The good news: Samsung says it has addressed the early problems with the Galaxy Fold and finally has a release date (in Korea at least). The bad news: the company is canceling the first round of U.S. preorders. The gooder news: if you were among those early adopters, the it’s giving you a $250 in-house credit to keep you in its good graces.
Shortly after announcing that its first foldable handset is set to start shipping to customers in South Korea on September 6, Samsung sent out a note to customers stating that it would be “taking the time to rethink the customer experience.” That involves, among other things, canceling existing pre-orders. “While not an easy decision to make,” the company writes, “we believe that this is the right thing to do.”
So Samsung canceled my pre-order for the Samsung Galaxy Fold…at least they gave me a $250 credit for anything on their store. That is admittantly quite generous.
— M. Brandon Lee | THIS IS TECH TODAY (@thisistechtoday) September 5, 2019
TechCrunch has confirmed the news with Samsung, though the company is letting the email to customers speak for itself. The letter also notes that the company is launching a “new Galaxy Fold Premier Service” for those who opt to pick up the newly rejiggered version of the phone. After the first version of the handset ran into some…issues with reviews, Samsung no doubt wants to be the first line of defense should consumers run into any problems with the new $2,000 phone.
The company has yet to confirm a release date for the rest of the world, though it notes that the Fold will be coming to markets including the U.S. in “coming weeks,” which is on track with the earlier September timeframe.
Parallel Markets is a new startup aiming to make it as easy to buy and sell private company shares as it is for public company stock.
COO Nicholas Goss said this is becoming issue for startups as they stay private for longer, which means early employees can find their equity locked up for longer periods of time — and that’s assuming they can even afford to exercise their stock options.
“This is the type of thing that’s really change the game when it comes to attracting talent,” Goss said.
CTO Brian Muller added, “There’s a pent up demand, both for the ability to sell and the ability to buy … We’re bringing our platform into the mix to work directly with issuers to support that liquidity in a structured way.”
That idea of working with issuers (in other words, the companies whose stock is being sold) is a big of what the Parallel Markets team said distinguishes them from secondary marketplaces like SharesPost. Co-founder and CEO Tony Peccatiello said that while these sales usually happen without input from the company, Parallel Markets is taking a different approach, one that “puts the control over these transactions in the hands of a CFO.”
In other words, Parallel Markets will work with company executives to create what Peccatiello described as “structured liquidity events,” where employees can sell their stock to designated buyers at a given time. The platform also gives the companies additional controls, like a setting floors and ceilings on the price per share.
Meanwhile, all the employees get notified when there’s an opportunity to sell their stock. And the sales are handled by Parallel Markets’ subsidiary broker dealer, in a way that’s compliant with the various regulations.
Peccatiello said the startup — which has raised $1.4 million itself from friends and family — is already working with some initial partners, although it hasn’t actually powered any stock purchases yet: “We expect to be doing those in Q4 of this year.”
Goss (who previously worked as an IPO lawyer at Latham & Watkins, as well as on the investment banking team at Credit Suisse) predicted that over time, startups will make this a bigger part of their compensation packages, where it “almost mimics in reverse the vesting cliff,” where there’s not just a schedule for receiving stock, but also “when you can start selling into these liquidity events.”
Today, Parallel Markets is officially launching a new tool called Passport that Muller said was created for its own needs — namely, verifying accredited investors.
He explained that equity crowdfunding sites, plus other platforms that work with accredited investors, currently need to subject those investors to “a lengthy and arduous on-boarding process” that involves uploading a variety of documents to confirm their accredited status.
With Passport, on the other hand, investors can go through the verification process just one time. After that, when they’re looking to invest through a platform that uses Passport, they can simply click a button to give Passport permission to share their information.
“We looked for partners who could provide this, but we did not find anyone who could provide an ongoing identity verification tool that worked across multiple platforms,” Peccatiello told me in a follow-up email. “We want identity to be truly portable — not only on other third party websites but also places like the blockchain, which provides an interesting use case with smart contracts.”
Parallel Markets is a new startup aiming to make it as easy to buy and sell private company shares as it is for public company stock.
COO Nicholas Goss said this is becoming issue for startups as they stay private for longer, which means early employees can find their equity locked up for longer periods of time — and that’s assuming they can even afford to exercise their stock options.
