Year: 2019

The Shelby GT500 is a beast on the track. It’s not a surprise. After a day driving around Las Vegas, I found something that surprised me: The GT500 is as comfortable on the road as it is on the track.

The Shelby GT500 is an icon of motoring. The name implies a simple formula of stuffing a lot of power into a modest body. I’m pleased to report Ford stuck to the proven method for the 2020 GT500. A 5.2L supercharged engine provides 670 HP in this coupe. It’s the most powerful Ford ever mass-produced. The 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 is a future classic, and unlike its predecessors, the car is memorable for more than just going fast in a straight line.

The 2013-2014 GT500 was a monster. It was raw and unhinged and had the thumping soul of a muscle car from a bygone era. It was a Mustang in its purest form. Fast down the drag strip and prone to crash when burning out of Cars and Coffee. This time around, Ford created something different. The 2020 GT500 is still packed with power, but refined enough to create a vehicle that’s capable and comfortable.

On the track, The GT500 dives into corners and roars down the straights. On the drag strip, it hits the quarter-mile in under 11 seconds (I did a 10.98). And on the street, it’s comfortable driving between red lights. The GT500 is a car someone could drive daily to and from an office park. I took my tester to Starbucks and through the back streets of Las Vegas. It’s sublime thanks to a brilliant implementation of a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission.

The DCT manages the communication between the engine and tires. It’s lovely. The dual-clutch transmission is lightning quick, with shifts happening as fast as 80ms. On the track, that’s critical, and on the streets, it makes for easy driving. When cruising from red light to red light, the shifts are refined. They’re quick and light as they translate the engine’s obscene power into mild motoring.

During my short time with the 2020 GT500, I never felt overwhelmed with powered when driving it on city streets. The 2020 GT500 is an exercise in controlled restraint. Somehow this 670 HP Ford can hit 60 mph in 3.3 seconds and can still be easy to putz around town. It’s surprising and a testament to the advances made within Dearborn.

The on-street feel is critical to the success of the latest GT500. Not everyone is looking for a dragster or track superstar. With this performance car, Ford is punching up, appealing to entry-level Porsche and BMW buyers with sticker shock. The GT500 is not apologetic. It’s not trying to be a European sports car, and yet I find it competitive with some of the best from Germany.

Yet don’t sleep on this GT500. When instructed, the 670 HP engine will rip the soul from your body. Drop the pedal to the floor, and it hits 60 mph nearly as fast as Ford’s GT supercar.

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The interior is lackluster for the price. When the GT500 is fitted with all the options, it approaches six figures. The performance is worth the sticker price, but the interior is that of a car costing around $30,000. The GT500 comes with upgraded seats, extra gauges, and some materials are improved. In the end, the GT500 lacks the interior refinement of an M3 or AMG C Class, and it will likely cost Ford some sales.

Ford engineers fitted the Shelby GT500 with a powertrain that will devour tracks. The dual-clutch transmission keeps the 670 HP supercharged engine in line. During my time on the track, this DCT performed admirably, gleefully holding shifts until the right moment and rev-matching downshifts while dipping into corners. Sure, a manual transmission would be fun at times, but using this DCT means peak performance is more obtainable.

The 2020 Shelby GT500 attacks corners, unlike any most muscle cars, dipping and diving without a hint of the brakes fading. It grips better than expected, holding the tires on the tarmac even during the most extreme corning. The on-track performance is impressive for any car, let alone a Mustang. The GT500 offers class-leading track performance. A Dodge SRT Hellcat Redeye will be the Mustang to a quarter-mile, but the Mustang will pull ahead at the first corner.

On the drag strip, nearly anyone hit an 11-second quarter mile. During my time at the track, there was a stiff headwind, and it took me four runs down the strip to go from 11.4 seconds to 10.98 seconds. Ford says the car can do it in 10.9, and I see little reason to doubt that time.

Monster burn-outs are a few menu options away. With just a couple button presses, a novice can lock the front wheels, and spin the rears to create a massive plume of burning rubber.

