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1. Zuckerberg misunderstands the huge threat of TikTok

In leaked audio of a Facebook all-hands meeting, Mark Zuckerberg described TikTok as “almost like the Explore Tab that we have on Instagram.” But Josh Constine argues that this is a serious misunderstanding of the app, which is more like a new form of social entertainment.

These distinctions matter because TikTok is a rapidly growing force in social media, a.k.a. a significant threat to Facebook and Instagram. And how can Zuckerberg beat what he doesn’t understand?

2. Microsoft’s latest Surface Laptop arrives in 13- and 15-inch models

Microsoft’s press event is currently underway as I write this newsletter, but it has already announced a new piece of hardware — the latest version of the Surface Laptop, with pricing starting at $999 for the 13-inch model.

3. Court says FCC’s ‘unhinged’ net neutrality repeal can’t stop state laws

The FCC’s repeal of net neutrality rules has been significantly weakened by a federal appeals court, which ruled that the Commission could not preempt state laws like those pending in California. In fact, one judge called the FCC’s logic “unhinged from the realities of modern broadband service.”

4. These are the top Y Combinator companies of all time, based on valuation

In October of 2018, Y Combinator published a mega list of the top 101 companies to have gone through the accelerator, as sorted by each company’s valuation. This morning they updated the list, with Airbnb and Stripe have swapping the top spots.

5. NASA launches a new planet-hunting telescope using a giant balloon

A new telescope will seek out planets that resemble Earth from a height of around 125,000 feet, using special optical technology that will filter out light from the stars they orbit to provide a better view.

6. Where top VCs are investing in edtech

New software, content and financing solutions for learning outside the traditional school system offer the more compelling business opportunities, particularly when it comes to vocational training. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

7. Streamlit launches open-source machine learning application development framework

Streamlit co-founder Adrien Treuille says that rather than building a one-size-fits-all machine learning tool, the key was developing a solution that was flexible enough to serve multiple requirements, depending on the nature of the data involved.

Think Jack Dorsey’s jobs are tough? Well, Tom Chavez is running six startups. He thinks building businesses can be boiled down to science, so today he’s unveiling his laboratory for founding, funding and operating companies. He and his team have already proven they can do it themselves after selling their startups Rapt to Microsoft and Krux to Salesforce for a combined $1.2 billion. Now they’ve raised a $65 million fund for “super{set}”, an enterprise startup studio with a half-dozen companies currently in motion.

The idea is that {super}set either conceptualizes a company or brings in founders whose dream they can make a reality. The studio provides early funding and expertise while the startup works from their shared space in San Francisco, plus future ones in New York and Boston. The secret sauce is the “super{set} Code,” an execution playbook plus technological tools and building blocks that guide the strategy and eliminate redundant work. “Our belief is that we can make the companies 10x faster and increase capital efficiency by 5X,” says Chavez of his partnership with {super}set co-founders Vivek Vaidya, who acts as CTO, and Jae Lim who manages the fund.

Perhaps the question isn’t whether the portfolio startups can scale, but if the humans behind them can without breaking. It’s stressful running a single company, let alone six. Even with the order of operations nailed down, each encounters unique challenges and no plan is one-size-fits-all. But after delivering 17.5X returns to their past investors, Chavez et al. have proven their power to repeatedly recognize what enterprises need and build admittedly boring but bountiful products in customer data management, and advertising yield.

The studio’s playbooks cover business plan formation, pitch strategies, go to market, revenue, machine learning, management principles, HR processes, sales methods, pipeline measurement, product sequencing, finance, legal and more. There’s also shared engineering code it provides, so each startup doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel. “I don’t think you can systemize it but I do think you can accelerate and de-risk the path,” Chavez explains.

Today, the first {super}set company is coming out of stealth. Eskalera helps enterprises retain top talent by tracking diversity and inclusion stats of employees to engage them with career growth and community programs. Chavez is the CEO, but plans to install a new one shortly so he can focus more time on founding more startups. There are 55 employees across the first six companies, with two already generating revenue and most ready to emerge in the next nine months.

The funding for Eskalera and other {super}set companies comes with unique terms. Because Chavez and the team aren’t just board members you hear from once a quarter but “shoulder to shoulder with the entrepreneurs” as he repeats several times in our interview, the startups pay more equity for the cash.

