Category: UNCATEGORIZED

October is right around the corner, and if you want to get the lowest possible price on your passes to Disrupt San Francisco 2019 you have just four days left to make it so. Depending on which pass you buy, you can save up to $1,300, but only if you buy your Disrupt SF pass before the deadline expires at 11:59 p.m. (PST) on September 6.

Some of the tech and investment industry’s greatest leaders, minds and makers will be on hand to share their work, insight and advice. It’s a great opportunity to learn from the people who’ve paved the way. Three full days of programming across four different stages will keep you engaged and inspired. Here’s just one example to pique your interest, and you can check out the full Disrupt agenda here.

Curious about the future of flight? You won’t want to miss our Main Stage interview with Sebastian Thrun, CEO of Kitty Hawk. Thrun’s bonafides are nothing short of impressive. Through X, the Google moonshot factory he founded, he helped take self-driving cars from theory to reality. He’s also co-founder and executive chairman of Udacity, the $1 billion online education startup. His current endeavor involves bringing two aircraft — the one-person Flyer and a two-person autonomous taxi called Cora — to market. We can’t wait to hear his take on the future of flight.

Curious about capital? Then head on over to the Extra Crunch Stage to hear John Geiger (John Geiger Company) and Kathryn Petralia (Kabbage) talk about alternative ways founders can raise cash without talking to investors. Say what?!

Curious about Startup Alley? Get a head start on your networking strategy by perusing our directory of startups exhibiting in Startup Alley. Be sure to stop by and meet our TC Top Picks — these 45 outstanding startups represent the best in their respective tech categories.

And of course, you won’t want to miss the Startup Battlefield. It’s a fast-paced pitch-a-thon featuring the very best early-stage startups. Watch them pitch and demo under pressure to a tough panel of expert tech and VC judges. Who will win the day — and the $100,000 prize?

Disrupt San Francisco 2019 takes place on October 2-4 — just one month away. But the early bird pricing disappears promptly at 11:59 p.m. (PST) on September 6. Buy your discounted tickets now, save a bundle and we’ll see you in San Francisco.

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

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is perhaps best known for his acting across films like 10 Things I Hate About You, 500 Days of Summer, and Snowden. But times weren’t always peachy for Gordon-Levitt as a creative. After leaving the movie business to go to college, he realized the limits of the industry on his potential as a creative. He decided he wanted to take his creativity into his own hands and launched a message board where he’d post films, songs, etc.

But what started as a side hobby has turned into a production company in its own right, using technology to allow dozens of people to collaborate on a creative project together. And, more importantly, it gives each contributor fair credit for their work, paying out individual creatives based on how much of their work was featured in the final product.

Obviously, it goes without saying that we’re thrilled to have Joseph Gordon-Levitt join us at TechCrunch Disrupt SF in October.

Far too rarely do we see creatives supported by the platforms where they post their work. With the current media landscape, and the ever-growing dominance of social media, the relationship between platform and creative is strained at best. And more importantly, it incentivizes all the wrong things.

From an interview in VentureBeat:

If what you’re going for is posting on YouTube, or Instagram, or platforms that monetize through the ad model, where they’re really just going for sheer volume and have the ability to manipulate people through ads, virality is the measure of success. And I think this is exactly at the heart of what’s interesting to me about doing [HitRecord]. I think if that is your measure of success, you’re going to undermine a lot of what’s actually meaningful and joyful about creativity. And I’m actually concerned for the human race’s creative spirit, because so much of our collective creativity is now destined for these platforms that are monetized by this sort of attention economy model. And it twists one’s understanding of one’s own creativity, and what the value of being creative is.

At Disrupt SF, we’ll discuss the growth of the HitRecord platform, plans for that fresh $6.4 million in Series A funding, and how founders can seize this moment to provide collaborative tools that align creatives with the platforms they’re using.

Disrupt SF runs October 2 to October 4 at the Moscone Center in the heart of San Francisco. Tickets are available here.

From today Firefox users who update to the latest version of the browser will find a pro-privacy setting flipped for them on desktop and Android smartphones, assuming they didn’t already have the anti-tracking cookie feature enabled.

Mozilla launched the Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) feature in June as a default setting for new users — but leaving existing Firefox users’ settings unchanged at that point.

It’s now finishing what it started by flipping the default switch across the board in v69.0 of the browser.

The feature takes clear aim at third party cookies that are used to track Internet users for creepy purposes such as ad profiling. (Firefox relies on the Disconnect list to identify creepy cookies to block.)

