Year: 2020

Google One, Google’s subscription program for buying additional storage and live support, is getting an update today that will bring free phone backups for Android and iOS devices to anybody who installs the app — even if they don’t have a paid membership. The catch: while the feature is free, the backups count against your free Google storage allowance of 15GB. If you need more you need — you guessed it — a Google One membership to buy more storage or delete data you no longer need. Paid memberships start at $1.99/month for 100GB.

Image Credits: Google

Last year, paid members already got access to this feature on Android, which stores your texts, contacts, apps, photos and videos in Google’s cloud. The “free” backups are now available to Android users. iOS users will get access to it once the Google One app rolls out on iOS in the near future.

Image Credits: Google

With this update, Google is also introducing a new storage manager tool in Google One, which is available in the app and on the web, and which allows you to delete files and backups as needed. The tool works across Google properties and lets you find emails with very large attachments or large files in your Google Drive storage, for example.

With this free backup feature, Google is clearly trying to get more people onto Google One. The free 15GB storage limit is pretty easy to hit, after all (and that’s for your overall storage on Google, including Gmail and other services) and paying $1.99 for 100GB isn’t exactly a major expense, especially if you are already part of the Google ecosystem and use apps like Google Photos already.

When founders start fundraising is as important as how they make their pitch to investors.

Timing matters and it’s more complicated than founders might realize, but it’s not just about picking the right month or time of day. Finding the right time to fundraise requires a micro- and macro-level strategy, according to Jake Saper of Emergence Capital, who joined TechCrunch’s virtual Early Stage event last week.

“There are really two angles to think about,” Saper said. The first is the macro perspective that takes into account the general flow of deals in the industry. Then there’s the micro timing that is specific — and different — for every startup, he added.

While Saper was particularly focused on giving advice to startup founders who have already raised a seed round and are preparing to raise a Series A, he said that most of his guidance can be applied to companies at a variety of funding stages. Let’s get started with the basics.

Peak pitch deck

The reality is that founders fundraise in all times of the year. However, there are certain times of the year when investors are more actively reviewing pitch decks.

January and February, followed by September, are the most active months for investors, based on data from DocSend that measured visits per pitch deck sent out by entrepreneurs each month.

Image Credits: Jake Saper/Emergence Capital

This fits with Emergence’s anecdotal evidence. The firm sees founders who spend a lot of December preparing for a big launch or fundraise in January and February, Saper said. By the time founders begin sending decks out in January, VCs are back from holiday vacations or other tech-related events, like CES. The same rhythm begins in summer with founders using these months to prep for fundraising in the fall.

While this is a common time to pitch VCs, keep in mind that you’re also fighting for their attention, Saper said.

Walmart is expanding its use of voice technology. The company announced today its taking its employee assistance voice technology dubbed “Ask Sam” and making it available to associates at over 5,000 Walmart stores nationwide. The tool allows Walmart employees to look up prices, access store maps, find products, view sales information, check email, and more. In recent months, Ask Sam has also been used to access COVID-19 information, including the latest guidelines, guidance and safety videos.

“Ask Sam” was initially developed for use in Walmart-owned “Sam’s Club” stores, where it rolled out across the U.S. in 2019. Because of its use of voice tech, Ask Sam can speed up the time it takes to get to information versus typing a query on the small screen. This allows employees to better engage with customers instead of spending time on their device looking for information.

In the COVID-19 era, the tool offers another perk — it’s easier to use a voice app when you’re wearing gloves.

In addition to common functions like price lookups and product locators, Ask Sam can also help employees with printing, email, or viewing staff birthdays or other events. An included Emergency Alert feature allows managers to quickly and efficiently alert all employees of emergency situations, whether that’s a lockdown order requiring them to remain in the store or an in-store emergency that requires everyone to leave the stores.

The voice assistance technology was built using machine learning techniques, which means it gets smarter and more accurate over time, as it’s used. In addition, a team manually reviews the questions being asked to help find other patterns and trends the tech may have missed, like top searched-items.

