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Apple’s splashy new product announcements at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose also ushered in new rules of the road for its ecosystem partners that force hard turns for app makers around data ownership and control. These changes could fundamentally shift how consumers perceive and value control over the data they generate in using their devices, and that shift could change the landscape for how services are bought, consumed and sold.

A lot of privacy advocates have posited a future wherein we ascribe value to the data of individuals and potentially compensate people directly for its use. But others have also rightly pointed out than in isolation, a single individual’s data is precisely value-less, since it’s only in aggregate that this data is worth anything to the companies that currently harvest it to inform their marketing and drive their product decisions.

There are many reasons why it seems unlikely that any of the companies for which user data is a primary source of revenue or a crucial aspect of their business model would shift to a direct compensation model – not the least of which is that it’s probably much cheaper, and definitely much more scalable, to build products that provide them use value in exchange instead. But that doesn’t mean privacy won’t become a crucial lever in the information economy of the next wave of innovation and tech product development.

Perils of per datum pricing

As mentioned, the mechanics of directly selling your data to a company are problematic at best, and unworkable at worst.

One big issue with this is that there’s definitely bound to be a scale limit on any subscription paid product. In a world where that’s increasingly a preferred method for media companies, food and packaged goods delivery, and even car ownership alternatives, there’s clearly a cap on how much of their income consumers are willing to commit to these kinds of recurring costs.

Here’s how Haun, a former federal prosecutor and clerk for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy puts it.

Kik’s best argument seems to be (2), that there’s no common enterprise between them and the Kin purchasers. Courts have held that the mere sale of something, without promising more, doesn’t give rise to a common enterprise. Based on the public information I’ve reviewed, it’s not obvious that Kik was under any contractual obligation to the purchasers other than to deliver the tokens. Once that delivery occurred, Kin holders controlled their tokens and could use them how they pleased — whether to buy items or otherwise. And plenty did. Kik created a marketplace that was open and that was meant to achieve real exchange between participants, so Kik wasn’t necessarily a participant in all transactions. Thus, the SEC may have a hard time demonstrating common enterprise between Kik and token purchasers — unless they can come up with evidence showing that Kik had obligations to purchasers after token delivery.

What about (3), the expectation of profits through the efforts of others? In its Wells response, Kik tells a good story about consumptive uses, given its integration with the messenger platform, which had millions of users at the time of the token sale. Apparently, 20% of Kin purchasers linked their wallets to Kik to buy everything from games to digital products and services. That some participants purchased as little as 9 cents in Kin also seems more consistent with for “use” than for “investment”.

Kik’s defense hinges on who used the company’s cryptocurrency to make purchases through its messaging service versus which of the 10,000 acquirers of Kin currency at the time of the token offering were speculating on the cryptocurrency’s potential rise in value.

Here again, Thaun’s explanation of what Kik needs to prove about the Kin offering is helpful.

But anecdotal evidence about why purchasers bought Kin won’t matter as much as the evidence around what Kik led purchasers to expect. This is because the case law focuses less on what was in a particular purchaser’s mind at the time, and more on what the seller “offered or promised” those purchasers. So the key will be what statements can be attributed to Kik before the sale — a great example of how PR, marketing, and other company building functions really matter when it comes to many crypto projects.

Kik says its primary marketing message focused on Kin’s use rather than on Kin as an investment, which makes sense since the project would only work if people actually used Kin. If that’s true, the SEC will need to contend with some of these facts:

• 50% of participants in the token sale purchased less than $1000 of Kin, which seems more consistent with a consumptive use vs. investment purpose argument.

• The way in which Kik structured things encouraged broad participation and discouraged speculation, for example, by capping the amount an individual could purchase to ensure more participants used its network.

• It delayed its token sale to ensure functionality of the network first, making sure it could be used now vs. just in the future.

• Since the token sale, the use of Kin has increased.

Slack wants to be the new operating system for teams, something it has made clear on more than one occasion, including in its recent S-1 filing. To accomplish that goal, it put together an in-house $80 million venture fund in 2015 to invest in third-party developers building on top of its platform.

