Monthly Archives: October 2020

News: Hoping to be LatAm’s top digital bank for SMBs, Xepelin launches a lending and revenue management service

• October 12, 2020
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There’s another entrant in the startup race to provide financial services to Latin America’s small and medium-sized businesses. Financial services have been a huge opportunity for startups coming out of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico in recent years, and now Xepelin, a new company from Chile, is looking to join the fray. Xepelin’s founders, Sebastian Kreis

There’s another entrant in the startup race to provide financial services to Latin America’s small and medium-sized businesses.

Financial services have been a huge opportunity for startups coming out of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico in recent years, and now Xepelin, a new company from Chile, is looking to join the fray.

Xepelin’s founders, Sebastian Kreis and Guillermo Molina Carvallo, launched their company with the vision of creating a new kind of online bank for Latin America’s small businesses.

Sebastian Kreis, chief executive officer, Xepelin. Image Credits: Xepelin

The company’s pitch to business owners depends on a variation of the lending tool known as factoring, where small businesses can take out loans based on the income they’re expecting to receive. In Latin America, where small businesses have limited avenues to traditional loans, according to Kreis, factoring represents a novel solution.

Xepelin already has a multimillion dollar credit line on the books in addition to a small round of initial financing and the company will be using both the credit line to bring customers in and the equity infusion to continue developing revenue management and resource planning tools for its customers.

Starting in Chile and Mexico, where the two founders have a long history in the financial services world, the company expects to become a player across the continent in line with the growth of private debt services for small businesses.

Other startups, like Portal Finance and Marco Financial are also targeting the lending markets. Like Xepelin, the two companies have secured multiple lines of credit to support their businesses.

Kreis estimates that debt financing in Latin America could grow to 70 times its current size given changes to the regulatory environment and increasing demand for digital financial services over the next decade.

News: If data is labor, can collective bargaining limit big tech?

• October 12, 2020
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What if consumer platforms had to do business with large coalitions representing ordinary peoples to get the right to exploit their data?

There are plenty of reasons to doubt that the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust report will mark a turning point in the digital economy. In the end, it lacked true bipartisan support. Yet we can still marvel at the extent of left-right agreement over its central finding: The big tech companies wield troublingly great power over American society.

The bigger worry is whether the solutions on the table cut to the heart of the problem. One wonders whether empowered antitrust agencies can solve the problem before them — and whether they can keep the public behind them. For the proposition that many Facebooks would be better than one simply doesn’t resonate.

There are good reasons why not. Despite all their harms, we know that whatever benefits these platforms provide are largely a result of their titanic scale. We are as uneasy with the platforms’ exercises of their vast power over suppliers and users, as we are with their forbearance; yet it is precisely because of their enormous scale that we use their services. So if regulators broke up the networks, consumers would simply flock toward whatever platforms had the most scale, pushing the industry toward reconsolidation.

Does this mean that the platforms do not have too much power, that they are not harming society? No. It simply means they are infrastructure. In other words, we don’t need these technology platforms to be more fragmented, we need them to belong to us. We need democratic, rather than strictly market processes, to determine how they wield their power.

When you notice that an institution is infrastructure, the usual reaction is to suggest nationalization or regulation. But today, we have good reasons to suspect our political system is not up to this task. Even if an ideal government could competently tackle a problem as complex as managing the 21st century’s digital infrastructure, ours probably cannot.

This appears to leave us in a lose-lose situation and explains the current mood of resignation. But there is another option that we seem to have forgotten about. Labor organization has long afforded control to a broad array of otherwise-powerless stakeholders over the operation of powerful business enterprises. Why is this not on the table?

A growing army of academics, technologists, and commentators are warming to the proposition that “data is labor.” In short, this is the idea that the vast data streams we all produce through our contact with the digital world are a legitimate sort of work-product — over which we ought to have much more meaningful rights than the laws now afford. Collective bargaining plays a central role in this picture. Because the reason that the markets are now failing (to the benefit of the Silicon Valley giants) is that we are all trying to negotiate only for ourselves, when in fact the very nature of data is that it always touches and implicates the interests of many people.

This may seem like a complicated or intractable problem, but leading thinkers are already working on legal and technical solutions.

So in some sense, the scale of the tech giants may indeed not be such a bad thing — the problem, instead, is the power that scale gives them. But what if Facebook had to do business with large coalitions representing ordinary peoples’ data interests — presumably paying large sums, or admitting these representatives into its governance — in order to get the right to exploit its users’ data? That would put power back where it belongs, without undermining the inherent benefits of large platforms. It just might be a future we can believe in.

