Monthly Archives: October 2020

News: Affirm files confidentially to go public

• October 8, 2020
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This afternoon Affirm, a startup focused on providing point-of-sale credit to consumers making online purchases, announced that it has filed to go public. The filing is confidential, so there’s little to be gleaned about the company’s performance from the news. That Affirm was exploring a public offering was reported by the Wall Street Journal back

This afternoon Affirm, a startup focused on providing point-of-sale credit to consumers making online purchases, announced that it has filed to go public.

The filing is confidential, so there’s little to be gleaned about the company’s performance from the news. That Affirm was exploring a public offering was reported by the Wall Street Journal back in July. In the aftermath of that news, TechCrunch tried to understand the valuation that Affirm was said to be targeting in its debut, which we placed at as much as $10 billion.

Affirm has been richly funded throughout its private life. The fintech unicorn has raised private funds in excess of $1 billion, including a $500 million Series G in September of 2020, a $300 million Series F in April of 2019, and a $200 million Series E in December of 2017. Affirm also raised more than $400 million in earlier equity rounds, and a $100 million debt line in late 2016.

Many venture bets are therefore riding on the success of Affirm and its future liquidity.

The company was valued at $2.9 billion at the time of its $300 million Series F last year according to PitchBook data. The company’s most recent valuation is not known. How much of a step-up a $10 billion public valuation would be, therefore, from its final private valuation is not clear.

Affirm will enter warm public markets if it chooses to list in short-order. The third quarter of 2020 was a bonanza of public-market liquidity, as the United States saw its most active quarter of public offerings since at least 2016, partially driven by the craze around SPACs. With retail investors and larger checkbooks alike active in their interest for growth-focused shares, unprofitable tech startups have done well in their recent debuts.

Those that make money have done even better, certain outliers like Snowflake aside.

After a confidential filing, Affirm will wait to hear back from the SEC on its application, and then will have the choice to file a non-confidential S-1 when it is ready. There is no set timeline here, but once the company’s numbers are public, we’ll be diving into them. Affirm joins other recent companies like Palantir who filed their public offerings confidentially first, before later making them public.

News: These 3 factors are holding back podcast monetization

• October 8, 2020
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If we want podcasting to continue to scale beyond its current and projected advertising revenue heights, we need to resolve some fundamental challenges.

Podcast advertising growth is inhibited by three major factors:

• Lack of macro distribution, consumption and audience data.
• Current methods of conversion tracking.
• Idea of a “playbook” for podcast performance marketing.

Because of these limiting factors, it’s currently more of an art than a science to piece disparate data from multiple sources, firms, agencies and advertisers, into a somewhat conclusive argument to brands as to why they should invest in podcast advertising.

1. Lack of macro distribution, consumption and audience data

There were several resources that released updates based on what they saw in terms of consumption when COVID-19 hit. Hosting platforms, publishers and third-party tracking platforms all put out their best guesses as to what was happening. Advertisers’ own podcast listening habits had been upended due to lockdowns; they wanted to know how broader changes in listening habits were affecting their campaigns. Were downloads going up, down or staying the same? What was happening with sports podcasts, without sports?

Read part 1 of this article, Podcast advertising has a business intelligence gap, on TechCrunch.

At Right Side Up, we receive and analyze all of the available research from major publishers (Stitcher, aCast), to major platforms (Megaphone) and third-party research firms (Podtrac, IAB, Edison Research). However, no single entity encompasses the entire space or provides the kind of interactive, off-the-shelf customizable SaaS product we’d prefer, and that digitally native marketers expect. Plus, there isn’t anything published in real-time; most sources publish once or twice annually.

So what did we do? We reached out to trusted publishers and partners to gather data around shifting consumption due to COVID-19 ourselves, and determined that, though there was a drop in downloads in the short term, it was neither as precipitous nor as enduring as some had feared. This was confirmed by some early reports available, but how were we to evidence our own piecewise sample with another? Moreover, how could you invest 6-7 figures of marketing dollars if you didn’t have the firsthand intelligence we gathered and our subject matter experts on deck to make constant adjustments to your approach?

We were able to piece together trends we’re seeing that point to increased download activity in recent months that surpass February/March heights. We’ve determined that the industry is back on track for growth with a less steep, but still growing, listenership trajectory. But even though more recent reports have been published, a longitudinal, objective resource has not yet emerged to show a majority of the industry’s journey through one of the most disruptive media environments in recent history.