Weeks ahead of its direct listing on The New York Stock Exchange, it continues to put that money to work.

Troops is the latest to land additional capital from the enterprise giant. The New York-based startup helps sales teams communicate with a customer relationship management tool plugged directly into Slack. In short, it automates routine sales management activities and creates visibility into important deals through integrations with employee emails and Salesforce.

Troops founder and chief executive officer Dan Reich, who previously co-founded TULA Skincare, told TechCrunch he opted to build a Slackbot rather than create an independent platform because Slack is a rocket ship and he wanted a seat on board: “When you think about where Slack will go in the future, it’s obvious to us that companies all over the world will be using it,” he said.

Troops has raised $12 million in Series B funding in a round led by Aspect Ventures, with participation from the Slack Fund, First Round Capital, Felicis Ventures, Susa Ventures, Chicago Ventures, Hone Capital, InVision founder Clark Valberg and others. The round brings Troops’ total raised to $22 million.

Launched in 2015 by New York tech veterans Reich, Scott Britton and Greg Ratner, the trio weren’t initially sure of Slack’s growth trajectory. It wasn’t until Slack confirmed its intent to support the developer ecosystem with a suite of developer tools and a fund that the team focused its efforts on building a Slackbot.

“People sometimes thought of us, at least in the early days, as a little bit crazy,” Reich said. “But now Slack is the fastest-growing SaaS company ever.”

“We think the biggest opportunity in the [enterprise SaaS] category is going to be tools oriented around the customer-facing employee (CRM), and that’s where we are innovating,” he added.

Troops’ tools are helpful for any customer-facing team, Reich explains. Envoy, WeWork, HubSpot and a few hundred others are monthly paying subscribers of the tool, using it to interact with their CRM in a messaging interface and to receive notifications when a deal has closed. Troops integrates with Salesforce, so employees can use it to search records, schedule automatic reports and celebrate company wins.

Slack, in partnership with a number of venture capital funds, including Accel, Kleiner Perkins and Index, has also deployed capital to a number of other startups, like Lattice, Drafted and Loom.

With Slack’s direct listing afoot, the Troops team is counting on the imminent and long-term growth of the company’s platform.

“We think it’s still early days,” Reich said. “In the future, we see every company using something like Troops to manage their day-to-day.”

Our search continues for audacious early-stage startup founders to participate in Startup Battlefield at Disrupt San Francisco 2019 on October 2-4. But the opportunity clock is running down quickly. You have just one more week to step up and apply to our legendary pitch competition — and launch your startup to the world. Don’t wait — fill out the application today.

Applying is simple, and it doesn’t cost a thing. Neither does competing, but the selection process is competitive. TechCrunch editors with years of Startup Battlefield experience thoroughly vet every applicant. They’ll select anywhere from 15-30 startups to go head-to-head at Disrupt SF ’19.

What’s at stake? The winning founders receive the coveted Disrupt Cup, $100,000 in equity-free cash and they become the media and investor darlings of Disrupt SF. That’ll do wonders to your bottom line, and it can launch your company to the next level and beyond.

But even if you don’t take the title, you still win. TechCrunch shines a bright spotlight on all Startup Battlefield participants, and they receive a huge amount of media and investor attention. Plus, every competing team becomes part of the Startup Battlefield alumni community of more than 850 startups — a group that’s collectively raised more than $8.9 billion in funding and produced more than 110 exits. You’ll be alongside names like Mint, Dropbox, Yammer, TripIt, Getaround and Cloudflare — that’s some good networking territory.

Don’t worry about Main Stage jitters. All teams receive free in-depth pitch coaching from our Startup Battlefield-tested editorial team. You’ll be primed and ready to deliver a six-minute pitch and a live demo to our judges — a panel of experienced VCs and tech experts. Then you’ll answer any questions they throw at you.

Selected finalists will go on to round two — another pitch, demo and question session in front of a fresh set of judges. All the judges confer and then declare the overall Startup Battlefield champion. The whole shebang takes place in front of thousands of influential technologists, founders, journalists and investors. We also live-stream the entire event to the world (and make it available later on-demand) on TechCrunch.com, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

Disrupt San Francisco 2019 takes place October 2-4. Be bold. Be audacious. Apply to compete in Startup Battlefield — you have just one week left to get it done!

