Category: UNCATEGORIZED

03 Dec 2019
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‘Carpentry Compiler’ turns 3D models to instructions on how to build them

Even to an experienced carpenter, it may not be obvious what the best way is to build a structure they’ve designed. A new digital tool, Carpentry Compiler, provides a way forward, converting the shapes of the structure to a step-by-step guide on how to produce them. It could help your next carpentry project get off the screen and into the shop.

“If you think of both design and fabrication as programs, you can use methods from programming languages to solve problems in carpentry, which is really cool,” said project lead Adriana Schulz from the University of Washington’s computer science department, in a news release.

It sounds a bit detached from the sawdust and sweat of hands-on woodworking, but they don’t say “measure twice, cut once” for nothing. Carpentry is a cerebral process more than a physical one, and smart, efficient solutions tend to replace ones that are merely well made.

What Carpentry Compiler does is codify the rules that govern design and carpentry, for example what materials are available, what tools can do, and so on, and use those to create a solution (in terms of cuts and joins) to a problem (how to turn boards into a treehouse).

Users design in a familiar 3D model interface, as many already do, creating the desired structure out of various shapes that they can modify, divide, pierce, attach, and so on. The program then takes those shapes and determines the best way to create them from your existing stock, with the tools you have — which you can select from a list.

Need to make the roof of your treehouse but only have 2x4s? It’ll provide a recipe with that restriction. Got some plywood sheets? It’ll use those, and the leftovers contribute to the base so there’s less waste. By evaluating lots and lots of variations on how this might be accomplished, the program arrives at what it believes are the best options, and presents multiple solutions.

“If you want to make a bookcase, it will give you multiple plans to make it,” said Schulz. “One might use less material. Another one might be more precise because it uses a more precise tool. And a third one is faster, but it uses more material. All these plans make the same bookcase, but they are not identical in terms of cost. These are examples of tradeoffs that a designer could explore.”

A 24-inch 2×4 gets cut at 16 inches at a 30-degree angle.

That’s really the same kind of thing that goes on inside a woodworker’s brain: I could use that fresh sheet to make this part, and it would be easy, or I could cut those shapes from either corner and it would leave room in the middle, but that’ll be kind of a pain… That sort of thing. It can also optimize for spatial elements, if for example you wanted to pack the parts in a box, or for cost if you wanted to shave a few bucks off the project.

Eventually the user is provided with a set of instructions specific to their set of tools. And the carpenters themselves act as the “processor,” executing operations, like “cut at this angle,” on real-world materials. In Carpenter Compiler, computer programs you!

The team presented their work at SIGGRAPH Asia last month. You can read more about the project (and learn how you can try it yourself) at its webpage.

03 Dec 2019
UNCATEGORIZED azeeadmin 0 comment

‘Carpentry Compiler’ turns 3D models to instructions on how to build them

Even to an experienced carpenter, it may not be obvious what the best way is to build a structure they’ve designed. A new digital tool, Carpentry Compiler, provides a way forward, converting the shapes of the structure to a step-by-step guide on how to produce them. It could help your next carpentry project get off the screen and into the shop.

“If you think of both design and fabrication as programs, you can use methods from programming languages to solve problems in carpentry, which is really cool,” said project lead Adriana Schulz from the University of Washington’s computer science department, in a news release.

It sounds a bit detached from the sawdust and sweat of hands-on woodworking, but they don’t say “measure twice, cut once” for nothing. Carpentry is a cerebral process more than a physical one, and smart, efficient solutions tend to replace ones that are merely well made.

What Carpentry Compiler does is codify the rules that govern design and carpentry, for example what materials are available, what tools can do, and so on, and use those to create a solution (in terms of cuts and joins) to a problem (how to turn boards into a treehouse).

Users design in a familiar 3D model interface, as many already do, creating the desired structure out of various shapes that they can modify, divide, pierce, attach, and so on. The program then takes those shapes and determines the best way to create them from your existing stock, with the tools you have — which you can select from a list.

Need to make the roof of your treehouse but only have 2x4s? It’ll provide a recipe with that restriction. Got some plywood sheets? It’ll use those, and the leftovers contribute to the base so there’s less waste. By evaluating lots and lots of variations on how this might be accomplished, the program arrives at what it believes are the best options, and presents multiple solutions.

“If you want to make a bookcase, it will give you multiple plans to make it,” said Schulz. “One might use less material. Another one might be more precise because it uses a more precise tool. And a third one is faster, but it uses more material. All these plans make the same bookcase, but they are not identical in terms of cost. These are examples of tradeoffs that a designer could explore.”

A 24-inch 2×4 gets cut at 16 inches at a 30-degree angle.

That’s really the same kind of thing that goes on inside a woodworker’s brain: I could use that fresh sheet to make this part, and it would be easy, or I could cut those shapes from either corner and it would leave room in the middle, but that’ll be kind of a pain… That sort of thing. It can also optimize for spatial elements, if for example you wanted to pack the parts in a box, or for cost if you wanted to shave a few bucks off the project.

Eventually the user is provided with a set of instructions specific to their set of tools. And the carpenters themselves act as the “processor,” executing operations, like “cut at this angle,” on real-world materials. In Carpenter Compiler, computer programs you!

