Friday, March 31, 2017
Shocking Video Shows Bad-Ass Badger Burying Entire Cow By Itself
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Scheduled is a new app that lets you schedule your text messages
Want to remember to tell a friend happy birthday, good luck or congratulations? Had a follow-up question for a client that just occurred to you at1 AM? Want to write a heartfelt thank you to be texted at a later date? Unfortunately, neither SMS nor most messaging apps including iMessage allow you to draft a textin advance and schedule it to be sent out on a later date. But a new iOS application called Scheduled can help.
To be clear, the app does not actually schedule texts forautomatic sending.
For that, youd need to hackyour iPhone and use one of the jailbreak appsinstead. Apple does not allow for this functionality, officially.
What Scheduled does is offer an App Store-approved workaroundfor scheduling texts.
The app itself is simple and straightforward to use.
You first select the person you want to text from your Contacts, then write the text you want to send and select the time you want to be reminded to send the text. When that time rolls around, Scheduled sends you a push notification so you can return to the app to send the text.
After sending, a quick swipe will delete the reminder from the apps queue.
Scheduled isnt only for SMS or iMessage, however it also supports messaging apps like Telegram, WhatsApp,Messenger, Twitter, and it allows you to copy the messages text to paste it into any other app of your choice. It can be used for reminding you of emails or phone calls, too.
Further down the road, Scheduled plans to add support for LinkedIn and Slack, and it will roll out a few tweaks to the sending flow, Apple Watch integration, and Android support at some point.
To be fair, there are other text message scheduling apps on the App Store, but Scheduleds interface is clean and modern, compared with those Ive seen previously.
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compose message text – en@1x
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overview text – en@1x
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send with text -en@1x
The app itself is a product fromBrthrs Agency, a digital agency just outside Amsterdam inThe Netherlands, which does a combination of client work and startup investing. The team, which consists of Sebastiaan Kooijman and Robert Keus, tells TechCrunch that Scheduled is currently a bootstrapped company project. Theyre considering making it a startup of its own, if it achieves traction.
The teamsays the plan to make money is to charge $0.99 if you want to add four or more messages tothe queue.
Of course, many users are already asking for auto-send functionality following the apps launch a few days ago, but this is not something that Apple permits.
We are investigating the options [for auto-send], says Keus, but its hard from a technical perspective. And our concept is to support people tobe thoughtful, he adds. When we have auto-send then people can act like robots.
Agreed.
Scheduled is currently a free download on the iTunes App Store.
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Thursday, March 30, 2017
Picture yourself as a space tourist in these Blue Origin capsule interior shots
One of the best parts of writing about transportation tech is that I get to reiterate my desire to go to space again, for the record, if youll have me Blue Origin I would like to go to space. Especially now that Ive seen the luxuriously appointed interiors of your New Glenn rocket, which are generous with the leather and where every seat is a window seat AND an aisle seat.
These are mock-ups, of course, but they likely are representative of what you can expect in exchange for your $100,000 plus ticket for a 10-minute space ride, as Ars Technica reports. That center unit depicted in the capsule isnt a cooler, by the way its the escape motor, which Blue Origin tested on its rocket last year, as a means to separate the capsule from its rocket quickly and with a maximum of force in case of emergency.
Id have hoped for a panoramic cockpit, but maybe that much transparent surface would have a hard time withstanding the forces the New Glenn will be up against. Or maybe thats just a very expensive upgrade option, like it is on luxury cars, too.
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Report: Free trials push Apple Music ahead of Pandora and Spotify on mobile usage
Spotify may be the reigning leader when it comes to the largest number of paid subscribers for a streaming music service, but its Apple thatcomes out on top when their respective audiences translate into monthly uniqueusers, specifically on mobile.
A report published this week from mobile analytics firm Verto has found that Apple Music attracted 40.7 million monthly unique users to its service in the U.S. in February. In comparison, Pandora came in at number two with 32.6 million users, andSpotify tookthird place with 30.4 million unique users for the month. Others ranking highly among music apps include iHeartRadio, SoundCloud and Amazon Music. iHeartRadio took the fourth slot, while SoundCloud, which last week secured a $70 million credit line, took the fifth slot.
Verto also found that YouTube, which has a relatively small number of monthly unique users on mobile in the US just 2.6 million users had the stickiest service, with a 35 percent stickiness rating (dividing daily by monthly active users). Doing the math, this gives YouTube 875,000 daily active users on mobile in the US. Spotify also scored strong here, grabbing the highest number of listening sessions per month, at 51.
