Category: UNCATEGORIZED

By the end of 2019, the global gaming market is estimated to be worth $152 billion with 45% of that, $68.5 billion, coming directly from mobile games. With this tremendous growth (10.2% YoY to be precise) has come a flurry of investments and acquisitions, everyone wanting a cut of the pie. In fact, over the last 18 months, the global gaming industry has seen $9.6 billion in investments and if investments continue at this current pace, the amount of investment generated in 2018-19 will be higher than the 8 previous years combined.

What’s interesting is why everyone is talking about games and who in the market is responding to this and how.

The gaming phenomenon 

Today, mobile games account for 33% of all app downloads, 74% of consumer spend, and 10% of all time spent in-app. It’s predicted that in 2019, 2.4 billion people will play mobile games around the world – that’s almost one third of the global population. In fact, 50% of mobile app users play games, making this app category as popular as music apps like Spotify and Apple Music and second only to social media and communications apps in terms of time spent.

In the US, time spent on mobile devices has also officially outpaced that of television – with users spending 8 more minutes per day on their mobile devices. By 2021, this number is predicted to increase to over 30 minutes. Apps are the new primetime and games have grabbed the lion’s share.

Accessibility is the highest it’s ever been as barriers to entry are virtually non-existent. From casual games to the recent rise of the wildly popular hyper-casual genre of games which are quick to download, easy to play, and lend themselves to being played in short sessions throughout the day, games are played by almost every demographic stratum of society. Today, the average age of a mobile gamer is 36.3 (compared with 27.7 in 2014), the gender split is 51% female, 49% male, and one-third of all gamers are between the ages of 36-50. A far cry from the traditional stereotype of a ‘gamer’.

With these demographic, geographic, and consumption sea-changes in the mobile ecosystem and entertainment landscape, it’s no surprise that the game space is getting increased attention and investment, not just from within the industry, but more recently from traditional financial markets and even governments. Let’s look at how the markets have responded to the rise of gaming.

Games on Games 

The first substantial investments in mobile gaming came from those who already had a stake in the industry. Tencent invested $90M in Pocket Gems and$126M in Glu Mobile (for a 14.6% stake), gaming powerhouse Supercell invested $5M in mobile game studio Redemption Games, Boom Fantasy raised $2M from ESPN and the MLB and Gamelynx raised $1.2M from several investors – one of which was Riot Games. Most recently, Ubisoft acquired a 70% stake in Green Panda Games to bolster its foot in the hyper-casual gaming market.

Additionally, bigger gaming studios began to acquire smaller ones. Zynga bought Gram Games, Ubisoft acquired Ketchapp, Niantic purchased Seismic Games, and Tencent bought Supercell (as well as a 40% stake in Epic Games). And the list goes on.

Wall Street wakes up

Beyond the flurry of investments and acquisitions from within the game industry, games are also generating huge amounts of revenue. Since launch, Pokemon Go has generated $2.3B in revenue and Fortnite has amassed some 250M players. This is catching the attention of more traditional financial institutions, like private equity firms and VCs, who are now looking at a variety of investment options in gaming – not just of gaming studios, but all those who had a stake in or support the industry.

In May 2018, hyper-casual mobile gaming studio Voodoo announced a $200M investment from Goldman Sachs’ private equity investment arm. For the first time ever, a mobile gaming studio attracted the attention of a venerable old financial institution. The explosion of the hyper-casual genre and the scale its titles are capable of achieving, together with the intensely iterative, data-driven business model afforded by the low production costs of games like this, were catching the attention of investors outside of the gaming world, looking for the next big growth opportunity.

The trend continued. In July 2018, private equity firm KKR bought a $400M minority stake in AppLovin and now, exactly one year later Blackstone announced their plan to acquire mobile ad-network Vungle for a reported $750M. Not only is money going into gaming studios, but investments are being made into companies whose technology supports the mobile gaming space. Traditional investors are finally taking notice of the mobile gaming ecosystem as a whole and the explosive growth it has produced in recent years. This year alone mobile games are expected to generate $55B in revenue so this new wave of investment interest should really come as no surprise.

