Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Fieldwire, which makes task management software for construction teams that helps organize everyone involved in a project so things don’t fall through the figurative (or literal) cracks, has raised $33.5 million in Series C funding led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Brick & Mortar Ventures, Hilti Group, and Formation 8.

It isn’t a huge amount of money. Still, the traction Fieldwire is enjoying might give the folks at Autodesk some pause, given the growing threat it presents to PlanGrid — a rival that Autodesk acquired last year for $875 million.

Already, six-year-old Fieldwire has 65 employees, with 45 of them in San Francisco and the rest in Phoenix, plus a smaller outpost in France. And founder and CEO Yves Frinault says the company expects to have closer to 150 employees by next summer.

Fieldwire is also “cash profitable,” he says, “meaning our bank account goes up every month, even though we started going fast.” To underscore his point, he notes that when we last talked with him in 2015, the company’s platform was hosting 35,000 projects; it has since hosted half a million altogether, with more than 2,000 unique paying customers on the platform. Many of them pack a punch, too, like Clark Construction Group, a 113-year-old, Maryland-based construction firm that reported more than $5 billion in revenue last year and that began using Fieldwire across all of its projects this past summer. (Clark employs 4,200 people.)

Because Fieldwire grows from the bottom up, meaning it targets teams who then use it for projects that are then run by numerous enterprises that work on various projects with other teams that can then also adopt the software, it has spread particularly quickly throughout North America, which counts for 70 percent of its volume. Fieldwire is also making inroads in Europe, where 15 percent of its revenue is coming and, to a lesser but growing extent, Australia.

Altogether, its software is localized in 13 languages.

It employs a freemium model. Small teams with five members or less can use a significant portion of the product for free. But more users requires more storage typically, and that’s where Fieldwire starts charging — typically between $30 and $50 per user per month, though bigger companies tend to pay the company by the year or based on the scope of a particular project versus on a per-license basis.

Fieldwire’s two main types of customers are general contractors and subcontractors. GCs will usually use the company’s software as a way to track quality and progress. Subcontractors tend to use the software internally to run their own crews.

As for what’s on its roadmap, Fieldwire — which already enables users to look at floor plans in real time, message with one another, track punch lists, schedule jobs and file reports —  suggests it’s zeroing in on 3D architectural drawings, which puts it in more direct competition with PlanGrid.

PlanGrid also makes construction productivity software, and fueled by parent company Autodesk, it also now offers users the ability to access building information modeling data, in either 2D or 3D. Fieldwire doesn’t seem terribly daunted by this. Instead, Frinault calls it a “product challenge to make a 3D product model consumable, so we’re working on it right now.”

With its newest round of funding, Fieldwire has now raised $40.4 million altogether.

Computer scientist and open software advocate Richard Stallman said he has resigned from his position as a visiting scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) after describing a victim of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein as “entirely willing” in emails sent to a department list. Stallman has also stepped down from his roles as president and board director at the Free Software Foundation, the nonprofit he founded in 1985.

Last week, the Daily Beast reported that Stallman had also called for the legalization of child pornography and abolishment of age of consent laws on his personal blog in multiple posts published over the course of 15 years.

In his MIT CSAIL resignation, also posted to his personal blog, Stallman wrote: “To the MIT Community, I am resigning effective immediately from my position in CSAIL at MIT. I am doing this due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings.”

MIT has been under scrutiny for its ties to Epstein, who a New Yorker investigation found had secured $7.5 million in donations for the MIT Media Lab, far more than what was previously disclosed. As a result, its director, Joi Ito, resigned last week and MIT ordered an investigation into the Media Lab’s ties to Epstein, who was found dead in his jail cell last month while awaiting federal trial on sex trafficking charges.

As part of its preliminary findings, MIT president Rafael Reif admitted that the law firm conducting the investigation had uncovered a letter he wrote to thank Epstein for a donation in 2012, four years after Epstein had already pled guilty to procuring for prostitution a girl under 18. “I apparently signed this letter on August 16, 2012, about six weeks into my presidency,” Reif wrote. “Although I do not recall it, it does bear my signature.”

