Author: azeeadmin

YouTube earlier this year announced its plans to significantly invest in original creator content for its TikTok competitor, YouTube Shorts, with the introduction of a $100 million YouTube Shorts Fund. The fund will reward creators for their most engaging and most viewed short-form videos over the course of 2021 to 2022, with the goal of quickly scaling creator activity on YouTube’s new short-form video platform, Shorts, to better rival TikTok. Today, YouTube announced the fund is officially launching and creators will begin to receive their first payouts in August.

Image Credits: YouTube

Every month, YouTube will invite thousands of eligible creators to claim a payment from the fund. These payouts may range anywhere from $100 to $10,000, based on viewership and engagement with their Shorts videos. Reached for comment, YouTube declined to share the exact viewership thresholds creators will have to reach to earn the payouts, saying that those numbers may change from month to month.

The company told TechCrunch it will determine how it calculates the thresholds by analyzing the best-performing channels and then calculating their bonus based on a number of factors, which includes views, where their audience is located and more. The company also said it wanted to make sure it was rewarding as many creators as possible, which is why it set a minimum payment of $100.

To qualify, creators must produce original content — not videos that were re-uploaded from other channels or those with watermarks from other social services. That was a problem that Instagram’s TikTok competitor Reels has faced — creators often re-used the same content they’re sharing on TikTok when they publish to Reels. To fight the problem, Instagram even had to adjust its algorithm to downrank the recycled content.

While there are plenty of tools that allow creators to strip the watermark from a video, as well as those that let you edit videos for upload to multiple short-form video platforms, YouTube says it will be using a combination of automation and human reviewers to ensure creators meet its guidelines around original content.

Creators will also need to be 13 or older in the U.S., or the age of majority in other countries and regions, to quality. Those ages 13 to 18 will also need to have a parent or guardian set up their AdSense account, link it to the creator’s channel and accept the terms, as this is where payments will be directed. All of a creator’s Shorts videos will count toward their bonuses each month they receive views — not just the month they were uploaded, YouTube notes.

The channels also need to have uploaded at least one eligible Short in the last 180 days and must follow YouTube’s Community Guidelines, copyright rules and monetization policies. While YouTube Partner Program members can participate in the fund, creators don’t have to already be monetizing on YouTube to quality for the new Shorts bonuses.

At launch, the fund will support creators in the U.S., Brazil, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa and the United Kingdom. Over time, it will expand to more markets.

Image Credits: YouTube

The company also told us it’s not looking for any specific types of video to reward, as the fund gets off the ground. Instead, it’s only looking at the metrics, like the total monthly performance a channel’s Shorts received.

On the one hand, not specifying any video categories or subject matter to lean into gives creators a lot of freedom to experiment when producing Shorts. But on the other, it could also lead creators to simply make more TikTok-like content, but publish it to YouTube instead in hopes of cashing in. That could result in YouTube Shorts feeling a lot like the TikTok clone that it is, rather than allowing it to differentiate itself by the nature of its content.

For comparison, other TikTok rivals, like Pinterest’s Idea Pins or Snapchat’s Spotlight aim to leverage what makes their platform unique and deliver that as short-form, public videos. Pinterest’s Idea Pins are often focused on tutorials or recipe-making, which are popular searches on its service. Spotlight, meanwhile, can feature Snaps — including those from private accounts, not professionals. That makes some Spotlight videos feel less polished and produced, compared with TikTok or Reels, which fits in with its more casual aesthetic.

YouTube says it will begin reaching out to creators starting next week to let them know if they’ve qualified for a bonus. The company will send a notification in the YouTube app, which includes the amount of the bonus and details on how to claim it. Creators will then have until the 25th of the month to claim the bonus payment before it expires.

Image Credits: YouTube

TikTok’s growth and popularity has encouraged a number of social platforms to invest directly in the creator community in hopes of winning back some of their audience. Facebook recently announced its own $1 billion-plus bonus system for videos across both Facebook and Instagram through the end of 2022, including but not limited to Reels videos. Snap initially said it would distribute $1 million per day through the end of 2020 for top Snaps on Spotlight, but later dialed that back. Pinterest announced a much smaller ($500,000) creator fund that runs through 2021.

