Author: azeeadmin

Last call, startup fans! Tomorrow we kick off the first TechCrunch Startup Battlefield MENA in Beirut, Lebanon. We sifted through more than 400 applications to find the 15 very best early-stage startups the Middle East and North Africa has to offer, and we want you in the audience to witness tech history in the making.

As if watching a Startup Battlefield competition isn’t exciting enough, we’ve worked a stellar list of speakers and dynamic workshops into the day-long mix. Interested in investing? Some of MENA’s leading investment firms will be in the house, including Outlierz Ventures, BeryTech Fund and Leap Ventures — to name just a few. See the full list of investment firms here.

If infrastructure and connectivity is more your thing, you’ll enjoy hearing Ogero Telecom’s Imad Kreidieh and Facebook’s Ari Kesisoglu discuss the impact of changes in the region’s telco industry.

You’ll gain perspective when Omar Gabr (Instabug), Nour Al Hassan (Tarjama), Mai Medhat (Eventtus) and Ameer Sherif (Wuzzuf) talk about the massive changes in MENA’s tech landscape over the last decade. And they’ll take a look at what challenges and opportunities lie ahead. Read the complete agenda here.

Now, about the main event. The 15 teams compete in three preliminary rounds — five startups per round. They have six minutes to pitch and present a live demo to our panel of judges — expert technologists and VC investors in their respective fields. An intensive Q&A follows each pitch.

Five teams move into the final round — to pitch a new panel of judges and endure another stress-inducing Q&A. From the five comes one champion. The first TechCrunch Startup Battlefield MENA champion.

To the winning founders go the spoils, including a $25,000 no-equity cash prize and 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).

This full, action-packed event offers excitement, enlightenment and a tremendous opportunity to network with the most influential movers and shakers in the Middle East and North Africa.

If you have a ticket, you’re one of the lucky ones as we’re all sold out! Videos of the event will be posted approximately 2-3 business days after the conclusion of the event on techcrunch.com.

It is four months since fintech ‘unicorn’ Revolut announced its intention to add commission-free trading to its banking app, in a bid to compete with Silicon Valley’s Robinhood (although, curiously, the two companies share two investors, namely Index and DST).

However, one London startup looks to be first out of the gate this side of the pond: Freetrade, founded by Adam Dodds, is officially launching today, and offers “zero-fee” stocks and ETF trading, alongside various premium paid features.

A year in the making, Freetrade has built a bona-fide “challenger broker,” including obtaining the required license from the FCA (the U.K. regulator), rather than simply partnering with an established broker as it is understood Revolut initially plans to do. This, Dodds explained on a call, has enabled the startup to plug directly into the capital markets “piping,” with as few intermediaries as possible. It means Freetrade can execute trades on its own behalf and ultimately be much more in control of its own destiny. It should also help the startup maintain a lower cost-base as the app scales.

The fintech has begun to onboard its 60,000-strong waitlist as of today, after a prolonged period in private beta. During that time, the company has run a number of private equity crowdfunding campaigns, shunning venture capital entirely. Asked why Freetrade chose not to raise VC money, Dodds says “the short answer is, we didn’t have to”.

“We got our start with a modest crowdfunding campaign for £100,000 in 2016. That was the seed that grew our community and waiting list to over 60,000 people. To date, we’ve raised over £4 million from our community to fund the business and from our point of view, there couldn’t be a better way. Our investors care so much about the business – they spread the word to everyone they know, they give us feedback on the product, and of course, they are our customers too!”.

Dodds says that many startups worry about getting the first 1,000 customers to love the product. In contrast, Freetrade “has over 3,000 [customers] that already believe in it so much they invested their own money to make it a reality”.

At launch, Freetrade lets you invest in U.K. stocks and ETFs, but will soon add U.S. stocks, too. Trades are “fee-free” if you are happy for your buy or sell trades to execute at the close of business each day. If you want to execute immediately, the startup charges a very low £1 per trade, and will soon add an all-inclusive monthly paid subscription to the app.

