Year: 2019

Gogoro, the Taiwanese electric vehicle company, revealed its newest vehicle today, a lightweight scooter designed for people who want something smaller than one of the company’s Smartscooter mopeds, but more powerful than an electric bike. Called the Viva, the scooter can run for 85 kilometers on one of Gogoro’s swappable batteries, which are charged at the same stations as its Smartscooters.

Horace Luke, co-founder and CEO of Gogoro, tells TechCruch that the Viva was created as an environmentally-friendly alternative to 50cc to 100cc gas scooters. It will be available starting in October, launching first in Taiwan next year before being released in some international markets.

Made from recyclable scratch-proof solid-core polypropylene and available in five color combinations, the Viva weighs 80 kilograms and has up to 21 liters of storage. It will retail at USD $1,800, with about 100 optional accessories available, including baskets and racks.

As in many other Asian cities, mopeds are popular in Taiwan and serve as the primary vehicle for many drivers, transporting multiple passengers and deliveries. Luke says Gogoro’s scooters now account for 95% of the country’s electric vehicle market share and about 17% of all new vehicles sold in Taiwan, including gas ones.

Viva was created to attract customers who don’t want to deal with the costs, including maintenance visits and parking, of owning a bigger moped.

“The Viva is aimed toward the population going no more than 5 kilometers a day, who don’t want to worry about scratches, cost of ownership, having to take it to the shop for maintenance or parking,” he adds. “We have 17% market share and now the question is how do you get to 25% or 35% market share?”

Like Gogoro’s mopeds, the Viva is also connected to the company’s iQ system, which lets users unlock their vehicles and monitor mileage and maintenance with a smartphone app. With Taiwanese government subsidies for electric vehicles, it will cost NTD $25,980 (about USD $837), making it competitive with the pricing of high-end electric bikes. Gogoro will also offer two years of free maintenance for Vivas sold in Taiwan.

Gogoro has now sold more than 200,000 Smartscooters and is present in international markets including the European Union (through a partnership with scooter-sharing service Coup), South Korea, where it recently launched electric scooters designed for delivery drivers, and Japan. It also runs a mobility platform designed to be a white-label solution for ride-sharing companies.

Research when to sell your shares in a privately held company, and the results may have you laughing — not because they’re funny but they’re because there’s an almost comical amount of information available out there. From blog posts to advertisements to advertorials to calculators, the data is overwhelming to the point of being useless.

It’s a problem that Matt Venables and Tom Hennessy — both former execs at the peer-to-peer payments company Circle —  experienced first-hand across numerous startup jobs. The more they looked to understand what their equity was worth and how to sell it without making a massive financial misstep, the more frustrated they felt.

Enter Vested, their three-month-old, Boston-based startup, one that is already backed already with $1.2 million from UnderscoreVC and Boston Seed Capital, and which — if they’re exceedingly lucky — will become the first stop for many thousands of startup employees who are in the same boat that the two once were.

What these individuals will find, promises Vested: Access to both both secondary outfits that buy stocks and loan providers, but also information around taxes, explained plainly; and competitive data about different industries and other recent stock sale information. More specifically, they both say, Vested will be hosting data that VCs and data analysts use, including public records filings, salary information, and independent appraisals of companies based on their last round of financing, their number of employees, and their valuation growth to produce as close as it can each startup’s fair market valuation.

Hennessey explains the pitch this way: “Matt and I have both some sold shares on the secondary market, and the process was non-transparent and not a fair process. But we realized the problem is much bigger than that — that the bigger issue is really around private equity compensation. The misunderstanding starts from day one. We’d love to capture employees before they ever sign an offer letter, then keep them along the way, so they understand at what points along the way does it make sense to exercise their options and why.”

Ultimately, the goal is guide more employees to exercise responsibly and to convert option holders into shareholders, because the alternative, apparently, is to do nothing at all. Says Venables, “Something like 80 percent of options are ever exercised. It’s abysmally low because people are confused, they wait too long, and [the rising value of their holdings] triggers the [alternative minimum tax]. A lot of people leave their jobs within a couple of years and they just decide it’s not worth the hassle.”

