Year: 2020

The next big media streaming service arrives tomorrow, as NBCUniversal launches Peacock.

The service has already been available to parent company Comcast’s Xfinity X1 and Flex cable customers since April, but tomorrow marks the launch to a general audience, with anyone in the United States able to sign up and access Peacock on a range of devices including iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, Android and Android TV devices, Chromecast, Xbox One, Vizion SmartCast TVs and LG SmartTVs.

Peacock will also launch on Sony’s PlayStation 4 on July 20 — but as with WarnerMedia’s HBO Max, there does yet not appear to be an agreement to bring the service to Amazon’s Fire TV or Roku.

Like most streaming services, Peacock will combine original programming with a library of existing content, including shows like “30 Rock,” “Parks and Recreation,” “Friday Night Lights” and “Saturday Night Live,” as well as movies like “Jurassic Park,” “The Bourne Identity/Supremacy/Ultimatum” and classic Universal horror.

When executives unveiled the service at an event in January, NBCUniversal Chairman Steve Burke argued that “affordability will be critical as more subscriptions are launched.” That’s why there’s a free, ad-supported tier — something that Burke said NBCUniversal still benefits from (now that Disney has taken operational control of Hulu) because it can control the consumer experience and sell its own ads.

The company says the free tier will include more than 13,000 hours of content, including older shows and movies, as well as new episodes of current shows like “This is Us” and “The Blacklist,” one week after they air. There will also be live sports including four exclusive Premier League soccer matches, coverage of the U.S. Open, an NFL Wild Card Playoff Game and eventually, events from the Tokyo and Beijing Olympics. (Peacock’s launch was supposed to coincidence with the Tokyo Olympics, until they were postponed due to the pandemic.)

The free version will also include sample episodes of Peacock Originals like “Brave New World” and the upcoming reboots of “Battlestar Galactica,” “Punky Brewster” and “Saved by the Bell,” but to get full access you’ll need to pay $4.99 per month to get Peacock Premium, or $9.99 per month to go ad free. As part of today’s announcement, NBCUniversal is also announcing launch dates for several Peacock Originals — “A.P. Bio” premieres September 3, “Departure” premieres September 17, “Five Bedrooms” premieres August 17 and “Hitmen” premieres September 3.

The premium tier includes 20,000 hours of content, with next-day access to current shows and the ability to watch new episodes of “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “Late Night With Seth Meyers” at 8pm Eastern, before they air on linear TV.

I’ve had a chance to try the service out for myself. On one level, the interface of any one streamer is pretty similar to the others, with the usual grid of show and movie icons. (Even Hulu recently redesigned to become a bit more like Netflix.) But Peacock offers a few different approaches to browsing, with curated channels that air in linear fashion and a Trending section with news, sports and entertainment clips. In general, there’s a bigger emphasis on linear and live TV experience, including news and sports, rather than being purely on-demand like Netflix.

Is there room for another streaming service? Although streaming viewership has boomed during the pandemic, new services have sometimes struggled, with Quibi executive Jeffrey Katzenberg blaming coronavirus for the app’s disappointing launch, while analysts criticized the HBO Max launch as “chaotic.” Plus, there’s the whole question of when production on original programming can resume.

Still, the NBCUniversal library could be a real draw. And it’s hard to argue with the price.

Recurrency, a member of the Summer 2020 Y Combinator cohort, was started by a 21 year old just out of college. He decided to take on a highly established market that is led by giants like SAP, Infor, Oracle and Microsoft, but instead of taking a highly complex area of enterprise software in one big bite, he is starting by helping wholesale businesses.

Sole founder and company CEO Sam Oshay just graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a dual degree that straddled engineering and business, before joining the summer batch. Oshay is bringing a modern twist to ERP by using machine learning to drive more data-driven decision making.

“What makes us different from other ERPs like SAP, Infor and Evercore is that we can tell the user something that they don’t already know.” He says these traditional ERPs are basically data entry systems. For example, you could enter a pricing list, but you can’t do anything with it in terms of predictions.

“We can scan historical data and make pricing recommendations and predictions. So we are an ERP that not only does data analysis, but also imports external data and matches it to internal data to make recommendations and predictions,” Oshay explained.

While he doesn’t expect to remain confined to just the wholesale side of the business, it makes sense that he started with it because his family has a history of running these kinds of businesses. In fact, his grandfather immigrated to the U.S. after World War II and started a hardware wholesale business that his uncle still runs today. His dad started his own business selling wholesale shipping supplies, and he grew up in the family business, giving him some insight that most recent college grads probably wouldn’t have.