This is not the retailer’s first experiments in use voice technology. In addition to the Ask Sam product’s earlier launch within Sam’s Club stores, Walmart itself also partnered with Google last year on voice-ordering across Google Assistant-powered platforms, in a bid to counter Amazon’s advances with Alexa in the home. And three years ago, Walmart had worked with Google on voice-based shopping on Google Home devices before Google Express shut down.

Walmart has not said whether it would create a version of Ask Sam technology that would aim to serve retail customers. But given that the product is now capable of answering questions that customers want to know too — like where to find an item or how much it costs — it makes sense that the retailer would expand the offering in the future.

Time to get your binge on at Disrupt 2020, startup fans. Tune in and engage September 14-18 — that’s five days of non-stop opportunity to expand your network, learn the latest tech and investment trends, exhibit your startup, pump up your portfolio and grow your business.

If you want to get the best bang for your buck, listen up. Early-bird pricing evaporates in just three days. Buy your pass before the deadline expires on July 31 at 11:59 p.m. PT, and you can save up to $300.

Thousands of people from around the world attend Disrupt because it’s the place where startup magic happens. You never know who you’ll meet or where a chance introduction might lead. But don’t take our word for it. Listen to your peers.

“Going to Disrupt introduced me to engineers and new technologies I never would have been exposed to in Tennessee. I met manufacturing experts from India, Costa Rica and Korea who talked to me about materials to make a better product for less money. The connections I made were unreal.” — Felicia Jackson, inventor and founder of CPRWrap.

“Disrupt gave our company and technology invaluable exposure to potential customers and partners that we would not have met otherwise. A company that does $15 billion in annual sales thinks our tech is a fit for their ecosystem, and we’re excited to continue building that relationship.” — Joel Neidig, founder of SIMBA Chain.

Navigating a 100% virtual Disrupt is a new experience for all of us, but we have the right tools ready to help you find, connect and meet with the people who align with your interests and business goals. The Disrupt online platform provides an interactive window to the programming across all the Disrupt stages — speakers, panel discussions, interviews, breakouts and Q&A sessions.

CrunchMatch, our AI-powered networking platform, boasts an upgraded algorithm for faster, more precise matching. Simply log in and start expanding your business opportunities when the platform opens next week. Use it to explore hundreds of startups from around the world in Digital Startup Alley, schedule 1:1 video calls to meet prospective customers, pitch investors, or recruit new talent.

Get ready to binge on the non-stop opportunity at Disrupt 2020, and don’t miss out on serious savings. The early-bird pricing disappears in just three days. Buy your pass before 11:59 p.m. (PT) on July 31 and save up to $300.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Years after Daphne Koller left academia to pursue its reinvention with Coursera, circumstances have conspired to return her to a passion left by the wayside. Big data, machine learning and biology are suddenly in syzygy and Koller is intent on making the most of it with her new company, Insitro — and telling us all about it at Disrupt SF 2020.

Koller was working on applying machine learning techniques to biology as early as 2000 during her tenure at Stanford. But the concept was hardly the household word it is today; The ML techniques we’ve come to rely on in practically every domain were then quite primitive by comparison, yet to many a forward-thinking mind clearly a tool with immense promise.

Leaving in 2012 to join Andrew Ng in founding one of the original MOOC platforms, Coursera, Koller temporarily left behind the world of computational biology. Four years later, however, she left Coursera to head up computing efforts at Google’s health R&D arm, Calico. Her work here clearly inspired to go her own way in 2018 and — with the blessing of GV and others to the tune of $100M — found Insitro.

The cost of developing new drugs can reach into the billions, making it impractical for pharmaceutical companies to pursue them in cases where the population affected by the treated condition is not large enough. The cost of drug development must drop, and Koller joined others in believing that data was the key.

These pharmaceutical companies have amassed enormous databases from human testing of drug candidates and other processes, but have been unable to effectively leverage them. Insitro aims to change that.

“We’re now at a moment in history where a confluence of technologies emerged all at around the same time to allow really large and interesting and disease-relevant data sets to be produced in biology,” said Koller at a talk hosted by TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos last year.

