Year: 2020

There’s been a wildfire in the economy these past few months, but one of the few redwoods still standing is that great bulwark of enterprise software known as SaaS.

SaaS stocks and SaaS startups and SaaS founders have (mostly) survived the pandemic unscathed, but that doesn’t mean that adaptability hasn’t been crucial to keeping these companies going strong. Sales are changing, buyers are scrambled, and the products of the future are going to have to flexibly respond to where the world of business is going.

That’s why we’re so excited to have a leading SaaS investor give us the 360 on where the SaaS world is today — and where it is headed on Extra Crunch Live today.

Jason Green is a founder and general partner at Emergence Capital, where he specializes in enterprise and cloud software, backing companies like Box, SalesLoft, ServiceMax, SteelBrick, SuccessFactors, Gusto and Yammer.

Extra Crunch Live is open exclusively to Extra Crunch subscribers. If you’re not already an Extra Crunch member, you can join here. We have the whole schedule of Extra Crunch Live talks as well.

My co-host Ingrid Lunden and I are going to be asking all the strategic and tactical questions about what SaaS startups need to be thinking about today, and then like all Extra Crunch Live calls, we’re going to open the floor to the audience to pose their own questions on all things enterprise.

So if SaaS is your jam and you want to engage with one of the foremost experts on the space, join us today (July 9) at 2pm EDT / 11am PDT / 6pm GMT with the links below the fold.

We hope to see you there!

There’s been a wildfire in the economy these past few months, but one of the few redwoods still standing is that great bulwark of enterprise software known as SaaS.

SaaS stocks and SaaS startups and SaaS founders have (mostly) survived the pandemic unscathed, but that doesn’t mean that adaptability hasn’t been crucial to keeping these companies going strong. Sales are changing, buyers are scrambled, and the products of the future are going to have to flexibly respond to where the world of business is going.

That’s why we’re so excited to have a leading SaaS investor give us the 360 on where the SaaS world is today — and where it is headed on Extra Crunch Live today.

Jason Green is a founder and general partner at Emergence Capital, where he specializes in enterprise and cloud software, backing companies like Box, SalesLoft, ServiceMax, SteelBrick, SuccessFactors, Gusto and Yammer.

Extra Crunch Live is open exclusively to Extra Crunch subscribers. If you’re not already an Extra Crunch member, you can join here. We have the whole schedule of Extra Crunch Live talks as well.

My co-host Ingrid Lunden and I are going to be asking all the strategic and tactical questions about what SaaS startups need to be thinking about today, and then like all Extra Crunch Live calls, we’re going to open the floor to the audience to pose their own questions on all things enterprise.

So if SaaS is your jam and you want to engage with one of the foremost experts on the space, join us today (July 9) at 2pm EDT / 11am PDT / 6pm GMT with the links below the fold.

We hope to see you there!

YouTube Kids, the family-friendly version of YouTube with built-in parental controls and a curated selection of kids content, is now available on Amazon’s Fire TV. The app’s arrival comes after Google and Amazon came to a mutually beneficial agreement that also allowed YouTube to launch on Fire TV last year and Amazon’s Prime Video to make its way to Chromecast and Android TV.

The agreement was meant to soon see the additions of other YouTube apps, including YouTube TV and YouTube Kids, on the Fire TV platform. But while YouTube TV arrived on Fire TV last September, YouTube Kids has seen a significant delay, considering it was promised to arrive sometime in 2019.

In any event, the YouTube Kids app is here now, offering parents a somewhat less risky version of YouTube’s service for younger children. Parents can create individual profiles for each child, customized to one of several age groupings, like preschool, younger and older — the latter meant for the tween crowd. However, the app’s content isn’t hand-selected. Instead, YouTube’s automated systems determine what’s considered age-appropriate. This can sometimes lead to mistakes, which parents can report using in-app tools.

For those who want a more customized and controlled experience, YouTube Kids also allows parents to handpick which channels the child can access.

Amazon says the YouTube Kids app will begin to roll out to Fire TV customers starting today, July 9, 2020.

For those not on Fire TV, YouTube Kids also recently launched on Apple TV earlier this spring. It’s not yet available on Roku.

