Year: 2019

Mesosphere was born as the commercial face of the open source Mesos project. It was surely a clever solution to make virtual machines run much more efficiently, but times change and companies change. Today the company announced it was changing its name to Day2IQ or D2IQ for short, and fixing its sights on Kubernetes and cloud native, which have grown quickly in the years since Mesos appeared on the scene.

D2IQ CEO Mike Fey says that the name reflects the company’s new approach. Instead of focusing entirely on the Mesos project, it wants to concentrate on helping more mature organizations adopt cloud native technologies.

“We felt like the Mesosphere name was somewhat of constrictive. It made statements about the company that really allocated us to a given technology, instead of to our core mission, which is supporting successful Day Two operations, making cloud native a viable approach not just for the early adopters, but for everybody,” Fey explained.

Fey is careful to point out that the company will continue to support the Mesos-driven DC/OS solution, but the general focus of the company has shifted, and the new name is meant to illustrate that. “The Mesos product line is still doing well, and there are things that it does that nothing else can deliver on yet. So we’re not abandoning that totally, but we do see that Kubernetes is very powerful, and the community behind it is amazing, and we want to be a value added member of that community,” he said.

He adds that this is not about jumping on the cloud native bandwagon all of a sudden. He points out his company has had a Kubernetes product for more than a year running on top of DC/OS, and it has been a contributing member to the cloud native community.

It’s not just about a name change and refocusing the company and the brand, it also involves several new cloud native products that the company has built to serve the type of audience, the more mature organization, that the new name was inspired by.

For starters, it’s introducing its own flavor of Kubernetes called Konvoy, which it says, provides an “enterprise-grade Kubernetes experience.” The company will also provide a support and training layer, which it believes is a key missing piece, and one that is required by larger organizations looking to move to cloud native.

In addition, it is offering a data integration layer, which is designed to help integrate large amounts of data in a cloud-native fashion. To that end, it is introducing a Beta of Kudo, an open source cloud-native tool for building stateful operations in Kubernetes. The company has already donated this tool to the Cloud Native Computing foundation, the open source organization that houses Kubernetes and other cloud native projects.

The company faces stiff competition in this space from some heavy hitters like the newly combined IBM and Red Hat, but it believes by adhering to a strong open source ethos, it can move beyond its Mesos roots to become a player in the cloud native space. Time will tell if it made a good bet.

The boards of Just Eat and Takeaway.com have reached agreement to combine their two European food delivery businesses.

The pair of publicly listed companies announced they were in talks to combine their businesses a week ago, saying then that talks were at an advanced stage.

Today they said their boards have reached agreement on the terms of “a recommended all-share combination”, and both will be recommending unanimously that shareholders vote in favor of the merger at respective meetings.

Meetings to seek shareholder approval are to be held no later than 20 December, and the pair say they expect the merger to be completed in Q4, assuming shareholders give the green light.

“The Combination would create one of the largest food delivery companies in the world, with scale, strategic vision, industry-leading capabilities, leading positions in attractive markets and a diversified geographic presence,” they write in today’s note, adding that the merger has “compelling strategic logic” and represents “an attractive opportunity” for both to build on “the strong individual platforms of Just Eat and Takeaway.com with the potential to deliver substantial benefits to respective shareholders, consumers,  employees and other stakeholders”.

Commenting in a statement, Jitse Groen, CEO of Takeaway.com, also said: “The Combination of Just Eat and Takeaway.com creates one of the world’s largest and most powerful food delivery websites. It will become a formidable company that will make an impact on tens of millions of consumers across the globe; it will be at the forefront of product and tech development in the sector, and it will lead the way in its relationship with its consumers, restaurant partners, its staff, and its delivery drivers. It is a dreamed combination, created by the sector’s dream team, and I can only be grateful for the opportunity of leading it.”

