Leading up to the iPhone 11 introduction at last week's media event, there was a sense that this year's iPhone lineup would be something of a stop-gap measure before the release of the iPhone 5G in 2020. To our pleasant surprise, however, the iPhone 11 is arguably one of the most exciting upgrades we've seen in years, thanks in large part to advanced camera technologies and impressive features like Night mode.
What's more, Apple made the entry-level iPhone 11 a tad more affordable with a sticker price of $699, or $399 with an eligible trade-in. Taken together, demand for Apple's iPhone 11 models appears to be much stronger than many initially anticipated.
Over the past few years, one of the more intriguing rumors involving a new Apple product has centered on a pair of Augmented Reality glasses the company was supposedly working on. In addition to the usual speculation from the rumor mill, there was also concrete evidence that Apple was making a concerted effort to hire a large number of engineers with vast experience in various technologies related to augmented reality.
Amid rumors that a pair of AR glasses or headset was in the works, developers a few weeks back found a STARTester app in one of the latter iOS betas that includes a head-mounted mode designed to replicate the user experience of some sort of augmented reality hardware. Notably, the mode itself has two options, one called "worn" and the other called "held."
If you have an Apple Watch, you obviously love it and you have to have it with you at all times. You also know how annoying it is to have yet another proprietary charger to take with you when you travel. Want to kill two birds with one stone instead? Then you’ve got to check out the Floveme 2 in 1 Wireless Charger for iPhone and Apple Watch while it’s on sale at a deep discount on Amazon.
Charges iPhone & iWatch Simultaneously: Wireless charging station combines phone charging pad and watch charging pad in one unit. It can charge iPhone and iWatch simultaneously without cable plugging in. Note: Watch charging pad only works for Apple watch series 1/2/3/4 (QC 2.0/3.0 Adapter is needed, Not compatible with Apple adapter).
50% Faster wireless Charging: Equiped with Qi fast wireless charger that can charge all Qi enabled phones. 10W charges for Samsung Galaxy S9/9+, S8/8+, S7/7 edge, S6/6 edge, Note8 and more , while 7.5W charges for iPhone Xs Max/XR/XS/X/8 Plus/8. Other Qi enabled phones will be charged in 5W. 2.5W charges for iWatch. Note: We recommend you use QC 2.0/3.0(5V 2A/9V 1.67A) adapter for charging, otherwise it may cause intermittent charging.
Travel Size On the Go: Wireless charging pad has stylish and simply design. The charging pad for iWatch is stretchable, you can easily pull it out or push it back. It does not need to carry multiple cables indoors or outdoors and it is lightweight and portable. Perfect phone charger and watch charger for everyday use and travel.
Case Friendly Wireless Charging: Designed with 2 coils that made of high-purity copper, wireless charger can identify your phone sensitively and support phone case within 8MM(0.3INCH) while less than 6MM(0.23INCH) is the best wireless charging distance (Please note that metal and magnetic attachments or credit cards may damage your phone).
Superior Safe & 12 Months Warranty: With temperature control, over-voltage protection, over-current protection, short circuit protection and other multiple safety protections, our wireless charging pad ensures the safety of your device during the entire charging.
Samsung fixed the poorly designed Galaxy Fold and launched it some five months after its initial launch date, so we can all forget about the original device that was supposed to highlight the company’s ingenuity.
Still, it’s a win for Samsung in the sense that history books will remember that 2019 was the year of the foldable, and Samsung was at the forefront of the foldable revolution. But if you’ve bought a Fold or plan to buy one, Samsung would like to remind you that the phone will break if you aren't careful with it.
People with large families have no choice but to buy large kitchen appliances, and that can be a pricey proposal when it comes to multi-use cookers. But a lot of the times people spend $150 on an extra large multi-cooker and then only use it as a slow cooker. Here’s a better idea: pick up a Crock-pot SCV800-S Stainless Steel 8-Quart Manual Slow Cooker while it’s discounted on Amazon. It’s one of the best models we’ve ever tried and it’s under $40 right now!
It has been building for months after a California man scheduled an event as a joke on Facebook, but the "Storm Area 51" mission began with a whimper today, as only a few dozen people bothered to march out into the Nevada desert to hang out at the front gate of the secure military compound.
The original event listing on Facebook titled "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us" amassed over two million "attendees," but the actual turnout thus far is much closer to zero. As Reuters reports, the event has featured very little "storming" and was more just a gathering of particularly dedicated memers and alien enthusiasts.
You know what’s better than a Sonos speaker? Two Sonos speakers. And you know what’s better than two Sonos speakers? Two Sonos speakers that are on sale at a discount! Head over to Amazon right now and you’ll find a Two Room Set with Sonos Play:1 + $30 Amazon Gift Card available for just $298. That’s two wireless speakers with incredible sound plus a $30 gift card for the price of one Apple HomePod!