“I learned about the wholesale business at a very deep level. And what I observed is that so many of the issues with my dad’s business came down to issues with his ERP system. It occurred to me that if someone were to build an ERP extension or a better ERP, they could unlock so much of the value that is currently locked inside these legacy systems,” he said.

So he did what good entrepreneurs do, and began building it. For starters, his system plugs into legacy systems like SAP or NetSuite, but the plan is to build a better ERP, one step at a time. For now, it’s about wholesale, but he has a much broader vision for his company.

He originally applied to YC during the Fall 2019 semester of his junior year, and was admitted to the winter batch, but deferred to the Summer 2020 group to complete his studies. He spent his remaining time at UPenn sprinting to early graduation, taking 10 classes to come close to finishing his studies (with just a dissertation standing between him and his degree).

With this batch being delivered remotely, he says that the YC team has taken that into account and is still offering a meaningful experience for the summer group. “All of the events that YC would normally be doing are still happening, just remotely. And to my knowledge, some of the events we’re doing are designed specifically for this weird set of circumstances. The YC team has put quite a bit of thought into making this batch meaningful and I think they’ve succeeded,” he said.

While the pandemic has created new challenges for an early-stage business, he says that in some ways it’s helped him focus better. Instead of going out with friends, he’s home with his head down working on his company with little distraction.

As you would expect, it’s early days for the product, but he has three customers who are operational and two more in the implementation phase. He also has two employees so far, a front end and back end engineer.

For now, he’s going to continue building his product and his business, and he sees the pandemic as a time when businesses might be more open to changing a system like a legacy ERP. “If they want to try something new, and you can make it easier for them to try that, I’ve found that’s a place where you can make a sale,” he said.

TechCrunch’s first Early Stage event goes down in exactly one week, and we’re pretty freakin’ amped about it!

Early Stage is unique in that it’s more of an entrepreneurial bootcamp, smashed into a two-day virtual format, than a traditional conference. Experts from across the industry will give presentations on a specific topic, from How To Draw Up Your First Contracts (James Alonso and Adam Zagaris) to How to Get People Obsessed with your Brand (Emily Heyward), and attendees will be able to participate in a live Q&A following each presentation.

We’ll also have several ‘main stage’ chats that are available to all attendees, including fireside chats with founders Dylan Field (Figma) and Mariam Naficy (Minted.com) and investors James Buckhouse and Jess Lee (Sequoia) and Reid Hoffman and Sarah Guo (Greylock).

There are upwards of 35 breakout sessions happening concurrently over the two days of the event. If you’re an early stage founder, you really can’t miss it.

Alongside core competencies like recruiting, brand building, PR, legal, and growth marketing, we’ll also have a great many breakout sessions focused on early stage fundraising.

Take a look:

How to get your first yes with Cyan Banister

Fundraising can be a bit like dominoes. Once you get one investor on board, it’s much easier to bring others along for the ride. But getting that first ‘yes’ can be the most difficult part. Hear the do’s and don’ts of hyper early stage fundraising from Cyan Banister, seed-stage investor and partner at Founders Fund.

How to avoid 1000 landmines with Garry Tan

When you’re starting your company, there are thousands of small, avoidable mistakes that can turn success into failure. Learn how to navigate around those and maximize your chance of success with key learnings from Garry Tan, founder and managing partner at Initialized Capital.

How to get your company acquired, not sold with Priti Choksi

Learn how to think about M&A as a possible exit opportunity from a former Facebook corporate development executive turned investor. Understand what acquirers are looking for and what questions you should be asking. Create optionality for yourself as you build and grow your company.

Think like a PM for VC pitch success with Lo Toney

Your pitchdeck is not just a reflection of your business, it’s a product unto itself. Your startup’s success, and avoiding the end of your runway, depends on the conversion rate of that product. Hear from Plexo Capital founding partner Lo Toney about how thinking like a PM when crafting your pitch deck can produce outstanding results.

How and when to take debt with Josh Brody

As tech takes over more and more industries, debt is becoming not only a viable option for some startups, but, in some cases, an optimal financing path. Hear from WTI Venture Partner Josh Brody on how to evaluate equity vs. debt, the right and wrong ways to take on debt, and how to pick a lender that understands and embraces the inherent risks associated with lending to early stage businesses.

The business of bootstrapping with Arun Mathew and Vlad Magdalin

Webflow was bootstrapped and profitable for seven years before co-founder and CEO, Vlad Magdalin trusted Accel’s Arun Mathew as their first institutional investor. Hear how Magdalin designed a sustainable, high-growth business without institutional investment, and the surprising factors that led him to take VC investment.

