Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Services are the future of Fitbit . That was the overarching message from an event this week in Manhattan. The small gathering of media outlets found the company spending most of its stage time on software and services, leaving a small window at the end to discuss the launch of a pair of hardware products, the Versa 2 smartwatch and Aira Air scale.

After a decade of leading with hardware, Fitbit has no doubt seen the writing on the wall in the wearables category. It’s true that devices continue to see growth, but with Xiaomi and other Chinese manufacturers devouring the low end of the market and Apple utterly dominating smartwatches, Fitbit is looking at other ways to leverage its presence in fitness.

Fitbit Premium will be a cornerstone of that play. At $10 a month or $80 annually, the company is eyeing a revenue streaming beyond device sales and enterprise/healthcare partnerships. It’s a play that echoes similar moves by companies like Apple, which has seen services and content become an increasingly important part of its revenue model as sales on devices like the iPhone continue to stagnate.

What does $10 a month get you? Custom insights. That’s the promise here. Bespoke health and sleep information that goes deeper than what users of Fitbit’s free app get. The core of the offering is nine guided health and fitness programs, with names like Intro to Healthy Habits, Get More Zzz’s, Habits for Restful Sleep, Get Active, Beginner Running, Run Training, Understand Calories, Kick Your Sugar Habit and Kick Your Salt Habit.

Health has always been core to what Fitbit does, and everyone’s moving to a subscription model anyway, so the offering makes sense on the face of it. But in a world where we’ve already got thousands of monthly subscription services vying for a piece of our electronic deposits, the company’s got a tough road ahead of it convincing consumers to shell out an additional $10 a month.

“The quick pitch is that it’s a one-stop shop that gives you all of what you really need to eat better, become more active, sleep better,” CEO and co-founder James Park told TechCrunch. “And it’s a service that’s tightly integrated with your Fitbit device. And so with a user base of over 27 million active users, definitely for our user base, it’s a really compelling solution.”

The offering promises a better breakdown of Fitbit’s new Sleep Score feature, thousands of video and audio workouts and various gamified offerings designed to better help the wearer move. Perhaps more compelling are a handful of content partners, including Headspace, Daily Burn and Yoga Studio by Gaiam that supplement Fitbit’s own premium content. Of course, Fitbit Premium isn’t designed to replace any of these services outright and will instead include a selection of content from each.

As ever, I’ll reserve full judgement until we get hands-on time with the service, but my concern is the same as with many fitness content services. Much of the data collected requires user input. I suspect the reminder of a monthly fee will go a ways toward convincing users to keep up, but as with so many of these, accuracy comes down to one key fact: You can’t lie to a fitness tracker, but you can lie to an app.

“A lot of the value that we’re trying to provide as well is that the programs provide and adapt dynamically without you having to really do anything,” says Park. “And we’re trying to provide more nudges and notifications that remind you, throughout the course of the day or through your program, what things you should be doing.”

Getting people to pay for a premium version of content they’ve been offered for free is always a heavy lift — and I say that as someone who works in publishing. I haven’t seen a magic bullet in the Fitbit Premium pitch so far, but I’d be more than happy to be convinced otherwise.

The service has already been piloted in Australia and New Zealand. It will start rolling out to U.S. users this month and will be available in 17 English-speaking countries this fall, with more languages arriving next year.

The service will be exclusively targeted at Fitbit users at launch, but Park says the plan is to move toward a more platform-agnostic model going forward, a move that could foretell a further move away from a hardware-revenue model.

“Long-term, we see Fitbit Premium as something that can be used with other devices as well, whether it’s an Apple Watch, Garmin, etc.” says Park. “But initially we’re focused on our existing users, because we have a lot of them.”

SF-based Elroy Air hopes to transform bulk air cargo shipping with its ‘Chapparal’ vertical take-off and landing craft, the first version of which will be able to carry 250 lbs of cargo as far as 300 miles. The startup, which was founded in 2016 by experienced professionals with track records of working in UAS (uncrewed aerial systems) has just completed its first flights of the ‘Aluminum Falcon’ prototype test craft.