The team presented their work at SIGGRAPH Asia last month. You can read more about the project (and learn how you can try it yourself) at its webpage.

02 Dec 2019
UNCATEGORIZED azeeadmin 0 comment

Why Notion is staying small as its valuation gets bigger

Work tools startup Notion, which recently reached a reported $800 million valuation, isn’t on the verge of a big SoftBank round. In fact, COO Akshay Kothari says the startup has “never felt like if we had more money we could grow faster.”

The company, centered around an app that helps non-developers build collaboration tools, has more than one million users and has scaled its product quickly despite having a team of just 27.

I wrote about the company’s partnership with some of tech’s top accelerators and venture capital firms last month. People are very curious about this small company and how it is run, so here’s more from my recent interview with COO Akshay Kothari in which we discussed the hyped startup’s philosophy of staying small and some of the challenges it may have ahead with this brand of thinking as competitors are raising massive sums.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Notion COO Akshay Kothari

Where does your story begin with Notion? Give me a snapshot of where the team is now.

Akshay Kothari: [Notion co-founders Ivan Zhao and Simon Last] started Notion six years ago and that’s when I invested. I had sold my previous company and I had this newfound money that I didn’t know what to do with. I invested in Notion, so that’s my connection.

We were kind of in research mode for many years trying to uncover what the market needs were. We launched about two years ago; 1.0 was just notes that you could take and a wiki so that you could collaborate with people. And then last year we launched databases and that was the 2.0 version, which kind of seemed like an inflection point, where now you could not only have your notes and your wiki, but also manage your tasks, manage your projects, manage candidates and recruiting, all in a single tool.

Over the last year and a half, the company has grown extremely fast. I joined about a year ago, there were about 10 people at the beginning of this year and now we’re close to 30. It’s still a really small engineering team. We’re 9 engineers, we don’t have any product managers, and we’re 2 designers. So there are about 10 people that are building the product, and 10 people on community and support teams, something that we’ve invested very heavily in. We’re starting to have a sales and marketing team. We have 2 people in marketing and 2 people in sales. That all rounds up to about 27 which is where we are now.

Since you joined do you think the idea has shifted at all?

In terms of the original idea, we were thinking about how people who didn’t know how to code could build things like tools and software that were really useful. I guess the only realization has been that not everyone wakes up wanting to build software, but everyone wakes to solve problems. That was the pivot to focusing on notes, wikis and tasks, because that’s actually something that every team needs.

Are those needs universal for big and small teams?

For the first 100 people you can actually do a lot with Notion. With 30 people, we pretty much run the entire company, except for using Slack for internal communication and Intercom for external communication like talking to customers. Everything else is actually on Notion, like our application tracking system for recruiting inside Notion, our sales CRM is in Notion, our wiki obviously is, our project management as well — no, we don’t use Jira.

For sub-100 businesses, you actually don’t need another tool. When you get to hundreds of people what tends to happens is that some person or some team tends to have a preference for a specific tool. In those situations, Notion plays well with other tools. You can embed things easily. So let’s say Excel or Google Sheets is something that you want to use, you can just embed that inside Notion. So Notion becomes this kind of central nervous system for all of the work that people are doing.

Building on that, one of the things we haven’t done is we don’t do synchronous communication so we’ve stayed away from that because I feel like people like using Slack. On Slack, you can’t actually collaborate on a project… Notion has become a place where you can actually do a lot of your work alongside the synchronous communication.

Work collaboration startup Notion cozies up to Silicon Valley’s top accelerators

So, no interest in building a chat or video chat product?

Not in the near term. I think Slack is one of those enterprise tools that people at companies actually like. For a lot of these other tools, we just have to use it, not because we love it but because that that’s what exists.

What are the barriers for satisfying the customers with 100+ employees?

02 Dec 2019
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Atomico Partner Tom Wehmeier reviews ‘The State of European Tech’ 2019 report

Atomico, the European venture capital firm founded by Skype’s Niklas Zennström, has released its latest annual The State of European Tech report, published in partnership with Slush and Orrick.

As part of the report, the authors surveyed 5,000 members of the ecosystem — including 1,000 founders — as well as pulling in robust data from other sources, such as Dealroom and the London Stock Exchange .

This year, the report reveals that the European tech ecosystem continues to mature and shows no sign of slowing — particularly highlighting the contrast from five years ago when the The State of European Tech report made its debut. Almost every key indicator is up and to the right, except, rather depressingly, diversity.

The data shows, for example, that competition for talent and access to the best founders has increased ferociously. And from a funding perspective, European founders have more choice than ever, especially with U.S. and Asian VC firms investing more and more in the region. Progress with gender diversity stalled, however, such as 92% of funding going to all-male teams.

I caught up with the report’s author Tom Wehmeier, Partner and Head of Insights at Atomico (also sometimes jokingly referred to as the “Mary Meeker of Europe”), where we discuss in more detail some of the key findings and why, it seems, that the rest of the world has finally woken up to Europe’s tech potential.

