Monthly Archives: January 2021

News: Harness snags $85M Series C on $1.7B valuation as revenue grows 3x

• January 14, 2021
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Harness, the startup that wants to create a suite of engineering tools to give every company the kind of technological reach that the biggest companies have, announced an $85 million Series C today on a $1.7 billion valuation. Today’s round comes after 2019’s $60 million Series B, which had a $500 million valuation, showing a

Harness, the startup that wants to create a suite of engineering tools to give every company the kind of technological reach that the biggest companies have, announced an $85 million Series C today on a $1.7 billion valuation.

Today’s round comes after 2019’s $60 million Series B, which had a $500 million valuation, showing a company rapidly increasing in value. For a company that launched just three years ago, this is a fairly remarkable trajectory.

Alkeon Capital led the round with help from new investors Battery Ventures, Citi Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Sorenson Capital and Thomvest Ventures. The startup also revealed a previously unannounced $30 million B-1 round raised after the $60 million round, bringing the total raised to date to $195 million.

Company founder and CEO Jyoti Bansal previously founded AppDynamics, which he sold to Cisco in 2017 for $3.7 billion. With his track record, investors came looking for him this round. It didn’t hurt that revenue grew almost 3x last year.

“The business is doing very well, so the investor community has been proactively reaching out and trying to invest in us. We were not actually planning to raise a round until later this year. We had enough capital to get through that, but there were a lot of people wanting to invest,” Bansal told me.

In fact, he said there is so much investor interest that he could have raised twice as much, but didn’t feel a need to take on that much capital at this time. “Overall, the investor community sees the value in developer tools and the DevOps market. There are so many big public companies now in that space that have gone out in the last three to five years and that has definitely created even more validation of this space,” he said.

Bansal says that he started the company with the goal of making every company as good as Google or Facebook when it comes to engineering efficiency. Since most companies lack the engineering resources of these large companies, that’s a tall task, but one he thinks he can solve through software.

The company started by building a continuous delivery module. A cloud cost efficiency module followed. Last year the company bought open source continuous integration company Drone.io and they are working on building that into the platform now with it currently in beta. There are additional modules on the product roadmap coming this year, according to Bansal.

As the company continued to grow revenue and build out the platform in 2020, it also added a slew of new employees, growing from 200 to 300 during the pandemic. Bansal says that he has plans to add another 200 by the end of this year. Harness has a reputation of being a good place to work, recently landing on Glassdoor’s best companies list.

As an experienced entrepreneur, Bansal takes building a diverse company with a welcoming culture very seriously. “Yes, you have to provide equal opportunity and make sure that you are open to hiring people from diverse backgrounds, but you have to be more proactive about it in the sense that you have to make sure that your company environment and company culture feels very welcoming to everyone,” he said.

It’s been a difficult time building a company during the pandemic, adding so many new employees, and finding a way to make everyone feel welcome and included. Bansal says he has actually seen productivity increase during the pandemic, but now has to guard against employee burnout.

He says that people didn’t know how to draw boundaries when working at home. One thing he did was introduce a program to give everyone one Friday a month off to recharge. The company also recently announced it would be a ‘work from anywhere’ company post-COVID, but Bansal still plans on having regional offices where people can meet when needed.

News: Samsung answers Apple with the $199 Galaxy Buds Pro

• January 14, 2021
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Even before the leaks, we all saw the Galaxy Buds Pro coming. It was a given that the company was planning to deliver its own take on Apple’s AirPods Pro, with improved sound quality and active noise canceling. The real secret weapon here, however, may be the price. This morning’s S21 announcement found Samsung dropping

Even before the leaks, we all saw the Galaxy Buds Pro coming. It was a given that the company was planning to deliver its own take on Apple’s AirPods Pro, with improved sound quality and active noise canceling. The real secret weapon here, however, may be the price.

This morning’s S21 announcement found Samsung dropping $200 off the price of its flagship smartphone, and here the Galaxy Buds come in at $50 cheaper than the AirPods’ asking price. It’s not clearance-bin pricing exactly, but $199 is a pretty reasonable starting price. And Samsung’s earbud track record is a pretty good indication that the headphones will be solid.