The idea, Dodds tells me, is to lower the price of entry so that anybody can begin putting together their own investment portfolio, no matter how small to begin with.

“The first thing to understand is that the commissions legacy stockbrokers charge are completely detached from the actual cost of making trades. They charge what they can get away with,” he says. “The lack of competition has allowed an oligopoly to settle in where all the legacy online brokers charge around £10 to make a trade.

“What we offer is a free option to start investing in real shares and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), where you don’t need to worry about any fees or commissions or timing your orders as free orders are filled at the end of the day. Or you can pay £1 for Instant orders that are filled immediately when the market is open. We’ll also offer a paid subscription tier that includes all our services, including instant execution and ISAs (tax-free account) for £10 a month”.

But how does this all compare to what Revolut has planned and how will Freetrade compete? Dodds wouldn’t be drawn on too many specifics, but reiterated that his startup has “built a new FCA-authorised financial institution from the ground up” and has now launched what he describes as the U.K.’s “first modern stockbroker”.

“Revolut seems to be burning masses of VC cash in a land grab for every vertical in fintech. I’m sure they’ll launch something to compete with us at some point, but we’re singularly focused on making the absolute best investment app out there and building a sustainable business,” he says.

It is four months since fintech ‘unicorn’ Revolut announced its intention to add commission-free trading to its banking app, in a bid to compete with Silicon Valley’s Robinhood (although, curiously, the two companies share two investors, namely Index and DST).

However, one London startup looks to be first out of the gate this side of the pond: Freetrade, founded by Adam Dodds, is officially launching today, and offers “zero-fee” stocks and ETF trading, alongside various premium paid features.

A year in the making, Freetrade has built a bona-fide “challenger broker,” including obtaining the required license from the FCA (the U.K. regulator), rather than simply partnering with an established broker as it is understood Revolut initially plans to do. This, Dodds explained on a call, has enabled the startup to plug directly into the capital markets “piping,” with as few intermediaries as possible. It means Freetrade can execute trades on its own behalf and ultimately be much more in control of its own destiny. It should also help the startup maintain a lower cost-base as the app scales.

The fintech has begun to onboard its 60,000-strong waitlist as of today, after a prolonged period in private beta. During that time, the company has run a number of private equity crowdfunding campaigns, shunning venture capital entirely. Asked why Freetrade chose not to raise VC money, Dodds says “the short answer is, we didn’t have to”.

“We got our start with a modest crowdfunding campaign for £100,000 in 2016. That was the seed that grew our community and waiting list to over 60,000 people. To date, we’ve raised over £4 million from our community to fund the business and from our point of view, there couldn’t be a better way. Our investors care so much about the business – they spread the word to everyone they know, they give us feedback on the product, and of course, they are our customers too!”.

Dodds says that many startups worry about getting the first 1,000 customers to love the product. In contrast, Freetrade “has over 3,000 [customers] that already believe in it so much they invested their own money to make it a reality”.

At launch, Freetrade lets you invest in U.K. stocks and ETFs, but will soon add U.S. stocks, too. Trades are “fee-free” if you are happy for your buy or sell trades to execute at the close of business each day. If you want to execute immediately, the startup charges a very low £1 per trade, and will soon add an all-inclusive monthly paid subscription to the app.

The idea, Dodds tells me, is to lower the price of entry so that anybody can begin putting together their own investment portfolio, no matter how small to begin with.

“The first thing to understand is that the commissions legacy stockbrokers charge are completely detached from the actual cost of making trades. They charge what they can get away with,” he says. “The lack of competition has allowed an oligopoly to settle in where all the legacy online brokers charge around £10 to make a trade.

“What we offer is a free option to start investing in real shares and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), where you don’t need to worry about any fees or commissions or timing your orders as free orders are filled at the end of the day. Or you can pay £1 for Instant orders that are filled immediately when the market is open. We’ll also offer a paid subscription tier that includes all our services, including instant execution and ISAs (tax-free account) for £10 a month”.