(Googles music properties, in fact, are not huge winners in terms of active users on mobile: Google Play ranked ninth among music apps in terms of monthly uniques in the US, with around 6 million.)
Verto a competitor to companies like ComScorethat has raised around $24 million says that it bases its figures on data is pulled from 20,000 SmartPanel users, people in the US and UK who opt-in to Vertos on-device metering app on their phone, tablet and computer, letting itmeasure theirusage on acrossdevices, apps, and sites. This measurement data is then combined with calibration data that Verto collects from analytics and advertising platforms across nearly half a billion devices monthly. (Customers includeUniversal Music Group, EA Games, Johnson&Johnson, Microsoft and others.)
The reasonwhy Apple Music brought in the most monthly uniques on mobile in the US is an interesting surprise. According to Vertos Connie Hwong, itcomes down Apple Musics three- month free trial, which more than doubles the amount of people who are listening using its app in the US: Apple last reported 20 million paying subscribersglobally (not just the U.S.) for Apple Music in December 2016.
While paying users tell one story about a company, and registered users tellanother, active users is still a third. In the cases of Spotify and Pandora, which are older services, there is a pretty wide gulf between registered (and paying) users and people who actively open an app on their phones.
Spotify earlier this month said that it had passed the 50 million mark for paying users globally; it hasnt updated its overall users (including free) since last June, but at the timeit said it had over 100 million. Vertos figure of 30.4 million active users in the US in February is one-third the size of all of Spotifys global registered users, and two-thirds the size of all paying users.
Pandora today has81million users, but only around 4 million of them are paying for its Pandora Plus tier, which gives users some control over the music that is played, but without being a full on-demand service. The premium tier, which will have an on-demand component, was announced earlier this month. Vertos figure of 32.6 million usersis just under one-half the size of all users; and eight times as many paying users a proportion that Pandora is under a lot of pressure to growwith the introduction of that$9.99 premium tier.
Whats interesting to me here is howApple Musics free tier seems to be doing so well here.There are a few reasons why that might be the case.
For starters, Apple Musicis preloaded on all iPhones, making the service that much easier for users to try out. Then, there is Beats 1, Apples radio service.
In a profile inthe Verge, Apple Music executive Larry JacksondescribedBeats 1 as the biggest radio station in the world (although Apple declines to give actual usage numbers). Robert Kondrk, another Apple exec, pointed specifically toits strength as an onboarding tool for Apple Music (incidentally eating into SoundClouds businessin the process), specifically around exclusive content thats streamed on Beats 1 that then links to streams in Apple Music:
Now an audience which once went to SoundCloud to hear the latest Drake music heads to Beats 1 first.
Kondrk describes the relationship between Apple Music and Beats 1 like an amusement park once youre inside the Apple Music app to listen to Beats 1, its only natural youll stay in it to stream the songs afterward.
Theres also the novelty aspect of a new app: users download apps but often stop using them after a while, and perhaps the same may go for a certain proportion of people who have downloaded older music apps. Conversely, there may be some curiosity about the newer Apple Music app and peoples interest in trying it out.
But the same cant be said for every new entrant music app. Tidal, the streaming service co-owned by Jay Z and with a roster of other big music artists among its backers, hasnt been entirely forthcoming about how many users it has: Verto cites just 100,000, while a report in January, near the time when Sprint disclosed a 33% stake in the business, said the number was closer to 850,000, and Tidal itself has said its 3 million.
Whatever the actual global number is, Verto said that the users Tidal tend to be dedicated, with a stickiness rating of 22 percent, the same as Amazon Music, with an average number of listening sessions for the month at 46, just behind Spotifys 51.
Thefocus on mobile in thisreport partly comes out of the fact that mobile and specifically the mobile phone represents the most popular platform for digital music at the moment:
The message for music app developers seems to be fairly clear: if you are a music app that wantsto continue to grow your user base, you need a mobile app thats pulling in active listeners on a very regular basis. It points to why we are seeing the likes of Spotify launch so many different variations on the concept of recommendation and discovery services, and why well continue to see more of these from the rest of the field. For streaming music services that offer on-demand music libraries, a vast catalog is no longer a selling point, Verto writes. Its a given.
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TechCrunch takes Manhattan: Include Office Hours with Flybridge Capital Partners
Founders!TechCrunch is taking over Manhattan next week with our first block party ever, and partnering with Flybridge to host Include Office hours at WeWork Grand Central Station. On April 6th from 2-4pm ET, General Partners Chip Hazard and Jesse Middleton will be meeting with underserved and underrepresented founders from the Greater New York area. Submit your application here.
