Author: azeeadmin

Vochlea Music, a U.K. startup and alumni of Abbey Road Red, the music tech incubator from Abbey Road Studios, is launching a crowdfunding campaign today for “Dubler Studio Kit,” a new device and app that turns your voice into a MIDI controller for synths, drum machines, DAWs and other music gear.

Described as a “vocal MIDI controller,” the Dubler Studio Kit consists of a bespoke USB microphone and a desktop application for Mac and Windows. It claims to be able to listen to you sing or beatbox and turn those sounds into MIDI notes and other MIDI control messages in real-time.

Designed to be responsive enough to use live or for use in a recording studio, with a bit of practice, its makers say you’ll be able to hum a synth pattern (depending on your ability to sing in relative tune), beatbox to trigger a virtual drum kit, or manipulate effects and filters vocally.

Vochlea Music demoed an early version of the technology at SXSW last year and won the festival’s pitch competition for its live vocal recognition for music making. While in pre-launch Beta testing, Dubler Studio Kit has been used by Mercury Prize nominated grime MC and producer Novelist, alongside other musicians and producers.

In a call with Vochlea Music founder and CEO George Wright, he explained that the Dubler Studio Kit was created in part to lower the barriers to generating and recording musical ideas, especially for those who are unable to play an instrument.

It’s common for artists, such as singers, to make a vocal note of their melody ideas using the iPhone’s voice memo app or similar mobile recording apps. However, being able to create MIDI notes and other MIDI data using your voice, instead of raw and often badly recorded audio, has the advantage of being able to edit and manipulate those ideas later within MIDI, including patching the resulting MIDI data to different sounds and effects.

Perhaps even more exciting is the way Dubler Studio Kit can be used in addition to playing an instrument, such as a synth or other keyboard, to control various parameters and effects. Traditionally, you have to lift one hand off the keyboard to make tweaks to the sound, or use a foot pedal. Dubler Studio Kit adds a fifth limb so to speak.

Furthermore, Dubler Studio Kit doesn’t use the VST or Audio Unit plugin format for integration with a DAW. Rather cleverly, once the software is installed, the Dubler Studio Kit is recognised by your Mac or Windows machine as a standard MIDI controller so that it can be used by any software that accepts MIDI, including Logic or Ableton or the hundreds of virtual instruments on the market.

Related to this out of the box experience is the choice to couple the Dubler Studio Kit software with a Dubler branded low-latency USB microphone. Wright says he wanted to avoid the user needing to have to conduct lengthy calibration with the Dubler machine-learning powered software, which would be the case if third-party microphones were supported.

In the future, that doesn’t prohibit Vochlea Music developing a version of Dubler Studio Kit for iPhone — where device specs are well-known — but will make supporting Android more tricky.

Live on Kickstarter, Vochlea Music wants to raise £40,000 for the Dubler Studio Kit over the next 35 days. During the campaign, backers have the opportunity to pledge to be amongst the first owners of Dubler Studio Kit at what promises to be an early bird price starting from £175.

Time is Ltd., a Prague-based startup offering “productivity software analytics” to help companies gain insights from employees’ use of Slack, Office 365, G Suite and other enterprise software, has raised €3 million in funding.

Leading the round is Mike Chalfen — who previously co-founded London venture capital firm Mosaic Ventures but has since decided to operate as a solo investor — with participation from Accel. The investment will be used by Time is Ltd. to continue building the platform for large enterprises that want to better understand the patterns of behaviour hidden inside the various cloud software they run on.

“Time is Ltd. was founded… to help large corporations and companies get a view into insights and productivity of teams,” co-founder and CEO Jan Rezab tells me. “Visualising insights around calendars, time, and communication will help companies to understand real data behind their productivity”.

Powered by machine learning, the productivity software analytics platform plugs into the cloud software tools that enterprises typically use to collaborate across various departments. It then analyses various metadata pulled from these software tools, such as who is communicating with who and time spent on Slack, or which teams are meeting, where and for how long as per various calendars. The idea is to enable managers to gain a better understanding of where productivity is lost or could be improved and to tie changes in these patterns to business goals.

