Daily Archives: April 7, 2021

News: E-bikes and earbuds among the first third-party hardware to support Apple’s Find My tracking

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Yesterday we noted that Apple launched a new Find My Certification Asst. app, designed to test support for third-party hardware. Find My, of course, has been a long-standing feature for Apple’s own hardware like iPhones, AirPods and Macs, but back at WWDC, the company announced plans to open it up to manufacturers. Today the company

Yesterday we noted that Apple launched a new Find My Certification Asst. app, designed to test support for third-party hardware. Find My, of course, has been a long-standing feature for Apple’s own hardware like iPhones, AirPods and Macs, but back at WWDC, the company announced plans to open it up to manufacturers.

Today the company made official its Find My Network Accessory program and unveiled a handful of hardware that will take advantage of the new Made for iPhone (MFi)-affiliated offering. Users will be able to locate missing devices via Apple’s Find My app.

Image Credits: Apple

At the top of the list are a pair of e-bikes, produced by VanMoof. The S3 and X3 will sport tracking functionality, along with a “Locate with Apple Find My” logo located on the bottom side of the crossbar. Belkin’s Soundform Freedom earbuds, meanwhile, will join Apple’s iPods in sporting the feature, while the Chipolo ONE Spot will beat the long-rumored AirTags to the punch. According to Apple, the new products are set to hit the market next week.

There are a bunch of different privacy concerns laid out by Apple in the white papers, along with other specifications companies will have to adhere to. Draft specs for chip makers will also be released in the spring, so companies can utilize the Ultra Wideband tech on Apple devices sporting a U1 chip. Approved products will be able to display the aforementioned “Works with Apple Find My” badge.

News: How founders can avoid blind spots and make better decisions with EchoVC’s Eghosa Omoigui

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Eghosa Omoigui explained what it means to have an All-22 tape and the steps founders should take to develop a skill set that will allow them to see and understand the playbook from all sides.

Building and maintaining a successful startup requires founders to see the entire playing field. Without that clear view, founders risk missteps when it comes to hiring, raising funds, launching a product or making an acquisition.

Essentially, any big decision can end in disaster if a founder loses perspective or lacks self- and situational awareness.

Eghosa Omoigui, the founder and managing general partner of EchoVC Partners, a seed and early-stage venture capital firm that serves underrepresented founders and underserved markets, has helped entrepreneurs navigate the first steps of starting a company and laying the right foundation early on.

Omoigui, who was previously director of consumer internet and semantic technologies at Intel Capital, advocates for founders to develop their own All-22 tape — a tool used by professional football coaches that allows the viewer to see all 22 players on the field at the same time. It improves a coach’s line of sight and, most importantly, helps avoid missing a critical motion or player.

The concept of this tool can — and should — be applied in the startup world as well, Omoigui said during the virtual TC Early Stage event.

Omoigui explained what it means to have an All-22 tape and the steps founders should take to develop a skill set that will allow them to see and understand the playbook from all sides.

The big picture

Before getting into the steps, it’s important to understand what the aim is. The upshot? For founders to have the best and most complete view of their company, team, investors, product and competitors.

For founders, that means being able to zoom out and see each of their employees’ points of view and being inclusive. Without an All-22 tape, founders can mistakenly spend too much on engineering while ignoring the product rollout strategy or forget to communicate with employees outside of their bubble of interest. A company can become fragmented as more blind spots emerge, which can ultimately lead to oversights that damage its reputation, operations or even its ability to raise money from investors.

For operators and investors, what we see is usually very driven by where we stand, or where we sit. And what you have to discover really is: How can I get much better views? And the best view is always the plan view, you’re looking from the top down, you’re watching the movement, and you have line of sight, you know, that’s essentially 360 degrees. (Timestamp: 3:40)

Situational and self-awareness

News: Facebook tests Hotline, a Q&A product that’s a mashup of Clubhouse and Instagram Live

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Facebook’s internal R&D group, NPE Team, has today launched its latest experiment, Hotline, into public beta testing. The web-based application could be described as a mashup of Instagram Live and Clubhouse, as it allows creators to speak to an audience who can then ask questions through either text or audio. However, unlike Clubhouse, creators can

Facebook’s internal R&D group, NPE Team, has today launched its latest experiment, Hotline, into public beta testing. The web-based application could be described as a mashup of Instagram Live and Clubhouse, as it allows creators to speak to an audience who can then ask questions through either text or audio. However, unlike Clubhouse, creators can opt to turn their cameras on for the event, instead of being audio-only.