The buds get a stated five hours of on-board battery life. That bumps up to eight hours with active noise canceling and Bixby Voice off — one of those things I can fairly easily live without. The case bumps things up to 18 and 28 hours, respectively. Pretty impressive claims for a quite small case.

Image Credits: Samsung

The buds’ design improves on the Galaxy Buds Live’s bean design, trading it for something a bit more ergonomic that’s designed to reduce the contact area between the device and the ear. Per Samsung’s claims, the ANC is capable of reducing ambient sound up to 99%. You can tweak the settings from there. They sport an 11 mm woofer and 6.5 mm tweeter, along with three microphones for calls.

There are a couple of features specifically for Samsung devices, including auto switching between phones and tablets, as well as Dolby head tracking and microphone capabilities for video recording on the Galaxy S21.

The buds are available in three colors and go up for order today. They’ll hit retail tomorrow.

News: Samsung’s Galaxy S21 line arrives with camera bumps, price drops and S Pen compatibility

• January 14, 2021
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Samsung wasted no time this year. With Mobile World Congress pushed back six or so months, the hardware maker hitched its wagon to the tail end of the CES whirlwind — though unlike its press conference earlier in the week, the company is very much on its own for the latest Unpacked. And why not?

Samsung wasted no time this year. With Mobile World Congress pushed back six or so months, the hardware maker hitched its wagon to the tail end of the CES whirlwind — though unlike its press conference earlier in the week, the company is very much on its own for the latest Unpacked.

And why not? In spite of broader issues with the mobile industry (certainly not helped by the COVID-19 pandemic), the Galaxy line is still very much a draw. People may not be as eager to buy a flagship as they were a couple of years ago, but when they do, it’s frequently a Samsung device.

I tend to save pricing for the end of these kinds of posts, but it really bears mention up front. Samsung’s launching three key iterations of the S21 line today: the S21, S21+ and S21 Ultra. Those are priced at $799, $999 and $1,119 respectively, here in the States. That’s down from $999, $1,199 and $1,399 last year. While it’s true we’re still very much in the flagship price range here, a $200 drop is not insignificant.

Image Credits: Samsung

Rather, it points to a very conscious correction — one that goes beyond simply introducing a budget flagship or flagship lite to appease that segment of the market. Smartphone sales were already lagging before the pandemic, and the routine pricing of flagships above $1,000 was a considerable piece of that. Obviously the pandemic has only exacerbated the situation for myriad reasons, and 5G, which was expected to lead to a sales rebound didn’t move the needle nearly as much as anticipated.

Of course, 5G was a headliner feature for Samsung all the way back in 2019. The company has been all-in with the Galaxy line for a while now, and frankly, the feature is just kind of expected now. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Samsung is going back to imaging as a key differentiator.

Here’s what Mobile head TM Roh has to say about the new handsets:

We are living in a mobile-first world, and with so many of us working remotely and spending more time at home, we wanted to deliver a smartphone experience that meets the rigorous multimedia demands of our continuously changing routines. We also recognize the importance of choice, especially now, and that’s why the Galaxy S21 series gives you the freedom to choose the best device for your style and needs.

I absolutely understand why companies continue to go the “in these challenging times” route with these announcements, though I will say that, for the most part, the notion of device upgrades as a response to COVID-19 is really overstated here, beyond the aforementioned price drop. And I suspect that, with fewer people leaving the house these days, the dream of a smartphone as a primary productivity device has probably dampened of late.

Image Credits: Samsung

Still, the S21 Ultra, in particular, has one very important trick up its sleeve. Samsung is further blurring the line between the Galaxy S and Note by making the Ultra S Pen compatible. The experience will vary to some degree, but users will be able to use the stylus to write and draw on the handset. It’s sold separately and there’s no in-device housing for the pen, though Samsung will be offering a case that will hold it. It will be interesting to see if the company goes out of its way to distinguish the new Note, but it seems equally possible that the lines are simply converging. After all, the S Pen has long been the key distinguishing factor.

The devices also get Ultra-wideband capabilities, which will bring a number of capabilities, including the ability to unlock car doors and AR messages to find lost items. More detail on that soon, no doubt.

Visually, the biggest change here is the camera housing, which gets streamlined. I’m holding off judgement until I see it in person, but the new “Contour Cut” housing feels a bit more brutalist or perhaps industrial than the prior generation. The device also drops the expandable memory. A strong argument could be made that current on-board storage has made microSD redundant for many or most, but it was always a nice little differentiator.