Works with Alexa for voice control (Alexa device sold separately)
Fill two separate rooms with different music, or link them together to hear the same song in both. Great surround speakers for your Sonos home theater, too
Versatile, compact fit. Place them wherever you want and enjoy rich, room filling sound
Streams all your favorite music services like Amazon Music Unlimited, Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music and more
Easy 10 minute wi fi set up. No Bluetooth pairing problems or interruptions
Connects wirelessly to Sonos speakers in other rooms so you can expand your Home Sound System when you’re ready
Battery life isn't necessarily the sexiest thing to think about when considering all the new capabilities and technologies associated with Apple's new iPhone lineup that started shipping and showing up in stores on Friday. However, the company has revealed in new documentation that expounds on the battery and performance of the new iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max that there are some under-the-hood upgrades included which users may come to seriously appreciate over time. Even if they're not readily apparent at first.
Smartwatches outsold traditional watches in the fourth quarter of 2018. The category saw a 51 percent increase in dollar sales for last year, along with a 61 percent increase in unit sales, according to recent data from NPD Group. One in four Americans aged 18 to 34 now own a
smartwatch, and that is likely to increase. Traditional watches did regain the majority of the market in Q1 2019, suggesting that not all consumers are ready to have a mini-computer on their wrists just yet.
Manjaro Linux 18.1, released on Sept. 12, is one of the most complete Linux OSes you will find. It is a powerhouse distro that offers a better Arch Linux computing platform, and it is the de facto standard for comparing Arch family options. After six months of development, the latest series is a fast, user-friendly, desktop-oriented operating system based on Arch Linux -- but its independent nature makes this distro a hallmark of out-of-the-box computing. Arch Linux itself is renowned for being exceptionally fast, powerful and lightweight.
Facebook has announced three additions to the Portal family: a new Portal, Portal Mini and Portal TV. The devices let users make calls using Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. The Portal has a new design that resembles a picture frame. The Portal Mini is similar but smaller. The Portal TV looks like a set-top box and comes with its own controller. The Portal TV blends the functionality of a set-top box with social media and video conferencing, observed Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.
Gone are the days when businesses just did business. Now, it's almost expected that business values and ethics will play a significant and enduring role in a company's identity. From the products they sell to the way they treat their employees, businesses are finding that they no longer can separate what they do from what they believe -- and customers want to know what the businesses they deal with stand for. Corporate social responsibility -- the merging of ethics with business -- is increasingly becoming a best practice.
Amazon has announced Amazon Music HD, which offers 50 million CD-quality songs -- 16 bits at 44.1 kHz. Customers also can stream millions more songs in Ultra HD -- better than CD quality -- with a bit depth of 24 bits and a sample rate up to 192 kHz. Amazon Music HD will play the highest quality audio customers' devices and network conditions will support. It is compatible with a variety of devices, including desktop computers, iOS and Android mobile devices, select Echo devices, Amazon Fire TV and Amazon Fire tablets.
Q1 in any business is the toughest for generating revenue and Oracle is no exception. In its Q1 earnings call it admitted missing by about $70 million on a $9.2 billion nut: small but consequential. No need to run for the smelling salts though, Oracle has been here before and it's got this. It should be no surprise, though, because in Q4 any self-respecting salesperson or manager works tirelessly to drain the pipeline and maximize earnings, in order to start Q1 with a bare cupboard. For a company like Oracle, that's a relative concept.
You've just come home from the gym and discovered that your teenager cleaned out your stash of energy bars. Drat. You decide to order a new supply of bars online. You usually buy Clif Bars, so you type the brand name into Amazon search -- but just as you're about to click the "Buy Now" button, you notice an ad for Quest Nutrition bars at the top of the search page. The bars look appetizing, they get multiple-star customer reviews and -- best of all -- you can get them at a bargain price. One click later, Quest has acquired your business.
In case wringing your hands over the tax man weren’t enough, criminals are out there trying to swipe your hard-earned cash and personal information from right under your nose.
Jeb Bush's love of Apple products has been widely documented, and the Republican presidential candidate continues to wear his Apple Watch on the campaign trail. Yesterday, in a meeting with The Des Moines Register editorial board documented by USA Today, Bush stumbled upon a feature he didn’t realize his smartwatch was capable of: taking phone calls. Somehow Bush managed to take a call without picking up his iPhone, and the sound of a person’s voice saying hello breaks through the meeting noise, to which Bush responds, “My watch can’t be talking.”
Pope Francis gets the social media treatment upon arriving in the U.S. Tuesday. As Pope Francis’s flight touched down in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, Twitter unveiled a new batch of emojis created for the highly anticipated papal visit. Until his departure from the United States on Sunday, Twitter users chronicling the Catholic leader’s East Coast journey will be able to include a cartoon image of the Pope’s face in front of the American flag on all Pope-related tweets by using the hashtag #PopeinUS.