Of course, it’s very early days. Venables and Hennessey say they’ve already spoken to numerous secondary exchanges that want to work with Vested, which will serve as a kind of offer aggregator. To motivate the exchanges to put their best foot forward, Venables adds that, “In time, the most compelling offers will be surfaced first.” The same will go for lenders offering non-recourse loans to employees who want to exercise more options than they can afford at the moment, say the founders.

As for the Vested’s business model, the idea is to receive a finders fee from both the exchanges and the lenders. The company also plans to offer a low-cost subscription product that goes above and beyond what an employee can find by by visiting Vested’s site. One idea is for them to receive push notifications when a buyer expresses interest in their company’s shares but Venables and Hennessey are contemplating a host of other bells and whistles.

Of course, step one is to build up awareness around Vested, and then attract employees in search of better, clearer, more actionable information. In the meantime, the duo may need to watch out for the 600-pound elephant in their space — Carta, which helps private company investors, founders, and employees manage their equity and ownership and that raised a big round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz earlier this year to build out a secondary marketplace. What if Carta tried killing off Vested before it ever has a chance, we asked the founders on a call earlier this week.

Vested instead sees the two as complementary. Says Venables, “Carta is building a structured secondary marketplace, one that’s really [catering to] employers. We’re building Vested 100 percent for employees.”

Pictured above from left to right: Vested cofounders Tom Hennessey and Matt Venables, along with their VP of Design, Nat Tarbox.

As is now typical just ahead of the holidays, Amazon just inundated us with a whole new lineup of hardware devices, including new Echo smart speakers and screens, at its Alexa event today, plus other smart home and connected devices from its brands Ring and eero. There were also a slew of surprises, like Alexa earbuds, glasses, and a smart ring. And oh yeah, a new Alexa-powered oven, too.

New Echos

Headlining the event are Amazon’s latest updates to its Echo line of devices.

Echo Dot with Clock

Not one for overly creative names, Amazon has given its entry-level Echo, the Echo Dot, a nifty upgrade. The new Echo Dot with a Clock now features a digital alarm clock on the front, which can be dimmed if you prefer, at times. This LED display also allows the Dot to show the weather, when asked, or a countdown timer.

The new Dot doesn’t replace the original, however. It’s just a $10 upgrade to $59 if you want the extra feature.

Echo Studio

The Echo the audiophiles have been waiting for. The new Echo Studio is Amazon’s response to Google’s Nest Max and Apple’s HomePod. The $199.99 device supports 3D audio and Dolby Atmos. It has five drivers, including one downward-facing 5.25-inch woofer, a 1-inch, front-firing tweeter and three, 2-inch, mid-range speakers aimed at different directions.

And it has a 24-bit DAC and a power amplifier with 100 kHz of bandwidth for high-res, lossless music playback — you know, like what’s available through the Amazon Music HD service.

Echo Buds

Surprise, Alexa comes to your ear through Amazon’s own $129 wireless earbuds. The Echo Buds include Bose’s Active Noise Reduction Technology and provide hands-free access to Alexa, so you can do things like play music, get directions, order an Uber and more. Later, you’ll also be able to check Whole Foods inventory as you shop, too. (For those who still shop…in an actual store).

The Echo Buds offers 5 hours of music or 4 hours of call time and come with a case that holds up to 3 charges. And with a tap, the Echo Buds can access your phone’s other assistant, like Siri or Google Assistant.

Echo Show 8

The $129 Echo Show 8 is a smaller, 8-inch version of the 10-inch flagship model of the Echo device with a screen. It’s a little bigger than the Echo 5, which is more of an alarm clock alternative, so makes sense for watching videos and placing voice calls…or dropping in on the kids. The device features an HD display and built-in camera shutter.

