Monthly Archives: October 2020

News: Audio learning startup Knowable switches to a $9.99-per-month subscription model

• October 15, 2020
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Knowable, the Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup focused on audio learning, is switching business models. When the company launched last year, it charged users on a per-class basis. Starting today, it’s shifting entirely to a subscription model, where listeners pay $50 annually or $9.99 per month for unlimited access to the Knowable library. “This gets us closer

Knowable, the Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup focused on audio learning, is switching business models.

When the company launched last year, it charged users on a per-class basis. Starting today, it’s shifting entirely to a subscription model, where listeners pay $50 annually or $9.99 per month for unlimited access to the Knowable library.

“This gets us closer to our mission of daily, actionable learning,” co-founder and CEO Warren Shaeffer told me. In other words, the subscription encourages people to treat learning through Knowable as an ongoing habit, rather than a one-off experience.

After all, he said Knowable is already seeing a 24% cross-purchase rate as listeners sign up for new courses. Plus, this will allow the company to experience with other formats, such as briefer lessons. And it’s similar to the subscription model employed by MasterClass and other companies offering video classes.

But why focus on audio in the first place? Shaeffer said that he and his co-founder Alex Benzer have “both seen firsthand that a great teacher can change the trajectory of somebody’s life.” At the same time, they didn’t have time to watch hours of video.

“Every [online learning company] today is very focused on the idea that you need to stare at a screen to learn in a structured way,” Shaeffer said.

The Knowable team

At the same time, many people listen to podcasts when they want to learn new things. So the pair created Knowable with the idea that when you go out for a walk, you can have an easy way to spend that time on what Benzer called “nutritious” content, rather than a “low-calorie true-crime podcast.”

“Warren and I are personally excited about helping people spend less time anxiously doomscrolling, and more time acquiring optimism and confidence through self-guided learning,” he said.

Courses include Alexis Ohanian on entrepreneurship, Mark Bittman on eating well and a variety of experts on public speaking.

Shaeffer said there are now 100 hours of educational content in the Knowable library — about half of it consists of Knowable Originals created by the company’s producers (Knowable’s content team is currently led by former This American Life producer Amy O’Leary), with the other half coming from a new, curated marketplace, where anyone can apply to sell a course.

The content, Shaeffer added, is “audio-first, not audio-only.” Yes, you mostly listen to the classes, but there’s additional material like quizzes and workbooks.

“We think audio is a great catalyst for inspiring,” he said. As a result, Knowable has focused on “soft skills” in categories like professional development, self-improvement and health.

But he also suggested that it’s a “fallacy” to think that you can’t teach more concrete hard skills through audio: “If you want to be a programmer, we’re envisioning a course where someone gets an overview of all the different ways they can learn, and it becomes a launchpad into a deeper dive.”

News: Google launches a slew of Search updates

• October 15, 2020
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Google today announced a number of improvements to its core search engine, with a strong focus on how the company is using AI to help its users. These include the ability to better answer questions with very specific answers, very broad questions and a new algorithm to better handle the typos in your queries. The

Google today announced a number of improvements to its core search engine, with a strong focus on how the company is using AI to help its users. These include the ability to better answer questions with very specific answers, very broad questions and a new algorithm to better handle the typos in your queries. The company also announced updates to Google Lens and other Search-related tools. Most of these are meant to be useful but some are also just fun. You will now be able to hum a song and the Google Assistant will try to find the right song for you, for example.

As Google noted, 1 in 10 search queries is misspelled. The company already does a pretty good job dealing with those through its ‘did you mean’ feature. Now, the company is launching an improvement to this algorithm that uses a deep neural net with 680 million parameters to better understand the context of your search query.

Image Credits: Google

Another nifty new feature is an integration with various data sources, which were previously only available as part of Google’s Open Data Commons, into Search. Now, if you ask questions about something like “employment in Chicago,” Google’s Knowledge Graph will trigger and show you graphs with this data right on the Search results page.

Image Credits: Google

Another update the company announced today in its systems ability to index parts of pages to better answer niche queries like “how do I determine if my windows have UV glass?” The system can now point you right to a paragraph on a DIY forum. In total, this new system will improve about 7% of queries, Google said.