“In parallel, we see on the machine learning side… technologies that are able to make sense of that data and come up with novel insights that can hopefully cure disease. We’re in the business of actually building data for the sole purpose of training machine learning models… what we think of as little crystal balls that would allow you to avoid doing experiments that are complex or even impossible.”

The resulting combination of “in vitro” (i.e. in the lab) and “in silico” (in computer) techniques they call insitro — not good latin, but nevertheless perhaps the new reigning paradigm in this field.

With a number of partnerships and studies ongoing and a staggering $143M Series B raised just this May, Insitro is going strong and Koller will no doubt have a lot to say about it at our all-online Disrupt SF 2020.

We hope you can join us at Disrupt online this September 14-18. Get a front-row seat with your Digital Pro Pass for just $245 or with a Digital Startup Alley Exhibitor Package. Prices increase today, so grab your tickets today!

The COVID-19 pandemic’s continued impact on Spotify’s business was apparent in the results of the company’s Q2 2020 earnings today. On some fronts, Spotify had good news. As more users turned to streaming services to keep themselves entertained while social distancing, Spotify grew its active monthly users by 29% to reach 299 million in the quarter. Its paid subscriber growth also topped Wall St. expectations with 138 million paid users, versus estimates of 136.4 million. However, the pandemic took a negative toll on Spotify’s advertising business, with ad revenue down 21% year-over-year to €131 million in Q2.

Spotify’s Premium subscriptions, which still account for the majority (~90%) of its revenues, grew by 17% to reach €1.76 billion in the quarter. The company attributed this growth to a range of factors, including growth in more expensive Family Plan subscriptions and its new Duo option for two users, as well as the expansion of those plans to new markets, like Russia.

Meanwhile, the company touted that users’ listening hours are also now returning to levels near what they were before the COVID-19 health crisis.

In the first quarter, the pandemic had initially led to declines in daily active users and listening hours as consumers coped with their sudden lifestyle changes,. like working from home and homeschooling children. Spotify today said that as of June 30, global consumption hours have since recovered to “pre-COVID levels” in all markets except Latin America, which is still around 6% below peak levels prior to the global health crisis.

This recovery in listening hours was led by those areas where the COVID-19 spread is slowing, including the E.U. and Asia-Pacific regions, the company noted. Spotify is also now seeing growth in other areas where listening had slowed due to government lockdowns and the work-from-home shift, like in-car listening. This is now less than 10% below pre-COVID levels, up from a 50% decline at its lowest point in April.

On the downside, Spotify’s ad revenue suffered in the quarter due to an overall more conservative market than before the COVID crisis — a trend the company expects to continue throughout the year. This drove Spotify to miss on revenue expectations in the quarter. The company reported revenue growth of 13% to 1.89 billion euros, but this fell short of analyst estimates of 1.93 billion.

“Last quarter we noted a marked deceleration in sales brought on by the global health crisis where the last three weeks in March were down more than 20% relative to our forecast,” the company said in its shareholder letter. “Performance continued to lag our expectations through April and May, but we significantly outperformed expectations in the month of June. [Quarter to date] through May, ad-supported revenues were down 25% year-over-year, but performance in the month of June showed significant improvement and was only down 12% year-over year.”

Though advertising is not a main revenue driver at this time, it’s still a key part of Spotify’s strategy with regard to its podcasting business. The company is investing heavily in bringing in new and exclusive deals, including recently Kim Kardashian West, Joe Rogan, Michelle Obama, DC & Warner Bros., TikTok star Addison Rae, and others. And it’s willing to spend — Joe Rogan’s deal reportedly cost the company more than $100 million, for instance.

It’s also selling its own podcast ads and building out other tools for podcast creation, editing, and distribution as part of its investment in this space. For instance, Spotify is developing new ad technology aimed at better monetizing podcasts, like its latest test of in-app offers, which will allow users to view and use coupon codes and other offers made in audio ads at any time from the Spotify app.

More recently, the company invested in video podcasts as well. Spotify also says its Streaming Ad Insertion technology will also become more broadly available to U.S. advertisers this summer and announced a $20 million ad partnership with Omnicom Media Group, which Spotify claims is the largest, global, strategic podcast ad partnership to date.

