Author: azeeadmin

Hustle Fund, the pre-seed firm founded by former 500 Startups partners Elizabeth Yin and Eric Bahn, has closed their first fund, coming in at the tune of $11.5 million.

Hustle Fund also recently brought on Shiyan Koh to its team of general partners. Before joining the firm, Koh was the VP of business operations and corporate development at personal finance company NerdWallet. She formerly worked as an investment professional at Bridgewater Associates and Institutional Venture Partners. At Hustle Fund, Koh will be based in Singapore to focus on expanding the firm’s reach in Southeast Asia.

The fund initially hoped to raise $50 million, according to an SEC filing last October, but felt confident it could prove its investing hypothesis with $11.5 million, Koh said in an email to TechCrunch.

“This has allowed us to get to the business of backing founders faster,” Koh said. “We want to be in this business for decades to come, so Fund 1 is just the beginning!”

Limited partners in the fund include Shanda, a global investment firm focused on the online gaming industry, messaging and communications company LINE, Korean search engine Naver and others.

Hustle Fund wants to be different from its peers in the venture capital community. Instead of backing founders with degrees from Stanford or some Ivy League school, the goal is to level the playing field for founders by focusing on potential impact.

The firm operates by investing $25,000 in pre-seed startups, and then undertakes a four to six-week growth period with each company. The idea is to work alongside the team and then determine if the fund will follow on with additional monetary investment.

“One of the fascinating things I learned while running the 500 Startups accelerator is that I understood so much more about our investments once they came into the batch, and I could see them work,” Yin said in a press release. “Not surprisingly, I noticed that the best teams were the ones who could execute with speed. It’s from this observation, we built Hustle Fund to back founders who can execute with high velocity by observing founders work.”

Since Hustle Fund’s launch last September, the firm has invested in 40 companies, including Setter, Thank You Kindly, FleetPanda and ClaimCompass.

Although Yin and Bahn’s departures from 500 Startups came in the midst of the drama surrounding 500 Startups founder Dave McClure’s alleged sexual misconduct, the pair was already planning on leaving the troubled accelerator to start their own fund. Before Yin and Bahn joined 500 Startups, they had their own respective careers as founders. Now, they’re combining their experiences as founders and investors to help small, scrappy startups.

Hustle Fund, the pre-seed firm founded by former 500 Startups partners Elizabeth Yin and Eric Bahn, has closed their first fund, coming in at the tune of $11.5 million.

Hustle Fund also recently brought on Shiyan Koh to its team of general partners. Before joining the firm, Koh was the VP of business operations and corporate development at personal finance company NerdWallet. She formerly worked as an investment professional at Bridgewater Associates and Institutional Venture Partners. At Hustle Fund, Koh will be based in Singapore to focus on expanding the firm’s reach in Southeast Asia.

The fund initially hoped to raise $50 million, according to an SEC filing last October, but felt confident it could prove its investing hypothesis with $11.5 million, Koh said in an email to TechCrunch.

“This has allowed us to get to the business of backing founders faster,” Koh said. “We want to be in this business for decades to come, so Fund 1 is just the beginning!”

Limited partners in the fund include Shanda, a global investment firm focused on the online gaming industry, messaging and communications company LINE, Korean search engine Naver and others.

Hustle Fund wants to be different from its peers in the venture capital community. Instead of backing founders with degrees from Stanford or some Ivy League school, the goal is to level the playing field for founders by focusing on potential impact.

The firm operates by investing $25,000 in pre-seed startups, and then undertakes a four to six-week growth period with each company. The idea is to work alongside the team and then determine if the fund will follow on with additional monetary investment.

“One of the fascinating things I learned while running the 500 Startups accelerator is that I understood so much more about our investments once they came into the batch, and I could see them work,” Yin said in a press release. “Not surprisingly, I noticed that the best teams were the ones who could execute with speed. It’s from this observation, we built Hustle Fund to back founders who can execute with high velocity by observing founders work.”

Since Hustle Fund’s launch last September, the firm has invested in 40 companies, including Setter, Thank You Kindly, FleetPanda and ClaimCompass.

Although Yin and Bahn’s departures from 500 Startups came in the midst of the drama surrounding 500 Startups founder Dave McClure’s alleged sexual misconduct, the pair was already planning on leaving the troubled accelerator to start their own fund. Before Yin and Bahn joined 500 Startups, they had their own respective careers as founders. Now, they’re combining their experiences as founders and investors to help small, scrappy startups.