The 1,215 lb aircraft is a full-scale testing version of the eventual planned commercially deployed Chapparal system, and managed to fly to a height of 10 feet, hovering for just over a minute before returning in a controlled landing. The test took place at McMillan Airfield, at the California National Guards Camp Roberts in Central California, and during the test the VTOL was piloted remotely by the company’s lead pilot.

Elroy Air raised $9.2 million in funding in February, but it’s mostly been quietly making progress on bringing its prototype to life after debuting the initial design in 2017. The startup’s goal is to “decouple air cargo from airports” according to CEO David Merrill – which means letting big VTOLs do the work that small cargo planes currently handle for air freight.

The specific approach Elroy Air is taking makes use of hybrid-electric power trains for its aircraft, which help them to travel longer distances vs. fully electric VTOLs, while retaining better fuel efficiency vs. vehicles that only use internal combustion engines. The aircraft is also designed to work with pre-packed pods, so that it can easily and quickly swap its cargo for another shipment at its destination for the return flight.

The company will now carry out further tests of its prototype following this successful hover demonstration, and it’s looking to begin some small commercial service launches as early as next year if all goes well.

ThoughtSpot was started by a bunch of ed-Googlers looking to bring the power of search to data. Seven years later the company is growing fast, sporting a fat valuation of almost $2 billion and looking ahead to a possible IPO. Today it announced a hefty $248 million Series D round as it continues on its journey.

Investors include Silver Lake Waterman, Silver Lake’s late-stage growth capital fund along with existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sapphire Ventures and Geodesic Capital. Today’s funding brings the total raised to $554 million, according to the company.

The company wants to help customers bring speed to data analysis by answering natural language questions about the data without having to understand how to formulate a SQL query. As a person enters questions, ThoughSpot translates that question into SQL, then displays a chart with data related to the question, all almost instantly (at least in the demo).

It doesn’t stop there though. It also uses artificial intelligence to understand intent to help come up the exact correct answer. ThoughtSpot CEO Sudheesh Nair says that this artificial intelligence underpinning is key to the product. As he explained, if you are looking for the answer to a specific question like ‘What is the profit margin of red shoes in Portland?” there won’t be multiple answers. There is only one answer, and that’s where artificial intelligence really comes into play.

“The bar on delivering that kind of answer is very high and because of that, understanding intent is critical. We use AI for that. You could ask, ‘How did we do with red shoes in Portland?’ I could ask, ‘What is the profit margin of red shoes in Portland?’ The system needs to know that we both are asking the same question. So there’s a lot of AI that goes behind it to understand the intent,” Nair explained.

ThoughtSpot gets answers to queries by connecting to a variety of internal systems like HR, CRM and ERP and uses all of this data to answer the question as best it can. So far, it appears to be working. The company has almost 250 large company customers, and is on a run rate of close to $100 million.

Nair said that the company didn’t necessarily need the money with $100 million still in the bank, but he saw an opportunity, and he seized it. He says the money gives him a great deal of flexibility moving forward including the possibility of acquiring companies to fill in missing pieces or to expand the platform’s capabilities. It also will allow him to accelerate growth. Plus, he sees the capital markets possibly tightening next year and he wanted to strike while the opportunity was in front of him.

Nair definitely sees the company going public at some point. “With these kind of resources behind us, it actually opens up an opportunity for us to do any sort of IPO that we want. I do think that a company like this will benefit from going public because Global 2000 kind of customers, where we have our most of our business, appreciate the transparency and the stability represented by public companies,” he said.

He added, “And with $350 million in the bank, it’s totally [possible to] IPO, which means that a year and a half from now if we are ready to take the company public, we can actually have all options open including a direct listing, potentially. I’m not saying we will do that, but I’m saying that this kind of funding behind us, we have all those options open.”

YouTube is expanding an experimental tweak to its recommendation engine that’s intended to reduce the amplification of conspiracy theories to the UK market.

In January, the video-sharing platform said it was making changes in the US to limit the spread of conspiracy theory content, such as junk science and bogus claims about historical events — following sustained criticism of how its platform accelerates damaging clickbait.

