Year: 2019

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. As Adam Neumann reportedly faces pressure to step down; it’s looking like a fight for life between WeWork and SoftBank

Members of WeWork’s board of directors are pressuring controversial CEO Adam Neumann to step down and become non-executive chairman, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Apparently the pressure originates with investor SoftBank, which needs The We Company’s IPO to go well. The idea is to keep Neumann involved, while also making room for new leadership that could make Wall Street more comfortable with a WeWork IPO.

2. How Peloton made sweat addictive enough to IPO

Speaking of IPOs, Josh Constine breaks down 13 reasons why this fitness company — which is about to go public — has built up such a devoted cult. Ultimately, he says he’s bullish about Peloton because people will always be busy, lazy and competitive.

3. Amazon’s ‘Fleabag’ wins four Emmys, including best comedy series

Netflix didn’t go home empty-handed either, with wins for “Ozark,” “When They See Us” and “Black Mirror.”

4. 100 Thieves’ Nadeshot and Scooter Braun are coming to Disrupt

The esports organization, founded by Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag, has grown over the past couple of years into a household name for those who follow gaming. Haag will be joined on the Disrupt stage by 100 Thieves co-owner Scooter Braun, who also manages megastars like Justin Bieber and Arianna Grande.

5. Kabbage founders drum up $11M for Drum, an SMB marketplace for sourcing salespeople, goods and services

Drum bills itself as a marketplace for businesses to source sales people and sell their goods and services. Co-founder Rob Frohwein said the startup is “democratizing access to a physical salesforce.”

6. How Kobalt is betting on music’s middle class and DIY stars

This is the latest installment in our in-depth EC-1 profile on Kobalt Music Group. The company’s CEO Willard Ahdritz predicted years ago that streaming and social media would increasingly undercut the gatekeeping power of the major label groups, realigning the market to center on a vast landscape of niche musicians. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts

The Equity team debates one of the most cherished beliefs in Silicon Valley, the “cult of the founder.” Meanwhile, Original Content catches up on the soothing Netflix reality show “Terrace House.”

Amazon is introducing a new feature to its Alexa Show device designed to help blind and other low-vision customers identify common household pantry items by holding them up in front of Alexa’s camera and asking what it is. The feature uses a combination of computer vision and machine learning techniques in order to recognize the objects the Echo Show sees.

The Echo Show is the version of the Alexa-powered smart speaker that tends to sit in customers’ kitchens because it helps them with other kitchen tasks, like setting timers, watching recipe videos, or enjoying a little music or TV while you cook.

But for blind users, the Show will now have a new duty: helping them better identify those household pantry items that are hard to distinguish by touch — like cans, boxed foods, or spices, for example. 

To use the feature, customers can just say things like “Alexa, what am I holding?” or “Alexa, what’s in my hand?” Alexa will also give verbal and audio cues to help the customers place the item in front of the device’s camera.

Amazon says the feature was developed in collaboration with blind Amazon employees, including its principal accessibility engineer Josh Miele, who gathered feedback from both blind and low-vision customers as part of the development process. The company also worked with the Vista Center for the Blind in Santa Cruz on early research, product development, and testing.

“We heard that product identification can be a challenge and something customers wanted Alexa’s help with,” explained Sarah Caplener, head of Amazon’s Alexa for Everyone team. “Whether a customer is sorting through a bag of groceries, or trying to determine what item was left out on the counter, we want to make those moments simpler by helping identify these items and giving customers the information they need in that moment,” she said.

Smart home devices and intelligent voice assistants like Alexa have made life easier for disabled individuals, as it allows them to do things like adjust the thermostats and lights, lock the doors, raise the blinds, and more. With “Show and Tell,” Amazon hopes to reach the wide market of blind and low-vision customers, as well. According to the World Health Organization, there are an estimated 1.3 billion with some sort of vision impairment, Amazon says.

That being said, Echo devices aren’t globally available — and even when they are offered in a particular country, the device may not support the local language. Plus, the feature itself is U.S.-only at launch.

