Monthly Archives: November 2020

News: S16 Angel Fund launches a community of founders to invest in other founders

• November 19, 2020
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Ten years ago a group of young tech founders in Moscow decided to get an apartment together, at Shmitovskiy lane 16. In time, the ecosystem around the group swelled to the point where today it now encompasses 300 entrepreneurs, executives, artists, and many other industries. The group now organizes the annual ‘Founders for Founders’ conference,

Ten years ago a group of young tech founders in Moscow decided to get an apartment together, at Shmitovskiy lane 16.

In time, the ecosystem around the group swelled to the point where today it now encompasses 300 entrepreneurs, executives, artists, and many other industries. The group now organizes the annual ‘Founders for Founders’ conference, in Russia and other locations. Just as in other places around the world, the members decided to help each other.

So they formed the Shmit16 Founder Community, and today they launch the S16 Angel Fund to invest in startups globally. Although tiny by investment standards (the funds first close will be $5 million) firm will focus on ‘founder-in-founder’ investments and has already backed 5 companies under this model. The fund plans to invest in five more companies in the next six months with an average of $250k ticket.

So far the Angel group has invested in AppFollow, Lokalize Simple, a fasting and diet management mobile app, and Anytype, a new operating environment for the modern internet.

The driving ethos of the S16 Fund is a focus on developing human potential and creating a productive peer context where information flows freely and participants can learn from each other.

Founding partners of the fund and community members include serial entrepreneurs Anatoly Marin, co-founder of Payment Systems (a mobile fintech in Eastern Europe); Aleks Shamis -partner at Dostavista (a crowdsourced same-day delivery service operating in 10 countries), Mikhail Peregudov, founder of Partiya Edy, recently acquired by Yandex ($YNDX), Oleg Bibergan, former Executive Director at Goldman Sachs, and others. Prior to this, the partners have invested in over 30 companies as individual angels.

S16 cofounder Anatoly Marin says: “There is a difference between helping a founder as someone whom you relate to on a human level, because you’ve been in these difficult places yourself, and helping a founder to get an ROI on your capital. The former helps shape relations where founders are open to share the most difficult subjects and get help. It is handy here that we’ve founded companies in different areas and can look at things from diverse perspectives.”

“The relationships in our community have always been about friendship, trust, and personal growth, with financial gains being an organic second-order outcome,” says S16 Angel Fund co-founder Aleks Shamis. “After 10 years, starting a fund was a natural next step in helping founders like ourselves.”

Beyond investment, S16 offers access to its network to help founders solve problems, find mentors and operators with business domain expertise such as go-to-market strategy, pricing, coaching for the executive team, and others.

News: Investors including Microsoft’s climate fund back hyperlocal environmental monitoring tech developer Aclima

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Mitigating the effects of climate change and pollution is a global problem, but it’s one that requires local solutions. While that seems like common sense, most communities around the world don’t have tools that can monitor emissions and pollutants at the granular levels they need to develop plans that can address these pollutants. Aclima, a

Mitigating the effects of climate change and pollution is a global problem, but it’s one that requires local solutions.

While that seems like common sense, most communities around the world don’t have tools that can monitor emissions and pollutants at the granular levels they need to develop plans that can address these pollutants.

Aclima, a decade-old startup founded by Davida Herzl, is looking to solve that problem and has raised $40 million in new funding from strategic and institutional venture capital investors to accelerate its growth.

“We’ve built a platform that enables hyperlocal measurement. We measure all the greenhouse gases as well as regulated air pollutants. We deploy sensor networks that combine mobile sensing where we use fleets of vehicles as a roving network. And we bring that all together and bring that into a back end,” Herzl said. 

The networks of air quality monitoring technology that exists — and is subsidized by the government — is costly and lacking in the kinds of minute details on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis that communities can use to effectively address pollution problems.

“A typical air quality monitoring station would cost somewhere between $1 million to $2 million. Here in the Bay Area, the regulator is paying less than $3 million for access to all of this for the entire Bay Area,” Herzl said. 

Aclima’s technologies are already being deployed across California, and some of the company’s largest customers are municipalities in the Bay Area and down south in San Diego. 

Image Credits: Getty Images under a license.

The company has two main offerings: an enterprise professional software product that’s geared toward regulators, experts, and businesses that want to get a handle on their greenhouse gas emissions and environmentally polluting operations and a free tool that’s available to the public.