Stallman’s emails were first made public last week by mechanical engineer and MIT alum Selam Jie Gano (the entire thread was later published by Vice). In an email sent to a MIT CSAIL mailing list earlier this month, Stallman wrote that Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s sex trafficking victims, who testified that she had been ordered to have sex with late MIT professor Marvin Minsky during a trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands when she was 17, had likely “presented herself to him as entirely willing.” He also wrote that “I’ve concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term ‘sexual assault’ in an accusation.”

Gano also published an email that Stallman sent to another CSAIL list that included undergraduate students. In it, he said “I think it is morally absurd to define ‘rape’ in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.”

 

Aspect Ventures, an early-stage, San Francisco-based venture firm founded five years ago very notably by two veteran VCs who happen to be women, is splitting up. Cofounders Jennifer Fonstad, formerly of DFJ, and Theresia Gouw, formerly of Accel, are launching separate firms, a source confirms.

The WSJ reported the news earlier today.

Fonstad tells the outlet that the split owes to “different leadership styles and different ways of operating at the portfolio level.”

Going forward, she plans to operate under the brand Owl Capital and to invest in growth deals, including in enterprise software, which has been a major focus area for Aspect, though it has occasionally backed consumer startups, including newly public TheRealReal and a direct-to-consumer jewelry brand called Baublebar.

Gouw, who is appearing in several weeks at our TechCrunch Disrupt event to talk about industry trends, declined to comment. But some members of Aspect’s team are joining her at new firm, aCrew, including Lauen Kolodny, who joined Aspect five years ago and was promoted from principal to partner in 2017; and Vishal Lugani, who joined Aspect as a principal in 2016 after spending 3.5 years as a senior associate with Greycroft and whose LinkedIn bio now identifies him as a founding partner with aCrew.

Team members who are meanwhile joining Fonstad include Chad Herrin, a former SuccessFactors VP who has been a venture partner with Aspect since lsat year, and Rebecca Hu, who spent a year with Earlybird Venture Capital before joining Aspect roughly one year ago as an investor.

Aspect had raised $150 million for its debut fund and a second $181 million fund at the start of 2018. Gouw, Fonstad and the rest of their Aspect colleagues will continue managing out these investments, though they will be making all new investments out of their respective new vehicles, presumably as they are locking down capital commitments.

According to the WSJ, aCrew is targeting $175 million for its debut fund, while Owl is shooting for $125 million in capital commitments.

The firm is far from the first to split over clashing management styles. Most recently, Social Capital drastically changed shape, with cofounder Mamoon Hamid heading over to help recharge Kleiner Perkins, and numerous other early members of the firm leaving to found Tribe Capital.

The We Company, parent company of the short-term real estate property management and development company WeWork and other We-related subsidiaries, is reportedly shelving its plans for an initial public offering.

The company’s plans for a public offering have been hampered by questions about its corporate governance and the ultimate value of a company that private investors once thought was worth nearly $50 billion.

Public investors were balking at that sky-high valuation and the company’s questionable governance practices under chief executive officer and co-founder, Adam Neumann, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news that The We Company would put its offering on hold. 

Over the past few weeks, The We Company has made several moves to allay investors’ concerns. The company unwound some particularly egregious transactions with Neumann and added new directors. It also moved to limit Neumann’s power at the company.

Last week, the company amended its prospectus to include the appointment of an independent lead director. It also slashed the strength of Class B and Class C shares so Neumann would not have 20 times the voting power of other shareholders, and removed Neumann’s wife from succession planning at the company.

Even these steps were not enough to comfort Wall Street investors, apparently. Not even the attempts to slash the company’s valuation to below $10 billion could attract enough investor interest to the public offering. And the opacity of The We Company’s reporting and metrics likely did nothing to help matters in the eyes of the investing public.

Now that The We Company is likely to pull its public offering… and with Uber and Lyft underperforming in their first year as public companies, perhaps venture capital firms will rethink the sky-high valuations they’d placed on their portfolio companies. Perhaps it’s time to relearn the lesson that greed may not actually be good.