The anti-tracking feature also takes aim at cryptomining: A background practice which can drain CPU and battery power, negatively impacting the user experience. Again, Firefox will now block cryptomining by default, not only when user activated.

In a blog post about the latest release Mozilla says it represents a “milestone” that marks “a major step in our multi-year effort to bring stronger, usable privacy protections to everyone using Firefox”.

“Currently over 20% of Firefox users have Enhanced Tracking Protection on. With today’s release, we expect to provide protection for 100% of ours users by default,” it predicts, underlining the defining power of default settings.

Firefox users with ETP enabled will see a shield icon in the URL bar to denote the tracker blocking is working. Clicking on this icon takes users to a menu where they can view a list of all the tracking cookies that are being blocked. Users are also able to switch off tracking cookie blocking on a per site basis, via this Content Blocking menu.

While blocking tracking cookies reduces some tracking of internet users it does not offer complete protection for privacy. Mozilla notes that ETP does not yet block browser fingerprinting scripts from running by default, for example.

Browser fingerprinting is another prevalent privacy-hostile technique that’s used to track and profile web users without knowledge or consent by linking online activity to a computer’s configuration and thereby tying multiple browser sessions back to the same device-user.

It’s an especially pernicious technique because it can erode privacy across browser sessions and even different browsers — which an Internet user might be deliberately deploying to try to prevent profiling.

A ‘Strict Mode’ in the Firefox setting can be enabled by Firefox users in the latest release to block fingerprinting. But it’s not on by default.

Mozilla says a future release of the browser will flip fingerprinting blocking on by default too.

The latest changes in Firefox continue Mozilla’s strategy — announced a year ago — of pro-actively defending its browser users’ privacy by squeezing the operational range of tracking technologies.

In the absence of a robust regulatory framework to rein in the outgrowth of the adtech ‘industrial data complex’ that’s addicted to harvesting Internet users’ data for ad targeting, browser makers have found themselves at the coal face of the fight against privacy-hostile tracking technologies.

And some are now playing an increasingly central — even defining role — as they flip privacy and anti-tracking defaults.

Notably, earlier this month, the open source WebKit browser engine, which underpins Apple’s Safari browser, announced a new tracking prevention policy that puts privacy on the same footing as security, saying it would treat attempts to circumvent this as akin to hacking.

Even Google has responded to growing pressure around privacy — announcing changes to how its Chrome browser handles cookies this May. Though it’s not doing that by default yet.

It has also said it’s working on technology to reduce fingerprinting. And recently announced a long term proposal to involve its Chromium browser engine in developing a new open standard for privacy.

Though cynics might suggest the adtech giant is responding to competitive pressure on privacy by trying to frame and steer the debate in a way that elides its own role in data mining Internet users at scale for (huge) profit.

Thus its tardy privacy pronouncements and long term proposals look rather more like an attempt to kick the issue into the long grass and buy time for Chrome to keep being used to undermine web users’ privacy — instead of Google being forced to act now and close down privacy-hostile practices that benefit its business.

Details have surfaced about one of the potentially key features of the next Apple Watch — sleep tracking. Bloomberg originally reported that Apple has been working on a sleep tracking feature, and 9to5mac now details how the implementation could work.

The new feature would work on the next Apple Watch. The new device could be unveiled at Apple’s iPhone event next week or at a later event this fall. It’s unclear whether existing devices will also support the new feature.

You don’t need any extra hardware to enable sleep tracking — an Apple Watch strapped on your wrist is enough. When enabled, the Apple Watch will track your movements using the accelerometer. Apple also plans to take advantage of the heart rate sensor. Interestingly, the company could also leverage the microphone to listen for noises.

When you wake up, you can check the quality of your night in the Health app on your iPhone. According to 9to5mac, there will be a new Sleep app on the Apple Watch as well.

As most people use their phone as an alarm clock, Apple would mirror your alarm on your Apple Watch. This way, the alarm would play on the Apple Watch first and use the iPhone as a backup. You could limit the alarm on the Apple Watch to vibration only. This feature would be particularly handy for couples who don’t have the same schedule.

When it comes to battery life, Apple could send you a notification to remind you to charge your Apple Watch before going to bed. Remember that the Apple Watch has a tiny battery, so it charges in no time. You could easily get enough battery life in just a few minutes.

That feature would work particularly well with the next iPhone. Rumor has it that Apple will add reverse wireless charging to the new iPhone. It means that you would be able to put your Apple Watch on the back of your iPhone to charge it directly from your iPhone.

And if you’ve been a long time Apple Watch user, Apple could also let you pick a second Apple Watch and turn it into a dedicated sleep tracker. You’d just have to switch from one Apple Watch to another when you go to bed.