Rezab cites the example of a large company undergoing “agile” transformation. “If you want to steer a massive company of 5,000 plus people, you really should understand the impact of your actions a bit more much earlier, not after the fact,” he says. “One of the hypothesis of an agile transformation is, for example, that managers really get involved a bit less and things work a bit more streamlined. You see from our data that this is or is not happening, and you can take corrective action”.

Or it could be something as simple as a large company with multiple offices that is conducting too many meetings. Time is Ltd. is able to show how the number of meetings held is increasing and what departments or teams is instigating them. “You can also show the inter-departmental video meeting efficiency, and if the people, for example, often need to travel to these meetings, how long does that takes vs. digital meetings — so you can generally help and recommend the company take specific actions,” explains Rezab.

Sales is another area that could benefit from productivity analytics, with Time is Ltd. revealing that most sales teams actually spend the majority of their meeting time inside the company not outside as you would think. “The structure of these internal meetings varies; planning for these events or just on-boarding and education,” says the Time is Ltd. CEO. “You can, so to speak, follow the time from revenue to different teams… and then see over time how it changes, and how it impacts sales productivity”.

Meanwhile, investor Mike Chalfen describes the young startup as a new breed of data-driven services that use “significant but under-utilised datasets”. “Productivity is one of the largest software markets globally, but lacks deep enterprise analytics to drive intelligent operational management for large businesses,” he says in a statement.

That’s not to say Time is Ltd. isn’t without competition, which includes Microsoft itself. “Our biggest competitor is Microsoft Workplace Analytics,” says Rezab. “However, Microsoft does not integrate other than MS products. Our advantage is that we are a productivity platform to integrate all of the cloud tools. Starting with Slack, SAP Success Factors, Zoom, and countless others”.

On March 12, 2019, we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the “World Wide Web”, Tim Berners-Lee’s ground-breaking invention.

In just thirty years, this flagship application of the Internet has forever changed our lives, our habits, our way of thinking and seeing the world. Yet, this anniversary leaves a bittersweet taste in our mouth: the initial decentralized and open version of the Web, which was meant to allow users to connect with each other, has gradually evolved to a very different version, centralized in the hands of giants who capture our data and impose their standards.

We have poured our work, our hearts and a lot of our lives out on the internet. For better or for worse. Beyond business uses for Big Tech, our data has become an incredible resource for malicious actors, who use this windfall to hack, steal and threaten. Citizens, small and large companies, governments: online predators spare no one. This initial mine of information and knowledge has provided fertile ground for dangerous abuse: hate speech, cyber-bullying, manipulation of information or apology for terrorism – all of them amplified, relayed and disseminated across borders.

Laissez-faire or control: between Scylla and Charybdis

Faced with these excesses, some countries have decided to regain control over the Web and the Internet in general: by filtering information and communications, controlling the flow of data, using digital instruments for the sake of sovereignty and security. The outcome of this approach is widespread censorship and surveillance. A major threat to our values ​​and our vision of society, this project of “cyber-sovereignty” is also the antithesis of the initial purpose of the Web, which was built in a spirit of openness and emancipation. Imposing cyber-borders and permanent supervision would be fatal to the Web.

To avoid such an outcome, many democracies have favored laissez-faire and minimal intervention, preserving the virtuous circle of profit and innovation. Negative externalities remain, with self-regulation as the only barrier. But laissez-faire is no longer the best option to foster innovation: ​​data is monopolized by giants that have become systemic, users’ freedom of choice is limited by vertical integration and lack of interoperability. Ineffective competition threatens our economies’ ability to innovate.

In addition, laissez-faire means being vulnerable to those who have chosen a more interventionist or hostile stance. This question is particularly acute today for infrastructures: should we continue to remain agnostic, open and to choose a solution only based on its economic competitiveness? Or should we affirm the need to preserve our technological sovereignty and our security?