Overall, Spotify said its podcasting advertising outperformed in the quarter and is continuing into July.

For some time now, Bixby hasn’t been much of a talking point for Samsung. It seems that the smart assistant has lost its luster even for the company that once touted it as the centerpiece of its massive hardware ecosystem. And now, according to a new report, Samsung is consider dropping the smart assistant from its mobile devices altogether.

Word comes from Reuters this week, citing a “correspondence.” Details are vague, and Samsung is unsurprisingly pushing back on the suggestion that it’s dramatically scaling back its commitment to Bixby. The hardware powerhouse denies the suggestion that it’s going to be dropping the software and/or its Galaxy Store store from its own devices.

A spokesperson tells TechCrunch, “Samsung remains committed to our own ecosystem and services. At the same time, Samsung closely works with Google and other partners to offer the best mobile experiences for our users.” They add, more specifically, “Samsung will continue to offer Bixby and Galaxy Store on its devices. Both services are an important part of the Galaxy ecosystem.”

Per the report, the company is considering a rev-share deal that would put Google’s Assistant, search and Play Store in more prominent positions on its devices. It’s a deal that Google has been long been pushing for. And understandably so. Samsung currently controls the largest Android market share — and for that matter, the largest market share period, with 21.2% of total global shipments, per figures from IDC.

Huawei is at a closeish number two with 17.8%, but we all know how that situation is going for Google at the moment. Between Samsung and Huawei, we’re talking well over a third of the total global smartphone market.

As for what’s in it for Samsung, well, it’s probably more about what’s not in it for Bixby. Thus far the assistant’s main selling point is its relative versatility, is it also appears on things like washing machines. Of course, thus far, it remains almost exclusively the domain of Samsung’s own devices.

The publicl indifference toward Bixby is not for lack of trying. Samsung has long included a devoted Bixby button on its Galaxy devices — though the company began to allow users to disable that functionality back in 2017. It’s also not for lack of spending. Samsung has shelled out a lot to enhance the assistant with the acquisition, and the Bixby roadmap has offered plenty of promise.

Next week’s Unpacked event should offer some key insight into where the company’s head is, with regards to Bixby these days.

Those of us who work in technology should always be asking ourselves, “Who we are really building for?” Do we design products to make ourselves more comfortable, or do we innovate to be the change in the world we want to see? One group perennially left out of tech conversations — moved out of sight and out of mind — is the 2.3 million people in the U.S. prison system. As tech becomes such a critical driver of progress in the world, we should be building products that improve inmates’ lives and help them reintegrate into society without the risk of relapse.

I recently stumbled across an essay I wrote following my work at the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, analyzing Norway’s humane prison systems and asking, “Could they work here?” These prisons are designed to replicate life outside their walls. They incorporate features like yoga classes and recording studios. They give inmates a chance to pursue higher education so that they can be meaningfully employed when they reenter the outside world. Anyone who has seen the documentary 13th knows that American prisons are very different. Why?

(Quick disclaimer: This is a fraught and emotional topic. It is hard to appreciate the complexity of incarceration and recidivism in a 1,000-word op-ed. I appreciate the input and forbearance of those with different perspectives.)

Writ-large, the corrections system has five goals:

1. Punish offenders.
2. Incapacitate them (keep them off the streets).
3. Deter crime.
4. Repay society.
5. Rehabilitate people so that they don’t commit more crimes.

But sadly, per criminologist Bob Cameron, “Americans want their prisoners punished first and rehabilitated second.”

This is why Norway has a recidivism rate of 20% while the U.S. rate hovers at around 75%. That is staggering. Three out of every four former inmates is at-risk of committing a crime after leaving prison. This is a huge deadweight loss for society. How much lower could that rate be if we invested in prisoners’ potential? If we gave them the tools to seamlessly reenter the world? Is there a role for private, for-profit enterprises here, and if so, how could technology be used to help people exit the corrections system permanently?

What’s being done today

Most tech coverage just focuses on tools used to predict recidivism and keep past offenders, many of whom are trying to reform their lives, behind bars. But there are many startups building products to help them successfully move on.