Microsoft to provide free Windows 7 updates for voting systems in 2020 The January 2020 end-of-support date for Windows 7 was expected to have a major impact on elections in the U.S. and other countries around the world. Today's announcement means those voting systems will receive free updates throug
Just when you think researchers have found the wackiest possible use for a neural net yet, another team finds an even more novel use for artificial intelligence. Take Facebook's new Fashion++ AI. It's a program that will help you become a fashionista...
As usual, now that a new iPhone has hit the market, iFixit is pulling it apart an iPhone 11 Pro Max to show you what the insides look like. It's a common annual ritual, and in short order we should have confirmation of the usual things like RAM chips...
In TiVo's heyday the company was synonymous with recording TV shows via your remote control, so you didn't have to rush home to catch "your show" or attempt to record it on the VCR. But that was two decades ago, and things have changed. Now, the comp...
SNK has detailed the full 20-game lineup for its Neo Geo Arcade Stick Pro, and it's mixed news for fans of the classic platform. The retro console and controller hybrid will focus on the best-known brawlers with six The King of Fighters games ('95 t...
Yesterday YouTube announced plans to change its policy around channel verification status. In a move to follow other social networks, the company said changes tying approval to authenticity and prominence would mean some might lose their tag, and wou...
Earlier this year, snippets of code discovered within Chrome by 9 to 5 Google suggested Google was working on a touchless version of its web browser that would work on feature phones. The company was reportedly developing a feature phone in collabora...
It might soon be that much harder to avoid ads by using a DVR. TiVo appears to be testing 15-second pre-roll ads that play before recorded shows, making it difficult to avoid at least some marketing -- you can fast-forward through the promos, but it'...
YouTube came under fire Thursday after changes to its verification program meant several prominent YouTubers will the coveted status. CEO Susan Wojcicki has since apologized for the "frustration and hurt that we caused with our new approach to verifi...
iPhone 11 goes Pro with photography - CNET One photographer, two days and Apple's three-camera iPhone in San Francisco. The bottom line: If you love taking photos, you'll treasure the iPhone 11 Pro.
All the best signs we saw at the Climate Strike in NYC - CNET Across the globe today students led marches and rallies for action on the Climate Change crisis, agitating for radical change towards sustainability throughout society, from industry to government to farming practices to the milit
Two Arrested In $10 Million Tech Support Scam That Preyed On the Elderly An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Two individuals were arrested this week in connection with a fraud scheme that manipulated thousands of victims into paying for invented tech services that they didn't need. The De
Systemd-homed: Systemd Now Working To Improve Home Directory Handling Freshly Exhumed shares a report from Phoronix, detailing a new set of systemd capabilities shown off by lead developer Lennart Poettering at the annual All Systems Go conference: Improving the Linux handling of user home directori
TiVo Tests Running Pre-Roll Ads Before DVR Recordings As noted by Zatz Not Funny, TiVo is testing pre-roll video ads that start playing when customers view one of their recordings. The Verge reports: The ad spots are noticeably low-res and worse quality than the DVR'd content that st
Latest Lakka Release On Raspberry Pi 4 Showcases Great Retro Gaming MojoKid writes: Lakka with RetroArch is one of the most comprehensive open-source retro-gaming console front ends available, with support for a wide array of single-board computers and multiple operating systems. Although the more
iOS 13 Ships With Known Lockscreen Bypass Flaw That Exposes Contacts An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Apple released iOS 13 with a bunch of new features. But it also released the new OS with something else: a bug disclosed seven days ago that exposes contact details without re
Google Reportedly Attains 'Quantum Supremacy' New submitter Bioblaze shares a report from CNET: Google has reportedly built a quantum computer more powerful than the world's top supercomputers. A Google research paper was temporarily posted online this week, the Financial Tim
VPN Apps With 500M+ Installs Caught Serving Disruptive Ads To Android Users New submitter screwdriver1 shares a report from The Next Web: In a yet another instance of Android adware, New Zealand-based independent security researcher Andy Michael found four apps with cumulative downloads of over 500 millio
Google Is Investing $3.3 Billion To Build Clean Data Centers In Europe An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google announced today that it was investing approximately $3.3 billion to expand its data center presence in Europe. What's more, the company pledged the data centers would be
In tech 'awakening,' U.S. workers at Google, Amazon join climate protests Hundreds of workers from Google, Amazon and other technology companies on Friday joined climate-change marches in San Francisco and Seattle, saying their employers had been too slow to tackle global warming and needed to take more
Delaware judge says Tesla board must face trial over Musk's mega-pay package A Delaware judge ruled on Friday that Tesla Inc's board of directors must defend at a trial Chief Executive Elon Musk's multibillion dollar pay package, which a shareholder lawsuit said unjustly enriched the head of the electric
Few U.S. lawmakers hit 'like' button after Facebook CEO visits Capitol Hill Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrapped up three days of discussions with Washington movers and shakers on Friday, with few if any indications he had won new "friends" to help the top social media company deal with multiple probes b
Fed's Rosengren flags risks to economy in WeWork-style model The rise in co-working spaces, like those offered by WeWork, may be a source of financial instability that could make the next U.S. recession worse by sparking a run on commercial real estate, Boston Federal Reserve Bank President
Exclusive: Fitbit considers whether it should explore a sale - sources Wearable device maker Fitbit Inc has been in talks with an investment bank about the possibility of exploring a sale amid challenges in successfully pivoting from fitness trackers to smartwatches, people familiar with the matter
No crowds as Apple's iPhone 11 hits stores in China Apple's latest iPhone 11 range hit stores in China on Friday, with short queues of die-hard fans contrasting with the hundreds who camped out ahead of some previous launches.