But how does this all compare to what Revolut has planned and how will Freetrade compete? Dodds wouldn’t be drawn on too many specifics, but reiterated that his startup has “built a new FCA-authorised financial institution from the ground up” and has now launched what he describes as the U.K.’s “first modern stockbroker”.

“Revolut seems to be burning masses of VC cash in a land grab for every vertical in fintech. I’m sure they’ll launch something to compete with us at some point, but we’re singularly focused on making the absolute best investment app out there and building a sustainable business,” he says.

Lingokids, the Madrid, Spain-based (and U.S. incorporated) edtech startup that helps children to learn a second language, has bolstered its balance sheet. The company has raised $6 million in Series A funding, and been awarded a $1.3 million grant from the European Union’s taxpayer funded H2020 programme,

Leading the Series A is HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, with participation from existing investors JME Venture Capital, Sabadell Ventures, Big Sur Ventures, and Gwynne Shotwell (President and COO of SpaceX). A number of new investors joined, too, including Silicon Valley ed-tech investor Reach Capital, Athos Capital, and All Iron Ventures. It brings total funding for Lingokids to over $11 million in the last year.

Meanwhile, I’m told a lot has happened since the startup’s last funding round a year ago. The team has grown to 40-plus employees, and the platform now counts a user base of over 7 million registered families around the world in 180 countries.

Notably — and presumably after finding market fit — Lingokids has also decided to focus only on English language learning (it had previously ventured into simplified Chinese and had plans to add Spanish). However, its central proposition remains the same.

The subscription-based platform teaches English to children ages 2 to 8 through a series of activities, games, and songs that adapt in difficulty to each child’s level. This, Lingokids maintains, allows for a fun and personalized learning experience, with an emphasis placed on parental involvement, which is key to language learning outcomes.

To that end, Lingokids says it will use the new capital for three main purposes: accelerating growth, acquiring new talent, and developing new features for the app. This includes plans to offer an “even more personalized experience for students and to increase parental involvement in the learning process​,” which will see the startup revamp the app’s parent section, and provide new types of interactive content formats. The platform will also add improved speech recognition features.

“There is a growing interest in English language learning in early childhood, with market figures suggesting that at least 500 million children under the age of 8 will be learning English by 2020,” says Cristobal Viedma, Lingokids founder and CEO, in a statement​. “We will continue to satisfy this demand and tackle English literacy around the world by offering high quality educational content at an affordable price.”

Lingokids, the Madrid, Spain-based (and U.S. incorporated) edtech startup that helps children to learn a second language, has bolstered its balance sheet. The company has raised $6 million in Series A funding, and been awarded a $1.3 million grant from the European Union’s taxpayer funded H2020 programme,

Leading the Series A is HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, with participation from existing investors JME Venture Capital, Sabadell Ventures, Big Sur Ventures, and Gwynne Shotwell (President and COO of SpaceX). A number of new investors joined, too, including Silicon Valley ed-tech investor Reach Capital, Athos Capital, and All Iron Ventures. It brings total funding for Lingokids to over $11 million in the last year.

Meanwhile, I’m told a lot has happened since the startup’s last funding round a year ago. The team has grown to 40-plus employees, and the platform now counts a user base of over 7 million registered families around the world in 180 countries.

Notably — and presumably after finding market fit — Lingokids has also decided to focus only on English language learning (it had previously ventured into simplified Chinese and had plans to add Spanish). However, its central proposition remains the same.

The subscription-based platform teaches English to children ages 2 to 8 through a series of activities, games, and songs that adapt in difficulty to each child’s level. This, Lingokids maintains, allows for a fun and personalized learning experience, with an emphasis placed on parental involvement, which is key to language learning outcomes.

To that end, Lingokids says it will use the new capital for three main purposes: accelerating growth, acquiring new talent, and developing new features for the app. This includes plans to offer an “even more personalized experience for students and to increase parental involvement in the learning process​,” which will see the startup revamp the app’s parent section, and provide new types of interactive content formats. The platform will also add improved speech recognition features.