The hope is having seasoned leadership aboard is worth it. “We’re product people first and foremost,” Chavez tells me. “What are you going to build? Who’s going to buy it? Why? What’s the technical moat? We’re not people doing jazz hands.” The {super}set team has plenty of skin in the game, though, given Chavez himself put in a big chunk of the $65 million, and the fund sticks to a standard management fee.

To supercharge the companies, {super}set brings in expert staffers in artificial intelligence, data science and more, who then align with the most relevant companies in the portfolio. They get equity grants to incentivize them to work hard on the startups’ behalf. “The worry I have about these larger funds is that they have an incentive disconnect where they work for the fees” Chavez says. His fund hopes to win through follow-on funding of its winners.

If portfolio companies hit hard times, Chavez says {super}set will stick with them. “My first company had multiple layoffs and a major pivot. We had an enterperenur that walked away. They lost conviction, but we brought that company to an $180 million exit after people said there was no effing way and that felt really good,” Chavez says of staying the course. “The good entrepreneurs have that demonic energy.” But if everyone involved agrees a project isn’t working, they’ll shutter it. “It comes back to opportunity cost of people’s time.”

Chavez has respect for studios taking different approaches, like Atomic in consumer startups, Science in e-commerce and Pioneer Square Labs, which maintains a larger fund staff. “What excites me is moving entrepreneurship a step forward. Why couldn’t we franchise this in other cities?” He hopes {super}set can attract top talent that “just want to work on cool shit” rather than getting sucked into a single company.

Can {super}set keep all the plates spinning and really lower their risk? “If we’re wrong there will be a giant orange plume streak across the sky. The early returns are promising but we have to prove it,” Chavez says. But after accruing plenty of wealth for himself, he says the thrill that keeps him in the startup game is seeing life-changing outcomes for his teams. “I have spreadsheets showing the wealth generated by employees of companies I’ve built and nothing makes me happier than seeing them pay for tuitions, property, or retiring.”

This morning’s Surface event was all about “flow.” It was hard to miss, honestly. The company must have collectively uttered the word dozens of times on stage in New York. The word of the day was largely a reference to cross device ecosystems and a couple of surprise dual-screen products shown off at the end.

Most of the rumors panned out. There was a new version of the Surface Laptop, including the addition of a 15 inch model, along with an updated process and the long-awaited addition of a USB C port. Speaking of, the Surface Pro got one of those, as well, along with improved studio microphones. There’s also the new Surface Pro X, which finds the company utilizes Microsoft’s new SQ1 chip, based on Qualcomm architecture.

In spite of all of the rumors, the company did manage a few genuine surprises. The first of the bunch was the genuinely odd Surface Earbuds. Microsoft’s attempt to differentiate itself from similar offerings by Apple, Google, Samsung and the link is going all in on productivity. The big, round earbuds are designed to specifically to work with Office, including features like audio transcription, Powerpoint slide forwarding and real-time translation. They’ll run $249.

More exciting is the addition of the Surface Neo. The dual-screen PC features some cool keyboard tricks and should be a genuinely fascinating product when it finally launches next holiday, sporting the new Windows 10X operating system. Holiday 2020 will also see Microsoft returning to the mobile space with the arrival of the Duo dual-screen Android handset.

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TechCrunch is excited to announce the 20 startups competing in Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2019. Over the next three days, these elite companies will compete on tech’s biggest stage for the Disrupt Cup, the attention of global press and investors, and $100,000 in equity-free prize money.

The selection process for Startup Battlefield is extremely competitive: The startups you will see on stage are the top 2.6% of those that applied. Startup Battlefield showcases the most promising early-stage and fundamentally disruptive startups.

This year’s batch is no exception. From rapid cholera detection to developer tools, strawberry picking robots to regulatory and compliance monitoring, these startups run the gamut. Companies have made innovations in satellite launch technology, wildfire predictive modeling, financial trading, gardening hardware and even chemical synthesis for rapid medicine creation.

Over the past two months, teams have trained tirelessly with the Startup Battlefield and TechCrunch editorial teams to strengthen their business case, enhance their product framing and create a strong stage pitch. On Wednesday and Thursday, teams have six minutes to pitch in front of a panel of esteemed judges and a live audience, followed by an intensive Q&A session from expert judges. On Friday, a select number of companies will be chosen to compete for the grand prize in the final Startup Battlefield round, with a brand new set of judges.

