Year: 2020

A startup behind one of the world’s most successful tech platforms for doctors has launched a new initiative to try and track the spread of the Coronavirus, initially in the UK but soon in the US.

Developed by MedShr – the app used by a million doctors to aid them in the diagnostic process – LetsBeatCOVID.net is designed to allow members of the public to complete a short survey about their health and exposure to COVID-19 in order that health services can save more lives.

Members of the public are asked to complete a short anonymous survey about themselves and are able to add information for others in their household or family. They can then update their responses if their situation changes using a randomly generated code to log back in. MedShr says users will, therefore, be able to hide their identity if they are concerned about their privacy. They will, however, be asked to verify their location via the phone’s browser in order to generate more accurate data about the spread of symptoms.
 
Anyone who completes the survey and chooses to enter their email will also get personalized guidance to help them understand their personal situation.

The not-for-profit initiative is led by Dr Asif Qasim, a Consultant Cardiologist based in London, England. Dr Qasim founded MedShr, an online network that enables doctors to connect and share data and knowledge with each other, in 2013.

Dr. Qasim said: “A million doctors around the world are working very hard to protect patients with COVID-19 in difficult and unprecedented circumstances. We are hearing from them that they don’t have the information they need to plan services and avert a crisis such as the one Italy is now facing. We believe this app could help.” Dr. Qasim says the data will be shared with health authorities fighting the pandemic.

LetsBeatCOVID.net could make it easier for members of the public to provide the information urgently needed by hospitals and governments by allowing hospitals to understand how many people are: more likely to require medical help or hospitalization; have been in contact with someone with COVID-19 but do not have any symptoms; have mild symptoms of COVID-19; or believe or know they have already had COVID-19 and recovered.

The spread and devastating impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) is unprecedented. Hospitals in China and Italy have struggled to care for the large numbers of people who become infected with the virus, especially those who needed Intensive Care and breathing support with a ventilator. Doctors and scientists believe that the UK, US and many other countries could be just a few weeks away from the devastating death toll that Italy is now experiencing. 

MedShr is a HIPAA and GDPR compliant professional network for doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals currently used by over one million members in 190 countries.

European fintech startup Revolut is launching its app and service in the U.S. Starting today, anybody can sign up and get a Revolut debit card. In the U.S., Revolut has partnered with Metropolitan Commercial Bank for the banking infrastructure — deposits are FDIC insured up to $250,000.

In just a few years, Revolut has managed to attract over 10 million customers by building a financial hub that lets you spend, send, receive and manage money from a single app. The company recently raised a $500 million funding round, valuing the company at $5.5 billion.

But the U.S. has been watching from the sidelines. Tens of thousands of customers have signed up to the waiting list and they’ll now be able to access all of Revolut’s core features.

Like competing challenger banks, such as Chime and N26, Revolut lets you open an account from your phone. After downloading the app, you enter personal details and send a few official documents to comply with know-your-customer regulation.

After that, you get U.S. account details and you can instantly top up your account with a bank transfer or a card transfer. A few days later, you also receive a physical debit card. You can also generate a virtual debit card from the app.

Revolut lets you control your debit card from the app directly. You can receive notifications every time you make a transaction. You can freeze and unfreeze your card, set some limits and restrict some feature, such as online payments or ATM withdrawals.

One of Revolut’s key features is that you can convert from one currency to another at a low fee — sometimes without any markup for popular currencies and small transactions (more details on foreign exchange fees here). You can hold foreign currencies in your Revolut account or send money to another Revolut user or a bank account in another country. Revolut also gives you local banking details to receive EUR or GBP.

In the U.S., Revolut offers the ability to receive your salary two days in advance if you share your Revolut banking details with your employer.

Revolut offers a ton of additional features in Europe, but the company is starting with this basic feature set in the U.S. You can expect more features in the future, such as the ability to purchase cryptocurrencies and invest on the stock market.

