Author: azeeadmin

Hour One, a startup that allows businesses to create ‘photoreal’ presenters which can speak pre-set any text or any language in a highly realistic manner, has signed a deal with Berlitz. The language learning giant will use the platform to augment its instructor-led services and grow its online language training programs in a way that would normally be impossible, without hiring thousands of human teachers.

Curt Uehlein, Berlitz’s CEO said in a statement: “Berlitz has built our methodology and brand on delivering the best outcomes for students serious about fluency, which requires a very human-centric experience. Our digital experiences had to replicate the classroom experience. Doing that successfully means Berlitz can extend our reach into new markets, and be more accessible to students, removing barriers of location and affordability.”

Hour One has been able to almost re-create the in-person instructor experience for Berlitz, with highly-realistic photoreal characters who have (in my opinion) very natural facial expressions and gestures, and – crucially – perfectly synced speech. I’ve seen the software in operation myself and it is extremely convincing. Instead of course content being created in a studio with a human speaker, it can now be generated using AI. Look out language teachers…

Oren Aharon, CEO, Hour One said: “Where other brands keep innovation at the periphery, Berlitz has fully embraced our technology to scale its business and propel it into the new era.”

Originally from Israel and new in New York, Hour One has raised $5 million from Galaxy Interactive, Kindred Ventures and Remagine Ventures.

It’s easy to forget, but Salesforce bought Slack at the end of last year for almost $28 billion, a deal that has yet to close. We don’t know exactly when that will happen, but Slack continues to develop its product roadmap adding new functionality, even while waiting to become part of Salesforce eventually.

Just this morning, the company made official some new tools it had been talking about for some time including a new voice tool called Slack Huddles, which is available starting today, along with video messaging and a directory service called Slack Atlas.

These tools enhance the functionality of the platform in ways that should prove useful as it becomes part of Salesforce whenever that happens. It’s not hard to envision how integrating Huddles or the video tools (or even Slack Atlas for both internal and external company organizational views) could work when integrated into the Salesforce platform.

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield says the companies aren’t working together yet because of regulatory limits on communications, but he could definitely see how these tools could work in tandem with Salesforce Service Cloud and Sales Cloud among others and how you can start to merge the data in Salesforce with Slack’s communications capabilities.

“[There’s] this excitement around workflows from the big system of record [in Salesforce] into the communication [in Slack] and having the data show up where the conversations are happening. And I think there’s a lot of potential here for leveraging these indirectly in customer interactions, whether that’s sales, marketing, support or whatever,” he said.

He said that he could also see Salesforce taking advantage of Slack Connect, a capability introduced last year that enables companies to communicate with people outside the company. “We have all this stuff working inside of Slack Connect, and you get all the same benefits that you would get using Huddles to properly start a conversation, solve some problem or use video as a better way of communicating with [customers],” he said.

These announcements seem to fall into two main categories: the future of work and in the context of the acquisition. Bret Taylor, Salesforce president and COO certainly seemed to recognize that when discussing the deal with TechCrunch when it was announced back in December. He sees the two companies directly addressing the changing face of work:

“When we say we really want Slack to be this next generation interface for Customer 360, what we mean is we’re pulling together all these systems. How do you rally your teams around these systems in this digital work-anywhere world that we’re in right now where these teams are distributed and collaboration is more important than ever,” Taylor said.

Brent Leary, founder and principal analyst at CRM Essentials says that there is clearly a future of work angle at play as the two companies come together. “I think moves like [today’s Slack announcements] are in response to where things are trending with respect to the future of work as we all find ourselves spending an increasing amount of time in front of webcams and microphones in our home offices meeting and collaborating with others,” he said.

Huddles is an example of how the company is trying to fix that screen fatigue from too many meetings or typing our thoughts. “This kind of “audio-first” capability takes the emphasis off trying to type what we mean in the way we think will get the point across to just being able to say it without the additional effort to make it look right,” he said.

Leary added, “And not only will it allow people to just speak, but also allows us to get a better understanding of the sentiment and emotion that also comes with speaking to people and not having to guess what the intent/emotion is behind the text in a chat.”