For broader questions, Google is now also using its AI system to better understand the nuances of what a page is about to better answer these queries.

Image Credits: Google

These days, a lot of content can be found in videos, too. Google is now using advanced computer recognition and speech recognition to tag key moments in videos — that’s something you can already find in Search these days, but this new algorithm should make that even easier, especially for videos where the creators haven’t already tagged the content.

Other updates include an update to Google Lens that lets you ask the app to read out a passage from a photo of a book — no matter the language. Lens can now also understand math formulas — and then show you step-by-step guides and videos to solve it. This doesn’t just work for math, but also chemistry, biology and physics.

Image Credits: Google

Given that the holiday shopping season is coming up, it’s maybe no surprise that Google also launched a number of updates to its shopping services. Specifically, the company is launching a new feature in Chrome and the Google App where you can now long-tap on any image and then find related products. And for the fashion-challenged, the service will also show you related items that tend to show up in related images.

If you’re shopping for a car, you will now also be able to get an AR view of them so you can see what they look like in your driveway.

Image Credits: Google

In Google Maps, you will now also be able to point at a restaurant or other local business when you are using the AR walking directions to see their opening hours, for example.

Another new Maps feature is that Google will now also show live busyness information right on the map, so you don’t have to specifically search for a place to see how busy it currently is. That’s a useful feature in 2020.

Image Credits: Google

During the event (or really, video premiere, because this is 2020), which was set to the most calming of music, Google’s head of search, Prabhakar Raghavan, also noted that its 2019 BERT update to the natural language understanding part of its Search system is now used for almost every query and available in more languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, Arabic, German and Amharic. That’s part of the more than 3,600 updates the company made to its search product in 2019.

All of these announcements are happening against the backdrop of various governments looking into Google’s business practices, so it’s probably no surprise that the event also put an emphasis on Google’s privacy practices and that Raghavan regularly talked about “open access” and that Google Search is free for everyone and everywhere, with ranking policies applied “fairly” to all websites. I’m sure Yelp and other Google competitors wouldn’t quite agree with this last assertion.

News: Small business payments and marketing startup Fivestars raises $52.5M

• October 15, 2020
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It’s a difficult time for small businesses — to put it mildly. And Fivestars CEO Victor Ho said that many of the big digital platforms aren’t really helping. Ho argued that those platforms (whether they offer delivery services, user reviews or marketing tools) all have the same underlying model: “They seek to take over a small business’ customer

It’s a difficult time for small businesses — to put it mildly. And Fivestars CEO Victor Ho said that many of the big digital platforms aren’t really helping.

Ho argued that those platforms (whether they offer delivery services, user reviews or marketing tools) all have the same underlying model: “They seek to take over a small business’ customer base and then charge them a tax to start reaching those customers.”

Superficially, a company like Fivestars, which has created software to support small business payments and marketing, might not sound that different.

But Ho said that the startup actually takes the “opposite” approach, because Fivestars isn’t trying to build up a big “walled garden” of its own customers that businesses pay to access. Instead, businesses pay for the software, which they use to build a database of their own customers; they don’t have to pay to reach those customers.

“The incentives are more aligned,” he said.

Image Credits: Fivestars

The Fivestars platform includes its own payment product, integration with other point-of-sale systems, marketing automation that delivers personalized messages to customers and a broader network of 60 million shoppers, allowing for cross-promotion across different Fivestars businesses.

The startup is announcing today that it has raised $52.5 million in new funding, combining a Series D equity round as well as debt and bringing its total funding to $145.5 million. The round was led by Salt Partners, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, DCM Ventures, Menlo Ventures and HarbourVest Partners.

Ho said Fivestars actually closed the round before the COVID-19 pandemic, but the team decided to hold off on the announcement because it seemed like a bad idea to “flaunt” the company’s bank account when so many of its customers were suffering.

The company has seen “record usage” during the pandemic, with 1 million new shoppers joining the network every month. At the same time, Ho acknowledged that the pandemic has caused Fivestars to shift its strategy. Originally, the goal for the funding was “just to keep growing our portfolio of merchants across our existing products,” but he said, “What changed pretty dramatically through this period for us was emphasizing the payments piece and the network” and focusing on “what small businesses need more than ever.”