But first, a few headlines from the report:

  • European technology companies are on track to raise a record 30$B+ in funding in 2019, up from $25B the year before. (Source: Dealroom)
  • Despite failing to match the level of venture-backed exits of 2018, there was a record number of 40 $100M-plus deals as of September 2019, a size that many European tech sceptics did not believe was possible. (Source: Dealroom)
  • A number of multi-billion-dollar non-venture backed companies like Nexi and Trainline made their debut on the public markets.
  • European tech policymaking remains a mystery to many European founders.
  • When asked to describe the top priority of the European Commission in terms of tech policy, 40% of founders and startup employees say they don’t feel informed enough to comment. (Source: survey)
  • Despite this reported lack of awareness on policy issues, all respondents voted EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager as the person who had the most influence on European tech in 2019, good or bad. (Source: survey)
  • European parliamentarians aren’t talking about fintech and digital health, two sectors which investors poured a combined $12.7bn into last year (Source: Politico and Dealroom)
  • Europe’s diversity figures are still grim reading.
  • In 2019, 92% of funding went to all-male teams, a similar level to 2018. (Source: Dealroom)
  • There is still only one woman CTO in the 119 companies (<1%) based on a sample of executives in CxO positions at 251 European VC-backed tech companies that raised a Series A or B round between 1 October 2018 and 30 September 2019 with more than $10M funding, even though 7.5% of software engineers are women. (Source: Stack Overflow, Craft, Dealroom)
  • Looking beyond gender diversity, ethnic minorities in tech experienced discrimination at a much high rate than white peers. (Source: survey)
  • At least 80% of Black/African/Caribbean respondents who reported experiencing discrimination linked it to their ethnicity. (Source: survey)
  • 63% of women VCs reported increased focus on attending events with stronger participation from diverse founders. The corresponding number for men VCs was only 33% of female respondents suggested that their male counterparts are leaving female VCs to fix Europe’s diversity problem. (Source: survey)
  • European founders aren’t just aiming for commercial success — they are trying to solve some of the world’s largest problems.
  • One in five European founders states that their company is already measuring its societal and/or environmental impact. (Source: survey)
  • Only 14% of founders don’t believe it’s relevant for their company. Founders that are women are much more likely to be advanced in their approach to measuring impact. (Source: survey)
  • Employees are placing a greater emphasis on corporate social responsibility, with 57% citing its importance in the State of European Tech survey. (Source: survey)

Extra Crunch: It is 5 years since Atomico published the first The State of European Tech report, which really attempted to capture a data-driven snapshot of the entire ecosystem. What are some of the biggest changes you’ve seen within European tech in the intertwining years or in this year in particular?

Tom Wehmeier: If I think back to when we did the first report, people who believe that Europe could actually be an interesting player in global technology, were largely limited to people who were in the tech industry in Europe itself. If you then fast forward to today, what has clearly happened — and I think 2019 was the year where this really materialized and became part of the narrative — was that belief translating from people on the inside to a bunch of people that were on the outside.

Most obviously has been the strength of interest from from the U.S. and the number of top-tier U.S. funds that are not just increasing their level of investment activity but committing to spending more and more time here on the ground, hiring people, building teams, building a network, and getting to know companies. I think it probably surprises people to know that 19% of all rounds this year will involve at least one U.S. investor in Europe, which is more than double since since the first year we did the report.

I think the other thing, where I come back to this idea that now we have finally convinced a certain group of people about the role that Europe can play, is mainstream institutional investors. I know it is not going to be lost on you, [but] this is going to be another record year for VC fund raising from Europe. And whilst the headline numbers might not be a surprise, I think what should catch people’s attention is that the composition of the LP base here in Europe is now shifting. And finally, there’s an unlocking of institutional investors, [by which] I mean pension funds, funds of funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, who are committing to European VC at levels that are significantly increased and elevated from where they had been in the past. So, if you just take pension funds, we’re going to see close to a billion dollars invested which is up nearly three fold.

It’s a validation of what’s happening around European tech to see that now coming through and I think is ultimately something that helps to build a foundation for the next five years of success. As much as this is a report that’s looking back, it’s also about trying to understand where things go from here.

With regards to the pension funds, do you think that is driven by the general bullishness towards European tech, or do you think it’s more the macro economic reality that maybe other places where they could put their money aren’t very attractive at the moment?

I think it’s really a reflection that there’s a strong level of belief that European venture as an asset class is an attractive investment opportunity. And that is reflected by the numbers. One of the charts that we’ve got in the report is from Cambridge Associates who do the benchmarking for the VC indices… And when you look back over a 1, 3, 5, or even a 10 year horizon, the performance from European VC is demonstrating that this is a place where for anyone building a diversified portfolio, they should have some allocation. I think it’s fundamentally the strength of the investment opportunity. That is the single biggest driver for why you’re seeing this happen.

I think the biggest thing that Europe has been able to prove is that it can take a great idea and turn it into a great company and that company can scale to not just a billion dollar outcome but to a multi-billion dollar outcome and go all the way through into an IPO or into a large scale acquisition. What you’ve seen happen in 2019 is in part A reflection of what happened last year where it was obviously this record year with Spotify, Adyen, Farfetch, Elastic and others that really showed you can go full cycle from start all the way to finish. And that the magnitude of those outcomes can be at a scale that makes them globally relevant.