In another supporting statement, Just Eat’s chairman Mike Evans added: “The Board believes that this is a compelling offer for Just Eat shareholders which will create a global leader in a dynamic and rapidly growing sector. Our businesses have a shared philosophy and culture, and together we will create one of the world’s largest online food delivery platforms with leading positions in key markets. With a significant commitment to the UK and to the employees of Just Eat, we believe the new combination and proven leadership team will allow us to better serve our millions of consumers and thousands of restaurant partners around the world. Just Eat will be a driving force in the creation of an exciting global leader and I am looking forward to working with Jitse and the talented Takeaway.com team to seize this opportunity together.”

Under the agreed terms, Just Eat shareholders will be entitled to receive 0.09744 Takeaway.com shares for each Just Eat share which they state implies a value for Just Eat of 731 pence per Just Eat share based on Takeaway.com’s closing share price on 26 July 2019 of €83.55 — representing a premium of 15% to Just Eat’s closing share price on 26 July 2019 (ahead head of the announcement of the merger talks).

While, following completion, Just Eat Shareholders will own approximately 52.15% and Takeaway.com Shareholders will own approximately 47.85% of the combined group — which is set to be called Just Eat Takeaway.com N.V., and will be headquartered in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands.

The pair say the current intention is to maintain “a number” of Just Eat’s current headquarter functions in London (they do not state how many or which), and “a significant part of its operations in the United Kingdom, including its existing operations in London, Borehamwood and Bristol”.

“A full assessment of the Combined Group’s other locations has not yet been conducted, and as a result, there are no specific plans in relation to these other locations,” they add.

A two-tier board structure is planned for the merged entity, with a management board and supervisory board, both of which will comprise a mix of members from the Takeaway.com boards and from the Just Eat board — including current Takeaway.com CEO Groen assuming the role of CEO of the combined group and Paul Harrison, the current CFO of Just Eat, taking up the CFO role for the merged entity, while Takeaway.com’s current CFO, Brent Wissink, will become co-COO of the combined group, along with Takeaway.com’s current COO Jörg Gerbig.

For the supervisory board, the plan is for current Just Eat chairman Evans to take the chairman role, while Adriaan Nühn, currently the chairman of the Takeaway.com supervisory board, will be vice-chairman and senior independent non-executive director.

The supervisory board will also comprise three independent non-executive members identified by Just Eat and two non-executive members identified by Takeaway.com.

The pair say approval will be sought for the listing and admission to trading of the enlarged share capital of the Combined Group on the Premium Segment of the London Stock Exchange’s Main Market for listed securities; and of the new Takeaway.com shares on Euronext Amsterdam; and inclusion of the Combined Group in the FTSE 100 Index and FTSE All-Share Index.

“Based on initial discussions with FTSE, Takeaway.com and Just Eat anticipate that the Combined Group would be eligible for inclusion in the FTSE 100 Index and the FTSE All-Share Index from completion of the Combination,” they add.

Sonderangebot! That sounds like a super-cool robotics startup you’d find at Disrupt Berlin 2019, right? But it’s German for special offer — and that’s super cool, too. Our premier tech conference takes place on 11-12 December, and we want to make attending Disrupt Berlin as easy on the budget as possible. Hence, our buy-now-pay-later Sonderangebot!

It’s our super early-bird season and, depending on which Disrupt Berlin pass you buy, you can save up to €600. But now you have the option to stretch your payments over four months and avoid an upfront layout of your hard-earned cash. Buy your passes here.

Here’s how our buy-now-pay-later installment plan works. Follow the normal process to purchase your pass. When it comes time to pay, select the payment plan option. You pay 25% of the pass price (plus fees) now and then pay off the remaining balance in three equal monthly payments.

Note: Discounted student, government or nonprofit Innovator passes do not qualify for payment installments.

Want to bring your whole team to Disrupt Berlin? Combine the buy-now-pay-later option with our group discounts for even more bottom-line comfort.

Perhaps you’re keen to introduce your early-stage startup to 3,000+ attendees — from more than 50 countries — as they stream through our exhibit hall. Yes? Then scoop up a super early-bird Startup Alley Exhibitor Package for €745 + VAT and yes, you can take advantage of the payment plan option.

