Year: 2019

Immigration may not seem to be a tech issue. But for Americans with some personal or family experience with the idea of separated families and/or concentration camps, it can be hard to see what is currently going on in our names thanks to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (better known as “ICE”) as anything less than the single most urgent moral or ethical issue in this country today.

This begs a disclaimer: I have Eastern European Jewish family roots in what became the Holocaust. I have a Cuban Jewish mother who came to this country by herself as a young girl refugee and was separated from her family for multiple years due to U.S. immigration policy.

I am a father myself. This piece is personal for me, in other words. If you want to know whether I can be objective here, I would have to admit that seeing repeated images of thousands of children, as young as 4 months old, facing inhumane and abusive conditions in my government’s name and supported by my tax dollars, has been quite possibly the most morally disturbing experience of my life.

Still, given that I write specifically about the ethics of technology here at TechCrunch, is this topic “a fit” for this column? Well, “fortunately,” if not for me or any of us personally, then at least regarding my desire to write up ICE for this column: the Silicon Valley tech industry has a long and deep history of entanglement with undocumented immigrants to this country. And in fact, “thanks” to tech companies such as Palantir, Wayfair, and Amazon Web Services and their present-day collaboration with ICE and its concentration camps, tech and immigration ethics is very much a live topic for today.

It’s also a disturbing and depressing topic. Which is why I’m hoping to offer some hope, by concentrating not only on camps and detentions, but more on a series of innovative and impactful recent protests, in which tech companies played leading roles — both as objects of criticism in some cases and as helpful resources for the critics in others.

First, let’s focus on Palantir. As Manish Singh wrote in TechCrunch in May, “Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents, obtained by advocacy organization Mijente through Freedom of Information Act litigation, note that agents of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations used Palantir’s software to build profiles of immigrant children and their family members for the prosecution and arrest of any undocumented person they encountered in their investigation.”

In other words, along with beds from multibillion-dollar furniture unicorn Wayfair, and web hosting from Amazon, the Peter Theil-funded Palo Alto software power is making this country’s showdown over immigration actively about the tech world, and this Monday, July 8, hundreds of protestors went to Palantir’s offices as part of a week of coordinated activities nationwide.

As Mijente campaigns director Priscilla Gonzalez told me, “We noticed the escalation of ICE operations, their invasions of homes, workplaces, and communities, and we began investigating just how people were being monitored and tracked like never before.”

Gonzalez continued, “We found that Palantir’s software allows ICE agents to build profiles of undocumented immigrants filled with personal information like their home address, work address, financial information, social media profile, and more. Palantir is the reason ICE has been able to accelerate its operations, conduct mass raids and rip families and communities apart.”

While it remains to be seen whether such protests will persuade Palantir to drop their contracts with ICE, what is clear is that the trend of staging significant protests against such institutions is only going to grow, as more and more grassroots groups, students, tech workers, faith leaders, elected officials, and others unite to hold them accountable.

Which brings me to my interview for this week.

A few days before the Palantir protest, and less than a week after an employee walkout from the Boston headquarters of Wayfair also drew hundreds of employees and supporters, another major ICE protest took place in Boston. This time, on July 2nd, it was a group of Jewish activists collaborating with Movimiento Cosecha, an organization representing undocumented immigrants.

Echoing yet another protest just a day earlier in which 36 Jewish activists were arrested while protesting an ICE facility in New Jersey, while carrying banners imploring “Never Again Para Nadie” (for no one), in Boston 18 protestors were arrested in similar fashion (multiples of 18 are culturally and religiously significant in Jewish tradition). While the Boston protest was not specifically tied to the tech industry, it was a moving — and telling — example of what tech companies might begin to expect if they continue involvement with ICE.

One of the arrestees in the Boston protest, moreover, was someone I had already been hoping to interview for this column — the nationally renowned sexual ethicist, author, and activist Jaclyn Friedman. As you will see below, Friedman has a lot to say about the intersection of sex, ethics, and tech. She insisted, however, that this interview focus almost exclusively on the ICE protest and the ethical issues behind it. I think the resulting conversation was powerful and educational.