Are the pension funds shifting their allocation of VC away from other geographies or are they just doing more VC as a whole?

02 Dec 2019
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Kredivo’s parent firm FinAccel raises $90M to expand its credit lending platform in Southeast Asia

Singapore-headquartered FinAccel has secured $90 million in what is the largest funding round for a fintech startup in Southeast Asia as it looks to further grow its credit lending app Kredivo and build more financial services.

The financing round, dubbed Series C, for the three-and-a-half-year-old startup was jointly led by Asia Growth Fund — a joint venture between Mirae Asset and Naver — and Square Peg.

Singtel Innov8, TMI (Telkomsel Indonesia), Cathay Innovation, Kejora Intervest, Mirae Asset Securities, Reinventure, and DST Partners participated in the “oversubscribed” financing round, the startup said.

FinAccel said it has raised more than $200 million in debt and equity this year itself. It has raised $140 million in equity to date.

FinAccel operates credit lending app Kredivo in Indonesia, where it has amassed more than a million customers and is growing by a whopping 300% each year, Akshay Garg, chief executive of FinAccel, told TechCrunch in an interview.

The app enables customers to secure credit between $100 and $2,200. If a customer pays it back in full in a month, FinAccel does not charge them any fee. Else, the service levies an interest rate of 2.95%, he explained.

Kredivo’s payments option is also integrated with a number of e-commerce firms including Lazada and Shoppe and food delivery startups in Indonesia, so users can quickly access the credit to purchase things and pay the app later.

Credit lending apps are increasingly gaining popularity across the globe, but especially in Southeast Asian markets where the penetration of credit card remains low — hence there are very few people with a traditional credit score. This has created an opportunity for startups to look at other metrics to determine who should get a loan.

FinAccel’s team poses for a picture

Garg said Kredivo looks at a range of data points including the kind of smartphone model a customer is using, and the apps they have installed on it. “Basically what we’re doing is almost like creating a user profile about the user using a combination of different data signals that come from the existing credit bureaus, the telcos, the e-commerce accounts, the bank accounts, and the users themselves,” he said.

“All of that creates a 360-degree overview of the customer that helps us determine the risk factors and decide whether to issue the credit,” he added. As of today, Kredivo is only approving about one-third of the applications it receives.

Jikwang Chung, Managing Director of Mirae Asset Capital, the strategic investment arm of Mirae Asset, said in a statement that FinAccel is one of the leading companies in Southeast Asia that is able to “combine a strong technology DNA with top-tier risk management and a bold vision of financial inclusion.”

FinAccel, which works with banks to finance the credit to customers, has evaluated more than 3 million applications to date and disbursed nearly 30 million loans. Garg said the startup is now working to develop more financial services such as low-interest education and healthcare loans.

In the next three to four years, it aims to grow to 10 million users and expand to other Southeast Asian markets such as Philippines.

A handful of other startups also operate in this space in Indonesia. C88, which also offers credit to customers, last year raised $28 million in a financing round led by Experian.

02 Dec 2019
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Omar Hamoui leaves Sequoia for L.A.-based Mucker Capital as it looks to lead more Series A deals

Mucker Capital, the now eight-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based pre-seed startup accelerator and venture outfit, has brought aboard Omar Hamoui, a partner at Sequoia Capital for the last six-plus years, as its third general partner.

Hamoui joins firm cofounders Erik Rannala and William Su, along with several other investors on the team who are collectively working to fund pre-seed, seed stage and — with Hamoui’s help — Series A stage deals in the L.A. region, as well as elsewhere in the U.S.

Mucker’s largest exit to date appears to be the L.A.-based shopping and rewards platform Honey, which was recently scooped up by PayPal for $4 billion in cash; Mucker was its first investor and the company went through its accelerator program. The firm also has stakes in ServiceTitan, NEXT Trucking, Emailage and AuditBoard, among others of its bets.

To find out more about Hamoui’s previously unreported move, we were in touch earlier today with Rannala to catch up a bit.

TC: When did you start talking with Omar? Did this move involve a recruiter? Is he moving to L.A. for the role? 

ER: We’ve known Omar for several years. He had moved back to Southern California — he’s originally from here — and was covering L.A. and the surrounding areas for Sequoia. We got to know him better while collaborating on companies and he ended up leading rounds in two of our portfolio companies, NEXT Trucking and Papaya.

While we’d been historically more focused on pre-seed and seed, we had also been opportunistically investing in post-seed  and early Series A rounds, and contemplating [a new, Series A stage fund that Mucker expects to raise] for some time. Somewhat serendipitously, Omar actually broached the topic with us independently. Given how well we were already working together, it made a lot of sense for him to join the team.

TC: How many funds have you raised to date? What sizes have they been?

ER: We’re currently investing out of our fourth seed fund [which closed last year]. We’d also raised a separate early-stage vehicle to invest in follow-on rounds for our pre-seed and seed investments and other post-seed and early series A opportunities. In total, we raised a little less than $90 million last year.

