Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Rocket Lab is set to complete a crucial test for its rocket reusability program during its next mission, which is currently set to take place sometime in mid-November, with a launch widow that opens on November 16. This is a bit of a surprise, because the launch company said that it would be doing this on its 17th flight, and the next launch is actually its 16th, but the company had a succinct answer for why it moved up the timetable.

This isn’t the first test Rocket Lab has performed in pursuit of reusability – after announcing in August 2019 its intent to recover and re-fly the Electron booster, something Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck originally said wasn’t in the cards for the company, Rocket Lab has tested reentry guidance and control systems, as well as the parachute to be used to slow the booster’s descent once it’s back in Earth’s atmosphere.

In a video released today, Beck explained the reasoning behind even attempting to recover the boosters (essentially to increase the company’s rate of production by eliminating the need to build a new booster for every flight) and also the reasons why it wasn’t in the original plan (the Electron is too small to allow for an engine-powered boost back like the ones Falcon 9 and Blue Origin’s New Shepard uses).

But Beck and team realized they could use an unconventional approach that involves flipping the rocket around and angling it such that it survives reentry, paired with a drogue parachute deployment and primary parachute combo that slows it enough that a helicopter can catch it mid-air as it drifts. This recovery attempt won’t include that mid-flight snag, but will instead hopefully see the booster land itself gently enough on the ocean’s surface, slowed by the chute, allowing a recovery team to pick it up.

Beck says that the helicopter catch part is actually not his biggest concern, since the company has previously demonstrated that part of its approach works in practice. Instead, it’s ensuring that they’re just able to actually get the stage after it deploys its orbital cargo to begin with.

If Rocket Lab can recover this first stage, that will put it well within striking distance of putting an operational recovery system in place, hopefully leading to less time between launches and potentially lower operational costs down the line.

No matter how the launch works out, we’ll get the chance to go over the attempt and next steps with Beck at our inaugural TC Sessions: Space event in December, where he’s joining us on our virtual stage for a fireside chat.

While the world awaits the Airbnb IPO filing that could come as early as next week, Upstart dropped its own S-1 filing. The fintech startup facilitates loans between consumers and partner banks, an operation that attracted around $144 million in capital prior to its IPO.

First Round Capital, Khosla Ventures, Third Point Ventures, Rakuten and The Progressive Corporation led rounds in the startup, according to Crunchbase data.

There’s quite a lot to like in Upstart’s IPO filing, including rapidly advancing revenues and recent profitable period. However, the company’s revenue concentration could be a concern to some investors who recall what recently happened to Fastly shares after losing a large customer.

PitchBook data indicates that the company was last valued at $750 million thanks to its 2019 Series D worth $50 million. Can Upstart reach unicorn status with its IPO? Let’s peek at the numbers and try to answer the question.

Results, earnings

Upstart’s technology uses what it describes as artificial intelligence (AI) to approve consumer loans. It collects consumer demand for credit and connects that demand to bank partners who fund the loans. The company’s AI-powered credit tool can give consumers “higher approval rates [and] lower interest rates,” according to its S-1 filing, which offers banks “access to new customers, lower fraud and loss rates, and increased automation.”

If Upstart’s AI tool can, in fact, more intelligently determine consumer creditworthiness, everyone could come out a winner, with consumers paying less and banks adding to their loan books without taking on outsized risk.

No-code is the name of the game in enterprise software, and today a startup called Ushur that has built a platform for any business to create its own AI-based customer communication flows with no coding required is announcing some funding to help fuel its growth.

The startup has picked up $25 million in a Series B round of funding led by Third Point Ventures (the fund founded and led by activist investor and hedge fund supremo Daniel Loeb), with previous investor 8VC (Joe Lonsdale’s fund) also participating. It brings the total raised by Ushur to $36 million.

Ushur is not disclosing its valuation but it’s growing fast. As a mark of how it is doing, the startup is currently focusing on the insurance sector (a big one when it comes to speaking with customers and amassing data during the conversation) and it counts Aetna, Irish Life, Tower Insurance and Unum among its customers building chatbots (dubbed Virtual Customer Assistants by Ushur), automated email response flows (branded SmartMail), and tools to help customer service agents serve people more quickly (Flowbuilder). It has APIs for those who need them, with integrations into Slack, ServiceNow, Salesforce and Jira, and works in 60 languages (not just English).