Photo courtesy of Getty Images/chombosan

Paving a third way

To avoid these pitfalls, France, Europe and all democratic countries must take control of their digital future. This age of digital maturity involves both smart digital regulation and enhanced technological sovereignty.

Holding large actors accountable is a legitimate and necessary first step: “with great power comes great responsibility”.

Platforms that relay and amplify the audience of dangerous content must assume a stronger role in information and prevention. The same goes for e-commerce, when consumers’ health and safety is undermined by dangerous or counterfeit products, made available to them with one click. We should apply the same focus on systemic players in the field of competition: vertical integration should not hinder users’ choice of goods, services or content.

But for our action to be effective and leave room for innovation, we must design a “smart regulation”. Of course, our goal is not to impose on all digital actors an indiscriminate and disproportionate normative burden.

Rather, “smart regulation” relies on transparency, auditability and accountability of the largest players, in the framework of a close dialogue with public authorities. With this is mind, France has launched a six-month experiment with Facebook on the subject of hate content, the results of which will contribute to current and upcoming legislative work on this topic.

In the meantime, in order to maintain our influence and promote this vision, we will need to strengthen our technological sovereignty. In Europe, this sovereignty is already undermined by the prevalence of American and Asian actors. As our economies and societies become increasingly connected, the question becomes more urgent.

Investments in the most strategic disruptive technologies, construction of an innovative normative framework for the sharing of data of general interest: we have leverage to encourage the emergence of reliable and effective solutions. But we will not be able to avoid protective measures when the security of our infrastructure is likely to be endangered.

To build this sustainable digital future together, I invite my G7 counterparts to join me in Paris on May 16^th. On the agenda, three priorities: the fight against online hate, a human-centric artificial intelligence, and ensuring trust in our digital economy, with the specific topics of 5G and data sharing.

Our goal? To take responsibility. Gone are the days when we could afford to wait and see.

Our leverage? If we join our wills and forces, our values can prevail.

We all have the responsibility to design a World Wide Web of Trust. It is still within our reach but the time has come to act.

Amazon will stop forbidding third-party merchants who list on its e-commerce platform in the United States from selling the same products on other sites for lower prices, reports Axios.

The company’s decision to end its price parity provision comes three months after Sen. Richard Blumenthal urged the Department of Justice to open an antitrust investigation into Amazon’s policies and a few days after Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced she would make breaking up Amazon, Google and Facebook a big part of her campaign platform.

Also called “most favored nation” (MFN) requirements, Amazon’s price parity provisions gave it a competitive edge, but because of its size, also led to concerns about its impact on competition and fair pricing for consumers. Amazon stopped requiring price parity of its European Union sellers in 2013 after it was the subject of investigations by the United Kingdom’s Office of Fair Trading and Germany’s Federal Cartel Office.

In a statement, Blumenthal said Amazon’s “wise and welcome decision comes only after aggressive advocacy and attention that compelled Amazon to abandon its abusive contract clause.” He added that “I remain deeply troubled that federal regulators responsible for cracking down on anti-competitive practices seem asleep at the wheel, at great cost to American innovation and consumers.”

TechCrunch has contacted Amazon for comment.

Elon Musk’s legal team responded late Monday, just before a deadline, to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s request to hold him in contempt of court over a tweet he made about Tesla’s production rate. In the filing submitted to a federal court in Manhattan, Musk’s lawyers say the tweet, posted last month, did not violate the terms of an agreement Musk made with the SEC.

“The Securities and Exchange Commission’s request that Musk be held in civil contempt for a single, immaterial tweet that dutifully complied with the Order and with Tesla’s ‘Senior Executives Communications Policy’ is incorrect on the facts and on the law,” the filing read. The policy refers to a court order that requires Musk to comply with Tesla’s pre-approval policy for communications that might contain material information.

The tweet in question was posted by Musk on February 20 and said Tesla would make about 500,000 cars this year. Musk followed it with a second tweet in the same thread that clarified Tesla’s annualized production rate at the end of 2019 would be around 500,000, or 10,000 cars a week, but deliveries were estimated to be about 400,000.