Echo

The company refreshed its existing Echo speaker with better sound and new colorful fabric covers (Twilight Blue, Charcoal, Heather Grey, and Sandstone), but remains at the same price as before $99. In other words, there’s no need to run out and buy this Echo to replace your old one, but if you were in the market already, the Echo you’ll get is slightly better.

Echo Glow

This fun Alexa accessory is basically a nightlight for the kids that can change color and flash to the music. But at $30, it’s a lot of cash for a little bit of fun. Let’s wait for the inevitable Kids Edition Dot + Glow bundle, shall we?

Echo Flex

You can now bring Echo to the bathroom with the new $25 Echo Flex device. (No really, this is how Amazon had it set up in its demo area.) The Flex plugs into any available outlet and functions as a small smart speaker. There’s no camera (whew) but it can respond to voice commands, like to give you the news and weather while you get ready for work, for example. It can also be upgraded with $14 accessories, including a Smart Night Light or Motion Sensor. The Flex is $25.

Echo Frames & Loop

Amazon introduced its beta, invite-only hardware devices. One is a pair of $179.99 Alexa-enabled glasses that stick 4 micro speakers in the frame for hands-free Alexa.

The other is a $129.99 Alexa-enabled smart ring with 2 microphones that puts Alexa on your finger for quick questions or brief calls.

Other Hardware

New Eero mesh Wi-Fi router

Amazon launched the next generation of its Eero router, which now works better with Alexa. The router lets you do things like shut off or pause the Wi-Fi with voice commands — features that will later come to other routers from TP-Link, Asus, Linsky, and Arris by way of an API.  The router is $99, or available in a three-pack for $249, and is available in the U.S. today and in Europe later this year.

Amazon Smart Oven

What’s an Amazon event without a new Alexa-powered oven, right? This time around, Amazon takes on the June Oven with a $250 combination convection oven, microwave, air fryer, and food warmer. Once paired with Echo, you can ask Alexa to do things like preheat the oven, start or stop the cooking, and more.

 

New Ring Cams

The Ring Stick Up Cam got a price drop to $99 as the Ring Stick Up Cam Elite, $199, launches. Unlike the Stick Up Cam, the new camera will be powered over Ethernet. The Ring Indoor Cam is a wired-only cheaper version of the camera at $60.

More Stuff

Alexa gets Smarter and Weirder

Amazon also took the time to mention a few upgrades to Alexa’s capabilities today.

• This includes a multilingual mode where Alexa will be able to now speak both English and Spanish in the U.S.; French and English in Canada; and Hindi and English in India.
• A new Neural Text to Speech model which will use machine learning to help Alexa be more “expressive.”
• Celebrity voices! Because who doesn’t want Alexa to sound like Samuel L. Jackson? No really. The Jackson voice will be a 99-cent add-on to Echo devices and more celeb additions are in the works.
• Alexa is coming to GM, including 2018 and newer Cadillac, Chevy, Buic and GMC vehicles
• Scan-to-Cook is an upgrade for Echo Show which lets you scan a barcode to have the new Amazon Smart Oven prepare the item correct. The feature works with hundreds of Whole Foods brands, like 365 Everyday Value, plus Gardein, Marie Callender’s and more.
• Certified for Humans is a new program that will highlight easy-to-use smart home products to consumers searching Amazon. Easy is just one requirement, though. The other is “works with Alexa.”
• Alexa Guard gets updated to listen for more than just breaking glass, smoke or carbon monoxide alarms. Now it will listen for human activity too — like if footsteps, talking, coughing, or a door closing, is detected while Guard is in Away mode.
• Alexa replenishment service, launching later this year, will alert you when supplies from smart home devices are low — like batteries that need changing in a smart lock, or an air filter that’s ready for a swap.
• New utterances: You’ll be able to ask Alexa, “tell me what you heard” and “why did you do that?”

Alexa-powered Food Network Kitchen Service

Customers love Alexa in the kitchen for watching recipe videos. So Amazon doubled down on this with its partner, Food Network, to offer both live and on-demand cooking classes for Echo Show users. The service launches in October, and while Alexa is the exclusive voice partner, it will also be offered on phones and tablets. Oh, and Bobby Flay is involved.