And to counteract all the challenges, TikTok last month introduced a $200 million fund for U.S. creators.

With the official launch of the Shorts Fund, YouTube notes it now has 10 ways creators can make money on its platform, including ads, YouTube Premium subscription revenue shares, channel memberships, Super Chat, Super Thanks, Super Stickers, merchandise, ticketing and YouTube BrandConnect.

Substack announced last week that it acquired Letter, a platform that encourages written dialogue and debate. The financials of the deal weren’t disclosed, but this acquisition follows Substack’s recent $65 million raise.

Newsletters are all the rage — Facebook launched its exclusive, celeb-studded Bulletin platform last month, and Twitter acquired the newsletter startup Revue earlier this year. Letter doesn’t publish email newsletters like Substack, but rather, it allows writers to engage in epistolary exchanges about fraught topics like Brexit, dating and the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. The idea behind Letter makes sense. Complicated conversations require nuance, yet these online debates too often happen on platforms like Twitter, where short-form tweets make it harder to have nuanced conversations.

“We could see that Letter, like Substack, was working in opposition to the ad-driven attention economy, attempting to change the rules of engagement for online discourse,” Substack wrote in its acquisition announcement.

But this acquisition may be cause for concern among those already troubled by the controversy Substack faced earlier this year, when news came out that the platform offered some writers up to six-figure advances as part of its Substack Pro program. The problem wasn’t that Substack was incentivizing writers to join the platform, but rather, who Substack had hand-picked to pay an advance. Plus, Substack says that it’s up to the writer to disclose whether or not they’re part of Substack Pro, which creates a lack of editorial transparency.

As Substack grew, writers left jobs at Buzzfeed and the New York Times, lured by pay raises and cautious optimism. But as more writers came forward as part of the Substack Pro program, Substack was criticized for subsidizing anti-trans rhetoric, since some of these writers used their newsletters to share such views. Substack admits it’s not entirely apolitical, but the choices of which writers to subsidize, and its decision to use only lightweight moderation tactics, are a strong political choice in an era of the internet when content moderation has a tangible effect on global politics. Some writers even chose to leave the platform.

Annalee Newitz, a non-binary writer who since left the platform, wrote on Substack, “Their leadership are deciding what kinds of writing and writers are worthy of financial compensation. […] Substack is taking an editorial stance, paying writers who fit that stance, and refusing to be transparent about who those people are.”

So, when Substack described its new acquisition Letter as a platform that encourages people to “argue in good faith instead of dropping bombs for retweets,” it made the acquisition worthy of a deeper examination. Statements like this sound agreeable, yet this kind of language often appears in arguments that deem social justice a threat to free speech. But free speech shouldn’t mean endorsing hate speech.

Substack wants to position itself as a neutral platform, and for many writers, it’s a valuable way to make money, especially in an unstable journalism industry. But given that some users have already become skeptical of who Substack chooses to financially incentivize, it’s worth examining the implications of buying Letter, a platform that includes writers associated with the so-called intellectual dark web in its group of twenty “featured writers.” On Letter, some of these writers question the validity of childhood transgender identity and refer to the statement “trans women are women” as propaganda, for example. Substack has already lost the trust of some trans and gender non-conforming writers, and the content on its newly acquired Letter won’t help rebuild that trust.

In addition, Letter co-founder Clyde Rathbone wrote in support of a controversial letter published in Harper’s Magazine, which called for the “concerted repudiation of cancel culture.” But critics of the letter point out that free speech isn’t really at stake here.

The open letter had been signed by over 150 prominent writers — like Gloria Steinem, Noam Chomsky (a Letter author), and Malcolm Gladwell (a Bulletin author). It argued: “We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.” These “professional consequences” echoed the predicament that J.K. Rowling — who also signed the letter — had put herself in. After denying that trans women are women, her reputation suffered. Some might call that “cancel culture,” but others might call it the refusal to continue to platform people who perpetuate harmful beliefs.

“The panic over ‘cancel culture’ is, at its core, a reactionary backlash,” wrote journalist Michael Hobbes. “Conservative elites, threatened by changing social norms and an accelerating generational handover, are attempting to amplify their feelings of aggrievement into a national crisis.”