Greg Epstein: I know you through your work as an expert in sexual ethics, and I’ve been wanting to interview you about work you’ve done on the intersection of sex, ethics, and tech. But then I saw you’d participated in this — what I think may have been a landmark protest — and I had to talk with you about it. Given your background, what led you to participating in this protest?

Jaclyn Friedman: I certainly can and will make connections between what we just did with the Jews Against Ice action [and] sexual ethics, but I honestly just came to it as a human person, and as a Jew who’s just panicked and outraged, and felt a strong need to do something more. This action appealed to me as a Jew, because my activism stems from my Judaism.

That’s where I learned about social justice, where I get the fire in my belly, both in terms of Jewish teachings about tikkun olam, as well as, it just happened the Temple I grew up in was led by the first woman ordained in the modern era, Sally Priesand. [She] was, before I even knew the word feminism, my first feminist role model.

But also obviously the US is running concentration camps, and it’s impossible for me to not take that personally as a Jew. It certainly has everything to do with my work on sexual ethics which is functionally work about bodily autonomy.

If you’re talking about mass incarceration, that’s an issue about bodily autonomy. If you’re talking about concentration camps, it’s certainly an issue about bodily autonomy, and that’s even before we start talking about the amount of sexual assault and molestation that has been allowed to be perpetrated by the folks who are running these detention camps.

After cracking down on ICOs, the SEC just okayed the first two RegA+ tokens that offer an alternative way for anyone to gain a financial stake in a company, even unaccredited investors. Blockstack got approved for a $28 million digital token sale to raise money, while influencer live streaming app YouNow’s spin-off Props received a formal green light for a consumer utility ‘Howey’ token users can earn to get loyalty perks in multiple apps.

Props has already raised $21 million by pre-selling tokens to Union Square Ventures, Comcast, Venrock, Andreessen Horowitz’s Chris Dixon, and YouTuber Casey Neistat, so it isn’t raising any money with the RegA+ by selling its tokens like Blockstack. Instead, users earn or ‘mine’ Props by engaging with apps like YouNow, which will award the tokens for creating broadcasts, watching videos, and tipping creators. Having more Props entitles YouNow’s 47 million registered users bonus features, VIP status, and more purchasing power with the app’s proprietary credits called Bars which users have bought $70 million-worth of to date.

But unlike most virtual currencies that can only be used in a single app and don’t technically belong to consumers, the open-sourced Props blockchain system can be integrated into other apps via an API and people can export their Props to cryptocurrency wallets. That lets them apply their Props in other apps beyond YouNow. Four partnered apps have been lined up including xSplit, a 17 million registered user app for video game streaming.

While Props aren’t currently redeemable for fiat currency, they were valued at $0.1369 each by the SEC-approved filing. The company is working to have Props listed on Alternative Trading Systems that work similarly to cryptocurrency exchanges. That lets Props give everyday app users a financial incentive to see the network of apps that adopt them grow. Since there’s a finite supply of 1 billion Props (with 600 million mined so far), if demand for Props rises then users could sell them for more. This creates a new growth hacking method for startups by providing a way to reward early and hardcore users.

“Our offering of Props is the first consumer-facing offering of “Howey tokens” to be qualified by the SEC. It makes it the first offering of consumer-oriented utility tokens that the SEC deems compliant, outside of Bitcoin and Ether” Props CEO Adi Sideman tells me. While SEC officials have said Bitcoin and Ether aren’t securities thanks to their sufficient decentralization, they haven’t received formal approval. “We used Regulation A+ (Reg A) for this qualification, so that Props may be earned by, and provide functionality to, non accredited investors, users, apps and validators, in compliance with US regulations.”

However this could also create risk for less savvy users who might misunderstand the token system and be overly convinced they’ll get rich by watching tons of musicians or comedians streaming on YouNow. Props will need to ensure partners that integrate its tokens don’t exaggerate their potential. It’s spent two years working on SEC approval but could still face consequences if Props are misrepresented.

