Year: 2020

Facebook’s internal R&D group, NPE Team, has today launched a new app called CatchUp that makes it easier for friends and family in the U.S. to coordinate phone calls or set up group calls with up to 8 people. While there are a number of group chat apps available to users today, what makes CatchUp unique is that the calls it enables are audio-only, not video, and it flags when users are available. In addition, CatchUp won’t need a Facebook account to use the service — the app works with your phone’s contacts list.

CatchUp does seem to take some inspiration from Houseparty, in that users in CatchUp can designate when they’re available to talk by setting their status in the app. This is similar to how Houseparty’s video chat app also lets you see who’s live, by sending out notifications when friends open the app and flagging them as “here” in the app’s interface.

Similarly, CatchUp shows users as “Ready to Talk” in the top section of its homescreen, with offline users and other contacts listed below.

Facebook explains the app’s intention is to address one of the key reasons people no longer make phone calls — they don’t know when someone has time to talk and they don’t want to interrupt them. Meanwhile, calls that can’t be answered go to voicemails that recipients don’t bother checking, which forces communication to go through text messaging or chat apps instead. And while video chats are on the rise, a phone call is often more convenient as users aren’t always video-ready or they’re trying to multi-task, not sit in front of a screen.

CatchUp approaches the problem of not knowing if a phone call would bother someone by allowing you to see who is ready and able to talk as soon as you launch the app.

Users can also create and join groups of friends, family, and mutual contacts in the app, as you can with other chat apps. Or they can place 1-on-1 calls as an alternative to using the phone.

Placing a call is simple as well. It’s just a one-button tap — not a complicated process of calling contacts, then “merging” calls as you do on your smartphone’s Phone app.

Facebook explains the idea for the app actually came about prior to the COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent quarantine, but the NPE Team accelerated the app’s development as a result of the pandemic.

While there are already easy ways to make voice calls using Facebook’s own Messenger and WhatsApp apps, the difference is that CatchUp works with your phone’s contacts. Users will have to download the app, but they won’t need to have an existing Facebook account — or an account with any Facebook-owned companies. Plus, the app’s simplified user interface could make it easier for older users, like grandma and grandpa, to navigate. It’s really just a one-screen experience with a toggle button to become “available” to talk.

The app also includes privacy features that allow you to configure which contacts can join your 1-on-1 and group calls.

CatchUp is currently being tested in the U.S. for a limited time on iOS and Android devices. Like other NPE Team apps, Facebook may choose to terminate the app if it’s not adopted by a sizable userbase. To date, the NPE Team has launched a small handful of apps, including meme creator Whale, conversational app Bump, music app Aux, video app Hobbi, couples app Tuned, and Apple Watch app Kit.

Even though it’s a vast sector in the midst of transformation, manufacturing is often overlooked by early-stage investors. We surveyed top VCs in the industry to gather their perspectives on the challenges and opportunities facing manufacturing.

Traditionally, manufacturing companies are capital-intensive and can be slow to implement new technology and processes. The investors in the survey below acknowledge the long-standing barriers facing founders in this space, yet they see large opportunities where startups can challenge incumbents.

These investors noted that the pandemic is bringing overnight change in the manufacturing world; old rules are being rewritten in the face of worker safety, remote work and the need for increased automation. According to Eclipse Ventures founder Lior Susan, “COVID-19 has exposed the systemic vulnerabilities inherent to manufacturing and supply chain and, as such, significant opportunities for innovation. The market was lukewarm for a long time — it’s time to turn up the heat.”

• Lior Susan, founder and managing partner, Eclipse Ventures.
• Ajay Agarwal, Bain Capital.
• Greg Papadopoulos, venture partner, NEA.
• Dayna Grayson, co-founder and general partner, Construct Capital.

Lior Susan, Eclipse Ventures

What trends are you most excited about in manufacturing from an investing perspective?