It’s now widening the net to also target financial services and telecoms companies, with the plan being to use the funding primarily to expand Ushur’s sales and marketing to keep growing its business after seeing a rise in demand during the Covid-19 pandemic, CEO and co-founder Simha Sadasiva said in an interview.

As companies — not just e-commerce or other online companies, but all companies — have turned to having more virtual interactions with their customers, solutions like Ushur’s have come into their own.

That’s been especially true for companies that are not “tech” at their core. They may lack the in-house talent and other resources to build and run tech-based services from the ground up, but at the same time also are looking for solutions that don’t involve the cost (and time) of working with third-party system integrators to implement them. This is the case, Sadasiva said, with RPA (robotic process automation) solutions, which he described as a competing approach that typically requires technical expertise or systems integrators to create and implement software.

Enter no-code: solutions — software platforms really — that are built with all the nitty gritty coding behind the scenes, and easy-to-use interfaces at the front for users to knit together programs, query databases and run calculations without needing to know how to do these at the coding level, at a typically lower cost.

“For every dollar you spend on RPA tool you have to spend $3-4 more to deploy it so we are very competitive,” Sadasiva said. One email service developed by Irish Life for its agents reduced typical enquiry processing times from between 3 hours – 2.5 days to “less than a second” with 40% fewer resources, the company claims.

To be clear, these are not off-the-shelf pieces of software, but flows that are customised by the customers based on what they need and then powered by natural language processing (which is also baked in behind the scenes).

“We have hundreds of templates already created,” Sadasiva said. “But the key thing is that they are like Lego pieces, or building blocks. We provide the assembly kit to make lots of new shapes and objects.”

Although there are a lot of companies marketing themselves a no-code and low-code, and indeed there is a big demand for more productivity and communication tools that don’t require you to be a programmer to use them but give you the flexibility of building what you need, not what a software company thinks you need, Ushur is finding a lot of traction with investors and customers.

“They’re right at the intersection of some of the biggest developments in enterprise software,” said Third Point Ventures Managing Partner Robert Schwartz in a statement. “Automation that feels personal yet delivers tremendous efficiencies to the enterprise. No-code design that allows customers to get to deployment and benefit easily and incredibly fast. Customer experiences that actually favor the customer. And they’re doing an incredible job with execution.”

Your pay is important. It’s usually something most people don’t understand — why are we paid what we’re paid? Ultimately, this lack of clarity can lead to confusion and negative feelings that affect our productivity and relationships with our employers. You may have encountered situations when you felt your pay was unfairly biased by your manager, recruiter, HR or company policies.

You may know or suspect instances in which your pay has been determined based on someone else’s preferences for background, or stereotypes about your gender, race, ethnicity, identity or abilities. It can even feel unfair based on your own confidence in your ability to negotiate.

What do we think is the right thing to do, and how do we aim to achieve it here at Plastiq? Paying employees fairly, equitably and competitively is what’s right. Being transparent about our philosophy and practices is the commitment we’ve made to achieve this goal.

In designing our compensation philosophy, the Plastiq leadership team agreed that fair pay and transparency would be our guiding principles. Then it was all about the data.

The first step was to understand everyone’s work: their job function, the scale and scope of their work, and their day-to-day responsibilities. This led us to being able to identify if someone was working in accounting or financial forecasting, software development or product management, recruiting or people operations, contributing as a recent graduate/new person to the workforce, a seasoned individual contributor, a senior team lead, an experienced people manager or a more strategic cross-functional vice president.

Next we invested in access to market data from a credible resource — one that we know is used by other companies we respect — with comparable market, industry and size to Plastiq. Because companies have to participate in the benchmark survey to be able to purchase and access the survey data, we knew we were getting accurate, verified information we could trust. This ensures a few things: no subjective self-reported data, accurate alignment in assessing the scale and scope of all the roles, as well as mutual interest by the user base to make sure the data reporting and retrieval was reliable. For Plastiq, the most relevant data centered around what other companies in San Francisco and Boston pay their talent. We also cared about paying as well or better than other tech companies — in particular fintech companies — that were not yet publicly traded.

