Berlin!
TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin will be in December. Disrupt Berlin is where you’ll find the renowned Startup Battlefield competition, hundreds of startups in Startup Alley, Workshops and legendary networking at our After Parties…
As part of our tour to promote Disrupt, you can come and pitch your tech startup to TechCrunch Editor-at-large Mike Butcher, in this “office hours” style event for Founders.
Sign up here for the meetup this Wednesday evening.
See you there!
Facebook this morning announced a new initiative focused on using its data and technologies to help nonprofit organizations and universities working in public health better map the spread of infectious diseases around the world. Specifically, the company is introducing three new maps: population density maps with demographic estimates, movement maps, and network coverage maps. These, says Facebook, will help the health partners to understand where people live, how they’re moving, and if they have connectivity — all factors that can aid in determining how to respond to outbreaks, and where supplies should be delivered.
As Facebook explained, health organizations rely on information like this when planning public health campaigns. But much of the information they rely on is outdated, like older census data. In addition, information from more remote communities can be scarce.
By combining the new maps with other public health data, Facebook believes organizations will be better equipped to address epidemics.
The new high-resolution population density maps will estimate the number of people living within 30-meter grid tiles, and provide insights on demographics, including the number of children under five, the number of women of reproductive age, as well as young and elderly populations. These maps aren’t built using Facebook data, but are instead built by using Facebook’s A.I. capabilities with satellite imagery and census information.
Movement maps, meanwhile, track aggregate data about Facebook users’ movements via their mobile phones (when location services are enabled). At scale, health partners can combine this with other data to predict where other outbreaks may occur next.
Above: movement maps of London and surrounding areas
And network coverage maps help to show where people can be reached with online messages — like those alerting to vaccination days or other health-related communications.
Of course, it’s hard to not overlook the irony involved with Facebook data and tech being used to help with outbreaks that, in some cases, it had a hand in creating. The company for years allowed the spread of vaccine misinformation to spread across its network. Irresponsibly, it also allowed Facebook Pages and Groups that promoted vaccine skepticism or outright false claims to rank at the top of Facebook searches for related terms, like “vaccines.”
After time passed, it’s not surprising to find this spread of misinformation on Facebook and elsewhere resulted in measles outbreaks in the U.S. and abroad — a disease that had been eliminated as a major U.S. public health threat around 20 years ago. And despite repeated debunkings of false claims about the link between measles and autism by scientists, Facebook users — now feeling equipped by the internet to be experts on anything they can type into a search box — continued to spread misinformation at scale.
Once looped into the anti-vax communities, Facebook’s algorithms only further ensconced the skeptics into a world where only their opinions were correct, and they were surrounded by others who felt the same. This deepened their beliefs.
Today, the World Health Organization says vaccine hesitancy is now one of the biggest threats in global public health, citing the 30 percent increase in measles cases worldwide.
Above: network coverage map in Democratic Republic of Congo following the recent Ebola outbreak
Facebook only recently announced a plan to curb the spread of misinformation on its platforms, following government inquiries. But the health crisis it helped create by way of inattention is already well underway.
To be fair, Facebook is not the only platform corrupted by anti-vax misinformation — Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook-owned Instagram have also just taken measures to address the problem. But Facebook is the largest social network, and a highly influential platform.
Of course, vaccine-preventable diseases are only one of many crises and potential crises in public health, along with threats like Ebola, antimicrobial resistance, influenza, dengue, HIV and many others. Access to more data can help health organizations across many areas.
This is not the first time Facebook has tapped its large data stores or other technologies to aid nonprofits and other researchers. The company has also provided aid organizations with anonymized location data for users in areas affected by disasters — including where people were marking themselves as safe, and where they were fleeing. In another humanitarian-related effort, Facebook has been working with A.I. to create population density maps, including most recently the one showing whole population of Africa.
“Epidemics pose a growing threat to lives and livelihoods,” said Vanessa Candeias, Head of Shaping the Future of Health and Healthcare at the World Economic Forum, in a Facebook announcement about the new maps. “Mitigating their risk and impact requires every tool in the toolbox.”
It’s been more than a year since T-Mobile and Sprint formally announced a merger agreement. This morning, members of FCC leadership have issued statements voicing their support for the $26 billion proposal.