A YouTube spokeswoman confirmed to TechCrunch it is now in the process of rolling out the same update to suppresses conspiracy recommendations in the UK. She said it will take some time to take full effect — without providing detail on when exactly the changes will be fully applied.

The spokeswoman said YouTube acknowledges that it needs to do more to reform a recommendation system that has been shown time and again lifting harmful clickbait and misinformation into mainstream view. Though YouTube claims this negative spiral occurs only sometimes, and says on average its system points users to mainstream videos.

The company calls the type of junk content it’s been experimenting with recommending less often “borderline”, saying it’s stuff that toes the line of its acceptable content policies. In practice this means stuff like videos that make nonsense claims the earth is flat, or blatant lies about historical events such as the 9/11 terror attacks, or promote harmful junk about bogus miracle cures for serious illnesses.

All of which can be filed under misinformation ‘snake oil’. But for YouTube this sort of junk has been very lucrative snake oil as a consequence of Google’s commercial imperative being to keep eyeballs engaged in order to serve more ads.

More recently, though, YouTube has taken a reputational hit as its platform as been blamed for an extremist and radicalizing impact on young and impressionable minds by encouraging users to swallow junk science and worse.

A former Google engineer, Guillaume Chaslot, who worked on the YouTube recommendation algorithms went public last year to condemn what he described as the engine’s “toxic” impact which he said “perverts civic discussion” by encouraging users to create highly engaging borderline content.

Multiple investigations by journalists have also delved into instances where YouTube has been blamed for pushing people, including the young and impressionable, towards far right points of view via its algorithm’s radicalizing rabbit hole — which exposes users to increasingly extreme points of view without providing any context about what it’s encouraging them to view. 

Of course it doesn’t have to be this way. Imagine if a YouTube viewer who sought out at a video produced by a partisan shock jock was suggested less extreme or even an entirely alternative political point of view. Or only saw calming yoga and mindfulness videos in their ‘up next’ feed.

YouTube has eschewed a more balanced approach to the content its algorithms select and recommend for commercial reasons. But it may also have been keen to avoid drawing overt attention to the fact that its algorithms are acting as de facto editors.

And editorial decisions are what media companies make. So it then follows that tech platforms which perform algorithmic content sorting and suggestion should be regulated like media businesses are. (And all tech giants in the user generated content space have been doing their level best to evade that sort of rule of law for years.)

That Google has the power to edit out junk is clear.

A spokeswoman for YouTube told us the US test of a reduction in conspiracy junk recommendations has led to a drop in the number of views from recommendations of more than 50%.

Though she also said the test is still ramping up — suggesting the impact on the viewing and amplification of conspiracy nonsense could be even greater if YouTube were to more aggressively demote this type of BS.

What’s very clear is the company has the power to flick algorithmic levers that determine what billions of people see — even if you don’t believe that might also influence how they feel and what they believe. Which is a concentration of power that should concern people on all sides of the political spectrum.

While YouTube could further limit algorithmically amplified toxicity the problem is its business continues to monetize on engagement, and clickbait’s fantastical nonsense is, by nature, highly engaging. So — for purely commercial reasons — it has a counter incentive not to clear out all YouTube’s crap.

How long the company can keep up this balancing act remains to be seen, though. In recent years some major YouTube advertisers have intervened to make it clear they do not relish their brands being associated with abusive and extremist content. Which does represent a commercial risk to YouTube — if pressure from and on advertisers steps up.

Like all powerful tech platforms, its business is also facing rising scrutiny from politicians and policymakers. And questions about how to ensure such content platforms do not have a deleterious effect on people and societies are now front of mind for governments in some markets around the world.

That political pressure — which is a response to public pressure, after a number of scandals — is unlikely to go away.

So YouTube’s still glacial response to addressing how its population-spanning algorithms negatively select for stuff that’s socially divisive and individually toxic may yet come back to bite it — in the form of laws that put firm limits on its powers to push people’s buttons.