Nintendo has communicated quite a lot on its new online service. And the company just shared the last missing piece of information — the service will launch on September 18th.

For the first time, Nintendo will launch a subscription service to access online services. It’ll cost $20 per year, $3.99 per month or $7.99 for three months.

Subscribers will be able to play multiplayer online games, such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Splatoon 2 and Arms. If you were already playing those games over the internet, you’ll have to start paying.

In order to sweeten the deal, the company is adding new services for subscribers. Your save data will finally be synchronized with Nintendo’s servers. If you break or lose your Switch, you’ll be able to restore your user profiles. Unfortunately, it won’t work with Splatoon 2, Dead Cells, Dark Souls Remastered, FIFA 19, NBA 2K19 and Pokémon Let’s Go.

Subscribers will also be able to play NES games for free. Around 20 games will be part of the library. If you plan on subscribing, Nintendo will offer a 7-day free trial on September 18th.

Nintendo has communicated quite a lot on its new online service. And the company just shared the last missing piece of information — the service will launch on September 18th.

For the first time, Nintendo will launch a subscription service to access online services. It’ll cost $20 per year, $3.99 per month or $7.99 for three months.

Subscribers will be able to play multiplayer online games, such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Splatoon 2 and Arms. If you were already playing those games over the internet, you’ll have to start paying.

In order to sweeten the deal, the company is adding new services for subscribers. Your save data will finally be synchronized with Nintendo’s servers. If you break or lose your Switch, you’ll be able to restore your user profiles. Unfortunately, it won’t work with Splatoon 2, Dead Cells, Dark Souls Remastered, FIFA 19, NBA 2K19 and Pokémon Let’s Go.

Subscribers will also be able to play NES games for free. Around 20 games will be part of the library. If you plan on subscribing, Nintendo will offer a 7-day free trial on September 18th.

You don’t have to search too hard to find Xanax and Fentanyl dealers posting their phone numbers all over Instagram, but at least it’s starting to push people towards addiction recovery resources.

Backlash led Instagram to perform a cursory blocking of exact drug name hashtag searches in April did little to solve the problem, as sellers just moved to unblocked hashtags like “#XanaxLife” and “Oxycontins”. Facebook and Instagram could share some of the blame for 2017’s massive spike in synthetic opioid deaths that skyrocketed from 10,000 to 30,000 according to The Center For Disease Control.

So last month, Facebook began redirecting users searching to buy drugs towards a  “Can we help?” box explaining that “If you or someone you know struggles with opioid misuse, we would like to help you find ways to get free and confidential treatment referrals, as well as information about substance use, prevention and recovery.” The box displayed a  “Get support” button that opens The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s website. But I criticized the company for allowing accounts like “Fentanyl Kingpin Kilo” to keep operating, even after it removed posts of some Pages and profiles for violating its drug rules.

But the problem is that some people searching for drugs on Instagram are actually seeking help. “Blocking hashtags has its drawbacks. In some cases, we are removing the communities of support that help people struggling with opioid or substance misuse” Instagram tells me.

Now Instagram will start pointing users searching for words like “opioids” or “uppers” towards treatment options too. An Instagram spokesperson tells me “As part of Instagram’s commitment to be the kindest, safest social network, we’re launching a new pop-up within the app that offers to connect people with information about free and confidential treatment options, as well as information about substance use, prevention and recovery.”

However, users can opt to “see posts anyway” which makes the interstitial little more than a speed bump for those adamant about finding drugs. At least Instagram tells me it’s testing type-ahead blocking so users won’t be able to easily discover drug synonyms and phrases that would surface dealers.

These pop-ups will appear when users search for opioids, prescription drugs, or illegal drug hashtags, and the company will add more hashtags to the list over time. They’ll show up today in the US before rolling out globally in the coming weeks. Info will also be available to assist concerned friends and family of victims. “We worked in close partnership with Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the NCADD, and the Partnership for Drug Free Kids to offer these resources” Instagram explained.

Instagram will have to be vigilant or dealers may win this cat-and-mouse game by constantly switching to new hashtags using drug name variants, misspellings, and synonyms, as well as by restarting terminated accounts. While it’s admirable that it’s trying to avoid shutting victims out of support communities, the relatively hands-off approach might not deter addicts. Instagram should also be flagging users posting drug names and phone numbers as potential dealers. By whitelisting accounts purposefully sharing treatment and support, it could more aggressively chase the pill peddlers.

