Category: UNCATEGORIZED

SpaceX’s Starship prototype is on a streak of successes, at a key moment for the spacecraft’s development. The Starship SN4 (so-named because it’s the fourth full-size prototype) tester managed to pass a test of its Raptor engine firing while installed on the test stand. SN4 previously passed a crucial low temperature pressure test designed to emulate conditions in space, and now seems ready to take on the next phase: a short flight demonstration.

The static test fire occurred late Tuesday night in Texas, where SpaceX is developing Starship at its facilities in Boca Chica. The SN4 Starship prototype had one Raptor mounted – which is far fewer than the six engines that the spacecraft will eventually have once it achieves full operational status. SpaceX is going to be adding more as it continues its testing and development program, however, with one planned for this iteration in order to demonstrate a short, roughly 500 feet controlled flight – similar to the one achieved by the sub-scale Starhopper testing vehicle last year.

That test flight could happen relatively soon, as SpaceX has been pursuing the required clearances to perform it for a few weeks now. Pending successful completion of that test, SpaceX is also already in process of developing the next iteration of its Starship prototype, which is designed to be outfitted with three Raptor engines and perform a higher altitude flight, paving the way fo the first ever orbital demonstration, which the company still wants to achieve sometime later this year.

The stakes for Starship were already high, considering how much SpaceX has invested in the vehicle, and how it hopes to eventually use it to replace both its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launchers for all mission activities. But they were recently raised higher still, as NASA has selected SpaceX and Starship as one of the approved contractors for its human lander development program. That means the agency will be looking to Starship as a means of transporting astronauts to the surface of the Moon, which it aims to do by 2024.

Burst Oral Care, a startup that sells an electric toothbrush boasting charcoal bristles and 33,000 sonic vibrations per minute, has raised a Series C of undisclosed size.

Although we don’t know the amount of the round, the Series C was led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, and Burst says it more than doubled the valuation from its previous round. (Goldman Sachs’ other direct-to-consumer investments include women’s razor startup Billie, which was recently acquired by P&G.)

The startup also says it has hundreds of thousands of subscribers who don’t just buy the $69.99 toothbrush but are also signed up to receive $6 replacement heads every 90 days. Co-founder and President Brittany Stewart argued that the need for a product like this has only grown in recent months, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shut down many dentists’ offices (dentists were facing some of the highest risks of exposure).

“The only care that you’re getting is oral care at home,” Stewart said.

As a result, she suggested that more dentists are pointing their patients to Burst as a way to keep their mouths in good shape until it’s safe to get a professional cleaning. (Meanwhile, some of the factories that Burst works with in China were affected by the pandemic, but Stewart said the company had done enough inventory planning that subscriptions were not affected.)

In fact, although Burst sells its toothbrush through a direct-to-consumer, subscription e-commerce model, it reaches new customers through a network of 25,000 “ambassadors” — namely, dental professionals who get a personalized discount code and referral fee for recommending the product.

This approach has prompted at some skeptical comparisons to multi-level marketing programs, but Burst and its investors have said it’s closer to an affiliate model. And during our interview, co-founder and CEO Hamish Khayat suggested that one of the startup’s real strengths compared other toothbrush and dental care startups is its involvement with the professional community.

“Since we started the company, we’ve been to every single dental show, we’ve been to dental offices, and through that we’ve garnered a very different set of knowledge,” Khayat said.

Stewart added that as Burst develops new products, it’s doing so in consultation with “thousands of dental professionals.” It’s already expanded beyond the toothbrush with products like floss, whitening strips and toothpaste, and Khayat said one of the big priorities in the comings months is launching a lineup of products for kids.

Burst previously raised a total of $20 million in funding. As part of the new investment, Goldman’s Allison Berardo and Hillel Moerman are joining the company’s board of directors.

“We are excited to back Brittany, Hamish, and the rest of the BURST team as they harness the power of the dental community to build a next-generation oral care business,” Berardo said in a statement. “BURST has a clear vision and brand ethos and we believe they have meaningful runway ahead with regard to both their product suite and go-to-market strategy.”

Sequoia’s Roelof Botha, who runs the firm’s US business, has a portfolio that’s rather impressive.

It includes 23andMe, MongoDB, Eventbrite, Evernote, Bird, Square, Tumblr, Unity, YouTube, and Xoom to name just a few. And his perspective on the startup ecosystem as a whole is unique in that Sequoia invests in companies at the very early stage and then follows on with later stage investments as they grow, taking part in the full life cycle of a business.

We’re thrilled to have Botha join an absolutely stacked agenda of speakers — including upcoming investors Hunter Walk and Kirsten Green, as well as past speakers Mark Cuban, Aileen Lee and Ted Wang, Charles Hudson and Mitch and Freada Kapor — for our Extra Crunch Live series, which brings together the top minds in tech with our Extra Crunch audience.