In addition to news of the YouTube Kids launch, Amazon also today announced that Fire TV Cube owners in the U.S. and select markets will be able to watch over-the-air TV and use Alexa to tune to various channels. This will require customers to attach their own over-the-air tuner, which is configured in the Settings menu under “Equipment Control/Manage Equipment/Add Equipment” and then “Live TV.”

Once set up, customers can ask Alexa to change the channel using either its name or number.

These Fire TV updates follow yesterday’s news about Fire TV updating its Live TV experience to integrate top live TV streaming services, YouTube TV, Sling TV, and Hulu + Live TV.

Canon has finally fully revealed its much-anticipated R5 and R6 mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras, and they look like very strong contenders for the field. The R5 is the new flagship of Canon’s mirrorless line, and it’s priced accordingly at $3,899 for the body alone. The R6 is its ‘affordable’ sibling at $2,499 for the body alone, and still includes an impressive list of features including some of the biggest autofocus system improvements common to the R5.

Canon EOS R5

The R5 is essentially now Canon’s top of the line interchangeable lens camera, barring the 1D X III. It has a 45 megapixel full-frame sensor, which is brand new with this camera, and uses the same DIGIC X processor found in the EOS-1D X III. Along with in-body image stabilization (which stacks with lens stabilization, if available), it has the ability to shoot 8K video at 30 frames per second – uncropped, meaning it uses the full resolution capabilities of that large sensor for maximum quality.

The R5 can capture 4K footage at up to 120 fps, and it can record 10-bit 4:2:2 footage using either C-Log and HDR PQ internally for maximum dynamic range and editing flexibility. This is really the camera that video pros and enthusiasts have been asking Canon to make, and beyond, since the 8K capabilities should mean it’s relatively future-proof.

Image Credits: Canon

Catering further to video pros, there are both mic and headphone jacks on the R5 body, and an optional wireless title transmitter grip can add an Ethernet jack and facilitates more advanced multi-camera linked shooting features. The R5 also features a fully articulating fold out display, and an electronic viewfinder with 5.76 million dot resolution. It’s weather sealed for outdoor shooting in a range of conditions, and has two card slots, including one CFexpress slot and one SD card slot.

For both still and video shooters there’s an autofocus system that uses Canon’s Dual Pixel technology to deliver AF across the entire frame. It can also detect human faces and yes, as well as the eye face and body of animals including not only dogs and cats but also birds – sure to be a popular feature among wildlife photographers. Also great news for still shooters is the 12 fps burst rate, which climbs to 20fps when using the software shutter.

Canon EOS R6

Image Credits: Canon

The R6 is similar in size and feature set to the R5, but has a much lower resolution 20.1 megapixel full frame sensor. It also shoots video at a maximum of 4K/60fps (with slight cropping), and has a lower resolution OLED EVF vs. its more expensive sibling. It also has Dual UHS-II SD card slots in place of the CF/SD combo on the R5, and less rigorous weather sealing. It also lacks the R5’s top e-ink display.

Still, it does include the same AF features and uses the same new battery type as the R5, and is compatible with the BG-R10 battery grip that also works with the more expensive camera. It finally sounds like a true and capable competitor to other options that have retained popularity among video enthusiasts and creators like the Sony A7 III even as Canon has released newer cameras like the EOS R and RP.

One potentially disappointing note for both cameras is regarding battery life, where the rating is around 320 shots with the LCD or just 220 shots on a full charge when shooting with the EVF. Sony’s A7R IV manages between 530 to 670 shots with the EVF and LCD respectively, for comparison.

New RF lenses

Canon’s camera hardware sounds like it delivers on a lot of what Canon fans, photographers and videographers have been looking for from the company for many years. But the real advantage of Canon’s system might reside in its RF glass, which has excellent reviews for all its existing lenses, and which is also gaining a bunch of versatile new products across the price range.

Image Credits:

These include a new 100-500 f4.5-7.1 superzoom ($2,699), which includes built-in image stabilization and should be a fantastic option for birders and wildlife photographers. There’s also affordable new RF600mm ($699) and 800mm ($899) fixed aperture f11 primes that won’t be useful in low lighting but that should be fantastic for sports and wildlife outdoors. Finally, a new RF85mm F2 ($599) with close-focusing macro capabilities seems like an awesome mid-range portrait and close-up lens.