There is a need for a new or existing entity to create cohesive data points; a third party that collects and reports listening across all major hosts and distribution points, or “podcatchers,” as they’re colloquially called. As a small example: Wouldn’t it be nice to objectively track seasonal listening of news/talk programming and schedule media planning and flighting around that? Or to know what the demographics of that audience look like compared to other verticals?

What percentage increase in efficiency and/or volume would you gain from your marketing efforts in the channel? Would that delta be profitable against paying a nominal or ongoing licensing or research fee for most brands?

These challenges aren’t just affecting advertisers. David Cohn, VP of Sales at Megaphone, agrees that “full transparency from the listening platforms would make our jobs easier, along with everyone else’s in the industry. We’d love to know how much of an episode is listened to, whether an ad is skipped, etc. Along the same lines, having a central source for [audience] measurement would be ideal — similar to what Nielsen has been for TV.” This would also enable us to understand cross-show ad frequency, another black box for advertisers and the industry at large.

News: Podcast advertising has a business intelligence gap

• October 8, 2020
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Widespread misinformation and misconceptions are delaying ad revenue growth for podcast creators, publishers and networks.

There are sizable, meaningful gaps in the knowledge collection and publication of podcast listening and engagement statistics. Coupled with still-developing advertising technology because of the distributed nature of the medium, this causes uncertainty in user consumption and ad exposure and impact. There is also a lot of misinformation and misconception about the challenges marketers face in these channels.

All of this compounds to delay ad revenue growth for creators, publishers and networks by inhibiting new and scaling advertising investment, resulting in lost opportunity among all parties invested in the channel. There’s a viable opportunity for a collective of industry professionals to collaborate on a solution for unified, free reporting, or a new business venture that collects and publishes more comprehensive data that ultimately promotes growth for podcast advertising.

Podcasts have always had challenges when it comes to the analytics behind distribution, consumption and conversion. For an industry projected to exceed $1 billion in ad spend in 2021, it’s impressive that it’s built on RSS: A stable, but decades-old technology that literally means really simple syndication. Native to the technology is a one-way data flow, which democratizes the medium from a publishing perspective and makes it easy for creators to share content, but difficult for advertisers trying to measure performance and figure out where to invest ad dollars. This is compounded by a fractured creator, server and distribution/endpoint environment unique to the medium.

For creators, podcasting has begun to normalize distribution analytics through a rising consolidation of hosts like Art19, Megaphone, Simplecast and influence from the IAB. For advertisers, though, consumption and conversion analytics still lag far behind. For the high-growth tech companies we work with, and as performance marketers ourselves, measuring the return on investment of our ad spend is paramount.

Because podcasts lag other media channels in business intelligence, it’s still an underinvested channel relative to its ability to reach consumers and impact purchasing behavior. This was evidenced when COVID-19 hit this year, as advertisers that were highly invested or highly interested in investing in podcast advertising asked a very basic question: “Is COVID-19, and its associated lifestyle shifts, affecting podcast listening? If so, how?”

The challenges of decentralized podcast ad data

We reached out to trusted partners to ask them for insights specific to their shows.

Nick Southwell-Keely, U.S. director of Sales & Brand Partnerships at Acast, said: “We’re seeing our highest listens ever even amid the pandemic. Across our portfolio, which includes more than 10,000 podcasts, our highest listening days in Acast history have occurred in [July].” Most partners provided similar anecdotes, but without centralized data, there was no one, singular firm to go to for an answer, nor one report to read that would cover 100% of the space. Almost more importantly, there is no third-party perspective to validate any of the anecdotal information shared with us.

Publishers, agencies and firms all scrambled to answer the question. Even still, months later, we don’t have a substantial and unifying update on exactly what, if anything, happened, or if it’s still happening, channel-wide. Rather, we’re still checking in across a wide swath of partners to identify and capitalize on microtrends. Contrast this to native digital channels like paid search and paid social, and connected, yet formerly “traditional” media (e.g., TV, CTV/OTT) that provide consolidated reports that marketers use to make decisions about their media investments.