“This is the type of thing that’s really change the game when it comes to attracting talent,” Goss said.
CTO Brian Muller added, “There’s a pent up demand, both for the ability to sell and the ability to buy … We’re bringing our platform into the mix to work directly with issuers to support that liquidity in a structured way.”
That idea of working with issuers (in other words, the companies whose stock is being sold) is a big of what the Parallel Markets team said distinguishes them from secondary marketplaces like SharesPost. Co-founder and CEO Tony Peccatiello said that while these sales usually happen without input from the company, Parallel Markets is taking a different approach, one that “puts the control over these transactions in the hands of a CFO.”
In other words, Parallel Markets will work with company executives to create what Peccatiello described as “structured liquidity events,” where employees can sell their stock to designated buyers at a given time. The platform also gives the companies additional controls, like a setting floors and ceilings on the price per share.
Meanwhile, all the employees get notified when there’s an opportunity to sell their stock. And the sales are handled by Parallel Markets’ subsidiary broker dealer, in a way that’s compliant with the various regulations.
Peccatiello said the startup — which has raised $1.4 million itself from friends and family — is already working with some initial partners, although it hasn’t actually powered any stock purchases yet: “We expect to be doing those in Q4 of this year.”
Goss (who previously worked as an IPO lawyer at Latham & Watkins, as well as on the investment banking team at Credit Suisse) predicted that over time, startups will make this a bigger part of their compensation packages, where it “almost mimics in reverse the vesting cliff,” where there’s not just a schedule for receiving stock, but also “when you can start selling into these liquidity events.”
Today, Parallel Markets is officially launching a new tool called Passport that Muller said was created for its own needs — namely, verifying accredited investors.
He explained that equity crowdfunding sites, plus other platforms that work with accredited investors, currently need to subject those investors to “a lengthy and arduous on-boarding process” that involves uploading a variety of documents to confirm their accredited status.
With Passport, on the other hand, investors can go through the verification process just one time. After that, when they’re looking to invest through a platform that uses Passport, they can simply click a button to give Passport permission to share their information.
“We looked for partners who could provide this, but we did not find anyone who could provide an ongoing identity verification tool that worked across multiple platforms,” Peccatiello told me in a follow-up email. “We want identity to be truly portable — not only on other third party websites but also places like the blockchain, which provides an interesting use case with smart contracts.”
The company, founded by marine biologist, Dominique Barnes, and chief technology officer, Michelle Wolf, who studied biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon, is helmed by longtime consumer goods executive Mary McGovern.
There’s a multi-billion dollar opportunity in the seafood market as consumers turn away from beef as a source of protein and several startups are out in the market pursuing either plant based or cultured protein alternatives to traditional seafood.
For Tyson, the investment is the latest foray into the increasingly competitive market for alternative meats.
The company was also an investor in Beyond Meat prior to its public offering and is backing the lab-grown meat company Memphis Meats as well.
“We’re excited about this investment in the fast-growing segment of the plant-based protein market,” said Amy Tu, president of Tyson Ventures, in a statement. “This continues our focus of identifying and investing in companies with disruptive products and breakthrough technologies related to our core business so we can continue to serve a growing global population.”
Culling together a development team of food scientists, academics and chefs under the direction of co-founder Michelle Wolf, the company has produced a seaweed and plant-protein alternative to shrimp that contains the 8 amino acids that are found in meat and seafood, the company says. New Wave Foods claims that its product is also lower in calories and salt than real shrimp and has zero colesterol and no allergens.
“Our product is a delicious, one-for-one direct swap for the real thing, and interchangeable in a wide range of recipes,” McGovern said in a statement. “It gives chefs and food service operators great menu options while addressing consumers’ growing demand for sustainable choices.”
Tyson already has a line of alternative protein products that it launched earlier this year under the Raised & Rooted brand.
The company, founded by marine biologist, Dominique Barnes, and chief technology officer, Michelle Wolf, who studied biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon, is helmed by longtime consumer goods executive Mary McGovern.
There’s a multi-billion dollar opportunity in the seafood market as consumers turn away from beef as a source of protein and several startups are out in the market pursuing either plant based or cultured protein alternatives to traditional seafood.
For Tyson, the investment is the latest foray into the increasingly competitive market for alternative meats.