Amazon isn’t alone in making accessibility a selling point for its smart speakers and screens. At Google’s I/O developer conference this year, it introduced a range of accessibility projects, including Live Caption which transcribes real-time audio; Live Relay for helping the deaf make phone calls; Project Diva, for helping those who don’t speak use smart assistants; and Project Euphonia that helps make voice recognition work for those with speech impairments.

Show and Tell is available now to Alexa users in the U.S. on first and second-generation Echo Show devices.

Running an ethical tech company is underrated. From fostering a diverse and inclusive company to examining your technology’s impact on society, it all comes down to ethics.

Ellen Pao, who previously served as CEO at Reddit and sued her former employer Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers for gender discrimination, has made it her life’s work to foster diversity, inclusion and ethics in the tech industry.

The same goes for Tracy Chou, who first hit the spotlight when she provoked tech companies to release their data around employee demographics by setting up a database to track such information in 2013. Now, Chou, who is also a co-founder at Project Include, is focused on tackling the problem of online abuse and harassment at her startup, Block Party.

Through Chou and Pao’s work at Project Include, the two have worked with a number of startups that wish to foster diversity and inclusion at their own startups. Sisense, a business intelligence platform led by Harry Glaser, is one of those startups.

While the diversity and inclusion movement has made some gains in the last few years, it has still suffered severe setbacks. On one hand, tech employees are recognizing their immense power when they speak up and organize. On the other hand, those accused of sexual harassment and misconduct are too often facing too few consequences. Meanwhile, people of color and women still receive too little venture funding, and tech companies are inching along at a glacial pace toward diverse representation and inclusion.

Tech workers at Salesforce, Microsoft and Amazon have spoken out against their employers for having contracts with military and government agencies, and Twitter and Facebook continue to thrive as platforms where harassment and abuse is prevalent. Meanwhile, gig economy workers for the likes of Instacart, DoorDash, Uber and Lyft have also organized around low wages, wage theft and lack of benefits.

Clearly, there’s still a lot of work to be done. At TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, you’ll hear from Pao, Chou and Glaser about how they grapple with ethics, and how focusing on diversity can positively impact a company’s bottom line.

Still need tickets? Head over here.

After several months of speculation, Apple today confirmed that it will be manufacturing the latest version of the Mac Pro in the United States. The move is in keeping with earlier versions of the high-end, pro-focused desktop. In June, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple would move production of the long-awaited desktop to a plant outside of Shanghai.

Apple didn’t deny the report at the time, instead stating, “Like all of our products, the new Mac Pro is designed and engineered in California and includes components from several countries including the United States.”

This week, however, the company reported that manufacturing will be returning to Austin, Texas, using manufacturers from a variety of states, including Arizona, Maine, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas and Vermont. Suppliers include Intersil and ON Semiconductor.

“The Mac Pro is Apple’s most powerful computer ever and we’re proud to be building it in Austin. We thank the administration for their support enabling this opportunity,” Tim Cook said in a press release. “We believe deeply in the power of American innovation. That’s why every Apple product is designed and engineered in the US, and made up of parts from 36 states, supporting 450,000 jobs with US suppliers, and we’re going to continue growing here.”

The move is in keeping with Apple’s commitment to invest $350 billion in the States by 2023. The early reports that the company was shifting to Chinese manufacturing was a major sticking point for Trump, who called out Cook and Apple by name in a series of tweets.

“Apple will not be given Tariff wavers, or relief, for Mac Pro parts that are made in China,” Trump tweeted in July. “Make them in the USA, no Tariffs!”

After stating clearly on Friday that he would honor a $95,000 contract with ICE, CEO Barry Crist must have had a change of heart over the weekend. In a blog post, this morning he wrote that the company would not be renewing the contract with ICE after all.

“After deep introspection and dialog within Chef, we will not renew our current contracts with ICE and CBP when they expire over the next year. Chef will fulfill our full obligations under the current contracts,” Crist wrote in the blog post.

