Author: azeeadmin

Amsterdam-based challenger bank Bunq has been self-funded by its founder and CEO Ali Niknam for several years. But the company has decided to raise some external capital, leading to the largest Series A round for a European fintech company.

The startup is raising $228 million (€193 million) in a round led by Pollen Street Capital. Bunq founder Ali Niknam is also participating in the round — he’s investing $29.5 million (€25 million) while Pollen Street Capital is financing the rest of the round.

As part of the deal, Bunq is also acquiring Capitalflow Group, an Irish lending company that was previously owned by … Pollen Street Capital.

Founded in 2012, Ali Niknam has already invested quite a bit of money into his own company. He poured $116.6 million (€98.7 million) of his own capital into Bunq — that doesn’t even take into account today’s funding round.

But it has paid off as the company expects to break even on a monthly basis in 2021. The company passed €1 billion in user deposits earlier this year. So why is the company raising external funding after turning down VC firms for so many years?

“Everything has a right time. In the beginning of Bunq, it was important to get a laser user focus in the company. Having to also focus on fundraises and the needs of investors distracts. Bunq now is mature enough to start scaling up significantly, so more capital is welcome,” Niknam said.

In particular, the company expects to acquire smaller companies to fuel its growth strategy. Challenger banks have also represented a highly competitive market over the past years in Europe. It’s clear that there will be some consolidation at some point.

Bunq offers bank accounts and debit cards that you can control from a mobile app. It works particularly well if your friends and family are also using Bunq as you can instantly send money, share a bunq.me payment link with other people, split payments and more.

In particular, if you’re going on a weekend trip, you can start an activity with your friends. It creates a shared pot that lets you share expenses with everyone. If you live with roommates, you can also create subaccounts to pay for bills from that account.

The company offers different plans that range from €2.99 per month to €17.99 per month — there’s also a free travel card with a limited feature set. By choosing a subscription-based business model, the startup has a clear path to profitability as most users are paid users.

Programmatic advertising is a $200 billion global marketplace that is rapidly growing and far-reaching, with Connected TV (CTV) serving as its latest accelerant. Unfortunately, however, it’s also a business sector rife with fraud and consumer privacy abuse, particularly in emerging media forms like CTV and mobile.

Global losses to ad fraud exceeded $35 billion last year, a figure expected to rise to $50 billion by 2025, according to the World Federation of Advertisers. Per the WFA, ad fraud is “second only to the drugs trade as a source of income for organized crime,” but there is no one-size-fits-all ad fraud strategy. To capitalize on the promise of video advertising in mobile and CTV, and measure ad efficacy with confidence, business leaders must ensure that they’re reaching customers — not bots — and achieving their business goals while remaining compliant with the latest regulations and laws.

There are a few key steps business leaders can take to guard their reputation and their ad spend:

• Deploy sophisticated tools to reveal the types of ad fraud attacks to which your ad budgets are falling prey.
• Analyze your budget with quality versus reach in mind — fraudsters continue to take advantage of advertisers’ historic obsession with reach.
• Acknowledge that the “Age of Privacy” has arrived; business leaders must remain compliant and protect their brand image in the ad marketplace.

Know the different types of ad fraud in CTV and mobile in-app to better protect your ad spend

It’s important to consider the various ways your ad budgets can be squandered on invalid traffic. Although 78% of U.S. households are now reachable via programmatic CTV advertising, ad fraud rates remain high, at 24% in Q4 2020. Traditional ad fraud attacks, such as spoofing (i.e., pretending to be a different publisher) and fake sites or apps, are being supplanted by more advanced schemes, such as CTV device farms.

Knowing that ad fraud is eating away at your budget is the first step, but business leaders need to understand the different schemes so they can apply the right protection in the right moments.

Looking at reach through a quality lens

Historically, the standard way to measure advertising has been focused on reach. However, reach is now more of a vanity metric if uncoupled from traffic quality.

Striving for reach while ignoring quality creates a prime opportunity for ad fraud. Generating fake traffic to create the illusion of “reach” has become a staple in many ad fraud schemes, with some CTV schemes fabricating up to 650 million bid requests a day per day from bots, per The Drum.

High impression rates that fail to convert into actual sales and pricing anomalies (as compared to a peer group) are compelling harbingers of traffic quality issues.