The company was also an investor in Beyond Meat prior to its public offering and is backing the lab-grown meat company Memphis Meats as well.
“We’re excited about this investment in the fast-growing segment of the plant-based protein market,” said Amy Tu, president of Tyson Ventures, in a statement. “This continues our focus of identifying and investing in companies with disruptive products and breakthrough technologies related to our core business so we can continue to serve a growing global population.”
Culling together a development team of food scientists, academics and chefs under the direction of co-founder Michelle Wolf, the company has produced a seaweed and plant-protein alternative to shrimp that contains the 8 amino acids that are found in meat and seafood, the company says. New Wave Foods claims that its product is also lower in calories and salt than real shrimp and has zero colesterol and no allergens.
“Our product is a delicious, one-for-one direct swap for the real thing, and interchangeable in a wide range of recipes,” McGovern said in a statement. “It gives chefs and food service operators great menu options while addressing consumers’ growing demand for sustainable choices.”
Tyson already has a line of alternative protein products that it launched earlier this year under the Raised & Rooted brand.
TechCrunch is live from San Francisco’s YBCA’s Blue Shield of California Theater where we’re hosting our first event dedicated to the enterprise. Throughout the day, attendees and viewers can expect to hear from industry experts and partake in discussions about the potential of new technologies like quantum computing and AI, how to deal with the onslaught of security threats, investing in early-stage startups and plenty more.
We’ll be joined by some of the biggest names and the smartest and most prescient people in the industry, including Bill McDermott at SAP, Scott Farquhar at Atlassian, Julie Larson-Green at Qualtrics, Wendy Nather at Duo Security, Aaron Levie at Box and Andrew Ng at Landing AI.
Our agenda showcases some of the powerhouses in the space, but also plenty of smaller teams that are building and debunking fundamental technologies in the industry. We still have a few tricks up our sleeves and will be adding some new names to the agenda over the next month, so keep your eyes open.
In an ever-changing technological landscape, it’s not easy for VCs to know what’s coming next and how to place their bets. Yet, it’s the job of investors to peer around the corner and find the next big thing, whether that’s in AI, serverless, blockchain, edge computing or other emerging technologies. Our panel will look at the challenges of enterprise investing, what they look for in enterprise startups and how they decide where to put their money.
With tools like Jira, Bitbucket and Confluence, few companies influence how developers work as much as Atlassian. The company’s co-founder and co-CEO Scott Farquhar will join us to talk about growing his company, how it is bringing its tools to enterprises and what the future of software development in and for the enterprise will look like.
Q&A with Investors 10:10 AM – 10:40 AM
Your chance to ask questions of some of the greatest investors in enterprise.
For startups, the appeal of enterprise clients is not surprising — signing even one or two customers can make an entire business, and it can take just a few hundred to build a $1 billion unicorn company. But while corporate counterparts increasingly look to the startup community for partnership opportunities, making the jump to enterprise sales is far more complicated than scaling up the strategy startups already use to sell to SMBs or consumers. Hear from leaders who have experienced successes and pitfalls through the process as they address how startups can adapt their strategy with the needs of the enterprise in mind. Sponsored by SAP.
Apple’s Susan Prescott has been at the company since the early days of the iPhone, and she has seen the company make a strong push into the enterprise, whether through tooling or via strategic partnerships with companies like IBM, SAP and Cisco.
Box’s Enterprise Journey Aaron Levie (Box) 11:15 AM – 11:35 AM
Box started life as a consumer file-storage company and transformed early on into a successful enterprise SaaS company, focused on content management in the cloud. Levie will talk about what it’s like to travel the entire startup journey — and what the future holds for data platforms.
Bringing the Cloud to the Enterprise Mark Russinovich (Microsoft)
11:35 AM – 12:00 PM
Cloud computing may now seem like the default, but that’s far from true for most enterprises, which often still have tons of legacy software that runs in their own data centers. What does it mean to be all-in on the cloud, which is what Capital One recently accomplished. We’ll talk about how companies can make the move to the cloud easier, what not to do and how to develop a cloud strategy with an eye to the future.
Enterprises face a litany of threats from both inside and outside the firewall. Now more than ever, companies — especially startups — have to put security first. From preventing data from leaking to keeping bad actors out of your network, enterprises have it tough. How can you secure the enterprise without slowing growth? We’ll discuss the role of a modern CSO and how to move fast… without breaking things.