The company has also removed the headphones charging adapter from the box, a move the world saw coming when the company deleted ads ribbing Apple from dropping accessories over what it said were environmental concerns. It’s the headphone jack all over again, because history rhymes.

Hardware-wise, the triple-camera situation is similar. On the S21 and 21+ you get a 12-megapixel ultrawide, 12-megapixel wide and 64-megapixel telephoto with 30x space zoom. The Ultra bumps that up to a 12-megapixel ultra-wide, 108-megapixel wide and a dual-telephoto lens system with 3x and 10x optical zoom. That’s the first time Samsung has offered a dual-telephoto setup. The Ultra also sports improved low-light shooting, courtesy of the Bright Night sensor.

Image Credits: Samsung

Software imaging updates include the ability to pull stills from 8K shooting, improved image stabilization and new modes like “Vlogger view,” which shoots from the front and rear camera simultaneously. I see limited use for that last bit in my own life, but I’m sure folks will find a creative use for it.

The screens measure in at 6.1, 6.7 and 6.8 inches (that last one is a decrease from the S20 Ultra’s 6.9 inches). All sport a 120Hz refresh rate that adapts based on usage. The phones also get the new Eye Comfort Shield, which reduces blue light as the day goes on.

Here in the States, all three phones sport the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 888. The S21 and S21+ start at 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, while the Ultra starts at 12GB and 256GB. The batteries are pretty healthy, clocking in at 4000, 4800 and 5000mAh. They’re all available for pre-order now and start shipping January 29.

News: Amazon’s Ring Neighbors app exposed users’ precise locations and home addresses

• January 14, 2021
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A security flaw in Ring’s Neighbors app was exposing the precise locations and home addresses of users who had posted to the app. Ring, the video doorbell and home security startup acquired by Amazon for $1 billion, launched Neighbors in 2018 as a breakaway feature in its own standalone app. Neighbors is one of several

A security flaw in Ring’s Neighbors app was exposing the precise locations and home addresses of users who had posted to the app.

Ring, the video doorbell and home security startup acquired by Amazon for $1 billion, launched Neighbors in 2018 as a breakaway feature in its own standalone app. Neighbors is one of several neighborhood watch apps, like Nextdoor and Citizen, that lets users anonymously alert nearby residents to crime and public-safety issues.

While users’ posts are public, the app doesn’t display names or precise locations — though most include video taken by Ring doorbells and security cameras. The bug made it possible to retrieve the location data on users who posted to the app, including those who are reporting crimes.

But the exposed data wasn’t visible to anyone using the app. Rather, the bug was retrieving hidden data, including the user’s latitude and longitude and their home address, from Ring’s servers.

Another problem was that every post was tied to a unique number generated by the server that incremented by one each time a user created a new post. Although the number was hidden from view to the app user, the sequential post number made it easy to enumerate the location data from previous posts — even from users who aren’t geographically nearby.

Ring Neighbors app (left), and the data it was pulling in, including location data (right). (Image: TechCrunch)

The Neighbors app appeared to have about 4 million posts by the end of 2020.

Ring said it had fixed the issue.

“At Ring, we take customer privacy and security extremely seriously. We fixed this issue soon after we became aware of it. We have not identified any evidence of this information being accessed or used maliciously,” said Ring spokesperson Yassi Shahmiri.

Last year Gizmodo found a similar bug in the Neighbors app that revealed hidden location data, allowing them to map out thousands of Ring users across the United States.

Ring currently faces a class-action suit by dozens of people who say they were subjected to death threats and racial slurs after their Ring smart cameras were hacked. In response to the hacks, Ring put much of the blame on users for not using “best practices” like two-factor authentication, which makes it harder for hackers to access a user’s account with the user’s password.

After it emerged that hackers were reportedly creating tools to break into Ring accounts and over 1,500 user account passwords were found on the dark web, Ring made two-factor authentication mandatory for every user.

The smart tech maker has also faced increasing criticism from civil rights groups and lawmakers for its cozy relationship with hundreds of U.S. police departments that have partnered with Ring for access to homeowners’ doorbell camera footage.