 

Amazon Sidewalk

One of the more interesting introductions today was Amazon Sidewalk, Amazon’s low-bandwidth, long-distance wireless protocol designed to connect all of the IoT devices around your home and beyond — including places where Bluetooth or Wi-Fi can’t reach. The network uses the free, over-the-air 900 megahertz spectrum, and could allow for things like an Alexa-connected mailbox or lights for the yard, for example.

Ring Fetch

The first product to take advantage of Amazon Sidewalk was a connected dog tag that will alert you when your pooch exits a geofence you’ve established — like the yard. The Ring Fetch launches next year.

An Indian SaaS startup, which is increasingly courting clients from outside of the country, just raised a significant amount of capital to expand its business.

Hyderabad-based Darwinbox, which operates a cloud-based human resource management platform, said on Thursday it has raised $15 million in a new financing round. The Series B round — which moves the firm’s total raise to $19.7 million — was led by Sequoia India and saw participation from existing investors Lightspeed India Partners, Endiya Partners, and 3one4 Capital.

More than 200 firms including giants such as adtech firm InMobi, fintech startup Paytm, drink conglomerate Bisleri, automobile maker Mahindra, Kotak group, and delivery firms Swiggy and Milkbasket use Darwinbox’s HR platform to serve half a million of their employees in 50 nations, Rohit Chennamaneni, cofounder of Darwinbox, told TechCrunch in an interview.

The startup, which competes with giants such as SAP and Oracle, said its platform enables high level of configurability, ease of use, and understands the needs of modern employees. “The employees today who have grown accustomed to using consumer-focused services such as Uber and Amazon are left disappointed in their experience with their own firm’s HR offerings,” said Gowthami Kanumuru, VP Marketing at Darwinbox, in an interview.

Darwinbox’s HR platform offers a range of features including the ability for firms to offer their employees insurance and early salary as loans. Its platform also features social networks for employees within a company to connect and talk, as well as an AI assistant that allows them to apply for a leave or set up meetings with quick voice commands from their phone.

“The AI system is not just looking for certain keywords. If an employee tells the system he or she is not feeling well today, it automatically applies a leave for them,” she said.

Darwinbox’s platform is built to handle onboarding new employees, keeping a tab on their performance, monitor attrition rate, and maintain an ongoing feedback loop. Or as Kanumuru puts it, the entire “hiring to retiring” cycle.

One of Darwinbox’s clients is L&T, which is tasked with setting up subway in many Indian cities. L&T is using geo-fencing feature of Darwin to log the attendance of employees. “They are not using biometric punch machine that is typically used by other firms. Instead, they just require their 1,200 employees to check-in from the workplace using their phones,” said Kanumuru.

Additionally, Darwinbox is largely focusing on serving companies based in Asia as it believes Western companies’ solutions are not a great fit for people here, said Kanumuru. The startup began courting clients in Southeast Asian markets last year.

“Our growth is a huge validation for our vision,” she said. “Within six months of operations, we had the delivery giant Delhivery with over 23,000 employees use our platform.”

In a statement to TechCrunch, Dev Khare, a partner at Lightspeed Venture, said, “there is a new trend of SaaS companies targeting the India/SE Asia markets. This trend is gathering steam and is disproving the conventional wisdom that Asia-focused SaaS companies cannot get to be big companies. We firmly believe that Asia-focused SaaS companies can get to large impact value and become large and profitable. Darwinbox is one of these companies.”

Darwinbox’s Chennamaneni said the startup will use the fresh capital to expand its footprints in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and other Southeast Asian markets. Darwinbox will also expand its product offerings to address more of employees’ needs. The startup is also looking to make its platform enable tasks such as booking of flights and hotels.

Chennamaneni, an alum of Google and McKinsey, said Darwinbox aims to double the number of clients it has in the next six to nine months.