Keeping an Enterprise Behemoth on Course Bill McDermott (SAP) 1:25 PM – 1:45 PM
With over $166 billion is market cap, Germany-based SAP is one of the most valuable tech companies in the world today. Bill McDermott took the leadership in 2014, becoming the first American to hold this position. Since then, he has quickly grown the company, in part thanks to a number of $1 billion-plus acquisitions. We’ll talk to him about his approach to these acquisitions, his strategy for growing the company in a quickly changing market and the state of enterprise software in general.
You can’t go to an enterprise conference and not talk about Kubernetes, the incredibly popular open-source container orchestration project that was incubated at Google. For this panel, we brought together three of the founding members of the Kubernetes team and the current director of product management for the project at Google to talk about the past, present and future of the project and how it has changed how enterprises think about moving to the cloud and developing software.
Companies have historically competed by having data in their toolbox, and gleaning insights to make key business decisions. However, increased regulatory and societal scrutiny is requiring companies to rethink this approach. In this session, we explore the challenges and opportunities that businesses will experience as these conversations evolve. Sponsored by SAP.
AI is becoming table stakes for enterprise software as companies increasingly build AI into their tools to help process data faster or make more efficient use of resources. Our panel will talk about the growing role of AI in enterprise for companies big and small.
Q&A with Founders 3:00 PM – 3:30 PM
Your chance to ask questions of some of the greatest startup minds in enterprise technology.
As companies gather more data about their customers, it should theoretically improve the customer experience, buy myriad challenges face companies as they try to pull together information from a variety of vendors across disparate systems, both in the cloud and on prem. How do you pull together a coherent picture of your customers, while respecting their privacy and overcoming the technical challenges? We’ll ask a team of experts to find out.
Innovation Break: Identifying Overhyped Technology Trends
James Allworth (Cloudflare), George Mathew (Kespry) and Max Wessel (SAP) 3:40 PM – 4:00 PM
For innovation-focused businesses, deciding which technology trends are worth immediate investment, which trends are worth keeping on the radar and which are simply buzzworthy can be a challenging gray area to navigate and may ultimately make or break the future of a business. Hear from these innovation juggernauts as they provide their divergent perspectives on today’s hottest trends, including Blockchain, 5G, AI, VR and more. Sponsored by SAP.
Few technologists have been more central to the development of AI in the enterprise than Andrew Ng. With Landing AI and the backing of many top venture firms, Ng has the foundation to develop and launch the AI companies he thinks will be winners. We will talk about where Ng expects to see AI’s biggest impacts across the enterprise.
While we’re still a few years away from having quantum computers that will fulfill the full promise of this technology, many companies are already starting to experiment with what’s available today. We’ll talk about what startups and enterprises should know about quantum computing today to prepare for tomorrow.
There is certainly no shortage of data in the enterprise these days. The question is how do you process it and put it in shape to understand it and make better decisions? Our panel will discuss the challenges of data management and visualization in a shifting technological landscape where the term “big data” doesn’t begin to do the growing volume justice.
Seafood has blown past its iceberg lettuce stage and entered trendy greens territory, with eaters loading up on oceanic superfoods and falling in love with previously unknown species as fast as daters swipe right. Even inland-dwelling locavores can easily satisfy their seafood cravings. What once was waste is now a premium snack, or maybe a wallet. We get that farmed fish is good—in every sense of that word. Mystery fish are a thing of the past. Sustainability is a minimum standard, not a luxury.
Just two years ago, that’s what I thought the seafood world would look like in 2027. Back then, as I studied trends in consumer desires, seafood sustainability initiatives, technology and investment, I foresaw seven transformative changes happening within a decade.
At the time it seemed like I was surfing the edge of plausibility. But based on what I’ve learned from the 200 or so seafood innovators entering the Fish 2.0 network over this past year, it’s all happening—in many cases much faster than I expected. And it’s happening all over the world.
So what does the future of seafood look like today?
Our palates are getting schooled
I predicted more diverse seafood diets, and while lionfish is not (yet) the new kale, don’t be surprised to see it sitting atop a Caesar salad in a few years.
