Author: azeeadmin

The team at Reduct.Video is hoping to dramatically increase the amount of videos created by businesses.

The startup’s technology is already used by customers including Intuit, Autodesk, Facebook, Dell, Spotify, Indeed, Superhuman and IDEO. And today, Reduct is announcing that it has raised a $4 million round led by Greylock and South Park Commons, with participation from Figma CEO Dylan Field, Hopin Chief Business Officer Armando Mann and former Twitter exec Elad Gil.

Reduct was founded by CEO Pabhas Pokharel and CTO Robert Ochshorn (both pictured above). Pokharel argued that despite the proliferation of streaming video platforms and social media apps on the consumer side, video remains “underutilized” in a business context, because it simply takes so much time to sort through video footage, much less edit it down into something watchable.

As Pokharel demonstrated for me, Reduct uses artificial intelligence, natural language processing and other technologies to simplify the process by automatically transcribing video footage (users can also pay for professional transcription), then tying that transcript to the video.

“The magic starts there: Once the transcription has been made, every single word is connected to the [corresponding] moment in the video,” he said.

That means editing a video is as simple as editing text. (I’ve taken advantage of a similar linkage between text and media in Otter, but Otter is focused on audio and I’ve treated it more as a transcription tool.) It also means you can search through hours of footage for every time a topic is mentioned, then organize, tag and share it.

Prabhas said that AI allows Reduct to simplify parts of the sorting and editing process, like understanding how different search terms might be related. But he doesn’t think the editing process will become fully automated — instead, he compared the product to an “Iron Man suit,” which makes a human editor more powerful.

He also suggested that this approach changes businesses’ perspective on video, and not just by making the editing process easier.

“Users on Reduct emphasize authenticity over polish, where it’s much more the content of the video that matters,” Prabhas said. He added that Reduct has been “learning from our customers” about what they can do with the product — user research teams can now easily organize and share hundreds of hours of user footage, while marketers can turn customer testimonials and webinars into short, shareable videos.

“Video has been so supply constrained, it’s crazy,” he continued. “There are all these use cases for asynchronous video that [companies] haven’t even bothered with.”

For example, he recalled one customer who said that she used to insist that team members attend a meeting even if there was only two minutes of it that they needed to hear. With Reduct, she can “give them that time back” and just share the parts they need.

 

Treinta, a startup that is part of the Winter 2021 Y Combinator cohort, announced this morning that it has raised north of half a million dollars for its bookkeeping and inventory management software aimed at Latin American small businesses.

The capital was raised between a small friends-and-family round, Y Combinator’s investment in Treinta, and another $220,000 that it closed in in early 2021.

The company, based in Bogotá, Colombia and currently sporting a team of 13, is working to bring digital transformation to the smallest of enterprises: namely single-operator small stores.

An accelerating digital transformation, the process by which companies transform aging workflows and processes into software-based rhythms, is not just for big companies. Though we often hear of large companies pursuing digital transformation efforts, Treinta is betting that tiny companies are similar to their larger siblings in needing to change how they do business.

Treinta’s concept of bringing the ability to record transactions, expenses, and track inventory to tiny companies in Latin America is proving to be a fast-growing idea. According to co-founder Lluís Cañadell, Treinta grew its monthly active users by 400% for a few months after launching on August 31, 2020. The company expected 300% growth in January and 30,000 monthly actives when we first spoke with them. The co-founder updated TechCrunch via email this week that his company actually reached the 35,000 user mark last month.

Cañadell also told TechCrunch that his company expects to keep expanding at a pace of around 100% month-over-month for a few more months. And Treinta surpassed $25 million in gross transaction volume — the value of transactions recorded in its app — a few weeks back. The startup is onto something.

How is it managing to grow so quickly? Lockdown in Colombia forced many small businesses online in a hurry. By offering what is, for many users, their first digital tool, Trenita is helping many small companies stay afloat.

Treinta plans on offering more services in time to its user base of SMB owners, including digital payments. Credit is another possibility that Cañadell mentioned to TechCrunch.

The startup has runway to get it through the end of Summer 2021, and big plans. Cañadell told TechCrunch that there are 50 million so-called microbusineses in Latin America — including Brazil, a market that Treinta has yet to expand to — of which 90% still use paper to record their business transactions. With smartphone penetration now greater than 80% in Colombia per the company, Treinta could have plenty of growth ahead of it.

I asked the company if it will participate in Y Combinator’s demo day. Cañadell said that he’s happy to talk to investors, but isn’t sure yet what his plans are. TechCrunch, of course, will be there.