Because the growing CTV ecosystem commands premium pricing, advertisers may be tempted to seek out deals. However, several leading streaming TV providers, such as XUMO and Philo, have warned advertisers about prices that seem too good to be true, noting that they may be signals of fraudulent activity. Work to identify where traffic is coming from and ask questions when the data looks suspicious.

The ad industry itself is also fighting back by giving tools to business owners meant to stymie ad fraud. There are several industry working groups and watchdog organizations — including the Media Rating Council, Interactive Advertising Bureau and Trustworthy Accountability Group — that accredit certain platforms and suppliers to combat ad fraud. These working groups and organizations also regularly release industry standards and programs designed to address fraudulent activity, such as the Ads.txt initiative meant to help advertisers know they are buying inventory via legitimate third parties. All business owners should utilize certified platforms – along with emerging programs and standards – to stay on top of the latest trends in ad fraud.

Business leaders need to prioritize brand safety and compliance

In addition to navigating the complex world of ad quality, brands must now consider whether the publishers they are working with are brand-safe and compliant with the latest consumer privacy and compliance laws.

Pixalate’s May 2021 estimates show that 22% of Apple App Store apps and 9% of Google Play Store apps that serve programmatic advertisements don’t have a privacy policy. This is significant because there are already documented cases of consumer data being misused as part of ad fraud schemes. And 70% of Google Play Store apps have at least one of what Google calls “dangerous permissions,” an increase of 5% in 2020. Additionally, of apps that serve programmatic ads, 80% of Apple App Store apps and 66% of Google Play Store apps count children aged 12 and under as part of their audience, which brings COPPA compliance risks into the equation as well.

There are a couple of things at play when it comes to brand safety that business leaders and brands should be aware of. The most important is that what is deemed “safe” for a brand is solely based on that brand – there is no golden standard because each brand has a different vision, mission and goals. Brand safety is subjective. However, it’s essential for success.

Ad fraud, brand safety and data compliance continually evolve, and leaders must follow the numbers, stay educated on market changes, and invest in the right partnerships to ensure consumers, not bots, are engaging with the most impactful and effective content.

Kobo’s Elipsa is the latest in the Amazon rival’s e-reading line, and it’s a big one. The 10.3-inch e-paper display brings it up to iPad dimensions and puts it in direct competition with the reMarkable and Boox’s e-reader tablets. It excels on reading experience, gets by on note-taking and drawing, but falls a bit short on versatility.

Kobo has been creeping upmarket for a few years now, and though the cheaper Clara HD is still the pick of the litter in my opinion, the Forma and Libra H2O are worthy competitors to the Kindle lines. The $400 Elipsa represents a big step up in size, function, and price, and it does justify itself — though there are a few important caveats.

The device is well designed but lacks any flourishes. The tilted “side chin” of the Forma and Libra is flattened out into a simple wide bezel on the right side. The lopsided appearance doesn’t bother me much, and much of the competition has it as well. (Though my favorite is Boox’s ultra-compact, flush-fronted Poke 3)

The 10.3″ screen has a resolution of 1404 x 1872, giving it 227 pixels per inch. That’s well below the 300 PPI of the Clara and Forma, and the typography suffers from noticeably more aliasing if you look closely. Of course, you won’t be looking that closely, since as a larger device you’ll probably be giving the Elipsa a bit more distance and perhaps using a larger type size. I found it perfectly comfortable to read on — 227 PPI isn’t bad, just not the best.

There is a frontlight, which is easily adjustable by sliding your finger up and down the left side of the screen, but unlike other Kobo devices there is no way to change the color temperature. I’ve been spoiled by other devices and now the default cool grey I lived with for years doesn’t feel right, especially with a warmer light shining on your surroundings. The important part is that it is consistent across the full display and adjustable down to a faint glow, something my eyes have thanked me for many times.

Image Credits: Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch

It’s hard to consider the Elipsa independent from the accessories it’s bundled with, and in fact there’s no way to buy one right now without the “sleep cover” and stylus. The truth is they really complete the package, though they do add considerably to its weight and bulk. What when naked is lighter and feels smaller than a standard iPad is heavier and larger once you put its case on and stash the surprisingly weighty stylus at the top.

