Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Partipost, a Singapore-based marketing startup that lets anyone with a social media profile sign up for influencer campaigns, has raised $3.5 million in new funding. The round was led by SPH Ventures, the investment arm of publisher Singapore Press Holdings, with participation from Quest Ventures and other investors.

The funding will be used to grow Partipost’s current operations in Singapore, Indonesia and Taiwan, and expand into Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia, other Southeast Asian markets with heavy social media usage. Since launching its mobile app in 2018, Partipost says it has added about 200,000 influencers to its platform, and that over the past 12 months, it has helped conduct 2,500 social media marketing campaigns for more than 850 brands, including Adidas, Arnott’s, Red Bull, Chope and Gojek.

According to benchmark report released in March by Influencer Marketing Hub, the influencer marketing industry is expected to be worth about $9.7 billion in 2020, with companies spending increasing amounts on social media campaigns and working with more “micro-influencers.” To serve them, the report said that more than 380 new influencer marketing agencies and platforms were launched last year, joining a roster of companies that already include AspireIQ, Upfluence, BuzzSumo, SparkToro and Inzpsire.me, to name just a few examples.

While most of these companies focus on helping brands identify the influencers with the widest social media reach, Partipost lets anyone sign up to take part in a campaign.

“Partipost’s main difference is that we believe that everyone can be an influencer,” founder and chief executive officer Jonathan Eg told TechCrunch. “Even if you have 200 followers, you can be one. We want to create a new market that we believe will be the future. Everyone can post on social media, write a review or give some feedback and be paid for it.”

“We want to empower everyone to monetize off their own data and influence and not just allow the big tech companies to do so,” he added.

Aspiring influencers browse brand campaigns on Partipost’s app and apply to take part by submitting a post draft. If the brand approves it, the user can then go ahead and post it on their social media profiles.

The amount of cash they earn is based on how much engagement each post receives. According to the company’s website, most campaigns require a minimum of 200 followers or more, and successful users can earn an average of $5 to $150 per campaign, depending on the brand’s payout structure.

One of Partipost’s selling points for brands is that it enables them to sign up thousands of influencers for a campaign in a single day, help them react quickly to online trends. Part of the funding will also be used to build data tools to help brands match campaigns with Partipost users more efficiently. The company says it expects to increase its base of aspiring influencers to one million within the next 18 months.

As part of the funding, SPH Ventures chief executive officer Chua Boon Ping will join Partipost’s board, while Quest Ventures partner Jeffrey Seah will become an observer.

In a media statement, Chua said, “Social influencer marketing is one of the fastest growing segments within Digital marketing. Hence, we are very excited to lead Partipost’s Series A round to further accelerate its growth. We are impressed by Partipost’s strong traction in Singapore, Indonesia and Taiwan as a young startup and look forward to partnering it to scale to new markets.”

Tesla’s energy storage business picked up steam in the second quarter and even played a minor role in the company’s fourth consecutive quarter of profitability, according to earnings reported Wednesday.

Commercial and residential energy storage sales as well as solar are still mere slices of Tesla’s overall business, which is largely dominated by automotive. However, second-quarter results show some promise for energy storage, particularly Megapack, the utility-scale energy storage product that launched in 2019 and is modeled after the giant battery system it deployed in South Australia.

While Tesla does provide separate deployment stats for solar and energy storage, it combines the two when reporting revenue, making it impossible to fully measure the success of Megapack. However, Tesla made a point in its earnings statement to flag Megapack as a winner in the second quarter and noted that it turned a profit for the first time.

“There’s a lot of demand for the product and we’re growing the production rates as fast as we can,” Drew Baglino, senior vice president of powertrain and energy engineering, said during Wednesday’s earnings call.

For the past four years or so Tesla has been asking investors to view it as an energy company instead of just an automaker. Some analysts think that the real value in Tesla’s business will be when it actually achieves some level of parity between the two sides of the shop — a goal that Musk is also shooting for.