Startup Battlefield starts today, Wednesday, October 2nd, at 12:50 pm with Startup Battlefield moderator and TechCrunch Senior Writer Anthony Ha.

To learn more about Startup Battlefield, click here. Tune in to watch the TechCrunch Disrupt live stream here.

Let’s check out the companies:

Wednesday 

Session 1: 12:30pm – 1:55pm

Traptic, Delos, Sendmi, Render, Mutiny

Session 2: 4:20pm-5:20pm

OmniVis, Ozone.AI, Leo Aerospace, Molecule.One, *WildCard

Thursday

Session 3: 1:00pm-2:05pm

Osano, Vise AI, Civic Champs, T4, OrbitFab

Session 4: 4:15pm-5:15pm

Avalow, Criam, LifeCouple, StrattyX, *WildCard

Friday

Finals begin at 1:15pm. Companies will be announced online Thursday night.

**As a part of Startup Alley, companies are eligible for the Wild Card. These are the companies selected for Wild Card and can compete in Startup Battlefield. These teams only learned of their acceptance last night.

Google today announced Action Blocks, a new accessibility tool that allows you to create shortcuts for common multi-step tasks with the help of the Google Assistant. In that respect, Action Blocks isn’t all that different from Shortcuts on iOS, for example, but Google is specifically looking at this as an accessibility feature for people with cognitive disabilities.

“If you’ve booked a rideshare using your phone recently, you’ve probably had to go through several steps: unlock your phone, find the right app, navigate through its screens, select appropriate options, and enter your address into the input box,” writes google accessibility software engineer Ajit Narayanan. “At each step, the app assumes that you’re able to read and write, find things by trial-and-error, remember your selections, and focus for a sustained period of time.”

Google’s own research shows that 80 percent of people with severe cognitive disabilities like advanced dementia, autism or Down syndrome don’t use smartphones, in part because of these barriers.

Action Blocks are essentially a sequence of commands for the Google Assistant, so everything the Assistant can do can be scripted using this new tool, no matter whether that’s starting a call or playing a TV show. Once the Action Block is set up, you can create a shortcut with a custom image on your phone’s home screen.

For now, the only way to get access to Action Blocks is to join Google’s trusted tester program. It’s unclear when this will roll out to a wider audience. When it does, though, I’m sure a wide variety of users will want to use of this feature .

 

 

Google today announced a handful of new consumer privacy tools for some of its most-used products, including Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Assistant. The tools are meant to better allow users to control, manage and erase the data Google collects from those who use its services or prevent Google from collecting that data in the first place, in some cases.

In Google Maps, there’s now an incognito mode option that works similar to the one available in the Chrome browser and, more recently, YouTube .

The idea is that there are times when you don’t want Google to track your usage of Maps, including when you search for particular places or travel about town.

There are a number of reasons why you might want to opt-out of being tracked in Maps — maybe you don’t want to taint your personalized recommendations with irrelevant data. Or maybe you don’t like the idea that a company tracks your every search and precise location because that’s just creepy!

You can access incognito mode from the menu that appears when you tap on your profile photo in Maps. The feature launches on Android this month, with iOS to follow.

On YouTube, Google is launching the ability to auto-delete your YouTube History. This means you’re able to set a particular time period where you want to keep your YouTube History available, like 3 or 18 months. The rest will be deleted automatically. You can also choose to manually delete the history, if you prefer.

Finally, Google is addressing privacy issues on Google Assistant.

You’ll be able to ask “Hey Google, how do you keep my data safe?” for more information, though it’s doubtful most consumers will ever think to utter this command.

More importantly, a new feature will launch in the next few weeks that will let you delete your Assistant activity with voice commands.

For example, “Hey Google, delete the last thing I said to you,” or “delete everything I said to you last week.”

If you need to delete further back than a week, the Assistant will direct you to the account settings page where you can make that happen. That’s a bit more cumbersome, but at least it puts the settings in closer reach than before.

The issues around voice assistants’ data retention have recently been making waves, as news media alerted consumers to the fact that these smart assistants weren’t exactly unmanned operations — actual humans were reviewing the retained voice log files in order to tweak and improve the assistants’ reactions and responses.

Google Assistant, Alexa and even Apple’s Siri came under fire for their lack of attention to privacy controls in this emerging area, and all three have now responded accordingly.