Ho also noted that during the pandemic, the company has provided customers with more than $1 million worth of credits and also made more of its products free to use.

“It’s very clear that small businesses are incredibly resilient,” he added. “Particularly when it comes to the category of experiences — you’re not going to take your wife on a date to Pizza Hut; when you go to Paris, you’re not going to go to generic chains.”

In the funding announcement, Natasha Teague of Fort Lauderdale health food store Tropibowls described the Fivestars platform as “a huge help.”

“The value of being able to communicate with our customers and share updates in real-time has been immeasurable,” Teague said in a statement. “The power of Fivestars’ expansive network and payment tech has made our reopening process seamless and a lifesaver as we navigate new needs as a result of the pandemic.”

News: When was the last time you worked out your soul?

• October 15, 2020
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Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. The whole crew was back today, with Natasha and Danny and I gathered to parse over what was really a blast of news. Lots of startups are raising. Lots of VCs are raising. And some

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

The whole crew was back today, with Natasha and Danny and I gathered to parse over what was really a blast of news. Lots of startups are raising. Lots of VCs are raising. And some unicorns are shooting to go public. It’s a lot to get through, but we’re here to catch you up.

Here’s what we got into:

• A Media Roundup: The Juggernaut raised $2 million in a round that we found to be both cool and timely. The news of a media startup raising money was paired with rumors of an exit for email media darling Morning Brew for a price tag of up to $75 million. Undergirding each story was recent reporting concerning the revenue success that Axios is enjoying. It’s nice to report on some media news that isn’t fresh layoffs.
• A cluster of wellness startups raising capital: If you like to work out your mind and body, it was a good week of news for you. Calm is looking for new funds at a fresh, higher valuation. TechCrunch has coverage here. Coa did raise, adding $3 million to its coffers for mental health group classes. And Playbook put together $9.3 million for its fitness instructor platform.
• VCs raised lots: It’s a hot time for VCs themselves to raise money, with OpenView, Canaan, True Ventures, Lead Edge Capital, First Round and Khosla either closing rounds or announcing new fundraises.
• Also on the VC beat: Terri Burns was made an investing partner at GV.
• Finally, we got into the recent GetAround funding and turnaround story, which segued us into Airbnb’s own recovery. TechCrunch has more here.

And with that, we’re off until Monday morning. Chat soon, and stay safe.

News: Brighteye Ventures’ Alex Latsis talks European edtech funding in 2020

• October 15, 2020
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Brighteye Ventures, the European edtech venture capital firm, recently announced the $54 million first close of its second fund, bringing total assets under management above $112 million. Out of the new fund, the 2017-founded VC will invest in 15-20 companies over the next three years at the seed and Series A stage, writing checks up

Brighteye Ventures, the European edtech venture capital firm, recently announced the $54 million first close of its second fund, bringing total assets under management above $112 million. Out of the new fund, the 2017-founded VC will invest in 15-20 companies over the next three years at the seed and Series A stage, writing checks up to $5 million.

Described as a thesis-driven fund investing in startups that “enhance learning” within the context of automation and other new technologies, coupled with changes in the way we live, Brighteye plans to disrupt the $7 trillion global education sector “as educators and students are adapting to distance learning en masse and millions of displaced workers are seeking to upskill,” according to a press release.

The firm’s investments to date include Ornikar, an online driving school in France and Spain serving more than 1.6 million students; Tandem, a Berlin-based peer-to-peer language learning platform with over 10 million members; and Epic!, a reading platform said to be used in more than 90% of U.S. schools.

To dig deeper into Brighteye’s thesis and the edtech sector more broadly, I caught up with managing partner Alex Latsis. We also discussed some of the findings in the firm’s recent European edtech funding report and how more venture capital than ever is set to flow into educational technology.

TechCrunch: Brighteye Ventures backs seed and Series A startups across Europe and North America that “enhance learning.” Can you elaborate a bit more on the fund’s remit, such as subsectors or specific technologies and what you look for in founders and startups at such an early stage?