Digital solutions that offer manufacturers greater agility and resilience will become major areas of focus for investors. For example, manufacturers still reliant on manual assembly were unable to build products when factories closed due to the coronavirus lockdown. While nothing would have kept production at 100%, the ability to quickly pivot and engage software-defined processes would have allowed manufacturing lines to continue building with a skeleton crew (especially important for any facility required to implement social distancing). Such systems have remote monitoring capabilities and computer vision systems to flag defeats in real-time and halt production if necessary.

When Facebook unveiled Libra, its cryptocurrency project, there were two distinct entities — the Libra Association, a not-for-profit that oversees all things Libra, and Calibra, a Facebook subsidiary that is building a Libra-based wallet with integrations in WhatsApp and Messenger. Today, Facebook announced that Calibra has a new name, Novi.

By rebranding Calibra to Novi, Facebook is trying to make it super clear that the Libra project isn’t a Facebook project per se. Facebook is just a member of the Libra Association with dozens of other members, such as Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase, Iliad, Lyft, Shopify, Spotify, Uber, etc.

The Libra blockchain is supposed to operate independently from Facebook, while Novi is a pure Facebook project headed by David Marcus. According to the company, Novi comes from the Latin words “novus” (new) and “via” (way).

Novi’s first product will be a cryptocurrency wallet. You’ll be able to download a standalone Novi app on your phone. While you don’t need a Facebook or WhatsApp account to create a Novi account, it will also be accessible directly in Messenger and WhatsApp — you’ll be able to tap on a button to launch a Novi menu to send and receive money through the Novi wallet.

The Facebook subsidiary wants to be reassuring when it comes to money laundering and know-your-customer regulation. When you sign up to Novi, you’ll have to take a photo of a government-issued ID. Novi isn’t a way to send money anonymously.

Instead, Novi promises instant transactions and “no hidden fees” for cross-border money transfers and local payments. It’s unclear whether Novi means there won’t be any fees or there will be fees but the company will be transparent about them.

The Libra Association recently updated its white paper to make important changes to the cryptocurrency protocol. The association is no longer building a global stablecoin tied to a basket of fiat currencies and securities.

When Libra launches, there will be several stablecoins — each of them will be backed by a single fiat currency, such as USD, EUR, GBP or SGD. Novi users as well as people using other Libra-enabled wallets will be able to send and receive LibraUSD, LibraEUR, LibraGBP or LibraSGD. Novi will also act as a ramp to convert fiat money to crypto assets and cash out your cryptocurrencies to traditional fiat currencies.

Novi plans to launch its wallet when the Libra network goes live. Only a limited set of countries will be able to access the service at first.

When Looking Glass Factory showed of its first holographic display way back on August 2018, it felt more like a proof of concept than anything — though it was immediately an impressive concept. In November of last year, the Brooklyn-based startup showed off an 8K display that used its holographic tech.

The feeling wasn’t quite as immersive, but the form factor certainly made more sense. The system has 33.2 million pixels and relies on a 45-element light field to provide a 3D effect. I saw it at some hotel meeting room at CES. It’s really neat. And now it can be yours for some unspecified price.

The system is shipping now, when ordered through Looking Glass’s site. The target markets here are medical imaging, mapping, automotive, architecture and engineering. A press release tied to the announcement features a handful of folks in these categories who are excited at what such a technology could mean, going forward. Here’s Epic Games CTO Kim Libreri,

Having access to a glasses-free holographic display is a massive breakthrough, and presents an exciting prospect for teams working in immersive computer graphics, visualization and content creation. The Looking Glass holographic display provides a stunning level of realism, and we look forward to seeing the innovations that emerge with the support of Unreal Engine generated content.

The company is only offering pricing quotes by request through its site — which means it’s pretty likely to be cost prohibitive for those just looking to augment our remote working set up. As noted in the earlier piece, the company is targeting enterprise users with early applications — organizations that generally have money to spend on state of the art harder. More consumer-focused applications, including gaming, could be coming a ways down the road. 

In the ‘Age of Corona’ – as some like to call it, the roboticization of industry and business has been super-charged by the pandemic. So while companies using messaging platforms to drive customers towards purchases was always on a long term trend, the sheer volume of people staying online 24/7 during global lockdowns has led to this tactic also being boosted.

