Author: azeeadmin

Berlin-based Zizoo — a startup which self describes as booking.com for boats — has nabbed a €6.5 million (~$7.4M) Series A to help more millennials find holiday yachts to mess about taking selfies in.

Zizoo says its Series A — which was led by Revo Capital, with participation from new investors including Coparion, Check24 Ventures and PUSH Ventures — was “significantly oversubscribed”.

Existing investors including MairDumont Ventures, aws Founders Fund, Axel Springer Digital Ventures and Russmedia International also participated in the round.

We first came across Zizoo some three years ago when they won our pitching competition in Budapest.

We’re happy to say they’ve come a long since, with a team that’s now 60-people strong, and business relationships with ~1,500 charter companies — serving up more than 21,000 boats for rent, across 30 countries, via a search and book platform that caters to a full range of “sailing experiences”, from experienced sailor to novice and, on the pricing front, luxury to budget.

Registered users passed the 100,000 mark this year, according to founder and CEO Anna Banicevic. She also tells us that revenue growth has been 2.5x year-on-year for the past three years.

Commenting on the Series A in a statement, Revo Capital’s managing director Cenk Bayrakdar said: “The yacht charter market is one of the most underserved verticals in the travel industry despite its huge potential. We believe in Zizoo’s successful future as a leading SaaS-enabled marketplace.”

The new funds will be put towards growing the business — including by expanding into new markets; plus product development and recruitment across the board.

“We’re looking to strengthen our presence in the US, where we’ve seen the biggest YoY growth while also expand our inventory in hot locations such as Greece, Spain and the Caribbean,” says Banicevic on market expansion. “We will also be aggressively pushing markets such as France and Spain where consumers show a growing interest in boat holidays.”

Zizoo is intending to hire 40 more employees over the course of the next year — to meet what it dubs “the booming demand for sailing experiences, especially among millennials”.

So why do millennials love boating holidays so much? Zizoo says the 20-40 age range makes up the “majority” of its customer.

Banicevic reckons the answer is they’re after a slice of ‘affordable luxury’.

“After the recent boom of the cruising industry, millennials are well familiar with the concept of holidays at sea. However, sailing holidays (yachting) are much more fitting to the millennial’s strive for independence, adventure and experiences off the beaten path,” she suggests.

“Yachting is a growing trend no longer reserved for the rich and famous — and millennials want a piece of that. On our platform, users can book a boat holiday for as low as £25 per person per night (this is an example of a sailboat in Croatia).”

On the competition front, she says the main competition is the offline sphere (“where 90% of business is conducted by a few large and many small travel agents”).

But a few rival platforms have emerged “in the last few years” — and here she reckons Zizoo has managed to outgrow the startup competition “thanks to our unique vertically integrated business model, offering suppliers a booking management system and making it easy for the user to book a boat holiday”.

Ah, wonderful to see you again, sir. The usual? Kool-Aid Grain Alcohol Martini with a twisty straw. Of course. And I see you’re wearing a new watch. The MQT Essential Mirror. Quite striking.

I see the watch has a quartz ETA movement – an acceptable movement by any standard – and a very elegant face and hands combination. What’s that? It has a quickset date? Of course, no watch over $200 would skimp on that simple complication. $251 you say? On a silver mesh band, also known as a Milanese? A relative bargain, given its pedigree.

Of course, sir. I’ve spoken with the chef and she’s preparing your Ritz crackers with Easy Cheese as we speak. Do tell me more about this watch. It seems to be one of your only redeeming features.
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What was that? No, I said nothing under my breath. Do go on.

Made in Berne, Switzerland, you say, by a pair of watchmakers, Hanna and Tom Heer, who left their high-paying jobs to make watches? And their goal is not to create a beautiful quartz piece that is eminently wearable yet quite delicate? Laudable, sir, laudable. I especially like the thin 41mm case. It’s so light and airy! Not unlike your Supreme baseball cap.

No, of course sir, we still give away all the mints you can eat after the meal. If you’d like I can tie that lobster bib around your neck. There we are. Nice and snug.