But energy storage and solar has remained in Tesla’s automotive shadow, despite assurances that these business products will eventually be equals. For now, energy storage remains a small, but growing, fraction of Tesla’s revenue.

CEO Elon Musk predicted its energy business would be roughly the same size at its automotive unit over the long term. He did not provide a timeline.

One product that Tesla is hoping will accelerate the growth of its energy storage business is Autobidder, the company’s machine-learning platform for automated energy trading.

Autobidder provides grid stabilization and ensures that things are “super smooth,” Musk said, adding that it is necessary in order to solve the sustainable energy problem

Overall, energy storage deployed was up 61% on a quarterly basis (from 260 megawatt hours to 419 megawatt hours) signs that the business is beginning to recover to levels before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Energy storage deployments in the second quarter were still only 1% higher than the same period last year, illustrating that Tesla still has a ways to go before it hits numbers reached in the third and fourth quarters of 2019.

Meanwhile, Tesla’s solar deployments shrank.

Tesla installed 27 MW of solar in the second quarter, down 23% from the previous quarter and off 7% from the same period last year. Some of that slippage is likely due to the economic slowdown and shelter in place orders that swept the U.S. in response to COVID-19.

Tesla became the leading solar installer in the United States with its acquisition of SolarCity but its position slipped as Sunrun and Vivint Solar surged in the U.S. market. Now, its looking to regain some of that ground with its Solar Roof, a new shingle-like product that has been development and testing for years. Tesla said Wednesday that installations of the Solar Roof roughly tripled in the second quarter compared to the first quarter. However, the company did not provide specific figures, making it unclear just how many Solar Roof installations it has completed.

 

Last week’s hack of over 100 very high-profile Twitter accounts did in fact expose the direct messages of many of those accounts, the company admitted today — including those of an elected official in the Netherlands.

The attack saw numerous popular accounts of celebrities and politicians taken over and tweeting a very obvious Bitcoin scam that nevertheless seems to have netted at least six figures. Twitter said that a “coordinated social engineering attack” gave hackers “access to internal systems and tools.” Verified users were also briefly prevented from tweeting (a change some welcomed).

In tweets and an update to its blog post on the “security incident,” Twitter said that “for up to 36 of the 130 targeted accounts, the attackers accessed the DM inbox.” They are “actively working on communicating directly” with those accounts affected.

Twitter had declined to say in the immediate aftermath of the attack whether DMs had been accessed by the hackers. Twitter’s messaging system is infamously not well encrypted but it was not clear whether the administrative tool reportedly used by the attackers offered access to inboxes.

Apparently whatever method was used, it gave access to DMs some of the time, or perhaps the hackers simply didn’t avail themselves of the opportunity for the remaining 94 accounts they took over. It’s not really clear from Twitter’s announcement. Twitter has previously said that it has “no evidence” that passwords were accessed by the hackers, and nothing in the update contradicts that.

The company’s attempted to place a silver lining on this cloud, saying it had “no indication that any other former or current elected official had their DMs accessed.” Considering the accounts of Barack Obama and Joe Biden were among those affected, that is technically good news.

This is almost certainly not the last we’ll hear from Twitter on this disturbing security breach.

Last week’s hack of over 100 very high-profile Twitter accounts did in fact expose the direct messages of many of those accounts, the company admitted today — including those of an elected official in the Netherlands.

The attack saw numerous popular accounts of celebrities and politicians taken over and tweeting a very obvious Bitcoin scam that nevertheless seems to have netted at least six figures. Twitter said that a “coordinated social engineering attack” gave hackers “access to internal systems and tools.” Verified users were also briefly prevented from tweeting (a change some welcomed).

In tweets and an update to its blog post on the “security incident,” Twitter said that “for up to 36 of the 130 targeted accounts, the attackers accessed the DM inbox.” They are “actively working on communicating directly” with those accounts affected.