Turn the exhaust to normal or track, and the car screams when the throttle is wide open. The noise is impressive. It’s full range and sounds more supercar than muscle car. I found the exhaust note to be more expansive than just an explosive rumble.

I asked a Ford engineer if the GT500 was louder than the GT350. He laughed before answering with a straight face. “First of all, both are legal,” he said, alluding to the explosive exhaust note. Unlike the GT350, the GT500 has a quiet mode. It’s not as soft as a Camry, but in this mode, the GT500 is less obnoxious, making it easier to drive daily.

It’s hard to imagine where the Mustang goes from here. I spent a day racing the GT500 around desert roads and the Las Vegas Speedway. It’s incredible and exceeded my expectations. The GT500’s power is endless, and the noise is intoxicating. How does Ford improve while maintaining the Shelby cobra heritage? Likewise, will future versions lean on electric motors to squeak even more performance from Ford’s pony car?

Never mind about the future. As it sits right now, the 2020 GT500 is the pinnacle of muscle car performance.

Purists will decry Ford’s use of an automatic transmission in this car, saying the GT500 should have a standard instead. It’s understandable. A manual transmission results in a commanding feeling of control. And for those looking for such experience, the much-less expensive GT350 is worth a look. The GT350 offers much of the usable power of the GT500 in a more traditional package. In the run-up to driving the GT500, I borrowed a 2019 GT350 for a week. It’s a beast, and I loved it. The steering seemed more direct than the GT500, and the manual transmission resulted in the feeling of unhinged power that’s somewhat lacking in the carefully packaged GT500.

Want an over-the-top, muscle car feel? Get the GT350. Want a supercar experience at a pony car price? Get the GT500.

It’s nearly a mischaracterization to call the GT500 a muscle car. The GT350 is a muscle car with its standard transmission and raw 5.2L flat-plane crank engine. The GT500, with its supercharged 670 HP engine and dual-clutch transmission, is something more refined. It’s not a supercar, nor is it a muscle car. It’s just a fantastic sports car living its best life.

It’s undeniable: In 2019, we are living in the twilight of combustion engines. Electric is the future. And in these last days, internal combustion engines are a work of art. Automakers from all parts of the globe are turning out wonderful engines that are breathtaking in their efficiency and performance. The supercharged 5.2L found in the GT500 is a masterpiece.

The Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 is the most powerful Mustang to date, and I would venture to say, one of the last without an assist from an electric motor. Enjoy it while it lasts. These sorts of fossil fuel-burning, greenhouse gas-emitting monsters from Detroit are long for this world.

The rise of the internet has given every company the chance to be a global company. But as a founder, growing from your garage to the worldwide markets can be tricky business.

That’s why we’ve assembled a panel of top-tier experts to talk through the peaks and pitfalls of scaling strategies at Disrupt Berlin in December.

I’m very pleased to announce that Holger Seim, founder and CEO of audio startup Blinkist, Karoli Hindriks, founder and CEO of Jobbatical, and prominent Silicon Valley immigration attorney Sophie Alcorn will be joining us at the show, which runs December 11 and December 12.

Holger Seim founded Blinkist in 2012. The learning service condenses the information and knowledge found in nonfiction books and repackages that info into small text or audio packets. The company charges $12.99/month for a subscription, with a steep discount for those who pay annually. Today, Blinkist has customers in more than 150 countries. Seim brings experience from his time at Deutsche Telekom, where he focused on digital growth and partnership initiatives.

Karoli Hindriks, CEO and founder of Jobbatical, brings a wealth of experience on the topic of scaling, not only from growing her own startup’s footprint, but by the very nature of the company itself. Jobbatical offers reliable relocation for folks joining high-growth tech companies, handling the nitty gritty of immigration on behalf of employers, including visa documentation and residence permits. Hindriks, a native of Estonia, also led the launch of seven television channels in Northern Europe, including National Geographic channels and MTV. In short, Hindriks knows how to cross borders, from tech talent to products.