As Karissa Bell pointed out on Engadget, Huddles also works like Discord’s chat feature in a business context, which could have great utility for Salesforce tools when it’s integrated with the Salesforce platform

While the regulatory machinations grind on, Slack continues to develop its platform and products. It will of course continue to operate as a stand-alone company, even when the mega deal finally closes, but there will certainly be plenty of cross-platform integrations.

Even if executives can’t discuss what those integrations could look like openly, there has to be a lot of excitement at Salesforce and Slack about the possibilities that these new tools bring to the table — and to the future of work in general — whenever the deal crosses the finish line.

This is your opportunity to get a glimpse of the future of iOS, iPadOS and watchOS. Apple just released the first public beta of iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and watchOS 8. Those releases are the next major versions of the operating systems for the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. Unlike developer betas, everyone can download these betas — you don’t need a $99 developer account. But don’t forget, it’s a beta.

The company still plans to release the final version of iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and watchOS 8 this fall. But Apple is going to release betas every few weeks over the summer. It’s a good way to fix as many bugs as possible and gather data from a large group of users.

As always, Apple’s public betas closely follow the release cycle of developer betas. And Apple also released the second developer beta of iOS and iPadOS 15 today. So it sounds like the first public beta is more or less the same build as the second developer build.

But remember, you shouldn’t install a beta on your primary iPhone or iPad. The issue is not just bugs — some apps and features won’t work at all. In some rare cases, beta software can also brick your device and make it unusable. You may even lose data on iCloud. Proceed with extreme caution.

But if you have an iPad, iPhone or Apple Watch you don’t need, here’s how to download it. Head over to Apple’s beta website from the device you want to use for the beta and download the configuration profile — do that from your iPhone for the watchOS beta. It’s a tiny file that tells your device to update to public betas like it’s a normal software update.

Once it’s installed, reboot your device, then head over to the Settings (or Watch) app. You should see an update. In September, your device should automatically update to the final version of iOS 15, iPadOS 15 or watchOS 8 and you’ll be able to delete the configuration profile.

The biggest change of iOS 15 is a new Focus mode. In addition to ‘Do not disturb’, you can configure various modes — you can choose apps and people you want notifications from and change your focus depending on what you’re doing. For instance, you can create a Work mode, a Sleep mode, a Workout mode, etc.

There are many new features across the board, such as a new Weather app, updated maps in Apple Maps, an improved version of FaceTime with SharePlay and more. Safari also has a brand new look.

We’ve spent millions of dollars running ads for brands like Outschool, Imperfect Produce and Microsoft. At Demand Curve, we’ve worked with over 500 startups, meticulously documenting growth tactics for all growth channels. This post also incorporates what we’ve learned from our agency, Bell Curve.

Here are seven ad types that have proven to increase click-through rates (CTR), with examples of each. Clone them to test in your own social ad campaigns.

Customer reactions

If you’re selling a consumer product, it’s likely that some of your customers have posted product reviews, unboxings or recommendation videos on their social media accounts. You can use your customers’ user-generated videos in your social ads — with permission.

Search through Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for posts that mention your product. Reach out to the customer and ask them if you can use their content in an ad campaign, and subsequently, compile the most positive reactions into a video ad.

This works well because dramatic faces are attention magnets. Make sure the thumbnail photo shows a strong emotional image. People will click because they can’t help but want to see what provoked the emotion. User-generated reaction videos also highlight your products’ “Moment of Wow.” If users care enough about your product to make a positive reaction video, their energy is contagious. Your ad audience will connect your product with a strong positive emotion.

Customer reactions make for great ads. Image Credits: Demand Curve

You versus the competition

Comparison ads anchor your product against something your audience already knows. This works well for both ads and the landing page your ad will lead to when clicked on. Try positioning your strongest value proposition — the most valuable promise you’re making to your customer — against your generic competitors.

In the white-hot creator economy space, startups are increasingly looking to build paint-by-numbers platforms to help budding creators more easily execute on what were once seemingly insurmountable business challenges.

