Author: azeeadmin

Los Angeles medical center Cedars-Sinai is currently piloting a program that places Amazon Echos in more than 100 patient rooms. The smart speakers use Aiva, a voice assistant platform for healthcare, and is intended to help patients communicate with their caregivers. Letting patients use Alexa to perform basic tasks like changing TV channels also frees up nurses to perform medical care.

Backed by Amazon’s Alexa Fund and the Google Assistant Investment Program, Aiva also participated in the Cedars-Sina accelerator program for healthcare startups. The platform also works with Google Home.

After a patient tells Alexa what they need, Aiva routes it to the right person’s mobile phone. For example, if someone needs medicine, their request goes to a registered nurse. If a response takes too long, Aiva reroutes the request “up the chain of command.”

Voice assistants are currently being tested in several capacities in healthcare. For example, voice assistants in Boston Children’s intensive care unit let nurses ask for administrative information, like who is the charge nurse on duty or how many beds are available in a ward. Boston Children’s also piloted voice-enabled versions of the checklist used to validate organs before transplant, with prompts to help reduce error. KidsMD, a program powered by Alexa, is meant to be used by parents at home to help them decide if their kids need to see a doctor.

Amazon still holds the top position in the smart speaker market, and likewise Alexa is currently the voice assistant most often used by hospitals, according to Healthcare IT News. So far, its devices have been used in Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Commonwealth Care Alliance, Northwell Health in New York, and Libertana Home Health in Los Angeles, in addition to Cedars-Sinai.

You might hear stories that TechCrunch favors venture-backed companies, or will only write about startups that have raised from certain VCs. Well, I can tell you that is totally untrue. In fact, it couldn’t be further from the truth. Speaking for myself, I really enjoy talking to successful bootstrapped companies. Raising money can be a validation, but it certainly isn’t a measure of success in itself… with more money comes increased responsibilities.

That’s an unusual preamble, but it sets the scene for Skill-Lync, an India-based online education company that is currently part of the Y Combinator program in the U.S. The business is bootstrapped and developing a fascinating service that helps India’s thousands of engineering graduates to turn their book smarts into employable skills and jobs.

Skill-Lync started out as a YouTube channel to share engineering tips, but today it is an online training course for mechanical engineering candidates. It operates three different types of courses, ranging from one-off modules to full-time curriculums.

With an estimated 1.5 million mechanic engineering graduates leaving India universities and colleges each year, competition for jobs is tough but equally, with many overseas markets seeking skilled talent, there are international opportunities but many students are unaware of how to pursue them.

Skill-Lync seeks to match mechanical engineers with U.S-based Masters degree courses and/or employers directly. That’s done through an online learning course that uses video content developed alongside industry companies — the goal is to help instill employable skills and experience to students.

Students watch videos independently but come together in groups on WhatsApp to work on assignments. Course teachers operate virtual ‘open hours’ on a Friday to allow interaction with students, questions and more.

The regular courses cost $250 per unit and cover specific areas related to mechanic engineering and its application in the workplace.

Last year, some 2,500 students took part in Skill-Lync courses and while the courses are demanding, with around a 22 percent completion rate, the results are impressive for those who cross the finishing line. So impressive, in fact, that Skill-Lync is launching a new and more comprehensive course that guarantees a job at the end of it or else participants get a full refund.

The new course — which guarantees employment or a refund — lasts for eight months of 40 hours per week, with a part-time option of 20 hours per week over 15 months. It is priced at Rs. 245,000 — around $3,500 — and open to qualified candidates based in India.

“Students learn in-depth technical concepts in developing a full-fledged Hybrid Electric Vehicle,” co-founders Suryanarayanan Paneerselvam and Sarangarajan Iyengar — who studied in India before getting on Masters Degrees and later jobs in the U.S. — told TechCrunch. “The course teaches students concepts such as Battery Performance Management, Electric & IC Engine Powertrain, Strength Analysis (Finite Element analysis), External Aerodynamics & Design.”

The first cohort will open in April, enrollment applications are open until March 15.

Paneerselvam and Iyengar expect that the higher commitment requirement can boost their completion rate to 67%, that would be double what it is currently is for individual courses. The duo is exploring options to help students earn money during the course through crowd-sourced support.

“We believe that education is like a product,” Paneerselvam said in an interview. “In the same way that you buy a product from Amazon but if it doesn’t work you can return it for a refund.”

The company is also preparing to launch a similar program to U.S-based students in June, who currently account around 10 percent of monthly course enrollments.