The lasting murkiness surrounding podcast media behavior during COVID-19 is just one recent case study on the challenges of a decentralized (or nonexistent) universal research vendor/firm, and how it can affect advertisers’ bottom lines. A more common illustration of this would be an advertiser pulling out of ads, for fear of underdelivery on a flat rate unit, missing out on incremental growth because they were worried about not being able to get download reporting and getting what they paid for. It’s these kinds of basic shortcomings that the ad industry needs to account for before we can hit and exceed the ad revenue heights projected for podcasting.

If there’s a silver lining to the uncertainty in podcast advertising metrics and intelligence, it’s that supersavvy growth marketers have embraced the nascent medium and allowed it to do what it does best: personalized endorsements that drive conversions. While increased data will increase demand and corresponding ad premiums, for now, podcast advertising “veterans” are enjoying the relatively low profile of the space.

As Ariana Martin, senior manager, Offline Growth Marketing at Babbel notes, “On the other hand, podcast marketing, through host read ads, has something personal to it, which might change over time and across different podcasts. Because of this personal element, I am not sure if podcast marketing can ever be transformed into a pure data game. Once you get past the understanding that there is limited data in podcasting, it is actually very freeing as long as you’re seeing a certain baseline of good results, [such as] sales attributed to podcast [advertising] via [survey based methodology], for example.”

So how do we grow from the industry feeling like a secret game-changing channel for a select few brands, to widespread adoption across categories and industries?

Below, we’ve laid out the challenges of nonuniversal data within the podcast space, and how that hurts advertisers, publishers, third-party research/tracking organizations, and broadly speaking, the podcast ecosystem. We’ve also outlined the steps we’re taking to make incremental solutions, and our vision for the industry moving forward.

Lingering misconceptions about podcast measurement

1. Download standardization

In search of a rationale to how such a buzzworthy growth channel lags behind more established media types’ advertising revenue, many articles will point to “listener” or “download” numbers not being normalized. As far as we can tell at Right Side Up, where we power most of the scaled programs run by direct advertisers, making us a top three DR buying force in the industry, the majority of publishers have adopted the IAB Podcast Measurement Technical Guidelines Version 2.0.

This widespread adoption solved the “apples to apples” problem as it pertained to different networks/shows valuing a variable, nonstandard “download” as an underlying component to their CPM calculations. Previous to this widespread adoption, it simply wasn’t known whether a “download” from publisher X was equal to a “download” from publisher Y, making it difficult to aim for a particular CPM as a forecasting tool for performance marketing success.

However, the IAB 2.0 guidelines don’t completely solve the unique-user identification problem, as Dave Zohrob, CEO of Chartable points out. “Having some sort of anonymized user identifier to better calculate audience size would be fantastic —  the IAB guidelines offer a good approximation given the data we have but [it] would be great to actually know how many listeners are behind each IP/user-agent combo.”

2. Proof of ad delivery

A second area of business intelligence gaps that many articles point to as a cause of inhibited growth is a lack of “proof of delivery.” Ad impressions are unverifiable, and the channel doesn’t have post logs, so for podcast advertisers the analogous evidence of spots running is access to “airchecks,” or audio clippings of the podcast ads themselves.

Legacy podcast advertisers remember when a full-time team of entry-level staffers would hassle networks via phone or email for airchecks, sometimes not receiving verification that the spot had run until a week or more after the fact. This delay in the ability to accurately report spend hampered fast-moving performance marketers and gave the illusion of podcasts being a slow, stiff, immovable media type.

Systematic aircheck collection has been a huge advent and allowed for an increase in confidence in the space — not only for spend verification, but also for creative compliance and optimization. Interestingly, this feature has come up almost as a byproduct of other development, as the companies who offer these services actually have different core business focuses: Magellan AI, our preferred partner, is primarily a competitive intelligence platform, but pivoted to also offer airchecking services after realizing what a pain point it was for advertisers; Veritone, an AI company that’s tied this service to its ad agency, Veritone One; and Podsights, a pixel-based attribution modeling solution.

3. Competitive intelligence

Last, competitive intelligence and media research continue to be a challenge. Magellan AI and Podsights offer a variety of fee and free tiers and methods of reporting to show a subset of the industry’s activity. You can search a show, advertiser or category, and get a less-than-whole, but still directionally useful, picture of relevant podcast advertising activity. While not perfect, there are sufficient resources to at least see the tip of the industry iceberg as a consideration point to your business decision to enter podcasts or not.