Substack says it plans to use the acquisition of Letter to help writers collaborate, and that it won’t integrate Letter into its platform. Rather, the Letter team will relocate from Australia to San Francisco to “bring their expertise to help build more of the infrastructure and support.”

TechCrunch asked Substack if the anti-trans content on Letter is cause for concern within the company, given the recent backlash against the platform.

Thoma Bravo-owned Sophos has announced its second takeover in as many weeks with the acquisition of Seattle-based DevSecOps startup Refactr.

Refactr was founded in 2017 and offers an automation platform that helps cybersecurity and DevOps teams to collaboratively operate. The platform, which is used by the non-profit Center for Internet Security and the U.S. Air Force’s Platform One, features a drag-and-drop low-code pipeline builder and DevOps-friendly features that encourage disparate teams to collaborate on the same agile workflow process, according to the company.

“Our mission is to enable DevSecOps to become the modern approach to automation, where cybersecurity use cases like Security Operation, Automation and Response (SOAR), Extended Detection and Response (XDR), compliance, cloud security, and Identity and Access Management (IAM) become building blocks for DevSecOps solutions,” said Michael Fraser, CEO and co-founder of Refactr.

The deal, the terms of which were not disclosed, will see Refactr’s entire team of developers and engineers join Sophos. While Sophos says it will continue to develop and offer Refactr’s DevSecOps automation platform to existing customers, it will also embed its SOAR capabilities to its own managed threat response (MTR) and XDR solutions.

“With Refactr, Sophos will fast track the integration of such advanced SOAR capabilities into our adaptive cybersecurity ecosystem, the basis for our XDR product and MTR service,” said Joe Levy, chief technology officer at Sophos.

Sophos’ acquisition of Refactr lands shortly after it announced plans to buy Braintrace, a cybersecurity startup that provides organizations visibility into suspicious network traffic patterns. Thoma Bravo completed its $3.9 billion takeover of Sophos in 2020 as the company continues to increase its reach in the cybersecurity space. Since then, the private equity firm has acquired security vendor Proofpoint for $12.3 billion and led a $225 million funding round in zero-trust unicorn Illumio.

Marvell announced this morning it intends to acquire Innovium for $1.1 billion in an all-stock deal. The startup, which raised over $400 million according to Crunchbase data, makes networking ethernet switches optimized for the cloud.

Marvell president and CEO Matt Murphy sees Innovium as a complementary piece to the $10 billion Inphi acquisition last year, giving the company, which makes copper-based chips, more ways to work across modern cloud data centers.

“Innovium has established itself as a strong cloud data center merchant switch silicon provider with a proven platform, and we look forward to working with their talented team who have a strong track record in the industry for delivering multiple generations of highly successful products,” Marvell CEO Matt Murphy said in a statement.

Innovium founder and CEO Rajiv Khemani, who will remain on as an advisor post-close, told a familiar tale from a startup CEO being acquired, seeing the sale as a way to accelerate more quickly as part of a larger organization than it could on its own. “As we engaged with Marvell, it became clear that our data center optimized portfolio combined with Marvell’s scale, leading technology platform and complementary portfolio, can accelerate our growth and vision of delivering breakthrough switch silicon for the cloud and edge,” he wrote in a company blog post announcing the deal.

The company, which was founded in 2014, raised over $143 million last year on a post money valuation of $1.3 billion, according to Pitchbook data. The question is was this a reasonable deal for the company given that valuation?

No company wants to sell for less than it was last valued by its investors. In some cases, such deals can still be accretive for early backers of the selling concern, but not always. In this case TechCrunch is not privy to all the details of the Innovium cap table and what its later investors may have built into their deals with the company in the form of downside protection; such measures can tilt the value of the sale of company more towards its later and final investors. This is usually managed at the expense of its earlier backers and employees.

Still, the Innovium deal should not be seen as a failure. Building a company that sells for north of $1 billion in equity value is impressive. The deal appears to be slightly smaller in enterprise value terms. In the business world, enterprise value is a useful method of valuing the true cost of an acquisition. In the case of Innovium, a large cash position, what was described as “Innovium cash and exercise proceeds expected at closing of approximately $145 million,” lowered the cost of the transaction to a more modest $955 million in net outlays.