Last, but certainly not least, we’ll have Sophie Alcorn, founding partner of Alcorn Immigration Law, to round out the panel. The firm was one of the fastest-growing immigration law firms in Silicon Valley. Alcorn can help founders understand the complexities of immigration and how they can leverage different immigration options to secure key talent. Alcorn can also inform investors of the things to look out for when ensuring founders can legally build companies in the U.S.

Join us in Berlin at TechCrunch Disrupt to hear more from our experts on how to scale your company globally. Tickets are available right here.

All is not lost for smartphone manufacturers. On the heels of two years’ of global stagnation, the category is finally showing some signs of life. Much of the bounce back comes as manufacturers are working to correct for dulled consumer interest.

I wouldn’t put too much weight in the numbers right now, as they’re little more than an uptick. Numbers from Canalys put shipment growth at one percent from Q3 2018 to Q3 2019. In most in cases, that would be a modest gain, at best, but this is notably the first time in two years that the numbers have been heading in the right direction.

Samsung saw the biggest gains — a phenomenon the analyst firm chalks up to a shift in strategy to eat some of its profits. The move has paid off for the quarter, with an 11% growth in device shipments to 78.9 million devices shipped. That gives the company the largest global marketshare at 22.4%.

Huawei, too, saw impressive growth, year-over-year, commanding second place with 66.8 million units shipped. Much of its growth came from China, which has ramped up spending on the company’s products as it has run into regulatory scrutiny overseas. Resumption of sales in some international markets helped juice growth as well. Of the top three, Apple continued to struggle the most, with a 7% loss from 2018.

For now, at least, none of the these numbers qualify as full turn around for a stagnant category, though the upcoming roll out of 5G coverage could help numbers in the right direction in the coming year.

Qoo10, a Singapore-based e-commerce firm has acquired India’s online marketplace ShopClues in an all-stock deal, the two companies said Thursday. The deal, which per a person familiar with the matter valued ShopClues at $100 million, ends years-long struggle at once thriving Indian firm to find a new home. The new deal will see ShopClues merged with eBay-backed Qoo10.

The announcement today comes months after ShopClues was in talks with Indian online retailer Snapdeal for a sale. At the time, ShopClues, which was once worth $1.1 billion, was valued at about $200 million.

More to follow…

Berlin rose as one of Europe’s leading startup hubs over the last decade, featuring unicorns N26, Delivery Hero, HelloFresh, and Auto1 Group. Berlin attracts developers from Eastern Europe and elsewhere into an international hub where English is the linga franca among startups and costs are noticeably lower than in London or Paris. Rocket Internet, while criticized for launching copycats of successful US startups has trained a deep bench of young software executives in rapidly scaling companies.

As we gear up for our Disrupt Berlin conference in December, I wanted to get a pulse on the types of startups that top VCs in Berlin’s ecosystem are looking to invest in right now, so I asked eleven of them to share examples of the trends they find most exciting:

• Luis Hanemann, Partner at e.Ventures
• David Rosskamp, Partner at June Fund
• Dr. Fabian Heilemann, Partner at Earlybird
• Simon Schmincke, Partner at Creandum
• Jan Miczaika, Partner at HV Holtzbrinck Ventures
• Pawel Chudzinski, Point Nine Capital
• Ciaran O’Leary, Partner at Blueyard Capital
• Jan Borgstädt, Partner at JOIN Capital
• Christoph Schuh, Partner at Lakestar
• Anton Waitz, Partner at Project A
• Filip Dames, Partner at Cherry Ventures

The range of interests hints at the expanse of Berlin’s startup ecosystem right now, with VCs focused on everything from fintech, agtech, and B2B marketplaces to audio, travel, and transportation.

Here are their responses:

 

Luis Hanemann, Partner at e.Ventures

“We see multiple trends emerging, in the B2C segment we see Audio is booming and is right for disruption. It’s amazing to see the development in the space. Our beloved Berlin-based  portfolio company Blinkist is addressing this topic and we have done a recent investment in Podimo, which is building the Netflix for Podcasts, launching soon in Germany.”