Ajit Pai was first out with a statement, suggesting that the pricey consolidation of two of the Unites States’ largest carriers would help accelerate his longstanding desire to provide more internet coverage to rural areas.
“Demonstrating that 5G will indeed benefit rural Americans,” Pai wrote, “T-Mobile and Sprint have promised that their network would cover at least two-thirds of our nation’s rural population with highs peed, mid-band 5G, which could improve the economy and quality of life in many small towns across the country.”
The FCC Chairman went on to suggest that the merger “is in the public interest,” adding that he would recommend fellow members of the commission’s leadership approve it. Commissioner Brendan Carr followed soon after with his own statement of approval, suggesting that a merger would actually increase competition among by consolidating it.
“I support the combination of T-Mobile and Sprint because Americans across the country will see more competition and an accelerated buildout of fast, 5G services,” the Commissioner writes. “The proposed transaction will strengthen competition in the U.S. wireless market and provide mobile and in-home broadband access to communities that demand better coverage and more choices.”
A number of ground rules have been laid out for approval. In a bid for approval, Sprint has promised to sell off prepaid brand, Boost Mobile. “[W]e have committed to divest Sprint’s Boost pre-paid business to a third party following the closing of the merger,” T-Mobile CEO John Legere said in a blog post following the statements of support. “We’ll work to find a serious, credible, financially capable and independent buyer for all the assets needed to run – and grow – the business, and we’ll make sure that buyer has attractive wholesale arrangements.”
The escalating US-China trade war that’s seen Chinese tech giant Huawei slapped on a US trade blacklist is causing ripples of shock across Europe too, as restrictions imposed on US companies hit regional suppliers concerned they could face US restrictions if they don’t ditch Huawei.
Reuters reports shares fell sharply today in three European chipmakers, Infineon Technologies, AMS and STMicroelectronics, after reports suggested some already had, or were about to, halt shipments to Huawei following the executive order barring US firms from trading with the Chinese tech giant.
The interconnectedness of high tech supply chains coupled with US dominance of the sector and Huawei’s strong regional position as a supplier of cellular, IT and network kit in Europe suddenly makes political risk a fast-accelerating threat for EU technology companies, large and small.
On the small side is French startup Qwant, which competes with Google by offering a pro-privacy search engine. In recent months it has been hoping to leverage a European antitrust decision against Google Android last year to get smartphones to market in Europe that preload its search engine, not Google’s.
Huawei was its intended first major partner for such devices. Though, prior to recent trade war developments, it was already facing difficulties related to price incentives Google included in reworked EU Android licensing terms.
Still, the US-China trade war threatens to throw a far more existential spanner in European Commission efforts to reset the competitive planning field for smartphone services. Certainly if Google’s response to Huawei’s blacklisting is to torch its supply of almost all Android-related services, per Reuters.
A key aim of the EU antitrust decision was intended to support the unbundling of popular Google services from Android so that device makers can try selling combinations that aren’t entirely Google-flavored — while still being able to offer enough ‘Google’ to excite consumers (such as preloading the Play Store but with a different search and browser bundle instead of the usual Google + Chrome combo).
Yet if Google intends to limit Huawei’s access to such key services there’s little chance of that.
(In a statement responding to the Reuters report Google suggested it’s still deciding how to proceed, with a spokesperson writing: “We are complying with the order and reviewing the implications. For users of our services, Google Play and the security protections from Google Play Protect will continue to function on existing Huawei devices.”)
Going on Google’s initial response, Qwant co-founder and CEO Eric Léandri told us he thinks Google has overreacted — even as he dubbed the US-China trade war “world war III — economical war but it’s a world war for sure”.
“I really need to see exactly what the president trump has said about Huawei and how to work with them. Because I think maybe Google has overreacted. Because I haven’t [interpreted it] that way so I’m very surprised,” he told TechCrunch.
“If Huawei can be [blacklisted] what about the others?” he added. “Because I would say 60% of the cell phone sales in Europe today are coming from China. Huawei or ZTE, OnePlus and the others — they are all under the same kind of risk.