A third revenue stream is through partnerships with companies like Google, which have attached Aclima’s sensors to its roving mapping vehicles to capture climate and environmental quality data alongside geographic information.

“You’re seeing a lot of large companies in traditionally who are now investing significant amount into really trying to understand their emissions profile and prioritize emission reductions in a data driven way,” Herzl said.

The company’s data is also providing real world tools to communities that are looking to address systemic inequalities in locations that have been hardest hit by industrial pollution.

West Oakland, for instance, has used Aclima’s data to develop community intervention plans to reduce pollution in the communities that have been most impacted by the regions industrial economy.

“The interconnected crises of climate change, public health and environmental justice urgently require lasting solutions,” said Herzl, in a statement. “Measurement will play a key role in shaping solutions and tracking progress. With this coalition of investors, we’re expanding our capacity to support new and existing customers and partners taking bold climate action.”

As a result of the new round of funding, led by Clearvision Ventures, the fund’s founder and managing partner, Dan Ahn will take a seat on the board of directors.

Photo: Greg Epperson/Getty Images

“They are the clear category leader in an important and emerging field of data and standards at the intersection of climate, public health and the economy,” Ahn said in a statement. “Both governments and industry will need Aclima’s critical data and analytics to benchmark and accelerate progress to reduce emissions.”

Other investors in Aclima’s latest round include the corporate investment arm of the sensor manufacturer Robert Bosch, which views the company as a strategic component of its efforts to use sensor data to combat climate change. 

“Aclima has built an expansive mobile and stationary sensor network that generates billions of measurements about our most critical resources every week,” says Dr. Ingo Ramesohl, Managing Director of RBVC, in a statement. “Bosch invents and delivers connected solutions for a smarter future across transportation, home, industrial, and many other fields. What Aclima has achieved in connected environmental sensing is an impressive feat. Together, we can accelerate Aclima’s ability to support customers in taking decisive and data-driven climate action.”

Another key investor is Microsoft, which has backed the company through one of the first direct investments from the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund. 

“We established our Climate Innovation Fund earlier this year to accelerate the development of environmental sustainability solutions based on the best available science,” said Brandon Middaugh, Director, Climate Innovation Fund, Microsoft, in a statement. “We’re encouraged by Aclima’s pioneering approach to mapping air pollution sources and exposures at a hyperlocal level and the implications this technology can have for making data-driven environmental decisions with consideration for climate equity.”

Other investors also adding Aclima to their portfolios in this round include Splunk Inc. GingerBread Capital, KTB Network, ACVC Partners, and the Womens VC Fund II. Existing shareholders participating in the round include Social Capital, Rethink Impact, Kapor Capital, and the Schmidt Family Foundation, the company said in a statement.

News: Spotify opens a marketplace for Canvas looping artwork designers

• November 19, 2020
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Spotify today announced that it has leveraged last year’s SoundBetter acquisition to create a marketplace for artists who make short, looping visuals for Canvas. The feature, which began rolling out widely last year, is an attempt to leverage technology, in order to make a more engaging alternative to the standard album art. As Sarah pointed

Spotify today announced that it has leveraged last year’s SoundBetter acquisition to create a marketplace for artists who make short, looping visuals for Canvas. The feature, which began rolling out widely last year, is an attempt to leverage technology, in order to make a more engaging alternative to the standard album art.

As Sarah pointed out, early reactions to the feature were mixed, though Spotify points to some new numbers around user engagement with the feature. According to the service listeners are:

• 145% more likely to share the track
  5% more likely to keep streaming
  20% more likely to add the song to their personal playlists
  9% more likely to visit an artists’ profile page

Offering up a marketplace is part of a push to broaden adoption of the technology, by offering access to some top names who have created visuals for high profile artists, ranging from Kanye to Billie Eillish. Spotify will also be rolling out Canvas access to more artists across the globe as part of this push.

“Since Canvas is a unique format to Spotify, we want to make it as easy as possible for artists to find visual artists to help them create eye-catching visuals,” the company writes. “After selecting a designer, artists share details on the sonics of their track and their creative vision, which the designer then takes into account to create a custom Canvas tailored to meet their needs.”