Even for a VC as seasoned and accomplished as Botha, the coronavirus pandemic represents a true Black Swan scenario for the tech ecosystem and the economy at large. And the firm felt it coming.

Sequoia published a memo on March 5 warning of a drop in business activity, supply chain disruptions and a significant softening of private financings. One important line in the memo: “nobody ever regrets making fast and decisive adjustments to changing circumstances.”

But what should those adjustments be? How should business leaders go about adapting their strategies and plowing through? What metrics should those leaders focus on both internally and in the process of fundraising?

We’re going to chat with Botha about all that and much more, including his predictions on economic recovery, the sectors he’s particularly bullish on right now, how he’s evaluating companies during this time, and what Silicon Valley may look like in a post-COVID world. (Full Zoom details below.)

I’m not going to be the only one asking questions — Extra Crunch members can (and should!) ask their own questions on the live Zoom call. Of course, you have to be an Extra Crunch member to do so. Folks who are interested can subscribe right here.

There will also be a live YouTube broadcast of the discussion below for anyone who wants to let it play in the background or watch without participating in the Q&A.

You can find the full details of the Zoom after the jump.

Scheduling details

• Add the call details directly to your calendar with this link.
  
  

The Europas Awards — which have been recognising the hottest European tech startups in since 2009 — are now open for the public voting stage, prior to the formal judging process.

The entries have been sorted and sifted by journalists to compile an editorially-driven ‘long list’ of some of Europe’s most exciting startups and investors.

Voting is now live, so please go and vote!

The public vote will close at midnight (UK time) on MAY 20 11.59 PM (London Time).

The all-star panel of judges will be deliberating on the list and public votes will help to inform the judges’ decision-making process. So get your fans voting and sharing!

The winners will be announced at the online awards ceremony on the evening of 25 June 2020, from London, UK.

The Europas Awards 2019 is sponsored by:

If you are interested in sponsoring The Europas or participating in the workshops as a partner? Get in touch with Claire Dobson // claire@thepathfounder.com.  Interested in speaking on the workshops? Contact Dianne See Morrisson // dianne@thepathfounder.com

THE EUROPAS CATEGORY WORKSHOPS

Of key interest to startups will be the opportunity to attend over 20 live workshops built around the awards categories, to which investors will be invited. That’s 20+hours of programming. Shortlisted companies will be able to pitch live on the platform, with slides. In addition, the “Pathfounder Sessions” will offer exclusive workshops with specially invited guests, aimed at European startups raising money at this time.

Attendees will even be able to network virtually and easily exchange contact details, just as you would at a real-world event.

Virtual attendees will be limited to only 500 people, and will include only Investors, Founders and Senior Executives of mid to late-stage companies as well as some of the newest companies on the scene.

The Europas is always attended by journalists from major tech titles, newspapers and business broadcasters, and will still be.

See below or here for the workshops:

Tue May 26
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas 2020: AgTech + FoodTech Sector Deep Dive + Pitch
(All broadcasts start 2 mins before the session time)

Wed May 27
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas 2020: ClimateTech, GreenTech and Sustainability Tech Sector Deep Dive + Pitch

Thu May 28
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas 2020: CyberTech Sector Deep Dive + Pitch
Panelist: Emily Orton, Chief Marketing Officer and Co-Founder, Darktrace

Fri May 29
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas 2020: EdTech Sector Deep Dive + Pitch

Mon Jun 01
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas 2020: FinTech Sector Deep Dive + Pitch

Tue Jun 02
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas 2020: HealthTech Sector Deep Dive + Pitch

Wed Jun 03
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas 2020: Mobility Sector Deep Dive + Pitch

Thu Jun 04
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas 2020: PropTech Sector Deep Dive + Pitch

Fri Jun 05
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas 2020: GovTech, CivTech, RegTech Deep Dive + Pitch

Mon Jun 08
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas 2020: Retail and eCommerce Sector Deep Dive + Pitch

Tue Jun 09
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas 2020: SaaS and B2B Sector Deep Dive + Pitch

Wed Jun 10
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas 2020: Social Innovation Sector Deep Dive + Pitch

Thu Jun 11
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas 2020: SpaceTech Sector Deep Dive + Pitch

Fri Jun 12
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas 2020: AI Sector Deep Dive + Pitch

Mon Jun 15
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas 2020: Blockchain Sector Deep Dive + Pitch

Tue Jun 16
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas 2020: Quantum Sector Deep Dive + Pitch

THE PATHFOUNDER WORKSHOPS

The Pathfounder Workshops
Prior to the awards there will be special, premium content events The Pathfounder, designed be a “fast download” into the European tech scene for founders looking to raise money or enhance their business.