So what is the way forward? The answer to this question is enabling collective bargaining through data unions. Data unions would become the necessary counterpart to big tech’s information acquiring transitions. By requiring the big tech companies to deal with data unions authorized to negotiate on behalf of their memberships, both of the problems that have allowed these giant tech companies to amass the power to corrupt society are solved.

Labor unions did not gain true traction until the passage of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. Perhaps, rather than burning our political capital on breaking up the tech giants through a slow and potentially Sisyphean process, we should focus on creating a 21st century version of this groundbreaking legislation — legislation to protect the data rights of all citizens and provide a responsible legal framework for data unions to represent public interests from the bottom up.

News: 4-year founder vesting is dead

• October 12, 2020
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A growing number of founders are starting to realize that a 4-year vesting schedule can damage their startup irreparably.

We recently invested in a team of co-founders who had voluntarily made their own vesting longer than four years. Four-year vesting is the industry standard. Why would someone voluntarily make it longer for themselves?

Their answer: “These days, with companies taking seven to 10 years to reach exit, it would make sense for founders to be on a similar schedule.”

This matters because the four-year co-founder vesting schedule frequently harms startup founders’ interests. Sometimes it damages their startup irreparably.

A growing number of founders are starting to realize this. I talked to quite a few about this over the last two years. Mostly, the “longer-than-four-years-vesting” founders share a similar story as well as logic. Almost always they are repeat, experienced founders. Often scarred by a co-founder separation in their prior startup, they are determined to set things up smarter in their next company.

Importantly, this group of founders assumes they are going to be the ones actually building the company. They created the company. They are the company. Nobody is forcing them out. I suspect founders who already believe this about their own startup will find this post most helpful.

Given the massive implications of co-founder vesting schedules, all startup founders should consider co-founder vesting lengths more carefully and then choose what makes sense for them. You make this decision around the time of incorporation but feel the effects over the lifetime of your company.

4-year vesting schedules are anachronistic

As far back as the 1980s, the standard startup vesting schedule was four or five years, with five being more prevalent on the East Coast. Nobody seems to remember a time it was anything different. The closest I’ve gotten to a logical answer on why it’s four years today stretches back to a pre-401(k) era, from before Reagan’s tax reforms in the ’80s. Prior to then, tax rules incentivized big company pension plans to have vesting periods of at least five years.

Startups didn’t offer traditional pension plans. Instead, startups offered employees stock, vesting over four years instead of five as a competitive move. That is all moot today. It has no relevance for startup founders in 2020.

More relevantly, time from founding to exit has gone from four years in 1999 to eight years in 2020. Yet founder vesting remains stuck at four. This is dangerous.

Exit data from U.S. startups with minimum $1 million in venture funding. Image Credits: PitchBook

Hedging against the crash of ineptitude

News: France’s Health Data Hub to move to European cloud infrastructure to avoid EU-US data transfers

• October 12, 2020
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France’s data regulator CNIL has issued some recommendations for French services that handle health data, as Mediapart first reported. Those services should avoid using American cloud hosting companies altogether, such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. Those recommandations follow a landmark ruling by Europe’s top court in July. The ruling, dubbed Schrems

France’s data regulator CNIL has issued some recommendations for French services that handle health data, as Mediapart first reported. Those services should avoid using American cloud hosting companies altogether, such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.

Those recommandations follow a landmark ruling by Europe’s top court in July. The ruling, dubbed Schrems II, struck down the EU-US Data Privacy Shield. Under the Privacy Shield, companies could outsource data processing from the EU to the US in bulk. Due to concerns over US surveillance laws, that mechanism is no longer allowed.

The CNIL is going one step further by saying that services and companies that handle health data should also avoid doing business with American companies — it’s not just about processing European data in Europe. Once again, this is all about avoiding falling under U.S. regulation and rulings.

The regulator sent those recommendations to one of France’s top courts (Conseil d’État). SantéNathon, a group of organizations and unions, originally notified the CNIL over concerns about France’s Health Data Hub.

France is currently building a platform to store health data at the national level. The idea is to build a hub that makes it easier to study rare diseases and use artificial intelligence to improve diagnoses. It is supposed to aggregate data from different sources and make it possible to share some data with public and private institutions for those specific cases.