“Props enables us to turn creators into stakeholders in the network, meaning they become partners in the success of the network. It’s an important tool for us to better incentivize and align with the most important users of our apps” PeerStream CEO Alex Harrington writes. “Props abstracts, for us as developers, the technical and regulatory complexity associated with blockchain-based tokens, through a simple set of APIs that we can use to integrate the token into our apps’ experience.”

With Blockstack and Props having pioneered the RegA+ approach, we could see more companies filing to use this method of raising money or sharing stakes with their users.

Luminar is one of the major players in the new crop of lidar companies that have sprung up all over the world, and it’s moving fast to outpace its peers. Today the company announced a new $100M funding round, bringing its total raised to over $250M — as well as a perception platform and a new, compact lidar unit aimed at inclusion in actual cars. Big day!

The new hardware, called Iris, looks to be about a third of the size of the test unit Luminar has been sticking on vehicles thus far. That one was about the size of a couple hardbacks stacked up, and Iris is more like a really thick sandwich.

Size is very important, of course, since few cars just have caverns of unused space hidden away in prime surfaces like the corners and windshield area. Other lidar makers have lowered the profiles of their hardware in various ways; Luminar seems to have compactified in a fairly straightforward fashion, getting everything into a package smaller in every dimension.

Test model, left, Iris on the right.

Photos of Iris put it in various positions: below the headlights on one car, attached to the rear-view mirror in another, and high up atop the cabin on a semi truck. It’s small enough that it won’t have to displace other components too much, although of course competitors are aiming to make theirs even more easy to integrate. That won’t matter, Luminar founder and CEO Austin Russell told me recently, if they can’t get it out of the lab.

“The development stage is a huge undertaking — to actually move it towards real-world adoption and into true
series production vehicles,” he said (among many other things). The company who gets there first will lead the industry, and naturally he plans to make Luminar that company.

Part of that is of course the production process, which has been vastly improved over the last couple years. These units can be made quickly enough that they can be supplied by the thousands rather than dozens, and the cost has dropped precipitously — by design.

Iris will cost under $1,000 per unit for production vehicles seeking serious autonomy, and for $500 you can get a more limited version for more limited purposes like driver assistance, or ADAS. Luminar says Iris is “slated to launch commercially on production vehicles beginning in 2022,” but that doesn’t mean necessarily that they’re shipping to customers right now. The company is negotiating more than a billion dollars in contracts at present, a representative told me, and 2022 would be the earliest that vehicles with Iris could be made available.

The Iris units are about a foot below the center of the headlight units here. Note that this is not a production vehicle, just a test one.

Another part of integration is software. The signal from the sensor has to go somewhere, and while some lidar companies have indicated they plan to let the carmaker or whoever deal with it their own way, others have opted to build up the tech stack and create “perception” software on top of the lidar. Perception software can be a range of things: something as simple as drawing boxes around objects identified as people would count, as would a much richer process that flags intentions, gaze directions, characterizes motions and suspected next actions, and so on.

Luminar has opted to build into perception, or rather has revealed that it has been working on it for some time. It now has 60 people on the task split between Palo Alto and Orlando, and hired a new VP of Software, former robo-taxi head at Daimler Christoph Schroder.

What exactly will be the nature and limitations of Luminar’s perception stack? There are dangers waiting if you decide to take it too far, since at some point you begin to compete with your customers, carmakers who have their own perception and control stacks that may or may not overlap with yours. The company gave very few details as to what specifically would be covered by its platform, but no doubt that will become clearer as the product itself matures.

Last and certainly not least is the matter of the $100 million in additional funding. This brings Luminar to a total of over a quarter of a billion dollars in the last few years, matching its competitor Innoviz, which has made similar decisions regarding commercialization and development.

The list of investors has gotten quite long, so I’ll just quote Luminar here:

G2VP, Moore Strategic Ventures, LLC, Nick Woodman, The Westly Group, 1517 Fund / Peter Thiel, Canvas Ventures, along with strategic investors Corning Inc, Cornes, and Volvo Cars Tech Fund.

