Author: azeeadmin

Venture capitalists swore in the new year the only way they know how… by submitting SEC paperwork for new funds! insert party hat/confetti emoji here.

As many of us brainstormed our New Year’s resolutions and let our hangovers wear off, several firms began this week what for some is a long and arduous process of raising a VC fund and for others is as simple as a few phone calls to LPs. What else happened this week? Pokémon GO creator Niantic secured $190 million, Mary Meeker announced the name of her fund and a whole bunch of people played with Popsugar’s somewhat sketchy twinning app.

Fresh funds:

Mary Meeker will raise up to $1.5 billion for Bond, her new VC fund. Union Square Ventures raised $429 million across two new funds. Lightspeed Venture partners announced a $560 million China fund. And biotech firm Atlas Venture brought in $250 million.

AR startups are failing:

TechCrunch’s Lucas Matney takes a look at struggling augmented reality startups and questions some of the larger players, from Magic Leap to Snap and Niantic. And speaking of Niantic, the Pokémon GO developer closed a $190 million funding round this week at a $3.9 billion valuation.

Indian startups start the year off strong:

Startups based in India raised more than $10 billion in 2018, per Venture Beat, a record amount of capital for the country. Already this year one company has closed a round larger than $100 million. CarDekho, an online marketplace for car sales in India, has pulled in a new $110 million Series C funding round this week to push deeper into financial services and insurance.

Future tech:

Boom Supersonic, which is building and designing what it calls the “world’s first economically viable supersonic airliner,” announced a $100 million Series B funding round led by Emerson Capital. Other investors include Y Combinator’s Continuity Fund, Caffeinated Capital, SV Angel, Sam Altman, Paul Graham, Ron Conway, Michael Marks and Greg McAdoo.

A startup disrupting the … bottled water business:

FloWater has raised $15 million for its reusable water bottle refilling stations to produce purified water. Bluewater, a Swedish company that sells water purifiers, among other things, led the round.

VC subsidized vending machines:

Vengo makes wall-mounted mini-vending machines the size of large picture frames that it then sells to vending machine distributors, asking for a small fee per month in exchange for access to its software. Now it has $7 million to build out its business.

A VC gets a second chance:

After SpaceX filed more SEC paperwork as part of its $500 million upcoming fundraise, TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos noticed a familiar name on the document: Steve Jurvetson. Jurvetson is a longtime board member of both Tesla and SpaceX, but after he left DFJ, the venture capital firm he co-founded, in 2017 amid questions about his personal conduct, there was uncertainty around whether he would keep those director positions. Well, it looks like Elon Musk is standing by Jurvetson.

And finally, are you smarter than a TechCrunch reporter?

Let this test decide.

Jonathan Teo, long a Bay Area venture capitalist, might be regretting having a Twitter account tonight. The reason: it was used to serve a summons to Teo by the law firm Baker Curtis & Schwartz, which represents a former employee of the early-stage venture firm Teo had cofounded in 2014, Binary Capital.

The plaintiff is Ann Lai, who joined Binary in 2015 and whose role at the firm, according to her complaint, was to be “primarily responsible for establishing [Binary’s] data-driven sourcing strategy, conducting the diligence regarding their potential investments, and supporting their portfolio companies on analytics/growth strategies.”

Yet Lai, who has three Harvard degrees, says that she battled discrimination and harassment on the job “almost from the day she started work,” according to her lawsuit.

Among Lai’s grievances: that Teo and firm cofounder Justin Caldbeck “requested and received headshots of female applicants that they sought to hire, and assessed these headshots for attractiveness. They also searched the applicants’ social media profiles to determine their relative ‘hotness.'” The complaint also states the Teo, Caldbeck, and Binary, which the two controlled, “expressed a desire to hold a company retreat, without significant others, at a location in which no one would wear clothes.”

The lurid details go on.

Ultimately, states the complaint — which was originally filed by her attorneys in 2017 and amended back in September — Lai was denied benefits, opportunities, and compensation owed to her because she pushed back against such conduct. She was also forced to resign and was defamed by both Caldbeck and Teo in the aftermath of her departure, says the suit, which seeks civil penalties.