Image Credits: Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch

The cover is nicely designed, if a bit stiff, and will definitely protect your device from harm. The cover, secured by magnets at the bottom, flips off like a sheet on a legal pad and folds flat behind the device, attaching itself with the same magnets from the other direction. A couple folds in it also stiffen up with further magnetic arrangement into a nice, sturdy little stand. The outside is a grippy faux leather and the inside is soft microfiber.

You can wake and turn off the device by opening and closing the cover, but the whole thing comes with a small catch: you have to have the power button, charging port, and big bezel on the right. When out of its case the Elipsa can, like the others of its lopsided type, be inverted and your content instantly flips. But once you put it in the case, you’re locked in to a semi-right-handed mode. This may or may not bother people but it’s worth mentioning.

The Elipsa, center, with the Forma and reMarkable 2 to its left and right.

The reading experience is otherwise very similar to that on Kobo’s other devices. A relatively clean interface that surfaces your most recently accessed content and a not overwhelming but still unwelcome amount of promotional stuff (“Find your next great read”). Ebooks free and paid for display well, though it’s never been my preference to read on a large screen like this. I truly wish one of these large e-readers would make a landscape mode with facing pages. Isn’t that more booklike?

Articles from the web, synced via Pocket, look great and are a pleasure to read in this format. It feels more like a magazine page, which is great when you’re reading an online version of one. It’s simply, foolproof and well integrated.

Kobo’s new note-taking prowess

What’s new on the bottom row, though, is “Notebooks,” where unsurprisingly you can create notebooks for scribbling down lists, doodles, notes of course, and generally use the stylus.

The writing experience is adequate. Here I am spoiled by the reMarkable 2, which boasts extremely low lag and high accuracy, as well as much more expression in the line. Kobo doesn’t approach that, and the writing experience is fairly basic, with a noticeable amount of lag, but admirable accuracy.

There are five pen tips, five line widths, and five line shades, and they’re all fine. The stylus has a nice heft to it, though I’d like a grippier material. Two buttons on it let you quickly switch from the current pen style to a highlighter or eraser, where you have stroke-deleting or brush modes. The normal notebooks have the usual gridded, dotted, lined and blank styles, and unlimited pages, but you can’t zoom in or out (not so good for artists).

Then there are the “advanced” notebooks, which you must use if you want handwriting recognition and other features. These have indelible lines on which you can write, and a double tap captures your words into type very quickly. You can also put in drawings and equations in their own sections.

Close enough. Image Credits: Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch

The handwriting recognition is fast and good enough for rough notes, but don’t expect to send these directly to your team without any editing. Likewise the diagram tool that turns gestural sketches of shapes and labels into finalized flowcharts and the like — better than the original wobbly art but still a rough draft. There are a few clever shortcuts and gestures to add or subtract spaces and other common tasks, something you’ll probably get used to fairly quick if you use the Elipsa regularly.

The notebook interface is snappy enough going from page to page or up and down on the “smart” notebooks but nothing like the fluidity of a design program or an art-focused one on an iPad. But it’s also unobtrusive, has good palm blocking, and feels nice in action. The lag on the line is definitely a con, but something you can get used to if you don’t mind the resulting product being a little sloppy.

Image Credits: Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch

You can also mark up ebooks, which is nice for highlights but ultimately not that much better than simply selecting the text. And there’s no way you’re writing in the margins with the limitations of this stylus.

Exporting notepads can be done via a linked Dropbox account or over USB connection. Again the reMarkable has a leg up here, for even if its app is a bit restrictive, the live syncing means you don’t ever have to worry about what version of what is where, as long as it’s in the system. On the Kobo it’s more traditional.

Compared to the reMarkable, the Kobo is really just an easier platform for everyday reading, so if you’re looking for a device that focuses on that and has the option of doodling or note-taking on the side, it’s a much better deal. On the other hand, those just looking for an improvement to that stylus-focused tablet should look elsewhere — writing and sketching still feels way better on a reMarkable than almost anything on the market. And compared with something like a Boox tablet, the Elipsa is more simple and focused, but doesn’t allow the opportunity of adding Android apps and games.

At $400 — though this includes a case and stylus — the Elipsa is a considerable investment and comparably priced to an iPad, which is certainly a more versatile device. But I don’t particularly enjoy reading articles or books on my iPad, and the simplicity of an e-reader in general helps me focus when I’m making notes on a paper or something. It’s a different device for a different purpose, but not for everyone.