The technical choices have been controversial as the French government originally chose to partner with Microsoft and its cloud platform Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft, like many other companies, relies on Standard Contractual Clauses for EU-US data transfers. But the Court of Justice of the EU has made it clear that EU regulators have to intervene if data is being transferred to an unsafe country when it comes to privacy and surveillance.

The CNIL believes that an American company could process data in Europe but it would still fall under FISA702 and other surveillance laws. Data would still end up in the hands of American authorities. In other words, it is being extra careful with health data for now, while Schrems II is still unfolding.

“We’re working with health minister Olivier Véran on transferring the Health Data Hub to French or European platforms following the Privacy Shield bombshell,” France’s digital minister Cédric O told Public Sénat.

The French government is now looking at other solutions for the Health Data Hub. In the near future, if France’s top court confirms the CNIL’s recommendations, it could also have some effects for French companies that handle health data, such as Doctolib and Alan.

News: Yotascale raises a $13M Series B to help companies track and manage their cloud spends

• October 12, 2020
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These days when you found a startup, you don’t go out and buy a rack of servers. And you don’t build an in-house datacenter team. Instead, you farm out your infrastructure needs to the major cloud platforms, namely Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. That’s all well and good, but over time any startup’s

These days when you found a startup, you don’t go out and buy a rack of servers. And you don’t build an in-house datacenter team. Instead, you farm out your infrastructure needs to the major cloud platforms, namely Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

That’s all well and good, but over time any startup’s cloud setup will become more complex, varied and perhaps multi-provider. Throw in microservices and one can wind up with a big muddle, and an even bigger bill. That’s the problem that Yotascale wants to attack.

And there’s money backing the startup’s progress, including $13 million in new capital. The round, a Series B, was led by Aydin Senkut at Felicis with participation from other capital pools, including Engineering Capital, Pelion Ventures and Crosslink Capital. Yotascale has now raised $25 million in total.

The funding event caught my eye, as I’ve heard startup CEOs discuss their public cloud spends in somewhat bitter terms; it’s hard for most startups to change infrastructure direction after they get off the ground, which means that as they grow, so too does their outflow of dollars to the major tech companies. The same megacaps that might turn around and compete with the very same startups that are pumping up their revenues and margins.

So spending less on AWS or Azure would be nice for startups. Yotascale wants to be the helper for lots of companies to better understand and attribute that spend the correct part of their platform or service, perhaps lowering aggregate spend at the same time.

Let’s talk about how Yotascale got to where it is today.

The startup’s CEO, Asim Razzaq, talked TechCrunch through his company’s history, which didn’t get started until after he had wrapped up tenure at both another startup, and PayPal.

When he set out to found Yotascale, Razzaq didn’t fire up a deck, raise capital and then get right to building. Instead, he first went out to do customer discovery work. That effort led him to the perspective that current solutions aimed at understanding cloud spend were insufficient and led to data being used against infrastructure teams in arguments for lower spend when it wasn’t a good idea (cutting backup expenses, for example).

During that time he also determined who Yotascale’s target customer is, namely the head of platform engineering at a company.

The startup self-funded for a while, with Razzaq telling TechCrunch that he wanted to be completely sure that he had conviction concerning the project before moving ahead.

After starting to work on Yotascale in mid 2015, the company raised some capital in 2016. It set out to solve the spend attribution problem that companies with public cloud contracts deal with — including having to contend with modern architecture and its related issues — while earning the trust of engineers, according to Razzaq.

From its period of customer discovery to working on product market fit after raising funds from Engineering Capital, Yotascale raised a Series A in mid-2018. Why? Because, Razzaq, told TechCrunch, as ones gains conviction, one must scale their team. And thus more capital was required.

During our chat with the CEO, it was notable how sequential his company-building process has proven. From talking to potential customers, to working to understand who his buyer is, to waiting on scaling the startup’s go-to-market efforts until he was confident in product-market fit, Yotascale seems to follow the inverse of the “raise lots and spend fast and try to win right away” model that became quite popular during the unicorn era.

How did Yotascale know when it found product market fit? According to its CEO, when companies started pulling the startup into their operations and not the other way around.

Yotascale reported 4x year-over-year annual recurring revenue (ARR) growth at some point this year, though Razzaq was diffident about sharing specifics concerning the metric.

Sticking to the theme of reasonableness and caution, when asked about why his Series B is modest in size, Razzaq said that he was not interested in raising big rounds, and that $13 million is an amount of money that can move his company forward. What’s coming from the company? Yotascale wants to add support for Azure and Google Cloud in addition to its AWS work of today, to pick an example.

