Author: azeeadmin

Drone operating system startup Airware today suddenly informed employees it will cease operations immediately despite having raised $118 million from top investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Google’s GV, and Kleiner Perkins. The startup ran out of money after trying to manufacture its own hardware that couldn’t compete with drone giants like China’s DJI.

A source sent TechCrunch screenshots from the Airware alumni Slack channel detailing how the staff was told this morning that Airware would shut down.

Airware makes a cloud sofware system that helps enterprise customers like construction companies, mining operations, and insurance companies reviewing equipment for damages to use drones to collect and analyze aerial data. That allowed companies to avoid using expensive helicopters or dangerous rigs with humans on harnesses to make inspections and gauge work progress.

One ex-employee asked “How do I get my options sent to me on paper so I can burn them all in a fire?”

Founded in 2011 by Jonathan Downey, the son of two pilots, Airware first built an autopilot system for programming drones to follow certain routes to collect data. It could help businesses check rooftops for damage, see how much of a raw material was coming out of a mine, or build constantly-updated maps of construction sites. Later it tried to build its own drones before pivoting consult clients on how to most efficiently apply unmanned aerial vehicles.

While flying high, Airware launched its own Commercial Drone Fund for investing in the market in 2015, and acquired 36-person drone analytics startup Redbird in 2016. But over time, the software that shipped with commercial drone hardware from other manufacturers was good enough to make Airware irrelevant, and a downward spiral of layoffs began over the past two years, culminating in today’s shutdown.

“Airware was ahead of the game trying to build their software. So far ahead that the drone hardware on the market wasn’t sophisticated enough to actually produce the granularity of data they needed to test out their software/train their algorithms” an ex-employee told TechCrunch (emphasis ours). “So they spent shitloads of money designing bespoke hardware, including two drones in-house, one multi-rotor called an AT-28, and one fixed-wing called Cygnet. Both projects were scuttled as hardware from DJI and Ebee caught up to needs, after sinking tons of engineering time and manufacturing into them.”

Following TechCrunch’s inquiry about the unnannounced news, Airware confirmed the shut down to us with this statement:

“History has taught us how hard it can be to call the timing of a market transition. We have seen this play out first hand in the commercial drone marketplace. We were the pioneers in this market and one of the first to see the power drones could have in the commercial sector. Unfortunately, the market took longer to mature than we expected. As we worked through the various required pivots to position ourselves for long term success, we ran out of financial runway. As a result, it is with a heavy heart that we notified our team, customers, and partners that we will wind down the business.

This is not the business outcome we had worked so hard for over the years and yet we are deeply proud of our company’s accomplishments and our leadership in driving the adoption of drone powered analytics to improve productivity, mitigate risks, and take workers out of harm’s way.

As we close the book of Airware; we want to thank the partners and customers who believed in us and helped us along the way. And, while it is difficult to say goodbye to our team, we want to thank them for all they have contributed to Airware and the industry. We look forward to seeing how they will take their learnings from Airware to fuel continued innovations in the world around us.”

[Update: Since we broke the news, Airware has put up a “thank you” note about the shutdown informing clients that “A representative from the Airware team will be in touch.”]

Employees will get one week’s severance, COBRA insurance until November, and payouts for unused paid time off. It appears the startup wasn’t able to raise necessary funding to save the company or secure an acquisition from one of its strategic partners like Catepillar.

Airware will serve as cautionary tale of startup overspending in hopes of finding product-market fit. Had it been more frugal, saved cash to extend its runway, and given corporate clients more time to figure out how to use drones, Airware might have stayed afloat. Sometimes, even having the most prestigious investors can’t save a startup from mismanagement.

Our ex-employee source concludes that “I think having $118m in the bank led Airware to charge ahead and sink tons of money into force-it-to-work methods rather than exercise a bit of patience and wait for the inevitable advance of hardware to catch up. They had a knack for hiring extremely talented and expensive people from places like Google, Autodesk, there was even SpaceX and NASA alumni there.

They spared no expense ever.”