It is however probably the best way right now to step into the shallow end of the “big e-reader” pool, with more complex or expensive options available should you desire them.

While crypto exchanges have demystified some of the largest cryptocurrencies for retail investors, many of the intricacies of decentralized finance are still lost on even more savvy investors as a result of DeFi’s weave of diverse offerings.

Zerion, a startup building a decentralized finance “interface” for crypto investors, has attracted venture capitalist attention on the back of recent growth. Amid a renewed crypto gold rush, the company has processed more than $600 million in transaction volume so far this year, now with over 200 thousand monthly active users, CEO Evgeny Yurtaev tells TechCrunch

The startup has also wrapped an $8.2 million Series A funding round led by Mosaic Ventures, with participation from Placeholder, DCG, Lightspeed, Blockchain.com Ventures, among others. Mosaic’s Toby Coppel and Placeholder’s Brad Burnham have joined Zerion’s Board, the startup also shared.

Zerion gives customers access to more than 50,000 digital assets and 60 protocols on the Ethereum blockchain through their app which streamlines the UI of DeFi. Users can access tokens and invest through the app similar to exchanges like Coinbase or Gemini, but do so using their own personal wallets like MetaMask, meaning user funds and private keys aren’t controlled by or accessible to Zerion, a sticking point for Yurtaev, a life-long crypto enthusiast and builder.

Image via Zerion

“There are a bunch of different tokens and protocols in the DeFi space,” Yurtaev says. “In theory, it’s supposed to be easy to navigate, but in reality, it’s all a mess… We try to demystify them.”

Alongside major growth in Ethereum and Bitcoin prices, DeFi volume has surged in 2021, up from just under $20 billion at the year’s start to nearly $90 billion this May. The DeFi market et large has proven just as volatile as Bitcoin, with market volume falling some 35 percent in the past couple months to just over $57 billion.

The startup’s mobile app on iOS and Android has become a particularly popular way for crypto investors to track the market and the tokens they’re backing. The average user opens the app more than 9 times per day, the company says.

Crypto’s 2021 upswing has drawn plenty of investor attention, not only to the assets themselves but to the platforms facilitating those transactions. Last month, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz announced that they had raised more than $2.2 billion to invest in startups building products in crypto spaces including decentralized finance.

Trump’s spicy trio of lawsuits against the social media platforms that he believes wrongfully banned him have succeeded in showering the former president with a flurry of media attention, but that’s likely where the story ends.

Like Trump’s quixotic and ultimately empty quest to gut Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act during his presidency, the new lawsuits are all sound and fury with little legal substance to back them up.

The suits allege that Twitter, Facebook and YouTube violated Trump’s First Amendment rights by booting him from their platforms, but the First Amendment is intended to protect citizens from censorship by the government — not private industry. The irony that Trump himself was the uppermost figure in the federal government at the time probably won’t be lost on whoever’s lap this case lands in.

In the lawsuits, which also name Twitter and Facebook chief executives Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg as well as Google CEO Sundar Pichai (Susan Wojcicki escapes notice once again!), Trump accuses the three companies of engaging in “impermissible censorship resulting from threatened legislative action, a misguided reliance upon Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and willful participation in joint activity with federal actors.”

The suit claims that the tech companies colluded with “Democrat lawmakers,” the CDC and Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served in Trump’s own government at the time.

The crux of the argument is that communication between the tech companies, members of Congress and the federal government somehow transforms Facebook, Twitter and YouTube into “state actors” — a leap of epic proportion:

“Defendant Twitter’s status thus rises beyond that of a private company to that of a state actor, and as such, Defendant is constrained by the First Amendment right to free speech in the censorship decisions it makes.”

Trump’s own Supreme Court appointee Brett Kavanaugh issued the court’s opinion on a relevant case two years ago. It examined whether a nonprofit running public access television channels in New York qualified as a “state actor” that would be subject to First Amendment constraints. The court ruled that running the public access channels didn’t transform the nonprofit into a government entity and that it retained a private entity’s rights to make editorial decisions.

“… A private entity… who opens its property for speech by others is not transformed by that fact alone into a state actor,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote in the decision.

It’s not likely that a court would decide that talking to the government or being threatened by the government somehow transform Twitter, YouTube and Facebook into state actors either.

Trump vs. Section 230 (again)

First Amendment aside — and there’s really not much of an argument there — social media platforms are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a concise snippet of law that shields them from liability not just for the user-generated content they host but for the moderation decisions they make about what content to remove.