As Sean Creeley, founder of Podsights, aptly points out: “We give all Podsights research data, analysis, posts, etc. away for free because we want to help grow the space. If [a brand], as a DIY advertiser, desired to enter podcasting, it’s a downright daunting task. Research at least lets them understand what similar companies in their space are doing.”

There is also a nontech tool that publishers would find valuable. When we asked Shira Atkins, co-founder of Wonder Media Network, how she approaches research in the space, she had a not-at-all-surprising, but very refreshing response: “To be totally honest, the ‘research’ I do is texting and calling the 3-5 really smart sales people I know and love in the space. The folks who were doing radio sales when I was still in high school, and the podcast people who recognize the messiness of it all, but have been successful at scaling campaigns that work for both the publisher and the advertiser. I wish there was a true tracker of cross-industry inventory — how much is sold versus unsold. The way I track the space writ large is by listening to a sample set of shows from top publishers to get a sense for how they’re selling and what their ads are like.”

Even though podcast advertising is no longer limited by download standardization, spend verification and competitive research, there are still hurdles that the channel has not yet overcome.

The conclusion to this article, These 3 factors are holding back podcast monetization, is available exclusively to Extra Crunch subscribers.

News: Killer Mike, former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, and Bounce TV founder Ryan Glover launch a digital bank

• October 8, 2020
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A group of Black Atlanta businessmen, politicians and entertainers — including former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, the entertainer Michael Render (better known as Killer Mike) and Bounce TV founder Ryan Glover — have launched a new digital bank focused on developing and promoting local communities and cultivating Black and Latinx entrepreneurs and small businesses. Named

A group of Black Atlanta businessmen, politicians and entertainers — including former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, the entertainer Michael Render (better known as Killer Mike) and Bounce TV founder Ryan Glover — have launched a new digital bank focused on developing and promoting local communities and cultivating Black and Latinx entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Named Greenwood in an homage to the thriving Tulsa, Okla., business community known as “Black Wall Street” that was destroyed by white rioters in 1921, the digital bank has several features designed to promote social causes and organizations for the Black and Latinx community.

For every sign-up to the bank, Greenwood will donate the equivalent of five free meals to an organization addressing food insecurity. And every time a customer uses a Greenwood debit card, the bank will make a donation to either the United Negro College Fund, Goodr (an organization that addresses food insecurity) or the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

In addition, each month the bank will provide a $10,000 grant to a Black or Latinx small business owner that uses the company’s financial services.

For Render, the decision to launch a new digital bank alongside Young and Glover was a way to link Atlanta’s well-established, centuries-old Black business community with the technologies that are redefining wealth and creating new opportunities in the twenty first century. It was also a way to equip a new generation with financial tools that could empower them instead of undermine them.

“What I have learned about capitalism is that you’re either going to be a participant in it or a victim of it,” said Render. “The ultimate protest is focusing your dollar like a weapon.”

Young, who is also the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, had seen the ways digital banking technologies were transforming the social order in countries like India — reducing the power of payday lenders and providing greater economic access — and wanted to bring those opportunities to communities in the U.S.

Atlanta is a perfect home for a new Black-owned digital bank. After riots in 1906 destroyed Atlanta’s own bustling Black business district in a prelude to the Greenwood Massacre 15 years later, the community rebuilt with banks like Citizen’s Trust (founded in 1921) and Carver (founded in 1946) serving the city’s Black community.

Rendon, a serial entrepreneur who owns a chain of barber shops called the SWAG Shop, some real estate, and a restaurant along with the rapper TI, said that he’s not just a founder of Greenwood, he’ll soon become a customer.

“Today, a dollar circulates for 20 days in the white community but only six hours in the Black community,” said Render in a statement.”Moreover, a Black person is twice as likely as a white person to be denied a mortgage. This lack of fairness in the financial system is why we created Greenwood.”

Greenwood will offer a physical debit card and savings and checking accounts to its customers — along with all of the digital features one would expect, including integrations with Apple, Samsung and Google Pay, the ability to make peer-to-peer payments, mobile checking deposits and free ATM usage at over 30,000 locations.