It’s been too long without any kind of outlandish news from any of Elon Musk’s companies, but SpaceX has filled the void with the announcement of a newly redesigned BFR spacecraft and the news that it will fly around the moon with a soon-to-be-named first passenger. Whenever they get around to actually engineering and building the thing, anyway.

In a tweet Thursday evening, SpaceX (though it was clearly Musk) announced that it has “signed the world’s first private passenger to fly around the Moon aboard our BFR launch vehicle.”

Attached to the tweet was an image of the BFR itself (above), much changed from its last appearance. It used to look like this:

And now it looks like this:

The old version was also two-toned, as you can see if you look closely at the ISS render, with the darker part likely corresponding to a heat-resistant surface. But this new one is more reminiscent of the Space Shuttle thanks to considerably lengthened fins and the addition of a top one. Perhaps the cool, smooth two-fin style simply proved impractical; flight stability in atmosphere probably makes that top fin necessary. There’s also what appears to be a front stabilizer of some kind.

The engine cluster is also different; the original design had 4 Raptor engines in a square, with two smaller “sea-level” engines for landing operations in between them. This new render has 7 Raptors in a honeycomb formation. We can only speculate why that might be: the engines may have been scaled down a bit for some reason or another, or the 7-thruster formation might be more robust to failures.

Since this is all basically concept work, it’s hard to say how much is real and how much is fantasy. Considering how early the craft is in production, it’s not surprising that major changes like these would be made.

A commentator on Twitter noted that the whole thing is very “Tintin-esque,” no doubt referring to the rocket flown by the beloved Belgian comic book hero in “Destination Moon” and “Explorers on the Moon.”

Although Musk responded with “Intentionally so,” the similarities are actually pretty few. Perhaps he meant the whole concept of a private lunar mission. At any rate Musk is clearly a fan of the comics, and any Tintin reference is a good reference.

There are also 6 rows of windows behind the cockpit, up from 3, suggesting SpaceX has expanded the seating in the planned craft. That fits with the passenger-related nature of the announcement.

As for that: this first circumlunar tourist will be announced at an event on Monday, September 17th. Who will it be? Likely a billionaire. Unfortunately, they’ll have a long time to wait. By the time the BFR is up and running, space tourism (though perhaps not round-the-moon trips) may very well have been going on for years. So if it will be this intrepid, extremely rich person’s first trip to our satellite, I doubt it will be their first trip above the Kármán line.

Chime, the no-fees mobile bank valued at $500 million as of its last round, has put some of its funds to use with its first acquisition. The deal is for Pinch, a startup that was focused on helping millennials and other young adults build better credit. It was best known for a service called PinchRent, which allowed users to increase their credit scores over time by reporting on-time rent payments to credit bureaus.

Millennials can sometimes struggle to improve their credit, or are uneducated about what their credit scores mean, studies have shown. And like any younger demographic, they may also be afflicted with shorter credit histories, which impacts those scores, too.

Many in this age group have said that their low credit scores are holding them back, and millennials prefer debit to credit, Visa has reported.

Pinch’s focus was to provide a different way for its users to increase their scores, rather than simply using credit cards or making loan payments on time.

It did this by aggregating the information on rent payments and submitting that to the credit bureaus. (The bureaus can take rental information, but they don’t work with individual landlords. That’s where Pinch came in.)

Since its founding in 2016, more than 80% of people on its service increased their scores from 10 to 100 points.

The startup was preparing to announce a $1.8 million seed round of funding from Homebrew and Collaborative ahead of its acquisition.

Pinch had only been in beta testing prior to joining Chime, and was also planning to do a full public launch. Instead, it shut down its service by alerting users via email that its last day of business would be June 27, 2018.

At the time of the service’s closure, it was in talks with Chime. But the deal itself only closed this Tuesday, we understand.

Chime declined to share the deal terms, but noted it’s an all-stock transaction and investors were happy.

The acquisition includes Pinch’s core team (5-10 people, depending on how the offers play out) plus founders Maia Bittner and Michael Ducker, who will now help the mobile bank launch credit and lending products over the next six months.