News: Samsung unveils its newest Tile competitor, the Galaxy SmartTag

• January 14, 2021
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Alongside its other announcements at Samsung’s event today, the company introduced its new Galaxy SmartTag Bluetooth locator, a lost item beacon for Samsung owners and a competitor with Tile. Like Tile and Apple’s forthcoming AirTags, the beacon can be attached to keys, a bag, a pet’s collar or anything else you want to track. Initially,

Alongside its other announcements at Samsung’s event today, the company introduced its new Galaxy SmartTag Bluetooth locator, a lost item beacon for Samsung owners and a competitor with Tile. Like Tile and Apple’s forthcoming AirTags, the beacon can be attached to keys, a bag, a pet’s collar or anything else you want to track. Initially, these SmartTags will use Bluetooth to communicate with a nearby Samsung device, however, the company confirmed a ultra-wideband (UWB) powered version called the SmartTag+ will arrive later this year.

The latter would allow the SmartTag to better compete with Apple’s AirTags, which are also expected to take advantage of newer iPhones’ UWB capabilities. Tile, in anticipation of this news, has already developed a UWB tracker arriving later this year, as well.

The SmartTag announced today, the Galaxy SmartTag11, will use Bluetooth and there is only one main SKU — not a range of products in different sizes or configurations. However, the tracker will be sold in two color variations: Black and Oatmeal.

The tracker works with any Galaxy device, a Samsung rep told us, as long as the device runs Android 10 or later.

Device owners can then locate the missing item with the SmartTag attached using the SmartThings Find app.

This works similar to Tile and other BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) trackers. When the SmartTag is offline — meaning, disconnected from the Galaxy S21 or other device — it sends a BLE signal that can be detected by nearby Galaxy devices. When detected, the device will send the nearby location information to the SmartThings Fine app so you can locate the item. Samsung says the SmartThings Find user data is encrypted and securely protected, so your location and personal information is safe when you lose your device and use the app to search for it.

The app will also offer a variety of locating tools, including a “Notify me when it’s found” option, as well as “Search Nearby,” “Search,” and “Ring” tools. Like Tile, you can also use a SmartTag to locate a missing phone. In this case, you push the Galaxy SmartTag button twice to receive an alert to help locate the missing phone.

The tag can also be customized to do other things when pushed once, so you could easily turn on your lights or TV when you return home, for example.

Ahead of the announcement, regulatory documents showed the tracker as a slightly chunkier version of Tile’s trackers, powered by a CR2032 cell battery, with Bluetooth connectivity. (We’ve confirmed the battery is, in fact, a user-replaceable CR2032.)

A Samsung rep could not provide us with the official and detailed tech specs for the device ahead of its announcement today, but we’ll update if the company figures it out. Unfortunately, without the confirmed details like whether the battery is user-replaceable, for example, or what the range is, it’s difficult to make a proper comparison to the existing trackers on the market. (You can’t always go off leaks alone here, either, as they aren’t always an indication of the final product. But the regulatory filings are likely a good starting point.)

To promote adoption, Samsung is giving away the new trackers pre-orders. From Jan. 14 to Jan. 28, 2021, consumers who pre-order the Galaxy S21 Ultra will get a $200 Samsung Credit plus a free Galaxy SmartTag. That could help the devices gain a little more traction, as Samsung’s previous investments in tracking gadgets, including its 2018 LTE-based SmartThings tracking fobs, never really caught on.

Outside the pre-order promotion, the SmartTags will cost $29.99 individually and will be sold starting Jan. 29th.

This is slightly steeper than Tile’s entry-level Bluetooth tracker, the Tile Mate, which retails for $24.99.

News: E2E encrypted email providers also see sign-ups surge as chat app users flock to Signal and Telegram in search of privacy

• January 14, 2021
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Privacy concerns that have been driving app users to alternative chat apps like Signal and Telegram in recent weeks, since Facebook-owned WhatsApp announced a T&Cs change, appear to also be generating some uplift for end-to-end encrypted email providers. Two Europe-based Protonmail and Tutanota have reported an uptick in sign ups in recent weeks. Protonmail founder

Privacy concerns that have been driving app users to alternative chat apps like Signal and Telegram in recent weeks, since Facebook-owned WhatsApp announced a T&Cs change, appear to also be generating some uplift for end-to-end encrypted email providers.

