Category: UNCATEGORIZED

For several years, blockchain technology has been touted as a way to verify the sale of property. Any kind of property. And so entrepreneurs busily began the process of trying to create a startup that could complete a property deal on the blockchain.

One that stood out from the start was Propy which was started by Natalie Karayaneva, an experienced, real-world property developer who had subsequently joined the blockchain world. Propy’s other co-founder is Denitza Tyufekchieva (pictured). 

Propy has now raised an undisclosed funding round from venture capitalist investor Tim Draper, best known for his early investments into Tesla, Skype, Twitter, Coindesk and Robinhood. TechCrunch understands this is part of a wider, ongoing fund-raise. 

Propy’s platform uses blockchain technology to, it says, simplify the home purchasing experience and eliminate fraudulent transactions. The idea is to close a traditional real estate deal entirely online. Thus, the offer, signed purchase agreements with Docusign, secure wire payments, and title deeds are all taken care of. Propy claims its platforms saves 10 hours of paperwork, per transaction.

“My vision for Propy is to bring self-driving real estate transactions to the world, with all of the logistics seamlessly executed on the back-end”,  Karayaneva said in a statement. “Our platform offers a terminal to observe transactions in real-time, making the process transparent for real estate executives, title companies, homebuilders, buyers, and REITs. With this new investment we are excited to bring much-needed change to the industry, satisfy consumers and empower real estate professionals all over the world.”

But this is not some out-there, wacky crypto-play. Most of the transactions are done in dollars on Propy, meaning it could be used by mainstream users from day one, as it’s able to process wire transfers via integration with a money transmitter connected to 70 banks.

Speaking to TechCrunch, Karayaneva added: “We do not replace lawyers, but rather help them, closing attorney’s share documents with consumers and agents via Propy. With DocuSign integrated, they can sign the documents on Propy and all parties get notified. In the US, agents have ready forms in Propy to fill out and they don’t need lawyers in a transaction at all.”

Crucially, Propy has an enterprise play going on here as well. Its platform can provide the back-office system to real estate enterprises with real-time transaction reports and automated compliance.

Draper said: “Propy has the potential to transform Real Estate, making transactions and titles simpler, more secure, and less expensive through innovative use of blockchain technology. [It] eliminates fraud and makes the closing process more secure, effective, and streamlined.”

According to one survey, almost one-fifth of millennials have now thought about buying a home become of the lock-downs induced by the Covid-19 pandemic, meaning that many will be looking for an easy way to transact, especially if it has the ease of use Propy has. 

Propy has some fellow-travelers in the blockchain prop-tech space. ShelterZoom is Blockchain platform used for virtual and remote collaboration with offices and clients, while StreetWire is a Blockchain-based data service for the real estate industry.

For several years, blockchain technology has been touted as a way to verify the sale of property. Any kind of property. And so entrepreneurs busily began the process of trying to create a startup that could complete a property deal on the blockchain.

One that stood out from the start was Propy which was started by Natalie Karayaneva, an experienced, real-world property developer who had subsequently joined the blockchain world. Propy’s other co-founder is Denitza Tyufekchieva (pictured). 

Propy has now raised an undisclosed funding round from venture capitalist investor Tim Draper, best known for his early investments into Tesla, Skype, Twitter, Coindesk and Robinhood. TechCrunch understands this is part of a wider, ongoing fund-raise. 

Propy’s platform uses blockchain technology to, it says, simplify the home purchasing experience and eliminate fraudulent transactions. The idea is to close a traditional real estate deal entirely online. Thus, the offer, signed purchase agreements with Docusign, secure wire payments, and title deeds are all taken care of. Propy claims its platforms saves 10 hours of paperwork, per transaction.

“My vision for Propy is to bring self-driving real estate transactions to the world, with all of the logistics seamlessly executed on the back-end”,  Karayaneva said in a statement. “Our platform offers a terminal to observe transactions in real-time, making the process transparent for real estate executives, title companies, homebuilders, buyers, and REITs. With this new investment we are excited to bring much-needed change to the industry, satisfy consumers and empower real estate professionals all over the world.”

But this is not some out-there, wacky crypto-play. Most of the transactions are done in dollars on Propy, meaning it could be used by mainstream users from day one, as it’s able to process wire transfers via integration with a money transmitter connected to 70 banks.

