Category: UNCATEGORIZED

We won’t bury the lead on this news, startup fans. We’re giving all you professional procrastinators and time-delayed decision makers an extra week to pull yourselves together and score early-bird savings on passes to Disrupt Berlin 2019 (11-12 December).

Early-bird pricing remains in play until 15 November at 11:59 p.m. (CEST). Don’t let this last-chance clock run out. Beat the deadline, buy an early-bird pass to Disrupt Berlin and keep up to €500 in your wallet.

One of the many awesome aspects of Disrupt is the opportunity to learn from a range of experts in the startup community. Here are just three examples of the knowledge you can absorb at Disrupt. Want more? Check out the full event agenda.

Series A financing is a tricky beast and one of the hardest deals to close. If this hot topic speaks to you, don’t miss this panel discussion going down on the Extra Crunch Stage.

What does it take to raise a Series A with Jessica Holzbach (founder, Penta) and Louise Samet (partner, Blossom Capital). Venture capital funds have boomed this decade, but raising money is still hard for young companies. What are investors today looking for in teams, metrics and products?

Climate change is arguably the biggest issue of our time. Learn how one founder turned sustainability into her business.

How to Build Sustainability as a Business with Benjamina Bollag (founder, CEO, Higher Steaks). As climate change and the impacts of a warming world become more important for the consumers who are exposed to it, hear from a developer of lab grown meat and others on how to build sustainability as a business.

Who wouldn’t love a crystal ball to divine investment trends for the coming year? We have the next best thing — minus the hocus pocus.

Investing in 2020 with Carolina Brochado (investment director, Softbank Vision Fund) and Tom Hulme (general partner, GV). Nothing changes quite as rapidly as investment trends. Brochado and Hulme will offer perspectives from their experience both on the ground in Europe and from 50,000 feet to talk about what 2020 has in store for startups.

There’s plenty more knowledge and opportunity packed into two short days. Don’t miss the Startup Battlefield pitch competition. Be there as 15-20 stellar startups vie for the Disrupt Cup, investor love, media attention and the $50,000 prize.

Looking for skilled coders to help bring your vision to life? Head to the Extra Crunch stage and watch the Hackathon finalists pitch working products they designed and built in 24 pressure-filled hours. Who will win the $5,000 prize for best overall hack?

Disrupt Berlin 2019 takes place on 11-12 December. This is it — one extra week. You have until 15 November at 11:59 (CEST) an extra week to buy an early-bird pass to Disrupt Berlin. Get ‘er done!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt Berlin 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

This July, Facebook announced a new division called NPE Team which would build experimental consumer-facing apps, allowing the company to try out new ideas and features to see how people would react. It soon thereafter tapped former Vine GM Jason Toff to join the team as a Product Manager. The first apps to emerge from the NPE Team have now quietly launched. One, Bump, is a chat app that aims to help people make new friends through conversations, not appearances. Another, Aux, is a social music listening app.

Aux seems a bit reminiscent of an older startup, Turntable.fm, that closed its doors in 2013. As in Turntable.fm, the idea with Aux is that of a virtual DJ’ing experience where people instead of algorithms are programming the music. This concept of crowdsourced DJ’ing also caught on in years past with radio stations who put their audiences in control of the playlist through their mobile app.

Later, streaming music apps like Spotify experimented with party playlists, and various startups launched their own guest-controlled playlists.

The NPE Team’s Aux app is a slightly different take on this general idea of people-powered playlists.

The app is aimed at school-aged kids and teens who join a party in the app every day at 9 PM. They then choose the songs they want to play and compete for the “AUX” to get theirs played first. At the end of the night, a winner is chosen based on how many “claps” are received.

As the app describes it, Aux is a “DJ for Your School” — a title that’s a bit confusing, as it brings to mind music being played over the school’s intercom system, as opposed to a social app for kids who attend school to use in the evenings.

Aux launched on August 8, 2019 in Canada, and has less than 500 downloads on iOS, according to data from Sensor Tower. It’s not available on Android. It briefly ranked No. 38 among all Music apps on the Canadian App Store on October 22, which may point to some sort of short campaign to juice the downloads.

The other new NPE Team app is Bump, which aims to help people “make new friends.”