The NFL and social video app TikTok today announced a multi-year partnership to bring NFL content to worldwide fans, just ahead of the NFL’s 100th season kick off on September 5. The partnership includes the launch of an official NFL account on the video platform, as well as a series of NFL-themed hashtag challenges, and other marketing opportunities for brands around the NFL content.

The first hashtag challenge, #WeReady, starts today and runs through Thursday. It encourages fans to show pride for their favorite NFL team while using the #WeReady hashtag. Several popular TikTok creators and NFL clubs will join the fans in the challenge.

TikTok will also have a presence at Soldier Field in Chicago for the Sept. 5 kickoff, where TikTok fans will be about to create videos and show their love for teams and players in an NFL-themed experience.

At launch, the NFL’s Tiktok account already features several videos, ranging from behind-the-scenes action to highlights, to funny memes and even inspirational content.

“We’re thrilled to partner with a powerhouse in the sports industry like the NFL to bring new life and a fresh perspective to the sports entertainment experience,” said Mayan Scharf, Global Partnerships, TikTok. “TikTok is a destination where fans can feel like they are a part of the team and we look forward to showcasing content from the NFL that is exciting, authentic and surprising to TikTok community,” he said.

While TikTok is better known for its meme-like, short-form videos featuring lip-syncing, displays of talent like dance, cosplay, comedy, art, and more, the company says that sports content is also a popular category on its service.

The NFL, meanwhile, is not averse to jumping on early with emerging platforms — whether that’s live-streaming video on Twitter, being the first sports league on Snapchat Discover, or launching an Alexa voice app, for example.

In addition, the NFL looks for opportunities that give it the ability to reach international fans, like when it distributed game highlights and recaps on Facebook. This is of particular importance at a time when ratings have become more of a concern for the sports league. Though it finally recovered last season from a multi-year ratings slump, the NFL knows that fans outside the U.S. are also worth courting as they can be just as loyal and engaged.

“Partnering with TikTok is a natural extension of our media strategy,” said Blake Stuchin, Vice President, Digital Media Business Development for the NFL, in a statement. “The platform reaches a fast-growing global audience of NFL fans and future fans. The NFL programming and hashtag challenges are a perfect way to kick off the NFL’s 100th season – with fun, new content that will entertain fans and invites them to celebrate and experience their NFL fandom in a way that’s authentic to the unique experience of TikTok,” he said.

Our countdown to the super early-bird deadline and serious savings continues unabated, people! The best pricing for passes to Disrupt Berlin 2019 ends in four days. When the clock strikes 11:59 p.m. (CEST) on 6 September, your chance to save up to €600 evaporates. Save your euros for another day and buy your pass right now.

We expect more than 3,000 attendees from more than 50 countries including European Union members, Israel, Turkey, Russia, Egypt, India, China and South Korea, to name just a few. If you’re a founder, there’s no better place to introduce your early-stage startup to the European and international startup scene.

If you’re an investor, you’ll find hundreds of dynamic early-stage startups exhibiting a wide range of tech products, services and platforms — not to mention a ton of talent — in Startup Alley. Talk about networking on steroids — and a prime opportunity to add to your portfolio.

Don’t just take our word for it. Vlad Larin, co-founder of Zeroqode found tremendous value in his Disrupt Berlin experience.

“TechCrunch Disrupt was a massively positive experience,” said Larin. “It gave us the chance to show our technology to the world and have meaningful conversations with investors, accelerators, incubators, solo founders and developers.”

And Jana Rosenfelder, co-founder of Actijoy, has attended three — count ‘em, three — Disrupt conferences. She’s a true believer in the networking opportunities that await founders and investors alike.

“Every startup should attend TechCrunch Disrupt,” said Rosenfelder. “It’s absolutely worth the money, because you can network and make important connections.”

Rosenfelder exhibited as one of our TC Top Picks at Disrupt SF ’18 and called it a door-opening experience. We’re accepting applications to TC Top Picks at Disrupt Berlin right now. Apply right here for your chance to win a free Startup Alley Exhibitor Package, VIP treatment and tons of investor and media love.

That’s just a small sample of reasons to go to Disrupt Berlin. Don’t forget Startup Battlefield, the TC Hackathon and two full days of incredible speakers — leading founders, tech titans and top investors — boundary-pushers all. We’ll keep you posted on our growing roster in the coming weeks.

Disrupt Berlin 2019 takes place on 11-12 December, and you have just four days left to get super early bird prices on your passes to this epic conference. The deadline strikes at 11:59 p.m. (CEST) on 6 September. Keep up to €600 in your pocket — buy your pass today.