Not quite ready to take on Startup Battlefield? We’re looking for outstanding startups to apply for our TC Top Picks program. If selected, you’ll receive a free Startup Alley Exhibitor Package, VIP treatment and loads of media and investor exposure.

Interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt SF 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Since 2013, SparkLabs Group has invested in more than 230 companies, and my general advice to our founders and portfolio companies hasn’t changed: I always tell them not to overthink valuation, know what they need in terms of capital for their seed round and how there is “good dilution” and “bad dilution.” Whether your dilution ends up being good or bad (or ugly) generally depends on how well you execute.

To solidify my advice, I sometimes go through the math of possible seed rounds and how future rounds can play out. To keep the discussion simple and focus on my core points, I keep the amount of investment the same and assume the company is starting with a 20% stock option pool, which venture capital firms typically require by a startup’s Series A round.

Three scenarios

I map out three valuations, representing a standard Silicon Valley startup with a pre-money valuation of $5 million (Scenario “A”), a “hot” startup with an $8 million pre-money valuation (Scenario “B”) and an outlier with a pre-money valuation of $12 million (Scenario “C”).

Let’s look at the typical pathway where the founders raise a $2 million seed round on a pre-money valuation of $5 million. They build their product, launch, gain great momentum and successfully raise an $8 million Series A, where even though they don’t get that many lead interests, they get a decent $20 million pre-money valuation.

Let’s assume this startup is in a mature startup space where investors are looking for good revenue traction.  With the $8 million raised, a startup team can face “The Good,” which I define as executing on all cylinders, or “The Bad,” which I would define as a struggle.

Sometimes it’s not about executing poorly or mismanagement. A product can be too early, deal with longer than expected sales cycles or face other factors outside a startup team’s control. Regardless, “The Bad” situation can be where a company isn’t able to raise their Series B at all — or struggles to find investors that still believe in the product and team, and gets funding but not at the best valuation for the founders and team ($15 million raised on a post-money valuation of $50 million).

“The Good” would be a startup hitting traffic, revenues, clients sales or whatever metrics help drive success.  Here the same startup raises a $15 million Series B on a post-money valuation of $95 million.

Scenario “C” was the startup with the outlier valuation at their seed stage that raised a $2 million seed round with a post-money valuation of $14 million. Probably a company founded by a co-founder of Twitter or a hot YC company. Their Series A continues on a similar trajectory, raising $8 million with a post-money valuation of $38 million. Their fork in the road is similar to the prior situation. “The Good” is a Series B that raises $15 million with a post-money valuation of $115 million, while the “The Bad” raises the same amount but has a post-money valuation of $85 million, and the founders owning 39.9% of the company versus 45.1%.

Don’t overthink or overplan your fundraising rounds

The easy conclusion is that it is really hard for founders and a team to predict and plan their fundraising rounds over the next several years, much less how well their product will turn out.

But you can make sure you’re better prepared as entrepreneurs by asking yourself some basic questions:

• How much capital do you really need to last you 12-18 months?
• Will this amount allow you to hit milestones to raise your Series A or Series B?

Some startups don’t need much capital to take off, while others need more. An entrepreneur’s problem can be raising too little or too much capital.

During my second startup in 2000 — during the first internet boom when money was flowing easier than today — we raised $7 million as our first round. I would describe that experience as “big rounds are like meth for entrepreneurs,” which typically ends in “The Ugly.” Money burns quicker than most entrepreneurs think. It’s not paper, it’s paper soaked in kerosene. Luckily, while facing bankruptcy, we closed an additional $7.5 million and the company became profitable — but not without a lot of pain and torment.

We have seen a fair number of our founders underestimate their cash needs at the seed round. Then they have to raise additional seed capital, which isn’t easy. Some might have been too confident in their sales ability or how efficient they would be with their capital. Investors might assume those were issues, plus question whether the market is really there, or whether the management team made too many missteps. Be prepared to answer these types of questions if you need to raise additional seed capital.