Exercise bike and treadmill company Peloton priced its initial public offering this evening at $29 per share. As part of the IPO, Peloton is offering 40 million Class A common stock to the public.

Peloton was expected to price its IPO between $26 to $29 per share, so this falls on the higher end. With Peloton selling 40 million Class A shares, it is looking to raise $1.16 billion with a valuation of more than $8 billion.

Peloton filed to go public back in August, reporting $915 million in total revenue for the year ending June 30, 2019. That was an increase of 110% from the fiscal year prior. Prior to this upcoming IPO, Peloton had raised $994 million at a private market valuation of $4.15 billion.

Shares of “PTON” will start trading tomorrow on the Nasdaq.

Amazon is making its Echo line of devices more family-friendly. The company had already launched an Echo aimed at parents and kids by bundling in FreeTime and giving the device a colorful look-and-feel. Today, it launched more devices ideal for kids’ rooms, while shipping them with features and accessories that make them not just toys, but practical household communication tools.

While the Echo Dot Kids Edition was designed to put an Alexa-powered speaker in the kids’ room, the newest Echo Show could be the next step for kids who want more than a Dot. The newly announced Echo Show 8 is the mid-sized missing piece to the Echo Show lineup, which now also includes the original 10″ device and the more recent, tinier and cheaper Echo Show 5.

With the slightly bigger screen, but still affordably priced at $129, the Echo Show 8 makes sense for doing things like watching videos or chatting with friends and family on video calls, which are more appropriate for those beyond the preschool set.

On that last point, Amazon has addressed one of parents’ concerns with Alexa’s calling capabilities: it’s introducing a new service called “Alexa Communications for Kids.” This allows parents to whitelist specific family members or friends the child can talk to — and the other party has to opt-in too.

That means parents can approve the child to call or video chat with grandma and grandpa any time they choose — or vice versa — but not with strangers. For tweens and teens, it means a set of approved friends could also be allowed the same benefit. In other words, it offers similar functionality to Facebook Portal’s support of Messenger and WhatsApp….but it’s not, you know, from Facebook.

With a screen-based device, kids can also use the new Echo Show 8 to play games or watch videos.

Alongside the launch of the Echo Show 8, Amazon is bringing its parental control system and kid-friendly subscription library FreeTime to all Echo Show devices. This will allow kids to watch only FreeTime-approved videos, decorate photos with stickers, sing along with the lyrics to their favorite music and more.

Meanwhile, the popular household feature drop-in is getting an upgrade, too. Parents often “drop-in” on kids to tell them to come to dinner or come downstairs, for example – the way intercom systems built into homes allowed for in the past.

A new drop-in feature will let Echo owners drop-in on everyone in the family, and have them all appear in a mosaic on the screen, Brady Bunch-style, on Echo Shows with a screen.

Beyond the smart screen itself, Amazon is also angling its way into the education market with a new API that will connect its Alexa devices to ed-tech systems, including Learning Management Systems (LMS), Student Information Systems (SIS), Classroom Management providers, and massively open online course (MOOC) platforms.

When the supported skills ship later this year, parents of children 13 and up will be able to ask things like “Alexa, what did Kaylee do in school today?” while kids could ask “Alexa, what is my homework tonight?”

This feature will require participation from ed-tech software developers, but Amazon has lined up several partners on that front, including Kickboard, ParentSquare, Coursera, Canvas, and Blackboard.

Finally, there’s a new device that’s just for fun — the Echo Glow. It doesn’t have a purpose, exactly, beyond the fact that little kids will think it’s cool. Essentially a night light, the glowing orb can play in sync to the music, change colors when tapped, or run special modes — like one that blinks through all the colors, or another “campfire” mode with colors similar to those of a campfire.

This would be a great accessory for kids’ rooms but it’s going to be limited by the price: $30. Given it doesn’t have much functionality — it’s a toy — parents will probably stick to cheaper nightlights instead.

Four months after its release, the Rift S is looking pretty irrelevant.