“It’s no secret that traditional banks have failed the Black and Latinx community,” said Glover, in a statement. “We needed to create a new financial platform that understands our history and our needs going forward, a banking platform built by us and for us, a platform that helps us build a stronger future for our communities. This is our time to take back control of our lives and our financial future. That is why we launched Greenwood, modern banking for the culture.”

To run the bank, the founding team hired Aparicio Giddins, who’s serving as the company’s president and chief technology officer. David Tapscott, a former executive with Combs Enterprises and Green Dot, is serving as the company’s chief marketing officer. Andrew “Bo” Young III, the managing partner of Andrew Young Investment Group and Paul Judge, the co-founder of Pindrop and TechSquare Labs, both have seats on the company’s board of directors.

The timing for Greenwood’s launch is somewhat auspicious, coming as it does nearly a century after the launch of Citizen’s Trust and days after the chief executive of Wells Fargo, Charles Scharf, said really, really dumb things about diversity in the financial services industry.

Backing the company is a $3 million commitment from undisclosed angel investors. The bank is currently taking deposits and the hope, according to Rendon, is for it to start a new wave of entrepreneurial activity among young Black and Latinx community members and their allies.

“The work that we did in the civil rights movement wasn’t just about being able to sit at the counter. It was also about being able to own the restaurant,” said Ambassador Young. “We have the skills, talent and energy to compete anywhere in the world, but to grow the economy, it has to be based on the spirit of the universe and not the greed of the universe. Killer Mike, Ryan and I are launching Greenwood to continue this work of empowering Black and brown people to have economic opportunity.”

News: Apple is extending some AppleTV+ subs through February 2021 for free

• October 8, 2020
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Apple told me today that it will be extending AppleTV+ subscriptions that are set to end November 1, 2020 through January 31, 2021 through their billing date in February of 2021. The basic situation is that Apple gave away a free year of AppleTV+ to new device purchasers last year and those are all set

Apple told me today that it will be extending AppleTV+ subscriptions that are set to end November 1, 2020 through January 31, 2021 through their billing date in February of 2021.

The basic situation is that Apple gave away a free year of AppleTV+ to new device purchasers last year and those are all set to end in November. Apple knows everyone is still looking at a tough winter ahead filled with COVID-related restrictions so it’s bumping those subs out to February.

Monthly users whose subscription start date is before November 1st, 2020 also get a deal, with a $4.99 credit (the cost of an AppleTV+ subscription) appearing for every month between November 2020 and February 2021. You do not have to do anything to receive the credit and users will be getting emails notifying them of these extensions/credits.

And, of course, if it gets to hold the total sub number steady through Q4 of a tough economic year so much the better, right?

AppleTV+ had a bit of a slow burn start, with a big sub onramp in the form of devices and some high profile launches that were tempered by early reviews of their marquee programming. But people warmed to the shows over time. 

I believed at the time that it was a bit of natural sugar crash happening. 

That proved out over time as The Morning Show ended up winning AppleTV+ its first Prime Time Emmy award. 

Total award nominations for Apple Originals now number 114 with 35 wins. 

And, by the way, Ted Lasso is one of the more clever and humane shows currently streaming at the moment. Please go watch it. It’s a well-acted melange of sport, non-toxic masculinity and heartfelt drama.

Also, as a quick note, if you were a day-one purchaser of an iOS device last year, it’s possible that your free year is actually ending October 31. But don’t worry, you’re covered in this offer, too. 

Here are the particulars of the deal for easy copying and pasting:

• If your AppleTV+ subscription ends on November 1, 2020 through January 31 of 2021 Apple is extending the free year to your sub date in February of 2021.
• This means that the yearly subscriber extension applies to people who subbed prior to January 31, 2020.
• As an example, if your sub was set to end November 15th 2020 then your first billing date would now be February 15th, 2020.
• If people signed up for yearly subs without a new device purchase during that same date period they will also get free through February 2021.
• If you have signed up for a monthly subscription before November 1st, 2020, you’ll get a $4.99 credit per month. 
• The new device program where you get a year free will still continue.
• Customers will get emails about this.

