Author: azeeadmin

Startup Battlefield Africa is right around the corner. This year it’s in Lagos, Nigeria on December 11. As usual, we have a stellar lineup of panels that will include investors and founders discussing issues such as blockchain, raising venture capital on the continent and beyond and much more.

And of course companies will compete in Startup Battlefield, our premier startup competition. Startup Battlefield consists of 15 teams competing in three preliminary rounds — five startups per round — which have only six minutes to pitch and present a live demo to a panel of expert technologists and VC investors. Five of the original 15 startups will be chosen to pitch a second time to a fresh set of judges. One startup will emerge the winner and receive a US$25,000 no-equity cash prize and win a trip for two to compete in the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2019 (assuming the company still qualifies to compete at the time). You can apply for a limited supply of free spectator tickets here.

And now to announce our next batch of judges who will be grilling the startups after their pitches. See you in Lagos!

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Titi Odunfa Adeoye, Sankore Investments

Titi Odunfa Adeoye is the founder and managing director of Sankore Investments, an investment platform that deploys capital across a range of asset classes on behalf of individuals and institutions. Sankore also runs an innovation arm that focuses on building new ventures and enabling early-stage enterprises in areas that are strategically important to the firm.

Prior to founding Sankore Investments, Titi was head of Investment Strategy at Zenith Capital, the investment banking subsidiary of Zenith Bank Nigeria. In her role, she led teams responsible for investment management, research and new product development within the asset management business. At Goldman Sachs in New York, Titi worked as a member of a team responsible for investment strategy, tactical asset allocation and portfolio advisory services for private funds. In this capacity, she developed research and investment expertise across a range of geographies and asset classes.

Her experience also covers restructuring, consulting, accounting and auditing with KPMG Consulting and PricewaterhouseCoopers in Washington, DC.

Temi Marcella Awogboro, Kairos Angels

Temi Marcella Awogboro is a co-founder of Kairos Angels, an investment club aiming to transform Africa by partnering with visionary entrepreneurs to build scalable and sustainable businesses on the Continent. Temi has more than a decade of experience in finance across developed and growth markets. As an investment professional, Temi has committed nearly US$500 million in private capital across strategic sectors in a bid to tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

Temi started her career at Goldman Sachs International, where she was a recipient of the Goldman Sachs and Institute of International Education’s Global Leaders Award. She is a Kauffman Venture Capital Fellow, an African Leadership Institute Tutu Fellow, a World Economic Forum Global Shaper (Lagos Hub) and Alumni Ambassador (London Hub).

Tahira Dosani, Accion Venture Lab

Tahira Dosani is the managing director of Accion Venture Lab, a seed-stage impact investing initiative focused on fintech for inclusion. Venture Lab provides capital and support to early-stage startups that leverage innovation to increase access to and quality of financial services for underserved consumers globally. Tahira works with the fund’s portfolio companies to provide strategic and operational expertise that accelerates their growth trajectories and enables stronger performance. Additionally, she supports investment decisions, manages portfolio relationships and drives the strategy and growth of Venture Lab.

Tahira previously led strategic projects at LeapFrog Investments, a specialist emerging market private equity impact fund focused on financial services. Prior to that, she worked as director of Strategy at the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development. Based in Dubai, she drove strategic initiatives for portfolio companies and led new investments in telecoms, technology and infrastructure in South and Central Asia. She also worked at Roshan, Afghanistan’s leading telecommunications operator, where she was head of Corporate Strategy and helped launch the country’s first mobile money platform. Tahira began her career as a management consultant with Bain & Company in Boston.

Gaurav Dosi, Facebook

Gaurav leads product management for Jobs on Facebook. Most recently, he was listed as one of the top 10 most important people in HRTech in 2017 by ERE Media. Prior to Facebook, Gaurav co-founded a ridesharing company in New Delhi, which was acquired by Carzonrent. He started his career as a consultant at Boston Consulting Group.

Following a flopped IPO in 2012, Facebook desperately brainstormed new ways to earn money. An employee of unknown rank sent an internal email suggesting Facebook charge developers $250,000 per year for access to its platform APIs for making apps that can ask users for access to their data. Employees also discussed offering Tinder extended access to users’ friends’ data that was being removed from the platform in exchange for Tinder’s trademark on “Moments”, which Facebook wanted to use for a photo sharing app it later launched. Facebook decided against selling access to the API, and did not strike a deal with Tinder or other companies including Amazon and Royal Bank Of Canada mentioned in employee emails.