Whatever startup role describes you — founder, investor, industry leader, developer or technologist — you can lock in your pass price and experience all the excitement and action of Disrupt Berlin 2019. Dive into two full days of hands-on workshops, product demonstrations, top-notch speakers, moderated Q&A sessions and world-class networking.

We’ll announce more exciting news in the weeks ahead — like how you can apply to compete in Startup Battlefield or earn a coveted spot as a TC Top Pick and exhibit in Startup Alley for free. Join our mailing list to stay in the loop.

We’re in the process of building our roster of Disrupt Berlin speakers, and TechCrunch editors want to hear your recommendations. Opportunities are limited, so submit your suggestions as soon as possible. The team reviews submissions on a rolling basis and when they’ve reviewed yours, you’ll receive the editorial decision by email.

Disrupt Berlin 2019 takes place on 11-12 December, and you can give your budget breathing room with our buy-now-pay-later installment plan. Buy your passes, take advantage of this Sonderangebot, and we’ll see you in Berlin!

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

Fever, a startup that uses proprietary algorithms to help companies plan events, announced today that it has raised $35 million led by Rakuten Capital, the investment arm of Japanese internet giant Rakuten . Other investors in the round, which brings Fever’s total raised to $70 million, included Atresmedia, Accel and Michael Zeisser, the former chairman of U.S. investments for Alibaba Group. Zeisser will also join Fever’s board.

Based in Madrid and London, Fever’s app generates personalized events listings for users and feeds into its Secret Media Network, which also collects user data from the company’s social media channel. The anonymized data is then analyzed using Fever’s algorithms to help companies plan events like “The Alice in Wonderland MaddHatter G&T” in Hollywood, the Halloween-theme “House of Spirits in Los Angeles and “Candlelight Concerts,” classical music shows aimed at young audiences.

The company now claims 25 million unique users per month across its main markets in London, New York, Paris and Madrid, and plans to use its new funding to expand into new cities.

In an email, Fever CEO Ignacio Bachiller told TechCrunch that Fever plans to expand into Chicago and Barcelona next (it launched in Paris, Los Angeles, Lisbon and Manchester last year). Then it will launch in new markets every couple of months, mostly in the United States and Europe this year and also in Asia next year. He added that one way Fever differentiates from other event discovery platforms is that it does not focus on discount-driven events and that there is no other platform currently “using firsthand discovery behavioral data to inform what new experiences to create by predicting demand. Basically, there is no Netflix for experiences.”

Bachiller also says that Fever may potentially collaborate with other Rakuten portfolio companies to help SMBs increase engagement with their customers.

The growing popularity of 3D printing machines and companies like Thingiverse and Shapeways have given previously unimaginable powers to makers, enabling them to create everything from cosplay accessories to replacement parts. But even though 3D printing has created a new world of customized objects, most of us are still buying clothes off the rack. Now researchers at MIT are working on software that will allow anyone to customize or design their own knitwear, even if they have never picked up a ball of yarn.

A team of researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), led by computer scientist Alexandre Kaspar, released two new papers describing the software today. One is about a system called InverseKnit that automatically creates patterns from photos of knitted items. The other one introduces new design software, called CADKnit, that allows people with no knitting or design experience to quickly customize templates, adjusting the size, final shape and decorative details (like the gloves shown below).

The final patterns can be used with a knitting machine, which have been available to home knitters for years, but still require a fair amount of technical knowledge in order to design patterns for.

Gloves made using CADknit

Both CADKnit and InverseKnit want to make designing and making machine-knitted garments as accessible as 3D printing is now. Once the software is commercialized, Kaspar envisions “knitting as a service” for consumers who want to order customized garments. It can also enable clothing designers to spend less time learning how to write knitwear patterns for machines and reduce waste in the prototyping and manufacturing process. Another target audience for the software are hand-knitters who want to try a new way of working with yarn.

“If you think about it like 3D printing, a lot of people have been using 3D printers or hacking 3D printers, so they are great potential users for our system, because they can do that with knitting,” says Kaspar.

