Year: 2019

Babbel, the popular Berlin-based language learning service, today announced that its founder and current co-CEO Markus Witte is stepping down from his CEO role but that he will remain the executive chairman of the company’s board. The company’s current co-CEO Arne Schepker will become Babbel’s sole CEO.

In addition to these leadership changes, the company also today announced that it has appointed Katherine Melchior Ray, who held previous executive positions with luxury consumer brands like Japan’s Shiseido, Hyatt Hotels, Tommy Hilfiger, Gucci and Louis Vuitton, as its new Chief Marketing Officer.

All of these changes come as Babbel ends as Babbel hits 100 million Euro in revenue for its 2018 financial year.

As Witte and Schepker told me in an interview ahead of today’s official announcement, there were a few reasons why the team decided that this would be the best way forward. And while it’s unusual for U.S. founders to step back from their CEO role, especially as a company is hitting a new growth phase, Witter argues that going forward, being the chairman of the board will put him in the best position to ensure the company’s future going forward.

“Being CEO and chairman of the board has pros and cons,” Witte told me. “To say that the founder and chairman are one and the same person, that’s the West Coast model — and every now and then, that has its advantages. But it’s not what people would consider good governance in Europe and at times, it makes things harder because it creates a conflict of interest in board meetings.”

Those conflicts, Witte argues, made him less effective in the chairman role and in addition, he believes that Babbel has now reached a point where chairman and CEO just can’t be the same person anymore. And so he decided that if he had to choose, he’d stay as chairman of the board because that’s the role where he can ensure that Babbel remains true to its mission.

He also admitted that as the company grew, the workload became a bit too much. “CEOs like to overestimate themselves and I’m no exception,” said Witte. “But you get to the point where you have to say: I can’t fill all of these roles anymore.”

With Schepker, Babbel had brought on an outsider as CMO a few years ago who proved himself in the co-CEO role and was, in Witte’s view, ready for the CEO role, making his decision easier.

Schepker tells me that the company doesn’t plan to change its overall strategy going forward. “We have a clear strategy and we plan to implement that even faster — but that’s independent of these leadership change,” he told me. “The focus is on how we can create more value for our customers, our learners, by looking at how we can better guide them through their personal learning journey. The problem that most learners face is that, unless they studied it in college, they never learned how to effectively learn a new language.”

In practical terms, this means that Babbel will look at expanding the range of language learning opportunities for its users to better guide them through their learning experience (and for longer).

Apple announced this morning a significant $2.5 billion commitment towards easing the California housing availability and affordability crisis. The investment includes a $1 billion commitment to an affordable housing investment fund, $1 billion towards a first-time homebuyer mortgage assistance fund, and $300 million in Apple-owned land which will be made available for affordable housing.

Another $200 million will go to support new, lower-income housing in the Bay Area including by way of a $150 million Bay Area housing fund, with partners like Housing Trust Silicon Valley. This will consist of long-term forgivable loans and grants. Another $50 million will be directed towards vulnerable populations, specifically to address homelessness in the Silicon Valley area.

Apple says it will also look into similar efforts across both Northern and Southern California that are designed to prevent homelessness.

The company says the full commitment in the state — which is being done in parntership with Governor Gavin Newsom, the state of California, and community-based organizations — will take approximately two years to be fully utilized, and will depend on the availability of projects. The capital returned to Apple will also be reinvested in future projects over the next five years.

The investment comes at a time when the housing crunch in Calfornia has forced people from their homes, Apple explained in its announcement.

“Community members like teachers, firefighters, first responders and service workers are increasingly having to make the difficult choice to leave behind the community they have long called home. Nearly 30,000 people left San Francisco between April and June of this year1 and homeownership in the Bay Area is at a seven-year low,” Apple said.

The housing crisis didn’t develop overnight, nor is the tech industry’s growth the only reason there’s now an issue.