Two Europe-based Protonmail and Tutanota have reported an uptick in sign ups in recent weeks.

Protonmail founder Andy Yen told TechCrunch it’s seen a 3x rise in sign ups for its end-to-end encrypted webmail service “in recent weeks”. While Germany’s Tutanota said usage has doubled since privacy concerns about WhatsApp’s new T&Cs sharing data with Facebook started circulating online.

“We are thrilled to see so many new users coming in. We already said in 2017 that the privacy-era has started, and we have been proven right ever since. People around the world are increasingly understanding that privacy matters and are no longer okay with fuelling the surveillance capitalism and the exploitation of their data by big tech such as Facebook. That’s why alternatives like Signal and Tutanota are constantly growing,” said Tutanota co-founder Matthias Pfau in a statement.

The fully e2e encrypted chat app Signal hasn’t disclosed how many new users it’s racked up in recent weeks but WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton — who joined forces with Signal after he left Facebook in 2018 — told us earlier this week that usage has “exploded”.

Anecdotal reports of newbies to the app — whose tagline is “say ‘hello’ to privacy” — abound.

In my case, among the UK contacts joining what had previously been a tight clique of privacy nerds, I can report a couple of ex London neighbours, an old university acquaintance, an antique Tinder date and two former colleagues — while my India-based TC colleague, Manish Singh, showed me three full screenshots of sign-ups his Signal app had alerted him to in just “the last few days”.

Telegram, another long-standing WhatsApp chat app alternative, has also reported a huge influx of new users in recent weeks.

The platform offers end-to-end encryption as an option for one-to-one chats (via its ‘Secret Chats’ feature), although unlike Signal e2e encryption is not the default rule. Nonetheless its founder, Pavel Durov, has been a very vocal critic of how Facebook treats users and their data. And that reputation baiting looks to be paying off.

“I hear Facebook has an entire department devoted to figuring out why Telegram is so popular,” Durov wrote in his Telegram Channel on January 8, seeking to capitalize on concerns about the looming WhatsApp’s T&Cs change. “Imagine dozens of employees working on just that full-time.

“I am happy to save Facebook tens of millions of dollars and give away our secret for free: respect your users,” he added.

A few days later Durov posted again to report Telegram’s user-base had surpassed 500M monthly actives in the first week of this year — adding 25M new users “in the last 72 hours alone”.

“These new users came from across the globe — 38% from Asia, 27% from Europe, 21% from Latin America and 8% from MENA,” he went on, implying around 6% of the new sign-ups came from North America (where there have also been reports of Trump supporters turning to Telegram as an alternative channel to organize protests as mainstream social networks have closed down accounts and pages linked to threats of violence and insurrection).

“This is a significant increase compared to last year, when 1.5M new users signed up every day,” he also said, adding: “We’ve had surges of downloads before, throughout our 7-year history of protecting user privacy. But this time is different. People no longer want to exchange their privacy for free services. They no longer want to be held hostage by tech monopolies that seem to think they can get away with anything as long as their apps have a critical mass of users.”

Durov has posted another update today — saying sign ups have “only accelerated” (and welcoming a couple more heads of state to the platform).

The privacy-flavored mass migration of users to WhatsApp alternatives has pushed the Facebook-owned company to attempt a public firefight this week — over what it couches as “rumours” about the looming T&Cs changes.

A Facebook spokesperson told us there are no changes to WhatsApp’s data sharing practices anywhere in the world with this update — which they said is about providing clearer, more detailed information to users on how and why the company uses their data, and also provides information about how businesses can use WhatsApp to connect with their customers.

But Facebook’s problem is it’s spent 15+ years torching user trust around privacy. And all those broken promises are coming home to roost as users fly elsewhere — searching for a platform whose business model isn’t predicated on exploiting their attention.

Whatever the specific detail of the latest WhatsApp T&Cs change, there’s no escaping the ugly truth that Facebook is an adtech giant. And it did already screw over WhatsApp users’ privacy — when it U-turned on data-sharing with Facebook just a few short years after it shelled out $19BN to line up all those extra eyeballs for its surveillance business.