Bittner previously co-founded subscription startup Rocksbox, and worked as a Sequoia Capital scout. Ducker, meanwhile, hailed from Microsoft and Twitter before starting Pinch.

Chime, whose user base is 90% millennials, may or may not relaunch Pinch’s rent-paying service, but it will be soon moving into credit.

“I think, particularly, post the 2008 crisis, there’s been just a general distrust of big banks. But also, people have seen how the amount of credit [they have] can create challenges in their life,” says Chime CEO Chris Britt, discussing the struggles its users face in terms of building their credit.

“And younger consumers are so saddled with with student loan debt that the last thing they want to do is get more debt on a credit card,” he adds, explaining why young people turn to debit cards.

He says Chime’s goal now is to helping serve this group’s needs around credit with a set of millennial-focused products.

“The reality is the typical debit card and checking account do nothing to build your credit score. So as we think about the future set of products that we want to roll out, we’re very focused on helping our members with that part of their life,” he adds.

Chime is now one of several millennial-focused mobile banks on the market, which do away with traditional banking fees as well as brick-and-mortar location. Others like Simple and Stash are also available, but Chime has raised over $110 million, making it the largest in terms of funding.

The company today also shared new numbers – it says it has over 1.7 million bank accounts on its platform, and is opening more than 150,000 accounts per month – in line with Wells Fargo. It expects to surpass 2 million bank accounts and $10 billion in total transaction volume by year-end.

Further down the road, Chime may venture into investing, but not until its user base is ready.

“So we’re very deliberate in how we think about helping our members along their financial journey. We start with the checking account, we make sure you’re paying all your bills, then we make sure you have a savings account balance – because you should have a savings account balance before you start day trading,” Britt says.

“It’s sort of irresponsible to be encouraging day trading if you don’t have the financial means…I think investment accounts and retirement accounts come first,” he notes.

Tomorrow is apparently Batman Day. That mostly means promotions from the folks at DC Entertainment and the long-awaited launch of the company’s DC Universe streaming service. If nothing else, the site is an interesting mix of multimedia content in a world of video-only sites, including original series, older content and digital comics.

Users who signed up in advance will get early access to the site today, while everyone else is going to have to wait until tomorrow to sample the service for $8 a month or $75 for a full year. DC Universe will be available on a slew of platforms in the U.S., including iOS, Android, Apple TV, Android TV and Roku — or you can just watch it from a desktop or mobile browser à la Netflix.

If Netflix and Hulu have taught us anything, it’s that original content takes a while to get right, so remember that as you rewatch the trailer for the live action Titans series. That’s not slated to actually launch until October 12 — hopefully it will benefit from a little retooling after a preview that made even the hardest core of fanboys/girls audibly groan. At the very least, it means no Batman Day launch for a show in which Robin literally says “f*** Batman.”

There are a number of other series on the docket, including some of the most beloved off-the-radar DC properties, like Young Justice: Outsiders, Doom Patrol, Swamp Thing, Harley Quinn and Stargirl. DC Universe will have stiff competition, however — along with the usual suspects, Marvel-owner Disney is set to launch a service of its own, likely next year. 

As for Batman Day, there’s a lot of Dark Knight content, including the 80s/90s film series and two of the three Christopher Nolan films. Some of the caped crusader’s finest comics work is up there too, including The Dark Knight Returns, Batman Year One and Batman Year 100.

That’s a lot of f***ing Batman.

Mary Meeker is leaving Kleiner Perkins to build a new fund and she’s taking the firm’s growth team with her.

The news, first reported by Recode and confirmed to TechCrunch, is the latest high-level departure at one of the most prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firms.

Joining Meeker in her new fund are Kleiner Perkins GPs Mood Rowghani and Noah Knauf, as well as Juliet de Baubigny, a partner. According to the firm, this is less of a messy break-up and more of an amicable and intentional decision to spin-off Kleiner’s growth-investing unit.