When it comes to fundraising, timing is everything with Jake Saper

There are some shockingly common timing mistakes founders make that can turn an otherwise successful fundraise into a failure. We’ll talk through how to avoid them and how to sequence efforts from the time you close your seed to ensure you find the right partner (at the right price!) for Series A and beyond.

SaaS fundraising and growth with Saam Motamedi

As a Partner at Greylock, Saam Motamedi invests in the next generation of enterprise software entrepreneurs at the seed and early stages, and is the first partner to entrepreneurs as they navigate product-market fit and go-to-market scale. He’ll share the three things enterprise founders should focus on to successfully get their early stage companies to product market fit, and why making early stage investments often comes down to betting on the founding team.

How to get into Y Combinator with Dalton Caldwell

The seed-stage venture firm has come to form its own startup economy over the years, with its network of companies and founders interconnecting across the tech industry and beyond. Find out how Y Combinator works today, and how you can become a part of it, in this discussion with head of admissions Dalton Caldwell.

How to sell an idea when you don’t have a product with Charles Hudson

It takes money to make money. But first, you must get the money on board. Hear from seed-stage investor Charles Hudson about what it takes to convert investors when all you have to show is a great idea and an understanding of the market.

How to structure your fintech startup with Rebecca Lynn

With the disintermediation of banks, and financial services more broadly, startups that are well structured can really have major advantages entering those markets. From benchmarking growth metrics that matter to navigating regulatory changes, learn more about Canvas Ventures partner Rebecca Lynn’s approach towards evaluating founding teams and equipping companies with what it takes to make the most of opportunities in fintech.

Seed funding tips and tricks with Jeff Clavier

There are now a thousand micro-VCs entrepreneurs can raise capital from, creating confusing market dynamics. Learn tips and tricks on fundraising from Uncork Capital’s Managing Partner, Jeff Clavier.

How to move fast and find the right VC investors with James Currier

Learn the right and wrong ways to find and approach the right investors for your startup. Discover the 6 elements VC’s look for that will make your process fast, in this lightning talk with James Currier, investor in over 130 startups and Managing Partner at NFX Capital.

And that’s just fundraising. We have dozens of other sessions focused on marketing and operations. The event goes down July 21 and 22.

You can grab your ticket to TC Early Stage right now; find more details on our event page.

Amazon today introduced the latest in smart store tech with the introduction of the Amazon Dash Cart, a grocery store shopping cart that identifies then charges you for the items you place inside its basket. The cart will first be made available at the Amazon grocery store opening in Woodland Hills, California later this year, the retailer says.

The cart today isn’t meant for your standard grocery shopping trip where you’re stocking up. Instead, Amazon explains, the smart cart can handle small-to-medium sized grocery trips of 2 bags or fewer.

This has to do with how the technology works to identify the items in the cart’s basket, it seems.

The Amazon Dash Cart uses a combination of computer vision algorithms and sensor fusion to identify the items in the cart, says Amazon. Then, when you exit through the Dash Cart lane in the store, sensors automatically identify the cart and your payment is processed using the credit card you have on file with your Amazon account.

To start using the cart, you’ll scan a QR code in the Amazon app with the reader on the cart. You then place your one or two bags in the cart and begin shopping. As you add items in the cart, you’ll need to wait to hear a beep. If the cart turns orange, it wasn’t able to read the item and you’ll need to try again.

In addition to the sensor tech, the cart has a screen at the top that allows customers to access their Alexa Shopping List and check things off, as well as view their current subtotal. The cart will also be equipped with coupon scanner where you can apply the coupons as you shop.

Based on the video Amazon provided (and very little specific detail), the cart does seem to require the product’s barcode to be visible. In one frame of the video, for example, the shopper uncovers the barcode with their finger before adding the item to the cart. The video also shows products with the barcode facing the shopper and the cart’s screen, when being loaded.

In another section, the video explains how to “add items without a barcode,” like produce. In this case, the shopper types in the PLU number on the screen and confirms the weight.

Amazon’s website doesn’t detail how barcode reading is involved, but says the cart is using “computer vision algorithms” and “sensor fusion.” That seems to imply the smart cart is the next step beyond Amazon’s existing technology, “Just Walk Out,” which is used across its Amazon Go stores. But with “Just Walk Out, the stores are using computer vision through camera-mounted systems alongside shelf sensor tech to identify when products are taken or returned to store shelves. The Dash Cart, meanwhile, will be tested at a regular grocery store — not an Amazon Go store.