That’s why e2e encryption in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg’s advertising empire simply can’t protect users’ privacy in the same way that a not-for-profit app like Signal can. And all those ‘personalized’ Facebook features — be they stickers, filters, lens or whatever — are just a distraction from the underlying truth that Facebook makes money by removing users privacy through an interconnected mesh of apps and tools that are dedicated to tracking Internet users and linking digital activity to eyeballs.

The techie obscurity that cloaked Facebook’s surveillance for years is now steadily being unpicked. And it’s clear that plenty of people don’t at all like what they see. 

News: Google’s Fitbit acquisition is official

• January 14, 2021
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Following regulatory scrutiny on both sides of the pond, Google this morning announced that it has completed its acquisition of wearables pioneer, Fitbit. Google’s use of the vast amount of user health data has long been the key sticking point of regulatory concern of the deal. After all, targeted advertising continues to be at the

Following regulatory scrutiny on both sides of the pond, Google this morning announced that it has completed its acquisition of wearables pioneer, Fitbit. Google’s use of the vast amount of user health data has long been the key sticking point of regulatory concern of the deal. After all, targeted advertising continues to be at the heart of much of what the tech giant does.

As such, it’s unsurprising that both Google and Fitbit are looking to address concerns in their respective statements on the acquisition. Google, in particular is quick to insist that the deal is all about hardware – which has admittedly been a struggle in this particular vertical. Google’s efforts to compete with Apple in the fitness and wearable categories have been, at best, uneven.

Google SVP of Devices and Services Rick Osterloh notes,

This deal has always been about devices, not data, and we’ve been clear since the beginning that we will protect Fitbit users’ privacy. We worked with global regulators on an approach which safeguards consumers’ privacy expectations, including a series of binding commitments that confirm Fitbit users’ health and wellness data won’t be used for Google ads and this data will be separated from other Google ads data.

We’ll also maintain access to Android APIs that enable devices like fitness trackers and smart watches to interoperate with Android smartphones, and we’ll continue to allow Fitbit users to choose to connect to third-party services so you’ll still be able to sync your favorite health and fitness apps to your Fitbit account. These commitments will be implemented globally so that all consumers can benefit from them. We’ll also continue to work with regulators around the world so that they can be assured that we are living up to these commitments.

Fitbit co-founder and CEO James Park echoed the sentiment, writing,

The trust of our users will continue to be paramount, and we will maintain strong data privacy and security protections, giving you control of your data and staying transparent about what we collect and why. Google will continue to protect Fitbit users’ privacy and has made a series of binding commitments with global regulators, confirming that Fitbit users’ health and wellness data won’t be used for Google ads and this data will be kept separate from other Google ad data. Google also affirmed it will continue to allow Fitbit users to choose to connect to third party services.

The levels and intimacy of data collected by these sorts of consumer devices has increased significantly over the past decade. Adding fuel to that fire is the push from companies like Fitbit and Apple to have their products taken more seriously as medical devices — or at least medically adjacent. Both companies have commissioned health studies, sought FDA clearance and worked with insurance companies. This push will no doubt only intensify.

The $2.1 billion deal’s completion comes with a number of concessions The EU in particular presented a number of caveats when it finally greenlit the acquisition last month. It noted at the time, “The commitments will determine how Google can use the data collected for ad purposes, how interoperability between competing wearables and Android will be safeguarded and how users can continue to share health and fitness data, if they choose to.”

As part of the deal, Google agreed to not use Fitbit data for ads for 10 years — which the Commission reserved the rights to extend by another 10 years. Google also agreed to maintain third-party developer access to Android APIs, in order to maintain some competition.

Founded in 2007, Fitbit became synonymous with the wearable fitness tracker space. Ultimately, however, the company struggled to maintain dominance with the arrival of the smartwatch, eventually ceding significant marketshare to the Apple Watch. The company eventually made headway in the category with devices like the Versa, but by then it was seemingly too late to continue on its own.

The deal certainly makes sense for Google, given its continued struggles to make a dent with Android Wear/wear OS. With Fitbit, the company’s getting an established hardware maker. It’s not entirely dissimilar from its purchase of HTC assets to help grow the Pixel line of phones, though there’s still enough cache in the Fitbit brand to keep it alive. Notably, Fitbit’s own growth in the smartwatch space was spurred on by several of its own acquisitions, including smartwatch pioneer and crowdfunding darling, Pebble.

