Year: 2019

Porsche is expanding two on-demand subscription programs to several more U.S. cities and into Canada.

The German automaker announced Thursday it will expand its monthly subscription program Porsche Passport and its shorter-term Porsche Drive plan to Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego and Toronto. Both programs will continue to be offered in Atlanta through local dealers.

The expansion suggests that Porsche’s experimentation with subscriptions has attracted enough new customers to warrant taking it on the road.

Porsche created the programs because consumers increasingly want more flexibility, more individual choice, and to have this on their mobile devices, Porsche North America President and CEO Klaus Zellmer said in the announcement.

The goal is to build a new customer base of Porsche owners. Zellmer’s comments suggest that the programs are having the desired effect.

“This innovative approach to the Porsche experience has already opened the door to an entirely new clientele,” Zellmer said. “In our first year and a half, more than 80% of Passport members in the Atlanta pilot were not previous Porsche owners.”

Both plans give customers access to up 20 current model variants in its portfolio. Porsche Passport is a monthly plan that gives its members unlimited swaps between models.

The cheapest version of the plan, which is a flat monthly fee of $2,100, gives members access to eight model variants. A more expensive $3,100 plan includes another 12 higher performing variants. Passport requires an activation fee of $595, and membership approval is dependent on a background and credit check.

Porsche Drive, which spun out of the Passport program, is designed for those who want occasional access — perhaps for a date or a weekend getaway — to its luxury SUVs and sports cars. Members can rent a Porsche for a minimum of four hours under Porsche Drive. Prices for Porsche Drive range from $269 for four hours in a Macan, 718 Cayman or Boxster all the way to $2,909 for weekly usage of a 911. The Porsche Drive prices do not include taxes or other fees.

Under both plans, the vehicles are ordered through the Passport app and then delivered and picked up by a concierge at the customer’s preferred location.

The Passport program was first launched in 2017 in Atlanta. During the pilot, the average subscription has been about four months. The most common reason customers suspended their membership was due extended travel plans, according to the company. This indicates that the month-to-month model provides the flexibility customers desire.

Passport users swap models on average 2.5 times per month, according to Porsche. The company also said that more than 50% of members flip their vehicles at home, close to 30% swap their vehicle at work, and the remaining exchanges occur in other locations, such as a coffee shop or restaurant.

The technology platform for the program will be managed by Clutch Technologies, a company that has been part of the pilot from the start. The expansion of Passport and Drive includes a new role for Porsche dealer partners in all five cities. Dealers will now oversee the customer experience and the fleet, including its concierge vehicle delivery and maintenance.

Indulge us as we paraphrase the song, Anything You Can Do from the movie, “Annie Get Your Gun.” Anything you can code, I can code better. I can code anything better than you.

If that describes your skills and attitude, it’s time — as we say in the States — to put up or shut up. We’re calling all code slingers to take part in the TC Hackathon at Disrupt Berlin 2019. We’re limiting participation to 500 people, so don’t wait. Apply here today.

Oh, and it doesn’t cost anything to apply or to participate. In fact, we give you a free Innovator pass to attend the show.

What’s at stake? Along with your reputation, you have a shot at winning a $5,000 prize from TechCrunch for the best overall hack. Plus, you and your team (either the one you bring or the one you find onsite) will choose one of several sponsored challenges — each one offering its own cash and prizes.

We’ll make an official announcement about specific sponsors and contests, but last year’s sponsored contests, prizes and winners will give you a sense of the kind of projects to expect.

Teams have just 36 hours to design, create and code a working solution to a real-world problem. It’s not easy — you’ll be tired, stressed out and probably a tad cranky. But we’ll keep you fed, watered and hopped up on caffeine for the duration.

The first round of judging will no doubt remind you of your high school science fair…only with bigger stakes. Judges will select just 10 teams to move into the finals, which take place on day two. Those teams will have just two sleep-deprived minutes to present and pitch their project on the Extra Crunch Stage.

After the judges confer, the individual sponsors will announce their winners and award their prizes. Then TechCrunch will select its choice for best overall hack — and award that team one of those oversized checks for $5,000.

TC Hackathon takes place during Disrupt Berlin 2019 on 11-12 December. Don’t miss your chance to strut your stuff, build something amazing and take home some serious ka-ching. Apply to the Hackathon today.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt Berlin 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Koru Kids, the London-based startup that helps you find and manage childcare, has raised £10 million in new funding to scale its platform.