Tillit, a fintech startup that is building something akin to buy now, pay later for B2B purchases , looks set to become Sequoia’s next European investment, TechCrunch has learned.

According to multiple sources, the Silicon Valley VC — which recently expanded to Europe with an office in London — is backing a €2.5 million round in the Oslo, Norway-based company, alongside seed investors LocalGlobe and Visionaries Club. Sequoia and LocalGlobe declined to comment.

With the tagline, “Making b2b purchases a breeze” and yet to launch, Tillit appears to combine invoice financing with a buy now, pay later model, meaning that credit is offered at the point of checkout (or invoice), with a number of payment options, including instalments. In addition, Tillit offers expenses management, with a range features to make it easier for employees to make B2B purchases.

In other words, the premise is that sellers get better conversions through offering instant credit, and buyers can defer or spread out payments and have greater control and visibility over purchases.

Meanwhile, Tillit isn’t the first investment in Europe by Sequoia since it revealed that it was doubling down on Europe with a dedicated team on the ground. Most recently, the firm led a $20 million round in Xentral, a German startup that develops enterprise resource planning software covering a variety of back-office functions for online small businesses. That speaks to Sequioa’s remit to “invest throughout the journey,” from pre-seed/seed all the way to IPO and beyond.

Workplace injuries and illnesses cost the U.S. upwards of $250 billion each year, according to the Economic Policy Institute. ERA-backed startup Intenseye, a machine learning platform, has raised a $4 million seed round to try to bring that number way down in an economic and efficient way.

The round was co-led by Point Nine and Air Street Capital, with participation by angel investors from Twitter, Cortex, Fastly, and Even Financial.

Intenseye integrates with existing network-connected cameras within facilities and then uses computer vision to monitor employee health and safety on the job. This means that Intenseye can identify health and safety violations, from not wearing a hard hat to ignoring social distancing protocols and everything in between, in real time.

The service’s dashboard incorporates federal and local workplace safety laws, as well as an individual organization’s rules to monitor worker safety in real time. All told, the Intenseye platform can identify 30 different unsafe behaviors which are common within workplaces. Managers can further customize these rules using a drag-and-drop interface.

When a violation occurs and is spotted, employee health and safety professionals receive an alert immediately, by text or email, to resolve the issue.

Intenseye also takes the aggregate of workplace safety compliance within a facility to generate a compliance score and diagnose problem areas.

The company charges a base deployment fee and then on an annual fee based on the number of cameras the facility wants to use as Intenseye monitoring points.

Cofounder Sercan Esen says that one of the greatest challenges of the business is a technical one: Intenseye monitors workplace safety through computer vision to send EHS (employee health and safety) violation alerts but it also never analyzes faces or identifies individuals, and all video is destroyed on the fly and never stored with Intenseye.

The Intenseye team is made up of 20 people.

“Today, our team at Intenseye is 20% female and 80% male and includes 4 nationalities,” said Esen. “We have teammates with MSs in computer science and teammates who have graduated from high school.”

Diversity and inclusion among the team is critical at every company, but is particularly important at a company that builds computer vision software.

The company has moved to remote work in the wake of the pandemic and is using VR to build a virtual office and connect workers in a way that’s more immersive than Zoom.

Intenseye is currently deployed across 30 cities and will use the funding to build out the team, particularly in the sales and marketing departments, and deploy go-to-market strategies.

People don’t often equate gaming with dating, but maybe they should. As gaming continues to grow in popularity, particularly in the wake of the pandemic, a new startup called 2up is launching to help gamers connect both on and off screen.

The app was founded by sibling duo Stephanie and Lincoln Smith, who have been gamers since they were young.

2up isn’t specifically a dating app — users can specify if they’re looking for new friends, new teammates, or a romantic connection on the app. They can also share their preferred console or platform, favorite games, and whether they prefer to play games competitively or casually, filtering down their potential matches based on aligned interests.

Delightfully, 2up is designed with an old-school 8-bit aesthetic.

The startup plans on generating revenue through a premium subscription, not unlike other matching and dating apps. A premium subscription will provide unlimited swiping, as well as Charms. Charms are the equivalent of a Super Like, helping users get the attention of someone they’re interested in matching with.

At launch, one month of premium 2up will cost $19.99, six months costs $12.49 per month, and a yearly subscription costs $8.49 per month.

2up also has quests, which rewards people for using the app on a daily basis and completing monthly engagement goals. Those who complete quests will be entered into a raffle to win a real-world prize like a gaming headset, gaming chair or even a new console.