Our general perspective is that the sale is probably not the outcome that Innovium’s backers had hoped for, but that it may still prove lucrative to early workers and early investors, and still works at that lower figure. It’s also notable how in today’s market of mega-rounds and surfeit unicorns, an exit north of the $1 billion mark in equity terms can be viewed as a disappointment in any terms. Innovium is selling for around the price that Facebook paid for Instagram in 2012, a deal that at the time was so large that it dominated technology headlines around the world.

But with so much capital available today, private valuations are soaring and mega deals abound. And recent rounds north of $100 million, much like Innovium’s 2020-era, $143 million round, can set companies up with rich valuations and a narrow path in front of them to beat those heightened expectations.

What likely happened? Perhaps Innovium found itself with more cash than opportunities to spend it; perhaps it simply needed a large partner to help it better sell into its market. With expected revenues of $150 million in Marvell’s fiscal 2023, its next fiscal period, Innovium did not fail to reach scale. It may have simply grown well as a private, independent company, and stalled out after its last round.

Regardless, a billion dollar exit is a billion dollar exit. The deal is expected to close by the end of this year. While both company boards have approved the deal, it still must clear regular closing hurdles including approval by Innovium’s private stock holders.

Boeing is all set to make a second attempt at flying its Starliner CST-100 commercial crew spacecraft to the International Space Station, performing a key demonstration ahead of actually putting astronauts on board for the final big launch before it can claim the spacecraft is certified for regular flight by NASA. Today’s ‘Orbital Flight Test 2’ (OFT-2) mission is a re-do of one that Boeing and NASA first performed in December, 2019.

That first try was meant to be the only one, but it didn’t go quite as planned, with software errors resulting in a mistaken fire of the craft’s engines, exhausting the fuel required to get to the Space Station for automated docking as planned. Boeing instead looked to salvage the test with a landing attempt, which also encountered a problem that was corrected before a good touchdown.

While Boeing originally wanted to re-fly the mission sometime last year, the schedule was pushed out for a variety of reasons, and a global pandemic occurring in the interim can’t have helped. Both Boeing and NASA conducted extensive investigations into not just the cause of the specific problem that the OFT-1 mission encountered, but the culture and processes of Boeing’s software development as well.

Space industry enthusiasts may already know that Boeing’s Starliner is one of two commercial spacecraft NASA contracted to ferry its astronauts to the International Space Station, the other being SpaceX. Elon Musk’s private launch company succeeded with its orbital flight test, and subsequently flew humans aboard its final demonstration launch, and is now a regular service provider for NASA, having carried two groups of astronauts to the ISS for standard tours of duty.

Accordingly, all eyes will be on Boeing to see if it can pull this off cleanly, especially given how much time it’s had since the last flight to correct any errors and prepare. The launch is set for 1:20 PM ET, with live coverage via the stream above kicking off around 12:30 PM ET.

We cover a lot of venture capital news here at TechCrunch. New funds, partner changes, the funding rounds themselves — the list is long. Lately, we’ve had to touch on rolling funds, solo GPs and a faster-than-ever investing cadence that has rewritten the rules of venture investing. Gone are the days when investors can take weeks, let alone months, to get into a hot deal in today’s turbocharged private markets.

But there’s another venture capital trend worth discussing: venture capital firms going public. This July, for example, London-based Forward Partners went public on the AIM, a sub-market of the well-known London Stock Exchange. Augmentum Fintech is another example of a London-listed venture capital firm. The investing group focuses on European fintech.

Most recently, Draper Esprit, another British venture capital firm, moved from the AIM to the LSE proper, with a secondary listing on Euronext Dublin. TechCrunch has cited Esprit partners in our explorations of the European venture capital scene in the past, especially in our regular digs through the startup hub’s numbers.