Obviously anything that gets artists paid is probably a net positive in the world. Though with prices in the hundreds of dollars per track, this sort of thing gets very expensive, very quickly. It’s something musicians will have to weigh against the on-going issues around streaming compensation. Depending on the size of the artist/number of streams, the investment could, potentially, pay off.

This is the sort of bill that record labels traditionally foot (assuming they don’t have their own preferred artists on staff), though nothing is really a given in the music industry these days.

News: Tencent Music Entertainment is backing Wave to bring virtual entertainment to China

• November 19, 2020
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Wave, the virtual concert platform that’s already produced events for John Legend and The Weeknd, has inked a deal to bring its virtual concerts to China through a partnership with Tencent Music Entertainment Group. The deal includes Tencent taking a minority stake in the music service, the companies said in a statement. Under the partnership,

Wave, the virtual concert platform that’s already produced events for John Legend and The Weeknd, has inked a deal to bring its virtual concerts to China through a partnership with Tencent Music Entertainment Group.

The deal includes Tencent taking a minority stake in the music service, the companies said in a statement.

Under the partnership, TME will be able to air Wave experiences in China across all of its platforms including QQ Music, Kugou Music, Kuwo Music, and WeSing.

For Wave, it’s another step on its long march to set up a new way for artists to create live events for fans and opens up a massive market for U.S. artists that want to tap into audiences in China.

The two companies are collaborating on ways to incorporate Wave’s virtual events into Tencent’s TME Live production.

“One of the first things we’re going to do is have the Western artists that we’re working with perform in a tour in China,” said Wave chief executive, Adam Arrigo. “Our ambition is to super serve artists and to have an outlet for them to have a global virtual tour.”

Arrigo sees opportunities not just to tap Tencent’s music platform, but also extend the company’s virtual entertainment environments into Tencent’s popular gaming ecosystem as well.

For artists, there’s the added benefit of alternative revenue streams, like in-stream tipping, gifting, and merchandising that haven’t really taken hold yet in the U.S.

“Those models are rooted in those Asian live-streaming audiences. Its’ a huge opportunity to access audiences and these modalities in the West that are going to take longer to get footing,” Arrigo said. 

Tencent has been a dominant player in China’s gaming and entertainment ecosystem for a while now, both through its massively multi-player online games, its messaging service, WeChat, and its payments services.

“The collaboration with Wave marks an important step forward in our efforts to integrate technology and music, aiming to amplify the immersive music experience for our users, enhance user engagement and promote content consumption,” said TC Pan, Group Vice President of Content Cooperation of TME, in a statement. “With this strategic partnership, we will further extend the boundaries of music services through virtual performances, and build a broader music ecosystem.”

News: Voyager Space Holdings to acquire multi-launch site startup The Launch Company

• November 19, 2020
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Voyager Space Holdings, one of the companies that has been on a bit of an acquisitive spree recently as it looks to put together a comprehensive and multi-vertical space technology offering, has announced that it intends to acquire The Launch Company, an Anchorage-based startup that is focused on “streamlining the launch process,” with the ultimate

Voyager Space Holdings, one of the companies that has been on a bit of an acquisitive spree recently as it looks to put together a comprehensive and multi-vertical space technology offering, has announced that it intends to acquire The Launch Company, an Anchorage-based startup that is focused on “streamlining the launch process,” with the ultimate aim of building a launch site capable of playing host to multiple users for quick turnaround between launches from different providers.

Already, The Launch Company has worked with a number of companies in the new space sector, including Firefly, Relativity, and Virgin Orbit. It’s been involved in the DARPA launch challenge, which was designed to kickstart the development of mobile and responsive multi-vehicle launch capabilities. The company’s focus on flexible and responsive launch services is in high demand not only in the emerging commercial space industry, but also for deep-pocketed and consistent clients like the Department of Defense and the U.S. Air Force.

Voyager has been focusing on assembling holdings that allow it to provide clients across the space industry with more vertical integration throughout the process of designing and launching a mission. They acquired Pioneer Technologies earlier this year, which is working with NASA on Artemis program elements, and also acquired Altius Space Machines, a satellite interface, servicing and design company last year.