While clearly the cart is not just a barcode scanner on wheels, Amazon’s website wasn’t being fully transparent about the technology’s use of barcode reading.

We also asked Amazon to further detail how its new technology works and were told that the cart does, in fact, “first look for a barcode to quickly identify the product.” However, if the barcode is obstructed — for example, by the customer’s hand — the computer vision algorithms will then try to identify the object instead.

Bringing Just Walk Out technology to a grocery store would be extremely challenging compared with an Amazon Go store, which is a convenience store in size. Grocery stores have more items the cart would need to be able to identify and new products become available all the time, as well.

Amazon announced in March it would begin selling its cashierless store technology to other retailers. Likely, it has similar plans for its smart cart, once the technology is tested and improved. Amazon declined to speak to its future plans, when asked.

 

 

Amazon this morning announced a partnership with Crossover Health to build worker healthcare facilities near its fulfillment centers. The plan is still in a pilot phase, as the commerce giant employs the services of Crossover, which builds clinics for corporate clients. The startup has built such facilities for Apple and Facebook, and was even rumored to be a potential target for an Apple acquisition a few years back.

Amazon’s first such Neighborhood Health Center  has opened in Texas’s Dallas-Fort Worth, potentially serving up to 20,000 employees, half of whom work for Amazon operations. The company says it plans to open 20 such centers in five cities for the initial phase, bringing the total potential coverage up to 115,000. The other cities are: Phoenix, Louisville, Detroit and California’s San Bernardino-Moreno Valley. If things go well, more locations will be added.

“Across the U.S., an increasing number of patients do not have easy access to a primary care physician and instead utilize emergency or urgent care options, which is not only more expensive for patients, but also overlooks important preventative care opportunities,” the company’s HR VP Darcie Henry said in a release, addressing some much larger systemic issues with healthcare in the United States. 

Resources have, of course, been even more strained across the country of late as the COVID-19 pandemic shows no sign of stopping more than four months in. As designated essential workers, Amazon warehouse employees have been particularly at risk. And while the company has taken great pains to discuss its response to the virus, it has come under fire from workers, political office holders and members of the media for its handling of COVID-19.

The UK government has confirmed a widely expected U-turn related to “high risk” 5G vendors linked to the Chinese state — attributing the policy shift to the US recently imposing tighter sanctions on Huawei’s access to its technologies.

UK digital minister Oliver Dowden told parliament the new policy will bar telcos from buying 5G kit from Huawei and ZTE to install in new network builds from the end of this year. While any of their kit that’s already been installed in UK 5G networks must be removed by 2027.

Although legislation to enable the enforcement of the policy has still to be laid before parliament and could face challenges from MPs who want to seek a more rapid removal of Huawei kit.

Yesterday telco BT warned against any overly rapid rip-out of existing Huawei kit, suggesting it could cause mobile network outages, generate security risks and further delay upgrades to the country’s fiber broadband network which the government included in its manifesto. BT CEO Philip Jansen had suggested an ideal timeframe of seven years to remove existing Huawei 5G kit so the government appears to have served up its best case scenario, while still piling additional cost on next-gen network builds.

Dowden conceded that the new policy will also delay the rollout of UK 5G networks but claimed the government is prioritizing security over economic considerations.

“Clearly since January the situation has changed. On the 15th of May the US Department of Commerce announced that new sanctions had been imposed against Huawei through changes to the foreign direct product rules. This was a significant material change and one that we have to take into consideration,” he told parliament.

“These sanctions are not the first attempt by the US to restrict Huawei’s ability to supply equipment to 5G networks. They are, however, the first to have potentially severe impacts on Huawei’s ability to supply new equipment in the United Kingdom. The new US measures restrict Huawei’s abilities to produce important products using US technology or software.”

Dowden said the National Cyber Security Center had reviewed the new US sanctions and “significantly” changed their security assessment as a result — saying the government would publish a summary of the advice that had led to the policy U-turn when challenged on the U-turn by the shadow digital minister.

“Given the uncertainty this creates around Huawei’s supply chain the UK can no longer be confident it will be able to guarantee the security of future Huawei 5G equipment affected by the change in US foreign direct product rules,” Dowden added.

A Telecoms Security Bill had been slated to be introduced before the summer recess but will now be delayed until autumn given the policy swerve.

In terms of costs and time associated with restricting and then ripping out Huawei kit from UK 5G networks, Dowden suggested it would add between two to three years more to 5G rollouts — and cost up to £2BN.