Michigan-based startup Orbion has secured $9.2 million in Series A funding, which it will use as it undertakes the mass-produced manufacturing of its plasma thrusters for use in small satellites. Orbion’s thrusters are Hall-effect thrusters, which use an electric field to accelerate their propellant and create thrust. Hall-effect thrusters are nothing new, but Orbion’s approach, which uses plasma propulsion, has not previously been available at a cost and volume affordable for smaller satellite operators.

Just as SpaceX has greatly reduced the cost of launch services, Orbion aims to take a technology that was once reserved for the elite few, who could spend hundreds of millions or more on launching gigantic, train car-sized satellites into orbit. That basically limited the addressable market to government, defense and some very deep-pocketed commercial clients.

It’s a shame because plasma propulsion is a fundamental necessity for some types of satellite operations, regardless of budget – and it’s also a much more propellant-efficient method vs. other potential options, and will even enable satellites to have longer operating lives before they fall out of orbit and therefore out of service.

The small sat and cube sat boom we’ve seen and are seeing is due in large part to the increased affordability of key components that make up their construction, from sensors, to optics, to processors, to solar panels and more. But as Orbion points out, in-space propulsion isn’t something that’s gained any cost benefits from advances and mass-production ramp in the computer, smartphone or energy industries here on Earth. Unlocking the ability to manufacture effective, efficient and reliable in-space propulsion systems at scale is therefore a key unlock for ensuring the small sat industry can grow with demand.

Orbion is looking to make it possible to reduce delivery times from six to eight months of testing alone, after the thrusters are manufactured, before a customer even takes delivery, down to just six to eight days from order. It’s working to improve both speed and volume through an end-to-end manufacturing process that makes use of robotic assembly lines – one borrowed in part from the missile industry, so it’s not without proven precedent.

This new round of funding will help Orbion grow to meet the swelling demand it sees from commercial industry, as well as government agencies, and was led by Material Impact and includes contributions from Invest Michigan, Invest Detroit, Wakestream Ventures, Ann Arbor SPARK and Boomerang Catapult.

Microsoft today announced the availability of its cloud regions in Switzerland. The company first announced its plans for two Swiss regions near Zurich and Geneva, called Switzerland North and West, in 2018. Earlier this year, Microsoft noted that it was seeing quite a bit of interest in these regions, especially from companies in highly regulated industries that need to address data residency regulations.

The new regions will feature support for the core Azure cloud computing services, as well as Office 365, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. With this launch, Microsoft now offers its cloud services in 56 regions worldwide, which is very much part of the company’s overall strategy for Azure.

“Microsoft cloud services delivered from a given geography, such as our new regions in Switzerland, offer scalable, highly available, and resilient cloud services while helping enterprises and organizations meet their data residency, security and compliance needs,” Tom Keane, Microsoft’s corporate VP for Azure Global, writes in today’s announcement. “We have deep expertise protecting data and empowering customers around the globe to meet extensive security and privacy requirements by offering the broadest set of compliance certifications and attestations in the industry.”

Current customers include enterprises like UBS Group, Swiss Re Group, and Swisscom, as well as BKW, the City of Zug, die Mobiliar, Exploris Health and Skyguide.

While AWS does not currently operate a region in Switzerland, Google Cloud runs a region with three availability zones near Zurich.

 

Originally from Barcelona, Glovo has become a major player in the on-demand delivery app space. And Glovo isn’t just about ordering food from your favorite restaurants. You can also order groceries, pharmacy items and more from the app. That’s why I’m excited to announce that Glovo founder Oscar Pierre is joining us at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin.

Glovo has experienced exploding growth over the past couple of years. When the company announced its most recent round of funding, its service was live in 124 cities across 21 countries. Most of them are currently in EMEA, Latin America and some Sub-Saharian countries. Some of the most important markets include Spain, Argentina, Peru and Italy.

While restaurants still represent the majority of orders on Glovo, the company isn’t giving up on other verticals. For instance, it has signed a deal with supermarket chain Carrefour to deliver thousands of products in less than 30 minutes.

The company currently has over 1,000 employees and works with tens of thousands of independent partners for deliveries. It’s a classic structure for on-demand companies, but it’s going to be interesting to hear Oscar Pierre’s take on the relationship between Glovo and its partners.