These distinctions are important for any business when planning pay. To use another small business as an example — let’s say a food truck looking to hire cashiers and cooks — one might evaluate how much to pay its employees using several factors. For example, there may be a difference in pay for food trucks operating out of Austin versus Seattle; the type of food truck (savory or sweet) may influence the level of skill required to prepare or serve the food; margins may be vastly different, meaning the business may be able to employ many or only a few. If you were planning to staff and pay a large-scale, lower-margin cupcake food truck in Austin, would it make sense for you to base your employees’ pay on a two-person sushi truck operation that required skilled sushi chefs in Seattle? Probably not. You’d want to benchmark against a business — preferably multiple businesses — like yours, in your market, with similar staffing and operational needs, to feel confident you’re using the right data.

There is always a way to understand the market data for a company’s particular situation and what their competitors pay for talent. On the flip side, if you’re trying to figure out what you should be paid and what’s fair, there is market data available to help guide you. You could start by asking other people you know that do the same type of work as you what pay they’ve seen around. You could even (and should), ask your manager, recruiter or HR team for the data.

For us at Plastiq, knowing we were committed to fair pay and to formalizing that into a transparent philosophy, the next piece was to decide how competitively we wanted to pay versus the market rates. We considered three possibilities:

GoPuff is making a big acquisition less than a month after it announced a $380 million round that valued the Philadelphia-headquartered delivery startup at $3.9 billion.

Bloomberg’s Katie Roof reported today that goPuff was in talks to buy alcoholic beverage chain BevMo, and goPuff just put out a press release confirming that it has reached an acquisition agreement for a price of $350 million.

As co-founder and co-CEO Yakir Gola explained last month, the startup delivers the kinds of products you’d find in a convenience store (such as over-the-counter medicine, baby food and alcohol) in 30 minutes or less — and it offers those deliveries 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

GoPuff hadn’t attracted much media attention until recently, despite operating in more than 500 U.S. cities, with backing from Accel, SoftBank Vision Fund and others. That started to change with the recent round —  which brought its total funding to $1.35 billion — and goPuff is making an even bigger splash by acquiring an iconic retailer.

The announcement suggests that by acquiring BevMo (which operates 161 stores throughout California, Arizona and Washington), the company can accelerate its expansion into California.

For one thing, goPuff can now promote its delivery offerings to BevMo’s brick-and-mortar customers. The company also says it will integrate BevMo’s brick-and-mortar stores into its micro-fulfillment network.

“We’re proud to bring goPuff’s operations to California and look forward to investing in talent and real estate across the state,” said goPuff co-founder and co-CEO Rafael Ilishayev in a statement. “Partnering with BevMo! quickly advances our strategic objectives of providing more customers in new geographies with a seamless solution for their instant needs. Through this acquisition, goPuff will operate coast-to-coast, solidifying our presence as a leading, national consumer business.”

The announcement included a statement from BevMo CEO Josiah Knutsen said as well.

“Joining goPuff, a company that has created a truly differentiated approach and defined the instant needs category, will allow us to better meet our consumers’ evolving needs, including delivering everyday essentials directly to their doorstep,” Knutsen said. “We look forward to helping introduce goPuff to California and working together to further enhance the experience for BevMo! customers and our communities at large.”

The deal is expected to close within 30 days. BevMo was previously owned by private equity firm Towerbrook Capital Partners.

Let’s get this out of the way: The Aeron is better. But not much, and that’s the story here.

The tCentric Hybrid starts at $900 and offers serious comfort and support for the tireless worker. There are endless adjustment levers, knobs, and options. The chair is available for ordering with a bevy of accessories and add-ons. The one I’m sitting in has the optional headrest, which I’ve found comforting as I’ve spent hours behind my desk nap while I hide from my family.

The chair is built like a rock. It’s solid and heavy and pretty in an industrial way. The lumbar support is ample, and the seat has plenty of cushion — but not too much! — for my middle-aged backside. Please don’t mistake what I’m saying: This is not a lounge chair. This is an office chair, but it’s still comfortable.

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The Hybrid chair has all the options one would expect. Every bit is adjustable, including the lumbar support, which has an inflatable bubble that can be pumped up or released on demand. The arms are endlessly adjustable, too, nearly to the point of fault. There’s no way to lock the armrests in place.

I received this tester about 2 months ago and pushed aside my Herman Miller Aeron to test it. Do I like the tCentric Hybrid better? Not really. They’re about the same to me though it took about a week of fiddling to get the tCentric Hybrid to the same level as the Aeron.