Government intervention

Most recently, governments are realizing the potential and reach of the gaming industry and making their own investment moves. We’re seeing governments establish funds that support local gaming businesses – providing incentives for gaming studios to develop and retain their creatives, technology, and employees locally – as well as programs that aim to attract foreign talent.

As uncertainty looms in England surrounding Brexit, France has jumped on the opportunity with “Join the Game”. They’re painting France as an international hub that is already home to many successful gaming studios, and they’re offering tax breaks and plenty of funding options – for everything from R&D to the production of community events. Their website even has an entire page dedicated to “getting settled in France”, in English, with a step-by-step guide on how game developers should prepare for their arrival.

The UK Department for International Trade used this year’s Game Developers Conference as a backdrop for the promotion of their games fund – calling the UK “one of the most flourishing game developing ecosystems in the world.” The UK Games Fund allows for both local and foreign-owned gaming companies with a presence in the UK to apply for tax breaks. And ever since France announced their fund, more and more people have begun encouraging the British government to expand their program saying that the UK gaming ecosystem should be “retained and enhanced”. But, not only does the government take gaming seriously, the Queen does as well. In 2008, David Darling the CEO of hyper-casual game studio Kwalee was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to the games industry. CBE is the third-highest honor the Queen can bestow on a British citizen.

Over to Germany, and the government has allocated 50M euros of its 2019 budget for the creation of a games fund. In Sweden, the Sweden Game Arena is a public-private partnership that helps students develop games using government-funded offices and equipment. It also links students and startups with established companies and investors. While these numbers dwarf the investment of more commercial or financial players, the sudden uptick in interest governments are paying to the game space indicate just how exciting and lucrative gaming has become.

Support is coming from all levels

The evolution of investment in the gaming space is indicative of the stratospheric growth, massive revenue, strong user engagement, and extensive demographic and geographic reach of mobile gaming. With the global games industry projected to be worth a quarter of a trillion dollars by 2023, it comes as no surprise that the diverse players globally have finally realized its true potential and have embraced the gaming ecosystem as a whole.

Entrepreneurship is on the rise, and nowhere is that more true than on college campuses. Students are ditching boring office jobs to seek out their own opportunities, whether that is launching a bootstrapped app, contributing to an open-source project, or building a venture-scalable startup.

Here at Extra Crunch, our mission is to go behind the headlines that cross our desks here at TechCrunch every day to ask how founders build great startups. How did they get started? How did they raise funding? How did they hire, and how did they handle the immigration processes often associated with new hires? How did they build out marketing channels? And when all of those parts work out, how do they exit? We work relentlessly to bring that expert knowledge to our members every single day.

Whether you’re a lifelong entrepreneur who started your first business at five years old or just someone discovering that startups and building products can be a career onto themselves, we are here to help you every step of the way.

And now, we want to make it even easier to access that help. For back to school this year, we are offering students a special subscription rate of $50 per year (regular price: $150) with similar discounts for international members. All you have to do is send an email using your school address to extracrunch@techcrunch.com and our founder success team will get you all squared away.

And if you want to sign up your entire startup or entrepreneurship club — we are offering volume discounts as well for student groups. Reach out to Travis Bernard travis@techcrunch.com if you are interested in bulk student rates, and make sure you include how many students you have in your group.

The world needs more innovation and more entrepreneurship. We hope Extra Crunch can be your first step to the next category-defining company.

TechCrunch has learned of a safety issue and a number of product reliability questions being raised about a modular computer made by a London edtech startup that’s intended for children to learn coding and electronics.

The product, called the pi-top 3, is a Raspberry Pi-powered laptop with a keyboard that slides out to access a rail for breadboarding electronics.

A student at a US school had to be attended by a nurse after touching a component in the device which had overheated, leaving them with redness to their finger.

A spokesperson for Cornell Tech confirmed the incident to us — which they said had happened in June. We’ve withheld the name of the school at their request.