The discussions were reported by the Wall Street Journal as being part of a sealed court document its reporters had reviewed from a lawsuit by bikini photo finding app developer Six4Three against Facebook alleging anti-competitive practices in how it changed the platform in 2014 to restrict access to friends’ data through the platform.

The biggest question remaining is how high in rank the employees who discussed these ideas were. If the ideas were seriously considered by high-ranking executives, especially CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the revelation could contradict the company’s long-running philosophy on not selling data access. Zuckerberg told congress in April that “I can’t be clearer on this topic: We don’t sell data.” If the discussion was between low-level employees, it may have been little more than an off-hand suggestion as Facebook was throwing ideas against the wall, and may have been rejected or ignored by higher-ups. But either way, now that the discussion has leaked, it could validate the public’s biggest fears about Facebook and whether it’s a worthy steward of our personal data.

An employee emailed others about the possibility of removing platform API access “in one-go to all apps that don’t spend… at least $250k a year to maintain access to the data”, the document shows. Facebook clarified to TechCrunch that these discussions were regarding API access, and not selling data directly to businesses. The fact that the discussions were specifically about API access, which Facebook continues to give away for free to developers, had not been previously reported.

Facebook provided this full statement to TechCrunch:

“As we’ve said many times, the documents Six4Three gathered for this baseless case are only part of the story and are presented in a way that is very misleading without additional context. Evidence has been sealed by a California court so we are not able to disprove every false accusation. That said, we stand by the platform changes we made in 2015 to stop a person from sharing their friends’ data with developers. Any short-term extensions granted during this platform transition were to prevent the changes from breaking user experience. To be clear, Facebook has never sold anyone’s data. Our APIs have always been free of charge and we have never required developers to pay for using them, either directly or by buying advertising.”

A half decade-later, with the world’s will turned against Facebook, the discussions of selling data access couldn’t come at a worse time for the company. Even if quickly aborted, the idea could now stoke concerns that Facebook has too much power and too much of our personal information. While the company eventually found other money-makers and became highly profitable, the discussions illuminate how Facebook could potentially exploit people’s data more aggressively if it deemed it necessary.

A feature film chronicling the misadventures of Elizabeth Holmes, the criminally charged founder of the once high-flying and now-defunct biotech startup Theranos, will make its official debut at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah in 2019.

Titled “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley,” the film was directed by Alex Gibney and produced by Gibney, Jessie Deeter and Erin Edeiken. Gibney is an Oscar-winning director, known for his documentaries “Taxi to the Dark Side;” “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room;” and “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief.”

Gibney teamed with HBO to investigate Holmes: “Drawing on extraordinary access to never-before-seen footage and testimony from key insiders, [Gibney] will tell a Silicon Valley tale that was too good to be true. With all the drama of a real-life heist film the … documentary will examine how this could have happened and who is responsible while exploring the psychology of deception,” HBO wrote of the project.

Holmes founded Theranos in 2003, dropping out of Stanford — as many tech luminaries have done — to disrupt healthcare. Her company garnered nearly $1 billion in venture capital funding from several high-profile investors and was at one point valued at north of $10 billion. She emerged as a celebrity in her own right and was touted as one of the youngest women to run a startup “unicorn.”

Then it all came crashing down.

Theranos’ claim to have invented blood tests that need just a single drop of blood was false. What followed were several lawsuits and a federal investigation that found Holmes and Theranos president Sunny Balwani guilty of “elaborate, years-long fraud in which they exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance.”

More details emerged when Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou, who had closely followed the company’s rise and fall, published his book, “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in Silicon Valley,” earlier this year. A feature film for his account is in the works, too, which means we may get two Theranos movies in 2019.

“Bad Blood” the movie is expected to star Jennifer Lawrence as Holmes. “Shape of Water” writer Vanessa Taylor has signed on to write, with Oscar-nominated director Adam McKay (“The Big Short”) directing.

A record 14,259 films were submitted for approval to premiere at Sundance this year; just 112 features were chosen. Sundance runs from January 24 to February 3, 2019.

The Nintendo Switch continues to prove itself as quite the formidable little console.