He also backed off the seemingly firm position he took on Friday on the matter when he told TechCrunch, “It’s something that we spent a lot of time on, and I want to represent that there are portions of [our company] that do not agree with this, but I as a leader of the company, along with the executive team, made a decision that we would honor the contracts and those relationships that were formed and work with them over time,” he said.

Today, he acknowledged that intense feelings inside the company against the contract led to his decision. The contract began in 2015 under the Obama administration and was aimed at modernizing programming approaches at DHS, but over time as ICE family separation and deportation polices have come under fire, there were calls internally (and later externally) to end the contract. “Policies such as family separation and detention did not yet exist [when we started this contract]. While I and others privately opposed this and various other related policies, we did not take a position despite the recommendation of many of our employees. I apologize for this,” he wrote

Crist also indicated that the company would be donating the revenue from the contracts to organizations that work with people who have been affected by these policies. It’s a similar approach that Salesforce took when 618 of its employees protested a contract the company has with the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). In response to the protests, Salesforce pledged $1 million to organizations helping affected families.

After a tweet last week exposed the contract, the protests began on social media, and culminated in programmer Seth Vargo removing pieces of open source code from the repository in protest of the contract in response. The company sounded firmly committed to fulfilling this contract in spite of the calls for action internally and externally, and the widespread backlash it was facing both inside and outside the company.

Vargo told TechCrunch in an interview that he saw this issue in moral terms, “Contrary to Chef’s CEO’s publicly posted response, I do think it is the responsibility of businesses to evaluate how and for what purposes their software is being used, and to follow their moral compass,” he said. Apparently Crist has come around to this point of view. Vargo chose not to comment on the latest development.

Following the well-received launch of Apple Arcade, Google today is officially introducing its own take on subscription-based access to premium mobile games — or, Google’s case, premium mobile apps, too. The new Google Play Pass subscription, arriving this week, will offer over 350 apps and games that are completely unlocked, with no upfront fees, in-app purchases, or advertisements. And the initial price point is something of a no-brainer — it’s just $1.99 per month for the first year, Google says.

That price will increase to $4.99 per month after the first 12 months have passed, which is the same price as Apple Arcade at launch. This launch promotion is only available until October 10, 2019, however.

The two services are similar in concept, as both are providing a large library of premium content for a monthly subscription. But there are some differences between the two.

For starters, Apple Arcade is filled with exclusives — meaning its games will not be found on Andriod. The reverse is not true for Google Play Pass. Instead, the Play Pass catalog includes many cross-platform titles, including some that even found their fame first on iOS, like ustwo’s Monument Valley.

In addition, Play Pass’s launch titles aren’t all games. There are also ad-free versions of popular mobile apps, like AccuWeather, Facetune, and Pic Stitch, for example.

Notable launch titles include Stardew Valley, Risk, Terraria, Monument Valley, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Reigns: Game of Thrones, Titan Quest, and Wayward Souls. Some lesser-known additions include LIMBO, Lichtspeer, Mini Metro, and Old Man’s Journey. Others, like This War of Mine and Cytus, are coming soon. And for little kids, there are some preschooler-friendly titles like Toca Boca classics and the My Town series.

More titles are added on a monthly basis, Google says.

Because it’s not relying on exclusives, Google’s catalog is more than triple the size of Apple’s at launch. That being said, Apple’s Arcade library is filled with gorgeous, high-quality games while Play Pass is rounded out with a lot of more utilities, like weather apps and photo editors.

Like Apple Arcade, the new subscription gets its own tab in the Google Play app, where the games are organized by genre, popularity and other factors — just like a mini app store. However, unlike Apple Arcade, where games are only found in the Arcade tab or through search, Google Play Pass titles will appear directly in the Play Store. They’ll be designated with a Play Pass ticket badge, so you can easily identify them.

The Play Pass subscription also allows the games to be shared with the whole family. The family manager can share their Play Pass subscription with up to five other family members, who can each access the titles independently. This is comparable to Apple Arcade.

We already knew Google was working on an Apple Arcade competitor before today. The Play Pass subscription’s existence had been leaked, and Google later confirmed the service with a tweet. What we didn’t yet know was the launch date, lineup, or the official pricing.