Fitbit considers whether it should explore a sale: sources Wearable device maker Fitbit Inc has been in talks with an investment bank about the possibility of exploring a sale amid challenges in successfully pivoting from fitness trackers to smart watches, people familiar with the matter
Back in January, Blackstone — the investment firm whose assets under management surpassed a jaw-dropping half a trillion dollars earlier this year — quietly began piecing together a new, growth equity platform called Blackstone Growth, or BXG. Step one was hiring away Jon Korngold from General Atlantic, where he’d spent the previous 18 years, including as a managing director and a member of its management committee.
Step two has been for Korngold, who is responsible for running the new program, to build a team, which he has been doing throughout the year, bringing in “people who speak the language of Blackstone,” he says, including from TCV, Andreessen Horowitz, Carlyle, Vista Private Equity, NEA, and SoftBank .
Apparently, the group is now ready for business. It has already closed on two deals from existing pools of capital with Blackstone, including acquiring outright the mobile ad company Vungle. According to Korngold, two more term sheets “are being signed imminently.”
We talked with him last week for more information about what the group is shopping for, what size checks it is willing to write, and which firms it views as its biggest rivals for deals (and more). Our chat has been edited for length and clarity.
TC: You’ve been hiring throughout the year people who have large-scale growth equity backgrounds. Are many of them women?
JK: Blackstone is one of the most diverse organizations [in terms of] gender or ethnicity. In general, it’s a huge priority for the firm and within our group of 20 people, 40 percent are female, a number we hope to get to 50 percent. Hiring is still in process, but it’s a really healthy culture.
TC: How many people does Blackstone employ altogether?
JK: There are 2,600 altogether across 24 offices.
TC: Is your group investing a discreet pool of capital?
JK: At some point, we’ll have a dedicated pool of capital, but as a firm, we’ve been investing in growth equity for some time [so have relied on other funds within Blackstone to date].
TC: There’s no shortage of growth equity in the world right now. What is Blackstone building that’s so different?
JK: The sheer scale of the operation is different. We have nearly 100 operating professionals — employees of Blackstone — who were hired because they are functional experts — from pricing experts to process engineering experts to human capital and procurement and digital marketing experts — and who can advise our companies.
Also, Blackstone can holistically assist a company through [our] growth equity and real estate and procurement and debt [groups] and other related infrastructure support, enabling companies to fight way above their weight class. We have 600,000 people across our portfolio, and that provides an interesting opportunity for our companies to cross pollinate [and to cross-sell to] one another.
Unlike most growth equity firms, we also have a significant number of data scientists who do three things: identify proprietary signals across asset classes to help instruct where we should be hunting; help our companies monetize their data; and help us in our diligence. They’ll access raw data feeds and almost see the matrix, if you will.
TC: How many data scientists are we talking about?
JK: A couple dozen [across Blackstone].
TC: Blackstone must be competing against fast-growing tech companies for data scientists. How do you convince them that work for an investing giant is the better gig?
JK: If you’re an intellectually curious individual, there are so many signals [coming through Blackstone] that it’s almost a proxy for the world. It’s like manna from heaven. It’s not like they’re doing a single-threaded approach. The nature of the challenges across our companies is so vast and so varying that whether you’re looking at a fast-growing retailer or a cell phone tower in another country, the nature of the tasks is always changing.
TC: SoftBank seems to have shaken things up a bit when it came on to the scene, given the size checks it is writing. Your boss, Steven Schwarzman, who recently talked with us about this bigger new push into growth equity, made sure to note that there are few organizations that can write $500 million checks.
JK: [Laughs.] Everyone in Silicon Valley wants to talk about SoftBank. We celebrate a lot of what SoftBank has done. They’ve validated the thesis that there’s an opportunity for growth equity on a scale that hasn’t traditionally been available.
It’s similar to the way we’re set up. SoftBank was never meant to compete with the venture community; they’re competing with the capital markets, and as private companies look to stay private longer market, SoftBank wants to support their development.
TC: And . . .
JK: I think the reality is that a lot of businesses have unproven business models and unit economics, and they’re garnering massive amounts of capital from different constituents. It’s less about who is staying private longer but are they sustainable over the long run, whether public or private. I think a lot of companies right now now that have unproven business models have been flooded by cash at too small a scale where they aren’t ready to handle it, and it masks weaknesses.