 

David Rosskamp, Partner at June Fund

“We spend a lot of time thinking around large macro themes and investing into them in a structured way. One central field of attention has been the agricultural world, in particular the flow of goods and information. We see a large need, and an equally large economic opportunity in digitizing these flows, in providing transparent access to agricultural supplies and in empowering millions of small-scale farmers. So June has invested in agricultural trading networks from Europe to Africa. It clearly matches our investment thesis: global, network-driven enterprises that the world needs. We have similar investments in healthcare or decentralized networks, to name a few.”

 

Dr. Fabian Heilemann, Partner at Earlybird

“At Earlybird we believe that the first wave of innovation within Logistics, being rather of a transformative nature, e.g. digital freight marketplaces and forwarder models, has reached its peak. We are now particular excited w.r.t the second wave of LogTech innovation, which we expect to have a truly disruptive impact on the industry. It is our conviction that the availability of structured data, but also the increasing maturity of for example distributed ledger technologies, entail the opportunity for digital service providers to expand their technology driven lead over incumbent players. Whereas competitive forces in Logistics today are mainly adhere to scale effects, we think that next generation of logistics companies will leverage technology to drive profitability.”

 

Simon Schmincke, Partner at Creandum

“We continue to see the consumerization of enterprise grade solutions—enabling self-onboarding in a toned-down SME-oriented solution. The FinTech scene here in Berlin is something we continue to be excited about, both for businesses and consumers. Also, anything real estate related immediately grabs our attention—co-living, financing, intelligent design, construction automation. The most important change, however, is that we see entrepreneurs aiming higher and building bigger companies, due, in large part, to the impressive role models the ecosystem has produced in recent years.”

 

Jan Miczaika, Partner at HV Holtzbrinck Ventures

“Over the past 20 years we’ve seen a significant shift in the focus of Berlin-based startups. Originally there was a strong focus on e-commerce and marketplaces. Today this is significantly broader. Berlin is a fintech hotspot, a global proving ground for mobility concepts, the HQ for digital B2C champions and has strong growth in B2B/SaaS. Berlin is also highly relevant for Blockchain, which fits extraordinarily well with the anarchical spirit of the city. As a broad, multi-stage investor we at HV are excited to cover all of the above, trying to find inspirational entrepreneurs with a strong vision for the future. I personally am most interested in companies with a strong data angle, across both B2C and B2B.”

 

Pawel Chudzinski, Partner at Point Nine Capital

“Marketplaces have transformed how consumers access products and services across many categories vs. in B2B this process feels like 10-15 years behind. We see more and more startups pursue marketplace opportunities across various b2b categories and we want to discover them as early as possible. We are industry agnostic, but the industries in which we have been spending most time recently were probably supply chain and logistics, and financial services (incl. crypto). We also expect a rise in sustainability focused startups and we started diving into this space as well – mainly from the SaaS and marketplace angle.”

 

Ciaran O’Leary, Partner at Blueyard Capital

“BlueYard is a thesis driven early stage firm that backs founders with transformative ideas that decentralize markets and empower humanity. Today BlueYard is focused on the reinvention of the internet for permission-less innovation through decentralized web protocols and services that can untangle the server-side monopolies (e.g. p2p protocols and networks), the ability to use nature / biology itself paired with breakthrough engineering and computation to solve humanity’s largest planetary challenges (e.g. synthetic biology, quantum computing), the re-thinking of the knowledge worker stack by liberating users and data from the current tools designed in the 1980s (e.g. alternatives to PowerPoint, Excel, etc) and the separation of state and money through algorithmically transparent and programmable money.”

 

Jan Borgstädt, Partner at JOIN Capital

“We are deeply entrenched in identifying technologies that lay the foundation of our industrial future – or what we call the Neue Industry. I look for companies whose founders have deep technical knowledge to build transformative tools that augment human capabilities in essential processes. Think about the construction industry, and how advanced modeling tools and software can revolutionize the backbone of the way our civilization is built. Or the automation of processes such as circuit mapping and production planning. These are among the trends that excite us right now.”