Launched in 2014, TechCrunch developedthe Include Program to facilitate opportunities for underserved and underrepresented founders. Include Office Hours are a part of this effort. Every month, TechCrunch partners with a notable VC or angel in SF or NYC. Companies selected meet with each partner to get key advice and guidance. Include Office Hours with Flybridge will take place April 6th from 2-4pm. Apply here to meet with the investors.
Underserved and underrepresented groups include(but are not limited to) female, Latino/a, Black founders, veterans, and LGBTQ.
Theres more! At TechCrunch Takes Manhattanwell also be hosting TC Include Pitch Practice for underrepresented founders, aFlash Pitch event, and TC Editorial Pitch Practice with Jon Shieber. All of this cumulating in the TC Trivia Throwdown with editor Jordan Crook.
Now lets check out the TechCrunch Include Office Hours Partners:
Chip Hazard, General Partner
Chip is a General Partner at Flybridge whose investment interests and experience broadly cover companies and technologies in theinformation technology sector. His investments include MongoDB, Firebase (acquired by Google), Stackdriver (acquired by Google), Mattermark, Datalogue and Nasuni. Before joining the firm in May 2002, Chip was a General Partner with Greylock Partners, a leading venture capital firm he joined in 1994. While at Greylock, Chip ledor participated in numerous successful investments in the enterprise information technologyfield. Prior to Greylock, Chip was with Company Assistance Limited, an investment and consultingfirm in Warsaw Poland; and Bain and Company, an international management-consulting firm.Chip received a BA with honors from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard BusinessSchool where he was a Baker Scholar and a Ford Scholar.
Jesse Middleton, General Partner
Jesse is a General Partner at Flybridge whose investment interests include mobile, SaaS, big data, consumer and e-commerce. His investments include Imperfect Produce, Remote Year and Splice. Prior to joining Flybridge in 2016, Jesse was an early executive at WeWork, one of the fastest growing and most valuable startups in history. He co-foundedWeWork Labsin 2011, which became WeWorks global startup incubator, and ran WeWork X, M&A, startup investments, business and digital product development as well as inside sales during his five-year tenure at the company.
Prior to WeWork, Jesse was the co-founder and CEO of Backstory, a venture backed startup. Jesse began his career traveling across the United States, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Israel and China as a network security engineer based in Philadelphia. He moved to New York City where he became the head of information technology at LivePerson in 2010. He also was an active angel investor and served as an advisor to many early stage technology startups including 3Claps, Authenticated Digital, Benny, Camelot Metrics, Eight, fitmob (acquired by ClassPass), inDinero, Jackpocket, Leo Health, Morsel, Rukkus, Squire, Symple, Thunderclap, Uptown House and YourTrove (acquired by LiveNation).
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Android co-founders new smartphone confirmed to run Android
The new smartphone from Andy Rubin, which will be the debut product of his new company Essential, will indeed run Android for its operating system. It looked that way from the tiny peek at the corner we got from Rubins tweet earlier this week, but now Googles Eric Schmidt has confirmed itll be one of a few phenomenal new choices for Android users coming very soon.
First of all:
But furthermore, this sounds like things between Essential and Google are very friendly, which could mean well see a new type of close collaboration evocative of the Nexus era. Google has clearly staked out its own new kind of territory with phones it builds itself, opting for a strategy competitive with what Apple and Samsung have done with their top-tier premium devices.
Also, Schmidts teaser comes on Samsung Galaxy S8 day, which seems like no accidental omen. Androids leading ranks have typically included Samsung and basically no one else, so itll be very interesting indeed if Essential is one among a few new options headed to the table.
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Rover and DogVacay merge to dominate the pet-sitting market
Putting an end to a fierce competition inthe pet-sitting business, Rover and DogVacay have agreed to join forces. Rover will be acquiring DogVacay in an all-stock deal.
DogVacays investors, including Benchmark, Andreessen Horowitz, First Round, Sherpa Capital and Foundation Capital, will now become Rover shareholders. Further terms of the deal were not disclosed, but all of our investors are extremely happy with their return, claimed DogVacay founder Aaron Hirschhorn.
Existing Rover CEO Aaron Easterly will bein charge of the mergedbusiness. Aaron Hirschhorn, who founded DogVacay, will stayinvolved throughout the integration. Hell alsobe taking a board seat.
We get to continuethe mission,thats whats so exciting, said Hirschhorn about the company sticking to its core business. The DogVacay website will remainin operation for the foreseeable futureand the businesses will continue to run as they have.