Today, Nintendo shared a press release of victory lap brags from its Thanksgiving weekend sales. The company detailed that $250 million in Nintendo products were purchased over the four-day period with the company’s Nintendo Switch console leading the way.

The company also revealed that after 20 months, they’ve sold 8.2 million Switch units in the US, with this past week representing the best week of sales for the device yet.

In January, the company made a big PR push for its Switch numbers, announcing that the device was the fastest-selling video game console ever. Ten months later, the pace hasn’t slowed much even with another several weeks of pre-Christmas sales ahead and the release of Super Smash Bros Ultimate for Switch, one of the system’s most anticipated titles.

Other tidbits from the release (figures are U.S. only):

• They’ve sold 22 million “3DS family” devices to date
• Sales of the SNES Classic now sit at 2.5 million, NES Classic has sold 2 million
• Super Mario Party has surpassed 1 million in unit sales and is the fastest selling Mario Party title to date

For a company that’s footing was being seriously called into question just a few years ago, Nintendo seems to be in awfully good shape and they don’t seem to mind reminding people of that fact.

I’ll admit that I’ve warmed up pretty quickly to the Osmo Pocket. The original post from earlier today is pretty skeptical, owing in no small part to the price point. And while I stand by the earlier assessment that $349 is prohibitively expensive for the consumer market the company appears to be going after, I’ve become fairly enamored after a couple of hours with the device.

We plan on doing something a bit more thorough with our video team in a couple of weeks, but in the time I spent with the Pocket after today’s announcement, I see a lot of potential here — particularly in the hands of far more capable videographers.

That’s not to say that this is a pro-level device. In fact, it’s intended to be the opposite. In spite of essentially costing double the standard Osmo, the Pocket is intended to be a more democratized take on the category — kind of the DJI Spark of the hand-held gimbal category. As such, it leans pretty heavily on pre-created scenes, ones similar to the kind you’ll find on the Mavic drones.

They’re pretty straightforward — and certainly the Osmo Pocket has far fewer points of failure than a drone. Among other things, if you manage to crash it into a tree, that’s entirely on you. Out of the box, you download the app, plug the Lightning or USB-C dongle into your phone and choose a scene. From there, it will walk you through the process of shooting and then neatly package it up, complete with edits and cheesy music.

It’s basically pre-made for sharing on social. And that’s really the core audience for a product like this. Serious shooters likely won’t be super inclined to lean heavily on the device, but with pretty minimal effort a first-time shooter can create some impressive stuff. I mean, I captured a bunch of neat-looking footage after puttering around the Times Square subway station for an hour.

That’s just commuters coming and going. You can imagine the sort of stuff you can grab when embedded in a more inspiring locale. And the miniature size means you can maneuver it into tighter spots. It’s not likely to serve as a GoPro replacement, but a bunch of optional cases and mounts mean you can probably pull off some interesting action cam-style shots.

The product certainly has the underlying technology to create some impressive and innovative shots. The pre-loaded scenes lower the barrier of entry, but pro users can customize things plenty, while the built-in display means you can do live shots without tethering to the camera. The screen is small, however, and what you’re able to accomplish on it is still pretty limited.

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I stand by my earlier assessment that the Pocket is a product without a clear audience, particularly given the price point. Given what it can do, however, it’s sure to find a devoted fan base.

Qualcomm Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of the chipmaker, has plans to invest up to $100 million in artificial intelligence.

Specifically, Qualcomm says it will provide capital to startups building on-device AI, which is AI that runs on the end device, like a smartphone or vehicle, rather than in the cloud. The fund’s leader, Qualcomm investment director Albert Wang (pictured), says on-device AI is the future.

“Today’s AI processing is very computationally intensive,” Wang told TechCrunch. “When you’re talking to Alexa, nothing is processed on your device, it gets taken to the cloud and gets scrunched there. There are a few problems with that — performance deteriorates, it consumes a lot of bandwidth and there are privacy issues. Imagine you have an Alexa that is more private and user-friendly, you ask the questions and can get the answers instantly. It doesn’t take the round trip all the way to the cloud.”

Qualcomm has previously made AI investments out of its evergreen venture fund, including in SenseTime, a Chinese AI facial recognition company, and GM-acquired Cruise, which is building AI-enabled autonomous driving technology. The AI fund’s debut investment was in AnyVision, an AI startup based in Tel Aviv working on face, body and object recognition technology. Qualcomm participated in the company’s $28 million Series A funding round, which was led by Bosch in July.