Real estate investor Nick Huber is the first to publicly try out the product with a livestream today that began at 10 AM PT (1 PM ET). Huber represents the sort of creator Facebook wants to work with for Hotline, Facebook told us, which is someone who helps people expand their professional skills or their finances. In Huber’s case, he’s talking about investing in industrial real estate as a second income stream.

At Facebook, Hotline is being led by Eric Hazzard, who joined Facebook when it acquired his app tbh, a positivity-focused Q&A app that grew to 2.5 million daily active users in nine weeks and saw over 1 billion poll answers before exiting. With Hotline, Hazzard is once again developing a product in the Q&A space.

But this time, the new app is taking inspiration from an up-and-coming social network, Clubhouse. In fact, Hotline’s user interface will look familiar to anyone who’s already used Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces or any of the other audio-only social networks, when it’s viewed on mobile. At the top on mobile (or to the left side on desktop), there’s a speaker section where the event host is featured in a round profile icon or live video stream. Below (or to the side on desktop) are the event’s listeners.

But there are also several differences between Hotline and existing apps, like Clubhouse.

Image Credits: Facebook

For starters, the app today has users sign in with Twitter then verify their identity via SMS.

The listeners’ section, for example, is divided up between those who are just watching the event, as represented by their profile icons, and those who are asking questions. At the top of this section, you’re presented with the lists of questions that users have asked, which others can upvote or downvote accordingly. The creator can then look to this section to find out which questions to answer next and can pull listeners onto the stage area with them for a conversation.

At present, users can type in their questions, then join the host “on stage,” when it’s their turn. Currently, guests are represented by their profile icon and are audio only when on stage. But in the settings, there’s an option for the listener to toggle on video that’s not yet functional for today’s test.

As the questions are asked, users can react with emoji including clapping hands, fire, heart, laughter, surprise and thumbs up.

Image Credits: Hotline

Hosts have full control over the experience, and can remove inappropriate questions from the queue or remove people from their Hotline session. For the initial tests, Facebook employees will moderate events and remove anyone that violates Facebook’s Community Standards, Terms of Service, Data Policy or the NPE Team’s Supplemental Terms.

Another notable difference between Hotline and Clubhouse is that Hotline events are recorded.

Today, Clubhouse favors more casual chats where people understand there’s no transcript or recording taking place (unless indicated by the host in the room’s title). This, Clubhouse believes, allows participants to speak more freely and with less fear. But Hotline automatically produces recordings. After the event, the host will receive two recordings of the session — one as an mp3 and another as an mp4. The creator can then upload these to other networks, like YouTube or Facebook, edit them into short-form content for apps like TikTok or turn the audio recording into a podcast, or anything else.

At launch, anyone can join a Hotline for free and there’s no limit on audience size, though this could change as the experiment progresses.

Despite the similarities with Clubhouse, Hotline has a different vibe because of its use of video, text-based questions, upvoting and because it’s recorded. This makes it feel less like a casual hangout and more like a professional event where an expert is leading a session and inviting an audience to ask questions.

Hotline is now one of several apps that Facebook’s NPE team has launched in the creator space to experiment with different ideas around audio and video. The group is continuing to test a creator app called Super, similar to Cameo, which is web-based and entirely video. It also previously tested an audio-only calling app, CatchUp, which shut down last year, as well as another Q&A product known as Venue, which is more of a Twitter-like companion for live events. More recently, it has launched TikTok-esque video apps Collab and BARS, which focused on collaborative music and raps, respectively.  

Over time, the goal of NPE projects isn’t necessarily to stand them up on their own as individual apps — though that could happen, if they gained enough traction. More broadly, the learnings from the tests and experiments can help inform future Facebook product development, as it builds out new features for existing products, like Messenger Rooms or Facebook Live, among other things.