In Europe, Revolut also offers insurance products through premium monthly subscriptions, mobile phone insurance, savings accounts, credit, rewards and more. Many of those features require partnerships with third-party companies. But it gives you an idea of Revolut’s roadmap in the U.S.

Disney+, the streaming service from the Walt Disney Company, has been rapidly ramping up in the last several weeks. But while some of that expansion has seen some hiccups, other regions are basically on track. Today, as expected, Disney announced that it is officially launching in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Switzerland; it also reconfirmed the delayed debut in France will be coming online on April 7.

Seven is the operative number here, it seems: it’s the largest multi-country launch so far for the service.

“Launching in seven markets simultaneously marks a new milestone for Disney+,“ said Kevin Mayer, Chairman of Walt Disney Direct-to-Consumer & International, in a statement. “As the streaming home for Disney, Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, and National Geographic, Disney+ delivers high-quality, optimistic storytelling that fans expect from our brands, now available broadly, conveniently, and permanently on Disney+. We humbly hope that this service can bring some much-needed moments of respite for families during these difficult times.”

Pricing is £5.99/€6.99 per month, or £59.99/€69.99 for an annual subscription. Belgium, the Nordics, and Portugal, will follow in summer 2020.

The service being rolled out will feature 26 Disney+ Originals plus an “extensive collection” of titles (some 500 films, 26 exclusive original movies and series and thousands of TV episodes to start with) from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, and other content producers owned by the entertainment giant, in what has been one of the boldest moves yet from a content company to go head-to-head with OTT streaming services like Netflix, Amazon and Apple.

The expansion of Disney+ has been caught a bit in the crossfire of world events. The new service is launching at what has become an unprecedented time for streaming: because of the coronavirus pandemic, a lot of of the world is being told to stay home.

That means huge demand for new services to entertain and distract people who are now sheltering in place. But it has also been putting a huge strain on broadband networks, and to be a responsible streamer (and to make sure quality is not too impacted), Disney confirmed (as it previously said it would) it would be launching the service with “lower overall bandwidth utilization by at least 25%.

Titles in the mix debuting today include “The Mandalorian” live-action Star Wars series; a live-action “Lady and the Tramp,” “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series,”; “The World According to Jeff Goldblum” docuseries from National Geographic; “Marvel’s Hero Project,” which celebrates extraordinary kids making a difference in their communities; “Encore!,” executive produced by the multi-talented Kristen Bell; “The Imagineering Story” a 6-part documentary from Emmy and Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Leslie Iwerks and animated short film collections “SparkShorts” and “Forky Asks A Question” from Pixar Animation Studios.

Some 600 episodes of “The Simpsons” is also included (with the latest season 31 coming later this year).

With entire households now being told to stay together and stay inside, we’re seeing a huge amount of pressure being put on to broadband networks and a true test of the multiscreen approach that streaming services have been building over the years. In this case, you can use all the usuals: mobile phones, streaming media players, smart TVs and gaming consoles to watch the Disney+ service (including Amazon devices, Apple devices, Google devices, LG Smart TVs with webOS, Microsoft’s Xbox Ones, Roku, Samsung Smart TVs and Sony / Sony Interactive Entertainment, with the ability to use four concurrent streams per subscription, or up to 10 devices with unlimited downloads. As you would expect, there is also the ability to set up parental controls and individual profiles.

Carriers with paid-TV services that are also on board so far include Deutsche Telekom, O2 in the UK, Telefonica in Spain, TIM in Italy and Canal+ in France when the country comes online. No BT in the UK, which is too bad for me (sniff). Sky and NOW TV are also on board.

Meet Imatag, a French startup that has been working on a watermarking product. Watermarking is nothing new, but the company has found a way to mark images even if they are resized, cropped, edited or compressed.

Many photographers and brands watermark their photos so that you can see who’s the original source when the photo gets re-uploaded around the web and on social networks. But it’s not perfect. If you put a tiny logo in a corner, you can just crop the photo to leave the logo out of the photo.

Stock photo databases, such as Getty and Shutterstock, put a gigantic logo in the middle of the photo so that’s it’s literally unusable if you don’t have the right licensing rights.