“We have not taken this decision lightly and I must be frank about the consequences for every constituency in this country,” he said. “This will delay our roll out of 5G. Our decisions in January had already set back that rollout by a year and cost up to a billion pounds. Today’s decision to ban the procurement of new Huawei 5G equipment from the end of this year will delay the rollout by a further year and will add up to half a billion pounds to costs.”

The additional set of requiring operators to rip out existing Huawei 5G kit by 2027 will entail “hundreds of millions of pounds” more to their costs.

“This will have real consequences for the connections on which all our connections relay,” he further cautioned, warning against that going any “faster and further” than the 2027 target — saying to do so would add “considerable and unnecessary” additional costs and delays.

“The shorter we make the timetable for removal the greater the risk of actual disruption to mobile networks,” he also said.

It’s a very significant change of government policy vs the package of restrictions announced in January when Boris Johnson’s government expressed confidence it could manage any risk associated with vendors with deep links to the Chinese state.

And Dowden faced a barrage of questions from opposition politicians about the “screeching U-turn” and the associated delays to the UK’s 5G network infrastructure from not having taken this decision six months earlier. 

Shadow digital minister Chi Onwurah said the government’s digital policy lay in tatters — and called for it to set up a cross-party taskforce to lead the infrastructure charge. “This entire saga has shown that the government cannot sort this mess out on their own,” she said. “We need a taskforce of industry representatives, academics, startups, regional government and regulators to develop a plan which delivers a UK [5G] network capability and security mobile network in the shortest possible timeframe.”

On government backbenches Dowden’s statement was more broadly welcomed. Although Johnson has faced significant internal opposition from a group of rebel MPs in his own party to his earlier Huawei policy so it remains to be seen whether they can be convinced to back the new package.

One rebel MP source, speaking to the Guardian, warned the fight is back on — saying they’ll table amendments to the telecoms security bill to further shrink the timeframe to rip out Huawei kit, including also for 3G and 4G, not just 5G.

On that issue of what’s to be done with kit from high risk vendors which is being used in existing non-5G networks, the government sought to slip in another delay today — with Dowden telling parliament the issue “needs to be looked at”, and announcing a “technical consultation with operators to understand their supply chain alternatives”.

“Given there is only one other appropriate scale vendor for full fiber equipment we are going to embark on a short technical consultation with operators to understand their supply chain alternatives. So that we can avoid unnecessary delays to our Gigabit ambitions and prevent significant resilience risks,” he said.

The technical consultation will determine government policy toward Huawei outside 5G networks, Dowden added.

The government has said before it’s taking steps to increase diversification in the supply chain around 5G network infrastructure kit. Dowden reiterated that line today, saying the UK is working with Five Eyes partners to try to accelerate diversification, while tempering the ambition by couching it as a global problem.

Over the longer term he said the UK wants to encourage and support operators to use multiple vendors per network as standard, though again he cautioned that the development of such open RAN networks will take time. In the nearer, medium term, he suggested other large scale vendors would be needed to step in — saying the government is already having technical discussions with alternative telecoms kit makers, including Samsung and NEC, about accessing the UK market to plug the gap opened up by the removal of Huawei equipment.

“We are already engaging extensively with operators and vendors and governments around the world about supporting and accelerating the process of diversification. We recognize that this is a global issue that requires international collaboration to deliver a lasting solution so we’re working with our Five Eyes partners and our friends around the world to bring together a coalition to deliver our shared goals,” he added.

We’ve reached out to Huawei for comment.

The UK government has confirmed a widely expected U-turn related to “high risk” 5G vendors linked to the Chinese state — attributing the policy shift to the US recently imposing tighter sanctions on Huawei’s access to its technologies.

UK digital minister Oliver Dowden told parliament the new policy will bar telcos from buying 5G kit from Huawei and ZTE to install in new network builds from the end of this year. While any of their kit that’s already been installed in UK 5G networks must be removed by 2027.

Although legislation to enable the enforcement of the policy has still to be laid before parliament and could face challenges from MPs who want to seek a more rapid removal of Huawei kit.

Yesterday telco BT warned against any overly rapid rip-out of existing Huawei kit, suggesting it could cause mobile network outages, generate security risks and further delay upgrades to the country’s fiber broadband network which the government included in its manifesto. BT CEO Philip Jansen had suggested an ideal timeframe of seven years to remove existing Huawei 5G kit so the government appears to have served up its best case scenario, while still piling additional cost on next-gen network builds.

Dowden conceded that the new policy will also delay the rollout of UK 5G networks but claimed the government is prioritizing security over economic considerations.