“2up is one network that unites gamers,” said Stephanie Lincoln. “There are so many different consoles, and there are all these different forums and communities. We wanted to unify everything and put everyone in one place. We knew that there was a need for something that was a more intimate. We wanted to deliver a way for that same community to connect one-on-one, on screen and off screen, to bring people together.”

2up has been bootstrapped since its inception.

Human Interest, a 401(k) provider for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), announced Thursday that it has tacked on another $55 million to its Series C.

The news is notable for a couple of reasons. For one, the San Francisco-based company had already raised $50 million across two tranches in 2020. Secondly, the majority of its existing backers (about 40 of 55) joined one new investor — NEA spinout NewView Capital (NVC) — in pumping more capital into Human Interest.

And last but definitely not least, the latest extension — which closed in December but is only now being publicly announced — effectively doubles Human Interest’s valuation from its financing a few months prior. 

CEO Jeff Schneble would not disclose the company’s current valuation, but he did say Human Interest “is now in the position of becoming a unicorn” the next time it raises, if that round “follows the same step-ups as the last couple” of financings.

With this latest extension, Human Interest has now raised a total of $136.7 million since its 2015 inception.

Human Interest’s growth has been impressive. It’s gone from adding about $100,000 a month in net new revenue in early 2019 to now adding more than $1 million a month in net new revenue, according to Schneble. The startup’s goal is to get to over $2 million a month by year’s end.

“We’ve grown about 10 times in the past 18 months or so, and we’re not going to stop here,” he told TechCrunch. “Our goal is to get to $100 million-plus ARR [annual recurring revenue] in the next three years so that we can go public in the next three to four years.”

Since its launch, Human Interest says it has helped nearly 3,000 businesses across America to offer retirement accounts to their more than 80,000 employees.

The COVID-19 pandemic was challenging, but led to an interesting shift in the company’s business. Pre-2020, about 85% of its customers were first-time 401(k) users. Last year, that number dropped to about 50%. This means that more companies moved from existing plans to Human Interest.

“Given there was a recession and a lot of uncertainty, it was a much easier pitch, considering we could offer a more affordable product,” Schneble said.

Human Interest says it works with “every kind of SMB” — from tech startups to law offices, from dentists to dog walkers, manufacturing firms and social justice nonprofits. Customers include a San Francisco Bay Area electrician company, a Denver-based  pizza chain and a Seattle-based chain of gas stations and convenience stores.

Despite being just a few years old, Schneble said the company doesn’t view itself as a startup.

“We want to build a really big company that will be around for decades, and can go public,” he said. “If we were trying to sell the company, we might be doing this differently.”

Currently, Human Interest has about 300 employees, up from a little over 100 a year ago. It plans to double the size of its engineering team this year.

Looking ahead, Schneble said the company is simply out “to do more of the same.”

“We don’t need new products,” he told TechCrunch. “There’s so much runway just doing what we’re doing, and that’s taking market share from others.”

It also plans to focus on improving the technology on its platform, which it moved from a third-party provider to in-house in 2020. The move led the company to double its margins over the past six months while eliminating transaction fees for plan administrators and participants, according to Schneble. 

“Often financial services products get worse as you go,” he said. “We want to be the opposite, and this year are focused on making our platform as awesome as it can be.”

Human Interest says it also launched new offerings, Complete and Concierge, last year in an effort to simplify retirement plan administration and “make retirement savings accessible to people in all lines of work.”

“The big incumbents haven’t figured out how to make plans affordable and accessible for smaller companies,” Schneble said. “We knew that to make a permanent dent in this country’s retirement crisis, we had to do something different.” 

The 401(k) space is indeed a growing one. Last July San Mateo-based Guideline — which is also focused on SMBs — announced an $85 million Series D round co-led by Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management and Greyhound Capital. It was later revealed that American Express Ventures had joined the financing as an investor.

With more than $2 billion in assets under management, new investor NewView Capital (NVC) — which also backed Plaid — aims to match late-stage funding with “significant operational support.” 

NewView founder and Managing Partner Ravi Viswanathan said he was impressed by how the company simplifies the process and administration for SMBs to offer 401(k)s and “is able to do so at lower fees through software and automation.”   

The NewView team was also drawn to the company’s desire to make offering a 401(k) accessible for more employers. In a blog post, Ankit Sud and Christina Fa wrote:

“Traditional 401(k) providers like Vanguard and Fidelity designed and priced their plans for large businesses. The administrative burden and high fees make it unaffordable for small business owners. In fact, only 10% of small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) offer 401(k) plans to their workforce, despite employing one-third of the working population…Human Interest brings simple, affordable 401(k) plans to the 90% of small businesses that do not offer retirement plans today. “

Human Interest, a 401(k) provider for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), announced Thursday that it has tacked on another $55 million to its Series C.