Wed Jun 17
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas Pathfounder Workshop:
Comms for Startups – What we talk about when we talk about PR

Thu Jun 18
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas Pathfounder Workshop:
Negotiating with VCs

Fri Jun 19
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas Pathfounder Workshop:
Meet the Press

Mon Jun 22
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas Pathfounder Workshop:
Crossing the Chasm: Making the Leap to Series B and Beyond

Tue Jun 23
2:00 PM – 2:40 PM GMT +1 (40 Min)
The Europas Pathfounder Workshop:
How We Scaled: 3 Former Europas Winners Share Their Journey to the Top

Thu Jun 25
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM GMT +1
The Europas Tech Startup Awards 2020

THE AWARDS

The Awards themselves will be announced live on 25th June at an online event which will feature special guests, and live entertainment.

After a decade of identifying the most innovative tech startups in Europe including Spotify, Transferwise, Soundcloud, and Babylon Health, The Europas has shown itself capable of finding Europe’s hottest startups. The Europas Awards is the only independent and editorially-driven event to recognise the European tech startup scene. The winners have been featured in Reuters, Bloomberg, VentureBeat, Forbes, Tech.eu, The Memo, Smart Company, CNET, many others — and of course, TechCrunch.

Timeline of The Europas Awards:

24 April___________Final deadline to submit applications
27 April___________All startups notified of longlist
05 May_____________Public voting begins
17 May_____________Public voting ends
25 May_____________Shortlist announced
26 May – 16 June___Awards Category Deep Dives + Pitches
17- 23 June________Pathfounder Workshops
25 June____________Winners announced / Virtual Awards

The Europas “Diversity Pass”
The awards have set aside a block of free tickets to ensure that pre-seed female and BAME founders are represented at The Europas. This limited tranche of free tickets ensures that it include more women and people of colour who are specifically “pre-seed” or “seed-stage” tech startup founders. If you are a women/BAME founder, apply here for a chance to be considered for one of the limited free diversity passes to the event.

Lastly, remember: stay home, stay safe!

Meet the speakers and judges:

Anne Boden
CEO
Starling Bank
Anne Boden is founder and CEO of Starling Bank, a fast-growing U.K. digital bank targeting millions of users who live their lives on their phones. After a distinguished career in senior leadership at some of the world’s best-known financial heavyweights, she set out to build her own mobile bank from scratch in 2014. Today, Starling has opened more than one million current accounts for individuals and small businesses and raised hundreds of millions of pounds in backing. Anne was awarded an MBE for services to financial technology in 2018.

Bernhard Niesner
CEO and c-founder
busuu
Bernhard co-founded busuu in 2008 following an MBA project and has since led the company to become the world’s largest community for language learning, with more than 90 million users across the globe. Before starting busuu, Bernhard worked as a consultant at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. He graduated summa cum laude in International Business from the Vienna University of Economics and Business and holds an MBA with honours from IE Business School. Bernhard is an active mentor and business angel in the startup community and an advisor to the Austrian Government on education affairs. Bernhard recently received the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2018 UK Awards in the Disruptor category.

Chris Morton
CEO and founder
Lyst
Chris is the founder and CEO of Lyst, the world’s biggest fashion search platform used by 104 million shoppers each year. Including over 6 million products from brands including Burberry, Fendi, Gucci, Prada and Saint Laurent, Lyst offers shoppers convenience and unparalleled choice in one place. Launched in London in 2010, Lyst’s investors include LVMH, 14W, Balderton and Accel Partners. Prior to founding Lyst, Chris was an investor at Benchmark Capital and Balderton Capital in London, focusing on the early-stage consumer internet space. He holds an MA in physics and philosophy from Cambridge University.

Claire Novorol
Co-Founder & Chief Medical Officer
Ada Health
Dr. Claire Novorol is Chief Medical Officer and co-founder of Ada Health. Prior to founding Ada, Claire worked as a Paediatrician within the NHS before specialising in Clinical Genetics. She has degrees in Pathology and Medicine as well as a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Cambridge. Claire is also the founder of Doctorpreneurs, a global community for healthcare professionals interested in innovation and entrepreneurship. She is a member of the Advisory Team Steering Group for the AHSN Network Community for Artificial Intelligence, an Entrepreneurship Expert with the Entrepreneurship Centre at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford and a member of the UK Digital Health Council. In 2018, Claire was featured on Business Insider’s Tech 100: The 100 coolest people in UK tech and Forbes’ Europe’s Top 50 Women in Tech, and she is a regular contributor to Forbes, writing on healthtech.

Clare Jones
Chief Commercial Officer
what3words
Clare is the chief commercial officer of what3words; prior to this, her background was in the development and growth of social enterprises and in impact investment. Clare was featured in the 2019 Forbes 30 under 30 list for technology and is involved with London companies tackling social/environmental challenges. Clare also volunteers with the Streetlink project, doing health outreach work with vulnerable women in South London.

Emily Orton
Co-founder & Chief Marketing Officer
Darktrace
Emily is responsible for global marketing and communications, a role she has held since Darktrace’s foundation in 2013. She is also a commentator on cyber security issues and has appeared in leading media outlets including BBC News, Sky News and Channel 4. Emily has ten years’ experience in technology marketing. She has an MA in Modern Languages from the University of Cambridge.