And they make a marble version? Wonderful! That hearkens back to the Tissot Rock Watches of yore. A delight, truly.

You’ve got a bit of cheese in your beard. Let me get… oh. I’m sorry to say that my hand got into the way of your pendulous tongue. I’m very sorry, sir.

Well, it’s been wonderful chatting with you. I’ll leave you to your Rick and Morty comics. What’s that? Caviar in an ice cream cone? With sprinkles? Of course. I’ll see what I can do. I do commend you, sir, all things being equal, on your taste in watches.

Google has announced its plan for combating election interference in the European Union, ahead of elections next May when up to 350 million voters across the region will vote to elect 705 Members of the European Parliament.

In a blog post laying out a narrow approach to democracy-denting disinformation, Google says it will introduce a verification system for “EU election advertisers to make sure they are who they say they are”, and require that any election ads disclose who is paying for them.

The details of the verification process are not yet clear so it’s not possible to assess how robust a check this might be.

But Facebook, which also recently announced checks on political advertisers, had to delay its UK launch of ID checks earlier this month, after the beta system was shown being embarrassingly easy to game. So just because a piece of online content has an ‘ID badge’ on it does not automatically make it bona fide.

Google’s framing of “EU election advertisers” suggests it will exclude non-EU based advertisers from running election ads, at least as it’s defining these ads. (But we’ve asked for a confirm on that.)

What’s very clear from the blog post is that the adtech giant is defining political ads as an extremely narrowly category — with only ads that explicitly mention political parties, candidates or a current officeholder falling under the scope of the policy.

Here’s how Google explains what it means by “election ads”:

“To bring people more information about the election ads they see across Google’s ad networks, we’ll require that ads that mention a political party, candidate or current officeholder make it clear to voters who’s paying for the advertising.”

So any ads still intended to influence public opinion — and thus sway potential voters — but which cite issues, rather than parties and/or politicians, will fall entirely outside the scope of its policy.

Yet of course issues are material to determining election outcomes.

Issue-based political propaganda is also — as we all know very well now — a go-to tool for the shadowy entities using Internet platforms for highly affordable, mass-scale online disinformation campaigns.

The Kremlin seized on divisive issues for much of the propaganda it deployed across social media ahead of the 2016 US presidential elections, for example.

Russia didn’t even always wrap its politically charged infowar bombs in an ad format either.

All of which means that any election ‘security’ effort that fixes on a narrow definition (like “election ads”) seems unlikely to offer much more than a micro bump in the road for anyone wanting to pay to play with democracy.

The only real fix for this problem is likely full disclosure of all advertising and advertisers; Who’s paying for every online ad, regardless of what it contains, plus a powerful interface for parsing that data mountain.

Of course neither Google nor Facebook is offering that — yet.

Because, well, this is self-regulation, ahead of election laws catching up.

What Google is offering for the forthcoming EU parliament elections is an EU-specific Election Ads Transparency Report (akin to the one it already launched for the US mid-terms) — which it says it will introduce (before the May vote) to provide a “searchable ad library to provide more information about who is purchasing election ads, whom they’re targeted to, and how much money is being spent”.

“Our goal is to make this information as accessible and useful as possible to citizens, practitioners, and researchers,” it adds.

The rest of its blog post is given over to puffing up a number of unrelated steps it says it will also take, in the name of “supporting the European Union Parliamentary Elections”, but which don’t involve Google itself having to be any more transparent about its own ad platform.

So it says it will —

• be working with data from Election Commissions across the member states to “make authoritative electoral information available and help people find the info they need to get out and vote”
• offering in-person security training to the most vulnerable groups, who face increased risks of phishing attacks (“We’ll be walking them through Google’s Advanced Protection Program, our strongest level of account security and Project Shield, a free service that uses Google technology to protect news sites and free expression from DDoS attacks on the web.”)
• collaborating — via its Google News Lab entity — with news organizations across all 27 EU Member States to “support online fact checking”. (The Lab will “be offering a series of free verification workshops to point journalists to the latest tools and technology to tackle disinformation and support their coverage of the elections”)

No one’s going to turn their nose up at security training and freebie resource.