Speaking to TechCrunch, Karayaneva added: “We do not replace lawyers, but rather help them, closing attorney’s share documents with consumers and agents via Propy. With DocuSign integrated, they can sign the documents on Propy and all parties get notified. In the US, agents have ready forms in Propy to fill out and they don’t need lawyers in a transaction at all.”

Crucially, Propy has an enterprise play going on here as well. Its platform can provide the back-office system to real estate enterprises with real-time transaction reports and automated compliance.

Draper said: “Propy has the potential to transform Real Estate, making transactions and titles simpler, more secure, and less expensive through innovative use of blockchain technology. [It] eliminates fraud and makes the closing process more secure, effective, and streamlined.”

According to one survey, almost one-fifth of millennials have now thought about buying a home become of the lock-downs induced by the Covid-19 pandemic, meaning that many will be looking for an easy way to transact, especially if it has the ease of use Propy has. 

Propy has some fellow-travelers in the blockchain prop-tech space. ShelterZoom is Blockchain platform used for virtual and remote collaboration with offices and clients, while StreetWire is a Blockchain-based data service for the real estate industry.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is adding a new way to withdraw funds from your Coinbase account. If you’ve added a compatible debit card to your account, you can transfer USD, EUR or GBP to your bank account nearly instantly.

There are some drawbacks, and the main one is that you’ll pay a lot of fees. In the U.S., Coinbase deducts 1.5% from the transaction, or a minimum $0.55 if it’s a small transaction. In Europe and the U.K., you pay 2% in fees or a minimum fee of £0.45/€0.52.

You also need to have a compatible card. Not all debit cards support incoming transfers. You need to have a Visa card that supports Visa Fast Funds. In the U.S., you can also use a MasterCard card with MasterCard Send.

It’s hard to know whether your bank or card issuer support those features. The best way to figure it out is probably by adding your card to Coinbase and see what Coinbase says.

Coinbase isn’t removing other withdrawal methods. For instance, if you’re looking for a cheaper way to withdraw your funds in Europe, a SEPA bank transfer costs €0.15 per transfer. And Coinbase supports instant SEPA transfers if your bank has enabled that.

The company also lets you link your PayPal account with your Coinbase account. Your funds should hit your PayPal account within a few seconds and there are no fees on Coinbase’s side.

As you can see, there are many ways to move money from your bank account to your Coinbase account. Some of them are slower than others, some of them are more expensive than others. Crypto-to-crypto transactions are a bit simpler by comparison as you only need your recipient’s wallet address to send tokens.

Removing the background of a video you’ve shot can be a real pain if you don’t have the kind of tools and setup used by professionals — and even then it isn’t as easy as it should be. Kaleido’s one-step background removal tool for images, remove.bg, has graduated to full motion video with the company’s new product, Unscreen.

The service itself is simple enough. You drag a video onto the Unscreen webpage, and a few minutes later (depending on the size and resolution of the content) you get it back, with everything gone but the person or object in the foreground.

The company’s first product was remove.bg, which was the same sort of thing but for still images; It was a big hit on Product Hunt. As someone who has to do a bit of work in that line myself now and then, it’s nice to know there’s a very simple, effective web service for snipping out the background quickly and accurately, even though I know I could do the same thing in Photoshop with a bit of work.

After nine months out there remove.bg is serving millions of users monthly, 25,000 of which are actually paying customers. Clearly there is demand for this type of service, and going from stills to video is a natural move, though of course the amount of computing power required is many times more. Kaleido tested the waters with an experimental MVP back in March, and developed Unscreen on the back of that.

The idea is, understandably, to become the go-to tool for creators who have little time to spare or don’t want to deal with heavy-duty options like Premiere. On YouTube and other platforms, speed is paramount if you want to have the first unboxing video or reaction to news, but maintaining production value is important, and people will be put off by janky live background removal that makes the creator look like an amateur.

Speaking of which, Kaleido chose to compete in the offline video processing space because there are entrenched and competitive offerings available from Zoom, Microsoft and others in the video chat space, where “good enough” is just fine. But there are comparatively fewer options for offline video editing, and fewer still that anyone can operate with no expertise at all.