TC: What will Omar be doing, specifically? How will the general partners divide up your coverage?

ER: Omar will be focused primarily on post-seed and  early Series A investments, writing $2 million to $3 million checks. The three of us will collaborate across all our seed and early stage investments, though Omar will be point person on post-seed, and Will and I will continue to focus on pre-seed and seed.

TC: You’ve been at this for a bit with Mucker Capital. What, if anything, has changed in the last year or two in terms of the L.A. scene?

ER: The L.A. ecosystem has been scaling and maturing rapidly since we started Mucker. The technical labor force here is roughly the same size as the Bay Area, so we’ve always had a wealth of talent. And the quality and sophistication of entrepreneurs and technical talent just keeps getting better and better as the ecosystem grows and evolves. We continually see more people relocating to L.A., and downstream investors spending more time here.

The vast majority of follow on funding here still comes from Bay Area firms, which isn’t a surprise considering so many firms are headquartered there [so] overall, we believe L.A. is still underfunded relative to the size of the ecosystem and the opportunities here. That’s one of the reasons we’ve been expanding the scope of our post-seed and early-stage investing and bringing on a third partner to focus on it. As there are more exits like Honey, Snap, and Oculus, we see more and more people recirculating back into the ecosystem starting companies, angel investing, and joining startups. [In the meantime], indigenous venture capital here in L.A. has lagged behind the growth in number and quality of opportunities that we see.

TC: You aren’t focused exclusively on L.A., correct?

ER: Over the past couple of years, we’ve continued to expand the geographic scope of our investments – finding companies in places where Silicon Valley VC’s haven’t really been investing, especially at the pre-seed and seed stage. Some of our recent investments are Modus  in Seattle, GoFor in Ottawa, Resilia in New Orleans, Pei in Austin, and Kast in San Diego.

TC: What company did Mucker miss, and what did you learn from the experience?

RN: One investment we passed on very early was Dollar Shave Club, and it’s certainly one we regret. We met Michael Dubin a few months after he launched the site and his original marketing video went viral. We obviously didn’t get it. Generic razor blades from Korea? Funny video? Pass!

02 Dec 2019
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The tech of giving back: an interview with Salesforce’s Chief Philanthropy Officer

Scott Bade Contributor
Scott Bade is a former speechwriter for Mike Bloomberg and co-author of More Human: Designing a World Where People Come First.
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Since its founding two decades ago, Salesforce has pioneered the Pledge 1% model of giving back one percent of equity, product, profit, and employee time to charity.

As EVP, Marketing and Chief Philanthropy Officer for Salesforce, Ebony Beckwith is in charge of identifying those service opportunities for more than 40,000 employees while also managing the Salesforce Foundation, which administers millions of dollars in community grants and programs supporting efforts that include workforce education, disaster relief and K-12 education.

Extra Crunch recently interviewed Beckwith about Salesforce’s ongoing efforts to create a culture that gives back and how Salesforce’s use of both a foundation and a fully-integrated business unit dedicated to nonprofits sets it apart from other corporate philanthropy efforts.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Ebony Frelix Beckwith Salesforce

Photo: courtesy Salesforce

Creating a culture of giving back

Extra Crunch: I want to start with what Salesforce is perhaps best known for: the 1% model. So can you talk about what it means and how it’s evolved over the years?

Ebony Beckwith: So literally the 1% model stands for ‘one, one, one:’ 1% of time, 1% of equity, and 1% of our products. Mark came up with this model based on the work he was doing at his previous company and how he really wanted to marry kind of philanthropy and doing good.

He’ll say, “doing well and doing good go hand in hand. You can do both.” [That’s why] when Mark and the founders started this company twenty years ago, they built giving back into our DNA as a core value.

They were betting on the success of our company before we had anything. You know one percent of employee time when you only have seven employees and not that much. But now we have over 40,000 employees, so one percent of their time is a lot. 

How has that model changed over the years?

Obviously, it’s become more formalized. My team and I are responsible for engaging our 40,000 employees to give back in the community in ways that are meaningful for them where they live and work. It’s part of the corporate culture. People know that [when] they come here, it’s part of the job expectation; [they’re] given seven paid days off to volunteer.

But our team is so small and we can’t get to every single employee. So we have a lot of programs and incentives for them to just really feel good about giving back. We match our employees dollar for dollar up to $5,000 to give back to the causes that they care about. [With] one program, Circle the Schools, our executives adopt a school in their local area, meet with the principal of the school and really work with them as community members to find out what’s needed. We have over 120 now.

Can you talk a little bit about about your identity? Do you see yourself as a philanthropy? As a nonprofit? As a company that services nonprofits?

The model has evolved over time. As of July 1st, Salesforce.org is a full vertical business unit within Salesforce. That is a dedicated social impact team working to serve nonprofits and higher ed and education institutions with our technology. 

At the same time, I am CEO of the Salesforce Foundation, which is the 501(c)(3) where we do all of our strategic grant making. We have a separate board that oversees [it and] a separate strategy. We’ll give away $30 million in grants this year.

[That’s also] where the employee giving programs like volunteer time off and employee matching are.