News: Google Assistant can now control Android apps

• October 8, 2020
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Google today announced it’s making it possible to use the voice command “Hey Google” to not just open but also perform specific tasks within Android apps. The feature will be rolled out to all Google Assistant-enabled Android phones, allowing users to launch apps with their voice as well as search inside apps or perform specific

Google today announced it’s making it possible to use the voice command “Hey Google” to not just open but also perform specific tasks within Android apps. The feature will be rolled out to all Google Assistant-enabled Android phones, allowing users to launch apps with their voice as well as search inside apps or perform specific tasks — like ordering food, playing music, posting to social media, hailing a ride, and more.

For example, users could say something like, “Hey Google, search cozy blankets on Etsy,” “open Selena Gomez on Snapchat,” “start my run with Nike Run Club,” or “check news on Twitter.”

At launch, Google says these sorts of voice commands will work with more than 30 of the top apps on Google Play in English globally, with more apps coming soon. Some of the supported apps today include Spotify, Snapchat, Twitter, Walmart, Discord, Etsy, MyFitnessPal, Mint, Nike Adapt, Nike Run Club, eBay, Kroger, and Postmates, Wayfair, to name a few.

If the specific voice command you would use to perform a common task is a little clumsy, the feature will also allow you to create a custom shortcut phrase instead. That means, instead of saying “Hey Google, tighten my shoes with Nike Adapt,” you could create a command that just said, “Hey Google, lace it.”

To get started with shortcuts, Android users can say “Hey Google, show my shortcuts” to get to the correct Settings screen.

The feature is similar to Apple’s support for using Siri with iOS apps, which also includes the ability to open apps, perform tasks and record your own custom phrase.

In Google’s case, the ability to perform tasks inside an app is implemented on the developer’s side by mapping users’ intents to specific functionality inside their apps. This feature, known as App Actions, allows users to open their favorite apps with a voice command. And, with the added functionality, lets users say “Hey Google” to search within the app or to open specific app pages.

Google says it has grown its catalog to include over 60 intents across 10 verticals, including Finance, Ridesharing, Food Ordering, Fitness, and now, Social, Games, Travel & Local, Productivity, Shopping and Communications, too.

To help users understand how and when they can use these new App Actions, Google says it’s building touchpoints in Android that will help them learn when they use certain voice commands. For instance, if a user said “Hey Google, show me Taylor Swift,” it may highlight a suggestion chip that will guide the users to opening the search result on Twitter.

Image Credits: Google

Related to this news, Google says it also released two new English voices for developers to leverage when building custom experiences for Assistant on Smart Displays, alongside other developer tools and resources for those building for displays.

The Google Assistant upgrade for apps was one of several Android improvements Google highlighted today. The company also says it’s adding screen-sharing to Google Duo, expanding its Verified Calls anti-spam feature to more devices (Android 9 and up), and updating the Google Play Movies & TV app to become the new “Google TV” app, announced last week.

On the accessibility front, it’s introducing new tools for hearing loss with Sound Notifications and others for communicating using Action blocks, aimed at people with cerebral palsy, Down Syndrome, autism, aphasia, and other speech related disabilities.

The features are available now.

News: Enhanced computer vision, sensors raise manufacturing stakes for robots as a service

• October 8, 2020
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Firms developing computer vision technology for standard robots, developments in 3D vision and so-called “Robots as a Service” are defining the next wave of automation.

For more than two decades, robotics market commentaries have predicted a shift, particularly in manufacturing, from traditional industrial manipulators to a new generation of mobile, sensing robots, called “cobots.” Cobots are agile assistants that use internal sensors and AI processing to operate tools or manipulate components in a shared workspace, while maintaining safety.

It hasn’t happened. Companies have successfully deployed cobots, but the rate of adoption is lagging behind expectations.

According to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), cobots sold in 2019 made up just 3% of the total industrial robots installed. A report published by Statista projects that in 2022, cobots’ market share will advance to 8.5%. This is a fraction of a February 2018 study cited by the Robotic Industries Association that forecasted by 2025, 34% of the new robots being sold in the U.S. will be cobots.

To see a cobot in action, here’s the Kuka LBR iiwa. To ensure safe operation, cobots come with built-in constraints, like limited strength and speed. Those limitations have also limited their adoption.

As cobots’ market share languishes, standard industrial robots are being retrofitted with computer vision technology, allowing for collaborative work combining the speed and strength of industrial robots with the problem-solving skills and finesse of humans.