In line with Trump’s obsessive disdain for tech’s legal shield, the lawsuits repeatedly rail against Section 230. The suits try to argue that because Congress threatened to revoke tech’s 230 protections, that forced them to ban Trump, which somehow makes social media companies part of the government and subject to First Amendment constraints.

Of course, Republican lawmakers and Trump’s own administration made frequent threats about repealing Section 230, not that it changes anything because this line of argument doesn’t make much sense anyway.

The suit also argues that Congress crafted Section 230 to intentionally censor speech that is otherwise protected by the First Amendment, ignoring that the law was born in 1996, well before ubiquitous social media, and for other purposes altogether.

For the four years of his presidency, Trump’s social media activity — his tweets in particular — informed the events of the day, both nationally and globally. While other world leaders and political figures used social media to communicate or promote their actions, Trump’s Twitter account was usually the action itself.

In the shadow of his social media bans, the former president has failed to re-establish lines of communication to the internet at large. In May, he launched a new blog, “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” but the site was taken down just a month later after it failed to attract much interest.

The handful of pro-Trump alternative social platforms are still struggling with app store content moderation requirements at odds with their extreme views on free speech, but that didn’t stop Gettr, the latest, from going ahead with its own rocky launch last week.

Viewed in one light, Trump’s lawsuits are a platform too, his latest method for broadcasting himself to the online world that his transgressions eventually cut him off from. In that sense, they seem to have succeeded, but in all other senses, they won’t.

AI teams invest a lot of rigor in defining new project guidelines. But the same is not true for killing existing projects. In the absence of clear guidelines, teams let infeasible projects drag on for months.

They put up a dog and pony show during project review meetings for fear of becoming the messengers of bad news. By streamlining the process to fail fast on infeasible projects, teams can significantly increase their overall success with AI initiatives.

AI projects are different from traditional software projects. They have a lot more unknowns: availability of right datasets, model training to meet required accuracy threshold, fairness and robustness of recommendations in production, and many more.

In order to fail fast, AI initiatives should be managed as a conversion funnel analogous to marketing and sales funnels. Projects start at the top of the five-stage funnel and can drop off at any stage, either to be temporarily put on ice or permanently suspended and added to the AI graveyard. Each stage of the AI funnel defines a clear set of unknowns to be validated with a list of time-bound success criteria.

The AI project funnel has five stages:

Image Credits: Sandeep Uttamchandani

1. Problem definition: “If we build it, will they come?”

This is the top of the funnel. AI projects require significant investments not just during initial development but ongoing monitoring and refinement. This makes it important to verify that the problem being solved is truly worth solving with respect to potential business value compared to the effort to build. Even if the problem is worth solving, AI may not be required. There might be easier human-encoded heuristics to solve the problem.

Developing the AI solution is only half the battle. The other half is how the solution will actually be used and integrated. For instance, in developing an AI solution for predicting customer churn, there needs to be a clear understanding of incorporating attrition predictions in the customer support team workflow. A perfectly powerful AI project will fail to deliver business value without this level of integration clarity.

To successfully exit this stage, the following statements need to be true:

• The AI project will produce tangible business value if delivered successfully.
• There are no cheaper alternatives that can address the problem with the required accuracy threshold.
• There is a clear path to incorporate the AI recommendations within the existing flow to make an impact.

In my experience, the early stages of the project have a higher ratio of aspiration compared to ground realities. Killing an ill-formed project can avoid teams from building “solutions in search of problems.”

2. Data availability : “We have the data to build it.”

At this stage of the funnel, we have verified the problem is worth solving. We now need to confirm the data availability to build the perception, learning and reasoning capabilities required in the AI project. Data needs vary based on the type of AI project  —  the requirements for a project building classification intelligence will be different from one providing recommendations or ranking.

Data availability broadly translates to having the right quality, quantity and features. Right quality refers to the fact that the data samples are an accurate reflection of the phenomenon we are trying to model  and meet properties such as independent and identically distributed. Common quality checks involve uncovering data collection errors, inconsistent semantics and errors in labeled samples.