My colleague Josh and I went hands-on with an early demo of Oculus Link, a feature launching in beta in November that lets Quest users connect their headset to a PC and play games that require a bit more horsepower than the Quest’s onboard compute can handle.

The differences between playing an upcoming title like Stormland on the $399 standalone Quest with Oculus Link versus playing it on the $399 PC Oculus Rift S are incredibly tiny and clearly not enough of a sell that anyone but the snobbiest of VR snobs should bother buying a Rift S.

The display resolution sounds like it is currently better than what’s possible on the original Rift but less than the full resolution of the Quest. The Quest will play the content at 72 frames per second as opposed to 80 frames that you’d get on the Rift S. You also will have one less onboard camera for inside-out tracking. A Facebook engineer at the booth detailed that latency on Oculus Link would be greater than on the made-for-PC headsets but that it should still be comfortable for most users, he wouldn’t get into specific numbers.

To use the feature you’ll need a USB-C 3 cable, the charging cable that came with your Quest won’t do. Oculus will be releasing its own cable after the beta ends that you’ll be able to buy separately.

Ultimately, playing is the true test, things weren’t as buttery smooth as they might be on a 90fps (or greater) headset but that isn’t something the Rift S can even handle so you’re still getting an experience that feels very very solid. You’re using your Quest — albeit tethered — and getting a PC experience. Textures were richer and environments were more complex but you’re using the same headset though you need a PC that meets Oculus’s recommended specifications.

Ultimately, I’m not quite sure what this very cool technology does for Oculus.

It 100% cannibalizes Rift S sales, but I can’t imagine too many Quest users will be going out to buy gaming PCs so they can utilize Link. Nevertheless, it’s a very cool platform and makes the Quest a better sell than it was for users that are deep into VR and already bought into the early generations.  All I know for certain is that I would be very pissed if I bought a Rift S instead of a Quest.

Florian Hillen, the chief executive officer of a new startup called VideaHealth, first started researching the problems with dentistry about three years ago.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard educated researcher had been doing research in machine learning and image recognition for years and wanted to apply that research in a field that desperately needed the technology.

Dentistry, while an unlikely initial target, proved to be a market that the young entrepreneur could really sink his teeth into.

“Everyone goes to the dentist [and] in the dentist’s office, x-rays are the major diagnostic tool,” Hillen says. “But there is a lack of standard quality in dentistry. If you go to three different dentists you might get three different opinions.”

With VideaHealth (and competitors like Pearl) the machine learning technologies the company has developed can introduce a standard of care across dental practices, say Hillen. That’s especially attractive as dental businesses become rolled up into large service provider plays in much of the U.S.

Dental practitioners also present a more receptive audience to the benefits of automation than some other medical health professionals (ahem… radiologists). Because dentists have more than one role in the clinic they can see enabling technologies like image recognition as something that will help their practices operate more efficiently rather than potentially put people out of a job.

“AI in radiology competes with the radiologist,” says Hillen. “In dentistry we support the dentist to detect diseases more reliably, more accurately, and earlier.”

The ability to see more patients and catch problems earlier without the need for more time consuming and invasive procedures for a dentist actually presents a better outcome for both practitioners and patients, Hillen says.

It’s been a year since Hillen launched the company and he’s already attracted investors including Zetta Venture Partners, Pillar and MIT’s Delta V, who invested in the company’s most recent $5.4 million seed financing.

Already the company has collaborations with dental clinics across the U.S. through partnerships with organizations like Heartland Dental, which operates over 950 clinics in the Midwest. The company has seven employees currently and will use its cash to hire broadly and for further research and development.

 

Insurtech startup Elma has closed a €3 million (~$3.2M) Series A funding round led by Mangrove Capital partners to build out a digital-first health insurance business starting with Spain, its domestic market.

Also investing in the Series A are a number of unnamed local investors focused on the healthcare space, along with Barcelona-based investor and company builder Antai Venture Builder (AVB), Arroba Capital, and US VC Joyance Capital Partners. 