This article will document the declining interest in cobots, the reasons for it and the technology that is replacing it. We report on two firms developing computer vision technology for standard robots and describe how developments in 3D vision and so-called “robots as a service” (yes, RaaS) are defining this faster-growing second generation of robots that can work alongside humans.

What are robotics sensing platforms?

News: Blissfully expands from SaaS management into wider IT services aimed at midmarket

• October 8, 2020
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When Blissfully launched in 2016, it was focused on helping companies understand their SaaS usage inside their organizations, but over time the company has seen that there is a wider need, especially in midmarket companies, and today it announced it was expanding into broader IT management. Company co-founder and CEO Ariel Diaz says that the

When Blissfully launched in 2016, it was focused on helping companies understand their SaaS usage inside their organizations, but over time the company has seen that there is a wider need, especially in midmarket companies, and today it announced it was expanding into broader IT management.

Company co-founder and CEO Ariel Diaz says that the startup began helping to track SaaS usage, eventually expanding into employee onboarding and exiting, and today they are expanding into a broader set of IT services.

“Our vision when starting a company was really that IT is being redefined in the age of SaaS. So step one was to help with everything around managing SaaS. And step two is what does that mean in terms of the broader IT management vision,” Diaz told TechCrunch.

Blissfully believed that SaaS was going to take a bigger and bigger part of IT in terms of mindshare, spend and how you manage it, and they turned out to be right. Now, they felt the time is right to expand their original idea to encompass more of the IT management function.

That has resulted in a newly expanded platform they are releasing today that not only includes the earlier SaaS management components that it’s been providing all along, but also four other new categories.

For starters they are offering IT asset management. “We are now offering the ability to track not just SaaS applications, but all your IT assets including hardware devices and traditional software,” Diaz said.

Next, they are including help desk management and ticketing capabilities to handle requests that fall outside of their SaaS management workflows. In addition, they are adding role-based access control to allow different people access to various IT management services, which is increasingly essential during the pandemic as people are being forced to troubleshoot and manage various IT issues from home. Finally, the startup is opening up its APIs so that IT can tap into that and build customized functionality or workflows on top of the Blissfully platform.

Diaz believes that the company has reached a point of maturity when it comes to SaaS management, and they saw a need in the midmarket to provide these additional IT services that larger organizations tend to get from a company like ServiceNow.

The new services will be available starting today from Blissfully.

News: Millennial Media’s Paul Palmieri launches Tradeswell, a startup promising to fix e-commerce margins

• October 8, 2020
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A new startup called Tradeswell said it’s using artificial intelligence to help direct-to-consumer and e-commerce brands build healthier businesses. The company is led by Paul Palmieri, who previously took mobile advertising company Millennial Media public and then sold it to TechCrunch’s corporate parent AOL (now Verizon Media). Afterwards, Palmieri founded Grit Capital Partners, but he

A new startup called Tradeswell said it’s using artificial intelligence to help direct-to-consumer and e-commerce brands build healthier businesses.

The company is led by Paul Palmieri, who previously took mobile advertising company Millennial Media public and then sold it to TechCrunch’s corporate parent AOL (now Verizon Media). Afterwards, Palmieri founded Grit Capital Partners, but he told me he decided to join Tradeswell as a co-founder and CEO because he was so excited about the vision.

Palmieri said that just as Millennial helped independent app developers get smarter about advertising, Tradeswell gives upstart e-commerce companies the data they need to compete with “the big platform behemoths.”

It’s no secret that a number of direct-to-consumer companies have struggled to make a profit due to challenging unit economics. Palmieri suggested that one reason for this is the fragmentation of their tools and data.

“If you’re selling something like Campbell’s Soup, you want to figure out, how is your tomato soup business and your chicken soup business?” Palmieri said. “Today, brands are saying, ‘How’s my Amazon business? How’s my Shopify business? How’s my Shopify business on Instagram?’”

So rather than relying on those platforms for data, Palmieri suggested brands want an indpendent platform that they trust to bring everything together, “where it’s a combination of a Bloomberg terminal plus a trading platform.”

Tradeswell’s AI focuses in six key areas of an e-commerce business: marketing, retail, inventory, logistics, forecasting, lifetime value and financials. Palmieri suggested that in some cases (like ad-buying), Tradeswell will replace existing software, while in other cases it will integrate.