People are looking beyond the shrimp-salmon-tuna triumvirate and learning to love the less familiar. Barramundi and cobia are going mainstream in some markets. Sustainable seafood purveyors are turning species that used to get thrown away into high-end treats, and celebrity chefs are buying invasive species (like that lionfish) and overlooked delicacies (like scampi caviar). At the same time, it’s getting easier to grow healthful, great-tasting salmon and other popular species in land-based farms, thanks to better feeds, disease prevention and production systems.
It looks like we really will stop loving our favorite wild fish to death and become more adventurous seafood eaters.
Fish and boat, Saint Louis, Senegal, West Africa, Africa (Photo: Godong / robertharding/Getty Images)
We’re buying direct
Local seafood still isn’t easy to come by for many of us, but options for buying direct from fishers—near or far—are proliferating. The number of community-supported fisheries (seafood’s take on the farm-to-table model) on Local Catch has quadrupled since 2017, and some fishers are looking to copy Seattle’s Pike’s Place fish market model. Even more are selling direct to restaurants and fishmongers in their home markets and overseas.
Fishers are finding that quality and diversity earn a premium. By selling boat- or farm-fresh seafood direct to chefs and market owners, they can earn three to six times the price distributors pay. And mobile apps are making it fast and easy for those who provide top-notch seafood to connect with those who want it. This trend is likely to grow as food packaging and preservation technologies continue to improve, making shipping cheaper. Big picture: sustainable seafood is reaching a broader market than ever, at prices that reflect its value.
Mystery fish are so yesterday
So many startups are working on traceability and transparency challenges that there’s little doubt we’ll soon know who caught a fish, where they caught it, how cold they kept it and more. Mystery fish is well on its way to no longer being a thing, at least in regions where regulations are enforced.
The rise of seatech is speeding efforts to clear up seafood’s notoriously murky supply chain. Sensors, robotics, networked cameras and other technologies that operate in and out of the water are helping fishers and farmers collect and analyze real-time data, so they can catch and grow seafood in the best possible way. Labor practices are getting a dose of daylight too.
The questions today are not about whether we can collect essential data, but about who owns the data, how public it should be and which datasets are most important. This is a huge leap forward.
Courtesy of Mikael Damkier/Shutterstock
Fish feed solutions accelerate
Right now, most farmed fish eat food made from wild forage fish. That’s not sustainable, which is why two years ago we were thrilled by the mere existence of alternative fish feed ingredients. Now more sophisticated thinking about the problem is fueling surprisingly fast progress.
Today it’s all about optimizing and scaling production. Many companies are turning black soldier flies into fish feed, and now they’re working on genetics that make flies richer in omega 3s and function better as feeds. Others have turned algae, grains and even industrial methane emissions into nutritious fish feed ingredients, and they’re figuring out the best mix of ingredients to grow each species.
This confluence of creative thinking means the fish feed problem is likely to get solved sooner than we thought possible, and make an even bigger impact on the aquaculture industry.
Farmed fish are big—and that’s a good thing
Speaking of aquaculture, I said farmed fish would fill out more of our seafood plate, and they are. Aquacultureis growing at a clip of 5.8 percent a year and accounts for more than half the fish we eat.
Not all farmed fish are raised right, but they can be. Solutions to aquaculture’s sustainability challenges are heading to market. In addition to the fish feed problem, innovators are working on escape-proof ocean farms, resource-efficient land farms, natural remedies for healthier fish, capturing and upcycling fish farm waste, and more productive hatcheries. This is all good—we need sustainable fish farming to take the pressure off wild fisheries and meet global demand for clean protein.
Photo courtesy of GettyImages/Johanna Parkin
There’s a war on waste
Turning waste into value was a niche in 2017. Now it’s one part of a broader campaign to crack down on waste at every point in the seafood supply chain. Does throwing out heads, tails and bones really make sense? Increasingly, the answer is no. New processing and preservation technologies allow higher yield from each fish, and people are taking a fresh look at “trash.”
Fish jerky from California whitefish offcuts is making a splash, as are bone broths made from seafood. In Australia, new products like scampi caviar, honey bugs and GT shrimp (named by Aussies after the car)—all recently discarded as bycatch—are yielding higher profits than the traditional deep-water scampi catch. The challenge now shifts from reducing waste in these supply chains to making sure the full fisheries remain sustainable.