“Clearly since January the situation has changed. On the 15th of May the US Department of Commerce announced that new sanctions had been imposed against Huawei through changes to the foreign direct product rules. This was a significant material change and one that we have to take into consideration,” he told parliament.

“These sanctions are not the first attempt by the US to restrict Huawei’s ability to supply equipment to 5G networks. They are, however, the first to have potentially severe impacts on Huawei’s ability to supply new equipment in the United Kingdom. The new US measures restrict Huawei’s abilities to produce important products using US technology or software.”

Dowden said the National Cyber Security Center had reviewed the new US sanctions and “significantly” changed their security assessment as a result — saying the government would publish a summary of the advice that had led to the policy U-turn when challenged on the U-turn by the shadow digital minister.

“Given the uncertainty this creates around Huawei’s supply chain the UK can no longer be confident it will be able to guarantee the security of future Huawei 5G equipment affected by the change in US foreign direct product rules,” Dowden added.

A Telecoms Security Bill had been slated to be introduced before the summer recess but will now be delayed until autumn given the policy swerve.

In terms of costs and time associated with restricting and then ripping out Huawei kit from UK 5G networks, Dowden suggested it would add between two to three years more to 5G rollouts — and cost up to £2BN.

“We have not taken this decision lightly and I must be frank about the consequences for every constituency in this country,” he said. “This will delay our roll out of 5G. Our decisions in January had already set back that rollout by a year and cost up to a billion pounds. Today’s decision to ban the procurement of new Huawei 5G equipment from the end of this year will delay the rollout by a further year and will add up to half a billion pounds to costs.”

The additional set of requiring operators to rip out existing Huawei 5G kit by 2027 will entail “hundreds of millions of pounds” more to their costs.

“This will have real consequences for the connections on which all our connections relay,” he further cautioned, warning against that going any “faster and further” than the 2027 target — saying to do so would add “considerable and unnecessary” additional costs and delays.

“The shorter we make the timetable for removal the greater the risk of actual disruption to mobile networks,” he also said.

It’s a very significant change of government policy vs the package of restrictions announced in January when Boris Johnson’s government expressed confidence it could manage any risk associated with vendors with deep links to the Chinese state.

And Dowden faced a barrage of questions from opposition politicians about the “screeching U-turn” and the associated delays to the UK’s 5G network infrastructure from not having taken this decision six months earlier. 

Shadow digital minister Chi Onwurah said the government’s digital policy lay in tatters — and called for it to set up a cross-party taskforce to lead the infrastructure charge. “This entire saga has shown that the government cannot sort this mess out on their own,” she said. “We need a taskforce of industry representatives, academics, startups, regional government and regulators to develop a plan which delivers a UK [5G] network capability and security mobile network in the shortest possible timeframe.”

On government backbenches Dowden’s statement was more broadly welcomed. Although Johnson has faced significant internal opposition from a group of rebel MPs in his own party to his earlier Huawei policy so it remains to be seen whether they can be convinced to back the new package.

One rebel MP source, speaking to the Guardian, warned the fight is back on — saying they’ll table amendments to the telecoms security bill to further shrink the timeframe to rip out Huawei kit, including also for 3G and 4G, not just 5G.

On that issue of what’s to be done with kit from high risk vendors which is being used in existing non-5G networks, the government sought to slip in another delay today — with Dowden telling parliament the issue “needs to be looked at”, and announcing a “technical consultation with operators to understand their supply chain alternatives”.

“Given there is only one other appropriate scale vendor for full fiber equipment we are going to embark on a short technical consultation with operators to understand their supply chain alternatives. So that we can avoid unnecessary delays to our Gigabit ambitions and prevent significant resilience risks,” he said.

The technical consultation will determine government policy toward Huawei outside 5G networks, Dowden added.

The government has said before it’s taking steps to increase diversification in the supply chain around 5G network infrastructure kit. Dowden reiterated that line today, saying the UK is working with Five Eyes partners to try to accelerate diversification, while tempering the ambition by couching it as a global problem.

Over the longer term he said the UK wants to encourage and support operators to use multiple vendors per network as standard, though again he cautioned that the development of such open RAN networks will take time. In the nearer, medium term, he suggested other large scale vendors would be needed to step in — saying the government is already having technical discussions with alternative telecoms kit makers, including Samsung and NEC, about accessing the UK market to plug the gap opened up by the removal of Huawei equipment.

“We are already engaging extensively with operators and vendors and governments around the world about supporting and accelerating the process of diversification. We recognize that this is a global issue that requires international collaboration to deliver a lasting solution so we’re working with our Five Eyes partners and our friends around the world to bring together a coalition to deliver our shared goals,” he added.