Facebook didn’t make an official announcement about Hotline’s launch, but offered a statement about today’s test.

“With Hotline, we’re hoping to understand how interactive, live multimedia Q&As can help people learn from experts in areas like professional skills, just as it helps those experts build their businesses,” a spokesperson said. “New Product Experimentation has been testing multimedia products like CatchUp, Venue, Collab, and BARS, and we’re encouraged to see the formats continue to help people connect and build community,” they added.

Hotline isn’t Facebook’s only attempt to challenge Clubhouse. The company is also in the process of developing a Clubhouse rival within the Messenger Rooms product experience, Facebook recently confirmed.

News: Mexican unicorn Kavak raises a $485M Series D at a $4B valuation.

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Kavak, the Mexican startup that’s disrupted the used car market in Mexico and Argentina, today announced its Series D of $485 million, which now values the company at $4 billion. This round more than triples their previous valuation of $1.15 billion, which established them as a unicorn just a couple of months ago in October

Kavak, the Mexican startup that’s disrupted the used car market in Mexico and Argentina, today announced its Series D of $485 million, which now values the company at $4 billion. This round more than triples their previous valuation of $1.15 billion, which established them as a unicorn just a couple of months ago in October of 2020. Kavak is now one of the top five highest-valued startups in Latin America.

The round was led by D1 Capital Partners, Founders Fund, Ribbit, and BOND, and brings Kavak’s total capital raised to date to more than $900 million. Kavak recently soft-launched in Brazil, and this new round of funding will be used to build out the Brazilian market and beyond, said Carlos García Ottati, Kavak’s CEO and Co-Founder. The company plans to do a full launch in Brazil in the next 60 days, García said, and we can expect to see Kavak in markets outside Latin America in the next 24 months, he added.

“We were built to solve emerging market problems,” García said.

Kavak, which was founded in 2016, is an online marketplace that aims to bring transparency, security, and access to financing to the used car market. The company also offers its own financing through its fintech arm, Kavak Capital, and counts more than 2,500 employees and 20 logistics and reconditioning hubs in Mexico and Argentina.

“In Latin America, 90% of the [used car] transactions are informal, which leads to a 40% fraud rate,” said García, who experienced these challenges first-hand when he moved to Mexico from Colombia a couple of years ago and bought a used car. 

“My budget allowed me to buy a used car, but there was no infrastructure around it. It took me 6 months to buy the car, and then the car had legal and mechanical issues and I lost most of my money,” he said. Kavak buys cars from individuals, refurbishes them, and offers warranties to buyers.

“Instead of buying a new car, they can buy a better car that still has all the warranties. It’s a really aspirational process,” said García. The company, which really amounts to four companies in one given its areas of focus, was built to be comprehensive by design in order to meet the various gaps in the market, García said.

“When you’re building a business here [Latin America], you need to build several businesses because so many things are broken,” he said. That’s why the financing option, for example, has been a key to their success, according to García.

Financing has traditionally been hard to come by in Brazil, and as García said, the used car market lacks infrastructure there, too. That being said, Brazil is Latin America’s fintech hub, and the space has been made leaps and bounds over the last 7-10 years with companies such as Nubank, PagSeguro, Creditas, PicPay, and others leading the way. As a result, credit cards and loans are more widely available today in the region, offering competition for Kavak Capital. While Kavak has localized some of its product for the Brazilian market — namely building out a Portuguese language version of the app and website — García said the markets are very similar.

“In Brazil, you still have the same problems that you have in Mexico, but Brazil is a little more developed, especially in fintech, which is light years ahead of Mexico,” he said.

With the Brazilian product heading to the races, García said they already have plans for other regions, though he declined to name them.

“80% of people in emerging markets don’t have access to a car,” García said of the global market size. “We want to go into big markets where customers are facing similar problems and where Kavak can really change their lives,” he added.

News: Dear Sophie: Help! My H-1B wasn’t chosen!

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My startup registered two H-1B candidates in this year’s lottery. Sadly, neither was selected. Help! We can’t afford for them to have to leave the U.S. What are our options?

Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.

“Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says Sophie Alcorn, a Silicon Valley immigration attorney. “Whether you’re in people ops, a founder or seeking a job in Silicon Valley, I would love to answer your questions in my next column.”