“Even some of our European brands who are very small like Nokia… all of them are made in China, usually with partnership with these big cell phone manufacturers. So that means several things but one thing that I’m sure is we should not rely on one OS. It would be difficult to explain how the Play Store is not as important as the search in Android.”
Léandri also questioned whether Google’s response to the blacklisting will include instructing Huawei not to even use its search engine — a move that could impact its share of the smartphone search market.
“At the end of the day there is just one thing I can say because I’m just a search engine and a European one — I haven’t seen Google asking to not be by default in Huawei as search engine. If they can be in the Huawei by default as a search engine so I presume that everyone else can be there.”
Léandri said Qwant will be watching to see what Huawei’s next steps will be — such as whether it will decide to try offering devices with its own store baked in in Europe.
And indeed how China will react.
“We have to understand the result politically, globally, the European consequences. The European attitude. It’s not only American and China — the rest of the world exists,” he said.
“I have plan b, plan c, plan d, plan f. To be clear we are a startup — so we can have tonnes of plans, The only thing is right now is it’s too enormous.
“I know that they are the two giants in the tech field… but the rest of the world have some words today and let’s see how the European Commission will react, my government will react and some of us will react because it’s not only a small commercial problem right now. It’s a real political power demonstration and it’s global so I will not be more — I am nobody in all this. I do my job and I do my job well and I will use the maximum opportunity that I can find on the market.”
We’ve reached out to the Commission to ask how it intends to respond to escalating risks for European tech firms as Trump’s trade war steps up.
Also today, Reuters reports that the German Economy Minister is examining the impact of US sanctions against Huawei on local companies.
But while a startup like Qwant waits to see what the next few months will bring — and how the landscape of the smartphone market might radically reconfigure in the face of sharply spiking political risk, a different European startup is hoping to catch some uplift: Finland-based Jolla steers development of a made-in-Europe Android alternative, called Sailfish OS.
It’s a very tiny player in a Google-dominated smartphone world. Yet could be positioned to make gains amid US and Chinese tech clashes — which in turn risk making major platform pieces feel a whole lot less stable.
A made-in-Europe non-Google-led OS might gain more ground among risk averse governments and enterprises — as a sensible hedge against Trump-fuelled global uncertainty.
“Sailfish OS, as a non-American, open source based, secure mobile OS platform, is naturally an interesting option for different players — currently the interest is stronger among corporate and governmental customers and partners, as our product offering is clearly focused on this segment,” says Jolla co-founder and CEO Sami Pienimäki .
“Overall, there definitely has been increased interest towards Sailfish OS as a mobile OS platform in different parts of the world, partly triggered by the on-going political activity in many locations. We have also had clearly more discussions with e.g. Chinese device manufacturers, and Jolla has also recently started new corporate and governmental customer projects in Europe.”
Every once in a while someone will ask me what is the best security advice.
The long answer is “it depends on your threat model,” which is just a fancy way of saying what’s good security advice for the vast majority isn’t necessarily what nuclear scientists and government spies require.
My short answer is, “turn on two-factor.” Yet, nobody believes me.
Ask almost any cybersecurity professional and it’ll likely rank as more important as using unique or strong passwords. Two-factor, which adds an additional step in your usual log-in process by sending a unique code to a device you own, is the greatest defense between a hacker and your online account data.
But don’t take my word for it. Google data out this week shows how valuable even the weakest, simplest form of two-factor can be against attacks.
The research, with help from New York University and the University of California, San Diego, shows that any device-based challenge — such as a text message or an on-device prompt — can in nearly every case prevent the most common kind of mass-scale attacks.
Google’s data showed having a text message sent to a person’s phone prevented 100 percent of automated bot attacks that use stolen lists of passwords against login pages and 96 percent of phishing attacks that try to steal your password.
Account takeover preventing rates by challenge type. (Image: Google)
Not all two-factor options are created equal. We’ve explained before that two-factor codes sent by text message can be intercepted by semi-skilled hackers, but it’s still better than not using two-factor at all. Its next best replacement, getting a two-factor code through an authenticator app on your phone, is far more secure.
Only a security key, designed to protect the most sensitive accounts, prevented both automated bot and phishing attacks but also highly targeted attackers, typically associated with nation states. Just one in a million users face targeted attackers, Google said.