The news is notable for a couple of reasons. For one, the San Francisco-based company had already raised $50 million across two tranches in 2020. Secondly, the majority of its existing backers (about 40 of 55) joined one new investor — NEA spinout NewView Capital (NVC) — in pumping more capital into Human Interest.

And last but definitely not least, the latest extension — which closed in December but is only now being publicly announced — effectively doubles Human Interest’s valuation from its financing a few months prior. 

CEO Jeff Schneble would not disclose the company’s current valuation, but he did say Human Interest “is now in the position of becoming a unicorn” the next time it raises, if that round “follows the same step-ups as the last couple” of financings.

With this latest extension, Human Interest has now raised a total of $136.7 million since its 2015 inception.

Human Interest’s growth has been impressive. It’s gone from adding about $100,000 a month in net new revenue in early 2019 to now adding more than $1 million a month in net new revenue, according to Schneble. The startup’s goal is to get to over $2 million a month by year’s end.

“We’ve grown about 10 times in the past 18 months or so, and we’re not going to stop here,” he told TechCrunch. “Our goal is to get to $100 million-plus ARR [annual recurring revenue] in the next three years so that we can go public in the next three to four years.”

Since its launch, Human Interest says it has helped nearly 3,000 businesses across America to offer retirement accounts to their more than 80,000 employees.

The COVID-19 pandemic was challenging, but led to an interesting shift in the company’s business. Pre-2020, about 85% of its customers were first-time 401(k) users. Last year, that number dropped to about 50%. This means that more companies moved from existing plans to Human Interest.

“Given there was a recession and a lot of uncertainty, it was a much easier pitch, considering we could offer a more affordable product,” Schneble said.

Human Interest says it works with “every kind of SMB” — from tech startups to law offices, from dentists to dog walkers, manufacturing firms and social justice nonprofits. Customers include a San Francisco Bay Area electrician company, a Denver-based  pizza chain and a Seattle-based chain of gas stations and convenience stores.

Despite being just a few years old, Schneble said the company doesn’t view itself as a startup.

“We want to build a really big company that will be around for decades, and can go public,” he said. “If we were trying to sell the company, we might be doing this differently.”

Currently, Human Interest has about 300 employees, up from a little over 100 a year ago. It plans to double the size of its engineering team this year.

Looking ahead, Schneble said the company is simply out “to do more of the same.”

“We don’t need new products,” he told TechCrunch. “There’s so much runway just doing what we’re doing, and that’s taking market share from others.”

It also plans to focus on improving the technology on its platform, which it moved from a third-party provider to in-house in 2020. The move led the company to double its margins over the past six months while eliminating transaction fees for plan administrators and participants, according to Schneble. 

“Often financial services products get worse as you go,” he said. “We want to be the opposite, and this year are focused on making our platform as awesome as it can be.”

Human Interest says it also launched new offerings, Complete and Concierge, last year in an effort to simplify retirement plan administration and “make retirement savings accessible to people in all lines of work.”

“The big incumbents haven’t figured out how to make plans affordable and accessible for smaller companies,” Schneble said. “We knew that to make a permanent dent in this country’s retirement crisis, we had to do something different.” 

The 401(k) space is indeed a growing one. Last July San Mateo-based Guideline — which is also focused on SMBs — announced an $85 million Series D round co-led by Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management and Greyhound Capital. It was later revealed that American Express Ventures had joined the financing as an investor.

With more than $2 billion in assets under management, new investor NewView Capital (NVC) — which also backed Plaid — aims to match late-stage funding with “significant operational support.” 

NewView founder and Managing Partner Ravi Viswanathan said he was impressed by how the company simplifies the process and administration for SMBs to offer 401(k)s and “is able to do so at lower fees through software and automation.”   

The NewView team was also drawn to the company’s desire to make offering a 401(k) accessible for more employers. In a blog post, Ankit Sud and Christina Fa wrote:

“Traditional 401(k) providers like Vanguard and Fidelity designed and priced their plans for large businesses. The administrative burden and high fees make it unaffordable for small business owners. In fact, only 10% of small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) offer 401(k) plans to their workforce, despite employing one-third of the working population…Human Interest brings simple, affordable 401(k) plans to the 90% of small businesses that do not offer retirement plans today. “

TikTok has crafted a number of policies over the years to distance itself from the often-messy political fray, but its users continue to have other agendas in mind.