Extra Crunch members receive access to weekly “Dear Sophie” columns; use promo code ALCORN to purchase a one- or two-year subscription for 50% off.

Dear Sophie:

My startup registered two H-1B candidates in this year’s lottery. Sadly, neither was selected.

One is my co-founder, the other is on OPT. Help! We can’t afford for them to have to leave the U.S. What are our options?

— Lost in Los Angeles

Dear Lost:

Take a deep breath; I’ve got your back. There are many creative immigration pathways for you, your co-founder and your F-1 OPT employee to explore. We’ll take a look at several options, and you can also check out my recent podcast in which my colleague Nadia Zaidi and I explain them in greater depth.

I hope the below ideas inspire you and fill you with a sense of hope and possibility. As always, I suggest consulting with an experienced immigration attorney who can help you identify the strongest path forward, as well as backup options for your co-founder and employee. The particular immigration strategy that’s best for you is always an individual determination. It’s best identified through a personal consultation with an attorney such as myself based on a variety of factors, including each person’s immigration history and your particular startup’s goals.

Co-founder immigration options

For a funded startup, there’s a great H-1B Plan B: the Cap-Exempt H-1B. Especially if your co-founder has a STEM background (and possibly even for some founders who don’t have this), there’s a wonderful new triple-win option that supports startups, international candidates and even diverse U.S. STEM college students seeking better project-based learning opportunities.

What is this magical rainbow-striped unicorn option, you ask? Well, here’s the legal background: Some employers qualify to petition for an H-1B visa at any time without going through the lottery. These employers — called cap-exempt employers because they are not subject to the annual H-1B cap of 85,000 visas available to for-profit employers — include:

• Institutions of higher education.
• Nonprofits tied to institutions of higher education.
• Nonprofit research organizations.
• Government research organizations.

If your co-founder can get a part-time H-1B visa through one of these cap-exempt employers, your startup can concurrently sponsor your co-founder for an H-1B regardless of the recent lottery results.

Image Credits: Joanna Buniak / Sophie Alcorn (opens in a new window)

To take advantage of this special law, I’m a huge fan of Open Avenues Foundation, which offers a Global Talent Fellowship. In this program, international talent can receive cap-exempt H-1B visas by leading university students for about five hours a week in real-world, project-based work within their field of expertise for the startup that nominated them for the fellowship. The candidate gets to stay in (or come to) the U.S., your startup gets a team of students working on a group project that benefits your company and increases diversity in your hiring pipeline, and U.S. students get the benefit of hands-on high quality STEM learning.

Once your candidate’s first cap-exempt H-1B is in place, your startup can petition for a second, concurrent Cap-Exempt H-1B for direct startup employment.

Interested in variations? If you’re not in STEM but have a university that would host you (free to the university), you can potentially partner with OAF. In addition, many universities in the U.S have global entrepreneur-in-residence programs that can help international co-founders qualify for concurrent Cap-Exempt H-1Bs. Your startup should also consider sponsoring your co-founder for an O-1A visa or change of status.

Another option to consider is for your co-founder to apply for International Entrepreneur Parole (IEP), a new 30-month immigration status in the U.S. The International Entrepreneur Rule (IER) was created by President Barack Obama and is the closest thing the U.S. has right now to a startup visa. The Trump administration tried to eliminate it, but the National Venture Capital Association, led by Jeff Farrah, successfully challenged the administration’s effort in federal court, so IEP remains on the books.

A lot of folks don’t believe it’s an option yet, so I’m currently looking for international startup founders with a strong case to file for IEP to test out this new program and demonstrate its existence to the world. We’re currently seeking global startup founders holding at least 15% equity in a U.S. startup that’s less than five years old and has raised at least $250,000 from U.S. investors. If you want to be on our free interest list, you can fill out this form. If we think you have a strong application, we’ll reach out.

If your co-founder wants to remain permanently in the U.S., consider starting a green card now such as the EB-1A green card for individuals of extraordinary ability or an EB-2 NIW (National Interest Waiver) green card for individuals of exceptional ability. Of these, the EB-1A is the quickest option, but its qualification requirements are tougher than for the EB-2 NIW.