For everyone else, adding a phone number to your account and getting even the most basic two-factor set up is better than nothing. Better yet, go all in and shoot for the app.
Your non-breached online accounts will thank you.
Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi just released its first quarterly results since announcing its $1.48 billion pledge to focus on smartphones and ‘AIoT’, an acronym for Internet of Things powered by artificial intelligence.
Xiaomi’s adjusted net profit for the first quarter increased 22.4 percent year-over-year to 2.1 billion yuan ($300 million), while total revenue climbed 27.2 percent to 43.8 billion yuan ($6.33 billion).
Sales in India, where Xiaomi handsets dominate, as well as other countries outside China, continued to be a bright spot for the company. International markets brought in 38 percent of its total revenue over the first quarter, representing a 35 percent increase. Xiaomi’s overseas momentum came amid a global slowdown in the smartphone sector and at a time its rival Huawei copes with a technology ban that threatens to hobble international sales.
Smartphones remained as Xiaomi’s biggest revenue driver, though the segment had shrunk from 67.5 percent of total revenue in Q1 of 2018 to 61.7 percent a year later. According to Canalys, Xiaomi was the world’s fourth-largest smartphone maker by units shipped in the first quarter. A brand traditionally popular among male consumers, Xiaomi has made efforts to court female users by taking over Meitu’s smartphone business that would allow it to sell selfie-optimizing devices.
Xiaomi’s ‘IoT and lifestyle’ unit, which churns out a wide range of home appliances from air purifiers to suitcases, saw its share of revenue jump from 22.4 percent to 27.5 percent year-over-year.
Xiaomi said growth of this segment was primarily driven by smart TV sales, a new area of focus at the smartphone company. In January, Xiaomi announced taking a 0.48 percent stake in TV manufacturer TCL, deepening an existing alliance that saw the two work together to integrate Xiaomi’s operating system into TCL products.
Xiaomi has long tried to differentiate itself from other hardware firms by making money not just from gadgets but also from software and internet services sold through those devices. But the latter portion is still relatively paltry, accounting for just 9.7 percent of Xiaomi’s total revenue, compared to 9.1 percent a year before.
As of March, Xiaomi owned 261 million monthly active users through its MIUI operating system installed across all devices, a 37.3 percent growth YoY. The number of IoT devices, excluding smartphones and laptops, jumped 70 percent to reach approximately 171.0 million units.
Auth0, a 2013-founded identity and authentication platform, has pushed into unicorn territory with a $1 billion valuation after raising $103 million in its latest Series E round.
The round was led by Sapphire Ventures, with participation from K9 Ventures, Telstra Ventures and several others. In all, Auth0 total funding tops $210 million to date.
Auth0 — pronounced “auth-zero” — provides authentication-as-a-service to its corporate customers — or, to everyone else, a secure login system used to properly authenticate the identity of employees. Anyone working in a medium-to-large business will know the process all too well. Auth0 provides login and authentication systems for a bevy of device types — including Internet of Things devices — in a variety of formats, including single-sign-on, multi-factor authentication and passwordless logins.
By securing the perimeter to a corporate network, the company says it can prevent data breaches from unauthorized logins and improper access.
The company touts more than 7,000 enterprise customers with more than 2.5 billion logins per month. It’s come a long way since its $2.4 million seed round in 2016.
Auth0 chief executive Eugenio Pace said its Series E was “validation” that the company is doing things right.
Clearly it is: it says customer growth and revenue has doubled year-over-year, and its employee numbers have increased by more than half in two years. Its latest Series D funding round that led its international expansion has seen offices also open in Buenos Aires, London, and Sydney.
Auth0 said the Series E will help support the growth of its five international offices. Pace said he was “truly grateful” for his investors’ support.
Robin Powered, a startup looking to help offices run better, has today announced the close of a $20 million Series B funding. The round was led by Tola Capital, with existing investors Accomplice and FirstMark participating in the round, along with a new strategic Allegion Ventures.
Robin started as part of an agency called One Mighty Roar, where Robin Powered cofounder Sam Dunn and his two cofounders built out RFID and beacon tech for clients’ live events. In 2014, they spun out the tech as Robin and tweaked the focus on the modern office.