Glovo doesn’t want to limit itself to delivering products from A to B. The company has been building darkstores, the equivalent of dark kitchens for groceries. Those micro-fulfillment centers open up a ton of possibilities, such as deliveries in less than 20 minutes and the ability to operate 24/7.

Oscar Pierre also has an unusual background as he started his career as an aerodynamics engineer for Airbus. I personally can’t wait to hear how he made the switch from Airbus to Glovo.

Buy your ticket to Disrupt Berlin to listen to this discussion and many others. The conference will take place on December 11-12.

In addition to panels and fireside chats, like this one, new startups will participate in the Startup Battlefield to compete for the highly coveted Battlefield Cup.

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Aerospace engineer and entrepreneur, ​O​scar ​Pierre, is CEO and co-founder of Glovo. He ​began his studies at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. After two years, he moved to Georgia Tech, in United States, to explore better opportunities.

After graduating, he began his professional career as aerodynamics engineer at Airbus, at his base in Toulouse. After 6 months he decided to look for new challenges and dedicate to creating a new business. Glovo began in early 2015. Previously, while studying, Pierre had already founded Zikkomo.com, a solidarity platform with 30 children sponsored in Malawi, and LoveItLocal.es in 2014, a market destined to boost local craft businesses. In January 2017 he was on Forbes magazine's 30under30 annual list of most influential young people.

Azimo, the U.K. headquartered money transfer service backed by Japan’s Rakuten Capital, amongst others, is seeing a change at the top: founder Michael Kent is stepping sideways to become “executive chairman,” while Azimo’s COO Richard Ambrose is being promoted to CEO.

However, perhaps more noteworthy — within the context of a plethora of loss-making fintechs — is that the personnel changes co-inside with the company announcing that it reached profitability during Q2 this year.

Azimo has raised $50 million of investment to date. Along with Rakuten, investors include eVentures, Greycroft, and Frog Capital.

“We’ve bucked the trend in fintech by focusing on profitability and long-term sustainability,” says Ambrose (pictured below), who, prior to joining Azimo two years ago, was an executive at PayPal. “The next big challenge is growing Azimo from a European to a global fintech business. We’re sanguine about this challenge because Europe — with its range of languages, currencies and payment habits — is a good place to cut your teeth before going global”.

And cut its teeth, Azimo has. Founded in 2012, the money transfer service now has 1.1 million registered sending customers and 2.3 million receivers. The average sent per transfer is £250 and users on average send money 2.4 times per month. The company’s main “corridor” focus is Africa, SE Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. I’m told there are plans for further expansion into Asia later this year.

“I am proud of the growth and success of Azimo, and most of all of the team that made it happen: we’ve created a world-class service and payment platform, which is lowering costs for millions of people around the world,” says Kent in a statement. “Richard has played a big part in the company’s development since he joined Azimo two years ago. I will continue to work closely with him and the rest of the team to make sure that our success story continues”.

Specifically, in his role as executive chairman, the Azimo founder will focus on new and existing investors and partners. Kent is also a fairly prolific angel investor. Along with his business partner Ricky Knox (the founder of Tandem Bank), he has backed the likes of Curve, ComplyAdvantage, YoYo Wallet, Thriva, and Tandem Bank, to name just a few.

The government of Rwanda will soon issue national policy-guidelines to eliminate gas motorcycles in its taxi sector in favor of e-motos.

The country’s president Paul Kagame previewed the plan last week. “We will find a way to replace the ones you have now. We urge taxi-moto operators to help us when the phase-out process comes,” he said speaking at a youth forum.

The Director General for the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority Patrick Nyirishema confirmed Kagame’s comments were ahead of a national e-mobility plan in the works for the East African nation.

“The president’s announcement is exactly the policy direction we’re in…it’s about converting to electric motos…The policy is prepared, it’s yet to be passed..and is going through the approval process,” Nyirishema told TechCrunch on a call from Kigali.

Motorcycle taxis in Rwanda are a common mode of transit, with estimates of 20 to 30 thousand operating in the capital of Kigali. The country has come a long way since the 1990s, becoming a test-bed for drone-delivery and prioritizing initiatives to become an African tech hub.