F-1 OPT employee immigration options

If your F-1 OPT employee graduated with a qualified STEM degree, that employee can apply for a 24-month work extension, known as STEM OPT. That will allow the employee to remain in the U.S. to continue working for you. In the meantime, you can register them again next year for the H-1B lottery. If there’s no possibility for STEM, please check out the Cap-Exempt H-1B option explained above.

If your F-1 OPT employee only has a bachelor’s degree, they might want to consider pursuing an advanced degree. Individuals with a master’s or higher degree from a U.S. university have better odds of being selected in the annual H-1B lottery. That’s because 20,000 of the 85,000 H-1B visas available each year are earmarked for individuals with a master’s or higher degree from a U.S. university.

You should be aware, however, that next year’s H-1B lottery will likely shift from the current random selection process to one based on the highest wages. Unless the Biden administration changes the policy, which was devised by the previous administration, employers who pay their H-1B candidates a Level III wage or higher have the best chance of getting selected to file for an H-1B visa.

As you know, sponsoring employers must agree to pay an H-1B candidate the higher of either the actual wage paid for the job or the prevailing wage, which is broken down into four levels based on experience required for the position and location of the position. Level I wage is basically for an entry-level position, while a Level IV wage is for a position requiring the most experience. While this will add greater predictability to the annual H-1B “lottery,” early-stage startups and small businesses may have a difficult time competing against more established companies on salary, particularly because stock options and equity are not included in the salary calculation.

If you need to find alternative visa solutions, you can always consult with an attorney. I hope all of these options help you realize the control and agency you have in this situation. You have choices!

All my best,

Sophie

Have a question for Sophie? Ask it here. We reserve the right to edit your submission for clarity and/or space.

The information provided in “Dear Sophie” is general information and not legal advice. For more information on the limitations of “Dear Sophie,” please view our full disclaimer. You can contact Sophie directly at Alcorn Immigration Law.

Sophie’s podcast, Immigration Law for Tech Startups, is available on all major platforms. If you’d like to be a guest, she’s accepting applications!

News: Google I/O will return as a virtual event May 18-20

• April 7, 2021
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When the pandemic arrived in the U.S. early last year, companies scrambled to figure out what to do with their long-standing, in-person developer events. For Apple and Microsoft, that meant going virtual – something companies have done with mixed results. For Google, it meant calling off I/O all together. The company canceled the developer conference

When the pandemic arrived in the U.S. early last year, companies scrambled to figure out what to do with their long-standing, in-person developer events. For Apple and Microsoft, that meant going virtual – something companies have done with mixed results.

For Google, it meant calling off I/O all together. The company canceled the developer conference traditionally held each May at Mountain View, California’s Shoreline Amphitheater.

“Out of concern for the health and safety of our developers, employees, and local communities — and in line with recent ‘shelter in place’ orders by the local Bay Area counties — we sadly will not be holding I/O in any capacity this year,” the company wrote at the time.

After a year off, the show is set to return in virtual form. Google sent out its customary puzzle invites today, noting that the event will be held May 18-20. (Props to 9 to 5 Google for solving.) Like other online-only events of a recent vintage, this version of the developer’s conference will be free to attend and open to all. (Live, we assume, and not “Olive,” but it’s hard to say for sure, based on the graphic below.)

Image Credits: Google

Google joins a number of companies continuing to hold virtual events in 2021. While an aggressive vaccine rollout has begun here in the States, there’s still plenty of questions and concerns surround the virus’s spread at large gatherings — even ones like I/O, which are traditionally held outdoors. Apple recently announced a second virtual version of WWDC, set for June, while Microsoft’s Build runs May 25-27.

News: Facebook’s tardy disclosure of breach timing raises GDPR compliance questions

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The question of whether Facebook will face any regulatory sanction over the latest massive historical platform privacy fail to come to light remains unclear. But the timeline of the incident looks increasingly awkward for the tech giant. While it initially sought to play down the data breach revelations published by Business Insider at the weekend by

The question of whether Facebook will face any regulatory sanction over the latest massive historical platform privacy fail to come to light remains unclear. But the timeline of the incident looks increasingly awkward for the tech giant.