The Series A round is led by Atomico, with Atomico Partner Niall Wass joining the company’s board. Also participating are previous investors AlbionVC, Forward Partners, Samos, JamJar, Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital, and 7Percent. It brings the total amount raised by Koru Kids to £14.1 million.

“Childcare is exhausting and difficult to arrange: for many families it’s hard to find the right thing at all, and for nearly everyone it’s excruciatingly expensive,” says Koru Kids founder and CEO Rachel Carrell (who has a doctorate from Oxford and previously worked at McKinsey!).

“Parents need affordable, flexible childcare to allow us to carry on in our careers but it’s very hard to find. Nurseries close early, childminders are in short supply and neither option copes well with parents finishing at 5pm one day and 10pm the next. Once I realised that there were so many people struggling with the same issues it gave me the impetus to quit my job and to create Koru Kids”.

The resulting childcare platform is described by Carrell as a “full stack” product that sees Koru Kids recruit, train, match, and provide on-going support and training to its nannies. At its core it aims to simplify the lives of working parents.

“Our platform takes care of taxes, payroll, pension, holiday, nanny communications, activity ideas, and a dozen other things that can come up when you’re dealing with nannies,” she tells me. “We also help parents share nannies, so one nanny takes care of children from two different families at once. That brings down the cost for families, the nanny gets paid more, and the children have a friend to play with”.

More broadly, Carrell says society should think of childcare as essential infrastructure for modern living. “If a third of London didn’t have water or roads, we’d consider that a major failing of essential infrastructure,” she argues. “As it turns out, one third of London schools don’t have an after-school club. We need to start respecting childcare as the essential infrastructure that it is”.

Typical Koru Kids customers are described as working parents with children aged 4-10 years old who may not have access to a suitable after-school club or want to provide a broader range of after school activities for their kids.

“Before Koru Kids, the only option for these people was a full time nanny — which is incredibly expensive — or an au pair, which many people don’t have an extra bedroom for or don’t want in their house,” says Carrell.

Exact competitors are hard to pin down as Koru Kids incorporates several different services, each with specific competitors. They include payroll agencies, training businesses, nanny agencies, after-school clubs, Gumtree and other listings sites.

“The key difference is that none of them provide a seamless service as we do,” claims the Koru Kids founder. “We train our nannies ourselves which is completely unique in the market; we do all the payroll, pension and other paperwork as well as the recruitment of nannies, and we are tech-led, using our own software which means we can be more efficient”.

Meanwhile, Koru Kids revenue model sees the company take commission per hour. Rather than the large upfront fees a nanny agency typically charges, Carrell says she has deliberately tried to align the startup’s interests with that of parents using the platform.

“If a match doesn’t last very long, Koru Kids is out of pocket; I think that’s as it should be,” she tells me. “We should only win when the parents win. That incentive structure means that every day our team comes to work and thinks about how to make the best possible matches, and what product to build to help our nannies get better and better each day”.

Residently, the U.K.-based ‘proptech’ startup that is building a rental platform to improve the rental experience, has picked up £7 million in seed funding. Backing comes from Felix Capital, LocalGlobe, and A/O PropTech, along with a number of the startup’s existing angel investors.

The new funding will be used to grow the startup’s engineering and product teams, and to continue building out Residently’s rental portfolio in London and New York. On the product side, a number of extra services will also be added to the company’s “Living” platform, which offers things like cleaning and ironing, storage, contents insurance, and furniture rental.

“Residently is building the world’s rental brand with a platform for rental properties designed around the needs of the renter,” says co-founder and CEO Tom Allason, who previously founded and exited Shutl to eBay.

“Residents enjoy a seamless digital rental experience, can choose their move in date, a furniture package, cleaning service and move seamlessly from property to property within the network. Property owners benefit from reduced void periods and lower fees than traditional agents”.

At the heart of Residently is a mission to “digitise” the rental experience through clever use of technology, coupled with a consumer-friendly mindset, in order to upgrade the experience of renting.

The platform lets renters search for properties, arrange viewings, take virtual tours, fill in forms and submit references, and pay deposits via a mobile app. Broadband and other utilities are set up in advance and the startup promises flexible move in dates. Residently’s add-on services include help with moving, storage, furniture rental, cleaning and digital locks — again, all managed via the app.

For landlords, Residently offers a property management service for viewings, paperwork, property maintenance and renewals. As part of its marketing package, Residently will individually style and furnish a property to help potential renters visualise “exactly how their home could look,” says the company.