Google Play Pass service is rolling out this week to Android devices in the U.S., with more countries coming soon. A 10-day subscription is available, before it converts to the $1.99 per month limited promotion, followed by the $4.99 per month price point when the promotion ends.

While neither Apple nor Google is discussing the terms of their deals with developers, Google says that the more people who download a Play Pass title, the more the revenue developers receive on a recurring basis. It also explained that Google itself is funding the initial launch offer, so developers can gain more subscriber interest without impacting their revenue.

Apple and Oprah will be working together to bring Oprah’s Book Club to the Apple TV+ streaming service. In a new series, the talk show host and producer will interview the authors of her book club picks, starting with Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author of “The Water Dancer.” A new episode will then be available every two months, allowing viewers time to read the titles being discussed.

The series will debut alongside Apple TV+’s launch on November 1, and is part of a larger, multi-year partnership Apple and Oprah announced last year. In addition to the book club, Oprah is also developing two documentaries for Apple: “Toxic Labor” about sexual harassment in the workplace and another, in partnership with Prince Harry, that will focus on mental health.

While the documentaries bring much-needed attention to worthy topics, Oprah’s Book Club TV series will be mutually beneficial for both parties from more of a financial standpoint. Apple is promoting Oprah’s book club selections in its Apple Books app, where “The Water Dancer” can now be pre-ordered as either an e-book or audiobook, for example. The TV show will then help to bring more attention to this and other titles, which in turn could boost book sales.

Apple also says it will make a contribution to the American Library Association to support local libraries and fund their programs.

As older readers may recall, Oprah’s Book Club originally got its start as a recurring segment on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” After a 15-year run, it relaunched in 2012 as a joint project between OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, and O: The Oprah Magazine. But those selections have been few and far between. With the launch on Apple TV+, it seems the club will be back on a more regular pace.

“Few people in the world can bring us together like Oprah, whose compassion and grace celebrating the power of books are unmatched,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, in a statement. “It’s our honor to provide a new platform for Oprah’s Book Club and support the American Library Association in opening hearts and minds to the joy of reading.”

“I am who I am today because of the experience of learning to read at an early age. Reading opened up a whole world for me beyond the red dirt road and my grandmother’s porch in Mississippi,” Oprah Winfrey, added, in a press release. “I want to do that for everybody. And the opportunity to do this with Apple, to speak to people all over the world about the pleasures, the excitement, the tension, the drama that a good book can bring you … I don’t know what’s better than that.”

In addition to the Oprah’s Book Club news this morning, Apple also gave last night’s Emmy viewers a first look at several other upcoming Apple TV+ shows, including the Octavia Spencer-led drama “Truth Be Told,” and M. Night Shyamalan’s psychological thriller “Servant.” Last week, it showed off kids’ shows “Ghostwriter” and “Helpsters.”

There’s fashionably late and then there’s the Galaxy Fold. Initially scheduled for an April 22 launch, the device was delayed after multiple reviews returned broken devices. Samsung was quick to blame users, only to ultimately go back to the drawing board.

A few months later, the company offered a broad September timeframe. Samsung hit the mark with time to spare in its native South Korea, launching the device a few weeks back. Now it’s time to do the same here in North America. The company’s first foldable (and, really, for that matter, the first “commercially viable” foldable) arrives this Friday, Sept 27.

The handset will be available as a carrier branded version through AT&T stores or unlocked through Best Buy and other retail locations. As noted, the company’s also offering a “Galaxy Fold Premier Service” — apparently part of the reason it canceled the original round of preorders. Basically the company wants to personally help users who buy the $2,000 deal with any specific problems.

Notably and somewhat humorously (albeit unintentionally so), the company recently issued a “Caring for your Galaxy Fold” video, which highlights how to not break the expensive new device. Samsung appears somewhat resigned to the fact that, which the device has been improved over the first attempt at going to market, the product is still more fragile than what we’ve come to expect from our smartphones.