Pitching the valuation game

We typically remind our founders that the best way to increase their valuation is to execute well and gain enough interest to be offered at least two term sheets.

If you are raising a Series A and your seed round was a convertible note or a SAFE, that cap really isn’t your valuation, so don’t get fixated on that as a minimum. We’ve had portfolio companies with valuation caps of over $30 million pre-money, but their Series A was priced above $20 million. We’ve also had a founder overzealously focused on their valuation cap from their seed round on, who ruined negotiations with a top 10 VC firm because they wouldn’t go lower than their cap.

If you have one potential lead, I generally recommend knowing your value and negotiating reasonably. If your lead lowballs you, of course you should walk away. But if it’s within range, don’t nickel and dime on the valuation.

Your goal is to create investor interest from multiple firms while generating the least amount of friction to quickly close your round. It might be a difficult balance between knowing your value but respecting what investors are looking for, but don’t kill your fundraising efforts by not being flexible on valuation. Remember, it’s not all about the money and your ownership percentage. If one of our portfolio companies had a term sheet for a $10 million pre-money valuation from an unknown family office or an $8 million pre-money valuation from a top-tier venture capital firm, we would tell them to take the lesser valuation, even if it’s a smaller gain on our books.

Although raising money while navigating dilution can be tricky, with the right preparation and mindset, it’s possible to close your round with the best value for your company.

Whole Biome has pulled in $35 million in Series B financing from a list of investing titans, including Sequoia, Khosla, True Ventures, the Mayo Foundation and AME Ventues — just to name a few. The goal? to heal what ails you using microscopic bugs.

Medical science has caught on in the last few years about the importance of gut health using these bugs (also known as probiotics). Now startups are pitching in using venture money to come up with new and novel ideas.

“We’re at a unique point in time as the field of microbiome biology converges with enabling cutting-edge technologies and bioinformatics that will open up a whole new world of innovative health products,” said Colleen Cutcliffe, Whole Biome’s co-founder and chief executive officer.

Cutliffe, who hails from DNA sequencing company Pacific Biosciences, along with her partners Jim Bullard and John Eid, built a platform able to compute information from varying populations and compare microbiome sequencing to get a clear picture of what’s missing in a patient’s flora for overall health.

The next step is to use the raised funds to launch a product for the management of Type 2 Diabetes.

Many of the prescription diabetes medications out on the market today can come with a load of side effects like upset stomach, dizziness, rashes or inability to consume alcohol. However, Whole Biome says their product will not have any side effects.

Slated for release in early 2020, the startup has conducted double-blinded, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trials for a product, which releases special probiotics into your gut with the goal of reducing glucose spikes.

“Whole Biome is creating novel, disease-targeting microbiome interventions that have the potential to improve the course of many of the significant health issues facing people today,” said Sequoia partner Roelof Botha. “They have built an integrated approach and a multi-disciplinary team across research, development and commercialization to unlock complex microbiome biology and create products with both clinical efficacy and unparalleled safety.”

To date, Whole Biome has now raised $57 million in funding.

Open source has become the de facto standard for building the software that underpins the complex infrastructure that runs everything from your favorite mobile apps to your company’s barely usable expense tool. Over the course of the last few years, a lot of new software is being deployed on top of Kubernetes, the tool for managing large server clusters running containers that Google open sourced five years ago.

Today, Kubernetes is the fastest growing open-source project and earlier this month, the bi-annual KubeCon+CloudNativeCon conference attracted almost 8,000 developers to sunny Barcelona, Spain, making the event the largest open-source conference in Europe yet.

To talk about how Kubernetes came to be, I sat down with Craig McLuckie, one of the co-founders of Kubernetes at Google (who then went on to his own startup, Heptio, which he sold to VMware); Tim Hockin, another Googler who was an early member on the project and was also on Google’s Borg team; and Gabe Monroy, who co-founded Deis, one of the first successful Kubernetes startups, and then sold it to Microsoft, where he is now the lead PM for Azure Container Compute (and often the public face of Microsoft’s efforts in this area).