The Information first reported in June of 2017 that, according to half a dozen women in the tech industry, Caldbeck had made unwanted advanced toward them. He resigned shortly afterward, while Teo fought unsuccessfully to keep Binary a going concern.

What happens next remains to be seen, but it’s certainly interesting that Lai’s attorneys used social media to reach Teo. They had no choice, they argue in an “ex parte application for order of publication of summons.” They say they tried reaching his attorneys as well as reaching Teo at the address where he last lived in San Francisco, but they say that not only has Teo since moved to an unknown address, his attorneys claimed to not know his whereabouts and refused to accept the summons on his behalf.

There was a precedent for the lawyers’ move. In fact, multiple cases have been granted similar approval by the court system to reach subjects via both Facebook and Twitter after they evaded being served, largely because social media is now the one point of contact that people typically maintain even when they flee to a foreign country of otherwise make themselves difficult to locate. For his part, Teo last tweeted from his account on December 12.

Worth noting: Lai’s attorneys — who also represented former Uber engineer Susan Fowler after she published her account of sexual harassment and sexism at the company — were able to serve Caldbeck this fall, they say through filings.

Caldbeck subsequently agreed to pay Lai $85,000 in exchange for her dismissing litigation against him personally.

We know Disney’s Star Wars Land (or “Galaxy’s Edge,” if we’re being formal) is opening sometime in summer 2019. But that’s about as exact as anyone at Disney would get.

The rumors said June. Now, it seems, so does Disney CEO Bob Iger.

Iger casually dropped the June target in an interview with Barron’s (as spotted by the OC Register).

You can read the full interview here, but the key bit comes in a question about the strategic impact of Galaxy’s Edge.

When Star Wars opens in Anaheim in June and in Florida later in the year, that’s adding capacity. You’re adding 14 acres of land [each], more rides, and more things for people to do.

So while it’s not as official as a press release, it’s about the next best thing. Anaheim in June, Florida still “later in the year.”

A June target makes a ton of sense, of course. Disney wants to make the biggest possible splash right out of the gate, which means opening the doors when the greatest number of people can visit. While Disney won’t have any trouble getting people into Star Wars Land, they might as well clear the runway. June means summer vacation, and summer vacation means ticket sales. Combine that with an unusual uptick in season pass blackout dates for June of 2019, and it really seems like all the stars are aligned for June.

Coming in at roughly 14 acres, Galaxy’s Edge is one of Disney’s biggest endeavors in years. It’s got a Millennium Falcon! It’s got a cantina with blue milk (and booze!). It’s got a hotel where guests get their own friggin’ storylines! As with anything Star Wars, expectations are going to be ridiculously high — but after seeing what they’ve done with Cars Land or Pandora (the Avatar-themed land in Florida), I’m convinced they’ll pull it off.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is looking to keep his ex-girlfriend Grimes and alleged acquaintance Azealia Banks out of the official record of a lawsuit concerning his “420” “joke” that brought the SEC down on him. An attempt to subpoena both Grimes and Banks was met with stiff opposition by Musk’s lawyer, who accused the plaintiffs of attempting to sensationalize the case.

As you may remember — though it seems so long ago now — Musk tweeted that he was “considering taking Tesla private at $420,” adding “Funding secured.”

Those initiated in weed culture recognized the nod to the official time of day for getting high, and soon afterwords came Instagram posts from Azealia Banks claiming that she had been staying at his place at the time at the invite of Grimes, that he had been high at the time of the tweet and that the share price was chosen as a clumsy joke to impress his girlfriend.

There were also questions as to the actual existence of funding, the wisdom of announcing such an important thing on Twitter without telling his board, and so on, leading to action by the SEC and shareholders. As part of a lawsuit filed by the latter, the plaintiffs wanted to subpoena Banks and Grimes (real name Claire Elise Boucher), whom they suggested had relevant evidence. Musk’s attorney, Dean Kristy, pushed back in a motion of opposition.