(You can find other hints that Yotascale is perhaps more mature than its peers at its current age. For example, in 2018 the company hired a new chief revenue officer, even putting out a release on the matter.)

That’s enough on this particular round. What will prove interesting is how far Yotascale can push its ARR up by the end of Q3 2021. And if it raises again before then.

News: Free-to-play gaming giant Roblox confidentially files to go public

• October 12, 2020
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The gaming company Roblox announced today that it had confidentially filed paperwork with the SEC to make its public debut. In February, the company which operates a free-to-play gaming empire with tens of million of users, was valued at $4 billion after a Series G funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz . The company has

The gaming company Roblox announced today that it had confidentially filed paperwork with the SEC to make its public debut.

In February, the company which operates a free-to-play gaming empire with tens of million of users, was valued at $4 billion after a Series G funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz . The company has raised more than $335 million in venture capital funding according to Crunchbase.

The company has not detailed the number of shares it plans to offer and furthermore notes in standard legalese that their timely debut is “subject to market and other conditions.” After a slow 2019 for tech IPOs the rebound of public markets in mid-pandemic 2020 has provided an awfully wide window for tech startups reaching for their debuts.

In the games space, we recently saw the debut of Unity Technologies, which makes a popular game engine that developers use to build and monetize gaming titles.

Roblox offers an interesting sell to both consumers and developers, shipping a free-to-play vision of the future which pushes developers away from graphics-intense game design towards building content that can be played on a wide variety of devices. The games company has been more successful than most in translating a first-party experience’s success into a robust developer network. Roblox’s platform has been particularly successful with young audiences.

News: Bumble balances gender representation of C-Suite with two new hires

• October 12, 2020
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Women-friendly dating and networking app Bumble announced today it’s expanding its C-Suite with two new hires: Anu Subramanian as Bumble’s Chief Financial Officer, who hails from Univision, and Selby Drummond as Chief Brand Officer, who is joining from Snap. The additions also create something of a milestone for Bumble, as the company can now claim

Women-friendly dating and networking app Bumble announced today it’s expanding its C-Suite with two new hires: Anu Subramanian as Bumble’s Chief Financial Officer, who hails from Univision, and Selby Drummond as Chief Brand Officer, who is joining from Snap. The additions also create something of a milestone for Bumble, as the company can now claim it has equal male-to-female representation across its C-Suite, which is, unfortunately, still unusual for a company of Bumble’s size.

Before the new hires, Bumble’s C-Suite included CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd, Chief Strategy Officer Sarah Jones Simmer,
General Counsel Mariko O’Shea, Chief of Staff Caroline Roache, President Tariq Shaukat, CMO Dominic Gallello, Chief Product Officer Miles Norris, CTO Ronen Benchetrit, CCO Robbie McKay, and Chief People Officer Tran Taylor.

Subramanian is joining Bumble from Univision Digital, where she had served as the Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. In this position, she helped lead Univision’s digital assets, including its direct-to-consumer business. Before Univision, Subramanian had worked at VICE Media where she was the Chief Financial Officer of the company’s global digital business. She also worked in the past at Scripps Networks in various roles, including CFO of digital.

Drummond, meanwhile, had been Snapchat’s first-ever Global Head of Fashion and Beauty Partnerships. Her work at Snap included leading strategy and launch efforts for Snapchat’s new fashion and shopping features, as well as content initiatives across the Snapchat, Bitmoji, and Spectacles products. Before Snap, Drummond worked at American Vogue for eight years, where she had been a senior fashion editor. In her last role, she had risen to Accessories and Special Projects Director, working on brand partnerships with Off-White, Air Jordan, Kith, and Proenza Schouler, and was involved with the magazine, website and events like the Met Gala.

The two new additions to Bumble’s executive lineup arrive shortly after the company’s recent hires of its first-ever President Tariq Shaukat and Chief Technology Officer, Ronen Benchetrit.

Bumble says Subramanian and Drummond will partner with Bumble’s new and legacy executive leaders to support the company’s plans to expand its app to more countries and support its growth in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

The news follows what’s been a busy year for the dating and networking app. At the end of last year, Bumble took control of its business from its main backer, Badoo, valuing the now-profitable dating app at $3 billion. The deal also allowed Bumble CEO Wolfe Herd to run Bumble and other previously Badoo-backed dating apps, including Badoo, Lumen and Chappy.

According to reports, Bumble hit 100 million users this summer and is preparing to IPO in 2021, possibly at a $6 billion-plus valuation.