In an internal pi-top email regarding this incident, which we’ve also reviewed, it describes the student being left with “a very nasty finger burn”.

Cornell Tech’s spokesperson told us it has stopped using the pi-top 3 — partly in response to this incident but also because of wider reliability issues with the device. They said some of their grad students will be working on a project with the K-12 team next semester with the aim of creating an alternative that’s more reliable, affordable and safe.

We have also been told of concerns about wider reliability issues with the pi-top 3 by a number of other sources.

We asked pi-top for comment on the safety incident at Cornell Tech and for details of how it responded. The company provided us with a statement in which it claims: “pi–top incorporates all possible safeguards into our products to ensure they are safe.”

“As soon as we became aware of this incident we immediately investigated what had happened,” it went on. “We discovered that the incident was a one-in-a-million occurrence. The user dropped a piece of metal, with a specific size and shape, under the unit. This fell in such a way that it touched a particular pin and caused a linear regulator to heat up. They received a small minor burn to the tip of one finger when they tried to recover that piece of metal.”

“This is the only reported incident where a user has been hurt whilst using one of our products,” pi-top added.

It is not clear how many pi-top 3 laptops have been sold to schools at this stage because pi-top does not break out sales per product. Instead it provided us with a figure for the total number of devices sold since it was founded in 2014 — saying this amounts to “more than 200,000 devices in 4 years which have been used by more than half a million people”.

pi-top also says it has sold products to schools in 70 countries, saying “thousands” of schools have engaged with its products. (The bright green color of the laptop is easy to spot in promotional photos for school STEM programs and summer camps.)

The London-based DIY hardware startup began life around five years ago offering a ‘3D-print it yourself‘ laptop for makers via the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform before shifting its focus to the educational market — tapping into the momentum around STEM education that’s seen a plethora of ‘learn to code’ toys unboxed in recent years.

pi-top has raised more than $20M in VC funding to date and now sells a number of learning devices and plug-in components intended for schools to teach STEM — all of which build on the Raspberry Pi microprocessor.

pi-top adds its own layer of software to the Pi as well as hardware additions intended to expand the learning utility (such as a speaker for the pi-top 3 and an “inventors kit” with several electronics projects, including one that lets kids build and program a robot).

The pi-top 3 — its third device — was launched in October 2017, priced between $285-$320 per laptop (without or with a Raspberry Pi 3).

The distinctively bright green laptop is intended for use by students as young as eight years old.

Unusual failure mode

In the internal email discussing the “Cornell failure diagnosis” — which is dated July 16 — pi-top’s head of support and customer success, Preya Wylie, conveys the assessment of its VP of technology, Wil Bennett, that the “unusual failure mode was likely caused by an electrical short on the male 34-pin connector on the underside of the protoboard”.

She goes on to specify that the short would have been caused by the metal SD-card removal tool that’s bundled with the product — noting this was “reported to have been somewhere underneath the protoboard at the time”.

“[Bennett] has recreated the same conditions on his bench in China and has seen the pi-top enter similar failure modes, with an electrical short and subsequent overheating,” she writes.

An additional complication discussed in the email is that the component is designed to stay on at all times in order that the pi-top can respond to the power button being pressed when the unit is off. Wylie writes that this means, if shorted, the component remains “very hot” even when the pi-top has been shut down and unplugged — as heat is generated by the pi-top continuing to draw power from the battery.

Only once the battery has fully depleted will the component be able to cool down.

In the email — which was sent to pi-top’s founder and CEO Jesse Lozano and COO Paul Callaghan — she goes on to include a list of four “initial recommendations to ensure this does not happen again”, including that the company should inform teachers to remove the SD-card removal tool from all pi-top 3 laptops and to remove the SD card themselves rather than letting students do it; as well as advising teachers/users to turn the device off if they suspect something has got lost under the protoboard.

Another recommendation listed in the email is the possibility of creating a “simple plastic cover to go over the hub” to prevent the risk of users’ fingers coming into contact with hot components.

A final suggestion is a small modification to the board to cut off one of the pins to “greatly reduce the chance of this happening again”.