He first complains that the plaintiffs did not follow procedure, but then suggests that Grimes is uninvolved and Banks is a “rapper” (in shade quotes) and a crank. Here’s the relevant excerpt:

Moreover, by targeting Mr. Musk’s girlfriend at the time (who has never worked for Tesla) and, according to published reports, a “rapper” who, based on the articles plaintiff has submitted, has a “history of making bold and sometimes unverified claims,” is a “veteran of long and nonsensical beefs [and has] feuded with everyone from Sarah Palin to Nick Cannon,” and has been “banned” from Twitter (see Pl. Exs. A, B), it is readily apparent that this is more of an effort to sensationalize these proceedings than a serious, legitimate effort to preserve “electronic documents” of third parties with first-hand knowledge of important facts.

A history of Banks’s greatest hits on social media followed, which I need not recap here.

Not only that, but there is no evidence, Kristy wrote, that Grimes, Banks or the media outlets also named were likely to discard any relevant evidence (Gizmodo, for example, is not going to delete its post on the whole affair, which is no doubt still getting traffic), for which additional reason the request should be denied.

Whether the plaintiffs will succeed in officially involving the parties in question is not for me to say, but it seems clear that at the very least they have unofficially involved them. Whether that proves a benefit or hindrance to their case in the end is similarly up in the air.

Signs that the Federal Reserve could hold off on further interest rate hikes coupled with a booming jobs report sent stocks on Wall Street surging to close a volatile first trading week for the New Year.

After yesterday’s Apple-induced slide, and in the face of economic indicators that signaled a potential slowdown in global and domestic growth, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, said that the central bank would be “patient” when it comes to raising interest rates.

That news, coupled with a strong jobs report, sent stocks rocketing up. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 746.9 points, or roughly 3.3 percent, while the Nasdaq shot up 4.3 percent, or 275.4 points.

It wasn’t just the Fed chairman’s observations about the potential for rate hikes in 2019 that had investors buying, but assurances about Powell’s job security in the face of increasing pressure from President Trump.

Speaking at a panel discussion of the American Economic Association alongside former Federal Reserve chairs Janet L. Yellen and Ben Bernanke, Powell said that he would not resign if asked by the president.

Immediately after Powell’s comments stocks began surging.

“With the muted inflation readings that we’ve seen coming in, we will be patient as we watch to see how the economy evolves,” Powell was quoted as saying in The Washington Post. “We’re always prepared to shift the stance of policy and to shift it significantly if necessary.”

It won’t be long before the James Webb Space Telescope is launched, an enormous and complex feat of engineering — but all one piece. That’s a good thing for now, but new research suggests that in the near future giant telescopes like the Webb might be replaced (or at least augmented) by swarms of tiny spacecraft working in concert.

One advance, from Ben Gurion University in Israel, is a leap in the capabilities of what are called synthetic aperture systems. It’s a technique where a single small camera moves across a space, capturing images as it goes, and by very careful analysis of the data it collects, it can produce imagery like that created by a much larger camera — essentially synthesizing a bigger aperture.

As documented in a paper published today in Optica, the team leapfrogs existing methods in an interesting way. Two satellites move in synchrony around the edge of a circle, collecting data as they go and beaming it to a third stationary one; this circle describes the synthetic aperture the two cameras are creating.

“We found that you only need a small part of a telescope lens to obtain quality images,” explained BGU grad student Angika Bulbul, who led the research, in a news release. “Even by using the perimeter aperture of a lens, as low as 0.43 percent, we managed to obtain similar image resolution compared to the full aperture area of mirror/lens-based imaging systems.”

In other words, they were basically able to get the results of a camera 50 times the size. That would be impressive anywhere, but up in space it’s especially important. Putting something as huge and complex as the Webb into orbit is an incredibly complicated and drawn out endeavor. And it’s putting a lot of eggs in one (very carefully checked and rechecked) basket.

