Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Jinx is launching a simple way to buy dog food and manage orders via text message.

The startup says it has developed “the first text-to-buy platform in the legacy pet food space,” in partnership with its investor Initialized Capital and the firm’s co-founder Alexis Ohanian (who departed earlier this year and is raising a new fund).

Jinx CEO Terri Rockovich told me that while Jinx’s most important differentiator is creating kibble and treats that are healthier and better-suited to modern dog lifestyles, the increasing competitiveness of the dog food market means that it’s also important to rethink the broader consumer experience.

“As a brand that’s committed to redefine dog nutrition … we’re required to go above and beyond in delivering a really unparalleled customer experience,” Rockovich said.

And that includes offering an easy shopping experience on our phones. Jinx provided a demo in which a user could starts a dog food purchase on the startup’s mobile website, enters their phone number for text updates, then confirms their purchase via text.

Rockovich added that since the startup’s general launch earlier this year, she’s seen subscriptions as increasingly central to Jinx’s business. (For example, a two-pound a bag of Jinx’s salmon, brown rice and sweet potato kibble normally costs $15, but you save 10% if you sign up for shipments every three weeks.)

And while the initial rollout of text-to-buy functionality is focused on the basic purchase experience, Jinx will be adding subscription management features next week, so that subscribers can make adjustments in a “seamless” way.

“We could send a push notification that says, ‘Hey, your order is going to ship in a week and arrives in a week and a half, do you want to add this product?'” Rockovich said. “Or if you want to pause your subscription indefinitely because you’re going on vacation, it’s so easy to do that via text.”

And because the underlying platform was built with Initialized, it can be used across the firm’s startup portfolio. Rockovich said the technology puts “a lot of automation at your disposal,” with chatbots that can tap into a business’ existing content library and FAQ, while also handing the conversation over to human agents when necessary.

In a statement, Ohanian said:

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the DTC e-commerce space and as a product-builder my whole career, realized I could build a better system for all the companies in our portfolio and that there’d be no better partner to launch it than Jinx, who have consistently been at the cutting edge of the industry. [Although] there are many plug and play text-to-buy options available in the marketplace, our goal was to create a proprietary technology that offered convenience and personalization to Jinx’s customers and allowed us to hone in on consumer findings that would be valuable to all our portfolio brands.

Unless you’ve been on very extended digital detox, you’ll have noticed algorithms don’t exactly have the greatest reputation these days, saddled as they are with pervasive questions of bias and inequity. Not to mention the dubious content amplification choices of social media platforms.

Nor has 2020 helped their automated cause — with, in just one example, outraged UK students leading chants of ‘fuck the algorithm‘ this summer as they were assigned exam grades using a flawed model after the government scrapped the sitting of exams during the coronavirus pandemic. (It was later forced into a U-turn on the issue — meaning students got their (human) teachers’ predicted grades instead.)

Given so much AI-fuelled ugliness and algorithmic mistrust, you’d be forgiven for thinking there are no more quick wins left. But walking routes app Go Jauntly may have found a redeeming use-case for AI to lift app users’ spirits in 2020.

It’s beta launched an algorithmically powered routing feature that recommends “green routes” within the user’s vicinity — meaning the leafiest and most pleasant/scenic (i.e. less polluted) urban walks possible — drawing on its understanding of users’ walking behaviour. The thinking being that COVID-19 lockdown-hit Brits could do with some nice new spots to stretch their legs locally and enjoy a change of air.

Go Jauntly’s app has been around since 2017, with more than 175,000 downloads of the (free) app to date, but it’s hoping the algorithmically powered green routes will be a game-changer for scale — given all walks in the app have been manually created by actual (human) boots on the ground up to now (including some user-submitted walks).

That said, the feature is only available to users of the app in the UK and Ireland (and only on iOS; Android is due to get it next Spring) — but the plan is to roll it out globally later in 2021. (The rest of Go Jauntly’s app is currently also available in Sweden, the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.)

As well as recommending the most scenic/least polluted route to walk between two destinations in the UK and in Ireland, the algorithm can suggest routes that start and end at a single location — for walks lasting from 10 minutes up to 2+ hours in length.

The machine learning tech powering the green routes feature is drawing on external sources of environmental data including the Tranquil City Index (which maps London based on measures associated with tranquility, e.g. lower pollution and noise), as well as OpenStreetMap and GraphHopper data for routing.

Go Jauntly is keen for beta testers to pull on their hiking boots and road test the algorithmically programmed walks to feed in data to help its models improve over time. So it’s quite possible that an AI’s (data-bounded) notion of ‘scenic’ may not live up to your human standards.