We asked pi-top to confirm what steps it has taken to mitigate the risk of pi–top 3 components overheating and posing a safety risk via the same sort of shorting failure experienced by Cornell Tech — and to confirm whether it has informed existing users of the risk from this failure mode.

An internal pi-top sales document that we’ve also reviewed discusses a ‘back to school’ sales campaign — detailing a plan to use discounts to “dissolve as much pi-top [3] stock as we can over the next 8 weeks”.

This document says US schools will be targeted from mid August; UK schools/educators from early September; and International Schools Groups from early September. It also includes a strategy to go direct to US Private and Charter Schools — on account of “shorter decision making timelines and less seasonal budgets”.

It’s not clear if the document pre-dates the Cornell incident.

In response to our questions, pi-top told us it is now writing to pi-top 3 customers, suggesting it is acting on some of the initial recommendations set out in Wylie’s July 16 email after we raised concerns.

In a statement the company said: “Whilst it is highly unlikely that this would occur again, we are writing to customers to advise them to take a common-sense approach and switch off the unit if something has got lost inside it.  We are also advising customers to remove the SD card tool from the unit. These simple actions will make the remote possibility of a recurrence even less likely.”

In parallel, we have heard additional concerns about the wider reliability of the pi-top 3 product — in addition to the shorting incident experienced by Cornell.

One source, who identified themselves as a former pi-top employee, told us that a number of schools have experienced reliability issues with the device. One of the schools named, East Penn School District in the US, confirmed it had experienced problems with the model — telling us it had to return an entire order of 40 of the pi-top 3 laptops after experiencing “a large volume of issues”.

“We had initially purchased 40 pi-tops for middle level computers classes,” assistant superintendent Laura Witman told us. “I met one of the owners, Jesse, at a STEM conference. Conceptually the devices had promise, but functionally we experienced a large volume of issues. The company tried to remedy the situation and in the end refunded our monies. I would say it was learning experience for both our district and the company, but I appreciate how they handled things in the end.”

Witman did not recall any problems with pi-top 3 components overheating.

A US-based STEM summer camp provider that we also contacted to confirm whether it had experienced issues with the pi-top 3 — a device which features prominently in promotional materials for its program — declined to comment. A spokesman for iD Tech’s program told us he was not allowed to talk about the matter.

A separate source familiar with the pi-top 3 also told us the product has suffered from software reliability issues, including crashes and using a lot of processor power, as well as hardware problems related to its battery losing power quickly and/or not charging. This source, who was speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were not aware of any issues related to overheating.

Asked to respond to wider concerns about the pi-top 3’s reliability, pi-top sent us this statement:

pi–top is a growing and dynamic company developing DIY computing tools which we believe can change the world for the better. In the past four and a half years we have shipped hundreds of thousands of products across our entire product range, and pi–top hardware and software have become trusted assets to teachers and students in classrooms from America to Zimbabwe. pi–top products are hard at work even in challenging environments such as the UN’s Kakuma refugee camp in Northern Kenya.

At the heart of our products is the idea that young makers can get inside our computers, learn how they work and build new and invaluable skills for the future. Part of what makes pi–top special, and why kids who’ve never seen inside a computer before think it’s awesome, is that you have to build it yourself straight out of the box and then design, code and make electronic systems with it. We call this learning.

The nature of DIY computing and electronics means that, very occasionally, things can fail. If they do, pi–top’s modular nature means they can be easily replaced. If customers encounter any issues with any of our products our excellent customer support team are always ready to help.

It is important to say that all electronic systems generate heat and Raspberry Pi is no exception. However, at pi–top we do the very best to mitigate thanks to the cutting-edge design of our hardware. Faults on any of our products fall well below accepted thresholds. Although we are proud of this fact, this doesn’t make us complacent and we continually strive to do things better and provide our customers with world-class products that don’t compromise on safety.