“We compete for supply with estate agents (e.g. Foxtons, Savills, Countrywide) as well as to a lesser extent serviced apartment providers who are taking residential properties off market,” says Allason. “We look at the renter as our customer rather and seek to develop that relationship over multiple tenancies and properties which we can monetise with services”.

After Hong Kong’s leader suggested she may invoke emergency powers that could potentially include limiting Internet access, one of city’s biggest industry groups warned that “any such restrictions, however slight originally, would start the end of the open Internet of Hong Kong.”

While talking to reporters on Tuesday, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam suggested the government may use the Emergency Regulations Ordinance in response to ongoing anti-government demonstrations. The law, which has not been used in more than half a century, would give the government a sweeping array of powers, including the ability to restrict or censor publications and communications. In contrast to China’s “Great Firewall” and routine government censorship of internet services, Hong Kong’s internet is currently open and mostly unrestricted, with the exception of laws to prevent online crime, copyright infringements and the spread of obscene material like child pornography.

In an “urgent statement” addressed to Hong Kong’s Executive Council, the Hong Kong Internet Service Providers Association (HKISPA) said that because of technology like VPNs, the cloud and cryptographies, the only way to “effectively and meaningfully block any services” would entail putting all of Hong Kong’s internet behind a large-scale surveillance firewall. The association added that this would have huge economic and social consequences and deter international organizations from doing business in Hong Kong.

Furthermore, restricting the internet in Hong Kong would also have implications in the rest of the region, including in mainland China, the HKISPA added. There are currently 18 international cable systems that land, or will land, in Hong Kong, making it a major telecommunications hub. Blocking one application means users will move onto another application, creating a cascading effect that will continue until all of Hong Kong is behind a firewall, the association warned.

In its statement, the HKISPA wrote that “the lifeline of Hong Kong’s Internet industry relies in large part on the open network,” adding “Hong Kong is the largest core node of Asia’s optical fiber network and hosts the biggest Internet exchange in the region, and it is now home to 100+ data centers operated by local and international companies, and it transits 80%+ of traffic for mainland China.”

“All these successes rely on the openness of Hong Kong’s network,” the HKISPA continued. “Such restrictions imposed by executive orders would completely ruin the uniqueness and value of Hong Kong as a telecommunications hub, a pillar of success as an international financial centre.”

The HKISPA urged the government to consult the industry and “society at large” before placing any restrictions in place. “The HKISPA strongly opposes selective blocking of Internet Services without consensus of the community,” it said.

As part of its efforts against health misinformation, Pinterest is now displaying information from public health organizations for keywords like “measles” or “vaccine safety.” The social media platform had previously blocked vaccination-related search terms, but a new announcement says the company wants to close the “data void” that results from false information being spread more widely than accurate information.

“What we and others have observed is an enthusiasm gap between those creating and disseminating harmful health misinformation and those creating resources rooted in settled science,” wrote Ifeoma Ozoma, Pinterest’s public policy and social impact manager. “Generally, there’s more accessible and visually compelling health misinformation than science-based journal articles on the virtues of vaccinations. In addition, we’ve found that some purveyors of health misinformation have a financial incentive.”

Pinterest search results for health-related keywords will now display information from the World Health Organization, the Vaccine Safety Net (created by WHO to provide vaccine information in different languages), the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers of Disease Control.

In addition, an information card on top of the results notifies users that “pins about this topic often violate our Community Guidelines, which prohibit harmful medical misinformation. Because of this, we’ve limited search results to Pins from internationally-recognized health organizations. If you’re looking for medical advice, please contact a healthcare provider.”

Users also won’t see recommendations or comments on Pins in these search results. “We’re taking this approach because we believe that showing vaccine misinformation alongside resources from public health experts isn’t responsible,” said Ozoma.

The new search feature is currently available in English on Pinterest’s website and iPhone and Android apps and will be expanded into other languages. Ozoma wrote that Pinterest will focus on vaccine-related searches first but “keep evolving our list of terms for which we block medical misinformation and provide expert advice as people try to get around our safeguards. We’ll also continue to remove this content and accounts that spread it from our service.”

Importantly for a visually-based platform, Pinterest, which has more than 300 million visitors a month, is also developing resources that health organizations can use to create eye-catching pins for text-based information.

Once filled with anti-vaccine pins (in 2016, researchers found that most vaccine-related posts on Pinterest contained anti-vaccine sentiment), Pinterest has become one of the most active social media platforms in terms of stemming the spread of misinformation about vaccines. In 2017, it began banning pins with “anti-vaccination advice,” which have always been prohibited by its advertising policies.