The right quantity refers to the amount of data that needs to be available. A common misconception is that a significant amount of data is required for training machine learning models. This is not always true. Using pre-built transfer learning models, it is possible to get started with very little data. Also, more data does not always mean useful data. For instance, historic data spanning 10 years may not be a true reflection of current customer behavior. Finally, the right features need to be available to build the model. This is typically iterative and involves ML model design.

To successfully exit this stage, the following statements need to be true:

The harsh truth: Some of the advice you read about marketing is incorrect.

While not always intentionally misleading, you’re often absorbing content written by:

• Marketers without a breadth of experience: People who’ve marketed a single product and have a limited — or biased — view on a channel.
• Non-practitioners: People who’ve never run experiments, but pass along (sometimes outdated) marketing insights that they’ve read online.

After running thousands of experiments for brands like Microsoft, Segment and Perfect Keto, here are 10 significant lies we’ve realized you’ve been told about marketing (on email marketing, ads and referrals).

1. “Send a welcome email immediately after signup.”

It’s better to avoid sending emails right after people sign up on your site. We’re used to getting generic, unimportant welcome emails every time we sign up for anything online. So most people will reflexively discard your welcome email as spam.

Instead, try delaying your welcome email by 15 to 45 minutes.

The delay removes the subscriber’s mental connection between signup and your email, bypassing the reflex to ignore.

As a result, you’ll likely get more opens and more engagement.

2. “Only highlight your best product reviews.”

For context, reviews are a big deal:

• 93% of consumers claim product reviews impact purchase decisions.
• The social proof of having 50+ product reviews increases conversion. Shoppers trust peers more than they trust brands.

But imperfect reviews can generate more sales than five-star ones. How?

When a partially negative review weighs your cons versus your pros, and concludes that the product was worth purchasing anyway, that sounds authentic and honest.

In contrast, strings of flawless five-star reviews don’t signal authenticity. Psychologically, they’re less likely to sink in as positive social proof.

Here’s what you can do:

• Make sure your post-purchase email flow contains a request for reviews. The more reviews you have, the better.
• Don’t bury slightly negative reviews. If someone leaves a four-star review and offers a fair (and insignificant) critique, showcase it toward the top of your product page.

3. “You have to send a newsletter every week.”

Most newsletters shouldn’t be sent weekly. This goes against what most creator economy entrepreneurs suggest.

But high cadences force newsletter writers to rush and publish lower-quality information to hit self-imposed deadlines.

Instead, consider only sending when you truly have value to add. At a minimum, consider setting a more reasonable cadence like once or twice a month so that you’ll have enough time and content to consistently hit a high-quality bar.

Virtual reality did not turn into the ultimate office replacement telepresence machine during the pandemic — and it wasn’t for lack of trying — but some startups focused on employee training in VR have found added validation in the past year as professionals across industries were forced to access institutional knowledge in remote settings.

Osso VR, a San Francisco-based virtual reality startup focused on medical training, has piqued investor attention as they’ve bulked up on partnerships with medical devices powerhouses like Johnson & Johnson, Stryker and Smith & Nephew during the pandemic. The startup tells TechCrunch they’ve recently closed $27 million in Series B funding led by GSR Ventures with additional participation from SignalFire, Kaiser Permanente Ventures and Anorak Ventures, among others.

CEO Justin Barad tells TechCrunch that the pandemic “created an intense level of urgency” for the startup as customers found new demand for their platform.

Osso VR is looking to upend modern surgical instruction with a virtual reality-based solution that allows surgeons to interact with new medical devices in 3D space, “performing” a surgery over and over on a digital cadaver from the comfort of anywhere they have enough room to stretch out their arms. Osso’s efforts are particularly useful to its medical device customers who can use the platform to boost familiarity with their solutions while helping surgeons gain proficiency in implanting them.

One of the startup’s broader aims is to bring video games’ multiplayer mechanics into the virtual operating room, allowing surgeons and medical assistants to collaborate in real-time so they not only know their responsibility but how they fit into the whole of each operation.

“It’s a lot like a symphony, everyone has a different role to play and you need to communicate with each other.” Barad says.

It’s a process that needs virtual reality’s spatial breadth, Barad notes, though instruction is always supplemented by text and videos as well.

Barad calls the startup’s aim “something unambiguously good,” a quality which has helped the team poach talent as it has scaled to some 100 employees, which includes what he claims is the world’s largest team of medical illustrators. That team has helped scale the platform’s content to more than 100 modules spanning 10 specialties.