One potential partner for CADKnit and InverseKnit is Kniterate, a company that makes a digital knitting machine for hobbyists, makerspaces and small businesses. Kaspar says he has been talking to Kniterate’s team about making knitwear customization more accessible.

To develop InverseKnit, researchers first created a dataset of knitting patterns with matching images that were used to train a deep neural network to generate machine knitting patterns. The team says that during InverseKnit’s testing, the system produced accurate instructions 94% of the time. There is still some work to do before InverseKnit can be commercialized. For example, the machine was tested using one specific type of acrylic yarn, so it needs to be trained to work with other fibers.

CADKnit, on the other hand, combines 2D images with CAD and photo-editing software to create customizable templates. It was tested with knitting newbies, who despite having little machine knitting experience were still able to create relatively complex garments like gloves and effects, including lace motifs and color patterns.

“3D printing took a while before people were comfortable enough to think they could do something with it,” says Kaspar. “It will be the same thing with what we do.”

Didi Chuxing’s autonomous driving unit is now an independent company, the Chinese ride-sharing and transportation giant said today. Didi’s autonomous driving team was created in 2016 and now has more than 200 employees in China and the United States. Didi’s announcement comes about a month after The Information reported that Didi was in talks with investors including SoftBank, its largest shareholder, to raise money for the unit.

In its announcement, Didi said the new company “will integrate the resources and technological advantages of Didi’s platform, continue to increase investment in R&D of core innovative technologies, and deepen collaboration with upstream and downstream auto industry partners” and also promote self-driving technology to transportation authorities.

The Financial Times reported last year that Didi had been approved to test self-driving vehicles in California, where it has a research facility in Mountain View. But Didi has to catch up with other companies that have been testing autonomous cars both in the U.S. and China. In California, it was the 53rd company to get a permit to test self-driving vehicles, behind technology rivals like Uber and Waymo.

Didi has already been testing autonomous vehicles, developed in partnership with car manufacturers and suppliers, in China, but its testing lagged far behind Baidu last year, which registered 140,000 kilometers in Beijing, or about 91 percent of the 153,600 miles test-driven by autonomous fleets owned by eight companies, including Didi, Pony.ai, Tencent and automakers NIO, Audi, Daimler AG and BAIC Group.

Aside from being able to license its technology to other transportation and vehicle companies, the launch of robo-taxis may help Didi’s ride-sharing service make up for a shortage in drivers. Stricter screening criteria was put into place after two female passengers were murdered by drivers on Didi’s ride-sharing platform and Didi said last month that it had removed more than 300,000 drivers who didn’t meet its standards since its safety overhaul began last year.

The CEO of the new autonomous driving company will be Zhang Bo, who is also the CTO of Didi. Meng Xing, former executive director of Shunwei China Internet Fund, is its COO, while software engineers Jia Zhaoyin, the head of its technical efforts for Didi’s smart-driving project, and Zheng Jianqiang will head its research and development teams in the U.S. and China.

Website infrastructure and security services provider Cloudflare will stop providing service to 8chan, wrote Matthew Prince in a blog post, describing the site as a “cesspool of hate.” Service will be terminated as of midnight Pacific Time.

“The rationale is simple: they have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths,” wrote Prince. “Even if 8chan may not have violated the letter of the law in refusing to moderate their hate-filled community, they have created an environment that revels in violating its spirit.

The decision was made after the suspect in this weekend’s mass shooting at El Paso, who has since been charged with domestic terrorism, posted a lengthy racist and anti-immigration “manifesto” to 8chan almost immediately before the attack, which killed at least 20 people. Federal authorities are treating the shooting as an act of domestic terrorism and the Justice Department is also considering bringing federal hate crime and firearm charges, which both potentially carry the death penalty, against the shooter.

8chan was also used by the perpetrator in March’s terrorist attacks on two Christchurch, New Zealand mosques, as well as the suspect in the April shooting at a synagogue in Poway, California.