We’ve reached out to Huawei for comment.

Jyoti Bansal was part of the AppDynamics founding team, a company that Cisco bought in 2017 for $3.7 billion. He might have been content to rest on that big win, but instead he went on to launch Harness and a venture capital arm, Unusual Ventures. Today, he announced his newest company called Traceable, which attacks security at the code level.

Bansal says that security has traditionally looked at protecting the network and hardware, but today the attack surface is more at the software level, and that’s why he decided to start another company. “The software is becoming the primary attack vector for a lot of things. If you look at most of the sophisticated data breaches […], they are happening in the code, not in the network or the infrastructure anymore,” he explained.

Traceable uses software agents to monitor the code for anomalous behavior like someone moving data via an API in an unusual way. The solution leverages machine learning to learn over time what normal behavior looks like. As it builds that understanding, it can identify abnormal activity and flag it or shut it down.

It integrates in other tools like Slack and sends out automated warnings that something could be amiss. This could involve an action like letting the team know it’s shutting down API access for five or 10 minutes to allow someone to explore the problem. If it’s a mistake, the software learns something, but if there’s something wrong the team can continue to block access and fix it.

The company also announced $20 million in Series A funding from Unusual Ventures and Big Labs. It’s worth noting that Bansal runs both of these firms. He admits he’s a busy guy, but says running companies is what he loves to do. Even though he could have retired after selling AppDynamics, it’s simply not how he is wired.

“Some people work in some role and once they retire they’re going to do what they enjoy. What I realized is that building companies is what I enjoy,” he said.

As someone who has built three startups, Bansal sees diversity and inclusion as a key success factor, something you have to really work at. “You have to be proactive about this from your recruitment practices to how you try to bring different kinds of diversity in your team,” he said. One of the mistakes he says is that people tend to hire people like themselves, and he learned early on that looking for a “cultural fit” would encourage more homogenized teams. He eliminated that as a hiring filter early on at AppDynamics.

“What I realized is the culture fit idea is a bad thing because it becomes about things like ‘Am I going to grab a beer with this person’ and are they similar to me or someone who I can relate to? But that’s not a good thing really like because that reduces the diversity in your hiring and interview process,” he said.

He is not intimidated about launching a third company in the middle of the pandemic and a weakening economy. In fact, he launched AppDynamics in 2008 just two months before the crash. “In hindsight I felt like that was one of the best thing that happened to me because it shaped who we were as a company — very customer obsessed, heavily focused on building the best product in the market and having a very strong culture inside the company. And that made us very successful,” he said.

He says he is trying to build a similar mindset at Harness and Traceable. To him, a recession tends to force a company to focus and weeds out companies that can’t do that. Traceable is his latest effort to solve a big problem, and pandemic or not, he’s moving forward.

Jyoti Bansal was part of the AppDynamics founding team, a company that Cisco bought in 2017 for $3.7 billion. He might have been content to rest on that big win, but instead he went on to launch Harness and a venture capital arm, Unusual Ventures. Today, he announced his newest company called Traceable, which attacks security at the code level.

Bansal says that security has traditionally looked at protecting the network and hardware, but today the attack surface is more at the software level, and that’s why he decided to start another company. “The software is becoming the primary attack vector for a lot of things. If you look at most of the sophisticated data breaches […], they are happening in the code, not in the network or the infrastructure anymore,” he explained.

Traceable uses software agents to monitor the code for anomalous behavior like someone moving data via an API in an unusual way. The solution leverages machine learning to learn over time what normal behavior looks like. As it builds that understanding, it can identify abnormal activity and flag it or shut it down.

It integrates in other tools like Slack and sends out automated warnings that something could be amiss. This could involve an action like letting the team know it’s shutting down API access for five or 10 minutes to allow someone to explore the problem. If it’s a mistake, the software learns something, but if there’s something wrong the team can continue to block access and fix it.

The company also announced $20 million in Series A funding from Unusual Ventures and Big Labs. It’s worth noting that Bansal runs both of these firms. He admits he’s a busy guy, but says running companies is what he loves to do. Even though he could have retired after selling AppDynamics, it’s simply not how he is wired.

“Some people work in some role and once they retire they’re going to do what they enjoy. What I realized is that building companies is what I enjoy,” he said.

As someone who has built three startups, Bansal sees diversity and inclusion as a key success factor, something you have to really work at. “You have to be proactive about this from your recruitment practices to how you try to bring different kinds of diversity in your team,” he said. One of the mistakes he says is that people tend to hire people like themselves, and he learned early on that looking for a “cultural fit” would encourage more homogenized teams. He eliminated that as a hiring filter early on at AppDynamics.