New York-based APDS recently raised a $5 million Series B to provide tablets that inmates can use for learning purposes. The tablets are now in-use in 88 correctional facilities in 17 states. Inmates can use the software to learn English, get their GEDs or learn entrepreneurship. North Carolina startup Pokket helps inmates plan for life outside of prison in the six months leading up to their release date.

Mission: Launch is an organization that hosts demo days and hackathons for inmates. They teach financial literacy, entrepreneurship and community engagement. Hackathon participants so far have built an app to convert online messages from friends and family into written postcards for inmates (who are shut off from social media) and an app to help people leaving the corrections system to seal their records so that they can get hired again.

Maintaining connections with friends and loved ones outside of prison makes a significant difference when it comes to reentering society. Technology company Securus recently announced free messaging on its 290,000 tablets so that inmates can communicate with relatives without having to pay exorbitant fees. Prison Voicemail in the U.K. provides a cheap phone service that families can pay. In all cases when it comes to implementing technology to reduce recidivism, the financial burden should not fall on inmates, a captive population with limited agency and earning potential.

Prison Scholars, a nonprofit founded by a former inmate, teaches entrepreneurship to inmates and helps them create post-incarceration business plans. They estimate that inmates who receive education are 43% less likely to return to prison, an implied ROI of $18.36 to society for every dollar invested. Defy Ventures boasts of 82% employment for program graduates and a 7.2% recidivism rate. Other programs to teach digital literacy and coding, which make resources like textbooks and Wikipedia available offline, have found similar success.

There are many similar examples of tech and education directly lowering recidivism. But why stop here? What else could tech do to make an impact?

What we could still do

The U.S. spends $80 billion to keep inmates behind bars. This creates an enormous financial incentive for taxpayers to reduce recidivism. Two related questions need to be addressed: Can tech companies actually make money on products to improve the lives of those in the prison system? And should they?

To answer the first question — and at the risk of sounding crass — a very simplified business model could look like this: State governments pay companies somewhere between $0 and the cost of keeping an inmate in jail for one year (~$81,000) for each inmate who successfully uses an educational product to prep for leaving prison.

The payment could be split across multiple years, so that the longer someone is able to go without reoffending, the more the provider makes. If taxpayers paid tech providers just 50% of the cost to house an inmate for one year, the tech company would make a per-user LTV of over $40,000 (!). This kind of financial incentive could easily attract more talented entrepreneurs to the goal of improving the lives of people in the corrections system. (The opposite of the for-profit prison business model, which creates a perverse incentive to maintain a constant prison population.)

The question of whether it is morally permissible for for-profit tech companies to sell products built for this demographic is a more difficult one. While there is no right answer, there are guidelines that companies could follow:

1. Don’t charge inmates or their families. Taxpayers have the largest financial incentive to reduce recidivism — and all the associated costs of the prison — so it is to state corrections budgets that tech companies should look for revenue opportunities.
2. No Goodhart’s law or perverse incentives. Products have to be designed and sold based on principles, e.g., “help former inmates reintegrate into society and live full lives,” and not numeric targets, e.g., “keep former inmates from committing a felony within three years of leaving prison.” Numbers-based targets can always be gamed. Force companies to keep the end-goal in mind of giving people the tools to improve their lives.
3. Collect user feedback. Award contracts only to the companies with high user affinity. Unlike standard consumers, inmates experience a principal/agent problem: The purchaser of the services (taxpayers) is not the user (the inmate). States should require tech providers to collect anonymous feedback from the users of their products, and only award contracts to those that get the highest ratings.
4. Your product’s job-to-do does not end when the sentence does. If products built to reduce recidivism are truly successful, it means that the providers of those products will be slowly eliminating their own markets as prison populations go down. These products should be built not just to get people out of prison, but to help them build meaningful lives for the years after they leave.

There are so, so many great products yet to be built for this demographic. A LinkedIn or Craigslist Jobs equivalent populated by the employers who hire former inmates. Live-streamed religious services so that inmates can continue to participate in their community faith organizations. Nonvocational hobby education platforms. Limited versions of MasterClass or Udemy or Coursera . Closed-loop online games.