The version I’m testing is outfitted with several add-ons and they’re wonderful. The company offers this chair with dozens of options. Need it taller? Okay, order a larger lift. Have long legs? It can be ordered with a longer seat. It’s available in a number of cushion options, too. You get the idea.

These chairs are built by ergoCentric in Mississauga, Ontario, and the company is expanding south into the American market. Chairs from ergoCentric are available through third-party retailers or directly from the company through a sales channel.

The Hybrid Mesh Back chair starts at $900, and that’s the rub. It’s nearly the same price as the coveted Herman Miller Aeron. I’ve used the chair for two months, and I’m not dying to switch back to my Aeron. Two months in, I’ve dialed this chair into a comfortable working throne and intend to keep using it for the foreseeable future. There are dozens of these Aeron alternatives on the market, and from what I’ve seen, the tCentric Hybrid is among the best thanks to its build quality.

The Department of Justice moved to block the long-impending Visa-Plaid deal today.

The transaction was announced in early 2020, making the decision by the government to try and scuttle its consummation in November a large irritation to both parties. The pair spent nearly the entire year operating in the gray area between having struck a deal and being granted its approval, and may now have endured all that misery for no reason.

But regardless of what happens next with the deal, inside the government’s suit itself was a simply epic piece of art. That’s something you don’t say much about antitrust, sure, but in 2020 everything is possible.

Here’s the drawing, with context:

As you can read from the accompanying text, Plaid is the volcano and, we suppose by analogy, Visa is somewhere else above the water doing business, worried that Plaid may erupt and change the climate in which Visa currently operates. That would work.

A less interesting explanation of the Magic Volcano — a far better conceptual framework than a magic quadrant — is what former Visa Ventures founder Peter Berg said about the doodle:

By Peter’s analogy, the volcano is really more of an iceberg. That would make Visa the Titanic or some similar boat, right?

It would be fun to close by saying “all aboard the S.S. Visatanic,” but it appears the government is trying to ensure that Plaid cannot berth aboard the boat.

Sticking to our nautical riff, if the Volcano-Iceberg Deal is killed, will Plaid raise the Jolly Roger and go hunt some other ships? There’s one in particular that comes to mind.

Autonomous drone company Skydio has hired three executives in product and engineering following its recent $100 million Series C funding round as part of the company’s strategy to expand beyond consumer applications and into the enterprise and public sector markets.

The hires include Roy Goldman, who was the director of software development at Tesla for five years and most recently held a similarly senior position at Carbon. Goldman has been hired to head up Skydio’s product management.

The company also hired Ryan Reading, who previously worked at Samsara where he has been vice president of engineering and more recently general manager of fleet safety, is now head of software engineering. Mike Ross, who led the he led the telematics product group at Samsara, was hired as senior director of product management.

The company said Thursday that the trio will “play critical roles in realizing the company’s vision for the first-of-its-kind integrated enterprise autonomy stack.”

Skydio CEO Adam Bry noted in a blog post that their track record in delivering enterprise products with cloud-connected hardware will be “key” for the company.

Skydio raised $100 million earlier this year to fund its next phase of product development for the enterprise, public sector and defense markets.

Skydio initially focused on consumer drones, launching two since its founding in 2014. Both models of consumer drones use artificial intelligence technology to fly without a human operator. The autonomous system is able to track objects and people, while simultaneously avoiding potential collisions with objects, including trees, power lines and other obstacles.

The company announced this summer a new X2 drone platform designed for enterprise use. Skydio previously said that the X2 drone, which includes onboard 360-degree superzoom camera, a FLIR 320×256 resolution thermal imaging camera, a battery life of 35 minutes of flying time and a maximum range of 6.2 miles, will ship in fourth quarter of this year.

Apple has released iOS 14.2 today. It includes multiple new features as well as some important bug fixes and security updates. Among other things, this release introduces over 100 new emojis.

You’ll find a transgender flag, a smiling face with tear, pinched fingers, two people hugging, some insects and animals, a disguised face and more. When it comes to new variations, there will be a Mx Claus, a gender-inclusive alternative to Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus. Tuxedos are no longer limited to men and veils are no longer limited to women — you’ll be able to send an emoji with a woman wearing a tuxedo and a man wearing a veil.

Today’s release also includes a new accessibility feature for blind users who have an iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max. Thanks to the built-in LiDAR sensor, you can use your iPhone to detect the presence of and distance to people in the view of the iPhone’s camera.