The office stands to be one of the least efficient pieces of any business. As a company grows, or even if it doesn’t, it’s particularly difficult to understand the ‘inventory’ of the office and how it is used by workers throughout the day.
“Before, if I asked you what you needed out of your next office, you might go around and survey employees or hire an architecture firm,” said Dunn. “I heard a story where a manager sent around an intern every Thursday at 3pm to talk to employees about the office, and that was one of two pieces of information handed over to the architecture firm. At the end of the day, it’s hard to know if there’s a shortage of meeting rooms, or teleconference-enabled rooms, or collaborative workspaces.”
That’s where Robin comes in. Robin hooks into Google Calendar and Outlook to help employees get a sense of what meeting rooms and activity spaces are available in the office, complete with tablet signage out front. Meetings are the starting point for Robin, but the company can also offer tools for seating charts and office maps, as well as insights. The company wants to offer insights about how the space in this or that office is being used — what they lack and what they have too much of.
Robin charges its clients per room ($300) and per desk ($24 – $60). The hope is to build out the same technological backbone for clients’ offices as WeWork provides alongside its physical space, giving every business the opportunity to optimize one of their biggest investments: the office itself.
Robin has raised a total of $30 million.
Getting your work wages on a monthly (not weekly nor biweekly) basis has become a more widespread trend as the price of running payrolls has gone up, and organizations’ cashflow has gone down. That 30-day shift may be a boost to employers, but not employees, who may need access to those wages more immediately and find it a challenge to stretch out their income month to month.
Now, a startup based out of London has raised a large round of funding for service that’s aiming to plug that gap. Wagestream — which works with employers to let employees draw down a percentage of their income in the month for a small, flat fee — today said that it has closed a Series A round of £40 million ($51 million).
The funding is coming in the form of equity and debt, with Balderton and Northzone leading on the equity side, which makes up £15 million of the raise, and savings bank Shawbrook investing £25 million on the debt side to finance employee draw-downs. Other investors in the round include QED, the Rowntree Foundation, the London Co-investment Fund (LCIF) and Village Global, a social venture firm backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, among others.
The company is not disclosing its valuation but this brings the total raised to just under £45 million and “the valuation is definitely higher now”, according to CEO and co-founder Peter Briffett.
The list of investors is proving to be a useful one for Wagestream as it grows. I asked if Bezos’ company Amazon was working with Wagestream. Briffett confirmed it is not a customer currently, “but we are talking to them.” It does, however, have a number of other customers already signed up, including pest removal service Rentokil PLC, Camden Town Brewery, the Slug & Lettuce pub chain and Carluccio’s chain of eateries, along with the NHS and Hackney Council — covering some 120,000 workers in all.
Amazon is an indicative example of one of the big opportunities for the company, which today is active in the UK but aiming to expand across Europe and the rest of the world.
While it is one of the biggest employers in the tech world, where it might typically pay out six-figure salaries in senior management, operational and technical roles, it’s also building out its business by being one of the biggest employers also of hourly workers in its warehouses, wider logistics operations and similar areas. It’s employees like these who might be considered the first wave of employees that Wagestream is initially targeting, some of whom may be earning just enough or slightly more than enough to get by (at best), and face being victims of what Briffett referred to as the “payday poverty cycle.”
Getting paid monthly today accounts for some 85 percent of all paychecks in the UK today, and the proportion is similar in Europe and also getting increasingly common in the US, Briffett — who has also worked at Microsoft, LivingSocial (when it was still backed by Amazon, and where he started the UK operation and ran it as the CEO for years), and YPlan (acquired by Time Out) — said in an interview. You might ask: why don’t the workers just budget better? But it doesn’t always work out that way, especially the longer the gap is between paychecks, and if you, for example, have an unexpected expense to cover.
Because of that ubiquity, and the acuteness of the problem (if you’ve ever earned just about enough, or been a child in a family whose parents did, you may understand the predicament quite well ), Wagestream is not the first time that we’ve seen a financial services startup emerge to target that demographic.
Some other attempts have been scandalously disastrous, however: recall “Payday Loan” provider Wonga, backed by an illustrious set of investors but ultimately accused of, and hit hard by regulators and the public for, preying on people who were in need of funds with loans that were not transparent enough in their terms and led the borrowers into deep debt.