“The additions of Anu and Selby underscore our commitment, along with Blackstone, to strengthen our bench with world class talent that deeply epitomize our mission and values, said Wolfe Herd in a statement about the hiring news. “Not only will their contributions provide a powerful impact on our businesses, they’ve also brought equal representation of women and men on our executive leadership team — a milestone that means a great deal to me on many levels,” she added.

News: Seraphim Capital’s space tech accelerator releases details of its newest Space Camp cohort

• October 12, 2020
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The U.K.’s Seraphim Capital, the country’s only space tech accelerator, has released details of its newest cohort as part of its Space Camp programme, timed with the end of World Space Week last week. 4pi Lab Raised so far: Undisclosed amount / Non-Equity Assistance from Creative Destruction Lab Description: “4pi Lab is developing a Low-Earth

The U.K.’s Seraphim Capital, the country’s only space tech accelerator, has released details of its newest cohort as part of its Space Camp programme, timed with the end of World Space Week last week.

4pi Lab
Raised so far: Undisclosed amount / Non-Equity Assistance from Creative Destruction Lab
Description: “4pi Lab is developing a Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellation providing real-time, wildfire detection, monitoring and reporting. Their unique sensor gives them the ability to detect wildfires at a 10m resolution globally helping to eradicate major catastrophic wildfire events.”

Clutch Space Systems
Raised so far: £300,000 from FSE Group Enterprise M3 Expansion Loan
Description: “Clutch Space Systems provides software-defined radio (SDR) ground stations for satellite communications. SDR ground station technology improves downlink communications, provides significant cost savings and is far more dynamic, acting as an enabler for the exponentially growing Satcoms market.”

Helix Technologies
Raised so far: N/A
Description: “Helix Technologies – enables precision GPS antennas, providing 10cm level accuracy. Through breakthroughs in manufacturing and RF technology, Helix has developed a new GNSS antenna with a ceramic core capable of precision dynamic position accuracy whilst being space efficient for demanding tel and navigation applications. The design also enables the antenna to be highly immune to reflection off infrastructure and jamming.”

Kinnami
Raised so far: Undisclosed amount / seed from ICE71 Accelerate, 25 June 2020
Description: “Kinnami uniquely secures and optimises data sharing, ongoing data migration and management across distributed systems. Kinnami has created a unique storage and security system, ‘AmiShare’, which fragments and encrypts data. By storing these encrypted fragments across a distributed network of devices, it can secure data collected on the edge and have application within Satcoms, Defence and Enterprise.”

Starfish Space
Raised so far: Undisclosed amount / seed, 1 December 2019
Description: “Starfish Space aims to create an on-demand, in-space transportation and maintenance service for orbiting satellites. Their proximity Operations software uses a combination of breakthrough orbital mechanics, Machine Vision AI, and a low-thrust electric propulsion system to enable them to use smaller and cheaper space tugs that can operate across orbits. This addresses Counter-space and Mission opportunities.”

Sust Global
Raised so far: N/A
Description: “Sust Global provides real-time geospatial monitoring at an asset-level for analyzing Climate Risk. Their platform uses data from multiple satellites and ground sources to create full-stack ‘Asset-Level Geospatial Analytics’. Sust combines this data with the latest Climate Models and Standardised Risk Assessments to analyze risk and gain quantitative actionable insights for the Financial Services sector.”

Vector Photonics
Raised so far: 2018 secured undisclosed funding from ICURe; 2019 £70,000 of funding from Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and £30,000 from a Glasgow company to support that award
Description: “Vector Photonics’ disruptive and revolutionary photonic crystal lasers push the boundaries of what is possible with conventional semiconductor lasers providing comparable costs and flexibility with edge-emitting laser performance. Its unique beam steering capability is industry-changing in Datacoms and aligned markets like LIDAR.”

News: Google updates Android Studio with better TensorFlow Lite support and a new database inspector

• October 12, 2020
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Google launched version 4.1 of Android Studio, its IDE for developing Android apps, into its stable channel today. As usual for Android Studio, the minor uptick in version numbers doesn’t quite do the update justice. It includes a vast number of new and improved features that should make life a little bit easier for Android

Google launched version 4.1 of Android Studio, its IDE for developing Android apps, into its stable channel today. As usual for Android Studio, the minor uptick in version numbers doesn’t quite do the update justice. It includes a vast number of new and improved features that should make life a little bit easier for Android developers. The team also fixed a whopping 2,370 bugs during this release cycle and closed 275 public issues.