Meant to say annualized production rate at end of 2019 probably around 500k, ie 10k cars/week. Deliveries for year still estimated to be about 400k.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2019

Musk’s lawyers write that he compiled with the policy, which allows him to “exercise his reasonable discretion in the first instance to determine whether his communications contain information requiring pre-approval,” but then posted the clarification after speaking with Tesla’s disclosure counsel. His lawyers claim this “underscore[s] his diligence” in complying with the SEC settlement, adding that Tesla’s projected production and rates of production for 2019 had already been “publicly discussed in multiple documents and discussed at length in an earnings call.”

Musk ran afoul of the SEC in August after tweeting that he had secured funding to take the company private. The SEC filed a complaint alleging securities fraud after Musk and Tesla’s board rejected an earlier attempt at an agreement. As part of a settlement reached in October, Musk was allowed to remain Tesla’s CEO, but had to step down as board chair. The SEC also fined Musk and Tesla $20 million each and stipulated that Tesla had to exercise disclosure controls and procedures over Musk’s tweets.

In today’s court filing, Musk’s lawyers wrote that Musk, who just before the settlement in October called the SEC “the Shortseller Enrichment Commission” in a tweet, has since followed the settlement’s terms closely and “dramatically reduced his volume of tweets generally and regarding Tesla in particular.”

“This self-censorship,” they added, “is reflective of his commitment to adhering to the Order and avoiding unnecessary disputes with the SEC.”

Russia has told internet providers to enforce a block against encrypted email provider ProtonMail, the company’s chief has confirmed.

The block was ordered by the state Federal Security Service, formerly the KGB, according to a Russian-language blog, which obtained and published the order after the agency accused the company and several other email providers of facilitating bomb threats.

Several anonymous bomb threats were sent by email to police in late January, forcing several schools and government buildings to evacuate.

In all, 26 internet addresses were blocked by the order, including several servers used to scramble the final connection for users of Tor, an anonymity network popular for circumventing censorship. Internet providers were told to implement the block “immediately,” using a technique known as BGP blackholing, a way that tells internet routers to simply throw away internet traffic rather than routing it to its destination.

But the company says while the site still loads, users cannot send or receive email.

ProtonMail chief executive Andy Yen called the block “particularly sneaky,” in an email to TechCrunch.

“ProtonMail is not blocked in the normal way, it’s actually a bit more subtle,” said Yen. “They are blocking access to ProtonMail mail servers. So Mail.ru — and most other Russian mail servers — for example, is no longer able to deliver email to ProtonMail, but a Russian user has no problem getting to their inbox,” he said.

That’s because the two ProtonMail servers listed by the order are its back-end mail delivery servers, rather than the front-end website that runs on a different system.

The letter, translated, says that the listed internet addresses caused “the mass distribution of obviously false reports of a terrorist act” in January, resulting in “mass evacuations of schools, administrative buildings and shopping centers.” (Image: supplied)

“The wholesale blocking of ProtonMail in a way that hurts all Russian citizens who want greater online security seems like a poor approach,” said Yen. He said his service offers superior security and encryption to other mail providing rivals in the country.

“We have also implemented technical measures to ensure continued service for our users in Russia and we have been making good progress in this regard,” he explained. “If there is indeed a legitimate legal complaint, we encourage the Russian government to reconsider their position and solve problems by following established international law and legal procedures.”

Russia’s internet regulator Roskomnadzor did not return a request for comment.

Yen says the block coincided with protests against government efforts to restrict the internet, which critics have dubbed an internet “kill switch.” The Kremlin, known for its protracted efforts to crack down and stifle freedom of speech, claimed it was to protect the country’s infrastructure in the event of a cyberattack.

Some 15,000 residents protested in Moscow on Sunday, during which users started noticing problems with ProtonMail.

It’s the latest in ongoing tensions with tech companies in the wake of the Russian-backed disinformation efforts. Russia’s crackdown on the internet intensified in 2014 when it ratified a law ordering tech companies operating in the country to store Russian data within its borders. LinkedIn was one of the fist casualties of the law, leading to the site’s nationwide ban in 2016.