In Hollywood (which is to say in cinema and high-end video production in general) the world of compositing is changing, with LED walls like those used on The Mandalorian an attractive, though expensive and complex, alternative to the standard green screen or frame-by-frame rotoscoping. A simple one-step process to easily remove backgrounds for quick-turnaround shoots, dailies, and other situations could be a godsend for many a VFX tech or production studio.

At all events the market is evolving but clearly exists, as paying customers attest. Kaleido is totally self-funded so far, with no need or desire to take on investors, since its income scales with its expenses and exposure.

As with most media products these days, Unscreen comes in a freemium subscription model. You can try it out with clips up to 10 seconds long for free (but the watermarked, low-resolution files aren’t really suitable for publication), then there are the usual subscription tiers, from $9 to $389 per month depending on how much footage you plan on uploading. 2/3 of its income is from small businesses, but it also counts several major enterprises and media companies among its paying customers.

Of course none of that matters if the product itself doesn’t work. I tested it out on a 5-minute, 720p video of a woman with long hair, and it finished in about 45 minutes. The end result was good, with the hair nicely preserved and only a handful of small glitches that would be easy to paint out if desired. A minute and a half of myself talking into the camera in 1080p took about 33 minutes, and a somewhat clearer 23-second video of a colleague turned out very crisp in about 10 minutes.

You might say, why so long? Zoom does it in real time. Yes, but at a low resolution and quality. It’s not the kind of thing you’d want to put online publicly and permanently, or use in a commercial shoot. From what I could tell, the quality of Unscreen’s removal was considerably better, but not straight-to-final good. You’ll want to watch it first to snag any issues.

Users have the option to render the video directly with a still, video, or solid color background, or a two-channel (alpha and color files) version for feeding into an editor. Other options are limited, so if you want to upscale, resize, re-render with a different color, etc, you’re out of luck. This isn’t an online video editing platform — it’s a web-hosted video effect and should be treated as such.

One thing Kaleido has been careful to demonstrate — and it’s sad to think that this is a differentiator — is that its products work with people whose skin tone and hair confound other solutions. The bare fact that some background removal processes work better with light-skinned people than dark-skinned, or with straight hair than curly, is a sad indicator of a lack of diversity in the training set that produced those tools.

Kaleido’s Bernhard Holzer told me that this was top of mind from the beginning, and that the team has been careful to assemble training data from all over the world to make sure the product works equally well no matter what country or hemisphere the user is in. They keep an eye out for unexpected issues; For instance, it was found that a person with a commencement cap on moving the tassel from one side to the other wasn’t handled well by the system — so they added a bunch of data to fix it. Users are encouraged to give feedback and the system is constantly evolving to take advantage of it.

The company itself is growing, and expects to double in size to about 30 employees this year — and as noted remains funded by its own income. The appetite for web tools is certainly considerable, and until now the idea of a single-click background removal one didn’t exactly make sense. But by being the first Unscreen hopes to become and remain the best.

SpaceX is set to launch a GPS-III satellite for the U.S. Space Force using a Falcon 9 rocket, with a target launch time of 9:43 PM EDT (6:43 PM PDT). That opens a 15-minute launch window, and so far weather is looking relatively good, which will hopefully help SpaceX end a recent string of launch scrubs, including one earlier this week for a reset Starlink mission.

The Falcon 9 used for this launch is a rarity these days – a brand new vehicle, including a booster being used for the first time. The attempt will include a landing of that first stage aboard SpaceX’s ‘Just Read the Instructions’ drone landing ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

There’s a good reason that SpaceX isn’t flying a previously flown booster for this one: The company’s contract with the Space Force stipulates that it can only use new, non refurbished vehicles for National Security Space Launch (NSSL) missions. But they recently announced an updated agreement that will allow SpaceX to use reflown first stages on future flights.

The webcast above will start at around 15 minutes prior to the opening of the launch window, so at around 9:28 PM EDT (6:28 PM PDT).

Long before the coronavirus, Sora, a startup run by a team of Atlanta entrepreneurs, was toying with the idea of live, virtual high school. The program would focus on student autonomy and organize its curriculum around projects that learners wanted to work on, such as finding ways to reduce the impact of climate change on the world. Students and teachers would use Zoom and Slack to communicate with each other, with standups everyday to pulse-check progress.