Twitter had declined to say in the immediate aftermath of the attack whether DMs had been accessed by the hackers. Twitter’s messaging system is infamously not well encrypted but it was not clear whether the administrative tool reportedly used by the attackers offered access to inboxes.

Apparently whatever method was used, it gave access to DMs some of the time, or perhaps the hackers simply didn’t avail themselves of the opportunity for the remaining 94 accounts they took over. It’s not really clear from Twitter’s announcement. Twitter has previously said that it has “no evidence” that passwords were accessed by the hackers, and nothing in the update contradicts that.

The company’s attempted to place a silver lining on this cloud, saying it had “no indication that any other former or current elected official had their DMs accessed.” Considering the accounts of Barack Obama and Joe Biden were among those affected, that is technically good news.

This is almost certainly not the last we’ll hear from Twitter on this disturbing security breach.

When you need a loan, the cost and speed of getting it can be as critical to get right as the financing itself, a principle that might be even more relevant today in our shaky pandemic-hit economy than ever before. Today, a company that proposes to cut both the time and price for securing financing, with a platform, initially aimed at SMBs, that lets business owners put up their home property as collateral to get the loan, is announcing a funding round to expand its business.

Selina Finance, which provides loans to small and medium businesses in the form of flexible credit facilities — you pay back only what you borrow, and you do that over time, rather than in one lump sum — that are backed by the value of your personal home, is today announcing that it has raised £42 million ($53 million) — £12 million in equity and £30 million in debt to distribute as loans. The company says it plans to raise significantly more debt in the coming months as its business expands.

The funding is coming from several investors, including Picus Capital and Global Founders Capital — two firms that are tied in part to the Samwer brothers, which built the Rocket Internet e-commerce incubator in Berlin. The company’s valuation is not being disclosed.

London-based Selina plans to use the funding in a couple of areas: first, to continue growing its business in the UK, which was founded by Andrea Olivari, Hubert Fenwick and Leonard Benning and launched in June 2019; and second, to start the process of opening up to other markets in Europe.

Selina today focuses on SMEs whose applications qualify as “prime” (as opposed to sub-prime). They can borrow up to £1 million in funds — the average amount is significantly less, £150,000, says Olivari — with interest rates starting at 4.95% APR. That undercuts the rates on typical unsecured loans. Selina is also in the process of getting a license to expand its offering to consumer borrowers, too.

We’ve moved on from the days when property investing was so stable that “safe as houses” was a common expression to mean absolute reliability. But for most people, their properties continue to represent the single-biggest asset that they own and thus become a key part of how a person might construct their wider financial profile when it comes to borrowing money.

Selina’s tech essentially operates a kind of two-sided marketplace: on one hand, its algorithms process details about your property to determine its market value and how that will appreciate (or depreciate), and on the other, it’s evaluating the health of the SME business, and the purpose of the loan, to determine whether the borrower will be good for it. It’s only a year old and so it’s hard to say whether this is a strong record, but Benning notes that so far, no customers have defaulted on loans.

“We have the security of the home, yes,” he said, “but we only take credit-worthy customers to make sure the default scenario doesn’t happen. It’s something that we avoid at any cost. Technically there is a long process that leads to that outcome, but it almost never happens.” He noted that Selina has people on its team who have worked for sub-prime lenders, which gives them experience in helping to determine prime opportunities.

More generally, the idea of leveraging your property to raise capital — say, through a remortgage or loan against its value — are not new concepts: banks have been offering and distributing this kind of financing for years. The issue that Selina is addressing is that typically these deals come with high interest rates and commissions, and might take six to eight weeks from application to approval and finally loan. Selina’s pitch is that it can bring that down to five days, or possibly less.

“It’s critical that we can make a loan in five days to be be nimble and accurate, because this is one area where banks break down,” said Fenwick. “It can take two weeks to arrange for someone to walk around on behalf of a bank to make a valuation. It’s just a backwards and archaic process. We can use big data and tap different areas and dynamics all that into a model to assess the valuation of a property with a low margin of error.”