But rather than guaranteeing money back, that U.S-focused course will totally free upfront other than $700 to pay for software licenses for requisite mechanical engineering services. Instead, Skill-Lync will make its money from graduates earning.

“We will guarantee anyone who finishes our course a full-time job opportunity,” Paneerselvam explained. “Once they join a company, they will pay us 15 percent of their salary for two years. Tuition will be capped at a maximum of $20,000. The student can also choose to pay $10,000 as a one time fee once they get a job after our course.”

Going forward, the ambitious company wants to apply its playbook to other industries beyond mechanical engineering.

“We want to get into biotech and chemical engineering,” Iyengar said. “We’ve basically created a playbook for mechanical engineering, now we need to apply it to other engineering disciplines.”

That’ll mean hiring experts in those disciplines and continuing to work with industry leaders to develop course content. It’s a move that is also likely to boost female participation — 98 percent of current students are male — which is something that the Skill-Lync founders are keen to make progress on.

More, widely, they believe that they could replace college-based training for skilled engineering in the future.

“In the future, we can be a college ourselves as an online platform, where a student can say ‘Hey, I don’t need 4 years of college, I’ll take this course and get a job,'” said Paneerselvam. “We know the path for this but currently we are not focusing on it.”

The more immediate goal is to scale the new courses.

Y Combinator is well known for its impressive network that connects promising startups to VCs. Skill-Lync is aiming to take advantage of that to raise something in the region of $5 million to develop its service into this wider vision.

“For what we are doing right now, we don’t need money,” Paneerselvam explained. “But the goal is in the next two years to take this masters program and scale it to 30,000 students. We seriously believe that possible across different domains.”

On the positive side, Skill-Lync has picked a good time to go after funding with a number of companies bringing digital learning to the fore. Investors have never been more keen on exploring the potential to democratize knowledge via the internet in India.

Byju’s recently raised $550 million to globalize its courses, which are aimed at grades 4-12, and spent $120 million to acquire Osmo, a startup that develops hardware to meld online and offline learning for kids. While U.S.-India company Emeritus was the beneficiary of a $40 million Series C and Topper raised $35 million in December.

Whether protected through copyright, trade secret, trademark, or patents, software technology companies depend on IP more so than perhaps any other business type in history.

It is surprising, then, just how little founders think about protecting their own IP. Sure, “product-market fit” is an all-engrossing search for truth that tolerates no distraction, but that is at best an explanation, not an excuse.

The real pros will find product-market fit while documenting and protecting IP along the way — it’s the only way to ensure you own your work, after all.

This article provides an overview to help you think about where your IP sits, how to protect it, and how to avoid certain pitfalls that plague far too many startups.

This is the second article in the Extra Crunch exclusive “Startup Law A to Z” series, following my article on corporate matters last week. I will avoid full repetition here, but briefly, the purpose of this series, alongside other Extra Crunch resources, is to provide you enough information to analyze your business circumstances and evaluate your legal risk exposure to common legal issues facing startups, such as corporate matters, IP, business transactions, compliance/regulatory, and HR. If you see legal risks in these or related areas, you can consult the Verified Expert list of best startup lawyers and reach out for help — it’s that simple.

The Legal IP checklist:

Assigning IP

• Founder pre-existing IP
• Employee Confidential Information & Intellectual Property Assignment agreements
• Independent Contractor/Consulting Services agreements

Protecting IP ownership

• Licensed IP and modifications/improvements
• Current or previous employers (see Cal. Labor Code §§ 2780-2782)

Strategic IP Portfolio

Patents

• One-year statutory bar
• Provisional patent application
• International protection
• Software patents under Alice v. CLS Bank
• Offense and defense against patent trolls

Trade Secrets

• Preserve confidentiality
• Limit and control access

Trademarks

• Check USPTO trademark database
• Secure federal trademark registration for enforcement
• Not merely descriptive

Copyright

• Original work of authorship
• Secure federal copyright registration for enforcement
• Understand ‘Fair Use’

Read on for our detailed breakdown of each of these items.

IP, legally speaking

From a high level, IP rights provide their owners the ability to legally prevent others from using certain technology or other protected assets. IP is essentially a property right that can be sold and assigned to others in the same way that vehicles, houses or any other form of tangible property can be bought and sold. Startups should think about IP along the lines of a portfolio specifically created to protect their particular business goals and strategy, in light of competitive market forces.

Blossom Capital, the venture capital firm co-founded by ex-Index Ventures and LocalGlobe VC Ophelia Brown, is announcing that it has raised an $85 million fund to invest in European tech startups at Series A stage.