Both had a very similar model, with a marketplace for pet sitting, dog walking and other pet-care services. Each takeabout a 20 percent cut from bookings. Total bookings on the combined sites amounted to$150 million for 2016. The growing businesses are not yet profitable.
The mergedcompany will be headquartered at Rovers Seattle location. TheDogVacay team will remain in Santa Monica, but with 22 positions set to be eliminated.
One of the new focuses will be to expand internationally. DogVacay already does well in Canada, which Easterly was enthusiastic about. They also plan to growtheir dog-walking business and potentially introduce other pet-related categories.
Were going to be taking a close look at anything that can help people become amazing pet owners despite the challenges of modern living, said Easterly.
When asked about future plans, he hoped for an IPO someday. We think being a public company is the most likely outcome,he predicted.
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Stances app lets you record a message for your Congressperson, then leaves it on their voicemail
Want to call your senator or U.S.representative to let them know where you stand on an issue, but dont have the time to hunt down their phone number, wait on hold, or continually redial to get past the busy signals? A new app called Stance aims to help. Instead of simply providing a way to call your reps, as many apps today do, Stance lets you pre-record your voice message to be left on the reps voicemail when the phone lines are freed up.
But wait!, you ask. Dont congressional staffers answer the phones? How is Stance going directly tovoicemail to play yourmessage on their machine?
Simple. It only places the calls at night, so voicemail is sure to pick up.
The initial idea for the app came from Nathaniel Teichman, COO at a small audio startup called Ense, from Venmo co-founder Iqram Magdon.
Teichmanexplains he was inspired to build Stance after attending a political rally and hearing about the frustration people had when trying to call their reps.
At the same time I was reading and hearing more and more about the importance of calling Congress, he says. I thought there must be a better way for people to get through so I met with a few coworkers and we realized we were in a position to come up with a better solution.
The coworkers spent the next few weekends working on the app, which works on top of Twilio. They mapped out the call trees for each representatives office, so the calls can get through. The app also uses Enses API to record, store and post the audio which is why Stance is now an official company project within Ense.
Using Stance is pretty simple. The app uses your location to identify who your representatives are, including both House reps and Senators. Youre then taken to a screen where you can record your message.
The app doesnt have a political agenda. Instead, it offers basic how to instructions that remind you to say your name and location, tell the rep how you stand on the issue and what you want them to do, and it suggests that you make your recording personal.
The recordings are saved until after hours then sent to the reps voicemail.
However, there is one big caveat to using Stance: it publicizes your recordings. (The app discloses this during the sign-on process, so its not a surprise.)
Your recordings are published to Stances website and theyre tweeted atthe rep on Twitter, the company says.
The latter is meant only as another way of getting the reps attention, but tweets are not officially counted as outreach. However, many representatives have been overwhelmed with phone calls during the Trump presidency, and their voicemails remain full sometimes, intentionally. Tweeting at least gives you another means of having your voice heard.
Of course, not everyone wants to have their messages made public especially since they are leaving their full name and location. But at this time, theres no option to set a voice messageto private, which is something of an oversight.
That could dampen Stances potential usefulness for thosewho dont want their political leanings to be publicized, or who want to share their thoughts on touchy issues more privately.
For example, if you were reaching out regardingyour reps position on healthcare, you might want to makeyour messagemore meaningfulby sharing your own struggles with health issues and discuss how the current system, the Affordable Care Act, has impacted your life. And you might not want that message posted publicly on the internet.
One of Stances co-creators, and Enses Head of Product, Ashwinn Krishnaswamy,pushes back on the privacy concerns, saying that the public blowback hasnt been as great as we thought. Thats not entirely true, though many of theinitial App Store reviews are from people who dont like the apps public nature.
Krishnaswamy says that the team is still gathering feedback about the private versus public nature of Stances, however.
Stance is a free download for iOS or Android.
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This years Tribeca Film Festival will include a video game festival, too
New York Citys Tribeca Film Festival is getting a sister event this year, it will include the kickoff of the very first Tribeca Games Festival.
The event is being launched in partnership with gaming publication Kill Screen and will take place on April 28 and 29 (during the film festival). There will be keynote interviews with Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima, BioShock director Ken Levine and Max Payne creator Sam Lake.
The games festival will also include X Post Conversations pairing up creators from inside and outside the game world, Retro Active events discussing games from 2016 and even a virtual reality-focused discussioncommemorating the 25th anniversary of The Lawnmower Man (!).
But what about actually playing games? Tribeca says there will be an interactive arcade, and the event will kick off with a crowd play of the first chapter of Marvels Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series. (Opening night will also include a concert by electronic artist Mura Masa.)