TC: Where is that most acute, in your view?
JK: I see that at the smaller growth equity phase — the $25 million to $150 million [per firm per check] range — where most growth equity resides because you have every VC firm there now. Many of the growth funds that have moved downstream. You also have crossover funds like DST and Coatue and Tiger, along with corporate venture capital. That huge flood of capital has created these massive valuations and it has compressed the due diligence involved.
If you look at Lyft and Uber — and Snap was in this category — the market is starting to speak. Public market shareholders are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt for a while but not indefinitely. You can’t feed the machine for growth’s sake.
TC: So what type of deals are you searching out?
JK: We won’t step into a situation where unit economics aren’t proven from day one. You won’t see us in a company that’s selling $1 for 80 cents and hoping someday that works. We’re Inherently more binary in profile. We’re capital-preservation minded while looking for asymmetric upside, and that’s where we have a disproportionate advantage. You’ll see us do deals where we can put our thumb on the scale, because of our real estate holdings or buyout assets or because [search across our] portfolio for help with procurement costs or insurance or R&D or a company’s go-to-market strategy.
TC: What have you done that proves all these bells and whistles make a difference?
JK: We have a couple of signed deals, including [the mobile ad company] Vungle [for a reported $750 million-ish], though we’re more often looking for growth-equity minority ownership positions. [Think] companies that are looking for a partner and not an owner. We’ll do growth buyouts but the vast majority will be significant minority positions.
We have a couple of other deals that will be signed imminently that we can’t discuss just yet.
TC: Are you hoping to take these companies public? Flip them to another private equity firm? Relatedly, do you have any thoughts about the public market and whether more companies should be going out?
JK: We’ll only look to an IPO if there’s a reason for it. Oftentimes, companies shouldn’t be public; sometimes, they should be, including if they need an acquisition currency or [to better establish their] branding. But the idea of, let’s rush to the door [is not our style].
TC: Who are your most direct competitors? Not Vista Private Equity, since it seems to prefer buying companies whole.
JK: Vista is going exclusively for control buyouts, massive turnarounds. It descends upon a company and says, ‘This is the playbook you will follow.’ It also uses a lot of leverage, where the vast majority or our [deals] are un-levered. We don’t use much debt. Vista and Silver Lake are much more competitors with each other.
TC: KKR then? Carlyle?
KR: They’re also multi-asset managers, but as it relates to growth equity, we’ve really found ourselves in slightly more rarefied air. Blackstone has demonstrated that it can use its scale to create an operational advantage, and virtually no other company — or few — can contemplate checks like we can.
TC: What do you want for these checks, other than a minority position? How involved are you and what size stake, exactly, are you aiming to buy?
JK: We want to have a relevant voice, so we want to be in the boardroom, but there is no target range. It can be 10 or 20 or 30 percent. It can be 80 percent. Ideally you want to be the main outside pool of capital along with management team.
Yesterday, software development tool maker Chef found itself in the middle of a firestorm after a Tweet called them out for doing business with DHS/ICE. Eventually it led to an influential open-source developer removing a couple of key pieces of software from the project, bringing down some parts of Chef’s commercial business.
Chef intends to fulfill its contract with ICE, in spite of calls to cancel it. In a blog post published this morning, Chef CEO Barry Crist defended the decision. “I do not believe that it is appropriate, practical, or within our mission to examine specific government projects with the purpose of selecting which U.S. agencies we should or should not do business.”
He stood by the company’s decision this afternoon in an interview with TechCrunch, while acknowledging that it was a difficult and emotional decision for everyone involved. “For some portion of the community, and some portion of our company, this is a super, super-charged lightning rod, and this has been very difficult. It’s something that we spent a lot of time on, and I want to represent that there are portions of [our company] that do not agree with this, but I as a leader of the company, along with the executive team, made a decision that we would honor the contracts and those relationships that were formed and work with them over time,” he said.
He added, “I think our challenge as leadership right now is how do we collectively navigate through times like this, and through emotionally-charged issues like the ICE contract.”
The deal with ICE, which is a $95,000-a-year contract for software development tools, dates back to the Obama administration when the then DHS CIO wanted to move the department toward more modern agile/DevOps development workflows, according Christ.
He said for people who might think it’s a purely economic decision, the money represents a fraction of the company’s more than $50 million annual revenue (according to Crunchbase data), but he says it’s about a long-term business arrangement with the government that transcends individual administration policies. “It’s not about the $100,000, it’s about decisions we’ve made to engage the government. And I appreciate that not everyone in our world feels the same way or would make that same decision, but that’s the decision that we made as a leadership team,” Crist said.
Shortly after word of Chef’s ICE contract appeared on Twitter, according to a report in The Register, former Chef employee Seth Vargo removed a couple of key pieces of open-source software from the repository, telling The Register that “software engineers have to operate by some kind of moral compass.” This move brought down part of Chef’s commercial software and it took them 24 hours to get those services fully restored, according to Chef CTO Corey Scobie.
