Tuesday, October 22, 2019
ETtech Top 5: Google India's FY19 revenue halved, SoftBank's WeWork takeover & more
Snap adds 7 million users in Q3, revenue up 50%
SC to hear WhatsApp message traceability petitions in January
Samsung India outsources production of some phones
Calgary-based Benevity, a platform helping employees of companies like Apple and Google give donations, raises $40M Series C from JMI Equity, General Atlantic (Meagan Simpson/BetaKit)
Calgary-based Benevity, a platform helping employees of companies like Apple and Google give donations, raises $40M Series C from JMI Equity, General Atlantic — Benevity, a global leader in corporate social responsibility and one of the largest startups in the Prairies, has raised $40 million in a Series C round of funding.
SkyWater, a Minnesota-based chip maker spun off from Cypress Semiconductor, receives up to $170M from DOD to make radiation-hardened chips that work in space (Stephen Nellis/Reuters)
SkyWater, a Minnesota-based chip maker spun off from Cypress Semiconductor, receives up to $170M from DOD to make radiation-hardened chips that work in space — (Reuters) - Semiconductor maker SkyWater Technology said on Monday it will receive up to $170 million from the U.S. Department …
Salesforce Ventures’s John Somorjai warns N.C.’s politics could dampen its tech hub potential
North Carolina has been rising as an entrepreneurial hub. It’s now home to massive deals, like IBM buying Red Hat for $34 billion and Fortnite maker Epic Games raising a landmark $1.25 billion, both which helped to put the state — and the Triangle region, in particular — on the map. And now it’s just minted another unicorn with Pendo’s last fundraise. But its tech hub potential can still be threatened by the state’s political swings, said Salesforce Ventures head John Somorjai, who spoke today at a tech event in Durham.
On a panel at Bull City Venture Partners’ Entrepreneurs’ Series 2019, Somorjai reminded the audience that investment in the state follows the talent. And a state can’t attract talent when it’s not “welcoming to all people,” he said.
North Carolina has had a difficult history on this front, if you recall.
In 2016, PayPal canceled plans to open a global operations center in Charlotte after N.C. passed the controversial (“bathroom bill”) law that prevented cities from creating non-discrimination policies based on gender identity. The state lost 400 potential jobs, as a result. Over 100 other companies, including Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook, eBay, Uber, and others also asked the state to repeal the law after its passing.
N.C. eventually revised the law, then reached a settlement this summer that allows transgender people to use certain bathrooms matching their gender identity. But in some cases, it was too late to woo the tech companies back.
These sorts of issues have a broader effect on the state’s ability to attract tech and business investment at a time when investors are often now looking outside the Valley (and its obscene valuations) to find companies that are more focused on profitability.
Salesforce Ventures, a strategic investor who keeps its stake below 15%, isn’t hesitant to fund companies beyond Silicon Valley — it has five investments in N.C. and 15 overall in the larger region, for example. And 75% of its investments were made outside of California, Somorjai noted.
But when asked what North Carolina’s biggest challenge was, in terms of becoming home to a startup community, he alluded to the state’s politics and its history of divisive laws.
“Before the last election, there was an environment here that wasn’t really welcoming to all people,” Somorjai said. “One of [Salesforce’s] core tenants — our core values — is equality. And there’s really sound business sense behind that,” he explained. “If you have discriminatory policies, people don’t feel welcome. If they don’t feel welcome, they’re not going to want to work there. And you will never be able to attract the best talent.”
“Money flows to where the talent is,” he added.
He also suggested to the event’s audience — a group of some 450 entrepreneurs and hundreds more working in the area’s startup ecosystem — that local community leaders should remain vigilant about these sorts of problems.
“If you’re complacent, it can happen again,” he said.
Despite the concerns, Somorjai was generally positive about the ability for strong startups to arise in N.C.
Salesforce Ventures itself invested in two N.C. area unicorns — Pendo and nCino — and it just acquired Charlotte-based MapAnything, which gives it some 200 new employees in the Tar Heel state. Elsewhere in N.C., startups AvidXchange, Red Ventures, and Tresata all have unicorn valuations.
“One thing we’ve been so excited about is — you have these tremendous universities that are putting out great engineers every year. And you have a growing group of investors that are investing in this area. There’s also now so much talent here that you’re attracting investors from all over the country,” he told the audience. “I think that’s great.”