While it initially sought to play down the data breach revelations published by Business Insider at the weekend by suggesting that information like people’s birth dates and phone numbers was “old”, in a blog post late yesterday the tech giant finally revealed that the data in question had in fact been scraped from its platform by malicious actors “in 2019” and “prior to September 2019”.

That new detail about the timing of this incident raises the issue of compliance with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — which came into application in May 2018.

Under the EU regulation data controllers can face fines of up to 2% of their global annual turnover for failures to notify breaches, and up to 4% of annual turnover for more serious compliance violations.

The European framework looks important because Facebook indemnified itself against historical privacy issues in the US when it settled with the FTC for $5BN back in July 2019 — although that does still mean there’s a period of several months (June to September 2019) which could fall outside that settlement.

Yesterday, in its own statement responding to the breach revelations, Facebook’s lead data supervisor in the EU said the provenance of the newly published dataset wasn’t entirely clear, writing that it “seems to comprise the original 2018 (pre-GDPR) dataset” — referring to an earlier breach incident Facebook disclosed in 2018 which related to a vulnerability in its phone lookup functionality that it had said occurred between June 2017 and April 2018 — but also writing that the newly published dataset also looked to have been “combined with additional records, which may be from a later period”.

Facebook followed up the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC)’s statement by confirming that suspicion — admitting that the data had been extracted from its platform in 2019, up until September of that year.

Another new detail that emerged in Facebook’s blog post yesterday was the fact users’ data was scraped not via the aforementioned phone lookup vulnerability — but via another method altogether: A contact importer tool vulnerability.

This route allowed an unknown number of “malicious actors” to use software to imitate Facebook’s app and upload large sets of phone numbers to see which ones matched Facebook users.

In this way a spammer (for example), could upload a database of potential phone numbers and link them to not only names but other data like birth date, email address, location — all the better to phish you with.

In its PR response to the breach, Facebook quickly claimed it had fixed this vulnerability in August 2019. But, again, that timing places the incident squarely in the period of GDPR being active.

As a reminder, Europe’s data protection framework bakes in a data breach notification regime that requires data controllers to notify a relevant supervisory authority if they believe a loss of personal data is likely to constitute a risk to users’ rights and freedoms — and to do so without undue delay (ideally within 72 hours of becoming aware of it).

Yet Facebook made no disclosure at all of this incident to the DPC. Indeed, the regulator made it clear yesterday that it had to proactively seek information from Facebook in the wake of BI’s report. That’s the opposite of how EU lawmakers intended the regulation to function.

Data breaches, meanwhile, are broadly defined under the GDPR. It could mean personal data being lost or stolen and/or accessed by unauthorized third parties. It can also relate to deliberate or accidental action or inaction by a data controller which exposes personal data.

Legal risk attached to the breach likely explains why Facebook has studiously avoided describing this latest data protection failure, in which the personal information of more than half a billion users was posted for free download on an online forum, as a ‘breach’.

And, indeed, why it’s sought to downplay the significance of the leaked information — dubbing people’s personal information “old data”. (Even as few people regularly change their mobile numbers, email address, full names and biographical information and so on, and no one (legally) gets a new birth date… )

Its blog post instead refers to data being scraped; and to scraping being “a common tactic that often relies on automated software to lift public information from the internet that can end up being distributed in online forums” — tacitly implying that the personal information leaked via its contact importer tool was somehow public.

The self-serving suggestion being peddled here by Facebook is that hundreds of millions of users had both published sensitive stuff like their mobile phone numbers on their Facebook profiles and left default settings on their accounts — thereby making this personal information ‘publicly available for scraping/no longer private/uncovered by data protection legislation’.

This is an argument as obviously absurd as it is viciously hostile to people’s rights and privacy. It’s also an argument that EU data protection regulators must quickly and definitively reject or be complicit in allowing Facebook (ab)use its market power to torch the very fundamental rights that regulators’ sole purpose is to defend and uphold.

Even if some Facebook users affected by this breach had their information exposed via the contact importer tool because they had not changed Facebook’s privacy-hostile defaults that still raises key questions of GPDR compliance — because the regulation also requires data controllers to adequately secure personal data and apply privacy by design and default.