Thousands of schools around the world recognise the fantastic benefits the pi–top [3], pi–top CEED, and pi–top [1] brings as a Raspberry Pi-powered device. Our new flagship products, the pi–top [4] and our learning platform, pi–top Further, take coding education to the next level, as a programmable computing module for makers, creators and innovators everywhere. We are proud of our products and the enormous benefits they bring to schools, students and makers around the world.

Internal restructuring

We also recently broke the news that pi-top had laid off a number of staff after losing out on a large education contract. Our sources told us the company is restructuring to implement a new strategy. pi-top confirmed 12 job cuts at that stage. Our sources suggest more cuts are pending.

Some notable names departing pi-top’s payroll in recent weeks are its director of learning and research, William Rankin — formerly a director of learning at Apple — who writes on LinkedIn that he joined pi-top in March 2018 to “develop a constructionist learning framework to support pi-top’s maker computing platform”. Rankin left the business this month, per his LinkedIn profile.

pi-top’s chief education and product officer, Graham Brown-Martin — who joined the business in September 2017, with a remit to lead “learning, product design, brand development and communication strategy” to support growth of its “global education business, community and ecosystem” — also exited recently, leaving last month per his LinkedIn.

In another change this summer pi-top appointed a new executive chairman of its board: Stanley Buchesky, the founder of a US edtech seed fund who previously served in the Trump administration as an interim CFO for the US department for education under secretary of state, Betsy DeVos.

Buchesky’s fund, which is called The EdTech Fund, said it had made an investment in pi-top last month. The size of the investment has not been publicly disclosed.

Buchesky took over the chairman role from pi-top board member and investor Eric Wilkinson: A partner at its Series A investor, Hambro Perks. Wilkinson remains on the pi-top board but no longer as exec chairman.

The job cuts and restructuring could be intended to prepare pi-top for a trade sale to another STEM device maker, according to one of our sources.

Meanwhile pi-top’s latest device, the pi-top 4, represents something of a physical restructuring of its core edtech computing proposition which looks intended to expand the suggestive utility it offers teachers via multiple modular use-cases — from building drones and wheeled robots to enabling sensor-based IoT projects which could check science learning criteria, all powered by pi-top’s encased Raspberry Pi 4.

Out of the box, the pi-top 4 is a computer in a box, not a standalone laptop. (Though pi-top does plan to sell a range of accessories enabling it be plugged in to power a touchscreen tablet or a laptop, and more.)

pi-top is in the process of bringing the pi-top 4 to market after raising almost $200,000 on Kickstarter from more than 500 backers. Early backers have been told to expect it to ship in November.

While pi-top’s predecessor product is stuck with the compute power of the last-gen Raspberry Pi 3 (the pi-top 3 cannot be upgraded to the Raspberry Pi 4), the pi-top 4 will have the more powerful Pi 4 as its engine.

However the latter has encountered some heat management issues of its own.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation recently put out a firmware update that’s intended to reduce the microprocessor’s operating temperature after users had complained it ran hot.

Asked whether the Foundation has any advice on encasing the Raspberry Pi 4, in light of the heat issue, founder Eben Upton told us: “Putting the Pi in a case will tend to cause it to idle at a higher temperature than if it is left in the open. This means there’s less temperature ‘in reserve’, so the Pi will throttle more quickly during a period of sustained high-intensity operation.”

“In general, the advice is to choose a case which is appropriate to your use case, and to update firmware frequently to benefit from improvements to idle power consumption as they come through,” he added.

TechCrunch’s Steve O’Hear contributed to this report

Twelve cell carriers, including the four largest — AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon — have promised to make efforts to prevent spoofed and automated robocalls.

Announced Thursday, the pledge comes after 51 U.S. attorneys general brokered a deal that would see the telecom giants roll out anti-robocalling technologies, including a way of cryptographically signing callers to wipe out phone number spoofing. Known as STIR/SHAKEN, the system relies on every customer phone number having a unique digital signature which, when checked against the cell networks, validates that a caller is real. The carrier near-instantly invisibly approves the call and patches it through to the recipient.