Alex Latsis: We invest in startups that use technology to directly enable learning, skills acquisition or research as well as companies whose products address structural needs in the education sector. For example, Zen Educate addresses the systemic issue of teacher supply shortages in the U.K. via an on-demand platform that saves schools money whilst allowing educators to earn more. Litigate is an AI-driven coach and workflow tool improving results for legal associates, while Ironhack, the largest tech bootcamp in Europe and Latin America, gives young professionals the skills needed to enter the innovation economy and connects them to employers with a 90% job placement rate.

As education is a complex field we always seek to establish a degree of founder market fit, but more importantly that the founding teams themselves are a good fit internally. No startup succeeds on the merits of a founder alone, even if they may be driving the momentum.

In “The European EdTech Funding Report 2020,” you note that Europe is gaining momentum with a healthy increase in VC investments in local edtech startups. Specifically, you say that edtech VC investment has experienced 9.2x growth between 2014 and 2019 in terms of money invested. What is driving this and how does Europe compare to other major tech regions for edtech, such as Silicon Valley/U.S. or China?

Both Europe and the U.S. saw about 2% of venture capital invested in edtech in 2019. Growth in edtech investment in these markets to date has been driven largely by increased willingness to pay for training that is unavailable, unengaging or too expensive in legacy institutions and to a lesser extent by increased digital penetration in schools and universities that has enabled SaaS products to scale.

Given the rapid evolution of online education in the face of the pandemic, we expect funding for edtech will trend closer to 3%-5% of venture funding in the coming years on both sides of the Atlantic. This will mean billions in incremental investment, hundreds of new promising companies and incredible learning opportunities, particularly for those looking to upskill/reskill. In countries like India and China where school and university student populations are growing more rapidly, we expect 5%+ of VC funding to go into edtech as there is more growth in core demand.

News: Proterra, which makes big honkin battery systems and electric buses, raises $200 million

• October 15, 2020
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Proterra, the battery system technology developer for heavy-duty electric vehicles, said it has raised $200 million in a new round of funding. The new cash comes from Cowen Sustainable Investment Advisors, which led the round, along with money from Soros Fund Management, Generation Investment Management and Broadscale Group. Cowen took the bulk of the round

Proterra, the battery system technology developer for heavy-duty electric vehicles, said it has raised $200 million in a new round of funding.

The new cash comes from Cowen Sustainable Investment Advisors, which led the round, along with money from Soros Fund Management, Generation Investment Management and Broadscale Group.

Cowen took the bulk of the round with $150 million while Soros, Generation and Broadscale forked over another $50 million.

This new capital infusion follows a year’s worth of speculation about a potential public offering for the big honkin battery systems developer. TechCrunch last reported in August 2019 that Proterra had hit a $1 billion valuation according to investors and would be seeking a potential IPO at the time.

The company said the new money would go to support the company’s ongoing research and development efforst into battery and electric drivetrain technologies and business development to increase the company’s footprint in additional commercial vehicle segments.

Proterra’s also looking at charging and energy management technology development to lower fleet management costs associated with operating electric fleets.

To date, Proterra has raised equity and debt totaling at least roughly $1 billion from investors including G2VP, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Constellation Ventures, Mitsui & Co. as well as BMW i Ventures, Edison Energy, the Federal Transportation Administration, General Motors’s venture arm and Tao Capital Partners .

Proterra, mainly makes buses for local, state and federal agencies that can travel 350 miles on a single charge. The Burlingame, Calif. company, which has a number of former Tesla employees in leadership positions, including the company’s former chief executive Ryan Popple, has also diversified its business to provide its power trains to other heavy- and medium-duty commercial electric vehicle manufacturers.

The company is now working with OEMs like Thomas Built Bus, Van Hool, FCCC, BusTech and Optimal-EV to bring 100% battery-electric vehicles powered by its technology to market, the company said in a statement.

“As demand grows for battery-electric vehicles and 100% zero-emission fleets, we are excited to collaborate with CSI as well as our other investors to accelerate the transition to clean, quiet transportation for all and deliver even more Proterra Powered vehicles around the world,” said Jack Allen, Proterra’s current chairman and chief executive.