News: Pre-seed fintech firm Financial Venture Studio closes on debut fund to build on legacy of top investments

• November 19, 2020
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Fintech has come into its own the past few years. Once an area of investment widely derided and avoided by VCs due to its regulated nature and entrenched incumbents, fintech has now emerged as one of the most popular categories for investment, buttressed by multiple, multi-billion dollar exits in just the past year like Plaid,

Fintech has come into its own the past few years. Once an area of investment widely derided and avoided by VCs due to its regulated nature and entrenched incumbents, fintech has now emerged as one of the most popular categories for investment, buttressed by multiple, multi-billion dollar exits in just the past year like Plaid, CreditKarma, and Galileo.

Yet, building fintech apps and systems still requires a lot of finesse. There are those pesky regulations that make a cold start difficult for a fintech startup, and for founders, getting their feet through the doors of legacy financial institutions can be a major barrier to entry.

Financial Venture Studio wants to bridge the gap between a founder with an idea and the actual reality of getting a fintech startup into the market.

It’s a new firm, but one that is building on an extended legacy as one of the most influential early investors in financial services.

Ryan Falvey and Tyler Griffin founded the firm in 2018. They first worked together at the Financial Solutions Lab (FSL), which was a startup-focused incubator developed by the non-profit Center for Financial Services Innovation and funded by JPMorgan Chase. Falvey founded the lab to extend digital financial services into more areas of the economy, along the way funding such heavyweights as Digit, Nova Credit, Even, Dave, and Point.

Falvey and Griffin spun out of the program to build their own venture firm, with the goal of capturing the same spirit of helping founders make connections and accelerating their way through the thicket of challenges in fintech. Falvey has a background in banking having worked at Silicon Valley Bank, while Griffin co-founded Prism Money before joining FSL and eventually leaving to start the Financial Venture Studio.

Today, the firm announced the closing of their $13 million debut fund, which was funded by a wide number of financial institutions.

Financial Venture Studios’ Shannon Austin, Ryan Falvey, advisor Tom Brown, and Tyler Griffin. Photo via FVS

“We joked around that we should have called it, ‘Too Early Capital’ because you encounter these companies right when you can tell that they have an idea, some product,” Falvey said. “If the team is working on something and we just really know fintech really well, we can say, ‘Hey, we can bring a bunch of these other resources to the table earlier in your life cycle than is common, and hopefully accelerate their growth.’“

Falvey said that fintech, perhaps unlike some other categories, requires unique specialization from investors early on to be effective. “The problem is, you still need to follow the rules, and you’re still operating in the United States, which is a very complex and very expensive market,” he said. “Our ideal models are coming in at the pre-seed and taking them straight to series A.”

Fintech is the name of the game here, and there aren’t too many no-gos for the team within that broad category. I asked about cryptocurrencies and blockchain, and Falvey said that “we’re desperate to do a crypto deal.”

The firm is mostly focused on startups targeting the U.S. market, which can include international startups that are looking to launch or expand locally. Falvey says that the average first check size is $100,000, and that “we want to be providing a degree of support that kind of goes above and beyond.” The firm often makes follow-on investments as startups scale up and find market traction.

Given the amount of previous investment in the space, I was curious how Falvey sees the opportunities today in fintech. He said, “I think a lot of institutions are starting to think, especially in the post-COVID world, very differently about how they develop product, how they deploy it, how they support their staff and employees, which is going to open up a lot of new opportunities for fintech providers there as well.”

We talked a bit about diversity, which while certainly a problem in tech in general, is particularly acute in financial services. Falvey says that for many companies in financial services, one of their first lessons is just how much more diverse their consumers are than their own teams. “It is a user base that is more female, more black and brown, and less coastal than is common in technology,” he said. He notes that startups often learn the need for diversity early in order to communicate better with different consumers. He also pointed out that diversity was a topic brought up by LPs quite consistently.

Already, the firm has made 18 early investments across three “cohorts” and also has made some late-stage investments into a handful of their former startups at the Financial Solutions Lab. Among its first investments have been Everlance, Anvil, Roger, and HoneyBee.

News: Is a new game and $100M investment enough for South Korea’s PUBG to return to India?

• November 19, 2020
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South Korea-based PUBG Corporation, which runs sleeper hit gaming title PUBG Mobile, announced last week that it plans to return to India, its largest market by users. But its announcement did not address a key question: Is India, which banned the app in September, on the same page? The company says it will locally store

South Korea-based PUBG Corporation, which runs sleeper hit gaming title PUBG Mobile, announced last week that it plans to return to India, its largest market by users. But its announcement did not address a key question: Is India, which banned the app in September, on the same page?