How do you decide on philanthropic areas?

02 Dec 2019
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Finding free money for your social impact startup

David Teten Contributor
David Teten is an advisor to emerging investment managers and a Venture Partner with HOF Capital. He was previously a partner for 8 years with HOF Capital and ff Venture Capital. David writes regularly at teten.com and @dteten.
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Congratulations; you’ve decided to launch a technology-enabled startup with a positive social impact! Nearly every major Silicon Valley venture-capital firm has now invested in a B Corp; maybe you will be one of them!

The bad news: some venture capitalists have a bias against startups with an explicit positive social impact on the grounds that they have a smaller addressable market, and that the founders are not sufficiently focused on creating shareholder wealth. And of course, effectively all venture capitalists are going to require some equity for their investment.

Fortunately, there are a wide range of organizations that specifically want to support you, not just the VC community. I’m now researching non-dilutive funding for Action Tank, a startup I’m gestating to “Make America Functional Again.” I worked with outsourced research firm Wonder* to identify all of the institutions we could who support tech impact startups with cash and community, and in many cases without dilution.  I emphasize my focus here is organizations which are backing for-profit companies and do not take equity. If you think I’ve missed any, please contact me.

I suggest start by looking at the many programs offered by the Fortune 500’s startup networks. In addition, there are many other groups will give you cash, training, and community with few or no strings attached:

Ashoka is a foundation that engages in scouring for and choosing the leading social entrepreneurs across the globe, who it refers to as Ashoka Fellows.

Aspen Tech Policy Hub. “Our program mixes the best of both Washington and Silicon Valley, bringing together stakeholders in policy and technology to train the next generation of policy entrepreneurs. The Aspen Tech Policy Hub is a West Coast policy incubator, training a new generation of tech policy entrepreneurs. We take tech experts, teach them the policy process through an in-residence fellowship program in the Bay Area, and encourage them to develop outside-the-box solutions to society’s problems. We model ourselves after tech incubators like Y Combinator, but train new policy thinkers and focus the impact of their ideas.

Bluhm/Helfand Social Innovation (BHSI) Fellowship. “Since 2011, the Bluhm/Helfand Social Innovation (BHSI) Fellowship has supported the work of 36 innovators—representing the United States as well as 18 other countries on five continents—who address pressing global issues, from healthcare delivery to college persistence and sustainable construction in developing nations.  From the beginning, the BHSI Fellowship has created meaningful, customized experiences for Fellows with connections to influential business and civic leaders, exposure to a broad audience as a speaker at Chicago Ideas, and over $3 million in financial support and in-kind contributions.”

The Clayton, Dubilier & Rice Fund for Entrepreneurial Studies. “The Clayton, Dubilier & Rice Fund for Entrepreneurial Studies supports entrepreneurs attempting to build something that advances business and society in revolutionary ways. “

Columbia Business School Tamer Fund for Social Ventures. Requires Columbia affiliation.

Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation identifies entrepreneurs that display characteristics of “exceptional social leadership through discretion, influence, vision, ambition, intelligence, and follow-through.” 

DV Hacks, led by BCG Digital Ventures: “A 48-hour hackathon to improve how we live, work, collaborate, and learn.”

Echoing Green is a foundation that distinguishes transformational leaders via its fellowships. Their foci include addressing environmental sustainability, racial and gender equity, economic development concerns, etc.

Future Labs Flash Pitch. “For pre-seed and seed companies based in the U.S. and Israel with a focus on AI for social impact,” 

Google AI for Social Good. “Our 20 selected organizations will receive coaching from Google’s AI experts, Google.org grant funding from a $25 million pool, and credits and consulting from Google Cloud. They will also be offered the opportunity to join a customized 6-month Google Developers Launchpad Accelerator program, including guidance from our nonprofit partner, DataKind, to jumpstart their work. We looked for projects across a range of social impact domains and levels of technical expertise, from organizations that are experienced in AI to those with an idea for how they could put their data to better use. “

Google for Startups Accelerator. “Geared toward social impact startups working to create a healthier and more sustainable future, the accelerator provides access to training, products and technical support. Startup founders will work with Google engineers and receive mentoring from over 20 teams at Google, as well as outside experts and local mentors.  

J.M.Kaplan Innovation Prize. “The J.M.K. Innovation Prize seeks out innovators who are spearheading transformative early-stage projects in the fields of the environment, heritage conservation, and social justice. The J.M.K. Innovation Prize is open to nonprofit and mission-driven for-profit organizations that are tackling America’s most pressing challenges through social innovation. In 2019, we will award up to ten prizes, each including a cash award of $150,000 over three years, plus $25,000 for project expenses, for a total award of $175,000. 

Kairos Fellows. “The Kairos Fellowship is designed to build the next generation of leaders in the field of technology, analytics, digital campaigning, and online organizing.”

MIT Solve initiative. “MIT Solve advances lasting solutions from tech entrepreneurs to address the world’s most pressing problems. Solve is a marketplace for social impact: we find tech entrepreneurs from around the world and broker partnerships across our community to scale their innovative work — driving lasting, transformational change.”