The corporate VC typically hands out cash to 12 to 15 startups per year. As for the AI fund, it’s not sure just how many companies it will back, but says its investments will range between $5 million and $15 million per deal.

Qualcomm doesn’t typically set aside capital for specialized funds, opting instead to rally behind its evergreen flagship vehicle. The firm did, however, launch a digital healthcare fund, which deployed capital to Fitbit, among others, years ago. As for AI, Wang says they bring a pretty unique set of resources to the table.

“Qualcomm is very big on the mobile platform and it’s gaining ground in the IoT space, so there are a lot of tech partnerships we can provide, a lot of market insight we can provide from both the hardware and software perspective, and just given our exposure, in general, we have a pretty big portfolio of companies.”

Qualcomm Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of the chipmaker, has plans to invest up to $100 million in artificial intelligence.

Specifically, Qualcomm says it will provide capital to startups building on-device AI, which is AI that runs on the end device, like a smartphone or vehicle, rather than in the cloud. The fund’s leader, Qualcomm investment director Albert Wang (pictured), says on-device AI is the future.

“Today’s AI processing is very computationally intensive,” Wang told TechCrunch. “When you’re talking to Alexa, nothing is processed on your device, it gets taken to the cloud and gets scrunched there. There are a few problems with that — performance deteriorates, it consumes a lot of bandwidth and there are privacy issues. Imagine you have an Alexa that is more private and user-friendly, you ask the questions and can get the answers instantly. It doesn’t take the round trip all the way to the cloud.”

Qualcomm has previously made AI investments out of its evergreen venture fund, including in SenseTime, a Chinese AI facial recognition company, and GM-acquired Cruise, which is building AI-enabled autonomous driving technology. The AI fund’s debut investment was in AnyVision, an AI startup based in Tel Aviv working on face, body and object recognition technology. Qualcomm participated in the company’s $28 million Series A funding round, which was led by Bosch in July.

The corporate VC typically hands out cash to 12 to 15 startups per year. As for the AI fund, it’s not sure just how many companies it will back, but says its investments will range between $5 million and $15 million per deal.

Qualcomm doesn’t typically set aside capital for specialized funds, opting instead to rally behind its evergreen flagship vehicle. The firm did, however, launch a digital healthcare fund, which deployed capital to Fitbit, among others, years ago. As for AI, Wang says they bring a pretty unique set of resources to the table.

“Qualcomm is very big on the mobile platform and it’s gaining ground in the IoT space, so there are a lot of tech partnerships we can provide, a lot of market insight we can provide from both the hardware and software perspective, and just given our exposure, in general, we have a pretty big portfolio of companies.”

In the wake of a report from the WSJ last week that detailed low demand for Apple’s latest iPhones was prompting the company to cur orders for the devices, particularly the iPhone XR, an Apple VP is detailing that the XR is the company’s best-selling model available right now.

The disclosure comes from Apple VP Greg Joswiak in an interview with CNET. It’s not a particularly juicy quote, only detailing that the device has “been our most popular iPhone each and every day since the day it became available.”

Joswiak didn’t specifically comment on the WSJ report. The assertion regarding iPhone XR sales relative to other iPhone models doesn’t really tell us a ton either without some solid numbers.

The fact that the $749 XR is the best selling of the iPhones available now isn’t wildly surprising. It was introduced as a crowd pleaser with a lower cost build that didn’t actually make many sacrifices in terms of compute power. The company’s iPhone XS retails for $999, they also are continuing to sell last-gen models at lower prices.

What’s interesting about this interview snippet is that this is just a slice of the detail we would generally get in a quarterly earnings report, but Apple recently decided that it’s not going to give that data moving forward and will instead just leave it at the revenues for its iPhone segment. In other words, this is about as good as it’s going to get moving forward in terms of insights about model breakdowns for device sales.

The company’s reasoning for not discussing unit sales moving forward pretty much boiled down to the fact that it wasn’t necessarily reflective of the company’s health, but the timing of this pertinent realization comes as analysts believe demand for the devices could start to slow.

The company’s stock price has taken about a 20 percent dive since it shared its most recent earnings.