But the scale of the disinformation challenge is rather larger and more existential than a few free workshops and an anti-DDoS tool can fix.

The bulk of Google’s padding here also fits comfortably into its standard operating philosophy where the user-generated content that fuels its business is concerned; aka ‘tackle bad speech with more speech’. Crudely put: More speech, more ad revenue.

Though, as independent research has repeatedly shown, fake news flies much faster and is much, much harder to unstick than truth.

Which means fact checkers, and indeed journalists, are faced with the Sisyphean task of unpicking all the BS that Internet platforms are liberally fencing and accelerating (and monetizing as they do so).

The economic incentives inherent in the dominant adtech platform of the Internet should really be front and center when considering the modern disinformation challenge.

But of course Google and Facebook aren’t going to say that.

Meanwhile lawmakers are on the back foot. The European Commission has done something, signing tech firms up to a voluntary Code of Practice for fighting fake news — Google and Facebook among them.

Although, even in that dilute, non-legally binding document, signatories are supposed to have agreed to take action to make both political advertising and issue based advertising “more transparent”.

Yet here’s Google narrowly defining election ads in a way that lets issues slide on past.

We asked the company what it’s doing to prevent issue-based ads from interfering in EU elections. At the time of writing it had not responded to that question.

Safe to say, ‘election security’ looks to be a very long way off indeed.

Not so the date of the EU poll. That’s fast approaching: May 23 through 26, 2019.

Give the gift of organization this year. Bags are often ignored but are a critical part of anyone’s mobile gear. They’re the outward representations of our techie styles, and we put far too little thought into where we keep our most prized possessions. Here’s a collection of bags TechCrunch reviewed over the last year. You’ll find waxed canvas bags, camera backpacks, trail-ready commuter bags and bags designed with women in mind.

 

WP Standard built the leather messenger bag you want

At $295 the bag is priced accordingly for the fantastic material and build. It’s a great bag to carry a few things and it will always be noticed. I have yet to see a bag as beautiful as the Vintage Leather Messenger Bag. If more space is needed, WP Standard now has a larger option that looks equally as good in the $310 Large Messenger Bag though I haven’t seen the bag in person yet.

Read the full review here.

Pad & Quill Heritage Satchel is a modern leather classic

This is a solid bag that I completely recommend. It’s a great size, able to hold most everything I threw at it while not being too big to carry even when lightly packed. After a few months with the bag, it’s aged nicely and is starting to feel like a well-worn pair of denim jeans. The leather is still delicious and seems durable enough to withstand a person’s daily grind.

Read the full review here.

The Bitcoin Genesis Block backpack will centralize your belongings

Unlike the blockchain, this backpack will centralize your stuff in a fairly large, fairly standard backpack. There is little unique about the backpack itself – it’s a solid piece made of 100% polyester and includes ergonomically designed straps and a secret pocket – but it is printed with the Bitcoin Genesis Block including a headline about UK bank bailouts. In short, it’s Merkle tree-riffic.

Read the full review here.

Chrome’s Vega Transit Brief makes your work vibe less uncool

The Vega isn’t Chrome’s most inspired design ever, but it isn’t supposed to be. If you want to show up to a meeting looking pro but still cool, like yeah you looked over the slides from the call but you drink shitty beer after work because you’re legit not because you can’t afford some triple-hopped bullshit, the Vega is probably for you. For anyone looking for a well-made bag that’s not too loud to carry to and from work meetings that happens to turn into a damn backpack, Chrome’s Vega Transit Brief is a great fit.

Read the full review here.

Chrome’s BLCKCHRM Bravo 2.0 backpack is a burly, stylish beast

It’s hard to overstate how good-looking this bag is. Like quality leather, the Hypalon breaks in with wear, picking up surface marks that fade into a kind of weathered patina over time. Between that material, the all-black mini Chrome buckle chest strap and central black leather panel, it’s a very sleek, sexy looking bag. Still, for anyone who digs the Bravo 2.0’s vibe but is wary of its heavy construction, the regular edition Bravo 2.0 might be a better choice. But if you like your packs fancy, serious and black on black on black, well, you know what to do.