“Keeping Instagram a safe and open place for people to share their daily lives is hugely important to us. One of the most inspiring things about Instagram is that people can come together to support one another. People from all over the world use hashtags, comments, and more to offer support and find communities who understand the issues they may be struggling with” says Instagram’s Head of Public Policy Karina Newton. “The opioid epidemic is an issue that affects millions of people, and we want to use our platform to offer resources to those who need it – in the places where they are seeking help. This is an important step for us in our ongoing commitment to make Instagram the kindest, safest social network.”

Given Instagram has over 1 billion users, is starting to make some serious ad revenue, and it owned by deep-pocketed Facebook, there’s little excuse for it not applying more content moderation resources to solve this problem already. It’s now late, and some damage has been done, so Instagram can’t play it cautiously anymore. Otherwise the opioid crisis could become the company’s latest scandal.

Google has secured a bit more buy in from Samsung for a next generation text messaging standard it’s long been promoting.

The Android OS maker’s hope for Rich Communication Services (RCS), which upgrades what SMS can offer to support richer comms and content swapping, can provide its fragmented Android ecosystem with a way to offer comparably rich native messaging — a la Apple’s iMessage on iOS.

But it’s a major, major task given how many Android devices are out there. And Google needs the entire industry to step with it to support RCS (not just device makers but carriers too) if it’s going to achieve anything more than fiddling around the edges.

Zooming out for a moment, the even bigger problem is the messaging ship has sailed, with massively popular platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram having already offloaded billions of users into their respective walled gardens, pulling the center of gravity away from SMS.

Not that that has stopped Google trying, though, even as it has been muddled in its strategy too — spreading its messaging efforts around quite a bit (with false starts like Allo).

Google doubled down on RCS in April when it pulled resources from the standalone Allo messaging app to focus on trying to drum up more support for next-gen SMS instead.

It has also managed to build a modicum of momentum behind RCS. At this year’s Mobile World Congress it announced more than 40 carriers now backed RCS — up from ~27 the year before. The most recent support figure put the carrier number at 55.

But, three years on from its acquisition of RCS specialist Jibe Mobile — and ambitious talk of building ‘the future of messaging’ — there’s little sign of that.

An added wrinkle is that carriers also have to have actively rolled out RCS support, not just stated they intend to. And it’s not clear exactly how many have.

Nor is it clear how many users of RCS there are at this stage. (Back in 2016 carriers were merely talking about building “a path” to one billion users — at a time when SMS had several billions of users, suggesting they saw little chance of creating anything near next-gen messaging ubiquity via the standard.)

The latest Google-backed RCS development, announced via press release, is of an “expanded collaboration” between Mountain View and Samsung — saying their respective message clients will “work seamlessly with each company’s RCS technology, including cloud and business messaging platforms”.

The pair have previously added RCS support to “select Samsung devices” but are now saying RCS features will be brought to some existing Samsung smartphones — including (and beginning with) the Galaxy S8 and S8+, as well as the S8 Active, S9, S9+, Note8, Note9, and select A and J series running Android 9.0 or later.

Which sounds like a fair few devices. But it’s also muddier than that — because again support remains subject to carrier and market availability. So won’t be universal across even that subset of Samsung Android handsets.

They also now say that (select) new Samsung Galaxy smartphones will natively support RCS messaging. But, again, that’s only where carriers support the standard.

“This means that consumers and brands will be able to enjoy richer chats with both Android Messages and Samsung Messages users,” they add, after their string of caveats.

Despite the PR ending on an upbeat note — with the two companies talking about bringing an “enhanced messaging experience across the entire Android ecosystem” — there’s clearly zero chance of that. A clear consequence of the rich ‘biodiversity’ of the Android ecosystem is reduced ubiquity for cross-device standardization plays like this. 

Still, if Google can cherry pick enough flagship devices and markets to buy in to supporting RCS it might have figured that’s critical messaging mass enough to stack against Apple’s iMessage. So added buy in from Samsung — whose high end devices are most often contending with iPhones for consumers’ cash — is certainly helpful to its strategy.

Chances are you see a story about cloud storage, and you yawn and move on, but Wasabi, a startup from the folks who brought you Carbonite backup, might make you pause. That’s because they claim to have found a cheaper, faster way to store data, and apparently investors like what they are seeing, forking over $68 million for a Series B investment.