Lastly — and needless to say — tech doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface when it comes to righting the wrongs of our corrections system. The reinstatement of voting rights, employment on-ramps and limits to background checks, the elimination of for-profit private prisons, adjustments to prison wages that tacitly amount to indentured servitude … the list of things we could improve is long. But tech can still play a critical role in improving the lives of fellow citizens in the corrections system.

Mohandas Gandhi quipped that “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” Almost one-third of Americans have some criminal history. The U.S. accounts for 25% of the world’s prison population. Let’s stop ignoring this demographic and build tools that really make the world better for those who need it most.

2020 has been all but normal. For businesses and brands. For innovation. For people.

The trajectory of business growth strategies, travel plans and lives have been drastically altered due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a global economic downturn with supply chain and market issues, and a fight for equality in the Black Lives Matter movement — amongst all that complicated lives and businesses already.

One of the biggest stories in emerging technology is the growth of different types of voice assistants:

• Niche assistants such as Aider that provide back-office support.
• Branded in-house assistants such as those offered by BBC and Snapchat.
• White-label solutions such as Houndify that provide lots of capabilities and configurable tool sets.

With so many assistants proliferating globally, voice will become a commodity like a website or an app. And that’s not a bad thing — at least in the name of progress. It will soon (read: over the next couple years) become table stakes for a business to have voice as an interaction channel for a lovable experience that users expect. Consider that feeling you get when you realize a business doesn’t have a website: It makes you question its validity and reputation for quality. Voice isn’t quite there yet, but it’s moving in that direction.

Voice assistant adoption and usage are still on the rise

Adoption of any new technology is key. A key inhibitor of technology is often distribution, but this has not been the case with voice. Apple, Google, and Baidu have reported hundreds of millions of devices using voice, and Amazon has 200 million users. Amazon has a slightly more difficult job since they’re not in the smartphone market, which allows for greater voice assistant distribution for Apple and Google.

Image Credits: Mark Persaud

But are people using devices? Google said recently there are 500 million monthly active users of Google Assistant. Not far behind are active Apple users with 375 million. Large numbers of people are using voice assistants, not just owning them. That’s a sign of technology gaining momentum — the technology is at a price point and within digital and personal ecosystems that make it right for user adoption. The pandemic has only exacerbated the use as Edison reported between March and April — a peak time for sheltering in place across the U.S.

No doubt about it, home fitness is hot. The category had already been gaining considerable traction in recent years and months, but the ongoing pandemic has undoubtedly accelerated interest by orders of magnitude. And understandably so. After all, while some businesses have begun reopening in some locations, gyms are still a big red flag, with one of the highest potential transmission risks of any communal space.

This morning Tempo announced a healthy $60 million Series B, led by Norwest Venture Partners and General Catalyst, along with a repeat investors Founders Fund, Signal Fire, DCM, Y Combinator and Bling Capital.

The news comes almost exactly a month after Mirror, one of the San Francisco-based company’s chief competitors, was acquired by fitness brand Lululemon for $500 million. Also worth noting here is the continued success of Peloton, whose streaming fitness classes have continued to catapult the home fitness equipment maker. A number of other startups have announced raises in recent weeks, while stalwarts like Technogym have introduced their own home streaming services.

Image Credits: Tempo

The Tempo device runs ~$2,000, plus a $39 monthly membership to its content, which includes strength, cardio and various other exercises as either live streams or on-demand content. Notably, the company says it’s on track to hit a $100 million run rate by year’s end, owing in part to sales that have jumped 500% since the company opened up pre-orders this February (without disclosing actual unit sales).

That’s due, no doubt, to word of mouth, but the company certainly isn’t discounting the role of COVID-19 in its fast success. “With tens of millions unable to go to the gym or attend classes in person, consumers’ fitness needs have evolved,” the company notes in a press release. “App-based services lack the necessary equipment to be effective for most people, while previous smart devices often do little more than stream videos without two-way guidance.”