Mulago Foundation Rainer Arnhold Fellowship. “The course brings Fellows and faculty together for an intensive week to work on design for maximum impact and scalability. Held in a retreat center on the coast in Bolinas, California, the course gives Fellows the rare opportunity to focus completely on their ideas and a systematic way to apply them.”

Bloomberg New Economy Forum Solutions. “Mike Bloomberg announces an open call for solutions to global challenges facing the new economy. Entrepreneurs, academics, founders, and big thinkers are invited to submit their solutions to societal problems that need momentum, support, and adoption from the private sector.”

Notley Ventures. “Notley is a catalyst for social innovation unlocking opportunities with today’s impact organizations and changing communities.  Our mission is to scale and support businesses, nonprofits, individuals, and programs making positive change in the world.” 

Recurse Center. “The Recurse Center is a self-directed, community-driven educational retreat for people who want to get better at programming.”

Skoll Foundation. “The Skoll Foundation drives large-scale change by investing in, connecting, and celebrating social entrepreneurs and innovators who help them solve the world’s most pressing problems.”

Summit Fellows. “Through a series of invitation-only events, Summit fosters a global community of entrepreneurs, academics, athletes, artists, astronauts, authors, chefs, engineers, explorers, philanthropists, spiritual leaders, scientists, and beyond.”

Thiel Fellowship. “Founded by technology entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel in 2011, the Thiel Fellowship is a two-year program for young people [under 22] who want to build new things. Thiel Fellows skip or stop out of college to receive a $100,000 grant and support from the Thiel Foundation’s network of founders, investors, and scientists.”

Pioneer.app. “Get funding and guidance for your project.  Pioneer is a weekly contest for creative people around the world making their ideas become real.  Winners get $7000, a round-trip ticket to Silicon Valley, access to world-class mentorship, and more.”

Roddenberry Foundation Catalyst Fund. “The Catalyst Fund awards small grants for early-stage, innovative, and unconventional ideas that address serious global challenges.“

SEIF Awards Tech for Impact. The SEIF Awards target European impact entrepreneurs who develop or make innovative use of technologies to tackle social and/or environmental challenges and contribute to the UN SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals]. Each Award grants the winners CHF 10’000. Together with our partners UBS and PwC we provide finalists a unique opportunity to increase their international awareness, gain reputation and present themselves to a top-class jury.

Three dot dash. “Powers the most influential social entrepreneurs between the ages of 13 -19, who have found a solution or innovation to address a basic human need.” 

YC120 (part of Y Combinator). “We’d like to find more curious, creative people who are doing exciting work in emerging fields and give them an opportunity to start building their network. “

VentureCrush FG.  Pando Daily wrote: “VentureCrushFG takes no equity, there is no co-working space, and no demo day. The application process is not advertised. Most applicants come from referrals.” “VentureCrushFG[‘s]…stellar reputation among founders and investors is due, in part, to the success of its most high-flying companies.” “If anything, it’s more of a community than an accelerator, a way to keep a strong network of alumni, mentors and investors connected. Between one and two hundred techies are part of the group, including founders, execs, 40 to 50 VCs and a few dozen angel investors.””

We Company Creator Awards. “This global competition is open to entrepreneurs, performers, startups, and nonprofits-anyone who embodies our mantra, Create Your Life’s Work.”

World Summit Awards for Young Innovators. “WSA Young Innovators is a special recognition for young social entrepreneurs under 30 years of age, using ICTs to take action on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). Together with the WSA winners of each year, they are honored as outstanding digital innovation with social impact.”

You may also want to look at product-based crowdfunding, e.g., Indiegogo*. Other traditional options for non-dilutive financing include grants, loans, SBIR, STTR, vouchers and tax credits, include:

You’re eligible for the many accelerators, as well as specifically the impact accelerators. See Conveners Impact Accelerator Selection Tool. Some specific accelerators:

There are many VCs who have a stated focus on social impact; for full lists see Impact Capital Managers and InvestorFlow. Oliver Libby, Managing Partner, H/L Ventures, notes, “it is important to remember that impact funders occupy the same spectrum of returns as regular investors.  From 100% loss capital (e.g. a grant) to shooting for massive returns (some impact VCs), an entrepreneur can unlock everything in between, including first-loss capital, impact bonds, patient capital from program-related investments and families, and more.  The market is also coming to understand that high impact can sometimes come with high returns too.”   

Rachel Butler, President, Cavendish Impact Foundation (where I’m an advisor), mentioned fiscal sponsorship as an option. “It’s an arrangement where an entity in need of funding (and it can be a for-profit, social enterprise) teams up with a 501(c)(3) that has an aligned mission, and money can be raised through the 501(c)(3) and used to support a specific project being done by the social enterprise.