The board has also grown, with former Broadcom exec Scott McGregor and G2VP’s Ben Kortland joining the table.

We may have already passed “peak lidar” as far as sheer number of deals and startups in the space, but that doesn’t mean things are going to cool down. If anything the opposite, as established companies battle over lucrative partnerships and begin eating one another to stay competitive. Seems like Luminar has no plans on becoming a meal.

Walmart’s grocery pickup business has been scaling quickly in recent years, and is now on track to reach 3,100 U.S. stores by year-end. Now, Walmart’s Sam’s Club business is making its own move to satisfy consumers’ demand for online ordering with same-day pickup. The retailer this week announced that same-day Club Pickup is now available at its nearly 600 U.S. locations.

The company began testing pickup at select locations starting last summer.

To order from Sam’s Club, members can either go online to SamsClub.com or use the Sam’s Club app to shop for items, check out, and pay. The orders will be ready for pick up within four hours — and often quicker, the retailer notes. The members will receive a text or email when their order is ready.

However, unlike Walmart, Target, or Amazon-owned Whole Foods order pickup programs, Sam’s Club has put a cap on order size. To qualify for same-day pickup, orders can’t exceed more than 15 items, the company says. To some extent, this limit makes sense, as many Sam’s Club shoppers use the warehouse club to shop in bulk to restock a large household — or even their small business — with various essentials. There may not be enough staff and time for Sam’s Club personnel to pull and prep more sizable orders for same-day pickup.

That said, knowing there’s a limit on how much you can order could dampen consumers’ use of the same-day pickup option — or have them turning to rivals instead.

Sam’s Club says members can order a range of items through the new service, including groceries, paper goods, electronics, and even alcohol. Produce and meat have so far been the most frequently ordered items.

Pickup is offered after 10 AM Monday through Friday, and after 9 AM on Saturday. Sam’s Club Plus members, who also have the option of shopping early, now will also have access to early pickup hours, too. These members can opt to schedule pickups between 7 AM and 10 AM, Monday through Friday.

Like parent company Walmart, some Sam’s Club location will offer a drive-up pickup area where employees will bring the order out to the car and load it.

Same-day grocery pickup has been one of the many ways U.S. retailers have been challenging Amazon. By leveraging their existing brick-and-mortar footprint and proximity to shoppers’ homes, businesses like Walmart, Target, and even local grocers (often in partnership with Instacart), have been making it easier for shoppers to order online for same-day pickup.

Sam’s Club, too, has an Instacart deal in place. The partnership, focused on same-day grocery delivery, was first announced in February 2018 and significantly expanded to over half of Sam’s Club locations in October. Last month, the Instacart partnership expanded again to include alcohol delivery at 215 stores across nearly a dozen U.S. states.

The company also last year announced free shipping by way of its Plus membership, as an alternative to Amazon Prime.

With skyrocketing demand for consumer products and renewed research into its medicinal value, cannabis is having a moment.

The quasi-legalization of marijuana created a gold rush for into the industry and startups like Demetrix are reaping the benefits.

The company, founded by the famed U.C. Berkeley researcher Jay Keasling and helmed by former Amyris executive Jeff Ubersax, just raised $50 million in a new round of financing to continue its pursuit of isolating and brewing cannabinoids, the active chemical ingredients in the marijuana plant.

The money came from previous investor Horizons Ventures, the Hong Kong-based firm backed by real estate billionaire Li Kashing, and Tuatara Capital, a fund which invests in the legal cannabis industry.

The idea of using yeast to brew cannabinoids isn’t a new one and there are several companies active in the space. Since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a drug based on one of the cannabinoids that’s found in the marijuana interest in the potential to identify and manufacture other pharmaceutically beneficial chemicals from the plant has grown.

Demetrix’s competitive advantage, according to Ubersax, is the company’s access to an exclusive license on Keasling’s research from Berkeley. The technology Keasling developed gives the company a unique ability to isolate and develop new cannabinoids and start screening them for utility.