The pandemic has both undermined and underscored Sora’s focus. On one end, the millions of students that flocked home have shown how hard it is to effectively and accessibly teach in virtual settings. On the other end, the pandemic isn’t going away any time soon. Parents and students are desperate for better options.

Sora co-founder Garrett Smiley thinks he can convince parents to approach virtual high school with optimism, their kids and their checkbooks. It all starts with green algae farms.

Smiley said students turn to Sora so they can “start running instead of walking” in their education. He added how the first students in the program spent time building algae farms in their backyards, working with SpaceX engineers and taking college-level math classes upon entrance.

Smiley, who co-founded the company with Wesley Samples, says that Sora sells best to students who feel stifled or “held back” from traditional educational institutions. Sora’s product, thus, feels more apt for educationally gifted students than students who might need extra help or support.

At Sora’s heart, it is a private school replacement with a project-based curriculum. How it works beyond that is a little bit more confusing to comprehend. Firstly, students upon enrollment embark on two-week learning expeditions, exploring the answers to broad questions like “how do we recreate an alien species.” As time progresses, students are prompted to create their own projects with check-in calls twice a day. Below is an example of a standup:

Beyond the self-directed study, Sora offers a series of Socratic seminars and workshops.

There’s no such thing as science class, but there are workshops such as “the Physics of Sharks.” Here’s an example schedule of a Sora student:

The organization is unconventional. Smiley is insistent on the fact that students complete core subjects and standards needed for high school transcript and graduation, including math, science, English and history. Students are also required to take the SAT or ACT, with practice resources provided by the school.

Sora also has an in-person, optional element. Cohorts will be designed by geography. Students are encouraged to meet up with each other outside of school, form sports teams and attend a Sora-sponsored meet-up.

Outside of learning, Sora created a network of more than 50 career mentors and has a suite of services, such as SAT prep and counselors to aid with the college admissions process.

Smiley says that Sora hasn’t yet graduated a class, so they do not have data on most common exit paths, but he added that the company does not promote college as the only option for students.

Sora is working on partnering with the “next generation of college and university replacements,” he says, such as boot camps or internships.

The goal of Sora is to create a community of self-directed and motivated learners.

“We don’t believe schools are in the business of content creation anymore, just typing in Google search engine search specifically you’ll probably find world-class resources to learn a subject,” Smiley said. “So for us, as to be a super successful school, we knew our role was creating this super high-quality community.”

The company had seven students in its inaugural class last year. Now, more than 39 students participate in Sora School, with three-full time faculty. Monthly tuition ranges from $300 to $800 per student.

Tuition is charged in relation to parent income by using a sliding scale, which Smiley says is part of their strategy in making sure Sora is an inclusive and diverse school.

The diversity breakdown of Sora is 67% white, 15% Hispanic, 13% African American and 5% Asian/Middle Eastern. The gender split male to female is 54% and 44%, respectively, with 2% of students identifying as non-binary.

From a mental diversity perspective, Sora lacks key resources needed to support students with special needs. Virtual high school as a product isn’t built for adoption en masse, but instead works best for students who can afford to partake in self-directed and independent learning. Similar to pandemic pods, it could exacerbate the widening inequalities between wealthy and low-income students.

Smiley says that they “definitely thought about” accessibility and are working on it. Still, he says that Sora is created for “students who perhaps don’t need the extreme structure of an in-person school,” which he estimates to be 95% of the world’s learners.

As Sora scales, a key aspect of its success will be if it is able to balance its hands-on, hands-off approach. The startup announced this week that it has raised a $2.7 million round, led by Union Square Ventures, to bring on more faculty, software engineers for back-end support and managers to work on curriculum development. Other participating investors in the round include Village Global, ReThink Education, Firebolt Ventures, Peak State Ventures, Contrary Capital and angel investor Taylor Greene.

For the past two years, TechCrunch has brought together the best and brightest minds in mobility at for our TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility event. This year, we are adding a little extra twist. On October 5, the day before Mobility 2020, TC is hosting a pitch-off — which only ticket holders can access — highlighting disruptive startups in the mobility space. Startups from all over the world applied and only 10 made the cut.