Like most complexities, the crisis arose from a combination of factors including also the area’s local laws, zoning regulations, protests against building vertically, NIMBY-ism, rental control’s impact on the market, the restricted housing supply and much more.  But tech has played a big role here, having led to a disparity between the wealthy tech workers and everyone else as well as contributing to rapid population growth that’s outpaced the growth in the housing supply.

Today, many area residents can’t afford to live in the cities where they work, commuting an hour or more from more affordable neighborhoods.

“Before the world knew the name Silicon Valley, and long before we carried technology in our pockets, Apple called this region home, and we feel a profound civic responsibility to ensure it remains a vibrant place where people can live, have a family and contribute to the community,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, in a statement. “Affordable housing means stability and dignity, opportunity and pride. When these things fall out of reach for too many, we know the course we are on is unsustainable, and Apple is committed to being part of the solution.”

Apple isn’t the first tech giant to make a contribution in an attempt to address the housing crisis. Facebook last month announced $1 billion to tackle affordable housing in California and elsewhere. Google earlier this year also announced a $1 billion investment aimed at easing the Bay Area housing crisis. Elsewhere, Microsoft committed $500 million for an affordable housing fund in the Seattle area.

The fact that the tech giants have to step in to address the problems — which do, in fact, impact their own businesses as they need to be able to hire more than the just high-paid engineers — is concerning. While some would applaud the sizable investments as proof of tech’s ability to be a good neighbor to their local communities, others would say we should just be taxing these companies more so the money is available to solve the problems upfront — instead of it going into loans that actually earn these companies more. Nor should they be invested into million- or billion-dollar programs that give these tech companies an incredible amount of influence in local politics.

But it could also be that crisis has gotten so out of control, it can no longer be solved at the local level.

“This unparalleled financial commitment to affordable housing, and the innovative strategies at the heart of this initiative, are proof that Apple is serious about solving this issue. I hope other companies follow their lead,” said Newsom. “The sky-high cost of housing — both for homeowners and renters — is the defining quality-of-life concern for millions of families across this state, one that can only be fixed by building more housing. This partnership with Apple will allow the state of California to do just that.”

Esports are the wild wild West right now. There’s clearly a huge potential for the industry to become incredibly lucrative, but everything from the infrastructure of competition to the overall culture isn’t quite ready for prime time.

This introduces a huge opportunity for the tech world to get in on the action. We’ve seen traditional VC money start to sniff around esports in ways big and small. Bessemer Venture Partners has invested in Team SoloMid, while Sequoia has invested in 100 Thieves.

Today, Gen.G has announced that it has accepted investment from the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, a longstanding New York City-based accelerator program.

Gen.G started as KSV (Korea plus Silicon Valley) in mid-2017 with a debut in the Overwatch League. In 2018, after expanding to other games including Heroes of the Storm, PUBG and League of Legends, KSV eSports rebranded to Generation Gaming (Gen.G) and launched a Clash Royale esports team.

At the end of 2018, Gen.G made yet another huge move. They lured Chris Park from his position as executive vice president in charge of product and marketing at Major League Baseball to join Gen.G as CEO.

Since, Park has been thinking about the long-term opportunities for the esports org and the industry as a whole. He secured $46 million in funding from Los Angeles Clippers minority owner Dennis Wong, Will Smith’s Dreamers Fund, NEA, Battery Ventures, Canaan Partners, SVB Capital and Stanford University, among others.

He signed a partnership with dating app Bumble to create Team Bumble, an all-female professional Fortnite squad.

Gender inclusion is one of the biggest misses in the esports world right now. Data shows that 46 percent of gamers are female (ESA) and that nearly one in four esports viewers are female (Nielsen). Despite no physical differentiators between men and women, women are severely underrepresented in the esports world.

Not one female competed in the Fortnite World Cup in 2018, despite the fact that qualifiers were completely open to any player. A big reason for the disparity here is that the gaming community isn’t generally a safe environment for female gamers, in big and small ways. Many female gamers experience abuse while playing games, like this streamer, and it’s gotten bad enough to push a small percentage of female gamers away from playing entirely.