Robocalls are a billion-dollar industry, but illegal. Many of these automated, robot-dialed calls imitate the area code to convince unsuspecting victims into picking up the phone. Often robocalls try to sell a product — or worse, try to trick victims into signing up for services they don’t need or con them out of cash.

The hope is that STIR/SHAKEN would weed out most robocalls. The system would verify real callers while the billions of illegal or spoofed robocalls made every year would fail.

So far to date, AT&T and Comcast have tested the new anti-robocalling system, and AT&T and T-Mobile have also teamed up to use the technology to fight robocalls. But the system works best when every carrier uses the technology, allowing calls to be checked even as they traverse between networks. By getting Verizon (which owns TechCrunch), Sprint and the other cell giants on board, the attorneys general hopes the cooperation will vastly reduce the number of robocalls each year..

CenturyLink, Charter, and U.S. Cellular have also signed up to the pledge.

There’s a catch: No deadline was set, allowing the carriers to take as long as necessary to roll out the technology. That may not be good news for those seeking immediate relief. Although all of the major networks have already made some progress in testing the new anti-robocalling system, few have said exactly when their service will be ready to roll out to consumers across the country.

The Washington Post first reported the news ahead of Thursday’s announcement.

The pledge comes just weeks after the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department took coordinated action against close to a hundred individuals and companies accused of making more than a billion illegal robocalls.

Overstock .com announced today that CEO Patrick Byrne has resigned from his role as chief executive and board member. Another board member, Jonathan Johnson, will be taking over as Overstock’s interim CEO.

This follows the company’s eyebrow-raising press release earlier this month titled “Overstock.com CEO Comments on Deep State, Withholds Further Comment,” in which Byrne said he was confirming reports by journalist Sara Cater.

“Starting in 2015 I (operating under the belief that I was helping legitimate law enforcement efforts) assisted in what are now known as the ‘Clinton Investigation’ and the ‘Russian Investigation’ (in fact, I am the notorious ‘missing Chapter 1’ of the Russian investigation),” he wrote, going on to say that this was “the third time in my life I helped the Men in Black.”

Byrne and his attorney subsequently said that these comments were tied to his “romantic” relationship with Maria Butina, and that he wanted to shed light on the way federal law enforcement investigated Butina (who’s been accused of working as a Russian agent, and who is currently in prison after pleading guilty to a lesser charge).

Since then, the publicly-traded e-commerce company has seen its stock price tumble.

Today’s announcement also takes the form of a letter from Byrne, in which he said he “came forward in as carefully and well-managed fashion” as he could, but that it’s still had a detrimental effect on the company.

“Though patriotic Americans are writing me in support, my presence may affect and complicate all manner of business relationships, from insurability to strategic discussions regarding our retail business,” Byrne said. “Thus, while I believe that I did what was necessary for the good of the country, for the good of the firm, I am in the sad position of having to sever ties with Overstock, both as CEO and board member, effective Thursday August 22.”

Byrne’s letter ends on an optimistic note about Overstock’s future, pointing to both its retail business and “blockchain assets that seem poised to revolutionize capital markets, finance, and governance for the poor.”

As of 12:51pm Eastern, Overstock shares are up 8.5% since the start of trading.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Apple reportedly launching new iPhone Pro and iPads with better cameras, 16-inch MacBook Pro and new AirPods

Here come the leaks around Apple’s fall hardware event (rumored to be scheduled for September 10). According to Bloomberg, we’ll get new iPhones — including a new Pro model that replaces the XS line and adds a third, wider angle rear camera.

Beyond 2019, Apple also reportedly has plans for iPhones that support 5G in the next year, plus a more affordable HomePod.

2. Google ditches desserts as Q becomes Android 10

Google’s official reasoning is more diplomatic than, “we couldn’t think of anything that started with ‘Q.’ ” Instead, it says that the desserts simply weren’t universal enough for the 2.5 billion active devices it has deployed around the world.