Amazon, for example, allows Alexa users to opt out of having recordings manually reviewed, and Apple suspended its Siri response grading program worldwide until it could address the issue with privacy controls through a future software update.

Google says its new voice commands for deleting Assistant data will roll out in the next few weeks, starting in English this week and all other languages next month.

In another security-related improvement, Google also said it would introduce a new feature called Password Checkup to its password manager that will tell you if any of your passwords are weak, whether you’ve reused them across multiple sites, or if Google has discovered they’ve been compromised.

This is a standard feature for most third-party password management apps, so it makes sense for Google to now incorporate it, as well.

Currently, this is available at passwords.google.com, but is being added to Chrome later this year.

At its annual Surface hardware event in New York, Microsoft announced the expected set of updates to its existing hardware lineup. The biggest surprise, though, was surely the announcement of the company’s dual-screen Surface Neo, which will go on sale before the 2020 holiday season. To make this kind of dual-screen device possible, Microsoft also built a new version of Windows 10: Windows 10X.

Microsoft says it’s announcing the hardware and software today in order to get it into the hands of developers ahead of the launch.

Just like the HoloLens, Surface Hub and Xbox use the core technologies of Windows 10, the dual-screen Surface, too, will run this new version, as will dual-screen devices from Dell, HP, Lenovo and other partners. Unsurprisingly, these devices — and Windows 10X — will feature improved pen support (and a virtual keyboard).

Windows 10X is the result of Microsoft’s work on making Windows 10 more modular so that it can take pieces of the operating system and use them as needed. As Microsoft told us ahead of today’s announcement, Windows 10X is essentially the continuation of the architecture changes it made to Windows 10 that allowed it to make the HoloLens, Surface Hub and Xbox versions possible.

The company stresses that this is not a new operating system but takes Windows 10 as you know it today and makes it more adaptable to other form factors. This also means that you won’t be able to buy yourself a stand-alone copy of Windows 10X. The only way to get it is on these new dual-screen devices.

By modularizing the Windows 10 core technology, including the user interface, Microsoft can do things like taking the Start menu and display that in HoloLens. Windows 10X does similar things and will allow you to put the taskbar or start menu on either panel as needed. Similarly, you’ll be able to use the Start menu on either panel, depending on what’s happening on the other panel.

The overall design doesn’t look all that different from the Windows 10 you are probably familiar with already, but it obviously has all of the functionality to move applications between devices — or span them across screens. The device reflows it automatically, no matter how you hold the device. Windows 10X also makes affordances for the Neo’s keyboard cover, which covers about half of the screen and then reveals what Microsoft, for some reason, calls the ‘WonderBar,’ with a virtual trackpad.

But this modularization effort also allows Microsoft to do some smart things under the hood. So while a regular PC will boot up and immediately run all of the services necessary to run a Win32 application, for example, Windows 10X won’t load this subsystem until it’s needed. This, the company argues, allows it to be very efficient with the resources available on the machine and extend its battery life significantly.

Unlike efforts like Windows 10 S, which took Windows 10 and only allowed you to run a small set of applications, Windows 10X will let you run any application you want, no matter whether that’s a web app, UWP or Win32 application. Microsoft says that developers won’t have to do anything specific to make their applications ready for Windows 10X. Windows 10X will do that for them.

Some of this work will surely flow back into the mainstream PC version of Windows 10. In some way, this has already happened with some of the work Microsoft did on the graphics capabilities of Windows 10 for Xbox flowing back to the PC.

Rumored in 2008 and officially canceled two years later, Courier is one of the great “what ifs” of the consumer hardware space. Somewhere out there is an alternative timeline where the dual screen booklet PC preempted the whole two-in-one tablet/PC boom.

In this universe, however, the dual screen PC has been more of a curiosity. A smatter of companies like Lenovo have experimented with the form factor to limited success. At this morning’s Surface event in New York City, however, Microsoft finally got around to planting its flag.

The software giant teased a long-rumored dual-screen upcoming Surface device at the event. The good news is that it’s real and it’s actually coming to market. The bad news is that, after years of anticipation, it’s still taking its time. The device isn’t slated to arrive until sometime around the holiday season 2020.