“What I realized is the culture fit idea is a bad thing because it becomes about things like ‘Am I going to grab a beer with this person’ and are they similar to me or someone who I can relate to? But that’s not a good thing really like because that reduces the diversity in your hiring and interview process,” he said.

He is not intimidated about launching a third company in the middle of the pandemic and a weakening economy. In fact, he launched AppDynamics in 2008 just two months before the crash. “In hindsight I felt like that was one of the best thing that happened to me because it shaped who we were as a company — very customer obsessed, heavily focused on building the best product in the market and having a very strong culture inside the company. And that made us very successful,” he said.

He says he is trying to build a similar mindset at Harness and Traceable. To him, a recession tends to force a company to focus and weeds out companies that can’t do that. Traceable is his latest effort to solve a big problem, and pandemic or not, he’s moving forward.

In this pandemic world, in-person meetings are a thing of the past. Most meetings these days are done via video conference, and no company has capitalized on the shift quite like Zoom.

Macro, a new FirstMark-backed company, is looking to capitalize on the capitalization. To Capitalism!

Sorry. Let’s get back on track. Macro is a native app that employs the Zoom SDK to add depth and analysis to your daily work meetings.

There are two modes. The first is essentially focused on collaboration, which turns the usual Zoom meeting into a light overlay, where folks are shown in small, circular bubbles at the top of the screen. This mode is to be used when folks are working on the same project, such as a wireframe or a collaborative document. The UI is meant to kind of fade into the background, allowing users to click on taps or objects behind other attendees’ bubbles.

The other mode is an Arena or Stadium mode, which is meant for hands-on meetings and presentations. It has two distinct features. The first is an Airtime feature, which shows how much different participants have ‘had the floor’ for the past five minutes, thirty minutes, or in total during the meeting. The second is a text-input system on the right side of the UI that lets people enter Questions, Takeaways, Action Items and Insights from the call.

Macro automatically adds that text to a Google Doc, and formats it into something instantly shareable.

There is no extra hassle involved in getting Macro up and running. When a user installs Macro on their computer, they’re instantly loaded into Macro each time they click a Zoom link, whether it’s in an email, a calendar invite, or in Slack.

Macro cofounders Ankith Harathi and John Keck explained to TechCrunch that this isn’t your usual enterprise play. The product is free to use and, with the Google Doc export, is still useful even as a single-player product. The Google Doc is auto-formatted with Macro messaging, explaining that it was compiled by the company with a link to the product.

In other words, Harathi and Keck want to see individuals within organizations get Macro for themselves and let the product grow organically within an organization, rather than trying to sell to large teams right off the bat.

“A lot of collaborative productivity SaaS applications need your whole team to switch over to get any value out of them,” said Harathi. “That’s a pretty big barrier, especially since so many new products are coming out and teams are constantly switching and that creates a lot of noise. So our plan was to ensure one person can use this and get value out of it, and nobody else is affected. They get the better interface and other team members will want to switch over without any requirement to do so.”

This is possible in large part to the cost of the Zoom SDK, which is $0. The heavy lifting of audio and video is handled by Zoom, as is the high compute cost. This means that Macro can offer its product for free at a relatively low cost to the company as it tries to grow.

Of course, there is some risk involved with building on an existing platform. Namely, one Zoom platform change could wreak havoc on Macro’s product or model. However, the team has plans to expand beyond Zoom to other video conferencing platforms like Google, BlueJeans, WebEx, etc. Roelof Botha told TechCrunch back in May that businesses built on other platforms have a much greater chance of success when there is platform across that sector, as there certainly is here.

And there seems to be some competition for Macro in particular — for one, Microsoft Teams just added some new features to its video conferencing UI to relieve brain fatigue and Hello is looking to offer app-free video chat via browser.

Macro is also looking to add additional functionality to the platform, such as the ability to integrate an agenda into the meeting and break up the accompanying Google doc by agenda item.

The company has raised a total of $4.8 million since launch, including a new $4.3 million seed round from FirstMark Capital, General Catalyst and Underscore VC. Other investors include NextView Ventures, Jason Warner (CTO GitHub), Julie Zhuo (former VP Design Facebook), Harry Stebbings (Founder/Host of 20minVC), Adam Nash (Dropbox, Wealthfront, LinkedIn), Clark Valberg (CEO Invision), among others.

Macro has more than 25,000 users and has been a part of 50,000 meetings to date.