Facebook allowing hundreds of millions of accounts to have their info freely pillaged by spammers (or whoever) doesn’t sound like good security or default privacy.

In short, it’s the Cambridge Analytica scandal all over again.

Facebook is trying to get away with continuing to be terrible at privacy and data protection because it’s been so terrible at it in the past — and likely feels confident in keeping on with this tactic because it’s faced relatively little regulatory sanction for an endless parade of data scandals. (A one-time $5BN FTC fine for a company than turns over $85BN+ in annual revenue is just another business expense.)

We asked Facebook why it failed to notify the DPC about this 2019 breach back in 2019, when it realized people’s information was once again being maliciously extracted from its platform — or, indeed, why it hasn’t bothered to tell affected Facebook users themselves — but the company declined to comment beyond what it said yesterday.

Then it told us it would not be commenting on its communications with regulators.

Under the GDPR, if a breach poses a high risk to users’ rights and freedoms a data controller is required to notify affected individuals — with the rational being that prompt notification of a threat can help people take steps to protect themselves from the risks of their data being breached, such as fraud and ID theft.

Yesterday Facebook also said it does not have plans to notify users either.

Perhaps the company’s trademark ‘thumbs up’ symbol would be more aptly expressed as a middle finger raised at everyone else.

News: SpaceX launches 60 more Starlink satellites, now at 300 launched in just over one month

• April 7, 2021
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SpaceX has launched another batch of Starlink satellites, keeping up its rapid pace of launches for the broadband constellation it’s deploying in low Earth orbit. This now makes 300 Starlink satellites launched since March 4, with 60 on each of five flights between then and now. The most recent launch before this one happened on

SpaceX has launched another batch of Starlink satellites, keeping up its rapid pace of launches for the broadband constellation it’s deploying in low Earth orbit. This now makes 300 Starlink satellites launched since March 4, with 60 on each of five flights between then and now.

The most recent launch before this one happened on March 24, with prior flights on March 14, March 11 and March 4 , respectively. That pace is intentionally fast, since SpaceX has said it aims to launch a total of 1,500 Starlink satellites over the course of this calendar year. Before that especially busy month, SpaceX also flew four other Starlink missions, including a shared ride on SpaceX’s first dedicated rideshare mission that also carried satellites for other customers.

In total, SpaceX has now launched 1,443 satellites for its Starlink constellation. That doesn’t reflect the total number of satellites on orbit, however, as a handful of those earlier satellites have been deorbited as planned. In total, the eventual planned sizer fo the constellation is expected to include up to 42,000 spacecraft based on current FCC frequency spectrum filings.

SpaceX recently signed a new agreement with NASA that outlines how the two organizations will avoid close approach or collision events between their respective spacecraft. NASA has measures it requires all launchers to follow in order to avoid these kinds of incidents, but the scale and frequency of SpaceX’s Starlink missions necessitated an additional, more extensive agreement.

This launch also included a landing of the Falcon 9 booster used, its seventh so far. The booster touched down as intended on SpaceX’s floating landing pad in the Atlantic Ocean, and will be refurbished for another potential reuse. SpaceX is also going to be looking to recover its fairing halves at sea, which are the two cargo covering shields that encase the satellites during take-off. The company actually just decommissioned two ships it had used to try to catch these out of mid-air as they fell slowed by parachutes, but it’s still looking to retrieve them from the ocean after splashdown for re-use.

Image Credits: SpaceX

News: Nuvocargo raises $12M to digitize the freight logistics industry

• April 7, 2021
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Despite hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of goods flowing across the U.S.-Mexican border each year, the freight industry has remained analog — each side of the border offering up its own maze of bureaucracy. Nuvocargo, a digital logistics platform for cross-border trade, is trying to modernize the process. The company offers an all-in-one service

Despite hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of goods flowing across the U.S.-Mexican border each year, the freight industry has remained analog — each side of the border offering up its own maze of bureaucracy.

Nuvocargo, a digital logistics platform for cross-border trade, is trying to modernize the process. The company offers an all-in-one service that rolls freight forwarding, customs brokerage, cargo insurance and even trade financing into one UI-friendly software and app. Housing all of these services under one app makes it easier for companies to track their supply chain and gives customs and logistics teams access to more centralized information, according to Nuvocargo CEO Deepak Chhugani.