BofA Securities acted as sole placement agent on this transaction.

News: Tesla’s decision to scrap its PR department could create a PR nightmare

• October 15, 2020
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This decision will affect the engineers and developers, marketing teams and all employees who put their all into the technology and company image, only to have it eventually misrepresented in the media.

A solid public relations team solves many issues within a company.

It helps spread important news announcements and topics integral to a company’s success. It communicates with the media in a timely manner to ensure accurate coverage and control the conversation. It builds a state of trust and engagement that propels a company’s vision and goals forward. Unless of course that company is Tesla, in which case it wants none of that.

According to numerous internal sources confirmed by automotive blog Electrik, Tesla has been slowly dissolving its internal PR department over the course of this year, leaving the sole voice of the company its founder, Elon Musk.

If true, this is a confounding decision by Musk and the decision-makers at Tesla.

What this creates for Tesla is a black hole of information coming from the company. Facts will be obfuscated if there is no official position on whatever happens in the news. For instance, consider the recent cases of self-driving collisions or a roof flying off a new car.

Or last month, when there was a major outage in Tesla vehicles, the press was left to speculate. There is no longer a PR department to reply to these incidents. It seems that Tesla has adopted a crisis management strategy that appears to think that the best course of action is to ignore future crises and they will just go away on their own. Unfortunately for Tesla, real life doesn’t work like that.

News: Cruise can now test driverless vehicles on the streets of San Francisco

• October 15, 2020
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Cruise, the self-driving car subsidiary of GM that also has backing from SoftBank Vision Fund, Honda and T. Rowe Price & Associates, has been issued a permit from California regulators that will allow it to test driverless vehicles on public roads in San Francisco. The California DMV, the agency that regulates autonomous vehicle testing in

Cruise, the self-driving car subsidiary of GM that also has backing from SoftBank Vision Fund, Honda and T. Rowe Price & Associates, has been issued a permit from California regulators that will allow it to test driverless vehicles on public roads in San Francisco.

The California DMV, the agency that regulates autonomous vehicle testing in the state, said the permit allows the company to test five autonomous vehicles without a driver behind the wheel on specified streets within San Francisco. Cruise has had a permit to  test autonomous vehicles with safety drivers behind the wheel since 2015.

“We’re not the first company to receive this permit, but we’re going to be the first to put it to use on the streets of a major U.S. city,” Cruise CEO Dan Ammann wrote Thursday on the company’s blog. “Before the end of the year, we’ll be sending cars out onto the streets of SF — without gasoline and without anyone at the wheel. Because safely removing the driver is the true benchmark of a self-driving car, and because burning fossil fuels is no way to build the future of transportation.”

Ammann described the issuance of the driverless permit as a low, key but milestone moment for the company, which has been working on autonomous vehicle technology for six years.

“The drama of this might be hard to appreciate. All anyone will see is a car, silently driving by itself through the city. Not speeding. Not crashing. Just quietly cruising,” he wrote. “But even without a literal launch into the sky, this is our moonshot. And the chaotic, gritty streets of SF are our launchpad. This is where years of blood, sweat, and tears have been poured out by everyone on the Cruise mission. And it’s where over two million miles of city testing will truly hit the road for the first time: an electric car, driving by itself, navigating one of the most difficult driving cities in the world.”

The driverless permit, which means no humans will be behind the wheel, comes with certain restrictions. The Cruise vehicles are designed to operate on roads with posted speed limits not exceeding 30 miles per hour, during all times of the day and night, but will not test during heavy fog or heavy rain, the DMV said. Any company applying for with driverless permit must provide evidence of insurance or a bond equal to $5 million, verify vehicles are capable of operating without a driver, meet federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards or have an exemption from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and is a SAE Level 4 or 5 vehicle.

Cruise is the fifth company to be issued the driverless permit in California. Waymo, AutoX, Nuro and Zoox also have driverless permits. Currently, 60 companies have an active permit to test autonomous vehicles with a safety driver, according to the DMV.