“We’re providing high quality low cost access to these molecules that have traditionally come from plants,” says Ubersax. 

Demetrix expects the global market for cannabinoids to reach $100 billion by 2029, citing 2016 research from Ackrell Capital.

While it’s currently cheaper to just extract cannabinoids used in existing products from the plant itself, as the body of research grows around applications for the more rare cannabinoids found in smaller percentages in the plant itself, brewing the active chemicals will start to look more and more appealing.

Demetrix says it will use the money from the new financing to scale its operations and commercialize the first of the over 100 unique cannabinoids it believes can be applied to consumer and medical products.

“Demetrix’s mission is to help the world benefit from nature’s rarest ingredients, and we’re excited to partner with world-class investors like Tuatara Capital and Horizons Ventures to help global pharmaceutical, supplement, and consumer product companies deliver innovative products using cannabinoids,” said Demetrix CEO Jeff Ubersax, in a statement. “We’ve assembled a team of industry veterans, built a scalable technology platform, and are working with global regulatory organizations to quickly commercialize.”

The company has raised $61 million to date.

Here’s a thing that should have never been a thing: Bluetooth-connected hair straighteners.

Glamoriser, a U.K. firm that bills itself as the maker of the “world’s first Bluetooth hair straighteners“, allows users to link the device to an app, which lets the owner set certain heat and style settings. The app can also be used to remotely switch off the straighteners within Bluetooth range.

Big problem, though. These straighteners can be hacked.

Security researchers at Pen Test Partners bought a pair and tested them out. They found that it was easy to send malicious Bluetooth commands within range to remotely control an owner’s straighteners.

The researchers demonstrated that they could send one of several commands over Bluetooth, such as the upper and lower temperature limit of the device — 122°F and 455°F respectively — as well as the shut-down time. Because the straighteners have no authentication, an attacker can remotely alter and override the temperature of the straighteners and how long they stay on for — up to a limit of 20 minutes.

“As there is no pairing or bonding established over [Bluetooth] when connecting a phone, anyone in range with the app can take control of the straighteners,” said Stuart Kennedy in his blog post, shared first with TechCrunch.

There is a caveat, said Kennedy. The straighteners only allow one concurrent connection. If the owner hasn’t connected their phone or they go out of range, only then can an attacker target the device.

Here at TechCrunch we’re all for setting things on fire “for journalism,” but in this case the numbers speak for themselves. If, per the researchers’ findings, the straighteners could be overridden to the maximum temperature of 455°C at the timeout of 20 minutes, that’s setting up a prime condition for a fire — or at very least burn damage.

It’s estimated as many 650,000 house fires in the U.K. are caused by hair straighteners and curling irons left on. In some cases it can take more than a half-hour for these heated devices to cool down to safe levels. U.K. fire and rescue services have called on owners to physically pull the plug on their devices to prevent fires and damage.

Glamoriser did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication. The app hasn’t been updated since June 2018, suggesting a fix has yet to be put in place.

Runa Capital, an international VC firm HQ’d in Silicon Valley says it has now closed $70 million for its third fund aimed at backing early-stage startups in so-called ‘DeepTech’. Runa says it is aiming for a $135 million final target for Runa Fund III. Last year, its total funding in the U.S. increased by 30 percent, tallying just shy of $100 billion across more than 5,500 deals, according to PwC and CB Insights.

Runa already has $270 million under management from its first two funds and is best known for backing mobile banking startup Final (acquired by Goldman Sachs), web server NGINX (acquired by F5 Networks), the mobile app analytics French Capptain (acquired by Microsoft), and the cloud banking platform Mambu. Its most recent investment was Acumatica acquired by private equity fund EQT Partners.

Founders Serguei Beloussov, Ilya Zubarev and Dmitry Chikhachev launched Runa Capital in 2011 and raised $135 million for Runa I, followed by a second fund of the same size in 2015. Beloussov and Zubarev are serial entrepreneurs who created several global enterprise software companies including Acronis, Parallels and Acumatica.