Trusting an AI’s urban walking route recommendation could also mean you end up passing through a less nice and/or welcoming neighbourhood than you’d expected.

Or you might find your route barred because the app is erroneously suggesting you walk through private property — much like a satnav trying to send a car the wrong way down a one-way street.

Ergo, green route guinea pigs should keep their eyes peeled — and definitely avoid straying into pastures new that contain cattle.

Go Jauntly says it hopes to continue to develop the algorithmic feature to incorporate more data sets in the future — such as accessibility information, toilets, and historical points of interest — to expand the types of route requirements it can support, working towards what it dubs a “full cross-platform digital ‘nature prescription’ in 2021”.  

It monetizes its hike-loving community of users via an optional premium subscription which gives access to extra content such as curated walking routes and guided tours, as well as the ability to download certain types of content such as walking trails for offline use.

Now that we know the virus that causes COVID-19 can be transmitted via aerosol (tiny particles in the air that can hang around for a long time), researchers and engineers globally have turned their attention to helping promote air circulation where risk exposure is high, and also to kill any active viral particles that might be in the air. One such effort is the Nanowave Air, a device created by Pittsburgh-based Dynamics, Inc. (via NEXT Pittsburgh) which uses UV-C light in a safe and contained way to inactivate the virus in enclosed spaces.

The Nanowave Air operates on basically the same principal as any air purifier you might have in your home, using a fan to take in air and then passing it through a filter before putting it back out into the room. The difference is that the filter in this case is actually exposure to ultraviolet light – and specifically UV-C light, the type that has been proven to be effective in killing the SARS-CoV-2 virus that leads to COVID-19.

UV-C light differs from the more common UV-A light that we’re all generally exposed to in significant quantities from sunlight, and direct exposure to UV-C is harmful to humans. It has been used in indoor viral surface sterilization in the past, but typically the rooms where it’s used can’t be occupied at the time, and obviously it’s not effective once it’s no longer in use and people are allowed back in.

The Nanowave Air was created by the Carnegie Mellon spinout Dynamics when its CEO realized that the technology they were working on around UV-C light sources already for large-scale industrial applications could be adapted to address the COVID-19 crisis. That led to the portable design of the Air, which is roughly the size of a hobbyist telescope, and which works by containing the UV-C light within, and funneling air through it at high speeds using fans in order to be able to neutralize any active virus present while also allowing people to still continue to occupy the spaces where it’s in operation.

Nanowave Air is now shipping, with a $3,450 retail price. It’s intended for use in spaces like primary care facilities, dental offices, and other shared locations where people have to occupy the same space despite current guidance around social distancing and especially indoor exposure. The company, which has tested its technology at a number of labs across the U.S. including the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Vaccine Research, also announced that it’s now being used in some homes with a COVID-19-positive individual, in order to reduce the exposure potential for other members of the household who haven’t yet contracted the illness.

This week saw the announcement of positive news for two of the larger efforts to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, but even if those end up providing long-term protection and ramp distribution quickly, the effort to contain COVID-19 globally will still include a lot of necessary preventative steps to avoid contraction among the unvaccinated populace. Managing airborne presence of the virus is sure to be a key ingredient, and solutions like the Nanowave Air could help to spur those efforts.

Amazon announced today it’s bringing Alexa Routines — the feature that allows users to create their own Alexa shortcuts that combine multiple actions — to its Fire TV platform. Starting today, Amazon customers will be able to include Fire TV commands in their Alexa routines, including those that power on or off the TV, open a Fire TV app, or play, pause, or resume content on the Fire TV.

For example, you could create an Alexa Routine for movie night that would pause the program and turn on the lights for your snack break, and another to again dim the lights and resume the movie when you return. Or you could incorporate Fire TV into your bedtime routine, by powering off the TV while also dimming the lights and turning on your morning alarm. This could be useful for those who like to wind down at night by falling asleep to their TV.

You can configure your own voice commands for these custom routines, too, like, “Alexa, I’m getting a snack,” or “Alexa, I’m back,” for example.

Amazon says these two use cases would address activities that, according to a Morning Consult survey it commissioned, are already common in the U.S. The survey found that 75% of U.S. consumers pause their TV show or movie at least once per night to grab a snack or a drink, and 32% said they fall asleep watching movies and TV shows more in 2020 compared with last year.

Plus, if you create a Routine you think others may find useful, you can share it with friends and family via the sharable URLs Amazon introduced in September.

These new “Entertainment Routines” are launching today across all Fire TV devices including Fire TV Edition smart TVs and Fire TV Cube. However, if you’re using a Fire TV Stick, you need a TV that supports Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) to use powering on and off your TV as Routine actions.