Crist says he wants to be clear that his decision does not mean he supports current ICE policies. “I certainly don’t want to be viewed as I’m taking a strong stand in support of ICE. What we’re taking a strong stand on is our consistency with working with our customers, and again, our work with DHS started in the previous administration on things that we feel very good about,” he said.
We’re going to try something new at Disrupt this year, based on the great response we’ve been getting to our startup how-to coverage. We’re going to put service provider experts on our Q&A stage, where you can talk to them directly in-person about key topics like growth, fundraising and recruiting.
To help kick off this experiment, we’ve asked growth marketing expert Asher King Abramson to lead a session where he’ll tear down your landing pages and Facebook/Instagram ads in front of a live audience. He’ll deconstruct how effective they are at (1) conveying what you do (2) and doing so enticingly — so that people click.
If you’re attending Disrupt and want to participate, you can submit your assets to ec_editors@techcrunch.com for him to consider.
If you’re not familiar, Abramson is the cofounder of Bell Curve, a growth marketing agency widely used by Y Combinator companies and others around Silicon Valley and the world, the cofounder of Demand Curve (YC s19), and a frequent industry speaker on growth (you can see some of his webinars here). We recently named Bell Curve to Verified Experts, our growing list of service providers who startups love to work with, based on founder recommendations. You may also be familiar with his cofounder, Julian Shapiro, a columnist here at TechCrunch who has covered topics for us including trends in paid channel ad prices, how well different sectors monetize and now a regular column featuring tips from across top growth marketers.
This focus on growth is part of our larger orientation towards building great companies via coverage in our new Extra Crunch subscription product.
Matchstick Ventures, a seed-stage firm that says it invests in “rapidly growing, yet underserved startup ecosystems,” announced this week that it has raised $30 million for its second fund.
That’s a lot more money than the firm’s $5 million seed round. This time, Matchstick says it will write initial checks of around $500,000, and in some cases make follow-on investments of $1 million or $2 million.
The firm’s partners, Ryan Broshar and Natty Zola, are based in Minneapolis-St Paul. and Boulder, respectively, and they said the underserved ecosystems they’re focused on include “the North, the Rockies, and companies across the Techstars ecosystem.” This is the first fund Matchstick has raised since Zola (the co-founder of Everlater, acquired by our parent company AOL) joined as a partner last year.
And even though Broshar and Zola only recently closed and announced the fund, they’ve already used it to make a number of investments, backing Onward (San Francisco), Soona (Denver), Upsie (Minneapolis), Pana (Denver) and Ordermark (Los Angeles).
The investors in the fund include Foundry Group, which discussed the relationship between the two firms in a blog post:
We’ve co-invested and served on boards with them and [Foundry Group Managing Director] Seth Levine has been an official advisor to Matchstick since inception. As we’ve gotten to know Natty and Ryan, we’ve also seen the ecosystems in which they operate — the North and the Rockies — begin to really thrive and gain momentum … We believe great companies can be built anywhere and are excited about Matchstick’s opportunity to leverage Natty and Ryan’s positions within their respective communities to partner with incredible founders and build their firm.
In a video shot in UM’s special drone testing habitat, the craft flies up, approaches its bit of roof, and gingerly applies the nail gun before backing off and doing it a couple more times.
It’s very much just a tech demonstration right now, with lots of room to improve. For one thing, the drone doesn’t use onboard cameras, but rather a system of static cameras and markers nearby that can tell exactly where the drone is and where it needs to go.
This is simpler to start with, but eventually such a drone should be able to use its own vision system to find the point where to touch down. Compared with a lot of the computer vision tasks being accomplished out there, finding the corner of a roof tile is pretty tame.
Currently the drone is also free flying and uses an electric nail gun; this limits its flight time to about 10 minutes and a few dozen nails. It would be better for it to use a tether carrying power and air cables, so it could stay aloft indefinitely and use a more powerful pneumatic nail gun.
Drones are already used for lots of industrial applications, from inspecting buildings to planting trees, and this experiment shows one more area where they could be put to work. Roofing can be both dull and dangerous, and rote work like attaching shingles may as well be done by a drone overseen by an expert as by that experts’ own hands.
John Maeda has been a professor at the MIT Media Lab, president of the Rhode Island School of Design, designer partner at venture firm Kleiner Perkins and most recently served as the head of computational design and inclusion at Automattic.
So perhaps it’s no surprise that he made another big leap with his latest job, becoming chief experience officer at Publicis Sapient — the consulting arm of advertising giant Publicis Groupe.
At the time he took the job, Maeda said he’d become more interested in working with “end-ups,” his term for larger companies that “serve the lives of human beings, regular people, non-tech people.”
An admirable sentiment — but it’s easier to talk about large-scale digital transformation that it is make it a reality. So after Maeda had been on-the-job for a few weeks, we met up to discuss how things are going.