Tribeca hasnt ignored the gaming world before this. Its held a number of virtual reality and gaming-related events in the past, including the premiere of L.A. Noire in 2011. Jane Rosenthal, the festivals co-founder, told me that shes had a long interest in games (she even produced one in the 90s), and she said shes been particularly excited to see video game storytelling evolve beyond,, say, simulating sports and shooting things.
For us at Tribeca, you can have all this great technology, but if you cant tell a story with it, then what good is it?, Rosenthal said. She also noted that the festival has been expanding beyond films by including television: The screens are all blurring. At the end of the day, good storytelling is good storytelling, no matter where its coming from.
Tickets for the games festival go on sale today. Rosenthal said this could become an annual event andperhaps even spin off into a completely separate festival though that will depend on audience response.
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Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Windows has a heart of trash
I did a bad thing. I opened a bad file and it borked my PC. So now, in concordance with the grand tradition of frustrated tech bloggers calling on enormous companies to conform to their wishes, here is my rant on how terrible computers are Windows ones, this time anyway and how they ought to be.
Now, Im no PC spring chicken. I build my desktops, I seat the CPU, I fiddle with the registry and fiddle with the BIOS (even though it isnt really a BIOS any more). Most importantly, I use Winamp. Ive cleared out more than a few malware infections, worms, trojans and the like on my own computer and others its just part of the whole cool lifestyle I lead.
This time was different. For one thing, it was the first time Id dealt with this stuff on Windows 10. Normally Im pretty careful, but I was just lazy this time. And the malware itself WinVMX as far as I can place it was perhaps more sophisticated, as well. (I dont recommend you try your luck.)
But as I was methodically eliminating the various sub-services and adware the original attack had installed, I found myself grappling with a second adversary: the immense ball of trash that exists at the heart of every Windows install.
Party like its 98SE
I dont mean to slander Microsofts engineers here. Windows is perhaps the most complex piece of software ever built. Its just that its like a rubber-band ball of versions, updates, patches, aborted toolsets and standards, and so on. Theyve never stopped adding to it, and while some of the examples of consistency and reliability are beyond compare running the same version of DOOM on 25 years of OSes is great, and hints at why Windows is so hard to leave behind for so many its really gotten to the point where the cart is going before the horse. And also the cart is full of trash.
In going through the various systems and recovery methods I found so many things broken or misleading, so many critical system items compromised, hidden, or neglected, so many dead ends built in, so many workarounds from the 90s that still worked and present-day tools that failed utterly, so many contradictions and redundancies that I finally have flipped over to the side that believes Microsoft needs to cut this trash cart loose.
Im not suggesting they abandon Windows or anything absurd like that. But for the love of God, I shouldnt have to be using DOS commands I learned on my friends 386 to get the computer to boot normally. I shouldnt be told that Windows can reinstall itself, then watch as it fails to even launch the tool that does so (it had been deleted [!]). I should be told when it tries again and formats the wrong drive without prompting. (Yes, I do back up my files, thanks for the suggestions.)
Why do I have to search through legacy control panels to find disk management? Why are there two sets of control panels in the first place? Why is the first thing Im told when reinstalling Windows, that if I am reinstalling it, to say I dont have a product key? Why does the installation process employ terminology and interfaces that are actively hidden from users in the OS itself?
Lipstick on a pig (thats eating trash)
In a lot of ways, Windows 10 is great. I plan to continue using it. It was rightly lauded for striking a happy medium between the exposed nuts and bolts of XP or 7 with the modern conveniences and interface of 8. (I still think they should have called 10 Windows One, la Xbox and OneDrive). I think keeping this compromise alive is important, especially as their rival Apple continues their practice of circling every square and removing every vestige of meaningful user choice.
But the company isnt half done. They made the sensible decision to work from the outside in, because you dont leave something like Windows 8 alive for long, and they made the surface layer of the OS more than palatable. But beneath that surface is decades of cruft, features and code that, while once necessary or even innovative, have been compacted with time and great pressure to create yes, a hot ball of molten trash.
Of course, Microsoft is stuck between a rock (a small one, me) and a hard place (millions of customers who rely on legacy systems in one form or another). So much depends on little nuggets buried deep in the garbage fire that they cant throw it all out at once. But who are they going to detail to audit a hundred million lines of code to find them and save them? Then, on the other side, how long can they keep shipping a product thats deeply compromised by carrying this burden, which wrecks user experience and increases the hackable surface area by orders of magnitude?