LPs in the new fund, which TechCrunch reported early details of twelve months ago, are said to span leading institutional investors, as well as high-profile tech entrepreneurs. The latter includes Robinhood co-founder Vladimir Tenev, and Zendesk founder Mikkel Svane.

Meanwhile, alongside Brown, Blossom’s other partners are Imran Ghory, who previously led data-driven deal sourcing at Index and was head of data insights at MarketInvoice; Mike Hudack, who until very recently was CTO at Deliveroo and prior to that a director of product at Facebook; and Louise Samet, a fairly active angel investor and who previously worked at Klarna as a digital product manager.

Also noteworthy, eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that the new VC firm appears to have a lost a founding partner already: former Uber China executive Candice Lo was previously listed on the Blossom Capital website as a Blossom co-founder and partner but TechCrunch understands has since departed.

“It’s been an honour being part of the team at Blossom, but I am leaving to spend more time with family,” said Lo in a statement issued to TechCrunch. “The fund has reached an incredible milestone and I will be cheering the team on as they continue to grow Blossom in Europe.”

In a call with Brown late last week, she said that Blossom aims to distinguish itself from other Series A investors in Europe by embracing a more “West Coast” approach with what she calls “high conviction” investing. The firm will write larger cheques than many Series A investors — in the region of $5m to $10m — and plans to do only 4-5 deals per year, which, again, is quite unusual.

The idea is to place fewer but bigger (and potentially riskier) bets and give the limited number of companies Blossom backs enough runway to get to a meaningful Series B. Arguably, it also means the Blossom team, which remains small, won’t be spreading the support offered to its portfolio too thin.

On that note, Blossom has already backed four companies. They are Duffel, Fat Llama, Frontify, and Sqreen. Co-investors have included Y Combinator, Greylock and Index Ventures -– some decent names for a new firm, to say the least.

Another aspect that Brown talked up is Blossom’s use of data to source and support deals. Both partners Ghory and Hudack have technical backgrounds — which should make them especially technical founder friendly — and I’m told the firm has developed technology that pulls in various data to look for signals of promising companies across Europe’s disparate and fragmented ecosystem.

The thinking, says Brown, is to ensure a small firm like Blossom can still source deals in some of Europe’s more hidden tech hubs, rather than just the major ecosystems. She declined to go into much detail on exactly what data is being used, obviously careful not to give away any of Blossom’s secret source.

More broadly, VCs are increasingly pinning more of their success on the use of data, whether that be throwing data scientists and analysts at the problem or building bespoke software. Two other European firms thought to be taking a similar approach to Blossom are London-based InReach Ventures and Berlin’s Fly VC.

“If you look at the big outcomes in Europe, around 70 percent of them today came from outside of the major hubs, in countries such as Romania, Finland and Portugal,” writes Brown in a blog post. “Data allows us to cover the entire continent, not just the major and overfished capitals like London, Paris, Berlin and Stockholm”.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission asked a judge to hold Elon Musk in contempt for violating his Oct. 16 settlement with the agency, Bloomberg News reports.

We’ve reached out to both Tesla and the SEC and are awaiting more information.

Last Tuesday night, Musk tweeted out that Tesla would make around 500,000 cars this year, correcting himself hours alter to clarify that he meant the company would be producing at an annualized rate of 500,000 vehicles by year end.

The next morning, Tesla announced that its general counsel, Dane Butswinkas, is leaving.

Butswinkas had battled on Musk’s behalf with the SEC last year, after Musk tweeted in August that he had “funding secured” to take the company private. In the end,  Musk and Tesla settled without admitting wrongdoing. Still, Tesla had to pay a $20 million fine; Musk had to agree to step down as Tesla chairman for a period of at least three years; the company had to appoint two independent directors to the board; and Tesla was also told to put in place a way to monitor Musk’s statements to the public about the company, including via Twitter.

It’s this last part that appears, right now, to be the sticking point.

This story is developing; more soon.

We all know climate change is affecting weather systems and ecosystems around the world, but exactly how and in what way is still a topic of intense study. New simulations made possible by higher-powered computers suggest that cloud cover over oceans may die off altogether once a certain level of CO2 has been reached, accelerating warming and contributing to a vicious cycle.

A paper published in Nature details the new, far more detailed simulation of cloud formation and the effects of solar radiation thereupon. The researchers, from the California Institute of Technology, explain that previous simulation techniques were not nearly granular enough to resolve effects happening at the scale of meters rather than kilometers.