Last month, Facebook was told to comply with the law or face its own ban. Twitter, too, also faces a possible blackout.

Facebook’s gang that couldn’t shoot straight advertising department has made another blunder, this time by pulling Elizabeth Warren campaign ads touting the Senator’s proposal to break up big tech.

The offending ads were pulled, according to Politico, over their use of the Facebook brand in their copy.

Meanwhile, other ads that the Senator’s Presidential campaign had run which addressed the plan to unwind various acquisitions by Facebook, Amazon, and Alphabet (the parent company of Google) were not removed from Facebook.

Indeed, the removal appears to be short-lived, but has given the Warren campaign ammunition for their argument and numerous headlines, tweets, and retweets.

“We removed the ads because they violated our policies against use of our corporate logo,” a Facebook spokesperson told Buzzfeed’s Ryan Mac. “In the interest of allowing robust debate, we are restoring the ads.”

That’s a good move for the Facebook public relations team, especially since the ads reportedly didn’t include Facebook’s logo.

But the damage has already been done. It provides fodder to Warren’s argument that big tech has too much power and control over the way information is disseminated — especially on its own platforms.

This incident may be a tempest in a teapot, but it will calcify positions on the left and the right about the self-interest of big technology and these companies’ ability to regulate content on their own platforms to the detriment of free speech — even in advertising.

Rather than be sore about losing independence within Facebook, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom told me it was an inevitable sign of his app’s triumph. Today at South By South West, Systrom and fellow co-founder Mike Krieger sat down for their first on-stage talk together since leaving Facebook in September. They discussed their super hero origin stories, authenticity on social media, looming regulation for big tech, and how they’re exploring what they’ll do next.

Krieger grew up hitting “view source” on websites while Systrom hacked on AOL booter programs that would kick people off instant messenger, teaching both how code could impact real people. As Instagram grew popular, Krieger described the “incredi-bad” feeling of fighting server fires and trying to keep the widely loved app online even if that meant programming in the middle of a sushi restaurant or camping retreat. He once even revived Instagram while drunk in the middle of the night, and woke up with no memory of the feat, confused about who’d fixed the problem. The former Instagram CTO implored founders not to fall into the “recruiting death spiral” where you’re too busy to recruit which makes you busier which makes you too busy to recruit…

But thankfully, the founders were also willing to dig into some tougher topics than their scrappy startup days.

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger (from left) drive to Palo Alto to raise their Series A, circa January 2011

Independence vs Importance.

“In some ways, there being less autonomy is a function of Instagram winning. If Instagram had just been this niche photo app for photographers, we probably would be working on that app for 20 year. Instead what happened was it got better and better and better, and it improved, and it got to a size where it was meaningfully important to this company” Systrom explained. “If this thing gets to that scale that we want it to get to which is why we’re doing this deal, the autonomy will eventually not be there as much because it’s so important. So in some ways it’s just an unavoidable thing if you’re successful. So you can choose, do you want to be unsuccessful and small and have all the autonomy in the world, or no?”

AUSTIN, TX – MARCH 11: Mike Krieger speaks onstage at Interactive Keynote: Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger with Josh Constine during the 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 11, 2019 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Chris Saucedo/Getty Images for SXSW)

Krieger followed up that “I think if you study . . . all the current companies, the ones that succeed internally eventually have become so important to the acquiring company that it’s almost irresponsible to not be thinking about what are the right models for integration. The advice I generally give is, ‘are you okay with that if you succeed?’ And if you’re not then you shouldn’t do the deal.” If the loss of autonomy can’t be avoided, they suggest selling to a rocket ship that will invest in and care for your baby rather than shift priorities.

Asked if seeing his net worth ever feels surreal, Systrom said  money doesn’t make you happy and “I don’t really wake up in the morning and look at my bank account.” I noted that’s the convenient privilege of having a big one.