Elma’s co-founders — Miguel Ángel Antón (CEO), Albert Malagarriga (CPO), and Miguel Vicente and Gerard Olivé (also co-founders of its investor, AVB) — have a background in digital industries and startups, building “user centric experiences”, as Antón puts it.

Healthcare experience in the founding team comes via the COO who we’re told spent 12 years at a C-level position at one of the largest health insurers in Spain (now owned by Bupa). Elma also has a chief medical officer — who Antón touts as bringing a wealth of experience in “digital care”.

Since 2017 the team has been building a number of digital healthcare tools that can be accessed via an app. The idea is to entice subscribers to Elma’s healthcare cover with the promise of tech-enabled convenience and a shorter wait time vs Spain’s (free) public healthcare service for remote chats with doctors.

It’s also hoping to disrupt legacy health insurance giants by offering slicker digital tools and services.

“Few companies or entities have had the opportunity to think about patient journeys and build and articulate a product that optimizes healthcare outcomes while controlling costs,” argues Antón. “We believe insurers have a privileged position to do that, yet they seem to have little incentive to innovate and adopt digital tools to make it happen given their legacy. We want to build a digital health subscription to better healthier, that includes insurance and is (finally) user centric.”

Among the tools Elma will offer subscribers initially is a telehealth service that lets members talk to a doctor via video call and chat, providing remote primary care and digital prescription (it has a team of seven doctors to serve that from launch) — and a doctor search engine for finding a medical professional to deal with a specific condition (it has a pool of 23,000 doctors in Spain for in-person healthcare).

“We are currently working on a booking feature and integration with test providers to make getting blood tests, scans and so on much easier and interconnected,” adds Antón.

“We are one of the few insurers that provide a full online, comprehensive quoting system for people to understand our products and buy entirely online. These are just a few features that we are releasing with, but our vision is to pursue the digitalization of the industry to fulfil our mission. Prevention, promotion of good habits, digital therapies, are coming up next.” 

On the prevention front, this being an insurtech startup, Elma’s roadmap includes linking insurance premiums to healthier lifestyles — via some form of behavior tracking.

“Healthier people should benefit from their good habits and we are already testing tools that identify people’s habits,” Antón confirms, adding: “Other features in our roadmap for next year are integration with wearables, care plans, skin prevention plans, etc.”

The team will be launching its first health insurance product in Spain next month.

Its website already lists pricing for a range of plans “con copago” (which means there’s a monthly fee to pay for the insurance cover plus an additional fee when you access healthcare services).

“We will have a full “sin copago” product in two weeks but we are believers of insurance with copayment,” Antón tells TechCrunch. “Being healthy makes you reduce visits to the doctor so you can keep your premium low and pay per use which will be best for our customers. We really love copayments…. Best way to pay less.”

The Series A will be put towards scaling in Spain, which is the firm focus for Elma for the foreseeable future given a large addressable local market.

Some 10M+ people (~23% of the population) pay for healthcare, according to Antón, who says this is on account of long wait time for the free public service. A majority of those (60%) pay for health insurance via their employer — so Elma is focusing on selling in to corporates to provide cover for their staff.

“We have an agreement with [insurance broker] Willis Towers Watson who will allow us to quote the most relevant companies in Spain,” he says, adding that it’s already signed agreements with listed companies  (such as Masmovil, Red Electrica Española); startups (eCooltra); and state owned companies (Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat).

“Healthcare is very country specific, that’s why its really hard to scale this type of company [to other markets]. So far we want to concentrate in Spain. The market here is huge, growing 5%-7% a year and needs a lot of digitalization,” he adds.

“We want to became leader in our market. In the future we will look for markets where our product fits the best, and it may be countries with or without a strong public health system. What we believe is true is if we make it here, where we are competing with an excellent service which is for free (Spanish public healthcare system), we can probably make it anywhere.”

In terms of app-focused competition, on Elma’s home turf there’s MediQuo, another Barcelona-based startup that promises to put a doctor in your pocket — via an app where users can chat to a medical “amigo”. While it’s not a fully fledged health insurance play pricing is low enough that users could combine it with legacy health insurance elsewhere — augmenting their usual cover with an up-to-date app supplement.