Why the long lead time? Simple: the company wanted to head off any additional leaks. Microsoft’s being pretty transparent in the fact that it’s got a lot of work to do to nail down the specifics of the form factor. It knows that consumers are looking for some sort of miracle device that can offer a larger screen, slimmer footprint and longer battery life and believes that a dual screen product might crack that code.

But much of the next year will require real world testing, and it’s essential accepting that a leak a is an inevitability, so it’s taking some of the air out of those tires by announcing its intentions on its own terms. It’s also announcing that a handful of top manufactures will be creating devices for the new form factor, including HP, Dell, Lenovo and ASUS. As with the tablet category, Microsoft will be competing with them with its own Surface hardware.

The new form factor will require a forked version of Windows 10 — specifically Windows 10 X. Like the tailored versions of the operating systems found on Hololens, Xbox and other Surface products, 10 X has the same underlying technologies as standard Windows 10 (including pen and mouse input) with some changes specifically for the new hardware. Here that means a more modular approach to things like the taskbar, which can show up on either or both displays. Microsoft is quick to point out, however, that the version with only exist on these devices.

Expect there to be some variation between pricing on the devices, along with things like screen size. Each company will be taking unique approaches to the category. As Microsoft puts it, it will let the market place vote. In other words, the best implementation will ultimately be determined by consumer purchases.

Based on the brief demo, Microsoft’s implementation is actually pretty impressive. While the second screen will almost certainly by awful to type on, there’s a flip up keyboard that overlays on top. The magnetic keyboard can slide up and down as well, with space on the bottom for a trackpad or something akin to a touchbar on the top — er, “Wonderbar.”

The keyboard wirelessly charges and connects via bluetooth. As a nice added feature, you can actually pull it off and use it separately from the product. Currently, the product is 5.3mm thin when open, something accomplished, in part, with the creation of some custom silicon.

The screens are both nine inches. Obviously the company hasn’t actually introduced a foldable display a la Samsung’s device, so there’s a small bezel between the two, meaning there’s limited flow between the two. There are also fairly large bezels on the top and bottom. Of course, with this product still a year off, there’s probably plenty of changes likely to come in the next year and change.

The Matrix name, likely, will change as well. For now, Microsoft’s getting the Neo in the hands of developers to help creating customized apps for the two screen experience.

 

In spite of everything else leaking out at this morning’s Surface event, Microsoft still able to save one big surprise for the end. The company’s getting back into phones. Not only that, it’s introducing a foldable. Though, as with the Neo, the Duo doesn’t actually have a foldable display like the Galaxy Fold. Instead, it’s two connected displays, more akin to the ZTE Axon M.

Interestingly (not that it’s not all interesting, of course), Microsoft is teaming with Google on this one. Rather than porting or forking Windows 10 (a la Windows 10 X introduced for the Neo), the company’s using Android here.

Developing…

Canadian technology holding company Tiny, home to companies like Dribble, Flow and Unicorn Hunt, today announced that it has acquired Meteor, the JavaScript-centric open-source app platform.

Meteor launched back in 2011 and while it was a developer darling for a while, its momentum stalled a bit in recent years as other technologies rose to the forefront.

Meteor promises developers that they can build their applications’ front- and back-ends as JavaScript apps and also offers Galaxy, a turnkey hosting service for these apps.

Meteor founder Geoff Schmidt will continue to focus on Apollo GraphQL, a platform for making GraphQL run at scale.

“We found ourselves in an interesting situation where we had two great products, Apollo and Meteor, living under the same roof,” Schmidt told me. “Apollo started growing so quickly that the right thing always seemed to put our incremental hours or dollars toward Apollo. So over time it became clear that they needed to be under different roofs so that Meteor wouldn’t get starved for resources and would have the room it needed to grow.”

Tiny promises that it will continue to invest in Meteor, Galaxy and their developer communities. Tiny and Apollo also say they’ll work closely during the transition and “pair their deep knowledge of the platform with Tiny’s ambitious plans.”

What exactly that’ll look like remains to be seen, of course, but Tiny has a relatively good track record of keeping the companies it acquires afloat. Schmidt also notes that users shouldn’t expect any major changes to Meteor or Galaxy in the near future.

“We talked to a lot of more conventional acquirers but ended up working with Tiny because of their strong values in design and community,” Schmidt explained. “At the core, I think Meteor is about developer experience, community, and empowering people to do things that they thought were out of their reach. Tiny is the group that we think is best equipped to carry that mission forward.”