Holly Jacobus
Investment Partner
Joyance Partners, New York
Holly Jacobus is an Investment Partner with Joyance Partners, investing in companies with the capacity to deliver Delightful Moments in US and EU. Her focus is new foods, consumer packaged goods, sexual wellness, femtech, farmtech and earth-positive manufacturing methods. Holly spent her career growing startups through early stage sales and PR, most recently as the Chief Revenue Officer at Citia, a NYC based global content creation, storage and distribution platform servicing Fortune 500 brands including GE (global), Mastercard (US), Viacom (global), and P&G (global). Holly was raised on a farm in California where she became the first graduate of Stanford University’s online high school (EPGY OHS) and an Academic All American Volleyball Player. She later studied bioengineering at UC Berkeley and French at Georgetown University where she played D1 Volleyball. When Holly isn’t investing or helping companies scale, you can find her backpacking the Sierra Nevadas or skiing the Tetons with her dog Smoky. Recent investments include: Unbound, WholyMe, TeaCrush, Finless Foods, Loli, MushLab, Weller, & Sigrid Therapeutics.

Husayn Kassai
CEO and co-founder
Onfido
Husayn Kassai is the Onfido CEO and co-founder. Onfido helps businesses digitally onboard users by verifying any government ID and comparing it with the person’s facial biometrics. Founded in 2012, Onfido has grown to a team of 300 across SF, NYC and London; received over $100 million in funding from Salesforce, Microsoft and others; and works with over 1,500 fintech, banking and marketplace clients globally. Husayn is a WEF Tech Pioneer; a Forbes Contributor; and Forbes’ “30 Under 30”. He has a BA in economics and management from Keble College, Oxford.

Julia Bosch
Founder and CEO
Outfittery
Originally from beautiful Bodensee, Julia studied business studies in Munich, Madrid and New York. Before starting Outfittery with Anna she led the internationalization of Zalando in Europe.

Julia Hawkins
Partner
LocalGlobe
Julia Hawkins is a Partner at LocalGlobe. Previously, Julia worked at Goldman Sachs, Last.fm, BBC Worldwide and most recently Universal Music where she set up their Corporate Venture arm and led investments in ROLI and Sofar Sounds among others. Julia enjoys working with mission driven founders and has a keen interest in consumer, entertainment, media and health tech from wellness to genomics. She holds a 1st from LSE, is a Kauffman Fellow and Board Trustee of Shwachman Diamond Syndrome UK, a charity dedicated to finding a cure for SDS, a rare genetic disease.

Kieran O’Neill
CEO and co-founder
Thread
Thread makes it easy for guys to dress well. They combine expert stylists with powerful AI to recommend the perfect clothes for each person. Thread is used by more than 1 million men in the U.K., and has raised $35 million from top investors, including Balderton Capital, the founders of DeepMind and the billionaire former owner of Warner Music. Prior to Thread, Kieran founded one of the first video sharing websites at age 15 and sold it for $1.25 million at age 19. He was then CEO and co-founder of Playfire, the largest social network for gamers, which he grew to 1.5 million customers before being acquired in 2012. He’s a member of the Forbes, Drapers and Financial Times 30 Under 30 lists.

Leanne Kemp
Founder & CEO
Everledger
Leanne Kemp is the Founder & CEO of Everledger, a leading emerging technology enterprise that tracks the provenance of high-value assets on a global digital ledger in an authenticated immutable manner. Using her extensive background in emerging technology, business, jewellery and insurance, Leanne is pushing boundaries with Everledger in building a global verification system that asserts transparency along the entire supply chain process. This enables the tracking and protection of high-value assets, consequently mitigating risk and fraud in global marketplaces. Her leadership role in technology has been recognised, winning awards including Innovator of the Year 2018 at the Women in IT Awards (London) as well as being named in UK Business Insider’s 26 Coolest Women in UK Tech 2016 and Brummell Magazine’s Top 30 Female Innovators 2016 in Brummell Magazine. She has also been named an IBM Champion for 2018. Leanne is an appointed member of the World Economic Forum’s Blockchain Council and a Co-Chair for the World Trade Board’s Sustainable Trade Action Group. She is also on the IBM Blockchain Platform Board of Advisors.

Lina Wenner
Principal
Firstminute Capital
Lina joined firstminute from the Boston Consulting Group, where she worked alongside global corporates across Consumer, Energy and Heavy Industrials, advising on digital strategy, restructuring and M&A as a member of the corporate finance team. She gained an MPhil in Management from the University of Cambridge and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, Economics and Statistics from the University College Utrecht, the Netherlands, where she graduated with Summa Cum Laude. At firstminute, Lina leads on sourcing for the Nordic and German-speaking regions and has a strong interest in digital health, robotics, direct-to-consumer brands and femtech. ​She sits as a board ​observer of Evolution AI.