Imatag takes a different approach. When you mark a photo, individual pixels are modified all around the image so that you can’t notice it when you compare it with the original shot. When you modify a photo, some pixels will be modified, but not all. This way, you can always find the watermark again.

“It’s not a good idea to modify colors directly. You have to start with grayscale analysis and that’s what we do,” co-founder and CEO Mathieu Desoubeaux. “We apply psychovisual masks to make sure that you can’t see it with human eyes.”

Imatag assigns a signature with each photo that it processes. By following the same process, you can just compare the signatures of multiple shots to see if they come from the similar source.

The startup goes one step further and offers a service for multiple use cases. With Imatag Monitor, the company monitors your images on the web to see where they appear.

Some clients use it to fight back against illegal use, such as photo agencies. But brands also use it to see if product shots appear on social networks for instance. They don’t want to refrain people from sharing those photos, but they want to monitor the response to a new product.

Imatag also works with smartphone manufacturers or car makers so that they can identify leaks before an official announcement. When you send photos of a new smartphone to various retailers, you can tag them with Imatag. This way, you can trace back the source of a leak in case your product shots start leaking.

Imatag lets you integrate their watermarking technology in your image flow if you’re dealing with a high volume of photos. Companies who don’t work with a lot of images can just use Imatag’s website directly.

Netflix said on Tuesday that it is lowering its traffic on network providers by 25% in India for a period of 30 days, following a similar move in Europe in a bid to reduce the congestion on the internet pipelines.

The American giant said that despite lowering the strain it puts on internet service providers, it will “maintain the quality” of its service.

“Given the crisis, we’ve developed a way to reduce Netflix’s traffic on telecommunications networks by 25% while also maintaining the quality of our service. So consumers should continue to get the quality that comes with their plan – whether it’s Ultra-High, High or Standard Definition. We believe that this will provide significant relief to congested networks and will be deploying it in India for the next 30 days,” Ken Florance, VP Content Delivery of Netflix, said in a statement to TechCrunch.

Netflix’s announcement follows a local telecom group’s (Cellular Operators Association of India) appeal to local streaming services to put less burden on internet pipelines that are facing surge in usage as more people stay and work from home in the wake of coronavirus outbreak.

A report by Bank of America, obtained by TechCrunch, said that internet service providers in India had witnessed a 10% surge in the volume of daily traffic and data consumption they were seeing on their networks. The firm analyzed traffic at internet exchanges and spoke with internet service providers to reach that conclusion.

More to follow…

April Underwood, who until early last year was Slack’s chief product officer, has joined Obvious Ventures as a venture partner, she announced on Twitter today.

Underwood said that as part of the firm’s team, she will “invest in great companies seeking to solve the big problems facing humanity: our climate, human health and wellness, and how we work.” Of Obvious’s focus on “backing company with world positive impact,” she said its mission “couldn’t possibly feel more needed than it does in this particular moment.”

For Underwood, the role is one of several that she is currently juggling. She founded a startup advisory outfit called Wise Owl last year. She is also a cofounder of #Angels, an organization that focuses on investing in female founders and to which Underwood remains very committed, she said today, tweeting that her focus on “getting more women on the cap tables of successful startups will continue unabated.”

Underwood is now among a growing number of  #Angels cofounders — powerful women at Twitter who introduced the initiative in 2015 — to be investing on pretty much a full-time basis.

In addition to Underwood, who spent nearly five years as a director of product at Twitter before joining Slack, #Angels was founded by Jana Messerschmidt, who is now a partner with Lightspeed Venture Partners; Jessica Verrilli, who is now a general partner with GV; and Katie Stanton Jacobs, who recently closed her own first venture fund with $25 million in capital commitments under the brand Moxie Ventures.

Another #Angels founder Vijaya Gadde, was and remains the General Counsel at Twitter. Meanwhile, Chloe Sladden, a former VP of Media at Twitter, last year cofounded a seed-stage startup making collaborative parenting tools called Honeycomb Labs.