So it’s therefore understandable that Spectrm, an AI-powered conversational marketing platform that does just this, has raised $3 million in Series A funding from international VC fund Runa Capital.  

Spectrm automates conversations to engage and convert customers online via an AI-driven algorithm. Then marketers use that data to segment the customer base and build stronger customer relationships. The platform is used by companies like eBay, Ford, Groupon, Renault, KLM, and more.

According to Global WebIndex research, social media users are now spending an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes per day across eight social networks and messaging apps. And during Covid-19-driven lockdowns, that would have been much more.

Сonversational marketing is a hot area. Facebook Messenger marketing has 10-80 times better engagement than email, for instance.

Max Koziolek, co-founder and CEO of Spectrm, said in a statement: “Our vision is to combine the power of conversations with the reach of the largest platforms in the world… we believe conversation is a deeply human experience that is more effective and more insightful than any other format in marketing”,

Dmitry Galperin, Partner at Runa Capital said: “Instead of trying to cover all marketing communication channels, it is much more effective to direct efforts to those that generate the most customer insights and highest ROI. Conversational marketing is one of those channels.”

Spectrm’s competitors include LivePerson (Nasdaq listed), ManyChat (raised $19.1M), Snaps.io ($11.3M), Automat.ai ($10.9M), and Chatfuel ($120K).


Spotify announced this morning it’s removing the content cap on the app’s “Your Library,” allowing users to now save an unlimited number of songs, albums, and podcasts to their collection of favorites. The change addresses a top user complaint since 2014 which, to date, had received over 12,500 votes on Spotify’s Community Ideas Exchange forum.

Though an average user may only have a few hundred or a few thousand saved songs, some have preferred a larger library. But before today, Spotify enforced a 10,000-item limit across 3 devices. When you hit that limit, Spotify would display a message that read: “Epic collection my friend. There’s no more room in Your Library. To save more, you’ll need to remove some songs or albums.”

The issue impacted those who liked to play their collection on shuffle, for example, or who liked to see all their favorite music in one interface in order to build custom playlists. Unfortunately, the 10,000-song limit on playlists remains so you aren’t yet able to now turn your entire music collection into a playlist to stream or share with friends.

It also doesn’t impact Spotify’s requirements around offline downloads. Users are still able to only download 10,000 songs across 5 different devices for offline listening. This, however, is less of an issue during the coronavirus outbreak as many people no longer commute to work without Wi-Fi or cellular access –like in trains or subways. And fewer people are traveling by air, where offline access comes in handy.

Instead, the limit’s removal is more about removing the anxiety around whether or not you should “like” a song, album, or podcast. This has become a more pressing issue now that Spotify has expanded into podcasts, which increased the type of items users could “like” and made it possible to fill up libraries faster.

The change to libraries is rolling out now across iOS, Android, desktop and web, Spotify said. You may not see it immediately, but should soon.

Spero Ventures, the venture capital firm backed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, has gone to Mexico City for its latest investment, backing the identity verification technology developer Mati.

Launched in San Francisco, the two co-founders Filip Victor and Amaury Soviche, decided to relocate to Mexico because of its proximity to big, untapped markets in Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia.

“After developing the technology in San Francisco, we chose to start commercially in Latin America. It has been the perfect petri dish for us: the markets here, especially in Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, are very exciting. These countries have the highest payments fraud rates in the world, which makes their identity issues the most interesting,” said Victor in a statement.

The rise of a new generation of fintech startup across Latin America creates a unique opportunity for Mati in a number of markets — and so does a new generation of financial services regulations, the company said. “We view the fintech regulations sweeping across LatAm as an opportunity to help a lot of promising fintechs and marketplaces get to the next level”, Victor said.

Already working across three countries, with operations in Mexico City, St. Petersburg, and San Francisco, Mati is an example of the global scope that even very early stage companies can now achieve.

Identity verification is at the core of much of the modern gig economy and much of the social networking defining life during a pandemic.

The company said it will use the capital investment — it would not disclose the amount of money it raised — to continue product development and expand its geographic footprint.

The scope of the identity verification problem is what brought Spero to the table to discuss an investment, according to a statement from Shripriya Mahesh, the founding partner at Spero.