The pair threw cold water on the idea that being forced to earn more money drove them out of the company. “I remember having this series of conversations with Mark and other folks at Facebook and they’re like ‘You guys just joined, do not worry about monetization, we’ll figure this out down the road.’ And it actually came a lot more from us saying “1. It’s important for us to be contributing to the overall Fb Inc . . . and 2. Each person who joins before you have ads is a person you’re going to have to introduce ads to.” Systrom added that “to be clear, we were the ones pushing monetization, not the other way around, because we believed Instagram has to make money somehow. It costs a lot to run . . . We pushed hard on it so that we would be a successful unit within Facebook and I think we got to that point, which is really good.”

But from 2015 to 2016, Instagram’s remaining independence fueled a reinvention of its app with non-square photos, the shift to the algorithm, and the launch of Stories. On having to challenge the fundamental assumptions of a business, “You’ve got maybe a couple years of relevance when you build a product. If you don’t reinvent it every quarter or every year, then you fall out of relevance and you go away.”

That last launch was inspired by wanting to offer prismatic identity where people could share non-highlights that wouldn’t haunt them. But also, Systrom admits that “Honestly a big reason why was that for a long time, people’s profiles were filled with Snapchat links and it was clear that people were trying to bridge the two products. So by bringing the two products [Feed and Stories] into one place, we gave consumers what they wanted.” Though when I asked anyone in the crowd who was still mad about the algorithm to hiss, SXSW turned into a snake pit.

Regulating Big Tech

With Systrom and Krieger gone, Facebook is moving forward with plans to more tightly integrate Instagram with Facebook and WhatsApp. That includes unifying their messaging system, which some say is designed to make Facebook’s apps harder to break up with anti-trust regulation. What does Systrom think of the integration? “The more people that are available to talk with, the more useful the platform becomes. And I buy that thesis . . . Whether or not they will in fact want to talk to people on different platforms, I can’t tell the future, so I don’t know” Systrom said.

AUSTIN, TX – MARCH 11: Josh Constine, Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom speak onstage at Interactive Keynote: Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger with Josh Constine during the 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 11, 2019 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Chris Saucedo/Getty Images for SXSW)

Krieger recommended Facebook try to prove users want that cross-app messaging before embarking on a giant engineering challenge of merging their backends. When I asked if Systrom ever had a burning desire to Instagram Direct message a WhatsApp user, he admitted “Personally, no.” But in a show of respect and solid media training, he told his former employer “Bravo for making a big bet and going for it.”

Then it was time for the hardest hitting question: their thoughts on Presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to regulate big tech and roll back Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram. “Do we get our job back?” Systrom joked, trying to diffuse the tension. Krieger urged more consideration of downstream externalities, and specificity on what problem a break up fixes. He wants differentiation between regulating Facebook’s acquisitions, Amazon white-labeling and selling products, and Apple’s right to run the only iOS App Store.

Acquisition vs Competition

“We live in a time where I think the anger against big tech has increased ten-fold — whether that’s because the property prices in your neighborhood have gone up, whether it’s because you don’t like Russian meddling in elections — there are a long list of reasons people are angry at tech right now and some of them I think are well-founded” Systrom confirmed. “That doesn’t mean that the answer is to break all the companies up. Breaking companies up is a very specific prescription for a very specific problem. If you want to fix economic issues there are ways of doing that. If you want to fix Russian meddling there are ways of doing that. Breaking up a company doesn’t fix those problems. That doesn’t mean that companies shouldn’t be broken up if they get too big and they’re monopolies and they cause problems, but being big in and of itself is not a crime.”

attends Interactive Keynote: Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger with Josh Constine during the 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 11, 2019 in Austin, Texas

Systrom then took a jab at Warren’s tech literacy, saying “part of what’s surprised me is that generally the policy is all tech should be broken up, and that feels to me again not nuanced enough and it shows me that the understanding of the problem isn’t there. I think it’s going to take a more nuanced proposal, but my fear is that something like a proposal to break up all tech is playing on everyone’s current feeling of anti-tech rather than doing what I think politicians should do which is address real problems and give real solutions.”