I realize Im not the first one to say this, and Im pretty sure I wont be the last, but its worth saying nevertheless (plus, Im angry because my desktop is still dead). Many people smarter and better informed than me work at Microsoft, and they have certainly been contemplating this problem for longer than I have. I hope that part of Microsofts new direction is freeing Windows from the fetters of its previous iterations, but with the knowledge that hidden among the links of those chains are jewels worth salvaging.
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Yep, more later-stage companies are taking on venture debt
Venture debt has been much in the news lately. Earlier this month, for example, we learned that ModCloth, an online company that sells vintage womens apparel, is being acquired by Jet.com for less than investors poured into the company largely because ModCloth was tripped up by unsecured bank debt.More recently,we learned that after failing to land an investor or buyer, themusic streaming service SoundCloud decided to raise a $70 million debt round.
Are desperate times beginning to call for desperate measures? That might be an overstatement. At the same time, theventure debt firm Western Technology Investmenthas seen plenty of cycles and amassed plenty of dataover its 37 years in the business, and CEO Maurice Werdegarsays the firm just finished its busiest quarter ever.
We talked with him late last week in a chat thats been edited for length.
TC: It seems like venture debt is popping up in more deals. True or not true?
MW: Thelong trend is definitely that venture debt continues to play a moderately increasing role. The role its intendedto play is to complement a companysequity strategy to help extend [funding] from one round to the next, adding time and giving companies and their teamsthe optionality of having more data and reaching certain inflection points beforeheading into that next round.
TC: And youve traditionally focused on early-stage companies as a result. You provided debt to Jet.com as part of itsmassive Series A round, for example. But it seems like later-stage companies are using more debt, too.
MW: Weve been very busy in late-stage rounds, too. I think people raise a little too little capital; they underestimatehow long it will take to raise their next round, so debt has become an interesting supplement to that.
TC: Are you seeing an uptick in the number of older companies knocking on your door?
MW: We cant get all the deals coming to us [there are so many]. Of course, theres always the adverse selection question that goes hand-in-hand with that demand: Are you getting the call becausethings arent going well or are these companies that are trying to be more thoughtful and strategic and proactive about their fundraising?
TC: Can you name names or sectors?
MW: Its just a giant pool of companies. If you think of the 30 most important companies over the last 15 years, we visited with more than 20 percent of them. Its a core part of the way that companies think about optionality.
TC: What do you make of this SoundCloud deal?
MW: The lenders in that [deal] arecounting on SoundClouds enterprise value being enough to cover its debt [as collateral].That wouldnt be a bet that Id necessarily be as comfortable with. Things can go wrong and collateral can be worth less than you think. When things fail, they fail badly. Companiesjust go out of business.They can definitely go to zero in this industry. Ive never met withSoundCloud and Im not saying anything about thecompany specifically, butthe idea of being the last-resort stop is dangerous.
TC:Yourindustry is known for taking money back when it gets nervous. Do you think founders fully understand how covenants work?
MW: We dont take covenants, actually. Other approaches [from other debt lenders] are to take more risk but to be able to get their cash back if they are nervous. So they monitor companies performance and if theyre nervous, they can either force VCs to put in more money or get their money back. Its a little likethe insurance policy that doesnt work when youre in anaccident.
[Silicon Valley Bank]s debt is very inexpensive, for example, but it comes with covenants. Were on the more expensive side, but its more like equity.Were pretty open about the fact that wevelost money more than 100 times, and by the way, we always see the trouble coming.
TC: Is more trouble coming now, broadly speaking?
MW: Everyone needs to grow into their valuations, and thats not easy to do if you raised in 2015, which was the high-water mark in a lot of rounds. So Id say instead that a lot of insiders are looking at debt as complementary, to make each roundlast longer. You can only do so many inside rounds before insiders get tired.
TC: So it does sound like youre seeing more older startups.
MW: Were having the most active quarter in our 37 year history period.Is there an uptick in older companies? Yes, but they feel like healthy companies that are nearing profitability [and theyre coming to us for a variety of reasons]. Their investors might be tired. They might not like the valuation theyd get if they were to head out right now. They might want to wait on a strategic [investor or acquirer] to get a better price. They might be wanting to make an acquisition and to use venture debt for that.
They might also be looking to refinance other venture debt. In some cases, lenders wont renegotiate, so companies are looking for other ways to [stretch out their funding]. Its not unlike refinancing your home to get a lower payment.
TC: How can founders be sure theyre striking the best deal when it comes to venture debt?
MW: Different lenders take different approaches, some with hidden covenants and clauses, but Id say its their law firms job to advise them. Theyve seen every lender 50 times so should be able to advise on what these different deals mean.