Luca Bocchio
Principal
Accel
Luca Bocchio joined Accel in 2018 and focuses on consumer internet, fintech and software businesses. Luca led Accel’s investment in Luko, Bryter and Brumbrum. Luca also helped lead Accel’s investment and ongoing work in Sennder. Prior to Accel, Luca was with H14, where he invested in global early and growth-stage opportunities, such as Deliveroo, GetYourGuide, Flixbus, SumUp and SecretEscapes. Luca previously advised technology, industrial and consumer companies on strategy with Bain & Co. in Europe and Asia. Luca is from Italy and graduated from LIUC University.

Nate Lanxon (Speaker)
Editor and Tech Correspondent
Bloomberg
Nate is an editor and tech correspondent for Bloomberg, based in London. For over a decade, he has particularly focused on the consumer technology sector, and the trends shaping the global industry. Previous to this, he was senior editor at Bloomberg Media and was head of digital editorial for Bloomberg.com in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Nate has held numerous roles across the most respected titles in tech, including stints as editor of WIRED.co.uk, editor-in-chief of Ars Technica UK and senior editor at CBS-owned CNET. Nate launched his professional career as a journalist by founding a small tech and gaming website called Tech’s Message, which is now the name of his weekly technology podcast hosted at natelanxon.com.

Tania Boler
CEO and founder
Elvie
Tania is an internationally recognized women’s health expert and has held leadership positions for various global NGOs and the United Nations. Passionate about challenging taboo women’s issues, Tania founded Elvie in 2013, partnering with Alexander Asseily to create a global hub of connected health and lifestyle products for women.

Raph Crouan
Venture Partner
C4 Ventures
Raph Crouan is a Venture Partner at C4 Ventures. He’s a Senior Adviser, Investor (>30 companies / managing a portfolio of 25 active companies & 1 exit on angel investment) & International Keynote Speaker (Europas, Pioneers, BDLA, DFF, ArabNet, Unbound, Latitude59, Slush, TechChill, ImpactCEE, LIS, SouthSummit, etc…) with a background in Sales, Marketing & Strategic Biz Dev (>10y @ Apple, Telco etc). He previously founded, fundraised & managed the Startupbootcamp IoT Program until 2018 for which they screened >1500 early stage companies & invested in ~10 every year. Contributor to Forbes, he recently wrote about its closure in early 2019 here. He’s also the President & Founding member for the FrenchTech organisation in the UK, a Founding Management Board Member at the AIOTI (Alliance for IoT Innovation) at the European Commission & a Founding Board Member of the French IoT Think Tank.

Facebook has a new connectivity app called Discover to help those who can’t afford to get online access information on the web.

The service, available through mobile web and Android app, allows users to visit any website in text format (no video, images, audio and other elements that eat up large amounts of data) and consume a few megabytes of internet data.

For Discover, which is part of the company’s Free Basics initiative, Facebook is working with mobile operators in Bitel, Claro, Entel, and Movistar. Discover is currently available in Peru, where it is in the initial testing phase.

In Peru, Discover is offering 10MB of free data to users each day. A Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch that the partner mobile operator determines the daily data allowance, and it anticipates operators in other countries where Discover would be tested to offer up to 20MB each day.

But nothing is set in stone. “We’ll be assessing how people are using Discover and the amount of daily data more during the trials and may work with our operator partners on adjustments going forward,” the spokesperson said, adding that mobile operators will also determine whether support for photos could be added to Discover.

Eliminating support for videos and images means that Discover users would be able to load dozens of websites in a day without running out of their data allowance.

Discover is the latest of a handful of internet connectivity efforts that Facebook has rolled out in recent years. The company maintains Internet.org, which offers unfettered access to dozens of websites in dozens of markets; and Express WiFi, which allows neighbourhood stores to sell small sachet of internet plans to users, in India. Facebook has partnered with more than 10,000 merchants and stores in the country to sell these data plans.

On the Internet .org website, the company also lists Connectivity Lab, as part of which it is “exploring a variety of technologies, including high-altitude long-endurance planes, satellites and lasers” to bring more people online. At least one of those tests has been discontinued.

“During the coronavirus public health crisis, we believe it is particularly important to explore ways to help people stay connected and to increase access to health information and other resources on the internet. As part of our ongoing work to connect people to accurate health information, coronavirus health resources will be highlighted on the Discover homepage,” said Yoav Zeevi, a product manager at Facebook.

Facebook’s Free Basics initiative, which has helped tens of millions of people access internet, has also received scrutiny for its approach and some unintended consequences. Internet.org was banned in India after the local authority in the world’s second largest internet market found that the program violated net neutrality principles.

Zeevi said the company has heard the feedback and responded by allowing people to browse all websites. “Our work on Discover has been informed by our broader efforts — including our participation in the Contract for the Web — to expand connectivity and access to the open web while continuing to protect privacy,” he said.