In Russia, a tug-of-war has emerged on the social network.

On one side are young people using the app to create videos in support of free speech, rallying the public against the government and its treatment of Alexander Navalny, the anti-Putin, anti-corruption politician and activist.

On the other is a government that has quickly versed itself in the art of video messaging — tapping and allegedly paying influencers to dissuade the masses from joining them.

Navalny’s long-term battle with Putin’s government has included political run-ins, imprisonments and a poisoning (with an evacuation to Germany to heal), followed by a return to Russia, subsequent arrest and conviction for violating a previous parole.

Through all of that, Navalny has taken on the mantle of anti-authoritarian hero. With many already unhappy about how the government is handling a weak economy and COVID-19 — a situation that has shaken (but, apparently, not completely toppled) government approval ratings — Navalny’s call for mass protests has been met with a strong response.

And as those protests unfold, TikTok is shaping up to be the scrappy social media analogue of that activity — not unlike the prominent role that Twitter took on during the Arab Spring.

“Political content is not typical for Russian TikTok,’’ said food blogger Egor Khodasevich, whose @kushat_hochu account has 1.2 million followers on the app. “Before Navalny’s return, Russian TikTok was all about dancing, pranks and post-Soviet trash aesthetics. All of a sudden, political videos have started to appear across all categories — humour, beauty, sport.’’

Now, in a significant turnaround, Russian content on the app is being flooded with catchy videos of teenagers cutting their passports in half and throwing them away, pupils taking down portraits of Putin and swapping them with those of Navalny, and others creating how-to’s for would-be protestors — advising them to wear warm clothes, to equip themselves with water and power banks and, if arrested, to pretend they are foreign.

@almorozova#навальный #свободунавальному быть против власти – не значит быть против Родины♬ оригинальный звук – новый год кончился…

These are pooling around hashtags like #23января (January 23, the date of one of the biggest protests so far) and #занавального (“For Navalny”).

The wave of videos even got shout-outs from Navalny himself — fittingly, not on TikTok, but Instagram, where he praised the TikTok activists for helping get the word and the crowds out.

“Respect to the schoolchildren who, according to my lawyer, caused a frenzy on TikTok,” he noted on one post. Later he poked fun at how the TikTok protest videos were described as “fakes” planted by dastardly Americans.

Russia as a country has a small but fast-growing and vocal group of TikTok users.

Figures provided to us from SensorTower estimate that of the more than 2.66 billion times to date globally that TikTok has been downloaded (a figure that includes its Chinese version Douyin), it has been installed about 93.6 million times in Russia (figures that don’t count third-party Android stores, direct downloads or sideloads).

A report in the Moscow Times from the end of December estimates that there are around 20 million active users in the country, more than double the 8 million it had at the end of 2019. TikTok itself does not disclose current MAUs in Russia or globally, but analysts have projected that the company is on track to pass 1 billion MAUs sometime in the early part of this year.

Even with those sub-100 million numbers, videos with the Navalny hashtag have passed 1 billion views on the platform (as of the time of publishing, the number of views has passed 1.6 billion).

The Empire Strikes Back…

But Russia is nothing if not persistent when it comes to being ahead of the game in tech, and it has been harnessing the media world in a couple of ways in aid of its own ends.

State television and other state media outlets strongly encouraged people to stay away from protests, citing issues like public safety, the spread of Covid-19, and the threat of arrest (one they followed through on: authorities have carried out controversial mass arrests of hundreds of people at these gatherings).

At the same time, attention turned to social media, and in particular TikTok.

Roskomnadzor first confirmed that it would fine all major social media platforms up to 4 million rubles ($54,000) over protest-related content, citing that “these Internet platforms failed to remove a total of 170 illegal appeals in a timely manner.”

It then followed that up with an order to the management teams of TikTok, Facebook, Telegram and Vkontakte to appear at the regulators’ offices to explain why they have not yet removed offending videos, reminding them that failure to comply will mean that fines will be increased to 10% of a company’s annual revenues, dangling the threat that non-compliance could mean services get blocked.

With TikTokers claiming they were being called in by the police after their videos were taken down, TikTok more directly started to get threatened with fines by the regulator in the wake of all this.

As with previous moves to censor online platforms, investigators explained their actions as a response to societal impact. In this case, regulators described protest videos as a coordinated criminal attempt to get minors to commit illegal acts that could endanger their safety.

In addition to all that, the state appeared to take on a guerilla approach, too.