We have reached out to The We Company for comment and will update with their response.

This story is developing. 

 

 

Waymo transported 6,266 passengers in self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans in its first month participating in a robotaxi pilot program in California, according to a quarterly report the company filed with the California Public Utilities Commission.

In all, the company completed 4,678 passenger trips in July — plus another 12 trips for educational purposes. It’s a noteworthy figure for an inaugural effort that pencils out to an average of 156 trips every day that month.  And it demonstrates that Waymo has the resources, staff and vehicles to operate a robotaxi pilot while continuing to test its technology in multiple cities and ramp up its Waymo One ride-hailing service in Arizona.

But Waymo’s data — along with quarterly reports from three other companies that hold permits with the CPUC — provides just a hint at what demand could be for commercial robotaxis and how these services might reshape cities.

Waymo’s pilot program, for instance, isn’t open to the public. Waymo or Alphabet employees and their guests can take rides within its geofenced South Bay territory, which currently includes Mountain View, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills. This is only a few of the cities where Waymo is currently testing in California.

And because companies in this pilot program cannot charge for rides, it’s difficult to determine what the demand will be for robotaxis, Dr. Susan Shaheen, co-director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California, noted in a recent interview.

Robotaxis and the CPUC

The CPUC authorized in May 2018 two pilot programs for transporting passengers in autonomous vehicles.  The first one, called the Drivered Autonomous Vehicle Passenger Service Pilot program, allows companies to operate a ride-hailing service using autonomous vehicles as long as they follow specific rules. Companies are not allowed to charge for rides, a human safety driver must be behind the wheel and certain data must be reported quarterly.

The second CPUC pilot would allow driverless passenger service — although no company has yet to obtain that permit.

The CPUC programs shouldn’t be confused with the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which regulates and issues permits for testing autonomous vehicles on public roads — always with a safety driver. The DMV has issued 63 autonomous vehicle testing permits since 2014. Companies that want to participate in the CPUC program must have a testing permit with DMV.

And for those companies that might want to someday get a permit from the CPUC for the driverless pilot, they must first obtain a driverless permit from the DMV. In 2018, the DMV issued rules to allow for autonomous vehicle driverless testing on roads.

Only Waymo holds a driverless testing permit from the DMV, although it does not have driverless vehicles on public roads in California yet.

AutoX, Pony.ai, Zoox and Waymo have received permits to participate in the CPUC’s Drivered Autonomous Vehicle Passenger Service Pilot program. Zoox scored the first permit from the CPUC in December. Pony.ai and AutoX, which started as an autonomous delivery company, followed.

Last quarter’s numbers

But Waymo, which received its permit on July 2  — two months into the second quarter — is already the leader, in terms of rides.

Pony.ai didn’t provide any rides in the last quarter, according to its CPUC report. Zoox’s report indicates that its 10 vehicles transported 134 passengers on more than 70 trips last quarter. The Zoox fleet traveled 352 miles during those trips.

Meanwhile, Waymo’s fleet completed 4,678 trips and logged 59,886 miles during the final month of the quarter.

As impressive as the numbers are, Shaheen and others in the industry wonder if the data being collected will help state regulators and companies determine the value and challenges of commercial robotaxi services.

“Is this data they’re collecting actually helpful and how are they going to use it?” Shaheen asked.

Under the program, permit holders must submit anonymized data about each autonomous vehicle in operation. Waymo and other companies participating in the pilot have to provide total vehicle miles traveled during passenger service, as well as total miles in electric vehicles (if applicable) every quarter. Other data requirements for each quarter include miles traveled to the pickup point, idling time, vehicle occupancy and data about accessible rides.

The data is meant to help the CPUC develop a framework for full, permanent deployment of paid autonomous vehicles passenger service in California. And yet, the data might not fully capture what a commercial service might look like. For instance, Waymo’s total miles traveled from the vehicle’s starting location to a pickup point — a term known as deadhead miles — were 48,137 miles out of the total 59,916. Waymo notes in its report to the CPUC that it is continuously testing in between rides, implying that this could drive up the deadhead miles.