Yes, that’s a hefty amount for an early round, but with founders who have multiple successful exits, investors might have seen a lower risk than you might think. The company didn’t go with your usual Sand Hill Road suspects here, instead opting for an unconventional set of industry veterans and family offices along with Forestay Capital, Swiss entrepreneur, Ernesto Bertarelli’s technology fund.

Much like Packet, a startup that scored $25 million the other day, they are hoping to take on cloud giants by finding a seam in the market they can exploit. While Packet was looking at customized compute, Wasabi is concentrating squarely on storage, an area they understand well from their Carbonite days.

CEO David Friend reports they are offering a terabyte of storage for just $5 a month, and says they are growing 30-40 percent month over month, since they launched in May 2017. In fact, he says they already have 3500 customers.

They took their time building their own custom storage solution, which he claims is faster and more efficient than any out there, allowing them to undercut Amazon S3 storage prices. Amazon is charging .023 cents per gigabyte for up to 50 terabytes. That works out to $23 a terabyte, substantially more than Wasabi’s asking price.

It begs the question though, how they can afford to keep scaling such a solution. For starters, they use co-location facilities like Digital Realty and Equinix for their storage solution instead of building out their own data centers. Friend says as they scale, they won’t be using their investment capital to add more capacity. Instead, they will be borrowing from banks in an apartment building kind of model, where you build the building, rent out the apartments and break even after a certain amount of time. He says, Wasabi can continue to grow this way.

They are going after fat data targets like media and entertainment and genomics, where they believe companies looking for the best price possible will bypass the big three — Amazon, Google and Microsoft — to build a more cost-effective storage solution.

The road is littered with failed cloud storage plays, but these folks have an experienced team and plenty of money behind them. Time will tell if they can buck the odds and take on the world’s biggest cloud companies by competing on price and performance, or if they can continue to keep prices this low as they grow and must add increasing capacity without the benefit of being webscale.

FINRA, the non-profit organization that tasks itself with policing the securities industry, is charging Timothy Tilton Ayre of Agawam, Massachusetts with fraud and unlawful distribution of unregistered cryptocurrency securities.

Ayre claimed that users could buy equity in his company, Rocky Mountain Ayre, Inc., buy purchasing HempCoin, a cryptocurrency. From the release:

In the complaint, FINRA alleges that, from January 2013 through October 2016, Ayre attempted to lure public investment in his worthless public company, Rocky Mountain Ayre, Inc. (RMTN) by issuing and selling HempCoin – which he publicized as “the first minable coin backed by marketable securities” – and by making fraudulent, positive statements about RMTN’s business and finances. RMTN was quoted on the Pink Market of OTC Markets Group and traded over the counter.

According to the complaint, FINRA also alleges that in June 2015, Ayre bought the rights to HempCoin and repackaged it as a security backed by RMTN common stock. Ayre marketed HempCoin as “the world’s first currency to represent equity ownership” in a publicly traded company and promised investors that each coin was equivalent to 0.10 shares of RMTN common stock. Investors mined more than 81 million HempCoin securities through late 2017 and bought and sold the security on two cryptocurrency exchanges. FINRA charges Ayre with the unlawful distribution of an unregistered security because he never registered HempCoin and no exemption to registration applied.

Because FINRA is not a government body its charges are rarely very onerous but, in the case of brokerage fraud, Ayre could face further scrutiny of he tries to sell securities in the future. The company, Rocky Mountain Ayre, seems to be associated with a restaurant and medical marijuana sales operation, although it is unclear what the company actually does. Hempcoin seems to be trading at 2 cents currently and has very limited trading volume.

If you weren’t done watching tech giants get grilled by lawmakers, mark your calendar for September 26 in what’s expected to be another riveting round of questioning.

Policy chiefs from AT&T and Charter, along with senior executives at Apple, Amazon, Google and Twitter will face questions from the Senate Commerce Committee later this month about how each company approaches safeguards to consumer privacy. The tech and telco companies will be asked to “discuss possible approaches to safeguarding privacy more effectively,” among other things.

Noticeably absent is Facebook; though the committee says the witness list is subject to change.

Committee chairman Sen. John Thune ssaid the hearing will allow the companies to “explain their approaches to privacy, how they plan to address new requirements from the European Union and California, and what Congress can do to promote clear privacy expectations without hurting innovation.”