Read the full review here.

Filson 24-Hour Tin Briefcase

This bag has a large main compartment with a padded laptop area that will hold a 15-incher easily, and a couple of pockets on the inside to isolate toothbrushes and pens and the like. On the outside is a pair of good-sized zippered pockets that open wide to allow access from either the top or side; inside those are organizer strips and sub-pockets for pens and so on.

Read the full review here.

Croots England Vintage Canvas Laptop

There isn’t a heck of a lot of room in there but this is definitely meant to be a daily driver briefcase and not an overnight bag — a “personal item” on the plane perhaps but I would take the Filson or ONA over it for space reasons. However as a bag to take to work the cafe, or the bookstore it’s a great option and a striking one. The Flight Bag is a slightly more expansive and unique option.

Read the full review here.

S-Zone $30 waxed canvas bag

To balance out the admittedly very expensive bags in this review I decided to grab a cheap one off Amazon as well. As I expected, it isn’t up to the quality level of the others, but for $30 it’s a bargain. If you want to experience how waxed canvas evolves and wears, an inexpensive bag like this is a great way to try it out.

Read the full review here.

WP Standard’s Rucksack goes the distance

This bag assumes that you’re OK with thick, heavy leather and that you’re willing to forgo a lot of the bells and whistles you get with more modern styles. That said, it has a great classic look and it’s very usable. I suspect this bag would last decades longer than anything you could buy at Office Depot and it would look good doing it. At $275 it’s a bit steep but you’re paying for years – if not decades – of regular use and abuse. It’s worth the investment.

Read the full review here.

The Nomadic NF-02 keeps everything in its right place

Nomadic is a solid backpack. It’s small, light, and still holds up to abuse. I’m a big fan of the entire Nomadic line and it’s great to see this piece available in the US. It’s well worth a look if you’re looking for a compact carrier for your laptop, accessories, and notebooks.

Read the full review here.

Chrome’s Yalta 2.0 is a roomy rolltop that keeps up

Compared to some of Chrome’s more heavy-duty bags and other less-technical packs, the Yalta is a likable middle ground. The pack isn’t as rain resistant as a bag made out of fully waterproof material and the laptop sleeve could use some structure, but it carries a fair amount and it’s got a nice slender profile that looks and feels good. The Yalta doesn’t really have any quirks or tricks beyond the strange side-zip compartment, and that makes it a good fit for anyone who needs a good-looking, weather resistant mid-sized rolltop backpack for work and what comes before and after.

Read the full review here.

Mission Workshop’s Radian rolltop starts simple but grows piece by piece

In the end I think the Radian is the best option for anyone looking at Mission Workshop bags who wants a modular option, but unless you plan on swapping out pieces a lot, I’m not personally convinced that it’s better than their all-in-one bags like the Rambler and Vandal. By all means take a look at putting a Radian system together, but don’t neglect to check if any of the pre-built ones fit your needs as well.

Read the full review here.

Why I still love the Peak Design Everyday Backpack

Like I said several months ago, the bag is best described as smart and solid. It’s a confident design with just enough pockets and storage options. The bag features one, large pocket that makes up most of the bag. Foldable dividers allow the wearer to customize the bag as needed. And quickly, too. These dividers fold in several ways, allowing the bag to hold, say, a large telephoto lens or several smaller lens.

Read the full review here.

P.MAI’s women’s leather laptop bag is luxury packed with utility

By designing a bag for women that blends a luxury aesthetic with comfortable utility, the P.MAI bag quickly rose to the the “Most Wished for” laptop backpack on Amazon last holiday season. Premium materials and quality design don’t come cheap. Still, the $450 price-tag may keep this one on the wish-list for now.

Read the full review here.