In late 2019, Google also acquired Timex smartwatch technology for $40 million, making it extremely likely that the company will be taking on the Apple Watch directly. Understandably so, the product has not only been a massive hit for Apple, it’s opened the door to all sorts of health offerings, including the recently launched Fitness+. If this year’s CES proved anything, it’s that home workouts are a huge business with lots of upside, with even Samsung getting into the act.

News: Carbyne raises $25M for a next-generation platform to improve emergency 911 responses

• January 14, 2021
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Emergency services continue to be a major force when it comes to coping with the Covid-19 health pandemic, and today a company that is building technology to help them run better is announcing a round of funding to continue expanding its business. Carbyne — an Israeli startup that has built a cloud-based platform aimed at

Emergency services continue to be a major force when it comes to coping with the Covid-19 health pandemic, and today a company that is building technology to help them run better is announcing a round of funding to continue expanding its business.

Carbyne — an Israeli startup that has built a cloud-based platform aimed at emergency services to help them pinpoint more complete information about the people who are calling in, and to provide additional telemedicine services to start responding faster — has picked up $25 million.

The plan will be to take the service — which was already seeing strong growth before the pandemic — to the next level in terms of the technology it is building and the markets and organizations it is serving.

“Carbyne was not founded last year: we were already pushing cloud services and video and location to 911 for quite a while and had served 250 million people before the pandemic,” said Amir Elichai, the CEO, in an interview. “But cloud solutions for emergency services went from nice to have to must have with Covid.” The company has partnerships with public health providers as well as with groups like CentralSquare and Global Medical Response (GMR), and says that in the U.S. it is on target to cover some 90% of the market.

The Series B1 is being led by Hanaco Ventures and ELSTED Capital Partners, with former CIA Director General David Petraeus, Founders Fund, FinTLV, and other past investors also participating.

The fact that this is a B1 round points to more funding on the way for the company in coming months. In any case, the $25 million is more than the company had planned to raise.

“The plan was to raise $15 million in 2020. After Covid started I decided we didn’t want to let anyone go, but we didn’t know what the situation would be. So we cut salaries instead across the board,” said Elichai. “But then we started to double revenues starting in Q2, and then in Q3 and Q4 grew 160%. It was straightforward to raise this money.”

The funding is coming on the heels of very strong growth for the company, in particular in the last year.

Carbyne’s services now cover about 400 million people, with a new implementation launching every 10 days since March of last year.

Elichai, who co-founded the company with Alex Dizengoff (CTO) and Yony Yatsun (engineering lead), said in an interview that in the last nine months, Carbyne has provided some 155 million location points to emergency medical services teams. Newer products are also growing. The services for EMS teams to provide help remotely have racked up 1.3 million minutes of video in that time, he said.

From what we understand, the funding puts Carbyne’s valuation at over $100 million. Although Elichai declined to give a specific figure, for some context, the company was valued at “around” $100 million when it last raised in 2018, a $15 million round that marked the first time that Founders Fund had invested in an Israeli startup.

The growth of the last year, and the ongoing demands on the business, point to that “over” being strong. Indeed, since its last round, the world at large, and the startup itself, have undergone some significant changes.

2018 and whatever dramas we were experiencing back then now feel like a distant, almost halcyon?, past when compared to some of the crises of the moment. One in particular, the coronavirus pandemic, has a direct connection to Carbyne.

Covid-19, the illness the results from the virus, has proven to be a pernicious and dogged ailment, often hitting people with its most dire and serious symptoms — the inability to breathe and organ failure — just when they start to think that they might be recovering. (Of course, that’s not the case for everyone, thankfully, but still it happens much too often to ignore.)

That has put a huge strain on emergency response services, from those that are fielding initial callouts, through to those making first contact with patients, and those at the hospitals bringing in and caring for the most serious cases. In many cases, those working these services have been stretched to overcapacity. The situation in many cities is nothing short of dire.

Carbyne’s technology has come into its own as a way not just to help those people do their jobs better by providing them with more data, but by becoming a means to those services channelling data back to those people calling in.