But if you could instead use a handful of satellites working together, and just replace one if it fails, that really opens up the field. “We can slash the huge cost, time and material needed for gigantic traditional optical space telescopes with large curved mirrors,” Bulbul said.

One of the challenges of space telescopes, however, is that they need to take measurements with extreme precision. And keeping a satellite perfectly still is hard enough, to say nothing of having it move perfectly to within fractions of a millimeter.

To keep on track, right now many satellites use reliable fixed sources of light, like bright stars, as reference points when calculating various things relating to their operations. Some astronomers have even used lasers to excite a point high in the atmosphere to provide a sort of artificial star for these systems to use.

These methods both have their strengths and weaknesses, but MIT researchers think they’ve found a more permanent, high-precision solution: a “guide star” satellite that would sit thousands of miles out and train a strong laser on the Earth and its orbital region.

This light source would be reliable, steady, and highly visible; satellites could use it to calculate their position and the minute changes to their imaging apparatus caused by heat and radiation, perhaps to a degree not possible with actual stars or atmospheric dots.

Both these intriguing technologies are still very much in the lab, but theory is where all big advances start, and it could be that in a few years, swarms of satellites will be sent into space not to provide terrestrial communications, but to create a massive synthetic telescope looking out on the universe.

The up to $818 million deal between Locus Biosciences and Janssen Pharmaceuticals (a division of Johnson & Johnson) that was announced yesterday points toward a new path for CRISPR gene editing technologies and (potentially) the whole field of microbiome-targeted therapies.

Based in Research Triangle Park, N.C., Locus is commercializing research initially developed by scientists at North Carolina State University that focused on Cas3 proteins, which devour DNA Pac-Man-style, rather than edit it like the more well-known Cas9-based CRISPR technologies being used by companies like Caribou Biosciences, Editas Medicine, Synthego, Intellia Therapeutics, CRISPR Therapeutics and Beam Therapeutics.

While the Cas9 CRISPR technologies can edit targeted DNA — either deleting specific genetic material or replacing it with different genetic code — Cas3 simply removes DNA strains. “Its purpose is the destruction of invading DNA,” says Locus chief executive, Paul Garofolo.

The exclusive deal between Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Locus gives Janssen the exclusive license to develop, manufacture and commercialize CRISPR-Cas3-enhanced products targeting bacterial pathogens for the potential treatment of respiratory and other organ infections.

Under the terms of the deal, Locus is getting $20 million in upfront payments and could receive up to $798 million in potential future development and commercial milestone payments and any royalties on potential product sales.

A former executive at Valiant Pharmaceuticals and Paytheon, Garofolo was first introduced to the technology that would form the core of Locus as an executive in residence at North Carolina State University. It was there that he met Dr. Chase Beisel and Rodolphe Barrangou, whose research into Cas3 proteins would eventually be productized by Locus.

The company spun out of NC State in 2015 and raised its first cash from the North Carolina Biotech Center a year later.

Locus is already commercializing a version of its technology with bacteriophages designed to target e coli bacteria to treat urinary tract infections. The company is on target to begin its first clinical trials in the third quarter of the year.

The focus on bacterial infection and removing harmful bacteria while ensuring that the rest of a patient’s microbiome is intact is a huge step forward for treating diseases that scientists believe could be linked to bacterial health in a body, according to Garofolo.

“Most microbiome companies are about adding probiotics to your body,” says Garofolo, representing a thesis that introducing “good” bacteria to the body can offset any harmful pathogens that have infected it.

“Things you’re exposed to are creating the groundwork for an infection or disease, or exacerbating an existing disease,” says Garofolo. And while he believes that the microbiome is the next big field for scientific discovery, the approach of adding probiotics to a system seems less targeted and effective to him.

Already, Garofolo has managed to convince investors of his approach. In addition to the initial outside investment from the North Carolina Biotech Center, Locus has attracted $25 million in financing from investors, including Artis Ventures and the venture capital arm of the Chinese internet giant, Tencent.

Meanwhile, investors have spent millions backing alternative approaches to improving human health through the manipulation of the microbiome.