Canon is also releasing 1.4x ($499) and 2x ($599) teleconverters for its RF lenses, which is a standby that every well-rounded system needs.

The R5 is set to be available at the end of July, and the R6 is going to begin shipping at the end of August. The lenses range in available from July to October, and the extenders will be shipping at the end of July as well.

Security researchers say a smartwatch, popular with the elderly and dementia patients, could have been tricked into letting an attacker easily take control of the device.

These watches are designed to help patients to easily call their carers and for carers to track the location of their patients. They come with their own cellular connection, so that they work anywhere.

But researchers at U.K.-based security firm Pen Test Partners found that they could trick the smartwatch into sending fake “take pills” reminders to patients as often as they want, they said.

“A dementia sufferer is unlikely to remember that they had already taken their medication,” wrote Vangelis Stykas in a blog post. “An overdose could easily result.”

Researchers triggering the “take pill” alert on a vulnerable smartwatch. (Image: Pen Test Partners/supplied)

The vulnerabilities were found in the back-end cloud system, known as SETracker, which powers the smartwatch. The same cloud system also powers millions of other white-label smartwatches and vehicle trackers across Europe, all of which were vulnerable to basic attacks, the researchers said.

The researchers found a copy of the source code that powers the back-end cloud system, allowing the researchers to find security weaknesses in the code. One of the major flaws found was that the server was using a hardcoded key which, if used, an attacker could have sent any commands to remotely control any one of these devices.

With this key, an attacker could trigger the “take pills” alert, secretly make phone calls from the device, send text messages, or — in the case of vehicle trackers — cutting the engine altogether.

The code also had passwords and tokens to SETracker’s cloud storage, which the researchers believe — based on the code — stored data uploaded by these devices. But the researchers were unable to check as doing so would have broken U.K. computer hacking laws.

The researchers said that the vulnerabilities have now been fixed. It isn’t known if the flaws had been exploited by someone else.

This latest research comes just months after Pen Test Partners found similar vulnerabilities in another widely-used white-label child-tracking smartwatches.

Security, or a lack of, is a growing trend among smart device makers, often which build devices with little consideration for good cybersecurity practices. That prompted the U.K. government to propose new legislation that would help improve their security by mandating that smart devices must be sold with a baseline level of security, such as unique passwords.

Singaporeans have a growing appetite for plant-based meat substitutes. In fact, demand for products from companies like Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods and Quorn have grown during the pandemic, partly because consumers are making more health-conscious decisions, according to the Straits Time. Now there is a new entrant to the market. Headquartered in Singapore, Karana announced today it has raised $1.7 million in seed funding and plans to launch its first product, a pork substitute made from jackfruit, this year.

Karana’s seed investors include Henry Soesanto, the CEO of Monde Nissin Group, which acquired Quorn Foods in 2015; agtech investment firms Big Idea Ventures and Germi8; and angel investors Kevin Poon and Gerald Li, both Hong Kong entrepreneurs with experience in the food and beverage industry. Karana said the round also included participation from an undisclosed leading Asia-based FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) distributor.

Karana’s jackfruit is sourced from Sri Lanka, where jackfruit is already a common meat substitute. What Karana’s processing method does is create a texture that replicates minced and shredded pork more closely, making it easier to use in dishes like dumplings, char siu bao or bahn mi.

Founded in 2018 by Dan Riegler and Blair Crichton, Karana turns organic jackfruit into a pork substitute by using a proprietary mechanical technique that the company says does not use any chemical processing. Its pork substitute will be available in restaurants this year, before arriving in retail stores at the beginning of next year.

Riegler and Crichton told TechCrunch in an email that Karana uses jackfruit because it not only has a “naturally meaty texture,” but is an environmentally-friendly crop. It is usually grown intercropped (or with other produce, in the same field), has a high yield and low water usage. But about 60% of jackfruit harvested currently goes to waste, they added. “There is a lot of room for further commercialization, which means additional income streams for farmers.”