To quote Samsung, “Just use a light touch.” That comes with the somewhat redundant “Do not apply excessive pressure” footnote. Not exactly the sort of thing that inspires confidence in a product’s durability. 

Back in 2017 Ometria, an “AI-powered” customer marketing platform raised $6m in Series A funding to add to the $11m it had already raised. Its platform is all about allowing retailers to send individually personalized marketing messages across several brand touchpoints.

Today it’s announced that it’s raised $21m in a Series B funding led by London-based Octopus Ventures, with existing investors Sonae IM, Summit Action, Samos and Adjuvo, as well as ten early angel investors, making further investments. Marieke Christmann from Octopus Ventures and Eduardo Piedade from Sonae IM both join Ometria’s board.

The funding will be used to accelerate Ometria’s product development, expanding the platform’s specialist retail marketing capabilities and further innovating its AI-based technology.

Off the back of the funding round, Ometria will also be opening its first US-based operation in New York.

Ometria’s schtick is that it addresses the fact that consumers will no longer tolerate the torrent of communication send towards them that is basically irrelevant to them, especially as the retail environment becomes ever more competitive.

Its main competitors are spread across companies like email service providers (Emarsys, Sailthru, Selligent, Bronto, Dotmailer), behavioral marketing tools (CloudIQ, SaleCycle, Yieldify) and customer insight companies (More2, AgileOne). Its argument is that none of these companies were developed specifically for retail, or to create and use a unified predictive profile of each customer.

Ometria’s CEO and Founder Ivan Mazour says: “We’re all overloaded with information and communication, it’s relentless and must be addressed. Retail marketing has contributed heavily to this, with most marketing experiences being ones we simply don’t enjoy. Ometria solves this ever-increasing problem for hundreds of retailers, and hundreds of millions of customers.”

It now has a client base of 200 retailers, including Hotel Chocolat, Fred Perry, MADE.com and Notonthehighstreet.com. Its senior leadership team now includes Pete Crosby (formerly of Triptease) as Chief Revenue Officer, Rob Lord (formerly of CheetahMail) as VP of Professional Services and Jennifer Yorke (formerly of Bazaarvoice) as VP of Customer Success.

Marieke Christmann, Investor, Octopus Ventures, says, “We are very excited to have led Ometria’s Series B – a great example of how we invest in truly pioneering entrepreneurs that are creating innovative solutions through tech. Ometria will use this investment to revolutionize the retail marketing industry with its AI capabilities. We want to see entrepreneurs put their customers at the heart of the business and that is precisely what the team is doing.

GoPro’s successor to the Hero 7 is likely coming on October 1, as the action camera maker has posted a teaser with the date to its official website. The tagline “This is Action” appears over a fast cut mash-up of variety of shots, including off-road racing, underwater diving and what looks like close-up footage of Frank Zapata (or someone else with a jetpack) flying around, along with the date.

The mostly shadowed image above is the closest we get to an official product shot, but we’ve seen leaks sourced from photo-focused rumor site Photo Rumors that suggest a redesign with added expandability options for advanced accessories including front-facing display monitors and external flash. These leaks also include some potential specs, like a new GP2 chip to help with on-board image stabilization, better lenses and image quality, and a new 12MP sensor, in addition to the new optional housing and accessories.

GoPro’s Hero 7 introduced HyperSmooth stabilization, which provides gimbal-like results without the actual gimbal thanks to advanced digital stabilization technology that GoPro developed in-house. But the company also saw the introduction of its strongest-yet competitor in the market this year with the DJI Osmo Action, a GoPro-like action camera from drone and gimbal-maker DJI, which is at least on par with the Hero 7 in terms of stabilization and quality, with added features aimed at the vlogging market like a built-in front-facing display.

The slogan “This is Action.” could actually be interpreted as a dig against its newest rival, since Action is capitalized and the DJI camera is literally named the “Osmo Action.” Hopefully GoPro does indeed get a little spicy about its competitor, since it’s a market that could definitely stand to benefit from some genuine competition in the higher end of the category.