Companies like Second Genome, Viome and Ubiome are all using approaches that identify bacteria in the human body and try to regulate the production of that bacteria through diet and probiotic pills. It’s an approach that allows these companies to skirt the more stringent requirements the Food and Drug Administration has put in place for drugs.

That doesn’t mean that extensive amounts of research haven’t gone into the development of these probiotics. Seed, a Los Angeles-based startup that launched last year, has recruited as its chief scientist George Reid, the leading scientist on microbial health and the microbiome.

Founded by Raja Dhir, a graduate from the University of Southern California and a leading researcher on microbiotics in his own right, and Ara Katz, the former chief marketing officer of BeachMint and an MIT Media Lab fellow, Seed focuses on developing probiotic treatments using well-established research.

“Foundational to our approach is that it’s not which microbes are present in your gut… It’s based on looking at what specific microbes can do to a healthy individual to improve that status of health independent of what is already present,” Dhir said in an interview around the company’s launch last June. “It’s a little bit less exciting from a tech perspective, but it’s hardcore grounded in basic science… The question is, does this have changes and effects in validated bio-makers in a controlled and placebo setting?”

Dhir said that a basic understanding of how different bacteria can influence health is necessary before getting into the benefits of personalization.

“These things can dance between drugs and nutrition,” Dhir said. “Probacteria are an additional lever that people should pull… like diet and exercise and cessation of smoking… In every correspondence we always have been and need to be clear that this should never be seen as a replacement of therapies.”

By contrast, the tools that Locus is developing are very much therapies with potentially far-reaching implications for illnesses, from irritable bowel syndrome to gastrointestinal cancers and even neurological disorders.

“The science [around the microbiome] is early, but it is very well-known that a potentially deadly pathogen should be removed from your body,” Garofolo said.

Over 100 million devices with Amazon’s Alexa assistant pre-installed have been sold, the company said Friday.

The new metric, revealed by Amazon devices SVP Dave Limp in an interview with The Verge, showcases just how quickly the company has crammed the voice assistant into disparate hardware devices and shoved them out the door. The company did not distinguish further how many of these items were Amazon-built Echo devices and how many were designed by third-party OEMs.

The company’s vision of encapsulating Alexa in anything with a circuit board was evident at its September hardware event where it announced more than a dozen new devices, including a clock, a microwave and some redesigns of existing products like the Echo. In the interview, Limp shares that there are more than 150 Alexa-integrated hardware devices on the market, most of which shipped in 2018.

When it comes to the 100 million number, that metric seems impressive for a platform that still seems to have so much room left to mature, but it also shows how aggressive the company has had to be to keep up with Google Assistant and Siri which obviously have significant reach on Android and iOS respectively. Alexa seems to occupy a more exclusive smart home presence than Google, which has managed to ship quite a few of its Google Home devices, especially the Google Home Mini.

Amazon’s low-cost Echo Dot similarly seems to be capturing the bulk of attention. The device was updated in September with a new design and a louder speaker. The company is also seeing success with hardware it hasn’t released yet, the company revealed that they’ve had more than 1 million people sign-up for an invite to buy an Alexa Auto device ahead of its launch.

A new voice phishing scam is going after iPhone users in a clever new way: by making calls seem like they are coming directly from Apple Support.

Brian Krebs reported today that a user, Jody Westby, got a call from Apple Support asking for her to call back. The contact information that came along with the number appeared to be Apple Inc.’s in the identity screen for the call. When she called the 866 number, however, something was clearly amiss.

KrebsOnSecurity called the number that the scam message asked Westby to contact (866-277-7794).

An automated system answered and said I’d reached Apple Support, and that my expected wait time was about one minute and 30 seconds. About a minute later, a man with an Indian accent answered and inquired as to the reason for my call.

Playing the part of someone who had received the scam call, I told him I’d been alerted about a breach at Apple and that I needed to call this number. After asking me to hold for a brief moment, our call was disconnected.