“The environment for venture has evolved — with larger checks being written for seed and A rounds and more support from partners required to build companies — demanding a high degree of specialization and extreme focus to excel,” a spokesperson for Kleiner Perkins said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. “The changes in both areas have led to less overlap between venture and growth and creating two separate firms with different people and operations now makes sense.”

We’ve reached out to Meeker for comment.

Meeker, widely known for her annual Internet Trends Report (don’t worry, it’s not going anywhere), joined the firm in 2010 after two decades as a managing director at Morgan Stanley. She was well-established as a tech analyst on Wall Street. In Silicon Valley, she quickly built a reputation as one of the best.

She was one of few women to earn a GP title at Kleiner Perkins in an industry where women have traditionally been shut out from the highest roles in VC. There will be no female GPs at Kleiner in her wake.

A new era at Kleiner Perkins

Founded in 1972, Kleiner has been around to support some of the biggest names in tech. It’s backed Google, Aol and Amazon, and more recently, Slack, Uber and Peloton.

Meeker, Rowghani and Knauf’s departures, as well as several other recent exits, signal a new era at the firm.

Since legendary investor John Doerr stepped down as managing partner in 2016, replaced by Ted Schlein, the firm has been hemorrhaging top talent.

Schlein, however, seems unphased. In an interview with Recode, he said he didn’t think it was a “huge deal.”

The late-stage team at Kleiner “continued to diverge away from what the core part of Kleiner Perkins has done for 46 years, and will continue to do for another 46 years,” he said.

Just last week, longtime Kleiner investor, and the only other female GP, Beth Seidenberg took the wraps off her own fund after announcing in May she would be leaving the firm.

Last year, general partner Mike Abbott left the firm one month after Arielle Zuckerberg, a partner, also exited. The pair was part of a group of seven to leave Kleiner at the time.

It’s been over a year since highly classified exploits built by the National Security Agency were stolen and published online.

One of the tools, dubbed EternalBlue, can covertly break into almost any Windows machine around the world. It didn’t take long for hackers to start using the exploits to run ransomware on thousands of computers, grinding hospitals and businesses to a halt. Two separate attacks in as many months used WannaCry and NotPetya ransomware, which spread like wildfire. Once a single computer in a network was infected, the malware would also target other devices on the network. The recovery was slow and cost companies hundreds of millions in damages.

Yet, more than a year since Microsoft released patches that slammed the backdoor shut, almost a million computers and networks are still unpatched and vulnerable to attack.

Although WannaCry infections have slowed, hackers are still using the publicly accessible NSA exploits to infect computers to mine cryptocurrency.

Nobody knows that better than one major Fortune 500 multinational, which was hit by a massive WannaMine cryptocurrency mining infection just days ago.

“Our customer is a very large corporation with multiple offices around the world,” said Amit Serper, who heads the security research team at Boston-based Cybereason.

“Once their first machine was hit the malware propagated to more than 1,000 machines in a day,” he said, without naming the company.

Cryptomining attacks have been around for a while. It’s more common for hackers to inject cryptocurrency mining code into vulnerable websites, but the payoffs are low. Some news sites are now installing their own mining code as an alternative to running ads.

But WannaMine works differently, Cybereason said in its post-mortem of the infection. By using those leaked NSA exploits to gain a single foothold into a network, the malware tries to infect any computer within. It’s persistent so the malware can survive a reboot. After it’s implanted, the malware uses the computer’s processor to mine cryptocurrency. On dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of computers, the malware can mine cryptocurrency far faster and more efficiently. Though it’s a drain on energy and computer resources, it can often go unnoticed.

After the malware spreads within the network, it modifies the power management settings to prevent the infected computer from going to sleep. Not only that, the malware tries to detect other cryptomining scripts running on the computer and terminates them — likely to squeeze every bit of energy out of the processor, maximizing its mining effort.

Based on up-to-date statistics from Shodan, a search engine for open ports and databases, at least 919,000 servers are still vulnerable to EternalBlue, with some 300,000 machines in the US alone. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg — that figure can represent either individual vulnerable computers or a vulnerable network server capable of infecting hundreds or thousands more machines.

Cybereason said companies are still severely impacted because their systems aren’t protected.