To understand why Draper Esprit not only decided to stay public but doubled down on its structure by moving to the main boards in London and Dublin, we got on the horn with the firm’s co-founder, Stuart Chapman. What follows is an edited and condensed transcript of our call. Coming up, The Exchange has analysis and further interviews about whether the trend of floating venture capital firms may spread, and why other investing groups opted in. But first, highlights from our chat with Chapman.

TechCrunch: We have a bunch of questions about the change in listing, but let’s start with how long ago you began this transition.

Stuart Chapman: I co-founded Esprit with Simon Cook back in 2006, and after a 10-year journey of raising conventional funds, we were coming to the point of raising our fourth fund. But we were having frustrating meetings with limited partners who were trying to pigeonhole us, and at the same time, the London market was getting more and more frustrated that private companies were staying private longer and they would not have access to them. I think we were down to ARM as the last true bastion of tech companies on the London Exchange, so we were approached by a group of City funds to raise our fourth fund through a public market listing.

The junior market in London was very helpful for that, and we spent five happy years on AIM, raising money annually – until we crossed over the billion [sterling] capitalization mark. By then, it was quite obvious that if we want to fulfill the same ambition and growth over the next five years, we were going to need to step up onto a bigger market that was going to give us wider access to funds and [expand our] attraction to a much larger group of people. Part of our mission at Draper Esprit is to democratize venture capital, as Simon would say; and [being listed on the main market] increases that opportunity.

When we started out on the AIM, we raised capital from professional funds’ tech enthusiasts, who were positively biased. Unfortunately, there’s not very many of them, and once you have exhausted that, then you move down into the more general funds – maybe funds with an angle on the U.K., funds with an angle on technology. But by their very nature, they tend to be small-cap funds, and there’s not that many of them in the U.K. So, by stepping up, we enable ourselves to go into more generous funds as well as tech funds [that] have a minimum bar.

And should we now expect to see Draper Esprit raise more capital per annum?

In a perfect world, the answer is no, because realizations equal investments, so you are self-sustaining. The one thing I would say about Draper Esprit is that we are trying to be innovative. It shocks me that venture capital backs some of the most mind-blowing tech advances in our history over the last 70 years using the same legal structure as a 1958 property vehicle in New York. I don’t get it! Surely, we can reinvent and push ourselves forward as much as we push our entrepreneurs. So long story short, Simon and I never opted to rest. We always wanted to see if we could create the next thing that would help entrepreneurs be more successful.

Talking about innovation in venture capital models, what’s the main motivation for your use of retail investment platform PrimaryBid? Is it to open the door for more regular folks to invest, or is it a really material way to add capital to Draper Esprit?

It’s the former. If you go back to 2010, we launched our [Enterprise Investment Scheme] product – in the UK, the EIS is a tax wrapper, where private individuals can invest into tech businesses and receive 30% tax credit; and then, if it goes well, it’s tax-free. It’s a great government initiative. However, whenever a government interferes in a market, it goes to the lowest denominator, and most people in the industry were using it to enable investors to gain tax credit. Whereas we said: That’s silly; you should use it to enable people to back the best possible businesses, and then the tax credit is just a bonus.

So what we did back in 2010 [was] we enabled X entrepreneurs, X people in the tech ecosystem, to participate in the Draper Esprit EIS program to be part of this democratizing equity. Today, that’s about £150 million in the EIS vehicle, and about £50 million in the VCT, which is another U.K. tax-related vehicle where you get the same benefits – so it’s now over £200 million from small individuals. The idea for us is to extend our ecosystem out into influential people.

How do you feel about having opened the way for other funds to go public?

Personally, and at Draper Esprit, we are big supporters of innovation, so we have helped Mark Boggett at Seraphim [and shared information and] our path. And then Nic Brisbourne … was an ex-colleague of mine and Simon’s, so we actually helped Nic, but we also invested in Forward Partners as a way of showing our support to what he was doing through our fund of funds program.

I think where we are very different is where we get confused with the more technology transfer shops. IP Group [for example is] a great model and it’s got real longevity [and has been] in the market much longer than us. But that’s not what we do. They’re looking to back computer science from an early stage in universities. And so, yes, we’re supportive of others following in our footsteps and we will be big fans of having much wider diversity.

Why are you investing in other funds, and does it open up your capital’s geographic footprint?