Selina is not the only tech company tackling this opportunity — specifically, Figure, the startup founded by Mike Cagney formerly of SoFi, is also providing loans to individuals against the value of their property, among other services. And for those who have followed other commerce startups financed by the Samwers, you could even say that there is a hint of cloning going on here, with even the sites of the two bearing some similarities. But for now at least Selina seems to be the only one of its kind in the UK, and for now that spells opportunity.

“Selina Finance is bringing much-needed innovation to the UK lending space by allowing customers to access the equity locked up in their residential property, seamlessly and on flexible terms,” said Robin Godenrath, MD at Picus Capital, in a statement. “The team impressed us with their strong focus on building a fully digital customer experience and have already achieved great product-market fit with their business loan use case. We’re excited and confident that Selina’s consumer proposition will also become an attractive alternative in the consumer lending space.”

Facebook is testing a new design for Facebook Pages that will, among other things, remove the “Like” count, offer a cleaner and more readable layout, and make it easier for those who operate Pages to actually use and manage them. These features and others were initially tested with a small percentage of public figures on the mobile app, but are now being expanded to a broader group of Pages.

Currently, the public figures involved in the test include actors, authors, creators, and a small handful of media entities, like bands and books. If included in the test, the Pages will see an option to opt in to try out the new experience when they’re logged in on mobile.

Facebook says it’s now expanding the test now to include a small percentage of English-language business Pages, as well.

 

The updated design and feature set is meant to make using Pages less complex, something the company understands can be an issue. It also acknowledges the need to simplify the use of Pages now, in particular, with so many people continuing to practice social distancing and choosing to instead connect with their communities online.

The new Page layout is meant to make it easier for visitors to a Page see key information, like the Page’s bio and posts. Notably, the design does away with the Page Likes and the Like button. Instead, the Page will only display a Follow button and follower count.

This change better reflects the Page’s true reach. Many people have “Liked” various Pages over the years, but then unfollowed them from their News Feed as they outgrew their interest. (Or they unfollowed them because they were only liking the Page as a favor, after being sent a request, for example.) The Follows count, meanwhile, indicates how many people are actually receiving the Page’s update in their News Feed.

 

 

Having both options has lead to a more complicated process where users first “like” a Page, which creates an automatic follow. But the person can then back out of that follow by changing their settings at any time. Page owners find this to be confusing and unhelpful because they want to engage with followers who are actually interested in the Page and its contents.

In addition, Page owners will be able to better connect with followers by browsing their News Feed, and then quickly switch between their personal Facebook profile and the public-facing Page (or Pages) they manage when they want to comment or react to posts they come across.

On the Page management side, they’ll be able to more clearly assign and manage admin access permissions based on specific tasks. This will be handled by an updated “Edit Access” screen, where owners can toggle on and off specific management tasks, like who can create Page content, send direct messages as the Page. create ads, respond to comments, and more.

The update additionally aims to make it simpler to navigate to the Page Insights section, which is where Page owners and managers track analytics related to the Page’s performance.

Now, Page owners will be able to get to these insights from the Page itself or even directly from a post. Within the Insights section, they’ll gain access to a handful newly added insights, as well, including top performing posts and a new metric that shows the Page’s audience overlap with its connected Instagram account.

They’ll receive fewer notifications from their Pages, too, as Facebook will now group together relevant and related data, like mentions and post reactions, when sending updates.

The test is running now in the Facebook mobile app but it’s not limited only to those who are seeing the simplified app design (pictured here with the colorful blue background and boxes.)

Facebook isn’t sharing when the update will roll out more broadly as this is still considered a test for the time being.

 

How’s your 60-second pitch working for ya? Could it stand a refresh? Get ready to learn new and better ways to make your pitch more effective at opening doors to opportunity. Step one: register here — it won’t cost you a dime.