Google’s cloud and the rise of containers

To set the stage a bit, it’s worth remembering where Google Cloud and container management were five years ago.

According to recent numbers from the World Health Organization, roughly half of people aged 12-35 are at risk for hearing loss. That’s due in no small part to explosive growth in “personal listening devices” like smartphones. Young people are cranking up the volume on their headphones and could be doing irreparable damage to their hearing in the process.

One of the health features Apple didn’t get around to discussing on stage yesterday tracks headphone volume levels over time. The feature, which available as part of the Health app, is able to track listening levels on calibrated and MFi headphones (including AirPods, Beats and the like). That information will be logged as either “OK” or “Loud” based on guidance from the W.H.O. 

The feature joins the new Noise app, which uses uses the Apple Watch’s built-in microphones to measure ambient noise. That app will send notifications if sound levels reach 90dBs — the level at which sustained exposure can lead to hearing loss.

The headphone health feature is a less proactive — assumedly because users have to opt into loud headphone volumes. Still, there’s something to be said for the ability to receive notifications when levels get loud, particularly over a sustained time period. I know I’ve certainly been in situations where I’ve unknowingly cranked the volume up on my headphones at, say, the gym where I’m using my own music to counteract whatever they’re pumping through the PA.

As this generation ages, this issue will likely only become more critical. But by the time many begin to discover the problem with prolonged volumes, it could be too late.

According to recent numbers from the World Health Organization, roughly half of people aged 12-35 are at risk for hearing loss. That’s due in no small part to explosive growth in “personal listening devices” like smartphones. Young people are cranking up the volume on their headphones and could be doing irreparable damage to their hearing in the process.

One of the health features Apple didn’t get around to discussing on stage yesterday tracks headphone volume levels over time. The feature, which available as part of the Health app, is able to track listening levels on calibrated and MFi headphones (including AirPods, Beats and the like). That information will be logged as either “OK” or “Loud” based on guidance from the W.H.O. 

The feature joins the new Noise app, which uses uses the Apple Watch’s built-in microphones to measure ambient noise. That app will send notifications if sound levels reach 90dBs — the level at which sustained exposure can lead to hearing loss.

The headphone health feature is a less proactive — assumedly because users have to opt into loud headphone volumes. Still, there’s something to be said for the ability to receive notifications when levels get loud, particularly over a sustained time period. I know I’ve certainly been in situations where I’ve unknowingly cranked the volume up on my headphones at, say, the gym where I’m using my own music to counteract whatever they’re pumping through the PA.

As this generation ages, this issue will likely only become more critical. But by the time many begin to discover the problem with prolonged volumes, it could be too late.

Air travel accounts for a significant chunk of greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants, and the amount of air travel has risen steadily over the past few decades, with emissions from aviation predicted to grow significantly through 2020 and beyond. Electric passenger planes are in the works, but unlikely to replace our workhorse passenger jets any time soon – which is why efforts like a new type of conventional fuel aircraft designed being backed by KLM Airlines.

The new aircraft design, conceived by designer Justus Benad and being further realized by a team of researchers at the Netherlands’ Delft University of Technology, per CNN. The look of the aircraft is clearly different from the start, ditching the typical cylindrical tube main fuselage for a ‘squat slice of pizza’ look that extends the body through the wings of the plane.

This beefed up core holds passengers, fuel and cargo, and through this distribution, which improves the aircraft’s overall aerodynamics, the plane will manage to be 20 percent more fuel-efficient vs. the Airbus A350, which carries approximately the same amount of passengers depending on its configuration.

A savings of 20 percent in fuel consumption may not seem like much, but over time, and at scale, it could potentially make a huge difference – especially if the pace of electric aircraft development and other alternatives doesn’t pick up. That said, timelines for deployment aren’t super immediate: These could enter service sometime between 2040 and 2050 based on the current development schedule, which isn’t exactly tomorrow.

Testing an all-new design for passenger jets, which basically look like they did when they were first introduced, is obviously not something one undertakes lightly, however. The good news is that the team is hoping to put a scale model into real-world flight testing later this year.