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

Data is the new oil, as the saying goes, and today Kabbage — a fintech startup backed by SoftBank that has built a business around lending up to $250,000 to small and medium enterprises, using AI-based algorithms to help determine the terms of the loan — is picking up an asset to expand its own data trove as it looks to expand into further SMB financial services. The company has acquired Radius Intelligence, the marketing technology firm that has built a database of information on some 20 million small and medium businesses in the US.

Terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but notably, it comes on the heels of a sightly tumultuous period for Radius. Last year, the company announced a merger with its big competitor Leadspace, only to quietly cancel the deal three months later. Then two months after that, it replaced its longtime CEO.

Radius — which is backed by some $120 million from investors that include Founders Fund, David Sacks, Salesforce Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures and the actor Jared Leto among others — last had a valuation of around $200 million according to PitchBook, but that was prior to these events. Kabbage, meanwhile, has raised hundreds of millions in equity and debt and is valued at over $1 billion. The deal will be financed off Kabbage’s own balance sheet and will not require the company to raise more funds, I understand.

Rob Frohwein, Kabbage’s co-founder and CEO, said in an interview that the plan is to integrate Radius’ tech and IP into the Kabbage platform — the task will be overseen by Radius’ current CEO, Joel Carusone — as well as Radius’ tech team of 20 engineers, who will work for the Atlanta-based startup out of its office in San Francisco.

He also added that Radius’ current products — which include market intelligence and contact information for employees at SMBs in the US, along with a host of related solutions, which up to now had been gathered both via public sources and the businesses updating the information themselves; as well as the technology for merging disparate sources of data and ferreting out the “valid” pieces that are worth retaining and throwing out what is out of date — will not be sold any longer via Radius. From now on, there will be only one customer for all that data: Kabbage itself.

To note: the company had already been a user of Radius’ data to help its own marketing team connect with new and and existing customers.

“We have known the company for a long time,” said Frohwein. Other customers that Radius lists on its site include Square, American Express, LendingTree, FirstData, MetLife, Sam’s Club, Yahoo and more.

This doesn’t mean that Kabbage might not offer the SMB intelligence in a format to businesses directly via its own platform at some point, but it also means that as Kabbage expands into services that might compete with some of Radius’ now-former customers — payments and merchant acquirer services, as well as tools to help SMBs grow their own customer funnels are some that are on the cards for the coming months — it will have an edge on them because of the data on users that it will now own.

The deal underscores two bigger trends among startups that focus on enterprise customers. First, it points to  ongoing consolidation in the world of marketing tech, in part as businesses look for ways to better compete against the likes of Microsoft and Salesforce, which are also continually building out their stacks of services. And we will likely see more activity from stronger fintech companies keen to expand their platforms to provide more touchpoints and revenue streams from existing customers, as well as more services to expand the customer base overall.

“We’re thrilled to join the Kabbage team. As a company dedicated to small business analytics and data management, we’ve always had a deep respect for Kabbage’s data-driven technology and focus,” Radius CEO Carusone said in a statement. “Our companies have complementary technical architectures and domain experience for decision making. With Kabbage, we can build a more sophisticated analytics solution to identify, reach and serve small businesses.”

Kabbage itself is not looking for new funding at the moment, Frohwein said, but he added also that it is on a fast trajectory at the moment but still a ways away from an IPO, so I wouldn’t discount more raises in the future. The company is currently on track to see revenues up 40% versus last year, with customers up 60%.

“We’re always looking to grow,” he said.

Indian mobile payments firm MobiKwik has reached a milestone very few of its local rivals can even contemplate: not burning money. The 10-year-old Gurgaon-headquartered firm said Tuesday it is now generating a profit excluding interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.

“We have been in an ecosystem where we have seen a lot of high-growth and several regulatory changes in the payments domain. But what we realized was that payments alone is likely not going to be a very profitable business,” Bipin Singh, co-founder and CEO of MobiKwik, told TechCrunch in an interview.

To get to the path of profitability, MobiKwik has made a number of significant changes to its business in recent years. It stopped participating in the race of getting more and more users and fight with the likes of Paytm, which has raised more than $2 billion to date.

Paytm remains unprofitable and an analysis of its financial performance shows that this is not going to change anytime soon. Google, which also offers a payments service in India, has no shortage of cash either.

Upasana Taku, co-founder and COO of MobiKwik, recalled an offsite meeting where someone asked her why Kotak and ICICI banks, both of which have about 15 million to 20 million customers, are profitable but wallet apps with tens of millions of users are not. MobiKwik, which employs 400 people, has 110 million users, she said.