Image credit, top: SeanPavonePhoto/Getty Images
Verizon is giving its customers 12 free months of Disney+
On November 12 Verizon will begin offering 12 months of Disney+ to all of its new and existing 4gLTE and 5G unlimited wireless customers, the companies said today in a joint statement.
It’s a great way for Disney to juice its early subscriber numbers and for Verizon to add a tantalizing perk as competition heats up for both streaming media companies and telecoms whose media strategy still seems a little… muddled.
While Comcast and AT&T each have their own successful media properties, Verizon (which owns Verizon Media Group, which owns TechCrunch) has seen its fortunes in the media landscape wane as much of the investment thesis behind buying Aol… then Yahoo… then merging them into Oath… then rebranding them as Verizon Media Group… fizzled.
Tying itself to Disney+ — even just promotionally — makes good business sense.
Through the agreement Verizon customers get access to everything Disney+ has to offer, including the highly anticipated Star Wars television series, “The Mandalorian” and another 25 original films and documentaries. Watch the over three hour-long teaser trailer below for an exhaustive look at every. single. Disney. piece. of. content. coming. to. the. service.
“Giving Verizon customers an unprecedented offer and access to Disney+ on the platform of their choice is yet another example of our commitment to provide the best premium content available through key partnerships on behalf of our customers,” said Verizon Chairman and CEO Hans Vestberg, in a statement. “Our work with Disney extends beyond Disney+ as we bring the power of 5G Ultra Wideband technology to the entertainment industry through exciting initiatives with Disney Innovation Studios and in the parks,” he added.
Here’s the deal: At launch, Verizon becomes the exclusive wireless carrier to offer 12 months of Disney+ for itsnew and existing customers. The offer also extends to its new Fios Home Internet and 5G Home Internet customers.
Folks can activate their Disney+ subscription and start streaming on devices including game consoles, streaming media players and smart televisions.
Defense Secretary Esper recuses himself from JEDI contract decisions to avoid conflict of interest with his son's employer IBM, an original contract bidder (Nextgov)
Defense Secretary Esper recuses himself from JEDI contract decisions to avoid conflict of interest with his son's employer IBM, an original contract bidder — Defense Secretary Mark Esper — The Pentagon's acquisition team will continue its review of bids submitted by Amazon Web Services and Microsoft …
Monday, October 21, 2019
Indian Navy 2019 – Chargeman Provisional Selection List Released
'Assembled in India' iPhone XR Now on Sale in the Country
FT launches a new consulting arm focused on helping businesses use consumer data
As more and more news businesses turn to paywalls and subscriptions, The Financial Times looks like an early model and success story — a few months ago the organization announced that it’s passed 1 million paying readers, with digital subscribers accounting for more than three-fourths of its circulation.
Now The FT is looking to share some of what it’s learned (and further diversify its business) by launching a new consulting unit called FT Strategies.
Chief Data Officer Tom Betts told me that The FT built a lot of the technology behind its subscription efforts. At first, the team assumed that it might be able to build a business selling that technology to other publishers. After all, Vox Media and The Washington Post are both trying to do something similar with their content management systems.
So it was surprising to hear Betts say that FT Strategy is actually “a pure consulting business.”
Asked whether The FT might eventually start selling a tech product as well, he replied, “Never say never about the technology dimension, but I think as we did our market research and started talking to customers and looking more at the technological landscape out there, we realized that over the years, many of the elements of the technology we have built have become commoditized.”
That doesn’t mean there’s a technology stack that publishers can buy off-the-shelf that can meet all their needs (there’s at least one startup called The News Project trying to piece that stack together).
But Betts argued, “Even if you go and buy best-of-breed technology, that doesn’t mean you can assembly it in the right way to make it useful and meaningful to scale and grow direct-to-consumer revenues. And most importantly it doesn’t mean that you know how to operate it with teams and how to actually use it to successfully scale and grow your business.”
That’s precisely what FT Strategies is trying to provide. In fact, Betts said the company has already been quietly testing out the idea in beta and built up a customer list that includes Bonnier, The Business of Fashion, Penguin Random House and the V&A — so not just news companies, but also a book publisher and an art and design museum.