“There is a growing interest in English language learning in early childhood, with market figures suggesting that at least 500 million children under the age of 8 will be learning English by 2020,” says Cristobal Viedma, Lingokids founder and CEO, in a statement​. “We will continue to satisfy this demand and tackle English literacy around the world by offering high quality educational content at an affordable price.”

Browser company Opera is back doing what it does best, offering you beautifully-designed alternatives to the stock browsers from the likes of Google and Apple . This week the company brought its ‘Opera Touch’ browser to iOS to give iPhone owners a new alternative to the basic Safari browser.

The app was first launched for Android in April and, as we noted at the time, it reinvents a lot of the established paradigms to work well on mobile and particularly large screens that don’t have a home button — which is steadily becoming every premium devices on the market today.

Touch for iOS — which you can download here — will be particularly of interest to owners of the iPhone X or Apple’s newest iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and (upcoming) iPhone XR devices since it is optimized for one-handed use. That’s to say it employs the same nifty user interface seen on the Android app (see below), which lets you open or close tabs, switch to search, go back or forward using a menu bar located at the bottom of the screen. One thing it is missing, for now, is more comprehensive management of bookmarks.

The app also includes Opera’s ‘Flow’ technology which lets a user pass links, images and notes from their phone to an Opera browser on their computer using a “secure and private” connection.

As ever, the Opera browser comes with ad blocking built-in and there’s the company’s usual protection from cryptojacking — that’s the process of being hacked and having your CPU used to mine crypto for someone else.

All in all, the browser is worth taking for a spin if you have Apple’s new home buttonless devices and seek an alternative to the pre-loaded Safari browser. Other options might include Google Chrome, recently given a redesign for its tenth anniversary, as well as Mozilla, UC Web, Dolphin and Brave.

Shares of Stitch Fix plunged more than 20 percent in after-hours trading on Monday following the release of a tepid fourth-quarter earnings report.

The subscription-based retailer and personal styling service’s adjusted earnings exceeded analyst expectations, but its revenue and active users fell short of estimates. In the quarter ending July 28, Stitch Fix reported a net income of $18.3 million, or 18 cents per share, up from analyst’s 4 cents per share estimate. Its reported net revenue of $318.3 million, a 23 percent year-over-year increase, failed to meet analyst expectations of $318.6 million.

The San Francisco-based company’s user base grew 25 percent YoY, to 2.7 million, another disappointment to Wall Street, which was looking for more than 2.8 million.

Stitch Fix, which has a market cap of nearly $4.4 billion, also reported fiscal year 2018 earnings. In its first year as a public company, Stitch Fix had $1.2 billion in net revenue, $44.9 million in net income and an adjusted EBITDA of $53.6 million.

Founder Katrina Lake took the company public on the Nasdaq in November 2017 in a highly anticipated consumer IPO. The company raised $120 million in the process, selling 8 million shares after making a last-minute decision to downsize its offering ahead of its first day of trading.

Following the release of its first-ever earnings report in December, shares of Stitch Fix similarly took a huge hit, plunging down 10 percent on the news.

The company usually finds its footing and, overall, its stock has continued to climb since its IPO. Stitch Fix had its best day yet on September 18 when its stock was valued at $52.44 apiece, up from the initial price of $15 apiece.

Alongside its earnings report, Stitch Fix announced the upcoming launch of Stitch Fix U.K., its first-ever international market expected to be available to consumers by the end of FY 2019. Following the release of its Q3 earnings report, the company announced the hire of Deirdre Findlay as its new chief marketing officer, as well as the launch of Stitch Fix Kids.

On the earnings call Monday, Lake emphasized how both services, Stitch Fix Kids and Stitch Fix U.K., will augment Stitch Fix’s total addressable market.

“We believe our ability to create a uniquely personalized shopping experience is something that will resonate with consumers and brands outside of the U.S.,” Lake said in a statement.

Lime plans to release a small fleet of e-scooters in Waterloo, Ontario, in what will be the startup’s first scooter-share pilot program in Canada.

The dockless bike and scooter company has paired up with the University of Waterloo to facilitate the launch. Lime’s scooters will be the first of any startup-owned e-scooters to hit the pavement in Canada.