The feature will be globally available, Amazon says.

If you want to know what the future of finance looks like, head east, where it’s already been laid down in China. Digital payments through mobile phones are ubiquitous, and there is incredible innovation around lending, investments and digital currencies that are at the vanguard of global financial innovation.

Take the cover photo of this article: At Alibaba, facial recognition software identifies customers at the employee cafeteria, while visual AI identifies foods on their tray and calculates a total bill — all pretty much instantly.

Given some of the big news stories emanating out of the sector the past two weeks, I wanted to get a deeper view on what’s happening in China’s fintech market and what that portends for the rest of the world moving forward. So I called up Martin Chorzempa, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who is writing a book on the development of China’s fintech sector to get his take on what’s happening and what it all means.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

TechCrunch: Why don’t we start with the big news from earlier this month about Ant Group and how its world-record shattering IPO was pulled at the last minute by Chinese financial regulators. What was your take and why were so many people trying to pile into the IPO?

Martin Chorzempa: I think there’s been surprise at how much interest there is in the company, and I think that’s just really an indication of the market for fintech in China. It’s certainly the world’s largest market for financial technology, and even though in the payments space things look pretty saturated between Ant and Tencent’s WeChat, there are so many areas that they’re expanding into, like credit and insurance, where there’s still a lot of room to run for these kinds of financial technologies to take over a much larger share of the financial system than they do now.

So even just considering the domestic market, it’s huge and it’s just going to get larger. Then, the big question mark is expanding abroad and whether these companies can become truly global financial technology giants. Today, nobody except Chinese people outside of China uses Alipay or WeChat Pay to pay for anything. So that’s a big unexplored side that I think is going to come into a lot of geopolitical risks.

So on globalization, who do these companies need to globalize? China has 1.3 billion people — isn’t that enough of a market to stay focused on?

Well, I don’t think anything’s ever enough for firms this ambitious. And if you think about it, if you have this really unique experience and data, that has a lot of applicability to other countries. So at the very least, it would be kind of a deadweight loss not to have that technology and experience applied to building out digital financial solutions in other countries.

Prior to the pandemic, Chinese people were going abroad in large numbers. So if you want to keep serving even the domestic market you have to have your payment methods accepted abroad.

Plus, if you want to facilitate and grow with China’s e-commerce businesses and other kinds of international trade, then having networks of merchants abroad and being able to use Alipay, for example, is something that could be really important to future growth. The domestic market is huge, but eventually you do run into diminishing returns if everybody already has your app and they’re already borrowing and investing.

Meet Bella, a new challenger bank launching on November 30th. The company is trying to differentiate itself with two distinctive features. First, you can interact with the app using keywords and text commands. Second, Bella is trying to build a community that helps each other to differentiate its product from soulless monolithic banking services.

Let’s start with the basics. When you open a Bella account, you receive a rainbow debit card that works on the Visa network. You get a checking account as well as the ability to create savings accounts. Behind the sene, Bella works with nbkc bank for the banking infrastructure. Accounts are FDIC insured up to $5 million.

Your card works with Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay. There are no foreign transaction fees and Bella reimburses all ATM fees. There are no account minimums and service fees either.

Image Credits: Bella

But the app doesn’t look like your average banking app. There’s a text field at the bottom of the screen at all times. If you tap that field and enter a keyword, you can do all the interactions you’d expect to do. That feature is called Socratex.

This isn’t a chatbot, it’s more like a command line interface. For instance, if you type “Send”, it’ll suggest “Send money”. You can then enter an amount and hit next. After that, you can type the name of a contact, or add a contact, and then hit send.

You don’t have to find the right menu and hit the right button. The app tries to guide you so that you can construct a full sentence describing your intent. Bella uses LivePerson for that text-based interface. LivePerson is also Bella’s strategic backer.

Image Credits: Bella

And then, there is the Karma account. Over a hundred years ago in Naples, people started ordering two espressos and drinking just one. The second one would be a caffè sospeso. A poor person could ask for a caffè sospeso later that day and get a free coffee.

Bella is basically doing the same thing with its Karma account. Users can deposit up to $20 into a personal Karma account. Another user could use its Bella card and get a notification saying that their purchase is covered by someone else’s Karma account.

Similarly, Bella is introducing a randomized cashback program. The company randomly picks purchases and sends you back 5 to 200% in cashback.

When it comes to savings accounts, you can open as many savings accounts as you want and set some unconventional rules. For instance, you can set up a rule that puts some money aside when it’s sunny, when your sports team is winning, etc.