Essentially an anonymous chat app, the idea here is that Bump can help people connected by giving them icebreakers to respond to using text. There are no images, videos or links in Bump — just chats.

Based on the App Store screenshots, the app seems to be intended for college students. The screenshots show questions about “the coolest place” on campus and where to find cheap food. A sample chat shown in the screenshots mentions things like classes and roommate troubles. 

There could be a dating component to the app, as well, as it stresses that Bump helps people make a connection through “dialog versus appearances.” That levels the playing field a bit, compared with other social apps — and certainly dating apps — where the most attractive users with the best photos tend to receive the most attention.

Chats in Bump take place in real-time, and you can only message in one chat at a time. There’s also a time limit of 30 seconds to respond to messages, which keeps the chat active. When the chat ends, the app will ask you if you want to keep in touch with the other person. Only if both people say yes will you be able to chat with them again.

Bump is available on both iOS and Android and is live in Canada and the Philippines. Bump once ranked as high as No. 252 in Social Networking on the Canadian App Store on September 1, 2019, according to Sensor Tower. However, it’s not ranking at all right now.

What’s interesting is that only one of these NPE Team apps, Bump, discloses in its App Store description that the NPE Team is from Facebook. The other, Aux, doesn’t mention this. However, both do point to an App privacy policy that’s hosted on Facebook.com for those who went digging.

That’s not too different from how Google’s in-house app incubator, Area 120, behaves. Some of its apps aren’t clear about their affiliation with Google, save for a link to Google’s privacy policy. It seems these companies want to see if the apps succeed or fail on their own merit, not because of their parent company’s brand name recognition.

Facebook hasn’t said much about its plans for the NPE Team beyond the fact that they will focus on new ways of building community and may be shut down quickly if they’re not useful.

Facebook has been asked for comment about the new apps and we’ll update if one is provided.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. YouTube’s homepage redesign focuses on usability, giving you control over recommendations

The company announced an updated, cleaner design that does away with information density, instead giving more room to the videos and their titles. Other new features include an “Add to Queue” option on the desktop, a desktop version of YouTube’s stop suggesting feature and more.

The design changes, which started rolling out yesterday, are focused on the desktop and tablet versions of YouTube, not the YouTube mobile website or app.

2. Disney+ will launch in the UK, Germany, Italy, France and Spain in March 2020

Disney has revealed more details about its international streaming plans. Keep in mind, though, that Disney+ won’t be exactly the same in every territory, thanks to rights/licensing deals that may already be in place.

3. How Microsoft is trying to become more innovative

Across the board, the company is trying to find ways to become more innovative, especially around its work in AI. Microsoft is unusually open about this process, too, and actually made it a focus at this week’s Ignite conference. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

4. Alibaba to invest $3.3B to bump its stake in logistics unit Cainiao

Alibaba is doubling down on its logistics affiliate Cainiao, two years after acquiring a majority stake in the firm. The Chinese giant said today it would invest an additional 23.3 billion yuan (about $3.33 billion) to raise its equity in Cainiao to 63%.

5. Kepler achieves a world-first for satellite broadband with 100Mbps connection to the Arctic

This is the first time there’s been a high-bandwidth satellite network for any central Arctic ground-based use, Kepler says, and this connection isn’t just a technical demo: it’s being used for the hundreds of researchers in the MOSAiC team.

6. Google hires former Disney and Star executive to head its India business

Sanjay Gupta previously served as a managing director at Disney India and Disney-owned Star. He’ll be replacing Rajan Anandan, who left the company to join VC fund Sequoia Capital.

7. Sir Martin Sorrell’s Silicon Valley charm offensive

Sir Martin Sorrell has enjoyed huge success, having built the world’s biggest advertising conglomerate, WPP, over 32 years. He’s also out for revenge, after he left WPP due to allegations of misconduct.

Official word has come down from federal authorities on one potential cause of the mystery illness affecting vape users: Vitamin E acetate, a chemical found in some vaping products that has been demonstrated to linger in the lungs long afterwards. The finding has been called a “breakthrough” but is far from the last word on the situation.

Sadly, the condition has already claimed the lives of at least 39 people, and more than 2,000 cases have been reported collectively from every state but Alaska. At present the only advice offered has been to stop vaping altogether.