While Maeda didn’t talk about his work with specific clients, he only seemed more convinced than ever that he’d made the right decision, and that “grown-up companies have gotten a bad rap.”
At the same time, Maeda sees some key ways in which these companies need to change, like becoming “dataful” — i.e., “leveraging quantifiable data to iterate faster.”
He added, “The CEO needs to run at exponential speed, because they know that the water is already above their head.”
Maeda also discussed his upcoming book “How To Speak Machine,” how companies can collect user data without violating user privacy and why he built his own app during his first 25 days on the job. You can read a transcript of our conversation, edited and condensed for clarity, below.
TechCrunch: So you’re 25 days in. Before you started, you said you were excited to work with what you called end-ups — these larger companies that are the opposite of startups. How has your idea of what the job was going to be compared to those first 25 days?
John Maeda: It really fits what I thought it was going to be. The startup-endup terminology came from — I wrote something for Gigaom with my partner in crime back then (Becky Bermont, now at Ideo) about startups and end-ups.
I think the end-up company is like this Mother Earth or Father Earth that everyone needs to be healthy. Even the startups need it! They’re talking about disrupt, disrupt, disrupt, and you know, maybe a few are brand new ideas, but the rest of kind of like, “You know, I wouldn’t mind being acquired by [a larger company].”
TC: Right, their long-term plan is to be acquired by one of the companies that they’re disrupting.
JM: So I think the end-up — I’m wondering if we should call it a grown-up company. And I think grown-up companies have gotten a bad rap.
“To our creators & users – I’m sorry for the frustration & hurt that we caused with our new approach to verification,” Wojcicki tweeted. “While trying to make improvements, we missed the mark. As I write this, we’re working to address your concerns & we’ll have more updates soon.”
The stated goal of the changes was to make it clear that verification isn’t an endorsement from YouTube, but simply a statement that the creator really is who they claim to be. This distinction became increasingly important as YouTube faced criticism for allowing the spread of hate speech and misinformation, with executives then defending the service as an open platform.
So moving forward, YouTube said it would focus on verifying public figures, famous brands and well-known creators — rather than allowing any account with more than 100,000 subscribers to request verification.
Been doing Youtube for 5 years, I post 2 videos a week, 950,000 subscribers…. YouTube emails me today that my channel has been “unverified” because the verified badge is only for well known channels with a large following @TeamYouTube literally no one asked for this
As a result of the new policy, numerous YouTube creators (including some with millions of subscribers) were notified they would be losing their verified status. Naturally, they went public with their unhappiness. (The news also led to some false alarms, like complaints that popular YouTuber PewDiePie had lost his checkmark, when he had not.)
While it remains to be seen how extensively YouTube will be revising or reversing its plans — and whether creators will be satisfied — this still seems like a clear mea culpa from YouTube leadership.
Security is in everything, it’s everywhere and it’s everyone’s responsibility. What part are you playing?
At TechCrunch Disrupt SF on October 2-4, we’re proud to have onstage some of the smartest security executives and highest-ranking officials ready to talk shop. Security will be front and center of Disrupt SF, with our panels and experts ready to discuss a range of topics. You can’t afford to miss out.
If you haven’t booked your ticket to Disrupt SF in two weeks, here are three reasons why you should.
Onstage we’ll talk to Homeland Security assistant director Jeanette Manfra to understand some of the greatest threats that face the United States today. As one of Homeland Security’s most senior cybersecurity officials, Manfra will discuss election hacking, how to defend against nation-state attackers and what companies can do to be prepared.
We will also have former NSA director Mike Rogers and Team8 founder Nadav Zafrir onstage to dive into the murky world of intelligence. Rogers, a career-long cybersecurity official and former head of the National Security Agency, will discuss his time at NSA and how the landscape of cybersecurity threats has changed, and what he brings to the private sector as a senior advisor to Team8, a cybersecurity think tank and company creation platform. Zafrir, a former Israeli intelligence chief who now heads the think tank, will join Rogers to talk about their most recent venture — security startups.
And, speaking of which, how do you build a secure startup without slowing growth? Companies are hungry to launch and grow, but scale often comes with a trade-off — security, or lack of. We have three leading experts who will join us on the Extra Crunch stage to discuss how to build a secure startup without compromising on scale.