Runa Capital typically invests between $1 million and $10 million in early-stage companies (largely Series A rounds) with a focus on deep tech, including machine intelligence and open-source; cloud business applications — and IT for regulated markets, such as fintech, edtech, and digital health. Another important area for Runa has been Quantum physics, and last year it established the Quantum Wave Fund, effectively a “materials science” arm for Runa. This backed quantum cryptography Swiss startup IDQuantique which was sold to SK Telecom.

In total, Runa has invested in 60+ companies in over 12 countries thus far — equally split between North America and Europe. In Europe, the fund tends to invest in tech-savvy Series A startups, particularly in the US. The fund has offices in Palo Alto, Berlin and Paris.

The move comes as last year showed the highest level of VC funding since the dot-com bubble at the turn of the century — $207 billion in over 14,000 deals around the world — a 21% year-over-year rise, much of it in to ‘deep tech’ startups.

According to Dealroom’s 2018 European trend report, European startups, European biotech companies and Israeli startups all received more VC money than ever last year — including over €8 billion poured into deep tech startups.

Amazon announced this morning a plan to invest over $700 million to retrain workers across the U.S. to allow them to move into skilled technical and non-technical roles across its corporate offices, tech hubs, fulfillment centers, retail stores, and transportation network. The company’s goal is to “upskill” 100,000 of its U.S. employees for more in-demand jobs by 2025 — or, one in three of Amazon’s U.S. workers.

In particular, Amazon has its eye on job roles like data mapping specialist, data scientist, solutions architect, and business analyst, as well as logistics coordinator, process improvement manager and transportation specialist, it says. Based on a review of its workforce and U.S. hiring, these are the fastest-growing, highly skilled jobs over the past five years.

For example, data mapping specialists have seen job growth of 832% in the past five years, based on Amazon’s own data, while data scientists jobs grew 505%, solutions architect grew 454%, security engineer jobs grew 229%, and business analyst jobs grew 160%. Meanwhile, the highly-skilled job roles in customer fulfillment have grown by 400%.

Amazon’s U.S. workforce is expected to reach 300,000 employees this year, and it will reach 630,000 employees worldwide.

The retraining investment breaks down to around $7,000 per worker, and it one the largest corporate retraining programs to date.

The funding will be distributed across a range of programs, including both existing programs and new initiatives. It will also be focused on training people both with and without existing technical backgrounds.

These programs include the new Amazon Technical Academy, which will train non-technical Amazon employees with skills that allow them to transition to software and engineering careers; the new Associate2Tech program that will train fulfillment center associates to move into technical roles; and the new Machine Learning University, to train those with a tech background to branch into machine learning.

Amazon will also expand its Career Choice program, launched in 2012, which offers pre-paid tuition to fulfillment center associates who want to move into high-demand jobs; plus Amazon Apprenticeship, a Department of Labor certified program offering paid classroom training and on the job apprenticeships with Amazon; and its AWS Training and Certification programs focused on closing the skills gap.

“Through our continued investment in local communities in more than 40 states across the country, we have created tens of thousands of jobs in the U.S. in the past year alone,” said Beth Galetti, Senior Vice President, HR, in a statement released this morning. “For us, creating these opportunities is just the beginning. While many of our employees want to build their careers here, for others it might be a stepping stone to different aspirations. We think it’s important to invest in our employees, and to help them gain new skills and create more professional options for themselves. With this pledge, we’re committing to support 100,000 Amazonians in getting the skills to make the next step in their careers,” she added.

The investment follows Amazon’s raising of its minimum wage to $15 for all U.S. employees last year, after the retailer was increasingly under attack for how its workers were treated and paid. Senator Bernie Sanders, in particular, had called out Amazon for engaging in “corporate welfare,” noting that Amazon wages were so low that workers couldn’t take care of their families — meaning thousands were on government subsidy programs, like food stamps.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos later challenged other retailers to follow his lead, and raise their minimum wages too. But that’s easier said than done as Amazon is so far ahead that its nearest e-commerce competitor, Walmart, is losing $1 billion this year on its e-commerce division as it tries to catch up.