Amazon announced more than a few devices today during an event at its headquarters in Seattle, and it was the smallest gadgets that made the biggest impression. The company built Alexa into earbuds, glasses, and a ring with the Echo Buds, Echo Frames, and Echo Loop. I’ve tried them all out.

The ones people are most likely to actually want are the earbuds, of course. With Bose noise reduction and Alexa functions built in, they’ll be a popular option for anyone for anyone who doesn’t want to take out their phone, but also doesn’t want to wear large over-hear headphones.

The Echo Buds are somewhat large — bigger than several sets of wireless headphones I’ve seen and tried, though they were comfortable after being corkscrewed into my ear.

They have two modes: noise reduction and passthrough, which you switch between with a double tap on either bud. The noise reduction was considerable but certainly not to the level you’d expect from a pair of over-ears. In-ear headphones already provide a physical barrier to sound getting in, but the addition of three microphones on each ear (two external and one internal) let it do the usual electronic reduction as well. I could still hear the crowd around me and people speaking to me, but it was easily drowned out by the Billie Eilish song they queued up.

Passthrough provided a quick and clear version of surrounding audio with no noticeable delay. Music and other stuff can still be played in this mode and it blended pretty seamlessly in.

Of course the Echo Buds, like pretty much everything else at the event, have Alexa built in. You get at the service via wake word, a process that worked well for me.

Their little case looks more fiddly than it is. Magnets snap the contacts onto each other and it begins charging immediately. You should get some 4-5 hours with the buds, out to 20 hours if you drain the case too.

About five feet away from these headphones, and with a half hour wait to test out, were the new Echo Frames. These glasses can be customized with your prescription, though sadly the design and material are locked in.

The oversized arms of the glasses house the Alexa hardware, and while the glasses themselves are pretty light, the thickness is definitely noticeable from any angle. The underside of the right arm has an activation button and a volume rocker, as well as the port for magnetic charging. The big shiny sides are touch sensitive; You swipe to accept a call, respond to Alexa offering more info, and so on.

The sound is a bit like someone whispering in your ear — you wouldn’t want to listen to music on these, the Amazon folks admitted. But speech was clear and Alexa commands were handled quickly.

The speakers aren’t exactly hidden: Each arm has two speakers inside, each of which has two “ports,” one on top and one on bottom. I asked the demonstrator probably five times why there are ports on the top if the sound needs to come out the bottom, but all she would say is that it’s how they made the directional audio work.

Perhaps that’s also why I could hear the Alexa responses from a foot or two away in a crowded room. You can configure it so only certain things get played automatically, which is good, because if the person on the bus next to me heard some of the texts I get, they might be alarmed.

Honestly it’s not much worse, though a bit clearer, than if someone is using bad earbuds. Just be aware that if you use these things, others might be hearing that whispered text conversation too.

Last, and weirdest, is the Echo Loop. It’s a big fat ring that you can use to ask Alexa questions and hear the answers. The big part with the dots isn’t actually the speaker, but rather part of the microphone array — presumably for subtracting ambient noise so the speech recognition works better. The inside of the ring is where you’ll find the tiny speaker — the smallest of any Amazon device, it was said — and mic.

You tap a button to activate Alexa, and the ring will vibrate to let you know it’s time to talk. You then ask your hand the question you have in mind, and afterwards cup the ring to your ear — right up to it, because this speaker is tiny. A second or two later, out comes Alexa’s voice, sounding like an old transistor radio, telling you the weather in Barcelona or whatever.

Does it work? Yes, it does. It’s a ring you can ask questions. The speaker is pretty quiet and you need to find the right position to hear it well (admittedly it was fairly loud in the room), but the ring speaks.

It’s not for everybody, which is why it, along with the glasses, are part of the new Day One Edition series of questionable devices. But if you can think of a way it might be useful, be assured: It works as advertised.