“The El Paso shooter specifically referenced the Christchurch incident and appears to have been inspired by the largely unmoderated discussions on 8chan which glorified the previous massacre,” wrote Prince. “In a separate tragedy, the suspected killer in the Poway, California synagogue shooting also posted a hate-filled ‘open letter’ on 8chan. 8chan has repeatedly proven itself to be a cesspool of hate.”

Before Cloudflare announced its decision to terminate service to 8chan, Prince spoke to reporters from the Guardian and the New York Times, telling the Guardian that he wanted to “kick 8chan off our network,” but also (in the later interview with the New York Times), expressing hesitation because terminating service may make it harder for law enforcement officials to access information on the site.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince says that his decision is not about free speech or making money. Instead, he says keeping 8chan within Cloudflare’s network facilitates monitoring of the site and cooperation with law enforcement. https://t.co/PVnnu6LFxM pic.twitter.com/4ffQ8AWLfC

— Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew) August 4, 2019

Update: I talked to Cloudflare CEO @eastdakota, who said he is undecided about whether or not to allow 8chan to continue using its DDOS protection service (which effectively allows the site to stay online) https://t.co/tewgBEqYeF pic.twitter.com/WkU1NYBm6g

— Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) August 4, 2019

In his blog post, Prince explained Cloudflare’s ultimate decision to cut service, writing that more than 19 million Internet properties use Cloudflare’s services and the company “[did] not take this decision lightly.”

“We reluctantly tolerate content that we find reprehensible, but we draw the line at platforms that have demonstrated they directly inspire tragic events and are lawless by design. 8chan has crossed that line,” he wrote.” It will therefore no longer be allowed to use our services.”

This is not the first time Cloudflare has cut off service to a site for enabling the spread of racism and violence. Cloudflare previously terminated service to white supremacist site Daily Stormer in August 2017, but noted that the site went back online after switching to a Cloudflare competitor. “Today, the Daily Stormer is still available and still disgusting. They have bragged that they have more readers than ever. They are no longer Cloudflare’s problem, but they remain the Internet’s problem,” Prince wrote.

Prince says he sees the situation with 8chan playing out in a similar way. Since terminating service to the Daily Stormer, Prince says Cloudflare has worked with law enforcement and civil society organizations, resulting in the company “cooperating around monitoring potential hate sites on our network and notifying law enforcement when there was content that contained a legal process to share information when we can hopefully prevent horrific acts of violence.”

But Prince added that the company “continue[s] to feel incredibly uncomfortable about playing the role of content arbiter and do not plan to exercise it often,” adding that this is not “due to some conception of the United States’ First Amendment,” since Cloudflare is a private company (and most of its customers, and more than half of its revenue, are outside the United States).

Instead, Cloudflare “will continue to engage with lawmakers around the world as they set the boundaries of what is acceptable in those countries through due process of law. And we will comply with those boundaries when and where they are set.”

Cloudflare’s decision may increase scrutiny on Amazon, since the 8chan’s operator Jim Watkins sells audiobooks on Amazon.com and Audible, creating what the Daily Beast refers to as “his financial lifeline to the outside world.”

A $28 million financing has made SmartNews, an AI-powered news aggregation app, a unicorn.

Japan Post Capital has led the Series E round, which brings the company’s total investment to $116 million and pushes its valuation to $1.1 billion. Existing investors in SmartNews include Development Bank of Japan, SMBC Venture Capital and Japan Co-Invest L.P.

The company, founded in Tokyo in 2012, boasts 20 million monthly active users in the U.S. and Japan. Growing at a rate of 500% per year, its audience checks into the app for a mix of political, sports, global and entertainment news curated for each individual reader. To make money, the company sells inline advertising, video ads and deals with publishers to sell ads against “SmartViews,” its equivalent of Google’s AMP or Facebook’s Instant Articles

Users reported issues with Instagram and Facebook Sunday morning.