“Think of us as a neural AI layer, where [a brand] might have different platform relationships, which are the fingers, and we’re the AI brain,” he said. “We’re giving brands insights and forecasts: If you make this change, we anticipate XYZ will happen.”

In some cases, like the aforementioned advertising, Tradeswell can also support full automation, so that merchants don’t have to worry about “setting up and tearing down hundreds of campaigns.”

The key, Palmieri said, is that the platform has access to the business’ full financials, so it can optimize for net margins, rather than simply driving the most impressions or clicks or sales.

While Tradeswell is only coming out of stealth mode today, it’s already been working more than 100 brands. For example, Steve Tracy of Red Monkey Foods and San Francisco Salt Company said in a statement that the startup’s “unique, comprehensive, algorithmic approach has helped us grow sales, identify commercialization opportunities and forecast far more accurately.”

News: Instacart raises $200M more at $17.7B valuation

• October 8, 2020
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Instacart announced today that it has raised $200 million in a new funding round featuring prior investors. D1 Capital and Valiant Peregrine Fund led the investment. Instacart is now worth $17.7 billion, post-money, or $17.5 billion pre-money. The plan is to use the funding to focus on introducing new features and tools to improve the

Instacart announced today that it has raised $200 million in a new funding round featuring prior investors. D1 Capital and Valiant Peregrine Fund led the investment. Instacart is now worth $17.7 billion, post-money, or $17.5 billion pre-money. The plan is to use the funding to focus on introducing new features and tools to improve the customer experience, and further support Instacart’s enterprise and ads businesses, according to a blog post.

Previously in 2020, Instacart raised $100 million in July, and $225 million in June. The June round valued the company at around $13.7 billion, meaning that the unicorn’s new funding round — raised just months later — came at a much higher price.

Instacart, like some other tech, and tech-enabled businesses, has seen demand for its service expand during the pandemic. It’s not hard to trace a connection between COVID-19 and its business results, as folks wanting to stay at home have turned to on-demand services to keep themselves safe.

The growth shown by Uber’s food delivery business is another example of this trend.

Instacart’s valuation has more than doubled since its 2018 Series F, when it was worth around $7.9 billion. The pace at which Instacart has created paper value is impressive, though its IPO plans appear murky from the outside and how much of the its COVID-bump will be retained when the pandemic ends is not yet clear.

The startup famously turned a profit during a month in Q2, worth around $10 million per The Information. The same report indicated that Instacart lost around $300 million in 2019. What the company’s full-year profitability profile will look like is not know.

TechCrunch sent a number of questions to the firm, including if it has had any further profitable months in 2020, and how quickly it grew in Q3 2020. The company’s spokespeople did not answer those questions.

“Today’s investment is a testament to the strong conviction our existing investors have in the strength of our teams and the important role Instacart plays for customers, partners, and the entire grocery ecosystem,” Instacart CEO Apoorva Mehta said in a press release. “I’m incredibly proud of our team’s work to scale our business this past year and rise to meet the unprecedented consumer demand and growth.”

Instacart is one of the company’s caught up in a regulatory war after California passed AB5, which changed the state’s rules on gig workers. A voter proposition — Prop 22 — that would keep rideshare drivers and delivery workers classified as independent contractors, is coming up for a vote in California. Instacart is in favor of the proposition, along with Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Postmates (now owned by Uber).

Uber, Lyft, Instacart and DoorDash have collectively contributed $184,008,361.46 to the Yes on 22 campaign. Those contributions have been monetary, non-monetary and have come in the form of loans. In September, the four companies each committed another $17.5 million to Yes on Prop 22 in monetary contributions. Of all the measures on this November’s ballot, Yes on Prop 22 has received the most contributions, according to California’s Fair Political Practices Commission.

Beyond Prop 22, Instacart is facing a lawsuit from Washington D.C. District Attorney General Karl A. Racine that alleges the company charged customers millions of dollars in “deceptive service fees” and failed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of sales tax. The suit seeks restitution for customers who paid those service fees, as well as back taxes and interest on taxes owed to D.C. Specifically, it alleges Instacart misled customers regarding the 10% service fee to think it was a tip for the delivery person, from September 2016 to April 2018.

Meanwhile, amid the pandemic and wildfires in California, workers have demanded personal protective equipment and better pay, and, most recently, disaster relief.