 

Christoph Schuh, Partner at Lakestar

Berlin is the tech ecosystem where we have done the most investments out of our existing portfolio of more than 50 companies. For example Travel & Mobility is the space where we are very much interested and active. We’ve invested into Berlin-based travel tech companies like GetYourGuide, HomeToGo and Omio and we’re still looking for new stars. At Lakestar, we also like B2B plays where industries are in transformation and tech can enable a new level of efficiency for the ecosystem. So we also invested into the Berlin based logistic player Sennder, the  #1 digital freight forwarder in Europe. Actually, we also look into industry disruption in 3.0/4.0/RPA space and others.”

 

Anton Waitz, Partner at Project A

“At Project A, we think and work in industry deep dives. That means we pick 5-6 industries at the time on which we spend most of our energy and where we do the majority of our investments. It’s interesting to see how recently our deep dives have let us think about some of the most fundamental questions in life: How will we work in 10 years time (Deep Dive: Business Software/Process Automation)? How will we reside (Deep dive: Real Estate)? How will we move us (Mobility) and things (Logistics)? How will we produce (Industry 4.0)? And how will we stay healthy (Digital Health)? I guess it shows how deep digitization has reached the very basics of our life – and how exciting our job actually is!”

 

Filip Dames, Partner at Cherry Ventures

“We believe the next years will show successful companies in industries which have traditionally been very hard to tackle for startups. For example, we’re just at the very beginning of seeing the effects of technology innovation in healthcare or manufacturing, two spaces we actively investing in with Cherry. Data, leveraged through AI or intelligent user interfaces can have a huge impact on solving problems in these industries. In Berlin, we’re excited to see that the city is becoming more and more a home for deep tech companies, attracting technical talent from around the world.”

 

Join TechCrunch in Berlin on December 11-12 for Disrupt Berlin…

It’s not quite an “Apple Prime” subscription, but it’s compelling. Apple on Wednesday introduced a new program that will allow Apple Card users to finance their iPhone purchases for 24 months, without paying interest. The program aims to appeal to consumers who frequently upgrade their iPhone to the latest model, but often turn to their carrier to finance those purchases.

With the Goldman Sachs Apple Card, those iPhone users will have another option — and one without the associated interest and fees of a traditional credit card purchase, Apple says. In addition, the Apple Card offers 3% back on purchases from Apple, which further sweetens the deal.

The program helps to lay the groundwork for what some believe may eventually become a larger subscription product for Apple, or a so-called “Apple Prime” — a name that references the Amazon Prime membership program that includes a variety of perks alongside its fast, free shipping.

An Apple hardware subscription could see users instead paying for the privilege of using the latest Apple hardware, while also bundling in other services, like AppleCare, similar to its current iPhone Upgrade Program today. But a true “Apple Prime” would include other Apple subscriptions under the same roof, like iCloud, Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple News+ and/or Apple Arcade, in some sort of bundle deal. 

Already, Apple has begun to experiment with subscription bundles. This week, for example, it announced a bundle for students that includes Apple Music and Apple TV+ for the same price as a student Apple Music subscription alone ($5/mo). And in a sense, Apple is already bundling its new Apple TV+ streaming service with its hardware, as it’s giving the service away for free with a new device purchase in its first year.

Apple has been steadily moving towards a more robust iPhone subscription program for some time.

In recent years, it has promoted iPhone trade-ins as something of a no-brainer for bringing down the cost of a new iPhone purchase. At the company’s iPhone 11 event in September, for example, Apple put up a slide that emphasized the new iPhone 11’s low price, when viewed under this model. Instead of a starting price of $699, the iPhone 11 could be as little as $399 — or $17 per month, Apple said — when you traded in your iPhone 8. The iPhone 11 Pro was $25 per month with an X trade-in, and the Pro Max, would be $29 per month with an X trade-in, Apple also said.