The ex-Uber team at Pietra is cashing in on this vision with a plan to build a backend for launching and scaling creator product lines.

The startup, which previously acted as a marketplace for jewelry sellers, has changed a bit since they announced a seed round from Andreessen Horowitz in early 2019. Now, the company has pivoted from hocking diamonds to building a broad platform for creators that are looking to scale sales of physical goods, from interfacing with suppliers, handling orders and fulfillment and setting up an online storefronts.

Pietra tells TechCrunch they’ve just raised a $15 million Series A led by Founders Fund with additional participation from Andreessen Horowitz, TQ Ventures and Abstract Ventures.

“We were initially focused on jewelry and luxury and the rise of creators in this luxury segment,” CEO Ronak Trivedi tells TechCrunch. “When we launched our beta last fall we had this platform that had evolved from a marketplace to a creator hub where any size creator could come in, use the platform, marketplace and tools to effectively launch a digital-first consumer business in the most efficient, cost-effective way possible.”

Pietra’s pricing depends on how many of their services you’re using and what the scale of your operation is, but most services are charged on a per-unit basis with the startup also taking a percentage fee on goods sold through their marketplace. The startup is also working on a Pro offering with differentiated pricing designed for slightly more established brands that are doing multiple production runs per year.

Early on, Pietra has a pretty distinct list of product verticals that they’re specializing in, including swimwear, makeup, apparel, fragrances and jewelry, among a few others. Overall, their platform seems pretty centered on the types of products that have been broadly successful with influencers who are looking to build out their first brands.

Pietra allows these customers to shop around with a network of suppliers, find which one is best for them and move through the process from crafting samples through order fulfillment with a tech platform to guide them through the process. Trivedi says the ultimate goal is to “find the best suppliers in the world and try and bring them on the platform at the lowest minimum orders, so that it allows the most people to try to start a business.”

The startup is trying to help small creators scale their product distribution, but also handle all of the bits that can determine success when it comes to launching a brand in the first place, including building a pre-sale website and building up some attractive marketing images of products.

Amazon has petitioned that the newly minted Chair of the FTC and implacable critic of the company, Lina Khan, be recused from decisions relating to the company. The company argues that she has been too outspoken about the failure to regulate Amazon to handle matters impartially.

It will be for the FTC to decide, and its oversight committee to supervise, whether Khan will recuse herself; an agency spokesperson declined to comment on the matter.

Amazon’s argument (which you can read below) is that Khan has simply gone too far in her criticism of Amazon prior to her confirmation at the FTC, creating an effective “prejudgment” that precludes her ability to consider cases relating to the company objectively.

Although Amazon profoundly disagrees with Chair Khan’s conclusions about the company, it does not dispute her right to have spoken provocatively and at great length about it in her prior roles. But given her long track record of detailed pronouncements about Amazon, and her repeated proclamations that Amazon has violated the antitrust laws, a reasonable observer would conclude that she no longer can consider the company’s antitrust defenses with an open mind.

But it’s equally plain to “a reasonable observer” that Amazon, one of the largest and most powerful companies in the world, is a natural target for analysis by an expert whose professional opinion is that antitrust regulation is inadequate and dated.

And it was arguably this very idea that set her on the path to her nomination and sudden ascendance to Chair. Her “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” paper was not the manifestation of a vendetta against the online services giant — it was an indictment of the aging antitrust doctrine that permitted what she argued amounted to legalized monopolistic behavior.

Amazon may have been the one in the crosshairs, but it was only a stand-in for an entire school of regulatory thought that, Khan has persuasively argued in numerous papers and articles, mindlessly pursued a narrow definition of consumer harms and benefits. There are other ways that a company might act against consumer interests, such as crushing competition in a market by subsidizing costs through dominance of another market — something Amazon has made core to its entire business model.

Furthermore, the position of Chair at the FTC is one of leadership and priority setting, not utter impartiality. The impartiality comes in the form of legal arguments that show a company has, for example, broken the law. Long-held opinions count for nothing with a judge, including Khan’s own public and professionally expressed opinions; should she lead the agency in an effort against Amazon, she will have to support her interpretation of the law with facts and systematic argument.