No doubt this is just another scheme to separate the unwary from their personal and financial details, and to extract some kind of payment (for supposed tech support services or some such). But it is remarkable that Apple’s own devices (or AT&T, which sold her the phone) can’t tell the difference between a call from Apple and someone trying to spoof Apple.

The exploit is unique because it allows callers to masquerade as other callers essentially by polluting search results with junk information that makes one number look like the contact number for a real company. The number Westby was told to call is a known phishing source. Remember: If anyone calls you claiming that your computer is broken they are most probably lying. After all, support people will never be proactive when it comes to problems with your computers, only reactive (if that).

Taylor Swift’s “Reputation” era, one characterized by military jackets, black sequins and snarls, is coming to a close and, apparently, that means her one-year-old mobile app is too.

The Swift Life, a gamified app developed in partnership with freemium mobile games maker Glu Mobile, announced this week that it would shut down effective February 1. Users of the app have until that date to spend any of their virtual currency, which they had to accumulate in order to purchase Taymojis and access exclusive content.

Glu is a formerly venture-backed business behind a number of celebrity-branded apps that help the A-listers find additional profit off their fan base. It’s responsible for “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood,” which recently announced it would shut down alongside all the Kardashian sisters’ mobile apps; “Britney Spears: American Dream,” “Katy Perry Pop” and “Nicki Minaj: The Empire.” Kim Kardashian’s app was reportedly the biggest success for Glu and at one point was expected to rake in more than $200 million in lifetime revenue. Other attempts by Glu to mimic Kim’s success failed, however.

Glu has already fallen on hard times, with reports indicating that a company restructure in 2017 led to the loss of at least 100 employees. Now it’s mourning the loss of two of its largest celebrity app plays, signaling what could be a dire future for the company. We reached out to Glu for comment.

There are no available Swift Life revenue figures, but its short lifespan coupled with fan complaints suggest it wasn’t the moneymaker Glu and Swift’s camp hoped for. The app was designed to provide Swift yet another avenue to intimately converse with fans, something she’s become known for in her more than 10-year career. Swift often chats directly with fans on Tumblr, views some of her 114 million Instagram followers stories and, offline, she invites select groups of fans into her home for album listening parties. An app where she could interact with and provide her biggest of fans unique material made sense.

Until all hell broke loose.

After reportedly soaring in its App Store debut, The Swift Life swiftly turned into a battleground for her politically opposing fans: “Less than 48 hours after launching, Taylor Swift’s new app has become plagued with Trump-loving trolls and homophobic comments,” Taylor Lorenz wrote for The Daily Beast in December 2017, just days after the app’s release.

What followed was an eruption of tweets and Reddit posts denouncing the app and its inability to prevent hate from spreading like wildfire across what was meant to be a wholesome, affectionate space for Swifites — on brand with Swift’s mostly squeaky clean image. It’s a wonder the app wasn’t shut down immediately.

Instead, the singer continued to earn money off the app, while some users complained an unannounced moderator was coming in and deleting certain posts. Simple fixes could have improved the user experience, and more access to Swift, something users were promised, would have bandaged the wound.

This week’s announcement cited the end of the Reputation era as the reason for the app’s shut down, but the reality is it failed to meet user expectations and prevent combative behavior.

The demise of Swift’s app, as well as Kim, Kourtney, Khloe and Kylie’s (Kendall got rid of hers long before), can only mean one thing: “We are mourning the end of the golden age of the celebrity app,” writes Vox’s Kaitlyn Tiffany.

In the age of Instagram, consumers, even Swift’s biggest fans — and she does have some very big fans — don’t need yet another app to suck up their time and money. When it comes to the Kardashian family, who have made themselves more accessible to their fans via social media and their reality television show than has ever been possible in the past, an app touting “exclusive content” seems especially lacking in credibility.

Sure, several other celebrity-promoted apps remain, but if Swift and Kim Kardashian, who have more than 230 million Instagram followers between them, can’t generate sticky users then who can?

Sorry Tom Hanks, Demi Lovato, Shakira, Chelsea Handler and other celebs looking to capitalize on their tech-enabled fans. The future of your apps isn’t bright.