Small accounts, newly created accounts and popular bloggers slowly all started posting videos persuading people away from the protests. These videos, in Russian, warn of the dangers of protesting.

It turns out that at least some of the people posting videos were quietly getting paid. Sums ranged from 2,000 rubles, or about $25, through to 5,000 rubles, according to one TikToker who declined the offer and posted the proposal on TikTok instead.

(Those figures may not sound very high, but they can still be welcome sums for young people in a country where the average salary as of 2019 is around $718 per month.)

It hasn’t taken long for the situation to get unmasked. Several videos criticizing protests have been removed in the last week. It’s unclear whether TikTok — which declined to comment for this article — or the original creators removed them.

But in one case, a TikToker who goes by the name @golyakov_ (741,000 followers) initially posted a stream of reasons why protesting was dangerous. He then later admitted to getting paid but claimed to believe in what he was saying (perhaps one reason why the video has stayed up?).

Startok, one of the agencies that represents social media influencers, confirmed to us that it has cut ties with two of the creators who had taken payments to make videos in support of the state.

TikTok’s immediate connection and current popularity with younger adults has made  it unique in the social media pantheon. However, it wasn’t the only social media platform seeing anti-Navalny activity — both in terms of messaging, and entities soliciting posts for payments.

A Navalny assistant posted this thread on Twitter of Stories from Instagram casting doubt on Navalny’s decision to return to Russia as a publicity stunt, knowing he would be arrested.

Meanwhile, Boris Kantorovich, a sales director of social media agency Avtorskiye Media who has used Twitter to post about people getting detained, noted that he also came across briefs on Telegram chat ADvizer.me, as well as in a Facebook group that required bloggers to create a video with one or two talking points. He said included “protesters provoked the police at the rally,” “we are tired of Navalny” and “we want peace and quiet.”

When Kantorovich posed as one of the TikTokers that he represents, he received a brief for a 15-second video. “After a quick negotiation I hiked the price up from 2,000 rubles to 3,500 rubles,” he said.

Further creative briefs came with the guidance that they needed to condemn protests on 31 January and 2 February, the second being the date of Navalny’s trial.

“Bloggers should say that ‘Navalny will go to jail 100%’, he is ‘funded from the West’ and ‘his recent imprisonment is legal,” Kantorovich said.

Kantorovich added that authorities didn’t reach out to his agency Avtorskiye Media to advertise with the bloggers it works with: “We clearly mark all ads but authorities don’t like it, because they are trying to create an illusion of a public opinion,” he said.

Similar information was shared by Anatoly Kapustin with the “Picture” advertising agency.

Kapustin, speaking in an interview on non-State-owned Russian TV station Rain, named the “public organization for youth affairs” as an advertiser.

“Talking points on offer were: ‘criminal charges could be brought against protesters,’ ‘you might end up in jail and then not find well-paid jobs,’ and ‘Navalny’s children are studying in America,’” he said in the interview.

In some cases, the virality tricks that TikTok is known for have been used by protestors to turn some of those pro-government campaigns around.

After a wave of people created videos based on the same clip of music that repeats in a deep voice that TikTok is not a place for politics, it’s a place for [fill in a fun and non-political activity/video here] — the audio and hashtag were hijacked by protestors seeking to encourage people to embrace free speech and not silence their voices.

TikTok declined to comment for this story, but in general the company has made it a policy not to wade into partisan politics, or to make a space for political advertising, turning its platform into a commercial opportunity to get political points across.

It declined to comment on whether it was taking down videos that might be reported as possible paid advertising by viewers, nor would it comment on whether it had responded to any government requests to remove videos. It periodically publishes transparency reports where some of that detail, and its subsequent actions, can be found, after the fact. (It judges each request individually.)

One thing that the Navalny situation has exposed is that there is a strong appetite among younger people to be more politically engaged, and for the moment, TikTok is emerging as their preferred place to do that.

Khodasevich, the food blogger, thinks TikTok can replace Twitter as a platform of choice for the opposition in Russia.

“Thanks to its clever algorithms, TikTok can show your video to a bigger audience than YouTube or Instagram, even if you don’t pay for promotion,” he said in an interview. “TikTok representatives told me political videos without direct calls for protests will not get banned.’’

It means that, with a bit of creativity — and a very heavy dose of opportunism and cynicism — both sides might still be able push forward with their political agenda. Boris Kantorovitch agrees.

“Authorities will change their strategy and become more subtle,” he said. “They acted in haste. Probably they thought of TikTok as a good breeding ground for loyalists. Now, the only way to stop people talking about politics on TikTok is by banning access to this platform.’’