In a media teleconference, the heads of the investigation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explained the basis for pointing the finger at Vitamin E acetate. The substance was cited as a possible problem early on but only recent testing has established it as a bona fide suspect, the team explained.

Samples taken from the lungs of 29 victims of the condition were sent in from 10 different states, and vitamin E acetate was found in all of them. “These findings provide direct evidence of vitamin E acetate as the primary site of injury within the lungs,” said Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the CDC .

Although she agreed that this evidence is a “breakthrough,” she noted that it is at present merely a correlative finding — more research is required to establish causation, namely the mechanism of harm, though other work has been done in that area.

“Previous non-CDC research suggests that when vitamin E acetate is inhaled, it may interfere with normal lung function,” she said.

“It’s important to note that these findings do not rule out other possible compounds or ingredients that may be causing these lung injuries,” she continued. “There may be more than one cause of the outbreak.”

Equally important are the statistics involved with the sources of the substances in question. As mentioned earlier in the investigation, a huge proportion of those suffering from this condition were using THC products, and specifically ones acquired through unregulated channels like street dealers.

The vitamin E acetate may have been added for the purpose of essentially cutting the product, Schuchat mentioned in response to a question on the call.

“That may be done for the illicit purpose, or the profit purpose, of diluting the materials, making it look nice and perhaps not having to use as much THC or other active ingredients,” she said.

Other potentially dangerous chemicals have been identified in vape products when heated and aerosolized, including many that even the creators might not have predicted.

Knowing a potential culprit doesn’t get at the heart of the problem, which would be that this chemical (perhaps among others) has already built up over months or years in the lungs of frequent vape users. Treatment is a parallel line of research, but knowing at least one substance responsible should be helpful.

The CDC’s previous advice still stands, the officials noted: They advise avoiding vaping altogether, since there are very few controls at present over what ingredients are allowed in vape products, and what must be declared on the packaging, or indeed whether those declarations are in any way accurate.

Official word has come down from federal authorities on one potential cause of the mystery illness affecting vape users: Vitamin E acetate, a chemical found in some vaping products that has been demonstrated to linger in the lungs long afterwards. The finding has been called a “breakthrough” but is far from the last word on the situation.

Sadly, the condition has already claimed the lives of at least 39 people, and more than 2,000 cases have been reported collectively from every state but Alaska. At present the only advice offered has been to stop vaping altogether.

In a media teleconference, the heads of the investigation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explained the basis for pointing the finger at Vitamin E acetate. The substance was cited as a possible problem early on but only recent testing has established it as a bona fide suspect, the team explained.

Samples taken from the lungs of 29 victims of the condition were sent in from 10 different states, and vitamin E acetate was found in all of them. “These findings provide direct evidence of vitamin E acetate as the primary site of injury within the lungs,” said Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the CDC .

Although she agreed that this evidence is a “breakthrough,” she noted that it is at present merely a correlative finding — more research is required to establish causation, namely the mechanism of harm, though other work has been done in that area.

“Previous non-CDC research suggests that when vitamin E acetate is inhaled, it may interfere with normal lung function,” she said.

“It’s important to note that these findings do not rule out other possible compounds or ingredients that may be causing these lung injuries,” she continued. “There may be more than one cause of the outbreak.”

Equally important are the statistics involved with the sources of the substances in question. As mentioned earlier in the investigation, a huge proportion of those suffering from this condition were using THC products, and specifically ones acquired through unregulated channels like street dealers.

The vitamin E acetate may have been added for the purpose of essentially cutting the product, Schuchat mentioned in response to a question on the call.

“That may be done for the illicit purpose, or the profit purpose, of diluting the materials, making it look nice and perhaps not having to use as much THC or other active ingredients,” she said.

Other potentially dangerous chemicals have been identified in vape products when heated and aerosolized, including many that even the creators might not have predicted.

Knowing a potential culprit doesn’t get at the heart of the problem, which would be that this chemical (perhaps among others) has already built up over months or years in the lungs of frequent vape users. Treatment is a parallel line of research, but knowing at least one substance responsible should be helpful.

The CDC’s previous advice still stands, the officials noted: They advise avoiding vaping altogether, since there are very few controls at present over what ingredients are allowed in vape products, and what must be declared on the packaging, or indeed whether those declarations are in any way accurate.