Timbuk2’s Launch featherweight daypack is tough and tiny

If you’re a longtime Timbuk2 fan know that the pack both looks and feels different from most of Timbuk2’s classic designs, and unfortunately doesn’t come in the bright, playful tri-color look that some of its classic messengers do. Still, if you’re into more natural, subdued tones and really don’t want your day-to-day pack to weigh you down unnecessarily, Timbuk2’s Launch is totally worth a look.

Read the full review here.

Osprey Momentum 32 is ready for muddy trails

The Osprey Momentum 32 impresses. I used it during a muddy week at Beaumont Scout Reservation and it performed flawlessly as a rugged, bike-ready backpack. It stood tall in the miserable rain and insufferable heat that engulfed northern Ohio during the camping trip. If it can withstand these conditions, it can withstand an urban commute.

Read the full review here.

Amazon has reversed a decision it made six months ago to shut off its US ecommerce site to Australian shoppers. Reuters reports that the U-turn comes after a customer backlash.

Since July shoppers in Australia trying to browse stuff to buy on Amazon.com have been redirected to the local site, Amazon.com.au.

Shipping to Australia from Amazon.com was also shut off at the same time. So shoppers were limited to buying goods sold by local sellers.

But from today the block has gone.

The geoblock on Amazon.com followed a change in Australian tax regulation requiring businesses earning more than $75,000 AUD per year to charge its 10% Goods and Services Tax (GST) on low value items imported by consumers.

The so-called ‘Amazon Tax’ was drawn up in response to concerns about the impact of Amazon and other large overseas ecommerce businesses on local retailers which have to apply GST to all products they sell.

A loophole had meant GST was only applied to items purchased from overseas retailers worth $1,000 AUD or more — so local competitors argued it gave Amazon, eBay and other overseas competitors an unfair advantage.

Amazon’s response was to shutter its overseas shops. But by limiting shoppers to the inventory on its Australian site, which only launched in December 2017, the ecommerce giant seems to have shot its local business in the foot — encouraging locals to look elsewhere for their retail fix. Or just not buy as much stuff.

The Guardian notes there are only about 80 million products on the Australian store vs 500 million on the US site.

Six months later Amazon has backtracked. And seemingly decided to suck up the 10% tax after all.

We’ve reached out to the company for a comment.

An Amazon spokesman told Reuters it had changed its mind after listening to customer feedback, adding it had built the “complex infrastructure needed to enable exports of low-value goods to Australia and remain compliant with [local] laws”.

So far only products sold by Amazon itself on Amazon.com are being made available for purchase by Australians, with third-party sellers not yet covered.

Notably — on the U-turn timing front — Black Friday is tomorrow.

Aka the day when retailers attempt to kick start a holiday buying bonanza by slashing a bunch of prices and scattering digital tinsel all over their online channels. Clearly Amazon doesn’t want to miss out on more sales.

One of the most immediate — and already live — applications for robotics and artificial intelligence in general has been in using unmanned robots in warehouses and other environments, where they replace humans in repetitive jobs such as sorting and moving objects from A to B. Now, Beijing-based robotics startup Geek Plus (aka Geek+) says that it has raised $150 million to seize that growing opportunity by investing in product development, sales and customer service. Geek Plus says that this is the largest-ever funding round for a logistics robotics startup.

The round, a Series B, was led by Warburg Pincus, with participation from other shareholders including Volcanics Venture and Vertex Ventures. The company is not disclosing its valuation but we have asked and will update as we learn more. Warburg Pincus led the startup’s previous round of $60 million in 2017, and Geek Plus has raised around $217 million since being founded in 2015.

Part of the reason for this large round is because the company says its on track for a big year, projecting to growth business five-fold, and it wants to capitalise on that growth both inside its own giant home market of Mainland China as well as further afield.

To date, Geek Plus says that it has delivered more than 5,000 robots across some 100 robotics warehouse projects in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, Singapore, Europe, and the United States. Current customers include Alibaba’s Tmall and VIP.com out of Asia.

