Dosh, which offers cash back on purchases, is announcing that it has raised $40 million to take on the advertising industry, with the pitch that its app provides a more targeted and guaranteed way of getting consumers to bite.

The funding — $20 million in equity and $20 million in venture debt — is led by Goodwater Capital and Western Technology Investment. Previous investors PayPal, BAM Capital and Anthem Venture Partners also participated. Sources close to the company confirm that the funding was done on approximately a $300 million valuation. It’s raised $96 million in total, including both equity and debt.

“Instead of taking all in equity we decided to split because of the strength of the company at the moment,” said Ryan Wuerch, Dosh’s founder and CEO, in an interview, who said the funding would be used for hiring, business development and technology investment. “We want to be opportunistic.”

It was only nine months ago that Dosh last raised dosh, $44 million on a $241 million valuation. In the interim, the startup has been on a roll — at one point, in the holiday spending period, hitting number-one among US shopping apps and clocking in some $50 million in cash back to its users, doubling those returns since last April. It now has 3 million card-linked subscribers and more than 150,000 retailers and brands signed up to its platform.

Up to now, Dosh’s business model has been to forge deals with retailers and brands — partners include Nike, Toms, Gap, Walgreens, Walmart, Target, Jack In The Box, and more — and payment card providers like Visa and MasterCard. When a user links up a card, and she or he buys something from the retailers and brands that have connected with Dosh, the user gets money back. That money can in turn be paid into your bank account, your PayPal account, towards further purchases, or to charity. Dosh itself makes money by taking a cut on each transaction, although it does not provide details of its percentage.

Going forward, the idea will be to continue to expand its business along the same lines by building more technology into the platform to make the offers you are getting more targeted to what you might be most likely to buy, and to use the same tech to increase rewards to entice you to buy things that you may be less likely to naturally buy.

The company’s viewpoint is that a direct cash reward is a much stronger driver for retail intent than advertising can ever be, and because of how Dosh links up with card providers, it’s much easier to see how an offer is linked to an actual purchase.

“When you think about advertising over the years, at first all you had was radio and TV and print with little attribution,” Wuerch said. “Now digital gives you clicks and impressions, but true attribution is when you get to the consummation of the purchase, which is what we are able to show. The tech that we built and continue to build enables us to understand consumers.”

Given the billions that are spent on advertising today, even moving the needle a little to get more retailers working with Dosh on more deals could prove very lucrative to the company… and its investors.

“Dosh’s mission is to put billions of dollars of wasted advertising spend directly into consumers’ pockets,” said Chi-Hua Chien, co-founder and managing partner at Goodwater Capital leading its investment in Dosh. “They are the clear leader in the rapidly growing card-linked offers market and we are confident this latest round of funding will accelerate their achievement of that mission.” (And to be clear there are many others in the same space of offering cash back on purchases, such as Drop and Ebates.)

Offers are specific to people on the platform. Wuerch explained it, he and I might both get offers for Sam’s Club cash back, but because he visited the store three days ago and is a very regular visitor, whereas I never go there, we may have very different cashback offers on the table.

Loyalty programs have become a strong driver for how people purchase goods and services. Amazon Prime is perhaps the strongest example of how that is being played out in e-commerce: to keep people using Amazon, under one umbrella, Amazon is offering users free and fast shipping on a range of items, plus access to services that ordinary customers will not get, all for a single monthly fee.

Dosh is taking a very different approach, in that it has “no plans” said Wuerch to ever move into e-commerce, instead focusing specifically on physical retail experiences.

“Our goal is to drive consumers into stores, and we have found that the cash stimulus really does create a change in consumer behavior,” he said.

Today, Dosh is only in the US, and Wuerch said that international expansion is likely to come in 2020. Whether that will come by way of organic growth or acquisition remains to be seen. In the UK, for example, Quidco provides a similar cash back experience to users.