Sustainability is the table stake
Over 90 percent of large-scale, U.S.-based seafood buyers have committed to selling only sustainable products. They’re trying to pluck the junk from their supply chains—and they have plenty of work yet to do—so there’s no way they’re buying something new that’s not sustainable. And the seafood itself is just the start of the conversation. Buyers want to know what a supplier is doing about labor, packaging and resource use, and new products must beat the status quo to gain space on shelves and screens. Introducing an unsustainable seafood product to today’s marketplace would be like introducing a petroleum-powered Hummer to the current car market. We can’t claim victory on sustainability yet, but the tide truly has turned.
Change goes deeper and faster
What most surprises me about all this progress is not just how fast it’s happening, but how people are redefining the problems. Instead of simply creating different fish feeds, innovators are asking how we can cut the amount of feed needed to grow each fish, make feeds more nutritious and breed fish that are light eaters or thrive on vegetarian diets. Instead of wondering whether aquaculture can advance, they’re working on clearing bottlenecks around hatcheries, disease and genetics. Packaging waste was barely on the seafood world’s radar two years ago; now it’s a prime target.
This has a lot to do with the sheer number of talented entrepreneurs and investors entering the seafood sector. The more ideas and technologies we put in play, the more hits we’re going to have. It also has to do with connections. I’m struck by how eager people are to work together regionally and across oceans and borders, once they get out of their caves and meet each other. The entrepreneurs participating in Fish 2.0 are as interested in partnerships with other businesses as they are in investment. As these personal networks pull together pieces of innovation bubbling up around the world and more investors jump into the pool, the pace of change in seafood has moved from a simmer to a rolling boil.
Last month, Netflix was spotted testing a new section in its TV app called “Latest,” which would connect viewers with a personalized list of upcoming content due to be released over the course of the current week and the next. Today, Netflix is formally announcing the launch of the feature with a focus on its ability to remind you of shows and movies you want to watch.
Netflix had confirmed in August that the Latest section would be available on its streaming app for TVs, including Fire TV, Apple TV, Roku, and others. But it also had a similar feature available on Android and is testing the feature on iOS, it said at the time.
Today, the company confirms the new tab will now be available on many game consoles and Roku, with smart TVs and other devices getting the upgrade in the next couple of months.
The tab itself will feature content from across categories, like drama, comedy, horror, docs, foreign, original, licensed and kids, the company notes. These recommendations will be organized into three sections: New this Week, Coming this Week, and Coming Next Week.
When you see something of interest, you can click “Remind Me” to receive a notification when the title is available to stream.
Netflix says the new feature was inspired by its popular “Now on Netflix” newsletters which help subscribers keep up with the ever-changing content slate.
The feature’s launch is significant for a few reasons.
For starters, it’s a rare addition to Netflix’s top-level navigation in its app which before was limited to Home, Search, TV, Movies, and My List. The Latest section will now get a prominent position, just beneath the Home button.
It will also be an important tool that Netflix will use to keep viewers engaged with its content so they’ll continue to pay for the subscription service. This is now more of a concern for Netflix, which recently posted a disappointing quarter, where it lost U.S. subscribers for the first time since 2011. It’s also poised to face serious competition from newcomers to the streaming market including, most notably, Disney whose soon-to-launch Disney+ will cost less than Netflix and can be bundled with Hulu and ESPN for the same price as a standard Netflix subscription.
The new addition will help to address another challenge, as well — helping subscribers figure out what to watch. Unlike traditional linear TV, Netflix doesn’t just drop you into live TV — you have to make a decision. This often leads to people scrolling for several minutes to find a show to stream, getting frustrated or overwhelmed by the choices, then just launching an old standby, like “The Office.” With reminders and notifications, Netflix can gently nudge viewers towards titles they already want to watch, which could mean less timing browsing and more time streaming.
Holy price hike, startuppers — you have just 48 hours left to save up to $1,300 on passes to Disrupt San Francisco 2019 on October 2-4. Don’t let time stand in your way of saving serious dough. Release your inner savvy shopper and beat the deadline. Early-bird savings disappear at 11:59 p.m. (PST) on September 6. Avoid the price hike — buy your early-bird passes today.
More than 10,000 attendees will be on hand to experience the very best of startup culture. Whether you come to be inspired by today’s leaders and tomorrow’s most promising startups or to gain business insight from industry analysts, you’ll find it all at Disrupt SF 2019.