3. Our 12 favorite startups from Y Combinator’s S19 Demo Day 2

Over the course of two days, the TechCrunch team witnessed more than 160 on-the-record startup pitches, spanning healthcare, B2B services, augmented reality and life extension. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

4. Hundreds of Uber and Lyft drivers to launch a protest caravan across California

Over 200 drivers in more than 75 cars plan to drive south to north — with more drivers joining along the way — to take dramatic action in advocating for California State Legislature bill AB5, and for a drivers’ union.

5. Eminem’s publisher accuses Spotify of copyright infringement in new lawsuit

Eight Mile Style has filed a lawsuit against Spotify, accusing the service of “blatant copyright infringement” in streaming “Lose Yourself” and other Eminem songs.

6. Splunk acquires cloud monitoring service SignalFx for $1.05B

SignalFx provides real-time cloud monitoring solutions, predictive analytics and more. The acquisition should make Splunk a far stronger player in the cloud space.

7. Google proposes new privacy and anti-fingerprinting controls for the web

If fully realized, this initiative will make it harder for online marketers and advertisers to track you across the web.

With 12 offices and 350 employees around the world, 3Q Digital is a giant among growth marketing agencies. They’ve worked with companies like Brandless, Opendoor, and Warby Parker, but they also have an internal business unit called 3Q Incubate to work with startups in their pre-launch phase. 3Q Digital gets tech and that’s a testament to CEO and founder David Rodnitzky’s early days as a one-man growth marketing consulting practice in 2008. Learn more about 3Q Digital’s approach to growth, their ideal client, and more. 

3Q Digital’s approach to growth

“As far as our own focus, we’re a performance agency founded on a bedrock of SEM and paid social; as the digital landscape has grown and expanded (channels, skills, services), so have we, but we continue to have a reputation as one of the best online performance marketing agencies around.”

David’s proudest accomplishment

“We’ve not only survived in Silicon Valley for 11 years, we’ve grown massively. We are one of the largest performance marketing agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area, with over 100 people locally. We continue to get referrals from founders who used us for their first start-up and now have come back to us for their second or third. The same is true for many venture capital partners who rely on us again and again.”

Below, you’ll find the rest of the founder reviews, the full interview, and more details like pricing and fee structures. This profile is part of our ongoing series covering startup growth marketing agencies with whom founders love to work, based on this survey and our own research. The survey is open indefinitely, so please fill it out if you haven’t already. 

Q&A with 3Q Digital CEO & Founder David Rodnitzky

Yvonne Leow: How did you become a growth marketer and start working with tech startups? 

David Rodnitzky: I moved to San Francisco in 1999 after graduating from law school in my home state of Iowa. In early 2000, I got a job at a Softbank — a Sequoia-backed SaaS startup as “manager of strategy.” I quickly realized that no one was running marketing, so I volunteered.

After spending $50K/month on PR and branding agencies, I discovered pay-per-click advertising via GoTo.com. I was immediately hooked by the measurability and ROI, and spent the next seven years working at Silicon Valley start-ups with a focus on measurable online marketing.

The Justice Department have indicted dozens of individuals accused of involvement in a massive business email scam and money laundering scheme.

News of the early-morning raids were first reported by ABC7 in Los Angeles.

Thom Mrozek, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Central District of California, confirmed more than a dozen individuals had been arrested during the raids on Thursday — mostly in the Los Angeles area. A total of 80 defendants are allegedly involved in the scheme.

The 145-page indictment, unsealed Thursday, said the 80 named individuals are charged with conspiracy to commit mail and bank fraud, as well as aggravated identity theft and money laundering.

Several other defendants were arrested across the U.S. Most of the individuals are based in Nigeria, said the spokesperson.

It’s not immediately known if the Nigerian nationals will be extradited to the U.S., however a treaty exists between the two nations making extraditions possible.

U.S. Attorney Nicola Hanna is expected to issue a statement shortly.

These business email compromise scams rely partly on deception and in some cases hacking. Scammers send specially crafted spearphishing emails to their targets in order to trick them into turning over sensitive information about the company, such as sending employee W-2 tax documents so scammers can generate fraudulent refunds, or tricking an employee into making wire transfers to bank accounts controlled by the scammers. More often than not, the scammers use spoofing techniques to impersonate a senior executive over email to trick the unsuspecting victim, or hack into the email account of the person they are impersonating.