The company says it will locally store Indian users’ data, open a local office and release a new game created especially for the world’s second-largest internet market. To sweeten the deal, PUBG Corporation also plans to invest $100 million in India’s gaming, esports and IT ecosystems.

But PUBG’s announcement, which TechCrunch reported as imminent last week, is treading in uncharted territory and it remains unclear if its efforts allay the concerns raised by the government.

Since late June, the Indian government has banned more than 200 apps — including PUBG Mobile, TikTok and UC Browser, all of which identified India as their biggest market by users — with links to China.

New Delhi says it enforced the ban over cybersecurity concerns. The government had received complaints about the apps stealing user data and transmitting it to servers abroad, the nation’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said at the time. The banned apps are “prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India,” it added.

KRAFTON, the parent firm of PUBG Corporation, inked a deal with Microsoft to store users’ data of PUBG Mobile and its other properties on Azure servers. Microsoft has three cloud regions in India. Prior to the move, PUBG Mobile data concerning Indian users was stored on Tencent Cloud. In addition, PUBG said it is committed to conducting periodic audits of its Indian users’ data.

In India, PUBG has also cut publishing ties with Chinese giant Tencent, its publisher and distributor in many markets. This has allowed PUBG Corporation to regain the publishing rights of its game in India.

At face value, it appears that PUBG Corporation has resolved the issues that the Indian government had raised. But industry executives say that meeting those concerns is perhaps not all it would take to return to the country.

Here’s where things get complicated.

Not a single app India has blocked in the country has made its comeback yet. Some firms such as TikTok have been engaging with the Indian government for more than four months and have promised to make investments in the country, but they are still not out of the woods.

PUBG Corporation, too, has not revealed when it plans to release the new game in India. “More information about the launch of PUBG Mobile India will be shared at a later day,” it said in a statement last Thursday. According to a popular YouTuber who publishes gameplay videos on PUBG Mobile, the company has privately released the installation file of the new game and has hinted that it plans to release the game in India as soon as Friday. (There’s also a big marketing campaign in the works, which could begin on Friday, people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.)

News: Diagnoss launches its coding assistant for medical billing

• November 19, 2020
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Diagnoss, the Berkeley, Calif.-based startup backed by the machine learning-focused startup studio The House, has launched its coding assistant for medical billing, the company said. The software provides real-time feedback on documentation and coding. Coding problems can be the difference between success and failure for hospitals, according to Diagnoss. Healthcare providers were decimated by the

Diagnoss, the Berkeley, Calif.-based startup backed by the machine learning-focused startup studio The House, has launched its coding assistant for medical billing, the company said.

The software provides real-time feedback on documentation and coding.

Coding problems can be the difference between success and failure for hospitals, according to Diagnoss. Healthcare providers were decimated by the COVID-19 outbreak, with hospitals operating below 60% capacity and one-fourth of them facing the potential for closing in a year if the pandemic continues to disrupt care.

The cost pressures mean that any coding error can be the financial push that forces a healthcare provider over the edge.

“For every patient encounter, a physician spends an average of 16 minutes on administration, which adds up to several hours every single day. In addition, codes entered are often wrong – up to a 30% error rate – resulting in missed or delayed reimbursements. We believe that, with the great progress we’ve seen with artificial intelligence and machine learning, we can finally address some of these inefficiencies that are leading to physician burnout and financial strain,”  said Abboud Chaballout, founder and chief executive of Diagnoss, in a statement.

Diagnoss acts like a grammar checking tool, but its natural language processing software is focused on reading doctor’s notes. The company’s tools can provide evaluation and management code for patient encounters; point out missing information in doctors’ notes; and provide predictions about the diagnosis and procedure codes that could apply after reviewing a doctor’s notes.

In a study of 39,000 de-identified EHR charts, the company found that its machine coding service was about 50% more accurate than human coders, according to a Diagnoss review.

Physician practices are already using Diagnoss’ service through a previously announced partnership with the mobile EHR vendor, DrChrono .

News: Instagram revamps its mobile messaging app Threads

• November 19, 2020
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Instagram is continuing to develop its standalone messaging app, Threads. Last month, the company modified the app to make it possible for users to message everyone, instead of just “close friends,” as its other messaging app, Direct, once did. Today, Instagram is releasing a redesigned version of the Threads app with updated navigation and a

Instagram is continuing to develop its standalone messaging app, Threads. Last month, the company modified the app to make it possible for users to message everyone, instead of just “close friends,” as its other messaging app, Direct, once did. Today, Instagram is releasing a redesigned version of the Threads app with updated navigation and a Status tab, as well as support for posting photos and videos to your Instagram Story.