Apple Arcade launched yesterday, alongside iOS 13, and while I’ve only used it for a short while, I think I can say this is the kind of mobile gaming I want, now and forever. For starters, this is a price I can actually stomach. I’m not a fan of subscription gaming, per se. But with a price as reasonable as Arcade’s ($4.99/month), and as many games as there are (i.e. more than I’ll be able to play in several months, if not a year), I don’t feel the pecuniary sting quite so keenly. Maybe it’s a byproduct of being an…
Google’s Chromebook laptops are no longer “cheap and cheerful” toys only good for light browsing. They can actually do serious stuff, like run Android applications, as well as run fully-fledged Linux distributions. But to make the most of that, you need a reasonably powerful machine, like this Samsung Chromebook Plus V2. This meaty device packs a 12.2-inch touchscreen, 64GB of storage, 4GB RAM, and an Intel Core m3 processor. It’s also a 2-in-1 machine, allowing you to use it in both laptop and tablet mode. And its 13MP webcam will make you look crystal clear when you’re in an important…
“I do not believe that it is appropriate, practical, or within our mission to examine specific government projects with the purpose of selecting which U.S. agencies we should or should not do business.” Barry Crist, CEO of Chef, in an email to employees. “And to be clear: I also find policies such as separating families and detaining children wrong and contrary to the best interests of our country.” Also Barry Crist, in the same email. It isn’t everyday you’ll find an executive businessperson in a leadership position willing to admit to the general public that they believe it’s inappropriate to…
It’s worth commending Samsung for taking the time out to fix the problems with the original Galaxy Fold. Granted, maybe some of these problems shouldn’t have been there in the first place – such as an easy-to-remove but essential plastic film – but it’s encouraging that Samsung delayed its most-hyped launch of the year to make a better phone. But don’t get me wrong: the Galaxy Fold is still no durability king, as JerryRigEverything’s (real name Zack Nelson) ritual torture tests show. You can watch it here: Nelson acquired a Korean retail version of the phone and put it through…
Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff. iOS 13 is finally here, and with it comes Apple’s increased focus on gaming. We now have Apple Arcade, a mobile gaming subscription service that comes with dozens of excellent new games. One of the side benefits of this is that you can now use popular wireless game controllers with your iPhone and iPad. Before now, iOS didn’t support Bluetooth game controllers generally. Instead, it supported the MFi (Made For iPhone) SDK, for whom only a…
Last year, a study by the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) argued that voice assistants like Google’s perpetuate “harmful gender bias” and suggests women should be there to assist rather than be assisted. But it turns out Google always wanted to use a male voice, but they didn’t because female voices are apparently easier to work with. Talking to Business Insider, Google’s product manager, Brant Ward, said: “At the time, the guidance was the technology performed better for a female voice. The TTS [text-to-speech] systems in the early days kind of echoed [early systems] and just became…
When new crypto or digital currency projects are announced it doesn’t take long for scams to follow. It appears that Telegram’s supposedly incoming TON token is the latest to be exploited by opportunistic scammers. According to Russian news outlet Kommersant, fraudsters are using the face of Telegram founder Pavel Durov to push fake TON investment opportunities. The advert appears to be a sponsored post made under a page called “Successful Investor.” On clicking the post, users are redirected to a website that imitates the appearance of Russian news site, RBC. Kommersant says the imitation website displays what looks to be…
Ripple Labs, the company behind the Ripple (XRP) cryptocurrency, has formally requested a US federal court dismiss a class action lawsuit that alleges it illegally sold unregistered securities, Fortune reports. A number of investors are claiming to have lost money after Ripple Labs convinced them to buy its Ripple (XRP) cryptocurrency. The group has demanded that Ripple Labs pay damages and declare that Ripple (XRP) is security. In response, Ripple Labs says that federal regulators have already concluded that Ripple (XRP) is a currency and a commodity, not a security — an assumption based on interpretation of previous regulator statements and not official rulings…
Just when you think researchers have found the wackiest possible use for a neural net yet, another team finds an even more novel use for artificial intelligence. Take Facebook's new Fashion++ AI. It's a program that will help you become a fashionista...
As usual, now that a new iPhone has hit the market, iFixit is pulling it apart an iPhone 11 Pro Max to show you what the insides look like. It's a common annual ritual, and in short order we should have confirmation of the usual things like RAM chips...
In TiVo's heyday the company was synonymous with recording TV shows via your remote control, so you didn't have to rush home to catch "your show" or attempt to record it on the VCR. But that was two decades ago, and things have changed. Now, the comp...
SNK has detailed the full 20-game lineup for its Neo Geo Arcade Stick Pro, and it's mixed news for fans of the classic platform. The retro console and controller hybrid will focus on the best-known brawlers with six The King of Fighters games ('95 t...
Yesterday YouTube announced plans to change its policy around channel verification status. In a move to follow other social networks, the company said changes tying approval to authenticity and prominence would mean some might lose their tag, and wou...
Earlier this year, snippets of code discovered within Chrome by 9 to 5 Google suggested Google was working on a touchless version of its web browser that would work on feature phones. The company was reportedly developing a feature phone in collabora...
It might soon be that much harder to avoid ads by using a DVR. TiVo appears to be testing 15-second pre-roll ads that play before recorded shows, making it difficult to avoid at least some marketing -- you can fast-forward through the promos, but it'...
YouTube came under fire Thursday after changes to its verification program meant several prominent YouTubers will the coveted status. CEO Susan Wojcicki has since apologized for the "frustration and hurt that we caused with our new approach to verifi...