“The investment by Warburg Pincus and other shareholders fully demonstrates their recognition of Geek Plus’s development and their confidence in Geek Plus’s future prospects,” said Yong Zheng, founder and CEO of the startup, in a statement. “We will continue to focus on empowering various industries through AI & Robotics technologies. This year, we expect to grow our business by more than five times…We will continue to be customer-centric, and create values for customers through a seamless integration of AI & Robotics technologies and customers’ supply chain needs.”

There are a number of other companies that have been delving into logistics robotics, both to improve their own logistics operations, and to build as a standalone business to be used by others. These represent competitors and potential partners, or even acquirers, to Geek Plus.

Top of the list is perhaps Amazon, which acquired robotics startup Kiva for $775 million in 2012 to build out its warehouse robots. Since then, it has expanded its robotics operations into a wider unit that, in the grand tradition of other services like AWS and fulfilment, may well productise its robots to fill the needs of other companies that want to inject some AI and robots into their own warehouse operations.

InVia and Fetch, meanwhile, are two companies busy building out technology to sell to third parties from the start, respectively robotics-as-a-service and robots themselves.

Given that some of these robots are also making their way out of the warehouse and into last-mile delivery scenarios, one estimate now puts the value of the wider market at $10 billion.

Geek Plus has been building products to date that cover a range of scenarios where you might use a robot: they include “cargo-to-man” picking systems, sorting and movement systems, and unmanned forklifts.

Wluper, the London-based tech startup building a conversational AI to power domain specific voice assistants, has raised $1.3 million in seed funding. Leading the round is “deep tech” VC IQ Capital, with participation from Seedcamp, Aster, and Magic Pony co-founder Dr Zehan Wang.

Founded in 2016 and originally backed by Jaguar Land Rover’s InMotion Ventures, Wluper’s “conversational AI” is initially targeting navigation products with what it describes as “goal-driven dialogue” technology that is designed to have more natural conversations to help with various navigation tasks.

The ‘secret sauce’, as it were, is that Wluper believes voice assistants work much better when the underlying AI is tasked with becoming an expert in a more narrow and specialist domain.

“When we think of intelligent assistants like Alexa or Siri, the only time you’ll believe they’re really good is if they understand you properly; most of the time, they simply can’t,” says Wluper co-founder Hami Bahraynian. “It is not the speech recognition which fails. It is the missing focus and lacking reasoning of these systems, because they all can do a lot of things reasonably well, but nothing perfectly”.

Describing the goal of “general” conversation AI as one that could take 15, 20 or more years to achieve, Bahraynian says that in the interim what is needed is “intelligent agents” that are created for a certain purpose, now.

“This is exactly what we do,” he says. “We build domain-specific conversational intelligence, which does one thing, understanding everything transport-related, but that one thing perfectly”.

Furthermore, Wluper’s domain-specific approach is able to make clear assumptions regarding what the user is talking about, and therefore claims to be able to understand much more complex questions and in a more natural way. This includes multi-intent queries, and follow-up questions to enable a “true” conversation, says Bahraynian.

Meanwhile, Wluper’s seed investment will be used to hire more engineers and research scientists to expand the startup’s research and development capabilities.

French crowd-lending platform October (formerly known as Lendix), wants to educate more people about new ways to borrow money. That’s why the company is launching a project called Grandir Ensemble (grow together).

11 big companies are borrowing €100,000 each on October at a 2.5 percent interest rate. October users will be able to lend as little as €20 to one of these companies.

If you look at the list of companies, all those names will sound familiar to French readers and beyond. Most of them are public companies, most of them are originally from France — AccorHotels, Adecco Group, Allianz France, Arkéa, Edenred, Engie, Iliad, JCDecaux, Suez, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and Webhelp.

According to October, annual revenue of those companies ranges from €1.8 billion to €122 billion, with Allianz generating more revenue than anyone else.

At a press conference, October co-founder and CEO Olivier Goy explained the idea behind this project. Those credit lines won’t change anything for big public companies. But many of those companies work with small and medium companies.