Critics have argued that programs such as Internet.org, which has been discontinued in some additional markets, have also fuelled violence in real life.

As Facebook expands its connectivity efforts, some other companies have scaled down their efforts. Earlier this year, Google discontinued its free Wi-Fi program called Station that offered internet access in more than 400 railway stations in India, and was available at public places in handful of other markets.

In 2018, Wikimedia shut down Wikipedia Zero, a program that allowed more than 800 million people to access the online encyclopaedia in 72 countries for free.

You can’t make access to your website’s content dependant on a visitor agreeing that you can process their data — aka a ‘consent cookie wall’. Not if you need to be compliant with European data protection law.

That’s the unambiguous message from the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), which has published updated guidelines on the rules around online consent to process people’s data.

Under pan-EU law, consent is one of six lawful bases that data controllers can use when processing people’s personal data.

But in order for consent to be legally valid under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) there are specific standards to meet: It must be clear and informed, specific and freely given.

Hence cookie walls that demand ‘consent’ as the price for getting inside the club are not only an oxymoron but run into a legal brick wall.

No consent behind a cookie wall

The regional cookie wall has been crumbling for some time, as we reported last year — when the Dutch DPA clarified its guidance to ban cookie walls.

The updated guidelines from the EDPB look intended to hammer the point home. The steering body’s role is to provide guidance to national data protection agencies to encourage a more consistent application of data protection rules.

The EDPB’s intervention should — should! — remove any inconsistencies of interpretation on the updated points by national agencies of the bloc’s 27 Member States. (Though compliance with EU data protection law tends to be a process; aka it’s a marathon not a sprint, though on the cookie wall issues the ‘runners’ have been going around the tracks for a considerable time now.)

As we noted in our report on the Dutch clarification last year, the Internet Advertising Bureau Europe was operating a full cookie wall — instructing visitors to ‘agree’ to its data processing terms if they wished to view the content.

The problem that we pointed out is that that wasn’t a free choice. Yet EU law requires a free choice for consent to be legally valid. So it’s interesting to note the IAB Europe has, at some point since, updated its cookie consent implementation — removing the cookie wall and offering a fairly clear (if nudged) choice to visitors to either accept or deny cookies for “aggregated statistics”…

As we said at the time the writing was on the wall for consent cookie walls.

The EDPB document includes the below example to illustrate the salient point that consent cookie walls do not “constitute valid consent, as the provision of the service relies on the data subject clicking the ‘Accept cookies’ button. It is not presented with a genuine choice.”

It’s hard to get clearer than that, really.

Scrolling never means ‘take my data’

A second area to get attention in the updated guidance, as a result of the EDPB deciding there was a need for additional clarification, is the issue of scrolling and consent.

Simply put: Scrolling on a website or digital service can not — in any way — be interpreted as consent.

Or, as the EDPB puts it, “actions such as scrolling or swiping through a webpage or similar user activity will not under any circumstances satisfy the requirement of a clear and affirmative action” [emphasis ours].

Logical reason being such signals are not unambiguous. (Additionally, the EDPB example raises the point of how would a user withdraw consent if such a signal were valid? By scrolling back up the same web page? Obviously that would be ridiculous and confusing.)

Here’s the relevant example from the document:

Again, harder to get clearer than that.

So any websites still trying to drop tracking cookies the moment a site visitor scrolls the page are risking regulatory enforcement. (Reminder: GDPR fines can scale as high as €20M or 4% of global annual turnover.)

Nonetheless, recent research suggests cookie consent theatre remains rife in the EU — albeit, not only limited to the ‘scroll and you’ve been tracked’ flavor of the practice.

Manipulative consent pop-ups and dark patterns also remain a major problem, with such tactics being actively deployed to undermine legal protections for EU citizens’ data.

Still, a lot of clarifying light has now been shone into this area by both regulators and courts, shrinking the operating space for bad faith actors.

A ruling by the European Court of Justice last year made it clear that active consent is required for tracking cookies, for example — also demolished ‘pre-checking’ as a valid way of gathering consent, among other stipulations.

Plus there’s increasing pressure on regulators to actually enforce the rules — with GDPR’s two year anniversary fast approaching.

So where consent is concerned, the rule of thumb, if you need one, is you can’t steal consent nor conceal consent. And if you wish to shortcut consent you can only do so if your shortcut is A) clearly and accurately signposted and B) you offer a similarly easy route to opt-out again. Simples.

You can’t make access to your website’s content dependant on a visitor agreeing that you can process their data — aka a ‘consent cookie wall’. Not if you need to be compliant with European data protection law.

That’s the unambiguous message from the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), which has published updated guidelines on the rules around online consent to process people’s data.

Under pan-EU law, consent is one of six lawful bases that data controllers can use when processing people’s personal data.