Karana’s founders started with pork because it is the most frequently consumed meat in Asia. Its seed funding will be used on research and development to launch new products and the company currently talking to strategic partners in other Asian markets. Future Karana products will use other crops grown in Asia to create new meat substitutes.

“Karana is a whole-plant meat company, our focus is on leveraging what nature has given us and enhancing these amazing biodiverse ingredients to create delicious products. In the future, we will launch products using other regional ingredients that will enable us to expand beyond pork,” the founders said. “This is a real differentiator from other companies that are by-and-large relying on commodity crops in processed forms.”

The GoPro Hero 8 action camera can now be used as a webcam thanks to a software utility. The software, which is still in beta, lets users connect a Hero 8 camera through USB and use it as a webcam. Without this utility, owners had to use a combination of dongles and HDMI cables to use the camera with their computers.

The GoPro app comes as most camera companies have released similar utilities for their latest DSLR cameras — Sony is the notable exception. TechCrunch has a running list right here.

With this new software from GoPro, owners can use their Hero 8 camera — and its handy wide-angle lens — in video chats with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and many others. And if used through Chrome, the camera will work with Webex, Skype, Slack, and others.

The work-from-home aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a shortage of webcams. As the global economy shifted to home offices, webcams from Logitech and Microsoft quickly sold-out. The few HDMI adapters that allowed DLSRs to act as a webcam sold out, too. Camera companies suddenly started retooling their software to allow their cameras to work as a webcam through USB instead of HDMI.

This move from GoPro is smart. At a new low price of $249, the GoPro Hero 8 Black is one of the least expensive routes to use a real camera as a webcam. Right now, the software solution only works with Macs. GoPro says a Windows version is in the works. To use a Hero 8 as a webcam, download the latest firmware from GoPro and snag GoPro’s new Webcam Desktop Utility app.

LogDNA, a startup that helps DevOps teams dig through their log data to find issues, announced a $25 million Series C investment today along with the promotion of industry vet Tucker Callaway to CEO.

Let’s start with the funding. Emergence Capital led the round with participation from previous investors Initialized Capital and Providence Equity. New investors TI Platform Management, Radianx Capital, Top Tier Capital and Trend Forward Capital also joined the round. Today’s investment brings the total raised to $60 million, according to the company.

Current CEO and co-founder Chris Nguyen says the company provides a centralized way to manage log data for DevOps teams with an eye towards troubleshooting issues and getting applications out faster.

New CEO Callaway, whose background includes executive stints at Chef and Sauce Labs, came on board in January as president and CRO with an eye toward moving him into the top spot when the time was right. Nguyen, who will move to the role of Chief Strategy Officer, says everyone was on board with the move, and he was ready to step back into a more technical role.

“When we closed the latest round of funding and looked at what the journey forward looks like, there was just a lot of trust and confidence from my co-founder, the board of directors, all of the investors on the team that Tucker is the right leader,” Nguyen said.

As Callaway takes over in the midst of the pandemic, the company is in reasonably good shape with 3000 customers using the product and a strategic partnership with IBM to provide logging services for IBM Cloud. Having $25 million in additional capital certainly helps, but he sees a company that’s still growing and intends to keep hiring..

As he brings more people on board to lead the company of approximately 100 employees, he says that diversity and inclusion is something he is passionate about and takes very seriously. For starters, he plans to put the entire company through unconscious bias training. They have also hired someone to review their hiring practices to date and they are bringing in a consultant to help them design more diverse and inclusive hiring practices and hold them accountable to that

The company was a member of the same Y Combinator winter 2015 cohort as GitLab. It actually started out building a marketing technology product, only to realize they had built a powerful logging tool on the back end. That logging tool became the basis for LogDNA .

Cloud services continue to be a key component of how organisations remain operational even as so much else — such as physically working in enclosed offices — is forced to change because of the COVID-19 health pandemic. Today, MariaDB Corporation, the company behind MariaDB SkySQL and one of the startups leading the charge on open source cloud databases, is announcing $25 million in funding to continue its growth.

The money is coming in the form of an extension to the company’s Series C round, and it’s being led by SmartFin Capital, a Belgian VC, with participation also from previous investor GP Bullhound.