The two founders then gave some pretty spurious logic for why Instagram’s acquisition helped consumers. “As someone who ran the company for how many years inside of Facebook? Six? There was a lot of competition internally even and I think better ideas came out because of it. We grew both companies not just one company. It’s really hard question. What consumer was damaged because it grew to the size that it did? I think that’s a strong argument that in fact the acquisition worked out for consumers.” That ignores the fact that if Instagram and Facebook were rivals, they’d have to compete on privacy and treating their users well. Even if they inspired each other to build more engaging products, that doesn’t address where harm to consumers has been done.

Krieger suggested that the acquisition actually spurred competition by making Instagram a role modeI. “There was a gold rush of companies being like ‘I’m going to be the Instagram of X . . . the Instagram of Audio, the Instagram of video, the Instagram of dog photos.’ You saw people start new companies and try to build them out in order to try to achieve what we’ve gotten to.” Yet no startup besides Snapchat, which had already launched, has actually grown to rival Instagram. And seeing Instagram hold its own against the Facebook empire would have likely inspired many more startups — some of which can’t find funding since investors doubt their odds against a combined Facebook and Instagram

As for what’s next for the college buddies, “we’re giving ourselves the time to get curious about things again” Krieger says. They’re still exploring so there was no big reveal about their follow-up venture. But Systrom says they built Instagram by finding the mega-trend of cameras on phones and asking what they’d want to use, “and the question is, what’s the next wave?”

Big changes in DC could mean that more startups will need the government’s permission before foreign nationals do work at the company.  In some cases, the foreign national will need to leave the company if the government is wary of granting that permission. 

This is tied up in the same new law that gave a once obscure government body—CFIUS—enhanced abilities to scrutinize minority, non-controlling investments by foreign entities. 

CFIUS changes have grabbed most of the headlines, but a Commerce Department process to define “emerging technologies” could have a huge effect on startups that employ foreign nationals.

Here’s what you need to know: the U.S. government has long controlled exports of sensitive technology for national security reasons.  This is done through the export controls regime, which impacts things like arms and ammunition, but also telecommunications and encryption software, among other items. 

Today, many venture-backed companies are not impacted by export controls because their technology is not on one of the control lists.  But that stands to change soon. 

Recent legislation requires the Commerce Department to evaluate controls on “emerging technologies.”  To kick off this process, in November the government identified 14 categories of technology it is looking at.  This included tech in the sweet spot of the bat for venture: AI/ML, robotics, 3D printing, and biotechnology to name a few.  It is an open question as to which of these technologies will ultimately be subject to controls and to what degree.

Image: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

Once something is determined to be emerging technology, the government can establish controls on the export, re-export, or transfer (in-country) of that technology.  Export controls is often thought of as the need to get a license from the government before sending a technology outside the U.S., and that is indeed a major part of what startups will need to contend with. 

But perhaps far more impactful for the startup ecosystem is what’s called “deemed exports,” or the release of controlled technology to foreign persons situated in the United States, which is “deemed” to be an export to the person’s country or countries of nationality. 

“Release” is defined broadly to include visual inspection and oral or written exchanges regarding the technology; in other words, typical actions an engineer or scientist at a young company does.  One saving grace for some startups will be that the deemed export rule does not apply to green card holders, though does apply to employer-based visas, like the H-1B or O visa.

Let’s think about how this might play out in practice.  Imagine the government decides to control artificial intelligence as an emerging technology and that a U.S.-based AI company employs an engineer on an H-1B visa.  Under these facts, it seems the company would need an export license for the foreign national to work at the company. 

A large company might be able to set up a wall that allows the foreign national to work on non-emerging technologies, but for a startup that only does AI the ability to separate the foreign national from the emerging technology work is severely limited, if not impossible.

Obtaining these licenses would present a tremendous burden for small, high-growth startups that often build teams by attracting the best and brightest from foreign countries.