Autonomous vehicle companies have largely supported the CPUC’s two pilot programs. However, many companies, including Waymo as well as others such as Lyft and Cruise, which aren’t participating in the pilot, submitted written comments in 2018 arguing against some of the reporting requirements and in support of charging for rides.

Waymo has previously stated in public comments to the CPUC that tracking deadhead miles “would not appear to provide any valuable data” because the vehicles used for testing purposes will be vastly different and may not accurately reflect the efficiencies that can be gained through a more expansive fleet during full deployment.

Without the ability to charge for rides, companies are treating the pilot as another means to dial in their eventual commercial service.

AutoX is treating the pilot as one way to gain a better understanding of the consumer’s experience, including ordering and waiting for the ride, said Hugo Fozzati, AutoX’s director of business operations.

“Before we scale out and really deploy this, we want to make sure that we’re doing everything right,” Fozzati said.

Now, two questions remain: What will happen next and which agency will have the greatest influence in shaping future regulations? The CPUC and DMV are the most likely candidates, but the California Highway Patrol, which has historically been involved in some DMV rule-making, as well as the California Air Resources Board, could also play a role.

How do you keep your startup secure?

That’s the big question we explored at TC Sessions: Enterprise earlier this month. No matter the size, every startup is an enterprise. Every startup will grow in size as it builds out. But as a company expands, that rapid growth can lead to a distraction from the foundational principle of any modern company — keeping it secure.

Security isn’t just a buzzword. As some of the largest companies in Silicon Valley have shown, security can be difficult. From storing passwords in plaintext to data breaches galore, how can startups learn from some of the biggest security lapses in the tech industry’s history?

Our panel consisted of three of the brightest minds in enterprise security: Wendy Nather, head of advisory CISOs at Duo Security, is an enterprise security expert; Martin Casado, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, is a security and enterprise startup investor; and Emily Heath, United’s chief information security officer, oversees the security operations of the largest U.S. airlines.

This is what advice they had.

Security from the very start

Apple Arcade seems purpose built to make room in the market for beautiful, sad, weird, moving, slow, clever and heartfelt. All things that the action, shooter and MOBA driven major market of games has done nothing to foster over the last decade.

I had a chance to play a bunch of the titles coming to Apple Arcade, which launched today in a surprise move for some early testers of iOS 13. Nearly every game I played was fun, all were gorgeous and some were really really great.

A few I really enjoyed, in no particular order:

Where Cards Fall — A Snowman game from Sam Rosenthal. A beautiful game with a clever card-based mechanic that allows room for story moments and a ramping difficulty level that should be fantastic for short play sessions. Shades of Monument Valley, of course, in its puzzle + story interleave. Super satisfying gameplay and crisp animations abound.

Overland — Finji — Overland is one of my most anticipated games from the bunch, I’ve been following the development of this game from the Night in the Woods and Canabalt creators for a long time. It does not disappoint, with a stylized but somehow hyper-realized post apocalyptic turn-based system that transmits urgency through economy of movement. Every act you take counts. Given that it’s a rogue like, the story is told through the world rather than through an individual character’s narrative and the world does a great job of it.

Oceanhorn 2 — Cornfox & Brothers — The closest to a native Zelda you’ll get on iOS — this plays great on a controller. Do yourself a favor and try it that way.

Spek — RAC7 — One of those puzzle games people will plow through, it makes the mechanics simple to understand then begins to really push and prod at your mastery of them over time. The AR component of the app seems like it will be a better party game than solo experience, but the effects used here are great and it really plays with distance and perspective in a way that an AR game should. A good totem for the genre going forward.

I was able to play several of the games across all three platforms including Apple TV with an Xbox controller, iPhone and iPad. While some favored controller (Skate City) and others touch controls (Super Impossible Road), all felt like I could play them either way without much difficulty.

There are also some surprises in the initial batch of games like Lego Brawls — a Smash Brothers clone that will be a big hit for car rides and get togethers I think.