Step two: tune in and join us tomorrow, July 23 at 4:30 p.m. ET / 1:30p.m. PT, for the next Pitchers & Pitches competition. We randomly chose five Digital Startup Alley exhibitors to bring the heat — in the form of their best 60-second pitch — in front a panel of expert judges. We’ll name all the names in just a minute.

Note: Anyone can attend Pitchers & Pitches, but only companies exhibiting in Digital Startup Alley during Disrupt 2020 are eligible to pitch.

The invaluable critique, feedback and advice pitchers receive will help them take their elevator pitch to new heights — a great way to prepare for showcasing their tech at Disrupt 2020. Not pitching? No problem — you can apply what you learn to your own business and take your elevator pitch up a few more floors.

Here are five more excellent reasons to tune in.

• Check out the new virtual Disrupt platform before it goes live in September
• Watch and interact with the pitch-off event on the virtual main stage
• Meet and video network with other attendees
• Connect with the five pitchers in their virtual booth in the startup expo
• The viewing audience (that’s you folks) chooses which team wins the pitch-off

The founders of the winning startup get a consulting session with cela, a company that connects early-stage startups to accelerators and incubators that can help scale their businesses.

Okay, let’s get to the judges for this session. We’ve tapped the experienced minds of two TechCrunch editors — Jordan Crook and Alex Wilhelm. Rounding out the panel we have two top featured VCs – Monique Idlett, of Reign Ventures and Jess Morris Jr., General Partner and Founder of Chapter One VC. They’ll drop a whole lot of knowledge to help you impress potential investors and customers alike.

Here are the five pitchers currently warming up in the bullpen and ready to take the mound in tomorrow’s competition.

Mnemonic AI

Timshel

Ivory & Gold

Lamienins

ZeBrand Inc. 

The next Pitchers & Pitches takes place tomorrow, July 23 at 4:30p.m. ET / 1:30p.m. PT. Register here for free. Don’t miss your chance to improve your pitch, bring the heat and unlock more opportunity.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

I’ve learned a lot during this pandemic. About myself, about the world. But perhaps most important of all, I’ve learned the value of a good chair. In normal years I’m rarely home, between work and travel, and as such it’s not something I gave much thought to. So naturally, I spent the first month and half cultivating some serious lower back pain.

The truth of the matter is that we have no idea how much longer we’re going to be dealing with all of this, and as such, I can’t recommend investing in a good chair enough. You can get a pretty solid one for a couple of hundred dollars, if you know where to look. Or there’s always Herman Miller.

The company’s office chairs are pretty universally well-received, and they’ve got a price tag to match. Even with that in mind, however, its venture into the world of gaming chair is still… well, “investment” is certainly one way to put it. The company’s collaboration with gaming peripheral mainstay Logitech is going to set you back a cool $1,500.

According to the companies, the Embody Gaming Chair was designed with help from 30 physicians, with a focus on good posture (something many gamers can likely use) and the ability to sit in one spot for an extended period of time, because, let’s be real here, gamers are gonna game.

There’s padding with “copper-infused particles” designed to cool off the body, and “pixelated support,” which helps more evenly distribute the sitter’s weight. Herman Miller describes that bit thusly:

Thanks to a dynamic matrix of pixels, Embody’s seat and back surfaces automatically conform to your body’s micro-movements, distributing your weight evenly as you sit. This reduces pressure and encourages movement, both of which are key to maintaining healthy circulation and focus.

The chair itself is made up of 42% recycled materials and is up to 95% recyclable — though hopefully you won’t be thinking about that for a while, given the pricing. There’s also a 12-year warranty that should let you hold onto it for a little bit longer. Which, again, will hopefully be a while at that price.

The Embody is going to be the first of a number of collaborations going forward, including a $1,300 gaming-focused desk and a $300 monitor arm. At the end of the day, your lower back will be more thankful than your bank account. 

An antitrust battle is brewing between Microsoft and Slack, Apple continues to defend its App Store policies and Dexterity raises funding for warehouse robots. Here’s your Daily Crunch for July 22, 2020.