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have also begun taking measures to stop the proliferation of anti-vaccine content, which has contributed to the return of diseases like measles around the world. In the U.S., the Centers of Disease Control said that between January 1 and August 22, 1,215 cases of measles were confirmed, the greatest number of cases reported in the country since 1992, and since measles was declared eliminated in 2000.

The Department of Justice said today that a federal grand jury has indicted software engineer Paige Thompson on two counts related to the Capital One data breach that affected over 100 million customers. The charges in the indictment carry penalties of up to 25 years in prison. Thompson will be arraigned in U.S. District Court in Seattle on Sept. 5.

Thompson allegedly created created software that allowed her to see which customers of a cloud computing company (the indictment does not name the company, but it has been identified as Amazon Web Services) had misconfigured their firewalls and accessed data from Capital One and more than other 30 companies.

Much of the information in today’s indictment was already included in the FBI’s criminal complaint filed in July. In the indictment, however, the Department of Justice includes the new allegation that Thompson used the cloud servers she allegedly breached for cryptojacking. Though Thompson had previously made references to cryptojacking, or stealing someone else’s processing power to mine cryptocurrencies, in Slack messages reported by Forbes, today’s indictment does not contain new evidence about why the Department of Justice is making those claims.

Research has found that cryptojacking may be on the rise, in part because many organizations do not have adequate security measures in place.

In its statement, the Department of Justice said it has identified some of the victims of the data breach, including a state agency and a public research university located outside Washington state and a telecommunications conglomerate outside of the U.S. The indictment did not name the victims, but security firm CyberInt has said that Vodafone, Ford, Michigan State University and the Ohio Department of Transportation may all be victims of the data breach, which also included 106 credit card applications and files copied from a cloud server by Thompson.

Alphabet Chief Legal Officer David Drummond is at the center of a media firestorm, following a new Medium post authored by a former Google employee who was engaged in a years-long relationship with Drummond more than 10 years ago.

Though the extramarital affair was originally reported on last fall by the New York Times in the broader context of Google’s permissive workplace culture, the former employee, Jennifer Blakely, says in a new and far more detailed account of their relationship that Drummond was a serial philanderer, leaving his wife for Blakely, then leaving Blakely after a son that he fathered with her for another now-former Google employee.

She adds that Drummond also had “an affair with his ‘personal assistant’ who he moved into one of his new homes.”

We reached out to Google, asking for comment either from the company or Drummond, and have yet to hear back.

It’s an enormously unflattering portrait and it comes at a delicate time for Google, which found itself at the center of the #metoo movement last year, after the Times revealed that another former executive, Andy Rubin, had been awarded a handsome exit package following a sexual misconduct claim that the company reportedly found credible.

In addition to accusing Drummond of neglecting her, Blakely also accuses him of being an absentee parent to a son who she says was very much planned by the couple, writing that “[m]onths or years would go by where he wouldn’t see [their son] or respond to my calls or texts with updates and pictures of him or even ask how he was doing, let alone how he might help out, knowing full well I was alone and in desperate need.”

Elsewhere in her post, Blakely says that following a custody battle over the boy that she won when he was four-and-a-half-years old, “David began providing ample child support.”

According to several sources familiar with the situation, the situation is more nuanced than Blakely describes and it was not a particularly happy union, though these same individuals acknowledge that much of her account is true. Drummond, who was Google’s general counsel back in 2001 when they met, was married when he began an affair with Blakeley, who’d been hired into Google’s legal department as a senior contracts manager. Though Google merely discouraged managers from having affairs with subordinates at the time (it wasn’t against the company’s code of conduct), when Drummond finally told the company in 2007 that Blakeley was pregnant with his child, she was moved into a role in the company’s sales department, far from the company’s legal department.

Blakely writes she had “zero experience in sales” and that it was a hard transition to make: “I did my best to keep up but I was floundering and became depressed at work.”

She left the company roughly one year later, in 2008. She says she and Drummond and their son were living together by that time, adding that seven months later, he broke up with her via text, saying he was “never coming back” to their shared home.

“And he didn’t,” she writes.

Drummond’s star has continued to rise at Google, where he has now spent 17 years and currently serves as its senior vice president of corporate development, as well as the chief legal officer for Google’s parent company, Alphabet.

Google has made numerous changes in the face of criticisms that male executives at the company have not faced consequences in the past for sexual misconduct at work — criticisms that boiled into anger, then walk-outs by tens of thousands of Google employees.