“For us, identity is foundational to scaling the vast array of gig economy, fintech, social, and commerce platforms that represent our collective future of work,” Mahesh said. “The ability to have safe and trusted interactions at an unprecedented scale, especially with people in places where national identity infrastructure is limited, will create opportunities and global connections we can’t yet even forecast.”

Apple has now resolved the bug that was plaguing iPhone and iPad apps over the weekend, causing some apps to not launch at all. The issue was related to a bug with Apple’s Family Sharing system, it appears, as users reported error messages which said “This app is no longer shared with you,” and directed them to buy the app from the App Store in order to still use it.

Following this issue, users on Sunday said they were seeing dozens of pending app updates for their iOS devices, some of which even went back to the app’s last update from well over a week ago. Users reported in forums seeing as many as 10, 20, 50 or even 100-plus new updates to install. This indicated a fix was in the works, as these were not brand-new updates — the apps were already up to date. Instead, these reissued updates seem to have been part of the fix for the Family Sharing problem, as afterward the bug was resolved.

Apple confirmed the issue has been now resolved for all affected customers.

Apple-focused news sites including MacRumors, 9to5Mac, Appleinsider, and others previously reported on the news of bug and the following deluge of app updates. 9to5Mac also offered a plausible explanation for what happened, saying it was likely due to a signing issue of some kind. Apps were essentially behaving as if they were paid downloads and the right to use the app had been removed from the iCloud family circle, the site explained.

Some users discovered they could delete the troubled app then re-download it to resolve the problem. That’s what the forced app updates did, too — they overwrote the parts of the apps causing the issue. Had Apple not reissued the app updates, many iOS users would have likely assumed it was the app developer’s fault. And they may have then left unfair complaints and 1-star reviews on the app’s App Store page as a result.

Apple has not shared any additional details about why the problem occurred in the first place, but if you happened to notice a significant increase in app updates on Sunday, that’s why.

India said it will publicly release the source code of its contact tracing app, Aarogya Setu, in a relief to privacy and security experts who have been advocating for this ever since the app launched in early April. 

Ajay Prakash Sawhney, secretary in the ministry of electronics and information technology, made the announcement on Tuesday, slating it as “opening the heart” of Aarogya Setu’s Android app, which has amassed over 115 million users in fewer than 60 days, to allow engineers to inspect and tinker with the code.

The source code will be published on GitHub at midnight Tuesday (local time). Sawhney said the government will also offer cash prize of up to $1,325 for identifying and reporting bugs and vulnerabilities in the code of Aarogya Setu.

Several privacy and security advocates, as well as India’s opposition party, had urged the government to release the code of the app for public auditing after a handful of vulnerabilities were spotted in the app.

Sawhney said today’s move should allay people’s concern with the app, which is designed to help curb the spread of the coronavirus disease.

More to follow…

As the leader of a publicly traded corporation with 135,000 employees, Verizon Communications CEO Hans Vestberg has a unique perspective on the state of the world.

When he appears today on Extra Crunch Live, our virtual speaker series for Extra Crunch members, we’ll ask him about this extraordinary moment in history and his plans for seeing the company through a black swan event that’s reshaping the global economy.

The discussion starts at 2 p.m. EDT/11 a.m. PDT/9 p.m. GMT. You can find the full details below.

Vestberg served as president and CEO at Ericsson for six years and joined Verizon as its CTO and president of Global Networks in 2017 before stepping into the CEO role a little more than a year later. (Disclosure: TechCrunch is owned by Verizon).

We’ll talk to Vestberg about his tactics for managing a company at scale through a crisis and will check in on the company’s 5G rollout, a platform inflection point that should change the landscape for founders and entrepreneurs. Verizon recently acquired BlueJeans, which competes directly with Zoom and WebEx, so we’ll also ask Vestberg about the company’s forward-looking investment strategy.

Extra Crunch members are encouraged to ask their own questions during the Zoom call, so please come prepared. If you’re not already a member, sign up on the cheap right here.

You can also check out the full Extra Crunch Live schedule here.

See you soon!