Underwood, who also sits on the board of Zillow, was in charge of much of Slack’s strategy and product decisions during her nearly four years with the company.

Underwood is now one of three venture partners who are working with Obvious Ventures .

The others include serial entrepreneur, investor and advisor Julie Hanna, and Di-Ann Eisnor, who was previously the Director of Urban Systems at Google’s Area 120 and, before that, started the U.S. office of Waze in 2009.

Obvious Ventures — cofounded very notably by Twitter cofounder Ev Williams —  closed its third fund with roughly $270 million in capital commitments earlier this year.

April Underwood, who until early last year was Slack’s chief product officer, has joined Obvious Ventures as a venture partner, she announced on Twitter today.

Underwood said that as part of the firm’s team, she will “invest in great companies seeking to solve the big problems facing humanity: our climate, human health and wellness, and how we work.” Of Obvious’s focus on “backing company with world positive impact,” she said its mission “couldn’t possibly feel more needed than it does in this particular moment.”

For Underwood, the role is one of several that she is currently juggling. She founded a startup advisory outfit called Wise Owl last year. She is also a cofounder of #Angels, an organization that focuses on investing in female founders and to which Underwood remains very committed, she said today, tweeting that her focus on “getting more women on the cap tables of successful startups will continue unabated.”

Underwood is now among a growing number of  #Angels cofounders — powerful women at Twitter who introduced the initiative in 2015 — to be investing on pretty much a full-time basis.

In addition to Underwood, who spent nearly five years as a director of product at Twitter before joining Slack, #Angels was founded by Jana Messerschmidt, who is now a partner with Lightspeed Venture Partners; Jessica Verrilli, who is now a general partner with GV; and Katie Stanton Jacobs, who recently closed her own first venture fund with $25 million in capital commitments under the brand Moxie Ventures.

Another #Angels founder Vijaya Gadde, was and remains the General Counsel at Twitter. Meanwhile, Chloe Sladden, a former VP of Media at Twitter, last year cofounded a seed-stage startup making collaborative parenting tools called Honeycomb Labs.

Underwood, who also sits on the board of Zillow, was in charge of much of Slack’s strategy and product decisions during her nearly four years with the company.

Underwood is now one of three venture partners who are working with Obvious Ventures .

The others include serial entrepreneur, investor and advisor Julie Hanna, and Di-Ann Eisnor, who was previously the Director of Urban Systems at Google’s Area 120 and, before that, started the U.S. office of Waze in 2009.

Obvious Ventures — cofounded very notably by Twitter cofounder Ev Williams —  closed its third fund with roughly $270 million in capital commitments earlier this year.

Compass, the real estate brokerage startup backed by roughly $1.6 billion in venture funding, has laid off 15% of its staff as a result of the shifting economic fortunes created by the global response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, according to an internal email seen by TechCrunch.

Citing economic fallout that has seen stock markets plummet 30 percent in just 22 days Compass chief executive Robert Reffkin wrote that the company has seen an over 60 percent decline in real estate showings and is modeling a 6-month decline in revenue of 50 percent.

“We aren’t just facing an economic recession, we are facing an economic standstill,” Reffkin wrote. As the country’s unemployment rate soars to a projected 10 percent, Reffkin wrote that the company had no choice but to cut its workforce.

The 15 percent reduction in staffing is being accompanied by an 80% reduction in its concierge business and a shift to entirely virtual delivery. As part of the reductions in corporate spending, Reffkin cut his own salary to nothing and reduced the entire executive team’s salary by 25 percent.

For the employees that are laid off, the company said it would provide an “enhanced severance and COBRA health insurance” along with letting employees hang on to their company laptops and providing tools, training, and networking help so that they can try to get a new job.

The news from Compass is just one indicator of a potential reckoning coming for the booming property tech investment category.

Earlier today, TechCrunch reported that Zillow was suspending its homebuying activities as a result of the new economic reality.