“Over the past several months, we have spent time in Waterloo to understand how our Lime-S e-scooters can help this progressive city reach its smart transportation goals,” Lime’s vice president of strategic development Andrew Savage said in a statement. “We are committed to meeting the unique needs of cities across Canada and are excited to continue expanding our global footprint.”

Lime didn’t say which other Canadian markets are next on the list.

It will be interesting to see how the scooters are received in Waterloo. According to a recent report from Canada’s The Globe and Mail, Toronto transportation leaders are hesitant to invite e-scooter startups to the city, which isn’t too surprising considering the drama that’s followed them in recent months. Toronto, still, as the largest city in Canada, is likely a very desirable market for the e-scooter startup trio: Lime, Bird and Spin.

This isn’t Lime’s first foray across borders. It launched its dockless bikes in Europe, specifically Frankfurt, Germany and Zurich, Switzerland, late last year and in June, the company debuted its scooters in Paris. The San Mateo-based company is now active in 100 markets across seven, soon-to-be-eight, countries.

Lime announced last week that it had recorded 11.5 million scooter and bike rides, just a few months after it surpassed the 6 million-ride mark. The company launched just over a year ago and has since raised $467 million in venture capital funding at a valuation north of $1 billion. Lime is backed by GV, Andreessen Horowitz, IVP, Section 32, GGV Capital and more.

Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s head of commerce, is leaving the company after more than 15 years and will be joining Greylock Partners, sources inside the company told us and Google confirmed. Ramaswamy will become a venture partner at Greylock Partners . At Google, his position will be filled by Prabhakar Raghavan, who was previously the company’s VP of apps for Google Cloud.

While at Google, Ramaswamy oversaw virtually all of Google’s Ads and Commerce products — that is, basically everything outside of the Google Cloud that makes the company most of its money. Ramaswamy joined Google as an engineer, but quickly moved up in the company’s ranks. He took his current position back in 2014, after Susan Wojcicki moved to YouTube.

At Greylock, Ramaswamy will focus on earlier-stage entrepreneurial projects.

Prabhakar Raghavan, vice president of engineering and products at Google Inc., speaks during the company’s Cloud Next ’18 event in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Tuesday, July 24, 2018.

Google’s advertising revenue still accounts for 84 percent of the total revenue of Alphabet. Last quarter, Google’s advertising revenues came in at over $28 billion. Annual revenue for 2017 was over $110 billion. It’s no secret, though, that Google has struggled to build a stronger commerce business, with projects like Google Express falling relatively flat as its competitors continue to grow.

Raghavan, who will take his place, joined Google in 2012, after a seven-year stint as executive VP and head of Yahoo Labs, which he founded. Like Ramaswamy before him, Raghavan will focus on products while Philipp Schindler will continue in his role as Google’s Chief Business Officer, working side-by-side with Raghavan.

Before Yahoo, Raghavan was the chief technology officer at Verity and worked at IBM Research. He is also the author of two computer science textbooks.

Google loves a good Easter egg. There are dozens upon dozens of different eggs hidden across Google’s product portfolio, from using Google Search to flip a coin to exploring the Doctor’s TARDIS in Google Maps.

Think you’ve seen them all? A seemingly new egg has just been discovered: a playable text adventure game, hidden right within Google Search.

Here’s how to play it:

1) Open Google.com in Chrome. (It might work in other browsers, but it was a bit glitchy when I tried it elsewhere.)

2) Search for “text adventure” without the quotes.

3) Open the Javascript developer console by pushing Command+Option+J on a Mac, or Ctrl+Shift+J on Windows.

4) You should see a prompt asking if you “Would like to play a game?”. Type yes and push enter, and the game will start!

From here, you’ll be playing as the “big blue G” of the Google logo, searching for your fellow alphabetical pals one command at a time. Don’t expect to dump days into this one — it’s no Zork. But for a lil’ gag that managed to stay hidden for who-knows-how-long within one of the world’s most trafficked websites, it’s pretty neat.

(Shout out to redditor attempt_number_1 for being the first to spot this.)