Two reasons, to be very honest with you. One is consistent with the previous point, which is [that] Europe wins when it has a really strong ecosystem. And, historically, Europe has founded seed funds in a haphazard way. Finland, for example, had 80 programs to raise early-stage capital. Regions were granted seed funds, but they had no follow-on capital.

No one realized that venture capital was an escalator, and unless you could pass the baton to the next person, [startups] have to do it themselves. But if you have to do it yourself, you don’t create an ecosystem.

The first point was how do we build an ecosystem, consistent with how we get more people into venture capital. If you have a solid ecosystem, then you bring in headhunters, you bring in talent, you bring in bankers, lawyers, you bring in advisers, you bring in the geniuses.

The second reason is that venture capital is quite constrained. If you raise a fund, it is very, very rarely permissible to invest it in other funds. Going back to Simon and I and our quest to be innovative, [we asked] well, why can’t we invest in early-stage funds, and work with them as partners, and [be their] go-to Series A, Series B fund.

[TechCrunch note: The firm then drew up a 2×2 matrix, with geography on one side, and skillset on the other. Draper Esprit divided the world into niches where it was strong and weak, and geographies where it was strong and weak. Where it was weak twice, it would partner with other funds, perhaps investing in them. This helped ensure ready deal flow.]

By partnering, we put ourselves into an area where we could benefit from their talent [and geographic focus,] and they benefit from our capital, and it has been a phenomenal success. We are now in about 42 funds across Europe. The first commitment was with £75 [million] and we’ve just committed a second £75 [million] to the program. So, we’re at £150 million, [making us] one of the largest private commercial investors.

What’s your take on Ireland, and do you see it as more than a gateway to Europe?

The Irish story has a very long heritage. They always used to be our largest shareholder, the Irish government, through the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund. They might be the second or third largest shareholder that we still have, but there is a very long relationship between Simon and I and the investment group over there.

And Ireland is renowned for great education, whether that be in the South through Trinity and UCD [in Dublin], or whether that be the North through Queen’s [University Belfast]. So, there’s been a great education system, great engineering infrastructure. They have greatly benefited from the Facebooks of the world, and the Googles of the world having [offices] in Ireland. That’s all the positives, and we have two investors in Ireland.

The downside is that it is relatively small. The numbers of Series A and later-stage growth deals that come out of Ireland are still a lot less than other cities. So we are fans of Ireland; the talent there is fantastic, but it’s a part of an ecosystem instead of another London or another Berlin.

Where is Draper Esprit hoping to find the next great startups? Is there a sector or two that you find particularly exciting?

In fintech, we’re taking an unfashionable approach. You have large incumbents with very outdated systems, but a very loyal and a very high degree of trust customer base. And then you have the regulators in Europe which are very positive towards innovation and incumbents and challengers. I hear my American colleagues are less complimentary about the SEC.

You’re in an environment where people are being encouraged to challenge the big banks. But they don’t have trust, and they don’t have the balance sheet. So, where we are currently attacking — we genuinely believe that the big guys need to update these legacy systems, and they’re not going to throw them away. And so, the only way you can update is you have to take off slivers of your book, of your market, and update it bit by bit. These projects are, if not 10s, 100s of millions [of pounds]. [It’s a] lucrative customer base that needs to adopt technology.

But updating that old tech would likely require fintech startups?

Yeah, that’s our strategy. The reason why I say it is not fashionable is because it doesn’t touch the consumer. It’s quite dull, and [it has] very long sales cycles. When you look at the genius within the teams that we’re backing, it’s that very in-depth [knowledge] where the sector views them as experts, the sector views and as the go-to people. So it’s a very high barrier to entry, which is why I think Europe does very well compared to [the U.S.] in this area because to actually try and attack those European startups from an overseas perspective is quite difficult.

More to come shortly; stay tuned.

Three-and-half months after launching the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID, Apple is finally breaking it out from its iMac bundle. The accessory is now available as a standalone, through Apple Stores and the company’s site.

There are two versions: the standard and a longer model with a numeric keypad (pretty much what the company offers with all of its Magic Keyboards), running $149 and $179, respectively. There’s also a $99 version that keeps the new rounded, compact design, but drops the Touch ID in favor of a key that locks the system. But where’s the fun in that?