The FBI says these impersonation attacks have cost consumers and businesses more than $3 billion since 2015.

The alleged fraudsters are accused of carrying out several hundred “overt” acts of fraud against over a dozen victims, generating millions of dollars worth of fraud over several months. In some cases the fraudsters would hack into the email accounts of the person they were trying to impersonate to try to trick a victim into wiring money from a business into the fraudster’s bank account.

Several bank accounts run by the fraudsters contained over $30 million in stolen funds.

The FBI said the agency has seem a large increase in the number of business email scams in the past year targeting small and large businesses, as well as non-profits.

Developing… more soon.

I liked the Lenovo Smart Clock when I reviewed it back in June. It’s a pretty minimalist take on the smart screen designed for the very specific purpose of living next to your bed. The streamlined features are very much by design — rather than the kitchen sink approach, the clock is built around a relatively limited number of Assistant functions, coupled with tailored alarm functionality.

Today, Google’s bringing a handful of new features, attempting to walk that line by adding functions without making the bedside product overly distracting. The addition of Google Photos is a no brainer, using the app to double as a small screen digital picture frame while it sits idle. Hey look, a Yorkie.

Google’s also bringing one of the best smart screen features to the small display, with the ability to view video from smart cameras. Not a bed feature to have next to your bed. Interesting, while the product is clearly capable of displaying video, Google still isn’t making YouTube available here, for the aforementioned reason of “limiting distractions.”

It’s a nice sentiment, but YouTube’s always been Google’s biggest and best weapon in smart screen wars. The company really pulled the rug out from under Amazon by blocking access to the service on Echo devices. Google says it may revisit the feature later, however, depending on user feedback.

Also new here is Continued Conversation, which keeps Assistant active for longer, in order to create a more “natural back-and-forth conversation” with the AI. The idea is to lesse the number of times the user has to use the wake word to interact with Assistant.

Those features are starting to roll out this week. The Smart Clock will also be available in additional countries including India soon.

Security is everything — more so than ever in startup land. But with the constant pressures to launch and scale, how do you build a secure startup from the ground up without slowing growth?

Whether you’re starting out small or you’re a multinational unicorn, your customers and their data will be your greatest asset. We’re excited to announce three cybersecurity industry experts who know better than anyone how to keep their organizations safe from phishing emails to nation-state attackers — and everything in between.

We’ll be joined by Google’s Heather Adkins, IOActive’s Jennifer Sunshine Steffens, and Duo’s Dug Song, who will discuss those startup security questions at TechCrunch Disrupt SF.

Adkins, a 16-year Google veteran, runs Google’s information security shop. As an early employee, Adkins built a global team responsible for maintaining the safety and security of Google’s networks, systems and applications as the company has ballooned in size. Her extensive background in network and systems administration has led her to work to build and secure some of the world’s largest infrastructure.

Steffens, who has spent over a decade at penetration testing and ethical hacking company IOActive, knows all too well how to build a security company. Her team go into enterprises large and small and find the weak spots in their security in an effort to fix the flaws before bad actors exploit them. Having worked during the early stages at several successful startups, Steffens brings a world of corporate and security knowledge to the table.

And, Song, who co-founded security giant Duo, led one of the most successful exits in Silicon Valley security startup history following the company’s $2.35 billion acquisition by Cisco last year. Song is a leading voice in the security community with broad experience in developing security solutions for the enterprises.

How do these cybersecurity leaders keep ahead of the bad guys — and the insider threats? Join us on the Extra Crunch stage to find out. Tickets to the show, which runs October 2 to October 4, are available here.

Did you know Extra Crunch annual members get 20% off all TechCrunch event tickets? Head over here to get your annual pass, and then email extracrunch@techcrunch.com to get your 20% off discount. Please note that it can take up to 24 hours to issue the discount code.