“There’s no reason why these exploits should remain unpatched,” the blog post said. “Organizations need to install security patches and update machines.”

If not ransomware yesterday, it’s cryptomining malware today. Given how versatile the EternalBlue exploit is, tomorrow it could be something far worse — like data theft or destruction.

In other words: if you haven’t patched already, what are you waiting for?

Elvie, a Berlin-based startup known best for its connected Kegel trainer is jumping into the breast pump business with a new $480 hands-free system you can slip into your bra.

Even with all the innovation in baby gear, breast pumps have mostly sucked (pun intended) for new moms for the past half a century. My first experience with a pump required me to stay near a wall socket and hunch over for a good twenty to thirty minutes for fear the milk collected might spill all over the place (which it did anyway, frequently). It was awful!

Next I tried the Willow Pump, an egg-shaped, connected pump meant to liberate women everywhere with its small and mobile design. It received glowing reviews, though my experience with it was less than stellar.

The proprietary bags were hard to fit in the device, filled up with air, cost 50 cents each (on top of the $500 pump that insurance did not cover), wasted many a golden drop of precious milk in the transfer and I had to reconfigure placement several times before it would start working. So I’ve been tentatively excited about the announcement of Elvie’s new cordless (and silent??) double breast pump.

Elvie tells TechCrunch its aim all along has been to make health tech for women and that it has been working on this pump for the past three years.

The Elvie Pump is a cordless, hands-free, closed system, rechargeable electric pump designed by former Dyson engineers. It can hold up to 5 oz from each breast in a single use.

It’s most obvious and direct competition is the Willow pump, another “wearable” pump moms can put right in their bra and walk around in, hands free. However, unlike the Willow, Elvie’s pump does not need proprietary bags. You just pump right into the device and the pump’s smartphone app will tell you when each side is full.

It’s also half the size and weight of a Willow and saves every precious drop it can by pumping right into the attached bottle so you just pump and feed (no more donut-shaped bags you have to cut open and awkwardly pour into a bottle).

On top of that, Elvie claims this pump is silent. No more loud suction noise off and on while trying to pump in a quiet room in the office or elsewhere. It’s small, easy to carry around and you can wear it under your clothes without it making a peep! While the Willow pump claims to be quiet — and it is, compared to other systems –you can still very much hear it while you are pumping.

All of these features sound fantastic to this new (and currently pumping) mom. I remember in the early days of my baby’s life wanting to go places but feeling stuck. I was chained to not just all the baby gear, hormonal shifts and worries about my newborn but to the pump and feed schedule itself, which made it next to impossible to leave the house for the first few months.

My baby was one of those “gourmet eaters” who just nursed and nursed all day. There were days I couldn’t leave the bed! Having a silent, no mess, hands-free device that fit right in my bra would have made a world of difference.

However, I mentioned the word “tentatively” above as I have not had a chance to do a hands-on review of Elvie’s pump. The Willow pump also seemed to hold a lot of promise early on, yet left me disappointed.

To be fair, the company’s customer service team was top-notch and did try to address my concerns. I even went through two “coaching” sessions but in the end it seemed the blame was put on me for not getting their device to work correctly. That’s a bad user experience if you are blaming others for your design flaws, especially new and struggling moms.

Both companies are founded by women and make products for women — and it’s about time. But it seems as if Elvie has taken note of the good and bad in their competitors and had time to improve upon it — and that’s what has me excited.

As my fellow TechCrunch writer Natasha put it in her initial review of Elvie as a company, “It’s not hyperbole to say Elvie is a new breed of connected device. It’s indicative of the lack of smart technology specifically — and intelligently — addressing women.”

So why the pump? “We recognized the opportunity [in the market] was smarter tech for women,” Boler told TechCrunch on her company’s move into the breast pump space. “Our aim is to transform the way women think and feel about themselves by providing the tools to address the issues that matter most to them, and Elvie Pump does just that.”

The Elvie Pump comes in three sizes and shapes to fit the majority of breasts and, in case you want to check your latch or pump volume, also has transparent nipple shields with markings to help guide the nipple to the right spot.