My hope is that the Apple Arcade advantage, an agressive $4.99 price and prime placement in the App Store, may help to create an umbrella of sorts for games that don’t fit the ‘big opening weekend’ revenue mold and I hope Apple leans into that. I know that there may be action-oriented and big name titles in the package now and in the future, and that’s fine. But there are many kinds of games out there that are fantastic but “minor” in the grand scheme of things and having a place that could create sustainability in the market for these gems is a great thing.

The financial terms were not disclosed by Apple but many of the developers appear to have gotten up front money to make games for the platform and, doubtless, there is a rev share on some sort of basis, probably usage or installs. Whatever it is, I hope the focus is on sustainability, but the people responsible for Arcade inside Apple are making all the right noises about that so I have hopes.

I am especially glad that Apple is being aggressive with the pricing and with the restrictions it has set for the store, including no in-app purchases or ads. This creates an environment where a parent (ratings permitting) can be confident that a kid playing games from the Arcade tab will not be besieged with casino ads in the middle of their puzzle game.

There is, however, a general irony in the fact that Apple had to create Apple Arcade because of the proliferation of loot box/currency/in-app purchase revenue models. An economy driven by the App Store’s overall depressive effect on the price of games and the decade long acclimation people have had to spending less and less, down to free, for games and apps on the store.

By bundling them into a subscription, Apple sidesteps the individual purchase barrier that it has had a big hand in creating in the first place. While I don’t think it is fully to blame — plenty of other platforms aggressively promote loot box mechanics — a big chunk of the responsibility to fix this distortion does rest on Apple. Apple Arcade is a great stab at that and I hope that the early titles are an indicator of the overall variety and quality that we can expect.

If you’re running a beta version of iOS 13 or 13.1, chances are you can now open the App Store and subscribe to Apple Arcade. The company has been rolling out its new subscription service, as MacRumors spotted. It works on my iPhone running a public beta version of iOS 13.1.

Apple Arcade requires iOS 13, tvOS 13 or macOS Catalina, which means that you won’t be able to access the service before updating to the new major versions of the operating systems. The final version of iOS 13 is set to launch on Thursday on the iPhone.

Originally announced earlier this year, Apple has been working on an ad-free gaming service that lets you download and play games for a monthly subscription fee. These games have no ads or in-app purchases.

Essentially, you pay $4.99 per month to access a library with dozens of games. Subscriptions include a one-month free trial and work with family sharing.

You can browse the selection of games without subscribing. There are currently 53 games available, but Apple said that it plans to launch over 100 games this fall.

Each game has its own App Store page with a trailer, screenshots and some new icons indicating the age rating, category, number of players and more.

If you search for a game on the App Store and you’re not an Apple Arcade subscriber, you get a new button that tells you that you can try it free by subscribing to Apple Arcade. It also says “Apple Arcade” above the app name.

The California state legislature has passed AB-1331, a criminal justice data bill that aims to improve the quality of criminal justice records and creates a pathway for courts to share data with researchers. The bill is awaiting a signature of approval by California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Authored by Assemblyperson Robert Bonta, the bill seeks to address the data gaps in criminal history records that “undermine their accuracy and reliability,” according to an AB 1331 fact sheet.

For example, the Department of Justice estimates that 60% of arrest records are missing disposition information, such as the judge’s ruling or sentencing. This can lead to criminalizing people who may be innocent. In addition, because pretrial risk assessment tools require timely and accurate information, any missing data could result in low-risk people being detained or high-risk individuals being released.

There are very few data collection standards In California, a state in which the criminal justice landscape is “highly decentralized” and each entity is responsible for its own data collection, Mikaela Rabinowitz, director of national engagement and field operations at non-partisan criminal justice data analysis organization Measures for Justice told TechCrunch. This makes it hard for the California Department of Justice to accurately track people across those systems, she said.

To address this, AB 1331 aims to establish clear collecting and reporting requirements for law enforcement agencies and courts. The legislation is designed to help law enforcement agencies to make better decisions about defendants and enable courts to share data with organizations like Measures for Justice, which aims to change the way we measure and understand criminal justice data.