TC: How big is this market right now?
MW: There are around18 venture debt players; its avery robust market. We represent about 10 percent of the venture market, if you were to market size it. So if you read that startups raised $20 billion last year, then that probably includes about $2 billion of venture debt.
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Tuesday, March 28, 2017
Watch Bill O’Reilly Snicker While ‘Apologizing’ For Mocking Maxine Waters
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Toyota and NTT to collaborate on connected car tech, including AI
Toyota and NTT, one of Japans largest carriers, are teaming up to work on connected vehicle technology, with an agreement to work together on research and development in this emerging area. The team-up makes a lot of sense, since both carriers and automakers are looking to maximize the amount of data they can get from their customers as vehicles become increasingly connected.
The partnership will include NTT and Toyota sharing tech and expertise, and creating big data research projects using vehicle info collected from across Toyotas fleet of connected cars. The collaboration will also see both work together on studies regarding next-generation connectivity and computing technologies, including 5G mobile networks and edge computing, where work including artificial intelligence is done in a distributed fashion, using processors embedded in vehicles, rather than at a centralized server farm.
NTT and Toyota will also work on studying the best possible deployment of data centers and connectivity infrastructure for blanket coverage of vehicles in operation and transmitting data, and theyll also work together on building artificial intelligence agents for interacting with and serving drivers.
Toyota showed off what this might eventually look like with its Concept-i vehicle at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, which included a virtual assistant called Yui which was billed as an AI companion that can help with vehicle autonomy, trip plannings schedule management and more.
Well see the first results of this partnership put to work in a field trial designed to assess the feasibilityand usability of representative services related to connected vehicle tech, NTT said in a press release.
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With a service that donates to the ACLU when Trump tweets, Make Tweets Great Again is a prime example of apps as activism
Earlier this month, Sarah Silverman tweeted about a new website called Make Tweets Great Again that had sprung up to give money to the ACLU every time President Donald Trump dropped a tweet bomb from his personal account.
HA! This is great- every time the Orange one tweets a donation goes to the @ACLUhttps://t.co/kP2UMP4Imv
Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman) March 7, 2017
The project is a prime example of a newfound apptivism from coders and developers across the Web, and the til-now-anonymous developers of the site hope that other programmers will get in on the act.
The site is the work of HappyFunCorpdeveloper Aaron Brocken, a product architect at the Brooklyn-basedapp development shop.
While other sites and services are providingtools to communicate with voters and Congressional representatives, or engage directly with the White House, Brocken felt that he had another, equally powerful tool at his disposal his coding skills.
In the wake of the election, Brocken, who grew up gay in the Midwest, felt exposed to a level of antagonism he hadnt experienced since he made his way to New York.
Living in New York City and working in tech, you feel pretty insulated [from hatred]. This is the first time in my life that I didnt feel insulated.
That exposure left Brocken somewhat powerless, he said, so he turned to what he knew best. It was as much an action item for me as calling a senator, he said. All I can do is code and build shit.
And thats how Make Tweets Great Again was born.
Brocken went to company co-founder Ben Schippers and asked if Schippers would fund the project. Initially reluctant to get involved in politics, Schippers said he quickly changed his mind after the president signed the executive order for what has become known as the first Muslim Ban.
Its hard to be a business owner and get involved in politics, said Schippers. For a while, Schippers said he was concerned about the way potential and current customers may react to the role the company was playing.
A lot of people in New York and San Francisco they arent really speaking out, said Schippers. Aaron pitched the idea to me and I thought this was a positive way to engage.
The Make Tweets Great Again premise is simple. Users pledge to donate a certain amount of money every time Donald Trump tweets from his personal account. Its a passive way to be involved, but its one that can engage people across the political spectrum by supporting one of the most active civil rights organizations in the country.
Already theyve been overwhelmed by the feedback on Twitter, and Brocken hopes it inspires other developers to work on similar projects.
Theres definitely ways to upset the status quo and have a bunch of projects jumping up, he said.
At the same time, both Schippers and Brocken wanted this to be a project that everyone could get behind.
Aaron and I spent a lot of time to make sure that this is not a negative thing, said the HappyFunCorp co-founder.
If its successful, the company said it would look to expand the project so that would-be donors could pick their organization and their Twitter target. The idea is to make it easier for people to engage with organizations they care about in a way that could, ostensibly, influence behavior.
And theyre opening up the platform to other developers, as well.
Even if people dont donate, as long as it inspires someone to take some action, its worth it, said Brocken.