PS: I’m going to be on vacation until Wednesday of next week. Until then, I leave you in Darrell Etherington’s capable hands!

The big story: Slack files antitrust complaint against Microsoft

The complaint was filed in the European Union and alleges that Microsoft is unfairly bundling its Teams product with the broader Office suite.

“Microsoft has illegally tied its Teams product into its market-dominant Office productivity suite, force installing it for millions, blocking its removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers,” Slack said in a statement.

When Microsoft first announced Teams in 2016, Slack took out an ad mocking the company and saying it welcomed competition. In April, Microsoft said Teams has grown to 75 million daily active users, compared to the 12.5 million that Slack reported in March.

The tech giants

Apple digs in heels over its App Store commission structure with release of new study — Apple has been commissioning research that defends its 30% commission on App Store purchases.

Spotify and Universal sign new licensing deal, will partner on development of marketing tools — In addition to re-securing Universal’s catalog for the music streaming service, the deal signs up Universal as an early adopter of Spotify’s future products for labels and artists.

Twitter cracks down on QAnon conspiracy theory, banning 7,000 accounts — Moving forward, Twitter said it will be removing QAnon-related topics from its trending pages and algorithmic recommendations and blocking any associated URLs.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Dexterity exits stealth with $56.2 million raised for its collaborative warehouse robots — The startup’s system combines hardware and software for warehouse tasks like bin picking and box packing.

Misfits Market raises $85 million Series B to send you ‘ugly’ fruits and veggies — Users sign up for a weekly produce box and can also add chocolate, snacks, chips, coffee, herbs, grains, lentils, sauces and spices.

YC-backed Glimpse helps Airbnb hosts make money through product placement — Airbnbs could the perfect place to convince someone to try a new mattress or a new kind of coffee.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

What you need to know before selling your company’s stock — Part 3 of financial adviser Peyton Carr’s guide for startup founders.

Messenger tools can help you recover millions in lost revenue — Rank Secure CEO Baruch Labunski says messenger tools have helped a single client recover more than $5 million in lost revenue.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

GEDmatch confirms data breach after users’ DNA profile data made available to police — The company said that during the breach, “Users who did not opt-in for law enforcement matching were also available for law enforcement matching, and conversely, all law enforcement profiles were made visible to Gedmatch users.”

Go SPAC yourself — I’d never heard of SPACs before today, but the latest episode of Equity explains that they could offer a way for companies to go public through a different pricing mechanism.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

Quantum science is just getting started, and although we’ve already hit some important milestones in both theory and practice, basic research is still needed in just about every nook and cranny of the field. To that end the National Science Foundation has dedicated $75M to the establishment of three brand new scientific institutes.

“Through the Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes, NSF is making targeted investments. Within five years, we are confident these institutes can make tangible advances to help carry us into a true quantum revolution,” said the agency’s director, Sethuraman Panchanathan, in a press release.

The three $25M grants aren’t for individual facilities but rather a community or researchers spread out over 16 academic institutions, 8 national labs, and 22 other partners.

Although each grant is meant to advance quantum science and engineering, each institute will be focusing on a different aspect.

• The Institute for Enhanced Sensing and Distribution Using Correlated Quantum States will focus on creating sensors using quantum technology that could be more sensitive and accurate than anything used today. Led by the University of Colorado.
• The Institute for Hybrid Quantum Architectures and Networks will build networks of small-scale quantum processors to design new algorithms and see if they can be used for practical purposes. Led by the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
• The Institute for Present and Future Quantum Computing will work to advance quantum computing into its next form: larger and more error-tolerant platforms that could outpace classical computers in ways that quiet the critics of quantum supremacy theory. Led by the University of California, Berkeley.

The hope, as with much fundamental research work, is to advance the science but also to engage students and graduates in this lively and relatively well-funded field.

The NSF has a number of other opportunities for quantum-related grants and collaborations, including for startups and smaller research projects — you can browse through them here.