Today’s partners will be able to refer small companies. October will wave the application fees for those companies up to €11 million in loans.

Thanks to this vote of confidence, you could imagine small companies applying to October because a big company they trust has done it before.

France’s Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire recorded a video message for the press conference, saying that he supports October and today’s campaign.

One of October’s key advantages compared to borrowing money from the bank is that it’s much faster. You can apply to a credit line and get an answer just a few days later. This is quite useful if you need to move quickly to launch a new product, open a new office and more.

October currently operates in France, Spain, Italy and soon the Netherlands. I already covered the company in depth back in June if you want to read more.

Heiliger Strohsack! Holy smokes — Disrupt Berlin 2018 kicks off in exactly one week! We’re beyond excited to welcome thousands of startup movers, shakers and makers to Europe’s premier tech startup conference.

We’ve packed a ton of top-notch programming into 29-30 November, and we can’t wait for you to arrive in Berlin and get the party started. And for any last-minute decision makers out there, we’ve got you covered. Pull the trigger and buy your pass today.

Here’s just some of the glorious startup action in store for you at Disrupt Berlin. For a pure adrenaline rush, you can’t beat Startup Battlefield, our renowned pitch competition. We’ve selected a cohort of exceptional early-stage startup founders to compete head-to-head for a shot at the coveted Disrupt Cup and a $50,000 non-equity cash prize. On top of that, all Battlefield competitors bask in a potentially life-changing spotlight of media and investor attention. Don’t miss your chance to be in the audience and see it all happen live and in person.

Let’s talk speakers and panels. The Disrupt Main Stage is home to some of the best minds in the startup, tech and investment worlds, and you’ll get to hear them share their entrepreneurial experiences, their insights and their take on critical issues facing the startup community. Be sure to check out the conference agenda here.

If you’re hungry for interactive discussions that delve deeper, you’ll want to attend our Q&A Sessions. These are smaller, more intimate panels moderated by a TechCrunch editor, and many Main Stage speakers will be on hand to answer questions from the audience. Get to the Sessions early to secure your seat, because we don’t record or live-stream these events. The only way to hear the discussions is to be in the room.

Of course, no trip to Disrupt is complete without spending time in Startup Alley, the expo floor, where you’ll find more than 400 early-stage startups showcasing the very latest in technology products, services and platforms. While you’re there, be sure to check out our TC Top Picks — a group of exceptional startups representing 12 tech categories.

No matter where you roam or who you want to meet, Disrupt Berlin is networking nirvana — a trove of opportunity. With thousands of attendees, we figured you could use some help connecting with the right people, so we’ve made CrunchMatch — our free business-networking service — available to all Disrupt Berlin attendees. Registered attendees will receive an email explaining how to access and use the service. It’ll help you find the right people quickly and efficiently. Networking made simple!

Only one week left until Disrupt Berlin 2018 rocks your startup world. If you don’t already have a pass, buy your ticket today. Heiliger Strohsack, people! Come to Berlin and connect with your community. Opportunity awaits!

This Saturday, several issues related to LGBTQ equality, including marriage, are up for referendum in Taiwan’s mid-term elections. A little more than a year after the country’s top court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, the LGBTQ community is once again fighting for their rights due to efforts by anti-gay groups. The battle has reached social media platforms including YouTube, where a group called 3 Yes is running an ad, including before popular children’s videos, that claims teaching about LGBTQ issues in schools will confuse young children about their gender identity.

3 Yes’ name refers to three referendum items (proposals 10, 11, and 12) that anti-gay groups want voters to approve during Saturday’s election. The questions ask voters “Do you agree that marriage should be restricted to being between one man and one woman under the Civil Code?”; “Do you agree that the Ministry of Education and schools at the elementary and junior high level should not teach about homosexuality as detailed in the Gender Equity Education Act?” [passed in 2004 to promote gender equality and prevent discrimination]; and “Do you agree to unions outside of the ones defined as marriage by the Civil Code to protect the right of same-sex couples to live together permanently?”