Nyirishema explained that converting to e-motorcycles is part of a national strategy to move Rwanda’s entire mobility space to electric. The country will start with public transit operators, such as moto-taxis, and move to buses and automobiles.

“Once the policy is out, we’ll no longer permit any motorcycle that is not electric to be added to a fleet,”  Nyirishema said, adding that the country’s regulators will need to create an appropriate transition period and program for taxi operators to move to e-motos.

The news comes as Africa’s motorcycle taxi markets — worth an estimated $4 billion — have seen a flurry of tech investment and expansion. Uber and Bolt got into the motorcycle taxi business in Africa in 2018.

Norwegian (and Chinese backed) browser service Opera’s recent $50 million backed West Africa product expansion included linking its new payment app to ORide, a motorcycle ride-hail venture it launched in Nigeria.

Nigerian motorcycle taxi and delivery startup MAX.ng raised a $7 million Series A round with participation from Yamaha. The company is using the funding to pilot e-motorcycles in Africa powered by renewable energy.

Another local moto-taxi venture—Uganda’s SafeBoda—received outside capital in a Series B round co-led by the venture arms of Germany’s Allianz and Indonesia’s Go-Jek. 

The Director General for  Rwanda’s Utilities Regulatory Authority Patrick Nyirishema prepared to confirm partners for the country’s e-moto conversion.

One startup that says it will be involved is Ampersand, a Kigali based venture that has already begun to pilot EVs and charging systems in Rwanda.

The company has worked with a feasibility study for implementing electric vehicles across Rwanda since last year, according to CEO Josh Whale. “We’ve also got a grant from the government…and it’s been tied in really well with the feasibility study,” he told TechCrunch.

Ampersand has shaped its own e-motorcycle model, building the batteries and fitting them into new motorcycle chassis imported from Asia. To keep the taxi-moto riders consistently moving—vs. delayed while recharging—the startup has developed a battery swapping system and station.

One motorcycle ride-hail startup that’s been testing an Ampersand e-moto is Cango. Founded in 2015, the company has app-based, on-demand taxi-moto fleets in Rwanda and Congo.

“We intend to be among the first to switch our fleet, as the [Ampersand] bikes are ready,” Cango co-founder Barrett Nash told TechCrunch in a message from Kinshasa.

Ampersand CEO Josh Wale sees electricity changing the micro-economics of motorcycle taxi markets. He estimates taxi riders in Rwanda spend $2000 a year on fuel and oil-charges for their gas machines.

“Looking at it from a driver point of view, from day one they are paying less for the bike and the battery by going electric,” he said.

 

 

 

Trump said in July that some U.S. suppliers would be allowed to sell to Huawei while it remains blacklisted, but so far no vendors have been allowed to do so. Reuters reports that more than 130 applications have been submitted by companies that want to do business with Huawei, but the U.S. Commerce Department has not approved any of them yet.

Huawei has served as a bargaining chip in the U.S.-China trade war, which escalated again last week when Trump said he would adds tariffs to $550 billion worth of Chinese imports, after China said it would impose duties of $75 billions on U.S. goods. Trump’s mixed signals during this weekend’s G7 summit also created confusion on Wall Street.

When both presidents met at the G20 Summit in June, Donald Trump told Chinese leader Xi Jinping that he would allow some American companies to sell to Huawei, even though it remains on the Commerce Department’s Entity List. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said the Commerce Department would begin accepting applications again, requiring companies to prove that the tech they sell to Huawei would not pose a national security risk.

But one of the reasons no licenses have been granted yet is because the Commerce Department is unclear about what it is supposed to do. Former Commerce department official William Reinsch told Reuters that “nobody in the executive branch knows what [Trump] wants and they’re all afraid to make a decision without knowing that.”

In addition to providing telecom equipment, Huawei is an important customer for many U.S. tech firms, including Qualcomm, Intel and Micron. Out of the $70 billion in parts it bought last year, $11 billion of that went to U.S. suppliers. The U.S. claims Huawei is a national security risk, a charge the company has repeatedly denied.