But in order for consent to be legally valid under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) there are specific standards to meet: It must be clear and informed, specific and freely given.

Hence cookie walls that demand ‘consent’ as the price for getting inside the club are not only an oxymoron but run into a legal brick wall.

No consent behind a cookie wall

The regional cookie wall has been crumbling for some time, as we reported last year — when the Dutch DPA clarified its guidance to ban cookie walls.

The updated guidelines from the EDPB look intended to hammer the point home. The steering body’s role is to provide guidance to national data protection agencies to encourage a more consistent application of data protection rules.

The EDPB’s intervention should — should! — remove any inconsistencies of interpretation on the updated points by national agencies of the bloc’s 27 Member States. (Though compliance with EU data protection law tends to be a process; aka it’s a marathon not a sprint, though on the cookie wall issues the ‘runners’ have been going around the tracks for a considerable time now.)

As we noted in our report on the Dutch clarification last year, the Internet Advertising Bureau Europe was operating a full cookie wall — instructing visitors to ‘agree’ to its data processing terms if they wished to view the content.

The problem that we pointed out is that that wasn’t a free choice. Yet EU law requires a free choice for consent to be legally valid. So it’s interesting to note the IAB Europe has, at some point since, updated its cookie consent implementation — removing the cookie wall and offering a fairly clear (if nudged) choice to visitors to either accept or deny cookies for “aggregated statistics”…

As we said at the time the writing was on the wall for consent cookie walls.

The EDPB document includes the below example to illustrate the salient point that consent cookie walls do not “constitute valid consent, as the provision of the service relies on the data subject clicking the ‘Accept cookies’ button. It is not presented with a genuine choice.”

It’s hard to get clearer than that, really.

Scrolling never means ‘take my data’

A second area to get attention in the updated guidance, as a result of the EDPB deciding there was a need for additional clarification, is the issue of scrolling and consent.

Simply put: Scrolling on a website or digital service can not — in any way — be interpreted as consent.

Or, as the EDPB puts it, “actions such as scrolling or swiping through a webpage or similar user activity will not under any circumstances satisfy the requirement of a clear and affirmative action” [emphasis ours].

Logical reason being such signals are not unambiguous. (Additionally, the EDPB example raises the point of how would a user withdraw consent if such a signal were valid? By scrolling back up the same web page? Obviously that would be ridiculous and confusing.)

Here’s the relevant example from the document:

Again, harder to get clearer than that.

So any websites still trying to drop tracking cookies the moment a site visitor scrolls the page are risking regulatory enforcement. (Reminder: GDPR fines can scale as high as €20M or 4% of global annual turnover.)

Nonetheless, recent research suggests cookie consent theatre remains rife in the EU — albeit, not only limited to the ‘scroll and you’ve been tracked’ flavor of the practice.

Manipulative consent pop-ups and dark patterns also remain a major problem, with such tactics being actively deployed to undermine legal protections for EU citizens’ data.

Still, a lot of clarifying light has now been shone into this area by both regulators and courts, shrinking the operating space for bad faith actors.

A ruling by the European Court of Justice last year made it clear that active consent is required for tracking cookies, for example — also demolished ‘pre-checking’ as a valid way of gathering consent, among other stipulations.

Plus there’s increasing pressure on regulators to actually enforce the rules — with GDPR’s two year anniversary fast approaching.

So where consent is concerned, the rule of thumb, if you need one, is you can’t steal consent nor conceal consent. And if you wish to shortcut consent you can only do so if your shortcut is A) clearly and accurately signposted and B) you offer a similarly easy route to opt-out again. Simples.

When Allison Rapaport was pregnant for the first time, in 2013, she struggled to find workout classes that didn’t completely go against the advice her OB-GYN gave her.

Conflicted on whether to trust online workouts or just slow down altogether, Rapaport went to a personal trainer, Leah Keller. The result? A program that was clear, straightforward and, most importantly, safe. Rapaport was back to her original stride just weeks after giving birth.

Turns out Keller’s fitness expertise matched well with Rapaport’s business eye, who had recently graduated business school and was the co-founder of Columbia Business Lab. The duo founded Every Mother, an online fitness streaming company that focuses on pre and post-natal care for childbearing women.

The company announced today that it has closed a $1.5 million seed round led by Courtside Ventures, with participation from Serena Williams’ Serena Ventures, Techstars Ventures, The Fund and prominent angels Robin Berzin of Parsley Health and Ilia Papas of Blue Apron.

Every Mother will offer fitness classes to combat one of the most common conditions that affects expecting mothers: diastasis recti, a condition that leads to a protruding waistline, urinary incontinence and back pain. The condition often worsens with traditional exercise, Rapaport said.

The classes range from 10 to 30 minutes and are pre-recorded videos. Customers can sign up for a quarterly or annual subscription and then take a quiz to help Every Mother place them in a corresponding stage. Users can be placed among other women preparing for pregnancy or amid new moms.