While it is still useful beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, you can use it to receive an alert when there’s someone in front of you that is more than six feet away, and another one if they come closer to you. In addition to stereo audio alerts, you can set up a haptic pulse that goes faster as the person gets closer.

TechCrunch’s Devin Coldewey has more details on the new feature:

iOS 14.2 also adds some minor features, such as new wallpapers, headphone audio level notifications when the volume is too high and redesigned controls for AirPlay.

When Apple introduced the HomePod Mini, the company talked about a new Intercom feature that lets you interact with another Apple user in your house. Today’s software updates add Intercom support for the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods and CarPlay.

If you have AirPods, you can now enable optimized battery charging. It works like optimized battery charging on your iPhone. If you plug your AirPods before going to bed, they won’t charge at full speed. Instead, your iPhone can tell your AirPods to charge to 100% right before you wake up — it should improve your battery life.

Apple is also releasing iPadOS 14.2 and watchOS 7.1. Apple Watch users in South Korea and Russia can now try out the ECG feature with recent Apple Watch models.

Before updating, back up your device. Make sure your iCloud backup is up to date by opening the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad and tapping on your account information at the top. Alternatively, you can plug your iOS device into your computer to do a manual backup in iTunes or the Finder. Once this is done, you should go to the Settings app, then ‘General’ and then ‘Software Update.’

Here’s the full iOS 14.2 changelog:

iOS 14.2 includes the following improvements for your iPhone:

• Over 100 new emoji, including animals, food, faces, household objects, musical instruments, gender-inclusive emoji, and more
• Eight new wallpapers in both light and dark mode versions
• Magnifier can detect people nearby, and report their distance using the LiDAR sensor included in iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max
• Support for iPhone 12 Leather Sleeve with MagSafe
• Optimized battery charging for AirPods to slow the rate of battery aging by reducing the time your AirPods spends fully charged
• Headphone audio level notifications to alert you when audio level could impact your hearing
• New AirPlay controls to stream entertainment throughout your home
• Intercom support with HomePod and HomePod mini using iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, and CarPlay
• Ability to connect HomePod to Apple TV 4K for stereo, surround sound, and Dolby Atmos audio
• Option to provide statistics about Exposure Notifications, without identifying you, to participating Public Health Authorities

This release also fixes the following issues:

• Apps could be out of order on the Home Screen dock
• Camera viewfinder may appear black when launched
• The keyboard on the Lock Screen could miss touches when trying to enter the passcode
• Reminders could default to times in the past
• Photos widget may not display content
• Weather widget could display the high temperature in Celsius when set to Fahrenheit
• Next-hour precipitation chart description in Weather could incorrectly indicate when precipitation stops
• Voice Memos recordings are interrupted by incoming calls
• The screen could be black during Netflix video playback
• Apple Cash could fail to send or receive money when asked via Siri
• Apple Watch app may unexpectedly close when opened
• Workout GPS routes or Health data are prevented from syncing between Apple Watch and iPhone for some users
• Audio is incorrectly labeled as "Not Playing” in the CarPlay Dashboard
• Devices could be prevented from charging wirelessly
• Exposure Notifications is disabled when restoring iPhone from iCloud Backup or transferring data to a new iPhone using iPhone Migration

For information on the security content of Apple software updates, please visit this website: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT201222

Amazon has officially started operations at its first European Amazon Air hub, based out of the Leipzig/Halle Airport in Germany. The new facility spans 20,000 square meters (65,600 square feet) and will host two Amazon-branded Boeing 737-800 aircraft, brining the company’s total operational air fleet to over 70 aircraft.

The retail giants says that the new hub will generate more than 200 jobs locally in the Leipzig area, where it already employs over 1,500 thanks to the presence of a large regional fulfilment center. Amazon also notes that this will help the company continue to offer timely delivery in Europe as the pandemic continues.

Amazon has steadily grown its Air cargo logistics operations since debuting the expansion of its delivery and shipping network in 2016. It has regional air hubs at airports in Texas, Puerto Rico, and Florida in the U.S., and plans to expand to Sand Bernardino International Airport in California and Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in 2021.

Back in June, it added a dozen new aircraft to its fleet in a move that was said to help it handle extra demand as a result of COVID. The addition of its European hub indicates it’s still prioritizing growing this aspect of its operations, which makes sense given demand for its services are likely spiking amid the current second virus wave in Europe and elsewhere globally.