Or, if you can’t beat them, join them? The last few days have seen government organizations the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Emergency Situations joining the platform to give the public a glimpse into how they, too, can roll with it.

@mchs.russiaВы только посмотрите, что могут наши сотрудники! Отправляйте свою реакцию в комментариях!Спасибо за предоставленное видео @@anatoly.doletsky♬ оригинальный звук – МЧС России

Some of the content is not exactly subtle — the Foreign Affairs almost immediately used its new account to post a TikTok discrediting Navaly — but more generally, these are signs that the government is all too aware of the impact the platform is having to galvanize people against it, and it’s trying various things to fight that.

So did TikTok really manage to bring a considerable number of young people to rallies? Are we witnessing a birth of a new protest movement or yet another example of one click activism?

According to a poll conducted on 23 January by TV Rain in Moscow, 44% percent of protesters took to the streets for the first time ever. Only 10% of respondents were under the age of 18, with an average age of protesters hovering around 31 years old, showing an overlap with the audience using TikTok in the country.

Other major movements (such as last year’s run of BLM activism) point to 18-34 being the biggest age demographic among protestors (albeit, worth noting strong participation among other ages, too). With that in mind, it seems that both authorities and opposition in Russia will try to use the social media platforms most popular among that age group to recruit their new foot soldiers.

Of course, as with everything on social media, Khodasevich added, it’s sometimes hard to figure out everyone’s actual agenda. Some political posts are genuine, some could be attributed to “news jacking.” But ultimately, they are sparking a lot of attention that the government is now mobilizing to counteract.

And with another critical Navalny hearing coming up on February 15th, as well as the September 2021 state Duma elections being only months away, the stakes are high for whatever political battles come next.

With a stated goal of aligning the mortgage industry with consumer interests, Austin-based UpEquity has raised $25 million in equity and debt funding to expand its business.

Chief executive Tim Herman started the mortgage lending company to take advantage of what he saw as inefficiencies in the $2 trillion U.S. housing market.

Existing financial services and property technology companies treat the symptom and not the cause of market inefficiencies, said Herman.

The company makes free cash offers but charges 2.5% on the loans it makes to homebuyers to give them the cash they need to make an offer before having to go through the traditional process of taking out a home loan through a bank. Then the homeowners can make payments directly to UpEquity to pay off the mortgage on the house.

“Our cash offer works like a guarantee that during the escrow period we will be able to get the mortgage in place,” Herman said.

A U.S. Naval Academy graduate and former fighter pilot, Herman saw real estate as the only avenue to true wealth creation open to him and his family given their years on the road and lack of available investment capital.

After the Navy, Herman went to Harvard Business School and met his co-founder Louis Wilson. It was in Boston while in B-School that the two men started UpEquity.

They since relocated to Austin because of its booming housing market and relatively more relaxed regulatory environment.

Ultimately, the pitch to customers is the ability to make an all-cash offer, which dramatically improves the likelihood of closing on a house. It’s a luxury that roughly 90 percent of Americans can’t afford, Herman said. There’s no downside for selling homeowners, if a purchaser doesn’t end up buying the home then UpEquity owns the house.

Of all of the 300 deals the company has done so far, only two have failed.

That’s why a company like UpEquity can raise $7.5 million in venture and $17.5 million in venture debt to start making loans.

The company’s A round was led by Next Coast Ventures and UpEquity said it would use the money to fund product development that can slash the time-to-close for the real estate agents that act as the company’s sales channel to ten days.

“Our goal is to finally align the mortgage industry with consumer interests,” said UpEquity Co-Founder and CEO Tim Herman. “This funding is validation that consumers, real estate agents and venture investors understand the power of removing friction from the homebuying process, not only for personal advancement, but to attain the American Dream.”

So far the company has expanded its operations from Texas into Colorado, Florida and California, where it has originated $100 million in mortgages in 2020.

“As real estate continues to evolve in the face of limited supply and tight competition, UpEquity is at the helm of PropTech’s growing capabilities,” said Thomas Ball, managing director at Next Coast Ventures. “Most innovation has focused on the front end, but until now, nobody has expedited what happens after the borrower submits an application. UpEquity has the team, talent and technology to not only succeed, but to disrupt and emerge as the leader in the mortgage lending marketplace.”

 

Royal Dutch Shell Group, one of the largest publicly traded oil producers in the world, just laid out its plan for how the company will survive in a zero-emission, climate conscious world.