Among them: Google no longer force employees to settle disputes with the company in private arbitration, including in cases of sexual harassment or assault; employees can now lodge complaints relating to harassment and other misconduct via a dedicated website; an and they can bring colleagues to support them to meetings related to investigations.

Still, Google has never commented specifically on Blakely’s allegations and it will be curious to see if this newest salvo forces its hand.

The affair, and others at the company, don’t seem to have forced dramatic changes to its official code of contact, in any case.

According to a section titled: “Friends and Relatives; Co-Worker Relationships,” it cautions employees  that “romantic relationships between co-workers can, depending on the work roles and respective positions of the co-workers involved, create an actual or apparent conflict of interest. If a romantic relationship does create an actual or apparent conflict, it may require changes to work arrangements or even the termination of employment of either or both individuals involved. Consult Google’s Employee Handbook for additional guidance on this issue.”

ZTE’s U.S. government dealings have never been as high-profile as fellow Chinese smartphone maker Huawei, but it has had its fair share of scuffles. Last summer, the company got smacked with a $1 billion fine over sanction violations. All in all, 2018 was not a great year for ZTE here in the States.

It all amounted to a big blow for a manufacturer that was actually doing pretty good business selling mid-range devices in the largest smartphone market. With the Axon 10 Pro, it seems ZTE is finally done licking its wounds and is ready to try again here in the States, even as trade tensions continue to loom large in dealings between the two super powers.

I’ve got to say, it’s looking like a pretty solid device. The company seems to be positioning the product in the same sliver of the market that OnePlus has found a home. At $549, it’s a breath of fresh air in a world of $1,000+ flagships, without skimping on the design language or features. It’s doubly compelling given that OnePlus’s own prices have been creeping up a bit as well, as the company has pushed into more premium territory.

The device has a 6.47-inch display with a small camera notch up top and an in-screen fingerprint reader. There’s the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon chip on-board (855), paired with a a beefy 4,000 mAh battery. Around back are three cameras, including a 48-megapixel, a telephoto and a wide-angle. The headphone jack, however, is MIA.

With Huawei more or less out of the picture here in the States, maybe there’s some room for ZTE to thrive, after all. Of course, the company still has to contend with a shrinking smartphone market, just like everyone else.

On the heels of a driver-led protest outside Uber’s San Francisco headquarters, where drivers showed their support for gig worker protections legislation (via Assembly Bill 5) and demanded a union, Uber is circulating a petition urging people to “protect ridesharing in California.” In the petition, Uber advocates for a policy that would offer drivers a minimum of $21 per hour, paid time off, sick leave and compensation if they are injured while driving, as well as a collective voice and “the ability to influence decisions about their work.”

Uber has also created a new website called “Independent Driver” to showcase stories from drivers who want to remain independent contractors. Lyft, similarly, is circulating a petition urging people to demand legislators “fix AB 5.”

“We agree with the bill’s goal to protect workers, but we don’t agree that this protection should come at the cost of the flexibility our community relies on to supplement their income, support their families, and set their own schedules,” Lyft wrote in its petition. “After talking with thousands of California drivers and listening to experts in labor laws, we’re proposing a revision that protects driver earnings and the flexibility to earn when and how you want. Our proposal includes additional workplace protections for drivers and a minimum earnings floor.”

I’ve reached out to Gig Workers Rising, one of the organizations responsible for bringing drivers together to support AB-5 and demand the right to unionize. I’ll update this story if I hear back. But, based on the organization’s recent tweet, what Uber is offering isn’t enough.

“$21 isn’t a living wage for any category of worker in the San Francisco metro area except a single adult or two adults living together,” Gig Workers Rising tweeted. “What they’re offering is the floor, while hoping to kneecap any efforts to raise wages down the line & create a real union.”

These petitions are clearly Hail Marys by Lyft and Uber to try to prevent the passage of AB-5, which seeks to codify the ruling established in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v Superior Court of Los Angeles. In that case, the court applied the ABC test and decided Dynamex wrongfully classified its workers as independent contractors based on the presumption that “a worker who performs services for a hirer is an employee for purposes of claims for wages and benefits…”

According to the ABC test, in order for a hiring entity to legally classify a worker as an independent contractor, it must prove the worker is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity, performs work outside the scope of the entity’s business and is regularly engaged in an “independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed.”

In short, AB-5, which has already passed in the California State Assembly, would ensure gig economy workers are entitled to minimum wage, workers’ compensation and other benefits.