The app connects to each device via Bluetooth and tracks your production, detects let down, will pause when full and is equipped to pump in seven different modes.

The pump retails for $480 and is currently available in the U.K. However, those in the U.S. will have to wait till closer to the end of the year to get their hands on one. According to the company, It will be available on Elvie.com and Amazon.com, as well in select physical retail stores nationally later this year, pending FDA
approval.

Lyft is on a bit of a Tesla poaching spree while Tesla employees are exiting in droves. The latest ex-Tesla employee to join Lyft is Cal Lankton, who most recently led the development of Tesla’s electric vehicle charging network up until May. At Lyft, Lankton will serve as VP of infrastructure operations where he will focus on the next generation of Lyft’s driver hubs.

“I came to Lyft because I believe in the company’s priorities of driver care and environmental sustainability, and I know that our retail footprint can effectively marry the two through smart design and deployment,” Lankton said in a statement.

Lyft is also bringing on board Geoffrey Bain from Unilever to serve as the company’s senior director of retail operations. Both will work with Lyft VP of Driver Experience Operations Karim Bousta, who joined the company in July from Tesla.  All of the aforementioned people report to Lyft COO Jon McNeil, who joined Lyft — also from Tesla — in February.

“With Cal and Geoffrey leading our retail strategy, I am confident that our next-generation service centers will exceed driver expectations, and they will see the results of this team’s dedication reflected in their earnings,” McNeill said in a statement.

In May, Lyft committed $100 million to better support its drivers by specifically putting the money toward cheaper oil changes, basic car maintenance, serviced car washes and more. Lyft also will almost double its operating hours at its driver hubs in 15 cities throughout the nation.

The idea with that commitment is to help drivers make more money and maximize their earnings by offsetting the costs of driving. Other benefits will include car and SUV rentals, tax education and more.

Lyft also says it expects to more than double its driver base in the next five years. Currently, Lyft has 1.4 million drivers, according to its latest economic impact report.

TechCrunch is heading to UCLA on October 18 and we’ve assembled some of the AR/VR industry’s most prescient founders, investors and executives to chat about the startups and trends driving virtual and augmented reality in 2018.

The world’s top tech companies have heavily invested in AR/VR and are persistent in broadcasting the technologies’ potential to blur the lines of how consumers interact with the digital world. Beyond the tech titans, it’s the small startups that are dialing into what’s missing in the ecosystem right now. Our agenda showcases some of the powerhouses in the space, but also plenty of smaller teams that are building and debunking fundamental technologies for virtual worlds.

We still have a few tricks up our sleeves and will be adding some new names to the agenda over the next month so keep your eyes open. In the meantime, check out these agenda highlights:

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TechCrunch Sessions: AR/VR
UCLA, Los Angeles // October 18
See full agenda here