Zillow said it decided to halt its offers to sellers after several states, including California, Illinois, Louisiana, Ohio, New York and Nevada, implemented emergency orders requiring people to stay home and all non-essential business activities, including some real estate-related activities, to stop.

Opendoor and Redfin made similar decisions to pause homebuying. Meanwhile other real estate companies are also laying off staff. The co-working startup Convene laid off staff as well, citing current market conditions.

Reffkin is hopeful that the economy will turn around and predicted that the economy could turn around in the next 100 days. And he ends his email looking forward to a return to normalcy for Compass and the broader market.

“I feel hopeful that China’s apparent success at reducing the spread of the Coronavirus and restarting their enormous economy may provide a blueprint for our future, as well,” Reffkin wrote. “And I feel hopeful because of the ways I see people throughout our company and throughout our society stepping up during this challenging time.”

To date, Compass has raised $1.6 billion in financing from investors including the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, Fidelity, Wellington Management, Softbank Vision Fund, and the Qatar Investment Authority, according to Crunchbase.

The world has been turned upside-down the past few weeks, with flight cancellations, global travel bans and a massive slowdown of worldwide commerce.

For immigrants to the United States here on work visas, these are particularly ambiguous and challenging times.

We’ve had prominent Silicon Valley immigration attorney Sophie Alcorn of Alcorn Immigration Law talk about all the nuances of immigration the past few months across our stages and through her Dear Sophie column on Extra Crunch, where she has answered questions like “how do I get visas for employees who work from home” and answering questions around the changes to the H-1B process.

Now, she’ll join us for a conference call we are hosting for Extra Crunch members tomorrow, Tuesday, March 24 at 1 p.m PDT (dial-in details below the jump) to discuss all the news that has happened the last few weeks and its impact on immigrants to the U.S. going forward.

I’ll join Sophie and Silicon Valley reporter Natasha Mascarenhas to talk about all the changes underway in the immigration system, with a focus on the visas typical for founders and workers in Silicon Valley. And then we will take questions from the audience to discuss the trends on what Sophie is seeing across her clients and across the Valley today.

If you aren’t able to join us, we’ll post a transcript of the discussion on Extra Crunch. Here’s how to dial in to Tuesday’s call:

Startups continue to find new ways to contribute to ongoing efforts to fight the global spread of COVID-19 during the current global coronavirus pandemic, and personal health hardware-maker Oura is no exception. The smart ring startup is working with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) on a new study to see if its device can help detect early physiological sings that might indicate the onset of COVID-19.

This study will include two parts: Around 2,000 frontline healthcare professionals will get Our rings to wear during the study. The rings track a users’s body temperature continuously, as well as their sleep patterns, heart rate and activity levels. Fever is a common and early symptom that could indicate COVID-19, and a continuously updated body temperature reading could detect fever very early. That’s not enough to confirm a case of COVID-19, of course, but the purpose of the study is to determine whether the range of readings Oura’s ring tracks might, taken together and with other signals, be useful in some kind of early detection effort.

There’s good reason why researches believe that Oura could be used in early detection: An Oura user in Finland alerted him to the fact that he was ill before he was displaying any overt symptoms of the virus, prompting him to get tested (relatively easy in that country). Test results confirmed that while asymptomatic, he had indeed contracted COVID-19. As a result, UCSF researcher Dr. Ashley Mason hypothesizes that the Oura ring could anticipate COVID-19 onset by as many as two to three days before the onset of more obvious symptoms, like coughing.

Being able to detect the presence of the virus in an individual early is key to global containment efforts, but even more important when it comes to frontline healthcare workers. The earlier a frontline responder is diagnosed, the less chance that they expose their colleagues or others they’re working around in close quarters.

In addition to the Oura rings being provided to study participants, the plan is to expand it to include Oura’s general user population, meaning its over 150,000 global users can opt in to participate and add to the overall poor of available information with their ring’s readings and daily symptom surveys. For existing Oura users, it’s a relatively low-lift way to contribute to the global effort to combat the pandemic – without even leaving the house.