In an attempt to counteract those proposals, LGBTQ advocacy groups introduced two additional referendums (14 and 15) that ask “Do you agree that the rights of same-sex couples to get married should be guaranteed by the Civil Code’s marriage regulations?” and “Do you agree that gender equity education as defined under the Gender Equity Education Act should be taught at all stages of the national curriculum and include education about emotions, sex, and homosexuality?”

Even though Taiwan’s Constitutional Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage in 2017, the fact that the issue and others made it to referendum this year underscores the power of anti-gay groups led by religious conservatives, including the Bread of Life Christian Church, the Happiness of the Next Generation Alliance, and the Alliance of Taiwan Religious Groups for the Protection of the Family. In addition to YouTube videos, groups such as these have also spread homophobic propaganda and misinformation through demonstrations, flyers, banners, and other online platforms including YouTube, Facebook, and Line, one of the most popular messaging apps in Taiwan.

3 Yes’ YouTube channel has three videos. Two appear to show same-sex couples before they suddenly veer into messaging that marriage is between one man and one woman. The third, which was uploaded to 3 Yes’ channel a week ago and is currently running as an ad, is even more pernicious.

It opens at a school, with young students looking at a textbook. A girl says “He must be 80% like a girl,” referring to a boy, who gets upset and runs home. Upset, he asks his parents “My classmates are laughing at me for being 80% like a girl. Do you think I’m a boy or girl?” as they look in shock at the textbook. His older sister then turns to their father and says “Dad, you must be 100% girl” as both parents gape at her in horror. The ad cuts to the slogan “Support ACCURATE, AGE-APPROPRIATE gender equity education.”

(It is worth pointing out that Taiwan’s government had to issue guidelines against sex-selective abortions because the preference for boys has skewed the country’s sex ratio).

I am the parent of a toddler and began noticing the ad popping up this week when we watched popular kids’ channels on YouTube. The example embedded above shows it running before a video by Super Simple Songs, a channel with over 12 million subscribers that features nursery rhymes and other content for very young kids. While I’ve seen it at other times, the frequency it appears in the afternoon and early evening suggests that 3 Yes scheduled their ad to run during those time slots, when many kids are home from school, in front of content targeted to them.

(It is important to note that while YouTube content creators can filter out certain advertisers from running before their videos, many may be unaware of ads like the one by 3 Yes because they aren’t located in the same market. Super Simple Songs, 3 Yes, and Google have all been contacted for comment. When reached through their Facebook page, someone from 3 Yes said they don’t run TV ads. I clarified that I mean YouTube ads and am awaiting a response.)

The ad is especially concerning because it helps the spread of misinformation about sexuality and gender by anti-gay groups in Taiwan. Debates are required for referendums and during one of them, the executive director of the National Alliance of Presidents of Parents Associations, Yang Chun-tzu, stated that children should not learn about homosexual issues during elementary and junior high school because it could influence their sexual orientation. That notion has been debunked by growing mounds of evidence that sexual orientation is mainly determined by genetic factors.

Indeed, statements like the those made by Yang and 3 Yes support the case for more education about LGBTQ issues in Taiwan’s schools, not less. 3 Yes’ video also appears to contravene Google’s new initiative against misinformation, though it’s less clear if it violates its policy against hate speech.

But even if it doesn’t incite physical violence, it promotes harmful stereotypes about LGBTQ people and is a sad echo of other instances when anti-gay ads have run on YouTube, sometimes appearing before videos by LGBTQ YouTubers. It is also a reminder that YouTube’s attempts to make its platform safer for children, including “safeguarding the emotional and physical well-being of minors,” is difficult to enforce.

Imagine being a LGBTQ child in Taiwan and seeing an ad like that pop-up while you are watching your favorite channels, at a time when the basic rights of LGBTQ people are up for a vote, and you are already confronted every day by banners and posters that declare you are in a lesser category of human. This is a stark reminder that social media platforms and content creators must pay more attention in different markets to the kind of ads and content that are allowed to be targeted to kids, especially during elections and other politically-charged times.