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Monday, March 27, 2017
A win for Apple in Beijing as court overturns iPhone patent ruling
Apple has bigger fish frying in the world of intellectual property. But it must be a relief that an IP court in Beijing has handed the smartphone pioneers a win. On Friday, the courts overturned a May 2016 ruling that said Apple had violated design patents of a small, and now defunct, Chinese company called Shenzhen Baili.
The disputes were over the exterior design of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models, which Shenzhen Baili claimed were a copy of their 100C smartphones, curved corners and all. The company barely existed at the time it filed the suit. And its100C smartphones were impossible to find.
Initially,Apple was handed an injunction to stop selling its iPhone 6 linein Beijing, but it quickly filed an administrative appeal and was permitted to sell the phones there again until further review by the court. Damage was likely minimal. Apple wasswitching upto iPhone 7 when this IP drama first arose, as TechCrunchs Sarah Perez noted at the time.
Since the Friday decision, iin press interviews, Shenzhen Bailis legal team hassaid it plans toappeal. Apple representatives were not immediately available for comment.
Apple has lost market share in China in recent years to up and coming device makers from Xiaomi to BBK Electronics brands Oppo and Vivo more recently. However, it has remained the most profitable player in the market. Specifically, as the Motley Fool reports, In 2016, Apple captured an incredible 79% of global smartphone industry profits with just 14.5% market share.
The latest IP decision indicates that China courts will not always rule in favor of home town businesses, at least. Another ruling had raised concerns over protectionist precedents.
Last spring, a court allowed leather goods makers Xintong Tianditocontinue making bagsusing theiphone and IPHONE trademarks in China. Xintong Tiandihad registered to usethe brand namein 2007, while Apples smartphones did not go on sale in China until 2009. Apple hadnt registered the brand specifically to cover leather goods.
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Nomos Glashttes Metro Neomatik is modern, slim and sophisticated watch
The smartwatch era has done nothing so much as renew my interest in real watches, which have their own type of special intelligence, albeit laid out in intricate arrays of gears and springs rather than written in silicon. Few watchmakers express this intelligence site so wonderfully as Nomos Glashtte, the German manufactory that produces exquisite timepieces with house made movements in distinct, signature cases.
Nomos Metro neomatik is especially representative of the brand, with a relatively new movement for the company, which manages to offer a self-finding rotor in an incredibly thin mechanical package, meaning you never have to charge or worry about replacing batteries, but still get a very low profile on the wrist. Its also very small in diameter relative to most contemporary watches, with a 35mm diameter that also adds to its understated appeal.
The white silver-plated face features small, 60 second markers at the hours, and a subset dial with inlaid textured concentric circles shows the seconds. The minute markers are tiny blue-hued dots and the brand mark is set just above the hour and minute hands. Overall, the dial feels modern thanks to its choice of solid, minimal sans-serif font and a general preference for white space over decoration.
While the Metro neomatik features a small overall diameter as mentioned, I found that it actually wears larger than the numbers would lead you to believe. The very thin bezel and the classic, retro-style lugs lend to this effect, as does the relatively thin 17mm Horween leather band. The diminutive, knurled crown on the right side of the face also gives prominence to the face, and the closeness of the hour markers to the outer edge of the face also help give it a larger look than you might expect.
The silvered dial has a slightly off-white look in most lighting, with delicate and sophisticated flecking you can see as you turn it under direct light. Its a very appealing finish that really sets off the fine detailing in the hour and minute markers, and the slight, natural sunburst effect on the second sundial made possible by its textured circles. Its definitely a watch that you have to get close to to appreciate in full, but even at a distance these add up to a very fine looking watch indeed
On the Metro neomatiks reverse, theres a sapphire crystal display back, which reveals the DUW 3001 in-house caliber created by Nomos. The movement itself is only 3.2 mm tall, which is why the Metro can achieve an 8.06mm overall thickness, including case and front and back sapphire glass. Detailing on the movement, including the finish on the rotor and the rest of the visible surfaces, as well as the tempered blue screws, make thework that goes into the hand-built custom motor easy to appreciate.
Nomos Glashtte is a watch maker for a very specific type of appreciator, and the Metro neomatik might be one of its most representative offerings in terms of speaking to that audience. Its a significant purchase at $3,840 USD (which includes shipping, and taxes), but its a relative bargain among high-end manufactory watches, and its unique in terms of its design appeal and its underlying technical achievement.
The Metro neomatik is a great example of why theres still no substitute for a finely made watch in a world when many fashion brands are chasing the carrot of wearables. Technology has a place on the wrist, sure but its hard to make a case for busy, buzzing software on power-hungry, tiny displays when tech like this is the alternative.
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