The changes address some of Threads’ shortcomings in usability. Though the app offered a way to update your Status or even automatically update it, based on your location, it was difficult to move between the different sections of the app.

The redesign attempts to make it easier for Threads users to view and interact with friends’ statuses and their Stories, or quickly switch back to the Camera interface or their messaging inbox, through a new navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. This navigation change, which adds the Status tab, will go live globally starting on November 19, says Instagram.

In addition, Instagram says Threads users can now take a photo or video and share it out to their Instagram Story, in addition to only their Close Friends Story directly in the Threads app.

The more recent change to the inbox, which added a new tab for “Everyone Else,” is also now globally available, as of today’s update.

These changes represent another step away from Threads being an app only meant to be used to keep with close friends.

The updates to Threads follow a period of overhaul for Facebook’s family of mobile messaging apps, including Messenger and Instagram itself, which saw another set of updates to its own inbox in recent weeks. Yesterday, Facebook announced that more features that were a part of the big overhaul of the Instagram messaging experience had become available, including an expanded co-watching feature, Watch Together, which now lets users watch IGTV, Reels and TV shows together in real-time over video chat.

It also rolled out chat themes, including a new one that featured characters representing the seven members of BTS. The company in September had announced cross-app communication with Messenger for users who upgraded their messaging experience on Instagram. That update had included the ability to change your chat color, react with any emoji, among other new features. Vanish mode is still to come to Instagram, but should arrive soon, Facebook said.

These changes, focused on Facebook’s flagship apps, may have left some wondering what would become of Threads — an app that hasn’t gone mainstream. As of the time of writing, the app was ranked No. 66 in the Photo & Video category on the U.S. App Store, and No. 1,031 Overall. But as these new efforts show, Instagram is continuing to tweak the user experience on Threads, in an effort to cater to those often use Instagram for messaging.

To be clear, some users may have had access to the new features ahead of today’s announcement, but they’re now broadly available.

News: Messaging app Go SMS Pro exposed millions of users’ private photos and files

• November 19, 2020
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Go SMS Pro, one of the most popular messaging apps for Android, is exposing photos, videos and other files sent privately by its users. Worse, the app maker has done nothing to fix the bug. Security researchers at Trustwave discovered the flaw in August and contacted the app maker with a 90-day deadline to fix

Go SMS Pro, one of the most popular messaging apps for Android, is exposing photos, videos and other files sent privately by its users. Worse, the app maker has done nothing to fix the bug.

Security researchers at Trustwave discovered the flaw in August and contacted the app maker with a 90-day deadline to fix the issue, as is standard practice in vulnerability disclosure to allow enough time for a fix. But after the deadline elapsed without hearing back, the researchers went public.

Trustwave shared its findings with TechCrunch this week.

When a Go SMS Pro user sends a photo, video or other file to someone who doesn’t have the app installed, the app uploads the file to its servers, and lets the user share a web address by text message so the recipient can see the file without installing the app. But the researchers found that these web addresses were sequential. In fact, any time a file was shared — even between app users — a web address would be generated regardless. That meant anyone who knew about the predictable web address could have cycled through millions of different web addresses to users’ files.

Go SMS Pro has more than 100 million installs, according to its listing in Google Play.

TechCrunch verified the researcher’s findings. In viewing just a few dozen links, we found a person’s phone number, a screenshot of a bank transfer, an order confirmation including someone’s home address, an arrest record, and far more explicit photos than we were expecting, to be quite honest.

Karl Sigler, senior security research manager at Trustwave, said while it wasn’t possible to target any specific user, any file sent using the app is vulnerable to public access. “An attacker can create scripts that could throw a wide net across all the media files stored in the cloud instance,” he said.

We had about as much luck getting a response from the app maker as the researchers. TechCrunch emailed two email addresses associated with the app. One email immediately bounced back saying the email couldn’t be delivered due to a full inbox. The other email was opened, according to our email open tracker, but a follow-up email was not.

Since you might now want a messaging app that protects your privacy, we have you covered.