In last two and a half years, MobiKwik has cut down on cashback it bandies out to users — a practice followed by nearly every company offering a payments solution in India — and focused on building financial services on top of its wallet app to retain customers and find additional revenue sources.

The company continues to focus on its mobile wallet and payments processing businesses that account for about 65% of its revenue, but its growing suite of financial services such as providing credits and insurance to customers is already bringing rest of the revenue, she said.

That’s not surprising. Fewer than 50 million credit cards are in circulation in India currently, and for people with limited income, getting a loan remains a major challenge.

“Even the population that has access to smartphones and cheap internet data can’t get a credit card in India. We found it a good match for the growth of our payments app. We started serving these users who have the discipline to repay money, have certain kind of income,” the couple said, who are now also donning the role of angel investors.

MobiKwik works with banks and other lenders to finance loans worth Rs 5,000 ($69) to Rs 100,000 ($1380). In the 18 months the service has been live, MobiKwik has offered 800,000 loans and disbursed $100 million. Its health insurance starts at as little as $1.3 a month.

MobiKwik expects its revenue to hit $66 million in the financial year that ends in March next year, up from $28 million a year earlier. The company, which expects to turn profitable in the next two to three years, plans to go public soon afterwards.

MobiKwik competes with a number of players, many of which are increasingly adding financial services such as loans to their platforms. India’s overall retail credit demand is expected to grow 60% to $771 billion over the next four years, according to the Digital Lenders Association of India.

OpenGov, the firm co-founded by Panaltir’s Joe Lonsdale that helps government and other civic organizations organise, analyse and present financial and other data using cloud-based architecture, has raised another big round of funding to continue expanding its business. The startup has picked up an additional $51 million in a Series D round led by Weatherford Capital and 8VC (Lonsdale’s investment firm), with participation from existing investor Andreessen Horowitz.

The funding brings the total raised by the company to $140 million, with previous investors in the firm including JC2 Ventures, Emerson Collective, Founders Fund and a number of others. The company is not disclosing its valuation — although we are asking — but for some context, PitchBook noted it was around $190 million in its last disclosed round — although that was in 2017 and has likely increased in the interim, not least because of the startup’s links in high places, and its growth.

On the first of these, the company says that its board of directors includes, in addition to Lonsdale (who is now the chairman of the company); Katherine August-deWilde, Co-Founder and Vice-Chair of First Republic Bank; John Chambers, Founder and CEO of JC2 Ventures and Former Chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems; Marc Andreessen, Co-Founder and General Partner of Andreessen Horowitz; and Zac Bookman, Co-Founder and CEO of OpenGov .

And in terms of its growth, OpenGov says today it counts more than 2,000 governments as customers, with recent additions to the list including the State of West Virginia, the State of Oklahoma, the Idaho State Controller’s Office, the City of Minneapolis MN, and Suffolk County NY. For comparison, when we wrote in 2017 about the boost the company had seen since Trump’s election (which has apparently seen a push for more transparency and security of data), the company noted 1,400 government customers.

Government data is generally associated with legacy systems and cripplingly slow bureaucratic processes, and that has spelled opportunity to some startups, who are leveraging the growth of cloud services to present solutions tailored to the needs of civic organizations and the people who work in them, from city planners to finance specialists. In the case of OpenGov, it packages its services in a platform it calls the OpenGov Cloud.

“OpenGov’s mission to power more effective and accountable government is driving innovation and transformation for the public sector at high speed,” said OpenGov CEO Zac Bookman in a statement. “This new investment validates OpenGov’s position as the leader in enterprise cloud solutions for government, and it fuels our ability to build, sell, and deploy new mission-critical technology that is the safe and trusted choice for government executives.”

It’s also, it seems, a trusted choice for government executives who have left public service and moved into investing, leveraging some of the links they still have into those who manage procurement for public services. Weatherford Capital, one of the lead investors, is led in part by managing partner Will Weatherford, who is the former Speaker of the House for the State of Florida.

“OpenGov’s innovative technology, accomplished personnel, market leadership, and mission-first approach precisely address the growing challenges inherent in public administration,” he said in a statement. “We are thrilled at the opportunity to partner with OpenGov to accelerate its growth and continue modernizing how this important sector operates.”

It will be interesting to see how and if the company uses the funding to consolidate in its particular area of enterprise technology. There are other firms like LiveStories that have also been building services to help better present civic data to the public that you could see as complementary to what OpenGov is doing. OpenGov has made acquisitions in the past, such as Ontodia to bring more open-source data and technology into its platform.