While one can only speculate at the administration’s true reasoning for its rapid elevation of Khan, it’s hard to imagine that it’s anything but a whole-hearted endorsement of the philosophy and change she advocates.

Khan’s expertise and perspective on antitrust have made Amazon a natural antagonist, not because Khan is a monomaniacal crusader, but because Amazon could very well represent one of the largest regulatory failures in history. To point that out is not grounds for recusal — it may however be grounds for making history.

You can read the full Amazon petition below:

SWORD Health, a virtual musculoskeletal care platform founded in 2015, announced today that it has raised an $85 million Series C funding round led by General Catalyst. Other participating investors included BOND, Highmark Ventures, BPEA, Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, Transformation Capital and Green Innovations. The funding comes months after the company raised a $25 million Series B round – which, put differently, means that the New York-based company has now  raised $110 million across six months.

CEO and founder of SWORD Health, Virgílio Bento, said that company was not actively having conversations with external VCs when it raised the round. The Series C closed within three weeks of the first anchor investor’s check.

“Given the interest of the market, given the valuations, and given the ability to bring other stellar investors [who] can help us grow even faster and more efficiently – that’s why we decided to raise again,” he said.

As alluded, SWORD Health’s massive tranche of capital comes as the world of MSK digital health startups continues to boom thanks to the broad rise of virtual care. Venture-backed startups such as Kaia Health, which saw its business grow by 600% in 2020 and Hinge Health, which was last valued at $3 billion are hitting growth stage. SWORD Health, while founded in 2015, has only been in the market for 18 months. Bento declined to share the company’s exact valuation, but he confirmed that it was north of $500 million.

MSK conditions, which can range from a sprained ankle to a disc compression, are diverse and, unfortunately, universally felt. The sheer expansiveness of the condition has triggered a crop of entrepreneurs to create solutions that help people avoid surgery or addictive opioids, two of the mainstream ways to deal with MSK conditions.

SWORD Health’s solution looks like this: the platform connects consumers to a virtual physical therapist who is accessible via traditional telemedicine. Beyond that, the company gives each consumer a tablet and motion sensors. The consumers are promoted to go through the motions, and get feedback and tips through a SWORD HealthDigital Therapist.

Nikhil Krishnan, the founder of Out-of-Pocket, explained how it all works through a first-person account:

As you go through them, the sensors + digital therapist can tell if the movements are correct and how far you’re moving in each direction. The digital therapist has 5000 different types of feedback messages like “don’t bend your knee,” “lean forward more,” and “your squat form is more embarrassing than your Facebook etiquette circa 2009.” You get a score of 1-5 stars depending on how far you move in a direction for a given exercise. My regimen was usually between 17-25 exercises and in total would take me 20-25 minutes.

SWORD Health sells to insurers, health systems and employers in the United States, Europe and Australia.

SWORD Health’s biggest competitor is Hinge Health, last valued at $3 billion. However, for now, Bento isn’t too worried about the behemoth.

“It’s really two different studies on how to build a healthcare company,” Bento said. He pointed to how SWORD Health spent its first four years as a company developing its sensor, while he claims that Hinge went out to the market with “a half baked solution” in sensor technology. That said, in March 2021, Hinge acquired medical device maker Enso to grow its non-invasive, musculoskeletal therapy tech, and continues to have the biggest marketshare among private startups in the sector.

The company touted that it has increased its number of treated patients 1000% year over year, which has led to 600% year over year revenue growth. Given the fact that it’s only been in the market for eighteen months, these metrics don’t provide an entirely holistic picture into the business, but instead offer a snapshot into the recent growth of an early-stage tool. With millions more, the SWORD Health founder is set to invest more in the company, and continue to not focus too much on profitability.

“This is a big problem that we want to solve, so we really want to reinvest all of the gross profit that we are generating into building a platform that is able to deliver more value to patients,” he said.

Virgin Orbit had a successful first commercial launch, meaning there’s now officially another small satellite launch provider in operation with a track record of delivering payloads to space. Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket took off from its carrier aircraft at around 11:45 AM EDT today, and the spacecraft had a successful series of engine fires and stage separations to make there’s of the trip to low Earth orbit.