(Side note: extensions to existing rounds seem to have become more frequent in recent months. That’s in part because extensions can be faster to close than opening and closing completely new rounds; in part because they are typically smaller amounts; and in part because fundraising has become a lot more challenging and harder to do in recent months, with people travelling and meeting in person much less, and sometimes not at all.)

Notably, however, being an extension doesn’t mean the valuation is not changing. This latest infusion brings the total raised by MariaDB Corp. to over $125 million, “doubling our valuation,” CEO Michael Howard noted in a statement.

Howard didn’t reveal the exact figure of that valuation, but for some context, the company — founded in Helsinki, Finland and now co-headquartered in Redwood City, CA — was last valued at €300 million ($340 million at today’s rates) in 2017, in a $27 million round led by Alibaba. That would put today’s round at a €600 million ($680 million), a big leap for the the startup — and for open source — in the space of three years.

Part of the boost for MariaDB’s business is coming directly as a result of the demands we’re seeing in the enterprise sector today for database-as-a-service tools built on cloud and open source architecture, Howard noted.

“Expanding MariaDB SkySQL cloud operations is our key focus,” Howard said in a statement. “There is an addressable and immediate market need with a growing number of companies who want to enable faster innovation and agility by adopting cloud technologies and shifting database management to DBaaS solutions.”

MariaDB says that DBS Bank, ServiceNow, Walgreens, Samsung and more than 75% of the Fortune 500 customers run MariaDB in both private and public clouds, speaking to the reach of the platform.

MariaDB Corp. is not disclosing its own growth numbers — we’re asking and will update as and when we learn more — but it’s likely they have been strong, judging by the valuation hike.

“MariaDB continues to exceed our expectations,” said Jürgen Ingels, founding partner, SmartFin Capital, in a statement. “The company’s innovation in cloud database technology will help support the rapid growth in IT modernization that businesses large and small are pursuing to keep up with the world around us. We feel MariaDB is well-positioned to take a large share of the growing cloud database market as companies continue to push forward into the cloud. We are proud to invest more in MariaDB to continue their exceptional growth.”

Apart from the more immediate effects of the health pandemic, MariaDB Corp’s growth speaks to other trends in enterprise IT that have been in play for years.

Gartner estimates that 75% of all databases will have migrated to cloud architectures by 2022 either with all-in or hybrid deployments, “with only 5% ever considered for repatriation to on-premises.”

While MariaDB remains committed to open source — indeed there is a MariaDB Foundation that includes members like Microsoft, Booking.com, Tencent and Alibaba — MariaDB Corp has positioned itself as something of a consolidator in terms of building commercial services on top of the open source relational database. Its acquisitions have included Clustrix and MammothDB to expand its functionality, and this funding will be used to that end as well, particularly around scaling and improving the speed of SkySQL.

“MariaDB has risen to be a household name in the IT industry,” said Per Roman, co-founder and managing partner of GP Bullhound in a statement. “We have been particularly interested in MariaDB’s focus on bringing its flexibility, security and stability to the cloud. That’s why we’re excited to invest in MariaDB, as we see enormous opportunities for its SkySQL product.”

Google is announcing the global availability of Swirl, an ad format that the company unveiled in beta just over a year ago.

The Swirl format involves banner ads that include interactive 3D product models. As the company put it in a blog post:

Swirl lets consumers engage with a product like it’s right in front of them by allowing them to rotate, zoom and expand the creative in the ad. Swirl ads allow brands to illustrate changes in behavior, new technology performance, unique product features and more.

The post went on to describe different campaigns that have already been created using the format, including Nissan Spain, which used a Swirl ad to show off the new features of its Qashaqai SUV, and adidas Latin America, which advertised the adidas Ultra Boost 2019 shoe.

Image Credits: Google

The ads don’t have to be purely product-focused either — apparently Purina used Swirl to allow potential customers to play fetch with a 3D dog model, an ad that apparently saw six times the engagement of a standard 2D ad.

To create Swirl campaigns, advertisers can upload 3D assets to Google Web Designer, or edit the models using Poly.