Image Credits: Apple

All of the models have keys devoted to Spotlight, Dictation, Do Not Disturb and Emoji (I ended up disabling the latter on mine, because I couldn’t avoid accidental presses ).

An important caveat in all of this: Touch ID only works on Macs running the M1 chip, which disqualifies a pretty massive chunk of the Macs currently on the market. If you do own one of those fancy new systems, the feature can be used for secure logins, purchases and the like. The limitation appears to be a result of Touch ID’s use of the Secure Enclave found on Apple’s new chip.

Image Credits: Apple

The keyboard includes a woven USB-C to Lightning cable, though Touch ID also works when the keyboard is connected wirelessly via Bluetooth. Also new are redesigned versions of the Magic Mouse and Trackpad, running $79 and $129 each.

After months of testing with upwards of 100,000 beta testers, Citizen today is launching its premium Protect offering for all users. The subscription service runs $20 a month and opens up a number of features on the app.

Chief among the new paid features is a “Get Agent” button, which offers access to a Citizen operator for a number of different scenarios. The company says it exists for instances where a user “may not want to be seen calling 911.” Whether that’s a matter of personal safety or other issues around calling the police no doubt depends on both the user and situation. The agents effectively work as a conduit to emergency operators.

For many, Citizen’s various controversies have overshadowed its features in recent years. Initially after its launch as “Vigilante,” the app made news earlier this year for launching a private “personal rapid response service” fleet of vehicles and a reward for a person wrongly accused of starting a Los Angeles wildfire.

“Our Protect Agents are highly trained safety experts who are equipped to help in a variety of stressful or uncertain situations,” the company write about the new service. “They personalize your experience to your situation. They can escalate to 911, provide first responders with your precise location, alert your designated emergency contacts, navigate you to a safe location or simply stay connected with you and monitor you until you feel safe again.”

The other key feature here is a new Protect Mode, which again, offers quick access to the aforementioned agent. When enabled in a questionable situation, the app will live monitor the user’s audio feed, using AI to detect for things like screams, offering up a connection to the agent. If you don’t respond, it will auto connect you. Users can also shake the phone twice to access the agent directly.

A recent job listing notes:

In this role, you will be communicating with users who are in need of assistance in potentially unsafe conditions. You will be responsible for guiding difficult conversations and using your best judgement in determining the severity of these situations in real-time. You will be at the frontlines of helping users who feel unsafe in their surroundings and offer direct assistance and escalation to 911.

It’s a potentially useful service for those looking for a panic button app of sorts — akin to an offering like Noonlight. But the question remains whether Citizen is the service best positioned to provide such an offering, given the red flags in its history.

Launched in 2016, the app was initially banned from the App Store over concerns about vigilantism (perhaps not a stretch, given its original name/positioning). As it has expanded beyond New York, the rebranded app has continued to raise flags on a national level.

Earlier this year, its crime-spotting crowdsourcing was expanded to include branded vehicles, which patrolled Los Angeles. “The broad master plan was to create a privatized secondary emergency response network,” a source told Motherboard at the time. The company later added that it had no plans to extend the service after its initial pilot.

That same month, the service’s CEO offered a $30,000 reward for someone suspected of starting a Los Angeles wildfire. The service later apologized for sending out a photo of the wrong person that raked in more than 800,000 views. “We deeply regret our mistake and are working to improve our internal processes to prevent this from happening again,” the company wrote in a statement.

Citizen is currently available in 20 U.S. cities. The new Protect Mode service launches today for iOS. An Android version is in the works.

Founded in 2017, Arizona-based Aira didn’t waste any time proving out its technology. We’ve written about the company’s wireless charging a few times over the years, including the “FreePower” technology it has baked into Nomad’s charging pads, which brings a more streamlined version of the Apple’s abandoned AirPower. The tech allows for users to charge up to three objects at once, without having to futz with their precise placement on the pad.