• Kickstarting an Industry
  Yelena Rachitsky [Oculus] 
  Oculus has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into funding VR content, and while the headset market is still small, developers have built plenty of games and experiences. Facebook’s VR future rests on people finding new worlds that they want to step into, how will Oculus make this happen?
  .
• The Social Experiment
  Adam Arrigo [TheWaveVR], Sophia Dominguez [SVRF] and Gil Baron [Mindshow]
  If anything, the OculusVR acquisition in 2014 signaled that Facebook saw VR as a social final frontier. No one really knows what exactly those interactions looks like though, but there’s an awful lot that’s already been explored.
  .
• Reality Checks
  Niko Bonatsos [General Catalyst], Catherine Ulrich [FirstMark Capital] and Jacob Mullins [Shasta Ventures]
  “[VR] is the frothiest space in the Valley right now. Nobody understands it but everyone wants in. Any idiot could walk into a f***ing room, utter the letters ‘V’ and ‘R’, and VCs would hurl bricks of cash at them.” – Erlich Bachmann. While this may have indeed been the case a couple years ago, investor cash has been a bit sparser in 2018. Where are the opportunities now?
  .
• Staying Lean and Mean
  Maureen Fan [Baobab Studios] 
  Baobab Studios has raised $31 million from top investors to create cinematic VR that excites audiences. While VR startups raised plenty of cash in 2016 and 2017, slow headset sales have caused startups to focus on building for a virtual future that might take a couple more years to reach.
  .
• Cloud 6
  Matt Miesnieks [6D.ai] and Bruce Wooden [6D.ai] 
  AR is out there, but the experiences available today are still feeling pretty isolated. 6D.ai is building out cloud AR tech to link these experiences together on a digital layer of the real world.
  .
• Ditching Headsets for Holograms
  Shawn Frayne [Looking Glass Factory], Brett Jones [Lightform] and Ashley Crowder [VNTANA]
  Augmented reality may be a powerful sight, but it requires participants to own expensive hardware. Is there a workaround? Startups are working to centralize the experience but it’s going to look a lot different.
  .
• Game Theory
  Nathan Burba [Survios] and James Iliff [Survios] 
  While VR might not just be about gaming, it’s accurate to say that, in 2018, it mainly is. Survios has raised nearly $55M to show the potential of VR gaming, as the studio continue releasing new titles, can they keep their momentum going and will gaming continue to be the big opportunity?
  .
• Early Days, Early Bets
  Peter Rojas [Betaworks] other speakers to be announced soon
  Fewer AR/VR startups seem to be raising big seed rounds in 2018, but how have early-stage investors changed their approach to funding new talent in the space? How should founders get their attention?
  .
• Building Inclusive Worlds
  Monika Bielskyte [AllFutureEverything] other speakers to be announced soon 
  If you had the chance to redesign society, where would you even start? As game developers continue designing massive online virtual worlds where we will spend more and more time, how should we look to correct issues we encounter and how can we build a better future?
  .
• Augmenting the Office
  Clorama Dorvilias [DebiasVR] and Derek Belch [STRIVR] and Morgan Mercer [Vantage Point] 
  How can businesses learn from mistakes before making them? By training employees with VR, there’s the potential to more accurately simulate key scenarios and push people towards good choices.
  .
• Your Virtual Self
  Parham Aarabi  [ModiFace] other speakers to be announced soon
  Smartphone AR is already in your pocket, but what can consumers actually use it for? While Snapchat face filters took us half-way there, new tech is making it easier for us to augment our faces with real world use cases while also getting closer to building out realistic avatars of our virtual selves.

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Early Bird tickets are still on sale for one more week. Buy your early bird tickets today for just $99 and you’ll save $100 before prices go up. Student tickets are just $45. Book your tickets here.
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Things have been pretty quiet on the Amazon HQ2 front. Earlier this year, the online retail giant announced that it had whittled the list of potential host cities for a second headquarters down to 20, but beyond that, the company hasn’t shared much. Looks like we’ll be getting an answer before end of year, however.

During a speech at the Economic Club of Washington this week, CEO Jeff Bezos said a decision will be made in 2018, though didn’t provide any insight into which way the company was leaning.

Cities around North America have been following all over themselves to win the bid, which Amazon says will bring 50,000 jobs and $5 billion in investment. The move comes as Seattle, the home of HQ1 has put the company under increased scrutiny. In July, Amazon helped kill a business tax designed to help fund low-income housing and homeless shelters.

Local tax breaks will no doubt be a deciding factor in where the company ultimately decides to set up shop.

Bezos in particular has also been the target of criticism on a national level. Last week, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (BEZOS) bill, designed to curb “corporate welfare.”

“Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is the wealthiest person on Earth, and since the beginning of this year, his wealth has increased by about $260 million every day,” Sanders’ office in a release around the bill. “Meanwhile, thousands of Amazon workers rely on food stamps because their wages are so low.”

Trump has also been critical of Bezos, albeit for very different reasons, as the Amazon founder also owns The Washington Post, a paper that’s released a number of high-profile bombshells about his administration.

Bezos took on Trump during the Economic Club of Washington address, stating, “it is really dangerous to demonize the media. It is dangerous to call the media lowlifes, it is dangerous to say that they are the enemy of the people.”