But that burden could be the least of the company’s problems if the foreign national is from a country like China. The U.S. government could be very reluctant to grant a license for someone from China to work on an emerging technology since the major motivation behind recent foreign investment scrutiny has been China. The result might be the foreign national has to leave the company entirely, exacerbating the severe talent drought in some disciplines.

IvancoVlad via Getty Images

Those working in the startup ecosystem understand the volume of foreign nationals working at high-growth companies, but also how impactful their work is to make the United States the world’s scientific and technological leader. 

In comments to the government, a consortium of life science investors backing companies in oncology, cystic fibrosis, anemia, and other areas sounded the alarm of how deemed exports could make laboratory collaboration between U.S. and foreign nationals difficult or impossible.  Certainly, this is not the result policymakers are shooting for given the public policy imperative of eradicating diseases. The ramifications of these changes could be tremendous if the government does not appropriately tailor what it means to be an emerging technology.

Comments from the National Venture Capital Association, where I work, stressed that many of the technologies the Commerce Department called out in November are not yet well-defined, which of course makes regulating them challenging. 

In addition, because many of the technologies—like AI/ML—will be widely used across many companies and industries, a broad set of controls could sweep in many unintended target companies and technologies. To alleviate these concerns, we recommended a targeted approach to classification of emerging technologies that categorizes only those technologies that have significant defense uses, and not broad commercial applications.

The U.S. government needs to tread carefully. 

The golf professional Sam Snead advised that a golf club needs to be gripped like you’re holding a live bird: firm enough so it doesn’t fly out of your hands but not so tight that you kill it. American innovation is the same in this way. 

Yes, policymakers need to consider the impact of emerging technology on national security and perhaps create some controls. But if policymakers ratchet up pressure too much, then talent, capital, and companies will flock to other countries, which means the United States loses out on the incredible benefits that high-growth startups bring to our country.  The rules of the road on emerging technologies have not been written, and each of us has an opportunity to make our voice heard during the process.

Multi-cloud architecture is a huge trend in enterprise, and today F5 made a big move to bring its own business closer to it. The company, which provides cloud and security application services, announced that it has acquired NGINX, the commercial company behind the popular open source web server, for $670 million.

We’d actually been hearing murmurs of this acquisition for a while with a pricetag of around $700 million. On top of that, our sources say NGINX was shopping itself around and other companies that had been looking at it included Citrix. That deal fell apart on price.

NGINX had last raised money nine months ago, a $43 million round led by Goldman Sachs to fuel expansion, and had positioned itself as a strong alternative to F5 in recent years. F5 itself, by coincidence, was said to have retained Goldman Sachs in 2016 to field acquisition interest in itself, although that never led to anything.

“F5’s acquisition of NGINX strengthens our growth trajectory by accelerating our software and multi-cloud transformation,” said François Locoh-Donou, President & CEO of F5, in a statement. “By bringing F5’s world-class application security and rich application services portfolio for improving performance, availability, and management together with NGINX’s leading software application delivery and API management solutions, unparalleled credibility and brand recognition in the DevOps community, and massive open source user base, we bridge the divide between NetOps and DevOps with consistent application services across an enterprise’s multi-cloud environment.”

Indeed, our sources noted that growth had stalled somewhat at the company, which was one reason for its interest in NGINX. The latter company currently runs 375 million websites with some 1,500 paying customers taking additional services like support, load balancing, and API gateway and analytics.

F5 said that it will be merging its own operations with those of NGINX, with current NGINX CEO Gus Robertson, as well as its founders Igor Syosev and Maxim Konovalov all joining the company.

“NGINX and F5 share the same mission and vision. We both believe applications are at the heart of driving digital transformation. And we both believe that an end-to-end application infrastructure—one that spans from code to customer—is needed to deliver apps across a multi-cloud environment,” said Robertson, in a statement. “I’m excited to continue this journey by adding the power of NGINX’s open source innovation to F5’s ADC leadership and enterprise reach. F5 gains depth with solutions designed for DevOps, while NGINX gains breadth with access to tens of thousands of customers and partners.”