These sorts of promotions seem to be working, as more Apple customers are turning to trade-ins than in the past.

“We…continue to see great results from our trade-in program with more than five times the iPhone trade-in volume we had a year ago,” noted Apple CFO Luca Maestri on Apple’s earnings call.

The larger idea is to encourage Apple’s customer base to viewing the iPhone not as a big, expensive one-time purchase, but as just another monthly bill you have to pay. Tack on a few extras, like a warranty and some media and entertainment options, and Apple has the meat for a real iPhone-led subscription — it’s very own “Apple Prime,” so to speak. And thanks to the Goldman Sachs Apple Card, it has a way to incentive users to buy from Apple directly.

 

 

 

One of the world’s most static technologies may be the humble mug, but startup Ember decided it was time for a change when they introduced their temperature-controlled smart mug to the market in 2016. Now, the company has launched its Ember Mug 2 – a follow-up that keeps the concept and design intact, but that improves the lineup in some key ways.

There are two separate new second-generation Ember mugs – the Ember Travel Mug, and the Ember Mug designed for home and office use. Both add extended battery life, thanks to swapping its old battery technology with “the most advanced battery technology on the market,” and both gain new redesigned charging coasters, while the Travel Mug 2 gets a new control interface for adjusting the temperature of the beverage within, and it’s a bit lighter while holding the same volume.

Ember Mug 2 (from $99.95)

This sequel to Ember’s home mug comes in black, white and copper versions, as well as in two sizes: 10z and 14oz. Like its predecessor, it features an internal heating element and battery, Bluetooth connectivity for smartphone control from the Ember app, and a durable ceramic coating.

The Ember Mug 2 has a customizable LED that shows you when it’s working, and that you can change to whatever color you wish, which is handy if you have a couple of these in use in one household. It comes in black and white (as well as the pricier copper edition) in order to set your desired temperature, you pair it with an app on your phone (a quick and painless process).

Ember will send you notifications when the liquid within reaches the desired temperature. I’ve long used one of their first generation products, and the one thing I found was that on my three-a-day coffee schedule, sometimes my third cup would end up cold, because the battery, while decent, would run out before my appetite for caffeine did.

Enter the sequel, which offers up to 50 percent better battery life than the original version. It’s hard to quantify, since the speed with which I drink my coffee differs day to day, but I will say that in testing I haven’t seen the low battery warning before I was long done actually drinking coffee for the day. In short, if you make sure to pop the mug back on its charging coaster every evening, you should have plenty of juice for a full day of use the next day without any sense of mug range anxiety.

Ember Travel Mug 2 ($179.95)

The Travel Mug 2 gets a slight redesign as well as battery improvements. Whereas Ember used a physical dial to control temperature adjustments without requiring you to use your phone on the last generation, now there’s a touch sensitive area on the cup just above where the body expands out towards the top. You can slide your fingers around this to increase or decrease the temperature of whatever you have within.

This tweak is likely what allowed Ember to slim down the design while keeping the internal volume (12 oz) the same, so that it’s a bit more lightweight and travel friendly than before (while also offering as much as three hours of battery life). Ember also took the auto sleep and wake features that it introduced with the original Ember ceramic Mug and brought them to the Travel Mug 2, meaning that it’ll turn itself on and off automatically depending on whether it detects liquid inside. or motion from being picked up, to extend battery life even further.

The design of the Ember Travel Mug 2 is top-notch, with a smooth matte surface and hand-friendly design, along with clear, easy to red LED displays that just disappear when not in use. The bottom display shows current temperature, as well as an indicator of remaining battery life, and you can add a custom name to show for avoiding confusion if there are multiple Travel Mugs in use.

Bottom Line

Ember’s follow-up hardware to its initial lineup isn’t a dramatic change – but the collection didn’t need a major overhaul because it gets so many things right. The added battery life in the new generation is great, and the appeal remains the same: If you’re a coffee or tea fanatic and don’t love returning to a lukewarm or cold cup, then this is the stuff for you.