But exclusion comes in many forms. Ninja announced in August 2018 that he won’t be streaming with female gamers, which you can read about here.

Beyond general principles about equality, the female gamer is a lucrative demographic that has yet to be properly tapped by any particular esports org, publisher, or otherwise. Gen.G is now ahead in the race to acquire female gamers as fans, customers and future talent.

Another forward-thinking move by Gen.G is its recent partnership with the University of Kentucky to help create and manage its esports program. We’ve seen startups like PlayVS look to build out the infrastructure and connective tissue that will eventually bind education and professional sports, as has been the case with traditional sports for generations. Gen.G is now tackling that ever-important bridge from academia to professional life by looking at universities.

The funding from ERA, the amount of which has not been disclosed, not only allows Gen.G to grow its foothold on the East Coast. It also gives the esports org a strategic partnership with ERA, which invests in super early stage tech startups. As more founders tackle the mounting challenges in esports, Gen.G is now in a prime position to watch over those deals closely and potentially tap into some of the solutions and services sure to sprout up in the next five to ten years.

“We are focused on ways to make it easier for people in the gaming community to connect,” said Chris Park, hinting at some of the technology that Gen.G is interested in. “My hope is that over time, platforms as well as teams treat fans and athletes as more than just users, and more like collaborators and partners.”

Adobe will be bringing another of its desktop-class imaging and graphics apps to the iPad: Illustrator, which is set for a launch win 2020, the company announced today at its annual MAX conference. Last year, Adobe announced a similar plan to deliver Photoshop for iPad, and that app launched on the App Store early on Monday.

Illustrator for iPad is still in “early” development, the company said, so we don’t know exactly what it’ll look like relative to the desktop version. But it will focus on making the most of touch and Apple Pencil-based input, which are uniquely available to the iPad. As with Photoshop, documents created on one platform will be available in full fidelity to edit on any others via Creative Cloud storage.

The app will be available in a limited private beta beginning immediately, but the group of those with access will remain very tight until Adobe has managed to get further along in the development process. You can sign up now to register interest, however, and maybe you’ll gain access sometime earlier than official launch to help with the beta and building process.

Adobe says it’s already been in touch with “thousands of designers” to understand how best to build them a version of Illustrator that works best for how they use tablets in their work. If the Photoshop for iPad release process is any measure, at launch next year Illustrator won’t offer feature parity, but it’s a starting point for turning the iPad into a true one-stop shop for creative pros who favor an Adobe working environment.

NASA’s commercial crew partner Boeing has achieved a key milestone on the way to actually flying astronauts aboard its CST-100 Starliner: Demonstrating that its launch pad abort system works as designed, which is a key safety system that NASA requires to be in place before the aerospace company can put astronauts inside the Starliner.

The Starliner’s demonstration mission involved starting from a standing position designed to simulate how it would be set up on top of the ULA Atlas 5 rocket during an actual crewed launch. It then activated its abort engines, which helped push the Starliner and its service module to a safe distance away from the launcher rocket. One issue is that only two out of three parachutes deployed, which will have to be investigated, but the actual fault tolerance defined by NASA here allows and anticipates that as a possibility.

The need for this system is described as a very ‘unlikely’ scenario by Boeing and NASA, but the agency and its partners are emphasizing safety as they develop both Boeing’s and SpaceX’s new crew transportation spacecrafts.

There’s an anthropomorphic test dummy on board, loaded with sensors that will provide Boeing and NASA with all the data they need about what the abort system impact would be on an actual human sitting in that Starliner, were this an actual incident with astronauts involved. That will provide further data about how people would’ve experienced the abort, which will be key information in addition to finding out why that third parachute didn’t fire.

In December, Boeing plans to launch its first uncrewed Starliner to the ISS for the next step ahead of launching with people on board. That remains on track based on an initial interpretation of these results.