Let’s look at just some of the leading experts who will grace our various stages and discuss new innovations and game-changing technologies (you can see the full agenda here):
The Ethics of Snipping DNA with CRISPR — Rachel Haurwitz is the founder of Caribou Biosciences, a startup on the cutting edge of gene editing technologies — including animal and human DNA. She will chat with us about the ethical and scientific questions surrounding CRISPRing human embryos and what that could mean for the future of humanity.
How to Take a Digital Brand Offline — E-commerce has fundamentally changed the way we browse and buy physical goods. But even though online sales have taken a huge bite out of brick-and-mortar, it doesn’t mean that digital brands aren’t interested in the prospect of offline channels. Hear from Rich Fulop (Brooklinen), James Reinhart (thredUP) and Susan Tynan (Framebridge) — three founders who have taken their own unique approach to launching a store.
The Fourth Big Wave: Talking Crypto — If you care about understanding crypto and the ways it may well impact you sooner than you might imagine, you won’t want to miss this fireside chat with Andreessen Horowitz general partner Chris Dixon.
How to Raise My First Dollars — Venture funding may have boomed over the last decade, but the decisions around your initial funding are as tricky as ever. Hear how to take advantage of the current landscape from top Silicon Valley early-stage thinkers, including pre-seed investor Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures, early-stage investor Annie Kadavy of Redpoint Ventures and Russ Heddleston, CEO of DocSend.
You’ll find plenty of networking opportunities in Startup Alley, where 1,200 early-stage startups and sponsors — including our TC Top Picks — showcase their latest innovations. Don’t miss out on the Startup Battlefield to watch an impressive group of startups launch on a world stage and compete for $100,000.
Be a savvy shopper and save big bucks. Buy your early-bird passes to Disrupt San Francisco 2019 by 11:59 p.m. (PST) on September 6.
Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt San Francisco 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.
It turns out GDPR was just the tip of the privacy iceberg. With California’s privacy law coming on line January 1st and dozens more in various stages of development, it’s clear that governments are taking privacy seriously, which means companies have to as well. New York-startup BigID, which has been developing a privacy platform for the last several years, finds itself in a good position to help. Today, the company announced a $50 million Series C.
The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners with help from SAP.io Fund, Comcast Ventures, Boldstart Ventures, Scale Venture Partners and ClearSky. New investor Salesforce Ventures also participated. Today’s investment brings the total raised to over $96 million, according to Crunchbase.
In addition to the funding, the company is also announcing the formation of a platform of sorts, which will offer a set of privacy services for customers. It includes data discovery, classification and correlation. “We’ve separated the product into some constituent parts. While it’s still sold as a broad-based solution, it’s much more of a platform now in the sense that there’s a core set of capabilities that we heard over and over that customers want,” CEO and co-founder Dimitri Sirota told TechCrunch.
He says that these capabilities really enables customers to see connections in the data across a set of disparate data sources. “There are a lot of products that do the request part, but there’s nobody that’s able to look across your entire data landscape, the hundreds of petabytes, and pick out the data in Salesforce, Workday, AWS, mainframe, and all these places you could have data on [an individual], and show how it’s all tied together,” Sirota explained.
It’s interesting to see the mix of strategic investors and traditional venture capitalists who are investing in the company. The strategics in particular see the privacy landscape as well as anyone, and Sirota says it’s a case of privacy mattering more than ever and his company providing the means to navigate the changing landscape. “Consumers care about privacy, which means legislators care about it, which ultimately means companies have to care about it,” he said. He added, “Strategics, whether they are companies that collect personal data or those that sell to those companies, therefore have an interest in BigID .”
The company has been growing fast and raising money quickly to help it scale to meet demand. Starting in January 2018, it raised $14 million. Just six months later, it raised another $30 million and you can tack on today’s $50 million. Sirota says having money in the bank and seeing these investments helps give enterprise customers confidence that the company is in this for the long haul.
Sirota wouldn’t give an exact valuation, only saying that while the company is not a unicorn, the valuation was a “robust number.” He says the plan now it to keep expanding the platform, and there will be announcements coming soon around partnerships, customers and new capabilities.
Sirota will be appearing at TechCrunch Sessions: Enterprise on September 5th at 11 am on the panel, Cracking the Code: From Startup to Scaleup in Enterprise Software.