Could you opt for a vacuum-walled mug or travel tumbler? Absolutely, and the Zojirushi line-up of insulated travel mugs will keep liquids hot for days. But Ember’s home mug is without peer for actually keeping things hot in an open-top design, and the Travel Mug’s ability to actually adjust and increase temperature on the fly is also a unique value proposition that can’t be matched by any passive insulation.

One of the world’s most static technologies may be the humble mug, but startup Ember decided it was time for a change when they introduced their temperature-controlled smart mug to the market in 2016. Now, the company has launched its Ember Mug 2 – a follow-up that keeps the concept and design intact, but that improves the lineup in some key ways.

There are two separate new second-generation Ember mugs – the Ember Travel Mug, and the Ember Mug designed for home and office use. Both add extended battery life, thanks to swapping its old battery technology with “the most advanced battery technology on the market,” and both gain new redesigned charging coasters, while the Travel Mug 2 gets a new control interface for adjusting the temperature of the beverage within, and it’s a bit lighter while holding the same volume.

Ember Mug 2 (from $99.95)

This sequel to Ember’s home mug comes in black, white and copper versions, as well as in two sizes: 10z and 14oz. Like its predecessor, it features an internal heating element and battery, Bluetooth connectivity for smartphone control from the Ember app, and a durable ceramic coating.

The Ember Mug 2 has a customizable LED that shows you when it’s working, and that you can change to whatever color you wish, which is handy if you have a couple of these in use in one household. It comes in black and white (as well as the pricier copper edition) in order to set your desired temperature, you pair it with an app on your phone (a quick and painless process).

Ember will send you notifications when the liquid within reaches the desired temperature. I’ve long used one of their first generation products, and the one thing I found was that on my three-a-day coffee schedule, sometimes my third cup would end up cold, because the battery, while decent, would run out before my appetite for caffeine did.

Enter the sequel, which offers up to 50 percent better battery life than the original version. It’s hard to quantify, since the speed with which I drink my coffee differs day to day, but I will say that in testing I haven’t seen the low battery warning before I was long done actually drinking coffee for the day. In short, if you make sure to pop the mug back on its charging coaster every evening, you should have plenty of juice for a full day of use the next day without any sense of mug range anxiety.

Ember Travel Mug 2 ($179.95)

The Travel Mug 2 gets a slight redesign as well as battery improvements. Whereas Ember used a physical dial to control temperature adjustments without requiring you to use your phone on the last generation, now there’s a touch sensitive area on the cup just above where the body expands out towards the top. You can slide your fingers around this to increase or decrease the temperature of whatever you have within.

This tweak is likely what allowed Ember to slim down the design while keeping the internal volume (12 oz) the same, so that it’s a bit more lightweight and travel friendly than before (while also offering as much as three hours of battery life). Ember also took the auto sleep and wake features that it introduced with the original Ember ceramic Mug and brought them to the Travel Mug 2, meaning that it’ll turn itself on and off automatically depending on whether it detects liquid inside. or motion from being picked up, to extend battery life even further.

The design of the Ember Travel Mug 2 is top-notch, with a smooth matte surface and hand-friendly design, along with clear, easy to red LED displays that just disappear when not in use. The bottom display shows current temperature, as well as an indicator of remaining battery life, and you can add a custom name to show for avoiding confusion if there are multiple Travel Mugs in use.

Bottom Line

Ember’s follow-up hardware to its initial lineup isn’t a dramatic change – but the collection didn’t need a major overhaul because it gets so many things right. The added battery life in the new generation is great, and the appeal remains the same: If you’re a coffee or tea fanatic and don’t love returning to a lukewarm or cold cup, then this is the stuff for you.

Could you opt for a vacuum-walled mug or travel tumbler? Absolutely, and the Zojirushi line-up of insulated travel mugs will keep liquids hot for days. But Ember’s home mug is without peer for actually keeping things hot in an open-top design, and the Travel Mug’s ability to actually adjust and increase temperature on the fly is also a unique value proposition that can’t be matched by any passive insulation.