Image Credits: Google

The highlights of today’s release are a new database inspector and better support for on-device machine learning by allowing developers to bring TensorFlow Lite models to Android, as well as the ability to run the Android Emulator right inside of Android Studio and support for testing apps for foldable phones in the emulator as well. That’s in addition to various other changes the company has outlined.

The one feature that will likely improve the quality of life for developers the most is the ability to run the Android Emulator right in Android Studio. That’s something the company announced earlier this summer, so it’s not a major surprise, but it’s a nice update for developers, as they won’t have to switch back and forth between different windows and tools to test their apps.

Talking about testing, the other update is support for foldable devices in the Android Emulator, which now allows developers to simulate the hinge angle sensor and posture changes so their apps can react accordingly. That’s still a niche market, obviously, but more and more developers are now aiming to offer apps to actually support these devices.

Image Credits: Google

Also new is improved support for TensorFlow Lite models in Android Studio, so that developers can bring those models to their apps, as well as a new database inspector that helps developers get easier insights into their queries and the data they return — and that lets them modify values while running their apps to see how their apps react to those.

Other updates include new templates in the New Project dialog that support Google’s Material Design Components, Dagger navigation support, System Trace UI improvements and new profilers to help developers optimize their apps’ performance and memory usage.

News: Amazon launches an AR app that works with new QR codes on its boxes

• October 12, 2020
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Amazon has quietly launched a new augmented reality application that works with QR codes on the company’s shipping boxes to create “interactive, shareable” AR experiences. Called simply “Amazon Augmented Reality,” the retailer describes the app as a “fun way to reuse your Amazon boxes until you’re ready to drop them in the recycling bin.” As

Amazon has quietly launched a new augmented reality application that works with QR codes on the company’s shipping boxes to create “interactive, shareable” AR experiences. Called simply “Amazon Augmented Reality,” the retailer describes the app as a “fun way to reuse your Amazon boxes until you’re ready to drop them in the recycling bin.”

As shown in the App Store’s screenshots of the new app, different Amazon boxes will offer unique activities for the AR experience. For example, one screenshot shows someone drawing the face on a pre-printed white pumpkin to turn it into a jack-o-lantern. When they then scan the QR code, the pumpkin jumps out as an AR object. Another screenshot shows an AR pumpkin and bat wings over top an image of a dog. And one shows the Amazon box turning into a little blue AR car when the QR code is scanned.

In the accompanying App Store video, there are other animated characters, including the Amazon smile logo itself an an AR corgi dog that jumps out playfully when the QR code is scanned.

The company notes in the description that if your iPhone is also capable of TrueDepth technology, the app can also use the device’s camera to track your facial movements to enable features like a “selfie” mode.

The app, which debuted a few days ago on the iOS App Store and Google Play, offers no other functionality if not used alongside an Amazon box that supports the new QR codes. (However, you can test out the experience here if you don’t have a box to use.)

Image Credits: Amazon

At launch, however, the app appears to focus only on the pumpkin AR experience. Once you have designed and scanned your pumpkin into AR, you can then press other buttons to decorate the pumpkin further — by giving it a hat or outfit, changing its light or color, among other things. You can also flip the camera around to display the pumpkin on your selfie image, where it moves along with your face.  You can then press the Camera button in the app to snap a photo of your creation to share on social media.

The new QR code-enabled boxes are only beginning to roll out now, so you may not have received one just yet, we understand. The boxes are also made using less material, as part of Amazon’s ongoing “Less Packaging, More Smiles” campaign.

Amazon has been dabbling in AR for some time, most recently with the launch of a new AR shopping feature that allows users of its main Amazon shopping app to visualized multiple items of furniture or decor in their room at the same time. A few years ago, it had also launched a simpler version of AR shopping with a feature called AR View in its Amazon iOS app, built using ARKit.  It had also once tried out “shoppable stickers” that used AR to place basic stickers of products in your space, instead of realistic representations of the items.

With its latest launch of the AR View feature, however, Amazon had done the work to support Apple’s latest version of ARKit and likely wanted to experiment further with the possibilities. The box-scanning AR app could serve as a way to test consumer demand for more AR products. But Amazon doesn’t appear to be using this app to collect extensive research data. The App Store description notes that all the information processed using the new technology in Amazon’s new AR Player will remain on the device, and is not “stored, processed or shared by Amazon.”

The app is currently available on iOS and Android as a free download.