News: Nanoleaf adds large and small triangles to its revamped Shape product line

• October 15, 2020
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Nanoleaf launched the next generation of its light panels in July. Called Shape, this new product looks like the company’s original offering, but sports better connectors, a simpler mounting solution, and most importantly, these panels can work with different shapes. Today, Nanoleaf announced triangle panels, which join the hexagon shape that launched in July. This

Nanoleaf launched the next generation of its light panels in July. Called Shape, this new product looks like the company’s original offering, but sports better connectors, a simpler mounting solution, and most importantly, these panels can work with different shapes.

Today, Nanoleaf announced triangle panels, which join the hexagon shape that launched in July.

This is the first product line from Nanoleaf that can use two different shapes at the same time. The triangles are available in large and small sizes, and feature all of the functions found on other Nanoleaf panels including mirroring a screen, and syncing to music. The panels also Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Apple Homekit and Samsung Smartthings.

Unlike past Nanoleaf products, the panels in the Shape line connect using a rigid connector that snaps into place. The mounting solution is also improved, allowing users to install panels without having to screw each panel to the wall.

Here’s what we concluded when reviewing the hexagon panels in the new Shape line.

The Nanoleaf Hexagons are a terrific addition to the Nanoleaf lineup, and I think they’re the model that’s mostly likely to appeal to a much broader customer base when compared to the company’s existing options. I personally didn’t expect to be that big a fan of Nanoleaf in general — I’d never been more than mildly interested in their offerings before. But as soon as I powered on the Hexagon, I was amazed at how much I felt like they improved the aesthetics of the space.

The complete kits cost $199 for the full size triangles and $119 for the mini triangles. Expansion packs are $59 and $119, respectively.

News: Google will let everyone migrate from Hangouts to Chat for free in 2021

• October 15, 2020
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Google’s strategy around its messaging apps is nothing if not messy right now (hello Hangouts, Meet, Chat, Duo and Co.), but it looks like things will get a bit easier come next year. We already knew that Hangouts’ time was coming to an end and as Google announced today, the company will allow all current

Google’s strategy around its messaging apps is nothing if not messy right now (hello Hangouts, Meet, Chat, Duo and Co.), but it looks like things will get a bit easier come next year. We already knew that Hangouts’ time was coming to an end and as Google announced today, the company will allow all current Hangouts users to migrate to Chat — which was originally meant to only be its Slack-like messaging service for business users — in the first half of 2021.

One interesting wrinkle here: Chat will now also become free to use for consumers. Currently, you have to be a paying G Suite/Workspace user to access the service (though somehow it’s enabled on my free personal account).

While Chat isn’t an exact 1-to-1 replacement of Hangouts, it actually offers a bunch of additional features for group chats and collaboration around files and tasks, as well as new security tools. Chat, together with Rooms and Meet, will also be integrated deeply into the Gmail app as part of Google’s Workspace migration.

Image Credits: Google

Google says it will automatically migrate all Hangouts conversations, contacts and history to Chat, but it’s not providing details about this yet. Final timing, Google says, may still shift. It’s not clear, though, when Google will force everyone to migrate and shut down the Hangouts servers for good.

There are a few more details here: if you use Hangouts with Google Fi, Hangouts support will go away ‘early next year.’ Traditionally, Fi users were able to make calls and manage their text messages from Hangouts. That experience will migrate to Google’s Messages app.

If you’re a Google Voice user, there’s a similar transition happening. For voice calls and text messages, Hangouts users will now be directed to the Voice app and early next year, your Voice support will be removed from Hangouts.

And for all users in the U.S. and Europe, the ability to call phones from Hangouts will disappear at the beginning of next year — and group video calls in Hangouts will transition to Meet in November.

Yeah — that all sounds complicated, but it’s a problem of Google’s own making. A few years ago, the idea was to move Hangouts users to its Allo and Duo apps and business users to Chat and Meet (or whatever they were called back then). Allo flopped (and few people use Duo), leaving Google with the unenviable task of keeping the aging Hangouts platform around for the foreseeable future and making the overall transition harder and more complicated, to the point where I’m not sure that consumers really understand what’s happening.