It’s a plan that rests on five main pillars that include the massive rollout of electric vehicle charging stations; a greater emphasis on lubricants, chemicals, and biofuels; the development of a significantly larger renewable energy generation portfolio and carbon offset plan; and the continued development of hydrogen and natural gas assets while slashing oil production by 1% to 2% per year and investing heavily in carbon capture and storage.

These four large categories cut across the company’s business operations and represent one of the most comprehensive (if high level) plans from a major oil company on how to keep their industry from becoming the next victim of the transition to low emission (and eventually) zero emission energy and power sources (I’m looking at you, coal industry).

“Our accelerated strategy will drive down carbon emissions and will deliver value for our shareholders, our customers and wider society,” said Royal Dutch Shell Chief Executive Officer, Ben van Beurden, in a statement.

To keep those shareholders from abandoning ship, the company also committed to slashing costs and boosting its dividend per share by around 4% per year. That means giving money back to investors that might have been spent on expensive oil and gas exploration operations. The company also committed too pay down its debt and make its payouts to shareholders 20% to 30% of its cash flow from operations. That’s… very generous.

The Plan

Shell is a massive business with more than 1 million commercial and industrial customers and about 30 million customers coming to its 46,000 retail service stations daily, according to the company’s own estimates. The company organized its thinking around what it sees as growth opportunities, energy transition opportunities, and then the gradual obsolescence of its upstream drilling and petroleum production operations.

In what it sees as areas for growth, Shell intends to invest around $5 billion to $6 billion to its initiatives including the development of 500,000 electric vehicle charging locations by 2025 (up from 60,000 today) and an attendant boost in retail and service locations to facilitate charging.

The company also said it would be investing heavily in the expansion of biofuels and renewable energy generation and carbon offsets. The company wants to generate 560 terawatt hours a year by 2030, which is double the amount of electricity it generates today. Expect to see Shell operate as an independent power producer that will provide renewable energy generation as a service to an expected 15 million retail and commercial customers.

Finally the company sees the hydrogen economy as another area where it can grow.

In places where Shell already has assets that can be transitioned to the low carbon economy, the company’s going to be doubling down on its bets. That means zero emission natural gas production and a trebling down on chemicals manufacturing (watch out Dow and BASF). That means more recycling as well, as the company intends to process 1 million tons of plastic waste to produce circular chemicals.

Upstream, which was the heart of the oil and gas business for years, the company said it would “focus on value over volume” in a statement. What that means in practice is looking for easier, low cost wells to drill (something that points to the continued importance of the Middle East in the oil economy for the foreseeable future). The company expects to reduce its oil production by around 1% to 2% per year. And the company’s going to be investing in carbon capture and storage to the tune of 25 million tons per year through projects like the Quest CCS development in Canada, Norway’s Northern Lights project, and the Porthos project n the Netherlands.

“We must give our customers the products and services they want and need – products that have the lowest environmental impact,” van Beurden said in a statement.”At the same time, we will use our established strengths to build on our competitive portfolio as we make the transition to be a net-zero emissions business in step with society.”

Money talk

For the company to survive in a world where revenues from its main business are cut, it’s also going to be keeping operating expenses down and will be looking to sell off big chunks of the business that no longer make sense.

That means expenses of no more than $35 billion per year and sales of around $4 billion per year to keep those dividends and cash to investors flowing.

“Over time the balance of capital spending will shift towards the businesses in the Growth pillar, attracting around half of the additional capital spend,” the company said. “Cash flow will follow the same trend and in the long term will become less exposed to oil and gas prices, with a stronger link to broader economic growth.”

Shell set targets for reducing its carbon intensity as part of the pay that’s going to all of the company’s staff and those targets are… eye opening. It’s looking at reductions in carbon intensity of 6-8% by 2023, 20% by 2030, 45% by 2035 and 100% by 2050, using a baseline of 2016 as its benchmark.

The company said that its own carbon emissions peaked in 2018 at 1.7 giga-tons per year and its oil production peaked in 2019.

The context

Shell’s not taking these steps because it wants to, necessarily. The writing is on the wall that unless something dramatic is done to stop fossil fuel pollution and climate change, the world faces serious consequences.

A study released earlier this week indicated that air pollution from fossil fuels killed 18% of the world’s population. That means burning fossil fuels is almost as deadly as cancer, according to the study from researchers led by Harvard University.

Beyond the human toll directly tied to fossil fuels, there’s the huge cost of climate change, which the U.S. estimated could cost $500 billion per year by 2090 unless steps are taken to reverse course.