These global climate models seem particularly bad at predicting the stratocumulus clouds that hover over the ocean — and that’s a big problem, they noted:

As stratocumulus clouds cover 20% of the tropical oceans and critically affect the Earth’s energy balance (they reflect 30–60% of the shortwave radiation incident on them back to space1), problems simulating their climate change response percolate into the global climate response.

A more accurate and precise simulation of clouds was necessary to tell how increasing temperatures and greenhouse gas concentrations might affect them. That’s one thing technology can help with.

Thanks to “advances in high-performance computing and large-eddy simulation (LES) of clouds,” the researchers were able to “faithfully simulate statistically steady states of stratocumulus-topped boundary layers in restricted regions.” A “restricted region” in this case means the 5×5-km area simulated in detail.

The improved simulations showed something nasty: when CO2 concentrations reached about 1,200 parts per million, this caused a sudden collapse of cloud formation as cooling at the tops of the clouds is disrupted by excessive incoming radiation. Result (as you see at top): clouds don’t form as easily, letting more sun in, making the heating problem even worse. The process could contribute as much as 8 or 10 degrees to warming in the subtropics.

Naturally there are caveats: simulations are only simulations, though this one predicted today’s conditions well and seems to accurately reflect the many processes going on inside these cloud systems (and remember — inherent error could be against us rather than for us). And we’re still a ways off from 1,200 PPM; current NOAA measurements put it at 411 — but steadily increasing.

So it would be decades before this took place, though once it did it would be catastrophic and probably irreversible.

On the other hand, major climatic events like volcanoes can temporarily but violently change these measures, as has happened before; the Earth has seen such sudden jumps in temperature and CO2 levels before, and the feedback loop of cloud loss and resulting warming could help explain that. (Quanta has a great write-up with more context and background if you’re interested.)

The researchers call for more investigation into the possibility of stratocumulus instability, filling in the gaps they had to estimate in their model. The more brains (and GPU clusters) on the case, the better idea we’ll have of how climate change will play out in specific weather systems like this one.

Ford is partnering with what3words to give drivers access to the startup’s novel addressing system.

Under the partnership, drivers will be able to connect to the free what3words app — on an iOS or Android device — to their vehicle via their SYNC 3 infotainment platform. Drivers can find the three-word address on website contact pages, guidebooks and business cards. Drivers can enter the addresses via voice or text input and receive directions through the vehicle’s navigation system.

The startup, founded in 2013, has divided the entire world into 57 trillion 3-by-3 meter squares and assigned three words to each one. Users of the what3words app, which is available in 26 languages, has been adopted by logistics, travel, automotive and humanitarian organizations because it provides exact locations anywhere in the world.

The system is used by Lonely Planet, which has rolled out three-word addresses for each of its listings, as well as Mercedes-Benz, ride-hailing app Cabify, the UN, Red Cross and TomTom.

The startup has also attracted an interesting mix of investors, most recently Sony’s venture capital arm. And last year, Daimler took a 10 percent stake in what3words, following an announcement in 2017 to integrate the addressing system into Mercedes’ new infotainment and navigation system — called the Mercedes-Benz User Experience, or MBUX. MBUX is now in the latest Mercedes A-Class and B-Class cars and Sprinter commercial vehicles.

“We are more mobile than ever before, but with that comes its challenges. The growing traction that what3words is gaining within the automobility industry is a testament to how we are improving journeys and customer experiences,” CEO and co-founder Chris Sheldrick said.

What3words will initially be available to Ford owners in the U.K. and Ireland, Germany, Spain, the U.S. and Mexico. More markets and languages will follow later in the year. The addressing system can be downloaded for free on iOS and Android.

Ford is partnering with what3words to give drivers access to the startup’s novel addressing system.

Under the partnership, drivers will be able to connect to the free what3words app — on an iOS or Android device — to their vehicle via their SYNC 3 infotainment platform. Drivers can find the three-word address on website contact pages, guidebooks and business cards. Drivers can enter the addresses via voice or text input and receive directions through the vehicle’s navigation system.

The startup, founded in 2013, has divided the entire world into 57 trillion 3-by-3 meter squares and assigned three words to each one. Users of the what3words app, which is available in 26 languages, has been adopted by logistics, travel, automotive and humanitarian organizations because it provides exact locations anywhere in the world.

The system is used by Lonely Planet, which has rolled out three-word addresses for each of its listings, as well as Mercedes-Benz, ride-hailing app Cabify, the UN, Red Cross and TomTom.