Beyond that, it’s not clear exactly what the point of the hearing is.

A congressional source told TechCrunch to expect each company to explain for one what they could do to protect privacy outside of the law, and what role Congress can play in creating a single set of privacy requirements.

This will be the latest in a string of hearings in recent months following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which embroiled Facebook in an exposure of millions of users’ data.

This will be the second Senate Commerce Committee hearing this year focused on the issue. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg was called to testify in April and later the Senate Intelligence Committee has held several hearings to discuss election security and disinformation campaigns around the 2018 midterm elections.

Hulu and Discovery this morning announced a wide-ranging partnership that will see Discovery’s live and on-demand programming added to Hulu’s streaming service. The multi-year agreement will see nearly 4,000 episodes of Discovery’s shows added to Hulu’s on-demand library, as well as five additional Discovery TV networks – Discovery Channel, TLC, Investigation Discovery, Motor Trend, the rebranded Velocity network, and Animal Planet – to Hulu’s live TV service.

This will bring the total number of Discovery TV networks on Hulu with Live TV to now eight. They join existing channels, HGTV, Food Network and Travel Channel which were available through a prior agreement with Scripps Networks, which Discovery acquired for $14.6 billion.

The new channels will begin to stream live in December, Hulu says.

Meanwhile, all Hulu subscribers will be able to watch on-demand programming like Deadliest Catch, MythBusters, Say Yes to the Dress, Naked and Afraid, Property Brothers, Gold Rush, Street Outlaws, Chopped, Chopped Jr., Fixer Upper, House Hunters and House Hunters International. 

Hulu and Discovery had been in talks about this deal for well over a year, reports Variety – even before Hulu with Live TV launched in May 2017.

“At Discovery, we are committed to bringing our portfolio of high-quality, safe family friendly brands and content to viewers across every screen, service and device around the world,” said Eric Phillips, President of Affiliate Distribution at Discovery, in a statement. “Our new agreement with Hulu affirms the strength of our brands and their value to viewers in a marketplace with an increasing array of options.”

Along with the overall Discovery partnership, Hulu has also reached a licensing agreement with OWN, part of the Discovery Networks family, which will bring four of the network’s top shows to Hulu. This includes all past episodes of Tyler Perry’s The Haves and the Have Nots, If Loving You is Wrong, The Paynes and Love Thy Neighbor, which are available to stream for the first time. Hulu was already streaming another OWN show, Queen Sugar from Ava DuVernay and Warner Horizon.

Despite the new additions, Hulu’s pricing remains the same. It’s still $40 per month for its cable-like Live TV service, which also includes the on-demand programming and Hulu Originals. Its on-demand only offering, meanwhile, starts at $8 per month, and goes up to $12 for the ad-free plan.

For Hulu, the deal will allow the service to better compete against a growing number of competitors for cord cutters’ dollars. In addition to the major on-demand offerings from Netflix and Amazon, Hulu’s live TV service is up against rivals like Dish’s Sling TV, Sony’s PlayStation Vue, Google’s YouTube TV, Philo, fuboTV, and AT&T’s DirecTV Now and WatchTV.

Hulu claims that the addition of Discovery has now put it over the top in terms of content. When the additions go live, Hulu with Live TV will stream more than 60 live TV channels along with Hulu’s entire streaming TV library, which it says is now the largest in the U.S.

However, Hulu’s live TV service continues to lack AMC Networks and Viacom channels, Variety also notes.

“As the only streaming service offering a complete television experience, Hulu continues to strike strategic, efficient deals with top brands that bring extraordinary value to all of our subscribers,” said Lisa Holme, Vice President of Content Acquisition, and Reagan Feeney, Vice President of Network Partnerships at Hulu, in a joint statement. “Discovery’s brand is synonymous with high-quality unscripted entertainment that TV fans love, which is why we are excited to bring their entire portfolio to our platform, across all of our subscription plans.”

The news of the Hulu deal follows remarks made by Discovery CEO David Zaslav at an industry event earlier this summer, where he said the company was considering a streaming service of its own, where all its networks would be available for a price of $5 to $8 per month.

Going live on Hulu doesn’t necessarily negate that plan – Discovery could always launch on Amazon’s a la carte service, Amazon Prime Video Channels, for example, or even go it alone. But it could reduce consumer demand for such a service, given that Hulu today reaches over 20 million U.S. subscribers.