Founders will pitch on the virtual TC Stage for one-minute followed by an intense Q&A with our judges. After all 10 companies have pitched, the illustrious set of judges – Shahin Farshchi (Lux Capital), Natalia Quintero (Transit Tech Lab), Rachel Holt (Construct Capital) – will select the top five companies that will go on to pitch at the main event on October 7 in front of investors, press and thousands of online viewers.

Check out the featured companies here:

Automotus
BuuPass Kenya Limited
DUCKT
fluctuo
HyPoint
Le Car
Movel AI Pte Ltd
ONO (ONOMOTION GmbH)
PreAct Technologies
Shelf.Network

To see the startups pitching on October 5, you can snag an exhibitor pass for just $25. It’ll get you access to the pitch-off, breakout sessions from Chargepoint and access to visit all of the early stage mobility startups in the expo for all the days of TC Sessions: Mobility. But if you really want to take it to the next level, get an all-access General Admission ticket for $195 that gives you access to the main stage speakers, networking and a complementary Extra Crunch membership (worth $99). But you’ll need to grab your tickets before Monday, October 5th when prices increase!

Tesla delivered 139,300 vehicles in the third quarter, slightly above Wall Street’s expectations and a notable improvement from last quarter as well as the same period a year ago.

Tesla’s numbers in the third quarter marked a 43% improvement from the same period last year when the company reported it had delivered 97,000 electric vehicles. The third quarter figures were 53% higher than last quarter when Tesla was still feeling the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that included suspending production for weeks at its main U.S. factory.

A consensus of analysts from FactSet had expected Tesla to report it had delivered 137,000 vehicles.

Despite the rosy numbers, Tesla shares were down 2.6% Friday morning, a fall likely tied to drops across all of the exchanges caused by the announcement that President Donald Trump had tested positive for COVID-19.

The vast majority of deliveries — some 128,044 — were Model 3 and Model Y vehicles. The remaining 16,992 were its more expensive Model S and Model X vehicles. Tesla doesn’t provide breakdowns of each model separately nor does it give information about regional deliveries.

Tesla produced 145,036 electric vehicles in the third quarter, about a 75% improvement from the last quarter as well as the same period last year. In both Q2 and the third quarter in 2019, Tesla produced about 96,000 vehicles.

This week’s pair of direct listings from Asana and Palantir were historic moments for each firm, but they also served as public business experiments.

For Palantir, the event tested how far corporate governance could be twisted while leaving an underlying remain worth buying in the eyes of public shareholders. And with Asana, its direct listing was a test of what sort of tech company can go public using the mechanism.

---

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

---

Asana is not as well-known as Spotify was during its famous direct listing, nor is it growing as quickly as Slack was when it also went public using the method. But Asana had charm of its own, including good growth. The question surrounding its debut was what sort of price it could secure given its rising losses and operating cash burn, and whether it would prove attractive enough to serve as a positive harbinger for yet-private SaaS startups.

How would investors react when it started to trade? Favorably, as it turns out.

Asana’s results augur well for other SaaS startups that may not find the traditional IPO process enticing but don’t want to wager their public debut on more exotic mechanisms like blank-check companies, especially the bulk of late-stage SaaS unicorns that are still cash-hungry and far from profitable on a GAAP basis.

Asana’s debut, then, is a lit torch for late-stage SaaS startups that have access to private cash and want to trade publicly.

A direct listing success

There was much to like in Asana’s IPO filing, along with a few cautionary notes. To avoid a full recap of our prior reporting, we’ll skate through only the most salient details as reminders.

Bolt Threads has brought together some new and existing partners including Stella McCartney, Kering (the fashion house behind brands like Balenciaga, Gucci, Alexander McQueen and Bottega Veneta), Lululemon and Adidas to create a consortium that will explore the company’s use of mushroom-based leather substitute in products, the company said.

These companies will be among the first to bring products made with Bolt Threads mushroom-based leather substitute to market in 2021, the company said.

“I have always been convinced that innovation is key to addressing the  sustainability challenge that luxury is facing. Finding innovative, alternative materials and fabrics can potentially drastically reduce the environmental impact of our industry over the long term,” François-Henri Pinault, the chairman and chief executive of Kering, in a statement.

The announcement is the culmination of at least two years of work from Bolt Threads, which first announced it would join the hunt for a leather substitute in 2018. The company announced its first product soon after — a $400 “Driver Bag” designed in conjunction with the Portland-based bag company, Chester Wallace.