The startup has also attracted an interesting mix of investors, most recently Sony’s venture capital arm. And last year, Daimler took a 10 percent stake in what3words, following an announcement in 2017 to integrate the addressing system into Mercedes’ new infotainment and navigation system — called the Mercedes-Benz User Experience, or MBUX. MBUX is now in the latest Mercedes A-Class and B-Class cars and Sprinter commercial vehicles.

“We are more mobile than ever before, but with that comes its challenges. The growing traction that what3words is gaining within the automobility industry is a testament to how we are improving journeys and customer experiences,” CEO and co-founder Chris Sheldrick said.

What3words will initially be available to Ford owners in the U.K. and Ireland, Germany, Spain, the U.S. and Mexico. More markets and languages will follow later in the year. The addressing system can be downloaded for free on iOS and Android.

Microsoft won’t stop its work on a nearly half-billion-dollar government contract designed to bring HoloLens augmented reality tech to the U.S. Army.

“We made a principled decision that we’re not going to withhold technology from institutions that we have elected in democracies to protect the freedoms we enjoy,” Nadella told CNN in an interview. “We were very transparent about that decision and we’ll continue to have that dialogue [with employees].”

The admission from the company’s top executive, that Microsoft has no plans to bend to a letter now signed by 200+ employees urging leadership to cancel work on a $479 million government contract, is hardly a surprise. Microsoft has fallen under internal scrutiny previously for its work pursuing and carrying out government contract work. This latest efforts bring an emerging technology to the forefront of modern warfare with a contract that aims to use the technology to increase the lethality of United States forces.

The letter sent Friday sought to push the company’s leadership to stop work on the $479 million military contract. The group claims now that more than 200 Microsoft employees have signed the letter.

“We did not sign up to develop weapons, and we demand a say in how our work is used,” the letter reads.

The publishing of the letter came just days before the company held an event highlighting the technological advances seen in their augmented reality technologies.

If you thought Fortnite was looking mortal, you might want to reconsider.

New numbers from SuperData show that the Fortnite juggernaut lagged by one meaningful measure at the start of this year. Revenue from the game across platforms dropped by a hard-to-ignore 48 percent between December 2018 and January 2019. As the report notes, December was a peak month for the multiplayer third-person shooter, with Fortnite fever in full swing and holiday purchases driving revenue to record levels.

While a 48 percent revenue drop might sound like a mortal wound, the game’s unique sales model and seasonal trends mean that we shouldn’t start prepping any Fortnite obituaries any time soon. With a free-to-play model, Fortnite relies on in-game purchases of digital goods like dance animations and elaborate character skins to drive revenue. With no recurring subscription fees apart from quarterly season passes, Fortnite’s revenues were never going to track a more traditional game’s numbers.

Case in point: Fortnite maker Epic looks to have socked away $3 billion in profit over the course of last year. By November, data from Sensor Tower estimated that Fortnite players were spending $1.23 million a day just on iOS. Given Fortnite’s platform agnosticism, that’s just one stream of many, from mobile to console to PC.

For Fortnite, a dip in revenue also doesn’t necessarily indicate declining user numbers or less play overall — it just means people were less likely to spend money on virtual goods. Those purchases are purely cosmetic and don’t confer a meaningful competitive advantage, so it’s kind of a strange metric to judge the game’s overall current health with though obviously an important one for the business of the game.

A game like Fortnite is designed to be cyclical, with players rotating in as fresh content debuts. In December, Fortnite’s new Season 7 release converged with the holidays, making for a potent revenue-driving combination as players bought up new virtual goods, explored a reimagined map, had more time to play and new devices to try out. By January, players were itching for the next major update.

“This is no doubt due to the fact that Season 7 began in December. We historically see a significant increase in Fortnite mobile revenue during the months when a new season debuts, as the player base purchases Battle Passes en masse,” Sensor Tower’s head of mobile insights Randy Nelson told TechCrunch.

“Substantial decreases in the subsequent month after a new season are not new; Fortnite revenue on iOS declined 33% between October and November 2018 based on our estimates, from $56 million to $36.6 million… In short, these peaks and valleys are common when looking at games based around season pass monetization on a schedule such as Fortnite’s.”

Overall, the January SuperData numbers show a 6% year-over-year decline in digital gaming across the board. If Epic was poised to see Fortnite hit stratospheric user and revenue growth last holiday season, the real test will be seeing if the game can keep its momentum all the way through 2019. With Season 8 due to infuse the game with a wave of fresh digital goods later this week, we should have a pretty good idea of Fortnite’s staying power by the time the new spring content is starting to go stale.