Today, the startup announced that it has raised a $12 million seed round, primarily led by private investors, including Jawad Ashan, Lori Greine, Robert Herjavec.  The funding will go toward expanding the company’s reach beyond consumer device charging, into the worlds of enterprise, automotive and hospitality, as well as the development of a 2.0 version of its charging tech.

“This new round of funding is a game changer when it comes to accelerating our capacity for innovation,” co-founder and CEO Jake Slatnick said in a release. “With so many partnerships in our pipeline, a 2.0 version of FreePower on the horizon, and Jawad having just joined our board, this is an inflection point for Aira.”

Image Credits: Aira

As we noted late last year, Aira has already made some headway in automotive. Late last year, it announced funding from auto parts supply giant Motherson, which is also part of this round. The deal was a pretty clear indication that the firm was pushing into integrating its wireless modules into cars — a welcome addition, as many automakers have traditionally lacked consumer electronics-friendly amenities.

Neither party announced any specific car partners at the time — or now, for that matter. But Aira notes that it and Motherson are teaming up to create automotive-grade FreePower modules.

Image Credits: Aira

“Current wireless charging technology is not built for moving environments, leaving consumers and automakers underwhelmed,” Aira says in a release issued today. “In-car charging surfaces with FreePower, on the other hand, are able to support devices shifting around while driving, multi-device charging, surfaces of any size, and firmware updates for future enhancements and compatibility. They can also deliver high-power charging while maintaining stringent safety and regulatory standards.”

The news also sees Axon  CFO Jawad Ahsan joining Aria’s board of directors.

Since 2015, Constance Freedman, founder and managing partner of Moderne Ventures, and partner Liza Benson have built up a network of more than 700 executives across the real estate, finance, insurance and home services industries.

Today, their early-stage venture capital firm buttoned up an oversubscribed second fund, raising $200 million this time, to infuse capital into startups in and around those industries. Moderne’s newest fund includes new and returning high-profile strategic partners like AvalonBay Communities, Camden Property Trust, Greystar, JBG SMITH, Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management and Realogy. The Chicago-based firm now has $350 million in assets under management.

Freedman’s background is in real estate, technology and venture, spending three years in sales and leasing before the “dot-com” days. After getting her MBA at Harvard, she turned toward investing, launching a fund in 2008 that focused on information and media, as well as working with the National Association of Realtors, which wanted to invest in real estate tech. That $20 million fund became the predecessor fund to Moderne Ventures and where a lot of what the firm does now came from, Freedman told TechCrunch.

In fact, a big part of their strategy is looking at companies outside and bringing them in, Freedman said.

“Industries like real estate are cyclical, so you don’t want to be beholden to one industry,” she added. “If a company has that as its beachhead, but can expand into other industries, the bigger the market and bigger the returns for investors. We will also have a stronger fund as a result.”

Moderne Ventures writes first checks of between $4 million and $7 million, and its sweet spot is companies with revenue of $2 million to $10 million. Most of its investments are late seed to early Series B.

To date, the firm has investments in more than 100 companies, including five unicorns, three IPOs and dozens of accretive financing events in the past year, Freedman said. Notable investments in the portfolio include ICON, Porch, Better Mortgage, Hippo Insurance, Homesnap (acquired by Costar), MotoRefi, Super, EasyKnock and Kaiyo. For its new fund, Moderne Ventures has invested in seven companies so far.

In addition to its fund, Moderne runs an industry immersion program called the Moderne Passport, to connect startups with that network of over 700 industry executives and corporate partners that can benefit from their services.

The program includes about 80 companies, and Freedman said Moderne will “make meaningful investments in about a third of them.” There is a class open right now, and the firm will have another one in seven to 10 months.

The firm offers a hands-on approach aimed at affecting a company’s growth, including go-to-market strategy. Moderne facilitates over 1,000 meetings between companies and its network each year, often turning into pilot programs.

Speaking about the ton of artificial intelligence technology applications within its core focus industries, Freedman said more than $30 million is spent on marketing to people who aren’t real buyers, but are just looking. Rather, Moderne Ventures is using AI and data analytics to help companies market to the right people.

“We create a lower or no-cost way for partners to try before they buy to remove the sales friction,” she added. “In return, companies get exposure opportunities that they can’t buy to accelerate their growth.”