In the last couple of years, the company has undergone some significant shifts in how it delivers its services: when I covered the startup’s last funding round in 2018, for example, it provided some services directly to EMS organizations, but mainly it needed users to install an app, or provide that technology through another app, in order to work. Now, Elichai says that the company has integrated some location services from companies like Google to remove the need to use an app to connect users to its platform.

Similarly, the startup has taken a strong lead in how it collaborates with municipalities not just to provide services to make their operations more efficient, but to help offset them getting overwhelmed. A project in that vein was a recent undertaking in New Orleans, which Elichai said played a part in helping the city from really buckling under and managing the Covid-19 outbreak. More on that here:

Longer term, in countries like the US and elsewhere, there is a strong argument to be made for a lot of legacy services in 911-style emergency response finally getting the updates they have needed for years.

Specifically, earlier this month, a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill approved in Congress earmarks $12 billion in funding for next-generation 911 deployments.

Carbyne believes that by 2023, it will be serving some 1.5 billion people, and it’s moves like this in the U.S. that point to why that might not be so far-fetched, Covid-19 or not.

News: X1 Card raises $12 million for its credit card with limits based on your income

• January 14, 2021
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X1 Card is raising a $12 million funding round. The company is building a credit card that sets limits based on your current and future income, not your credit score. Spark Capital is leading the round with Jared Leto, Aaron Levie, Jeremy Stoppelman, Max Levchin and Ali Rowghani also participating. American Express veteran Ash Gupta

X1 Card is raising a $12 million funding round. The company is building a credit card that sets limits based on your current and future income, not your credit score.

Spark Capital is leading the round with Jared Leto, Aaron Levie, Jeremy Stoppelman, Max Levchin and Ali Rowghani also participating. American Express veteran Ash Gupta is also joining the company as an advisor — he was the Chief Risk Officer of American Express.

The company says that it has attracted nearly 300,000 signups on its waitlist. I covered X1 Card back in September and it attracted a lot of readers. So that number doesn’t surprise me.

The X1 Card is a stainless steel Visa credit card with a different origin story. When you apply for a card, instead of determining your limits based on your credit score, the company wants to see your current and future income.

The startup believes the credit score system is outdated and doesn’t reflect your creditworthiness. That’s why it doesn’t use it to calculate limits. Your credit score still affects your variable APR (from 12.9% to 19.9%), but that’s it.

There are also a lot of software features that work with the credit card. For instance, you can track your subscriptions from the X1 app, you can also generate an auto-expiring virtual card for free trials that require a credit card. You also get notifications for refunds.

As for rewards, you get 2X points on all purchases. If you’re a heavy user and you spend more than $15,000 on your card per year, you’re upgraded to a new tier and earn 3X points. There’s also a viral element as you get a boosted reward level when you refer a friend — you get 4X points for a month. You can then spend your points with retail partners.

The company has promised a lot of features and now has enough cash in its bank account to deliver. Let’s see if the company can live up to the hype once the first customers get their cards. But it’s clear that the credit score system is outdated.

News: Watch Blue Origin launch a rocket with an upgraded crew capsule live

• January 14, 2021
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Blue Origin is launching its New Shepard suborbital rocket for the first time in 2021, with a liftoff planned for 9:45 AM CST (10:45 AM EST/7:45 AM PST) from its launch facility in West Texas. This is the 14th flight of New Shepard, and it includes some key testing activities for Blue Origin in preparation

Blue Origin is launching its New Shepard suborbital rocket for the first time in 2021, with a liftoff planned for 9:45 AM CST (10:45 AM EST/7:45 AM PST) from its launch facility in West Texas. This is the 14th flight of New Shepard, and it includes some key testing activities for Blue Origin in preparation for its first human spaceflight missions.

The company has been flying a crew capsule on board its rocket for quite a while now, albeit empty (or rather, loaded with scientific and other cargo, rather than people). This version includes some key systems that will be used when astronauts are inside, however, including communications systems, and cabin environment regulation technologies that will make the trip for private spacefarers more comfortable and safe.

Blue Origin has had 13 previous successful New Shepard launches before, so one can reasonably expect things to go well today. But the company’s focus on that crew cabin and gathering data around systems crucial to human spaceflight is an exciting indicator that people could be on board that spacecraft sooner rather than later.

The stream above will being 30 minutes before the liftoff time, so at around 10:15 AM EST/7:15 AM PST.