Wonga itself paid a big price for its practices, and the company is now bankrupt (and apparently still unable to replay creditors, as of the last report in March).
It was the disaster of Wonga — and an article in the WSJ about alternatives to payday loans — that Briffett said got him thinking about the possibilities and building Wagestream. (Ironic note: if you use PitchBook as I do, Wonga is listed among Wagestream’s backers, which Briffett assures me is an error.)
Wagestream positions itself as a “social impact” startup for targeting a very real problem that impacts financial inclusion for a proportion of the population, and it says this represents one of the highest rounds ever for a startup in the UK aimed at social impact.
“We fell in love with the strong product-market fit of Wagestream. We very rarely hear such universal positive feedback from all who have tried a product,” said Rob Moffat, a partner at Balderton, in a statement. “Companies used to take an active role in supporting the financial health of their users but this has slowly been eroded, to the extent where employees paid at the end of the month are effectively subsidising their employer for 29 days a month. Wagestream starts to restore the right balance.”
Wagestream operates by striking deals with employers to offer its services to its workers, who download an app and link up Wagestream with their salary and banking details. Businesses are able to set limits for what percentage of their wages employees can draw down each month, and how often the service can be used. Typically the limit is around 40 percent of a monthly wage, Briffett said.
Employees then can get the money instantly by paying a fee of £1.75 per withdrawal. “We are funding all of the withdrawals up front,” Briffett said. “We are the first company to marry workforce management and financial data.”
Down the road, the plan will be to expand to Europe as well as to the US, where there are already some other services that are trying to tackle the same problem, such as Instant Financial and DailyPay. There are also a number of areas the company could move into, such as working with companies that employ contract workers, and providing additional financial services to workers already using the app to draw down funds.
More expansion, Briffett said, will inevitably also mean more funding particularly on the debt side.
For now, the emergence of Wavestream is an encouraging sign of how VCs are not just interested in tapping their coffers to bet on tech companies that they think will be hits. They also want to hunt for those whose returns may well be strong, but ultimately are made stronger by the longer-term effect they might have on the wider landscape of consumers, how they interface with fintech, and continue their own progress in the world.
Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Clinc is today announcing a $52 million Series B. The company behind the conversational AI platform netted cash from Insight Partners, DFJ Growth, Drive Capital, Hyde Park Venture Partners, and others.
This round of financing brings Clinc’s total amount of funding to $60 million and will help Clinc scale its conversational AI to new markets. Clinc plans to reach 140 employees by the end of 2019 and intends to move into a new 26,000 square foot office in Ann Arbor, MI. According to Clinc, the company achieved a 300% year-over-year revenue growth and expects to more than triple the business again this year.
“We’ve had phenomenal growth and built unbelievable momentum in a very short period of time,” said Jason Mars, Clinc CEO. “Now we’re adding more world class investors to support our growing team as we work to accelerate the pace of innovation and to reshape the conversational AI landscape, one industry at a time.”
Mars explained to TechCrunch that it sought specific investors for this round that could help take the company to its initial public offering. Jeff Lieberman, Insight Partners’ Managing Director, is joining Clinc’s board of directors and brings significant IPO experience to the boardroom as he previously helped several companies go public including Event, Shutterstock, and Website Pros. With this round, Clinc also adds DFJ’s Randy Glein to its board of advisors.
Mars said this round of financing could be its last before going public. He hopes to take the company straight to an IPO from here and noted that the capital gives the company several years of runway.
With this round, Clinc now has investors on both coasts along within the middle of the country where it’s based.
Clinc was founded in Ann Arbor, MI in 2015 and has remained committed to the Midwest city since its launch in 2016. The company currently has offices elsewhere including Europe, Asia, and throughout the States. CEO Mars tells TechCrunch that the short term plan is to keep key management in Ann Arbor, but it’s plausible that other offices will eventually have more staff.
The company’s conversational AI platform is unique in the industry and has allowed the company to make inroads in different markets. Its deep neural network product can be trained to work in a variety of industries, and Clinc currently works with major banks, automakers, quick-service restaurants, and healthcare companies. The company recently showed off how it could work in video games, too.
Clinc showed off its system at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018. Watch his demo here.