So, for example, if the 501(c)(3) has in its mission to support improving education, and a for-profit social enterprise is developing an app to help improve access to better education for people in underserved communities, the 501(c)(3) could support that specific project. The 501(c)(3) does have to maintain discretion about how they use the funds (as a safeguard to just having it be an arrangement for funneling philanthropic funds), and there are some other stipulations, but otherwise it’s pretty straightforward.  The ‘Project’ can actually do the fundraising, as an agent of the 501(c)(3), and have the money directed to the 501(c)(3). The project is usually something that has a fairly short timeframe with measurable milestones that indicate progress. The 501(c)(3) also takes an administrative fee for their role in the collaboration.“

Bill Warren, CEO of Peeps Democracy, Inc., wrote, “another type of funding source for a social impact entrepreneur to think about is startup challenges/competitions at her/his alma mater. For example, Duke sponsors a $10,000 annual prize for students, faculty, or alumni working on a startup in the clean energy space. These prizes can be a great source of non-dilutive funding for early-stage ventures and also offer free exposure to academic thought-leaders and other alumni, who might support your startup via mentorship or investment. “

Emily Rasmussen, founder & CEO of Grapevine.org, suggests turning philanthropic donations into for-profit investments using Donor Advised Funds (DAFs), which are like Health Savings Accounts for charitable giving. You make a tax deductible donation into a DAF account, get an immediate tax deduction, and then donate your funds out to charities over time. In the meantime, your funds are invested to help grow your fund, just like an endowment. With some 501(c)(3) DAF sponsors (e.g Impact Assets), after making  a tax-deductible donation into their DAF account, donors can then advise the sponsor to invest their charitable assets into a specific social enterprise deal. These deals are sourced by the donor investor and any future returns go back into the DAF account and are available for future impact investments or charitable donations.

Lastly, I suggest reviewing these links on fundraising:

* I’m an investor in this company.

Thanks to Emily Campbell, Esq., of The Campbell Firm PLLC for helpful input; she has advised me on some legal matters in the past.

02 Dec 2019
UNCATEGORIZED azeeadmin 0 comment

Facebook updates crisis response tools, adds WhatsApp integration

Facebook is expanding Crisis Response, its diaster-reporting and communications feature that’s been used in 300 crises in over 80 countries. The company today is announcing several new features, including WhatsApp integration, support for first-hand information sharing, and an expansion of its “Data for Good” tools for things like better disaster and displacement maps.

Crisis Response originally grew out of a handful of features that help family, friends, and communities support one another in the wake of a disaster. A couple of years ago, Facebook organized these tools — like Safety Check, Community Help, and Fundraisers — all under a centralized “Crisis Response” centralized hub.

Today, Facebook is adding new functionality to Crisis Response which will allow people in affected areas to share first-hand information about what they’re witnessing or think others should know — like building collapses or road closures, for example. This is in addition to their existing ability to share requests or offers for help, as before.

In addition, Facebook Crisis Response now works with WhatsApp. This particular integration is fairly light — the entire feature set isn’t coming to WhatsApp, to be clear. But people can now offer or request help through the messaging app, instead of using just Facebook Messenger.

Facebook’s “Data for Good” tools are also being updated and expanded. Via partnerships with over 100 organizations, Facebook provides disaster maps and relief organizations with information about where to distribute supplies, based on aggregated, anonymized data.

With the updates, Facebook says it’s now able to deliver these updates to state and local officials, as well as federal relief agencies, thanks to partnerships with organizations like Direct Relief and the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS (NAPSG) Foundation.

The company is also improving its disaster maps, following its work with experts on the topic of displacement, like the International Displacement Monitoring Centre. The maps have been corrected for things like commute patterns and tourist populations, Facebook says.

The

02 Dec 2019
UNCATEGORIZED azeeadmin 0 comment

DHS wants to expand airport face recognition scans to include US citizens

Homeland Security wants to expand facial recognition checks for travelers arriving and departing the U.S. to also include citizens, which had previously been exempt from the mandatory checks.

In a filing, the department has proposed that all travelers, and not just foreign nationals or visitors, will have to complete a facial recognition check before they are allowed to enter the U.S., but also to leave the country.

Facial recognition for departing flights has increased in recent years as part of Homeland Security’s efforts to catch visitors and travelers who overstay their visas. The department, whose responsibility is to protect the border and control immigration, has a deadline of 2021 to roll out facial recognition scanners to the largest 20 airports in the United States, despite facing a rash of technical challenges.

But although there may not always be a clear way to opt-out of facial recognition at the airport, U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents — also known as green card holders — have been exempt from these checks, the existing rules say.

Now, the proposed rule change to include citizens has drawn ire from one of the largest civil liberties groups in the country.

“Time and again, the government told the public and members of Congress that U.S. citizens would not be required to submit to this intrusive surveillance technology as a condition of traveling,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union .

“This new notice suggests that the government is reneging on what was already an insufficient promise,” he said.

“Travelers, including U.S. citizens, should not have to submit to invasive biometric scans simply as a condition of exercising their constitutional right to travel. The government’s insistence on hurtling forward with a large-scale deployment of this powerful surveillance technology raises profound privacy concerns,” he said.

Citing a data breach of close to 100,000 license plate and traveler images in June as well as concerns about a lack of sufficient safeguards to protect the data, Stanley said the government “cannot be trusted” with this technology and that lawmakers should intervene.

When reached, spokespeople for Homeland Security and Customs & Border Protection did not immediately have comment.

CBP says traveler photos and license plate images stolen in data breach

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