On board, Virgin Orbit carried seven payloads, including the first ever defense satellite for the Netherlands, as well as cubsats developed by the U.S. Departme of Defense for its Rapid Agile Launch initiative, which is seeking to test the viability of flying small spacecraft to space on relatively short notice on launch platforms with increased flexibility, which Virgin Orbit’s provides thanks to its ability to take off horizontally from more or less conventional runways. Virgin Orbit also carried two Earth observation satellites for Polish startup SatRevolution, and it will be delivering more in future flights to help build out that company’s planned 14-spacecraft constellation.

In January, Virgin Orbit completed its final demonstration mission, reaching orbit for the first time with LauncherOne. That paved the way for this mission, and the company plans to increase the pace and frequency of its commercial missions from here on out, with at least one more planned tentatively for later this year, and many more in 2022.

In terms of payload capacity, Virgin Orbit’s Launcher One can carry around 1,100 lbs to low Earth orbit, which compares favorably with the capacity of Rocket Lab’s Electron, which can carry around 661 lbs to the same destination. It fits a niche for small satellite operators that currently has a lot of demand, served in part by SpaceX as well with its ridesharing missions, but Virgin Orbit has the potential to provide more dedicated services for operator looking to launch just a few small spacecraft for a modest constellation. And as mentioned, its potential for varying its take-off location in future could be a big competitive advantage in the defense and security industries.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed seven new charges against Paige Thompson, the former Amazon Web Services (AWS) engineer accused of hacking Capital One and stealing the personal data of more than 100 million Americans.

The new charges, which include six counts of computer fraud and abuse and one count of access device fraud, were revealed in court documents filed earlier this month, obtained by The Record. The previous indictment charged Thompson with one count each of wire fraud and computer crime and abuse, which meant she faced five up to five in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. As a result of the additional charges, Thompson now faces up to 20 years of jail time.

The superseding indictment has also expanded the number of victimized companies from the four listed in the 2019 indictment to eight. In addition to Capital One, a U.S. state agency, a U.S. public research university and an international telecommunications conglomerate, the list now includes a data and threat protection company, an organization that specializes in digital rights management (DRM), a provider of higher education learning technology, and a supplier of call center solutions. The companies have not been named, but security firm CyberInt previously said that Vodafone, Ford, Michigan State University and the Ohio Department of Transportation may all be victims of the breach.

Thompson, who used the handle “erratic” online and was identified after boasting about her activities on GitHub, remains accused of using her knowledge from her previous employment as a software engineer at Amazon to create a program that identified which customers of a cloud computing company (the indictment doesn’t name the company, but it has been identified as Amazon Web Services) had misconfigured firewalls. Once the tool found its target misconfiguration, Thompson allegedly exploited it to extract privileged account credentials.

The prior indictment alleges that once Thompson gained access to victims’ cloud infrastructure using the stolen credentials, she then accessed and downloaded data to a server at her residence in Seattle. It remains unclear whether any of the information was passed to third parties.

In the case of the Capital One breach, which the company confirmed in July 2019, the stolen data comprised 106 million credit card applications, which included names, addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth, along with 140,000 Social Security numbers, 80,000 bank account numbers, and some credit scores and transaction data. Capital One, which replaced its cybersecurity chief four months after the incident, was fined $80 million in August 2020 for the security breach and its failure to keep its users’ financial data secure.

Prosecutors also allege that Thompson copied and stole data from at least 30 entities in total that used the same cloud provider, and claim that, in some cases, she used this access to set up cryptocurrency mining operations using victims’ cloud computing power – a practice known as cryptojacking.

Thompson pleaded not guilty and was released on pre-trial bond in August 2019. She was initially set to face trial in November 2019, but the trial was delayed to March 2020 due to the huge amount of information the prosecution had to analyze.

The trial was later rescheduled to October 2020 due to the pandemic, then to June 2021, then October 2021, and now to March 14, 2022, with prosecutors still citing the need for more time to analyze the data collected from Thompson’s devices.