The founders of Seattle-based Modus cold emailed Pete Flint, the founder of Trulia and a current managing partner at the venture capital firm NFX, for months to no avail. In a last ditch effort, Alex Day, Jai Sim and Abbas Guvenilir sent one more message to the investor who’s real estate listings tool sold to Zillow in 2014 for $3.5 billion. They were at a coffee shop below his San Francisco office, was he interested in meeting?

Fortunately for them, he was.

Modus, a real estate startup focused on title and escrow services, is today announcing a $12.5 million Series A financing co-led by NFX’s Flint and Niki Pezeshki of Felicis Ventures. Liquid 2 ventures and existing backers including Mucker Capital, Hustle Fund, 500 Startups, Rambleside and Cascadia Ventures also participated in the round.

“The first revolution in online real estate was transforming the research experience, the next revolution in the industry is transforming the transaction,” Flint said in a statement.

Modus launched in 2018 with a focus on Washington State real estate opportunities. The startup, led by former employees of a nearly-defunct lunch delivery company Peach, has developed software to help both agents and home buyers navigate the home closing process, which, unlike many other real estate experiences, has yet to receive a boost of innovation from startups building in the sector. That’s why Modus started with an emphasis on escrow services, though the team’s long term vision, they explain, is to power all real estate transactions.

“When you think about communication, you think of Gmail; when you think of traveling, you think of Uber . We want to be synonymous with home closing,” Sim, the company’s executive chairman, tells TechCrunch.

Sim, the former head of marketing at Peach, says Modus has ambitions of becoming a sort of operating system for real estate, or “like what Stripe is for payment processing, we want to become for real estate transactions.”

Since closing its Series A financing in May–the team waited until now to make its financing information public–Modus has increased its headcount to 50 employees across product, engineering and operations. Their goal now is to provide their software to home-buyers in 15 to 20 states over the next two years. To support expansion efforts, Modus plans to raise a Series B in the second or third quarter of next year.

Modus has previously raised $1.8 million in seed funding.

The founders of Seattle-based Modus cold emailed Pete Flint, the founder of Trulia and a current managing partner at the venture capital firm NFX, for months to no avail. In a last ditch effort, Alex Day, Jai Sim and Abbas Guvenilir sent one more message to the investor who’s real estate listings tool sold to Zillow in 2014 for $3.5 billion. They were at a coffee shop below his San Francisco office, was he interested in meeting?

Fortunately for them, he was.

Modus, a real estate startup focused on title and escrow services, is today announcing a $12.5 million Series A financing co-led by NFX’s Flint and Niki Pezeshki of Felicis Ventures. Liquid 2 ventures and existing backers including Mucker Capital, Hustle Fund, 500 Startups, Rambleside and Cascadia Ventures also participated in the round.

“The first revolution in online real estate was transforming the research experience, the next revolution in the industry is transforming the transaction,” Flint said in a statement.

Modus launched in 2018 with a focus on Washington State real estate opportunities. The startup, led by former employees of a nearly-defunct lunch delivery company Peach, has developed software to help both agents and home buyers navigate the home closing process, which, unlike many other real estate experiences, has yet to receive a boost of innovation from startups building in the sector. That’s why Modus started with an emphasis on escrow services, though the team’s long term vision, they explain, is to power all real estate transactions.

“When you think about communication, you think of Gmail; when you think of traveling, you think of Uber . We want to be synonymous with home closing,” Sim, the company’s executive chairman, tells TechCrunch.

Sim, the former head of marketing at Peach, says Modus has ambitions of becoming a sort of operating system for real estate, or “like what Stripe is for payment processing, we want to become for real estate transactions.”

Since closing its Series A financing in May–the team waited until now to make its financing information public–Modus has increased its headcount to 50 employees across product, engineering and operations. Their goal now is to provide their software to home-buyers in 15 to 20 states over the next two years. To support expansion efforts, Modus plans to raise a Series B in the second or third quarter of next year.

Modus has previously raised $1.8 million in seed funding.