Virtual reality founders have struggled in recent years to coax investor attention as consumer and enterprise uptake has proven slower than the early wild ambitions for the technology. In its stead, investors have looked more towards bets on adjacent technologies like gaming and computer vision that don’t require the specialized head-worn hardware. Osso VR’s platform runs on Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2 headset through the company’s Oculus for Business program.

Pakistan, the world’s fifth most populous country, has been slow to adapt to the internet economy. Unlike other emerging economies such as China, India and Indonesia, which have embraced digitization and technology, Pakistan has trailed the region in the adoption of technology and startup formation.

Despite this, investors have dreamed for years of the huge opportunities in unlocking Pakistan’s potential as a digital economy. As a country of 220 million people, almost two-thirds of whom are under the age of 30, Pakistan draws natural comparisons to Indonesia — which has rapidly emerged as one of the most vibrant technology ecosystems outside the U.S. and China.

After years of lagging behind, over the course of the past 18 months, Pakistan’s technology ecosystem has come to life in unprecedented fashion. In 2021, Pakistani startups are on track to raise more money than the previous five years combined. Even more excitingly, a large portion of this capital is coming from international investors from across Asia, the Middle East and even famed investors from Silicon Valley.

Image Credits: Mikal Khoso

The rapid emergence of Pakistan’s technology ecosystem on the international stage has been no accident — it’s the result of a confluence of changing facts on the ground and shifting dynamics in the startup and investing world as a result of the pandemic.

Unlocking Pakistan’s potential

The sudden emergence of Pakistan’s tech ecosystem on the international stage has been driven by three major factors: an improving security situation, quickly growing mobile connectivity, and critical legal changes and deregulation.

As a frontline state and coalition partner in the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan saw fatalities from terrorist violence soar from 295 in 2001 to a peak of over 11,000 in 2009. This climate of instability and violence scared away international business and investors from Pakistan for much of the first two decades of the 21st century.

WellSaid Labs, whose tools create synthetic speech that could be mistaken for the real thing, has raised a $10M Series A to grow the business. The company’s home-baked text-to-speech engine works faster than real time and produces natural-sounding clips of pretty much any length, from quick snippets to hours-long readings.

WellSaid came out of the Allen Institute for AI incubator in 2019, and its goal was to make synthetic voices that didn’t sound so robotic for common business purposes like training and marketing content.

It achieved that first by basing its solution on Tacotron, a speech engine developed by Google and academic researchers. But soon it had built its own that was more efficient, resulted in more convincing voices, and could produce clips of arbitrary lengths. Speech engines often trip up after a couple sentences, descending into babble or losing tone, but WellSaid’s read the entirety of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein without a hiccup.

The voices were good enough that they were rated as human or as good as human by listeners — not something you could really say about the usual virtual assistant suspects when they speak more than a handful of words. Not only that, but the speech was generated considerably faster than realtime, where other high quality options often operated at a tenth realtime or slower — meaning three minutes of speech would take one minute to generate by WellSaid and half an hour or more by Tacotron.

Lastly, the system allows for new “Voice Avatars” to be created based on existing voice talent, like a trusted company spokesperson or voiceover artist. Originally about 20 hours of audio was needed to build a model of their quirks and voice style, but now it can do so with as little as 2 hours, CEO Matt Hocking said.

The company is strictly business-focused right now, which is to say there’s no user-facing app to digitize your voice into an avatar or anything. There are attendant risks and no realistic business model for it, so that’s off the table for now.

Such a realistic voice might still be of enormous help to people with disabilities, however, something Hocking acknowledges but admits they’re not quite ready to tackle yet.

Image Credits: WellSaid Labs

“We are committed to expanding access to this technology so that nonverbal communicators, nonprofits, and others can benefit from it,” he said.

In the meantime the company has expanded from its first market, corporate training videos, to marketing, longer copy, interactive products with considerable text, and app experiences. One hopes that the talent these avatars are based on are being properly compensated for helping create a digital likeness of their voice.

The oversubscribed $10M round was led by FUSE, with participation from repeat investor Voyager, Qualcomm Ventures LLC, and GoodFriends, all of whom were likely impressed by the product and business growth. Synthetic voices have served a handful of popular use cases but content has not been a big one — so there’s plenty of room to grow. The company will invest the money in deepening its product offering and growing the team along with it.