“I believe that the capabilities that we’e built, clearly they are salient to other news publishers, but I believe that they span far beyond that,” Betts explained.
He went on to argue that FT Strategies could potentially work with any company that’s “either facing disruption as the news media industry has” or that’s in a sector that’s part of the broader direct-to-consumer trend — basically, any company that needs help figuring out “how do we market to individuals, how do we build relationships to individuals, how do we leverage those relationships both so that the consumers have the most positive and engaging experience with our products and to maximize revenue.”
As for whether any of these business might be leery about giving another company — and, in some cases, a competitor — access to their customer data, Betts said that philosophically, the FT believes that “a healthy paid content ecosystem is good for the FT and it’s good for all the publishers that participate in it.”
More concretely, he said his team is “very clear internally about having the Chinese walls and professional standards for FT Strategy that ensures the right levels of confidentiality of clients’ data [so] their confidential information doesn’t leak back into the core operation.”
Former Stitch Fix COO Julie Bornstein is rewriting the e-commerce playbook
More than two years after Julie Bornstein–Stitch Fix’s former chief operating officer–mysteriously left the subscription-based personal styling service only months before its initial public offering, she’s taking the wraps off her first independent venture.
Shortly after departing Stitch Fix, Bornstein began building The Yes, an AI-powered shopping platform expected to launch in the first half of 2020. She’s teamed up with The Yes co-founder and chief technology officer Amit Aggarwal, who’s held high-level engineering roles at BloomReach and Groupon, and most recently, served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Bain Capital Ventures, to “rewrite the architecture of e-commerce.”
“This is an idea I’ve been thinking about since I was 10 and spending my weekends at the mall,” Bornstein, whose resume includes chief marketing officer & chief digital officer at Sephora, vice president of e-commerce at Urban Outfitters, VP of e-commerce at Nordstrom and director of business development at Starbucks, tells TechCrunch. “All the companies I have worked at were very much leading in this direction.”
Coming out of stealth today, the team at The Yes is readying a beta mode to better understand and refine their product. Bornstein and Aggarwal have raised $30 million in venture capital funding to date across two financings. The first, a seed round, was co-led by Forerunner Ventures’ Kirsten Green and NEA’s Tony Florence. The Series A was led by True Ventures’ Jon Callaghan with participation from existing investors. Bornstein declined to disclose the company’s valuation.
“AI and machine learning already dominate in many verticals, but e-commerce is still open for a player to have a meaningful impact,” Callaghan said in a statement. “Amit is leading a team to build deep neural networks that legacy systems cannot achieve.”
Bornstein and Aggarwal withheld many details about the business during our conversation. Rather, the pair said the product will speak for itself when it launches next year. In addition to being an AI-powered shopping platform, Bornstein did say The Yes is working directly with brands and “creating a new consumer shopping experience that helps address the issue of overwhelm in shopping today.”
As for why she decided to leave Stitch Fix just ahead of its $120 million IPO, Bornstein said she had an epiphany.
“I realized that technology had changed so much, meanwhile … the whole framework underlying e-commerce had remained the same since the late 90s’ when I helped build Nordstrom.com,” she said. “If you could rebuild the underlying architecture and use today’s technology, you could actually bring to life an entirely new consumer experience for shopping.”
The Yes, headquartered in Silicon Valley and New York City, has also brought on Lisa Green, the former head of industry, fashion and luxury at Google, as its senior vice president of partnerships, and Taylor Tomasi Hill, whose had stints at Moda Operandi and FortyFiveTen, as its creative director. Other investors in the business include Comcast Ventures and Bain Capital Ventures
Private brands biz of e-tailers under scanner
SoftBank's WeWork takeover would lead to Adam Neumann's exit: Sources
Russian cryptocurrency payment network A7 expands to Africa, as Moscow builds an alternative payments system amid western sanctions after its Ukraine invasion (Financial Times)
Financial Times : Russian cryptocurrency payment network A7 expands to Africa, as Moscow builds an alternative payments system amid weste...
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The first project we remember working on together was drawing scenes from the picture books that our mom brought with her when she immigrate...
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Sohee Kim / Bloomberg : South Korean authorities are investigating a data leak at e-commerce giant Coupang that exposed ~33.7M accounts; ...