In 2016, California passed the OpenJustice Data Act, which led to the creation of a criminal justice data platform available to the public. The interactive platform, spearheaded by the California Department of Justice, features data from California’s 1,000-plus law enforcement agencies to allow for side-by-side comparison of agencies, like the San Francisco Police Department versus the Los Angeles Police Department.

While the OpenJustice platform represented a major step in the right direction, it wasn’t enough. AB 1331 now seeks to address the gaps that still exist within the data on both people and processes.

“You can’t change what you can’t see, and good decision-making really starts with the data and facts,” Measures for Justice Executive Director and President Amy Bach told TechCrunch. “If you want good decision-making, you need to have better data processes at the local and state level, and you have to increase data for outside researchers. This is a really exciting step forward. Basically, California is being welcomed into a prestigious group of pioneering states like Florida and Connecticut that have recently passed bills to address the criminal justice system.”

Nationwide, criminal justice reform has been having a moment lately. Last March, Florida signed into law a comprehensive and standardized data collection and public reporting process. Connecticut, meanwhile, has repealed the death penalty, decriminalized small amounts of cannabis and reformed its pardon and parole processes over the last several years. And Colorado passed a bill to make jail capacity data to public. California is now the latest state to make headway in closing the data gaps in the criminal justice system.

“I think this is a huge frontier,” Rabinowitz said. “I think criminal justice has been really far behind other public systems in making use of data, both in terms of investing in the tech necessary for high-quality data but also in terms of using research to drive decision-making. It’s certainly far behind where education or public health are. As we see criminal justice becoming more and more of a critical policy issue and political issue, there is more interest in having the data necessary to make informed criminal justice decisions.”

Netflix has just scored a major content deal that could help it to stem the loss of subscribers as competition among streamers heats up. The company announced it has acquired the global streaming rights to the popular sitcom “Seinfeld,” which will bring all 180 episodes of the Emmy winner to the Netflix subscribers starting in 2021.

The timing of this addition is critical for Netflix, as “Seinfeld” will go to air the same year that the streamer loses one of its most-watched pieces of content: re-runs of “The Office.” It will also follow Netflix’s loss of another iconic sitcom — when “Friends” exits the service in 2020.

Despite the age of the content in question, these are still highly expensive deals because of the evergreen nature of the shows and their ability to reach new fans who weren’t old enough to have watched the shows when they originally aired.

Beyond that, these re-runs have massive audiences. For example, Nielsen found that “The Office” is the most-watched show on Netflix, despite the streamer’s multi-billion dollar investments in its own original content which is far more heavily promoted across its platform.

And that original content isn’t performing well, as of late, making it even more critical for Netflix to hold on to at least some of its classic library content. Last quarter, the company lost U.S. subscribers for the first time since 2011. The company didn’t cite increased competition as a factor, as many of its challengers — like Disney+, Apple TV+, and HBO Max — have yet to launch. Instead, it pointed to price hikes and a programming slate that failed to attract subscribers.

Meanwhile, Netflix was recently outbid for rights to “The Office,” as NBCU paid $500 million to pull the hit from Netflix when its deal ends in 2021. Netflix also lost “Friends” to WarnerMedia, which paid $425 million to bring the classic show to its new service HBO Max for five years, starting in 2020.

Given the “Seinfeld” deal with Sony Pictures Television is for worldwide distribution to Netflix’s roughly 150 million subscribers, its price should be in that same ballpark if not higher. (Netflix isn’t discussing deal terms).

“Seinfeld is the television comedy that all television comedy is measured against. It is as fresh and funny as ever and will be available to the world in 4K for the first time,” said Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer for Netflix, in a statement. “We can’t wait to welcome Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer to their new global home on Netflix.”

Classic sitcoms aren’t the only things Netflix has been dropping, as of late.

It also this year exited the Marvel superhero business with the cancellations of “Jessica Jones” and “The Punisher,” after having already axed “Iron Fist,” “Luke Cage” and “Daredevil,” ahead of the launch of Disney+. And it has canceled a number of other under-performing series, including “The OA,” “Tuca & Bertie,” “Designated Survivor,” “She’s Gotta Have It,” and its remake of “One Day at a Time.”