As you can see, Bella wants to introduce some randomized events so that you get surprised by your own bank account. The company wants to give back $1 million in cashback over the first four weeks on the market. Let’s see if that could turn the financial service into a viral experience.

Actress Kerry Washington has made an investment of undisclosed size in direct-to-consumer jewelry startup Aurate.

This isn’t Washington’s first startup investment — she’s also backed The Wing, Community and Byte. In fact, when we asked her about her dream investment at Disrupt in September, she hinted at a new deal that “feels pretty dreamy.”

When I brought up those comments earlier this week, Washington laughed and confirmed that Aurate is exactly what she’d been thinking about. In addition to providing funding, Washington also collaborated with the company to create The Lioness Collection, which features two of Aurate’s bestselling gold chains bonded together as both a necklace and a bracelet, along with hoop earrings and a pendant inspired by the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet.

Washington was excited about Aurate’s goals of sustainability (its gold comes from sustainable sources) and making fine jewelry more affordable. Plus, she said, “I love working with female founders,” to the extent she and Aurate founders Sophie Kahn and Bouchra Ezzahraoui have become “our own lioness tribe.”

“I was inspired by what the themes of what the lioness means, how lionesses operate, how the lionesses hunt together and nurture their cubs together,” she added. “There’s no hierarchy among lionesses … They are fierce and ambitious but that they also take care of each other.”

Image Credits: Aurate

And while the average price point of Aurate jewelry is $300, pricing for items in the Lioness Collection starts at around $150, with 20% of the proceeds going to women’s activist group Supermajority.

Kahn recalled “countless Zoom conversations” with Washington do develop the collection, while Ezzahraoui said that the team has been talking to Washington for the past three years — it took a while to make sure everyone was “aligned philosophically” and to figure out the right partnership.

“Aurate is style and substance and Kerry is style and substance,” Kahn said. “She’s also an activist, she cares and has a voice. That’s why it was such a perfect fit.”

Also worth noting: Aurate’s business continues to grow during the pandemic, and the startup is now profitable. Although it operates a couple of brick-and-mortar stores in New York City, 95% of its business is online.

You might think that jewelry might not be a priority during a period of social distancing, but Aurate is more affordable than most fine jewelry, while still being high-quality and long-lasting. Plus, it’s a fashion item that’s visible over Zoom.

“I’ve actually found that playing with jewelry, it’s been more more meaningful when all that you’re showing is from you waist up on a Zoom call,” Washington said. “It has survived a lot of the life editing process. High-heeled shoes, not so much.”

Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.

“Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says Sophie Alcorn, a Silicon Valley immigration attorney. “Whether you’re in people ops, a founder or seeking a job in Silicon Valley, I would love to answer your questions in my next column.”

Extra Crunch members receive access to weekly “Dear Sophie” columns; use promo code ALCORN to purchase a one- or two-year subscription for 50% off.

Dear Sophie:

My VC partner and I are working with 50/50 co-founders on their startup — let’s call it NewCo. We’re exploring pre-seed terms. One founder is on a green card and already works there. The other founder is from India and is working on an H-1B at a large tech company. Can the H-1B co-founder lead this company? What’s the timing to get everything squared away? If we make the investment we want them to hit the ground running.

—Diligent in Daly City

Hello, Diligent!

Thanks for your questions. It’s always very exciting for me to hear about new companies launching and this has been the year for creativity as necessity is the mother of invention. The easiest path is for the founder with a green card to be president and CEO, and for the H-1B co-founder to be an employee working in a specialized technical role to qualify for an H-1B transfer from the current employer to the new startup. However, there are a few potential immigration issues to be aware of. Check out my recent podcast about due diligence in immigrant-founded startups.

The good news is that we can get the H-1B founder’s work transferred to NewCo, even though it’s a small, pre-revenue company. Presumably NewCo has a strong business plan. If you can make the investment so the company has the ability to pay the H-1B prevailing wage, we can usually effectuate the H-1B transfer for the founder in about 2-3 months.

It’s important to be aware of the proposed equity split between the founders. Simplest is if the founder on H-1B will own less than 50% of the company. If this individual must own the majority, some structural work can be done with a corporate attorney to set things up to qualify for an H-1B, but it’s more complicated.

This is because to qualify for an H-1B — whether it’s a transfer, initial petition or extension — the sponsoring employer must demonstrate that an employer-employee relationship exists between the company and the H-1B beneficiary. That means the employer must have the ability to hire, supervise and fire the H-1B beneficiary, and the H-1B beneficiary cannot own a controlling stake in the sponsoring company. For additional context, check out my podcast on H-1B Transfers for Startup Founders.