The news also comes at a time when the role of technology’s impact on jobs is starting to take shape. As warehouses become more automated and jobs, overall, become more technology-dependent, it makes sense that Amazon would want to look internally to fill these new roles.

A marketplace dominated by Slack and Microsoft Teams, along with a host of other smaller workplace communication apps, might seem to leave little room for a new entrant, but Swit wants to prove that wrong. The app combines messaging with a roster of productivity tools, like task management, calendars and Gantt charts, to give teams “freedom from integrations.” Originally founded in Seoul and now based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Swit announced today that it has raised a $6 million seed round led by Korea Investment Partners, with participation from Hyunadi Venture Investment Corporation and Mirae Asset Venture Investment.

Along with an investment from Kakao Ventures last year, this brings Swit’s total seed funding so far to about $7 million. Swit’s desktop and mobile apps were released in March and since then more than 450 companies have adopted it, with 40,000 individual registered users. The startup was launched last year by CEO Josh Lee and Max Lim, who previously co-founded auction.co.kr, a Korean e-commerce site acquired by eBay in 2001.

While Slack, which recently went public, has become so synonymous with the space that “Slack me” is now part of workplace parlance at many companies, Lee says Swit isn’t playing catch up. Instead, he believes Swit benefits from “last mover advantage,” solving the shortfalls of other workplace messaging, collaboration and productivity apps by integrating many of their functions into one hub.

[gallery ids="1854310,1854311,1854309"]

“We know the market is heavily saturated with great unicorns, but many companies need multiple collaboration apps and there is nothing that seamlessly combines them, so users don’t have to go back and forth between two platforms,” Lee tells TechCrunch. Many employees rely on Slack or Microsoft Teams to chat with one another, on top of several project management apps, like Asana, Jira, Monday and Confluence, and email to communicate with people at other companies (Lee points to a M.io report that found most businesses use at least two messaging apps and four to seven collaboration tools).

Lee says he used Slack for more than five years and during that time, his teammates added integrations from Asana, Monday, GSuite and Office365, but were unsatisfied with how they worked.

“All we could do with the integrations was receive mostly text-based notifications and there were also too many overlapping features,” he says. “We realized that working with multiple environments reduced team productivity and increased communication overhead.” In very large organizations, teams or departments sometimes use different messaging and collaboration apps, creating yet more friction.

Swit’s goal is to covers all those needs in one app. It comes with integrated Kanban task management, calendars and Gantt charts and at the end of this year about 20 to 30 bots and apps will be available in its marketplace. Swit’s pricing tier currently has free and standard tiers, with a premium tier for enterprise customers planned for fall. The premium version will have full integration with Office365 and GSuite, allowing users to drag-and-drop emails into panels or convert them into trackable tasks.

While being a late-mover gives Swit certain advantages, it also means it must convince users to switch from their current apps, which is always a challenge when it comes to attracting enterprise clients. But Lee is optimistic. After seeing a demo, he says 91 percent of potential users registered on Swit, with more than 75 percent continuing to use it every day. Many of them used Asana or Monday before, but switched to Swit because they wanted to more easily communicate with teammates while planning tasks. Some are also gradually transitioning over from Slack to Swit for all their messaging (Swit recently released a Slack migration tool that enables teams to move over channels, workspaces and attachments. Migration tools for Asana, Trello and Jira are also planned).

In addition to “freedom from integrations,” Lee says Swit’s competitive advantages include being developed from the start for small businesses as well as large enterprises that still frequently rely on email to communicate across different departments or locations. Another differentiator is that all of Swit’s functions work on both desktop and mobile, which not all integrations in other collaboration apps can.

“That means if people integrate multiple apps into a desktop app or web browser, they might not be able to use them on mobile. So if they are looking for data, they have to search app by app, channel by channel, product by product, so data and information is scattered everywhere, hair on fire,” Lee says. “We provide one centralized command center for team collaboration without losing context and that is one of our biggest sources of customer satisfaction.”
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