Day one starts with educational content and foundational exercises, and users can enter their waist measurements to track progress. As time goes on, educational content regarding how to repair certain conditions becomes less and less, and foundation core exercises get longer. Full body workouts cap every day.

The company claims it is the only clinically proven workout to repair and resolve diastasis recti. Its first study was a retrospective with Weill Cornell published in 2013, and the next study will be a prospective trial done with HSS in NYC.

The company was profitable when it closed the deal in late January. The valuation, per Rapaport, was $9 million post-money. While the pandemic was not part of the company’s fundraising process, COVID-19 surely impacted the startup’s growth: new sign-ups grew more than 50% in April, per Rapaport.

When asked about how Every Mother differs from a free Zoom workout class, Rapaport, who is currently 37 weeks pregnant with child number three on the way, responded, “It isn’t just about being accessible, both from a medium and cost standpoint. It’s about giving women something that is safe, that works, and that they can actually follow and stick to.”

When Allison Rapaport was pregnant for the first time, in 2013, she struggled to find workout classes that didn’t completely go against the advice her OB-GYN gave her.

Conflicted on whether to trust online workouts or just slow down altogether, Rapaport went to a personal trainer, Leah Keller. The result? A program that was clear, straightforward and, most importantly, safe. Rapaport was back to her original stride just weeks after giving birth.

Turns out Keller’s fitness expertise matched well with Rapaport’s business eye, who had recently graduated business school and was the co-founder of Columbia Business Lab. The duo founded Every Mother, an online fitness streaming company that focuses on pre and post-natal care for childbearing women.

The company announced today that it has closed a $1.5 million seed round led by Courtside Ventures, with participation from Serena Williams’ Serena Ventures, Techstars Ventures, The Fund and prominent angels Robin Berzin of Parsley Health and Ilia Papas of Blue Apron.

Every Mother will offer fitness classes to combat one of the most common conditions that affects expecting mothers: diastasis recti, a condition that leads to a protruding waistline, urinary incontinence and back pain. The condition often worsens with traditional exercise, Rapaport said.

The classes range from 10 to 30 minutes and are pre-recorded videos. Customers can sign up for a quarterly or annual subscription and then take a quiz to help Every Mother place them in a corresponding stage. Users can be placed among other women preparing for pregnancy or amid new moms.

Day one starts with educational content and foundational exercises, and users can enter their waist measurements to track progress. As time goes on, educational content regarding how to repair certain conditions becomes less and less, and foundation core exercises get longer. Full body workouts cap every day.

The company claims it is the only clinically proven workout to repair and resolve diastasis recti. Its first study was a retrospective with Weill Cornell published in 2013, and the next study will be a prospective trial done with HSS in NYC.

The company was profitable when it closed the deal in late January. The valuation, per Rapaport, was $9 million post-money. While the pandemic was not part of the company’s fundraising process, COVID-19 surely impacted the startup’s growth: new sign-ups grew more than 50% in April, per Rapaport.

When asked about how Every Mother differs from a free Zoom workout class, Rapaport, who is currently 37 weeks pregnant with child number three on the way, responded, “It isn’t just about being accessible, both from a medium and cost standpoint. It’s about giving women something that is safe, that works, and that they can actually follow and stick to.”

A number of UK entrepreneurs have banded together to survey Angels about their investment strategy. The initiative comes in the wake of the UK government’s “Future Fund” for startups, which has been criticized as being inadequate for the needs of Angel and Seed-stage startups.

The group hopes the survey will give the UK early-stage investment community actionable data in order that they might be able to make critical decisions during the UK’s pandemic lockdown and in a “post-COVID-19” world.

The organizations involved include 7percent Ventures, Forward Partners, Portfolio Ventures, ICE, Foundrs, Punk Money, Humanity, Culture Gene, Barndance, Bindi Karia and Stakeholderz. The initiative was started by Nick Thain the former CEO and co-founder of GiveMeSport, which was acquired last year.

Speaking to TechCrunch, Thain criticized the “Future Fund” introduced by the British Business Bank, saying it “fails to adequately address the funding requirements of startup businesses that fall below the £250k investment threshold. These businesses traditionally rely on investment from the UK’s active Angel investors.” He says the survey will “aim to measure the appetite of investment in early-stage businesses, and what can be done to improve the situation for these organizations.”

Activate our Angels is an anonymous survey designed to answer these core questions: Are Angels Investing now? If not, when will they start again (e.g. Q4 etc)? If yes, then what has changed (e.g. deal terms, valuations, types of businesses)?

Thain explained that founders need to know if they should “triple down on contacting Angels now”; look for a change in the terms of investments; or hold and plan for much later, taking the pandemic era into account.

“We want Angels to know the answer to ‘What are other Angels doing during this crisis?’. Are they following the crowd, or taking their own investment path,” he said.

The survey will run for the next few days and the results will be published on TechCrunch.