The co-founder who has the green card would probably need to be designated as the person who will have the authority to hire, supervise and fire the co-founder on the H-1B visa on the immigration forms. As always, I recommend working with an experienced startup immigration attorney who can present a strong legal argument for the H-1B as well as efficiently streamline the H-1B transfer process.

Facebook’s internal R&D group, NPE Team, has today officially launched its latest app, E.gg, to a broader audience. The app, a freeform creation tool described as a “GIF collage bonanza,” was announced earlier this year, but was only onboarding users via a waitlist until now. Today, it’s available in the App Store for anyone to download.

The app allows users to create and share canvases, which are basically mixed media “artsy” collages created using a combination of text, images, and/or GIFs. The latter leverages Facebook’s acquisition of the GIF repository Giphy from May. Anything you make in E.gg can be given its own unique URL, allowing others to view your content even if they don’t have the app installed themselves.

Image Credits: Facebook

However, if you do use E.gg, you can browse through other people’s work directly in the app. And when you discover something on their pages you like, you can easily reuse that content on your own pages with attribution.

When first introducing E.gg this summer, Facebook Product Manager Jason Toff described it as an “experimental new platform for weird and wonderful expressions of who you are and what you love,” adding that the inspiration for the project was the “raw and exploratory spirit on the early Interwebz.”

In other words, the early days of the web resulted in a lot more weird and offbeat creativity, because users were experimenting with what was possible — from dancing baby GIFs to awful font choices to tacky website backgrounds.

The question E.gg aims to answer is whether a more low-pressure, creative tool can help give people the power to express themselves more freely.

Facebook says that during its beta testing phase, people used E.gg to create create fan pages, guides, tributes, profiles, collages, recipes and more.

Unfortunately, the app during its beta period had also been met with complaints from artists who claimed it was stealing their work. They said the tool had pulled in their GIFs without permission or credit. Facebook responded at the time to acknowledge the issues and noted that the reason the app was still in a beta testing phase was to get feedback about the sort of problems it needed to correct before going live. The company said it would hold off on expanding E.gg until it fixed these problems.

Presumably, Facebook has addressed the attribution issues, as the app is now live.

E.gg is available as a free download from the iOS App Store in the U.S. Users can also browse others’ creations via http://e.gg.

Creating a great customer experience requires a lot of data from a variety of sources, and pulling that disparate data together has captured the attention of companies and big and small from Salesforce and Adobe to Segment and Klaviyo. Today, Grouparoo, a new startup from three industry vets is the next company up with an open source framework designed to make it easier for developers to access and make use of customer data.

The company announced a $3 million seed investment led by Eniac Ventures and Fuel Capital with participation from Hack VC, Liquid2, SCM Advisors and several unnamed angel investors.

Grouparoo CEO and co-founder Brian Leonard says that his company has created this open source customer data framework based on his own experience and difficulty getting customer data into the various tools he has been using since he was technical founder at TaskRabbit in 2008.

“We’re an open source data framework that helps companies easily sync their customer data from their database or warehouse to all of the SaaS tools where they need it. [After you] install it, you teach it about your customers, like what properties are important in each of those profiles. And then it allows you to segment them into the groups that matter,” Leonard explained.

This could be something like high earners in San Francisco along with names and addresses. Grouparoo can grab this data and transfer it to a marketing tool like Marketo or Zendesk and these tools could then learn who your VIP customers are.

For now the company is just the three founders Leonard, CTO Evan Tahler and COO Andy Jih, and while he wasn’t ready to commit to how many people he might hire in the next 12 months, he sees it being less than 10. At this early stage, the three co-founders have already been considering how to build a diverse and inclusive company, something he helped contribute to while he was at TaskRabbit.

“So, coming from [what we built at TaskRabbit] and starting something new, it’s important to all three of us to start [building a diverse company] from the beginning, and especially combined with this notion that we’re building something open source. We’ve been talking a lot about being open about our culture and what’s important to us,” he said.

TaskRabbit also comes into play in their investment where Fuel GP Leah Solivan was also founder of TaskRabbit. “Grouparoo is solving a real and acute issue that companies grapple with as they scale — giving every member of the team access to the data they need to drive revenue, acquire customers and improve real-time decision making. Brian, Andy and Evan have developed an elegant solution to an issue we experienced firsthand at TaskRabbit,” she said.

For now the company is taking an open source approach to build a community around the tool. It is still pre-revenue, but the plan is to find a way to build something commercial on top of the open source tooling. They are considering an open core license where they can add features or support or offer the tool as a service. Leonard says that is something they intend to work out in 2021.