The mobile apps wouldn’t load for many users beginning in the early hours of the morning, prompting thousands to take to Twitter to complain about the outage. #facebookdown and #instagramdown are both trending on Twitter at time of publish.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for more information and when they are expecting services to come back online. We’ll update this story when we hear back.

We spend a lot of time around here covering the latest startup fundraises, and for good reason. While capital is certainly an input and not an output, there is nothing quite like the closing of a round of several million in venture capital to prove that yes, the startup I’m working on is at least interesting to someone other than me. External validation shouldn’t be your motivating principle, but it is motivating. Plus, it’s a great milestone to reach out to the press and start talking up the story.

And so week after week, we cover the latest rounds. This company raised $4.5 million in a seed round, and this company raised $16 million in a series A. These stories — and the narratives behind them — are crisp, clean, and precise. A proverbial founder walked up and down South Park in SoMa, explained their story, collected a couple of term sheets, picked one, locked in the due diligence, and is now announcing their round. The VCs are excited, the founder(s) are excited, the employees are excited (and sometimes even the customers are excited!)

The reality for founders though is far more messy and gritty than those headlines would indicate. When I get founders off the record and out for drinks, the true story starts to emerge. That $4.5 million seed fundraise took eight months of maniacal scheduling with two hundred investors just to find a lead. And that lead didn’t lead lead, but took only 20% of the round. In the meantime, they raised twelve times across convertible notes and SAFEs, each one giving the company just a bit more gas in the tank to continue.

When I wrote that a startup raised $4.5 million in one slam dunk, what I really should have written was that they raised $150k, $300k, a few more $50k investments from randos, a couple of thousand from that startup competition, wow $500k from that amazing angel, a $750k SBIR grant from the government that took nine months too long to process, some credits from Brex, and finally at some point that lead investor showed up who gets $3-3.5 million in news value credit on their wimpy $900k check.

As an editor and a writer who covers these aggregate rounds, I struggle with how to approach them. Founders regularly tell me that they would love more transparency and less bravado around fundraises. They want to read how other founders handle the messy complexity of their fundraises, if only because they can compare their own hellish experiences with those of others.

More fundamentally, our readers deserve to read the truth. A $4.5 million round led by a single venture firm writing a $3.5 million check is a very different construct than a bricolage of a random assortment of angel investors. That difference in investor and round quality does indicate something about the startup under examination, and so offering more of those details would better inform our readers as well.

All that is well and good, but no one really wants to hear about these difficulties. Certainly users and customers don’t want to hear about how the software they use or purchased is run by a company that is constantly days away from death. Some early-stage employees probably have the focus to ignore such morbid considerations while carrying out their functions, but many need their paychecks to come from a black box. Somehow, the checks always arrive, and that lowers the stress for everyone.

And even just in terms of the craft of writing, do we really want to exchange the standard funding sentence (“blah blah blah raised blah from blah with participation from blah blah blah”) with a multi-paragraph exegesis of a fundraise?

Writing is about choosing which details are salient and which to pass over. It would be exhausting every morning to read tomes of fundraise detail. Yet, our consistency in depicting fundraises as efficient and precise can create an atmosphere where if you didn’t find a lead in a few weeks and lock down the whole round, you are a failure.

That’s not really a depiction I want to support.

And so, take this as someone who talks to dozens of founders a year off the record about their fundraises, and also sat on the other side of the table as a VC for years. Fundraises are almost always really, really, tough. Very few people get commits in the first meeting, or even in the subsequent meetings. Half the investor introductions during a fundraise are often a complete waste of time if not outright damaging, psychologically or materially. There are a lot of sharks out there. It is much more common today to aggregate a bunch of mini-rounds than it was a couple of years ago.

This is not failure, but just the path of the entrepreneur today in 2019. And at the end of that whole long and windy road, after all of those hundreds of hours of coffee meetings and PowerPoint strategy sessions and skeptical investor convos, all of that work will boil down to twenty words about how the fundraise closed, X dollars were raised, and money was seemingly wired magically to your bank account.

You, me, and really everyone can and should know the truth. But perhaps just rejoice in that headline, and get back to the next slog.