“And you just have one single audit trail in case something goes wrong,” Chhugani told TechCrunch, adding that the process helps reduce or eliminate the extra costs that come with a high administrative overhead. It also lets customers take a high-level look at their operations from within a single interface, he said.

Chhugani likened the experience to something like UberEats, which offers customers the ability to easily track food orders from restaurant to home.

“Just imagine, because you are dealing with so many different parties, you lose visibility on what’s going on. If you want a snapshot of – what did I spend end-to-end? – you actually have to go through all these email chains or faxes or texts with different providers,” Chhugani explained. “Some of them might be in another country. So [Nuvocargo] just creates more visibility throughout the process, from where the goods literally are to visibility around your finances.”

But Nuvocargo is thinking beyond the actual movement of goods. The company is also starting to offer customs brokerage, comprehensive cross-border cargo insurance, and factoring, or short-term account receivable finance. The last of these solves an especially difficult pain point for trucking companies, who sometimes must wait up to net-90 days to be paid.

The approach has caught investors’ eyes: nearly one year after announcing it had raised a $5.3 million seed round, the company has closed on a $12 million Series A funding led by QED Investors and with injections from David Velez, Michael Ronen, Raymond Tonsing, FJ Labs and Clocktower. Investors NFX and ALLVP, which participated in the previous round, also participated.

The “holy grail” of their new offerings, as Chhugani called it, is trade financing. Because Nuvocargo will already have a relationship with companies, including an understanding of credit and fraud risk, its hope is that it can offer financial products at a competitive rate.

This is what attracted QED Investors, a firm that typically focuses on financial technology rather than logistics and trucking.

“After speaking with [Deepak] and seeing the connection points and parallels between what we were looking at in e-commerce and the challenges of actually getting goods across border, the fintech spark went off in my own head,” Lauren Connolley Morton, a Partner at QED, said in an interview with TechCrunch. “The opportunities for factoring, for lending, for insuring goods are all very much right up our alley.”

Although Chhugani declined to disclose Nuvocargo’s valuation after this most recent round of funding, it’s clear there is plenty of room to grow into the logistics industry’s huge and seemingly disaggregated value chain.

News: Black Innovation Alliance, Village Capital team up to support founders of color

• April 7, 2021
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Black Innovation Alliance and Village Capital today announced Resource, a national initiative aimed at boosting the efforts of entrepreneur support organizations (ESOs) led by, and focused on, founders of color. The motivation behind the project is straightforward. ESOs “face record demand, declining resources and are chronically underestimated, underappreciated and underfunded,” the organizations say. Resource aims

Black Innovation Alliance and Village Capital today announced Resource, a national initiative aimed at boosting the efforts of entrepreneur support organizations (ESOs) led by, and focused on, founders of color.

The motivation behind the project is straightforward. ESOs “face record demand, declining resources and are chronically underestimated, underappreciated and underfunded,” the organizations say.

Resource aims to give local accelerators and incubators support in the form of training and community.

Resource’s “ESO Accelerator” will train startup ecosystem leaders on how to build a more financially sustainable organization, as well as help connect them to potential funders. It also will provide milestone-based financial support tied to organizational development.

Resource also plans to build a national community of practice among ESO leaders of color and their funders to share best practices and “develop stronger capital and mentorship pathways” for Black, Latinx and Indigenous founders across the U.S.

Village Capital, says CEO Allie Burns, supports and invest in entrepreneurs “who have been historically sitting in historical blind spots of investors, whether that’s by the problems they’re trying to solve, the geography they’re located in or demographic factors that we have seen lead to capital being concentrated in very few people, places and problems.” Village Capital has worked with more than 100 other ESOs to help grow companies with founders from all backgrounds over the past five years.

The goal with Resource is to help ensure that incubators and accelerators focused on supporting people of color have the resources they need to flourish, she added.

“We want to make sure that those accelerators and other ESOs have the financial, social and human capital to keep their doors open and grow,” Burns said.

Black Innovation Alliance Executive Director Kelly Burton points out that these Black-led organizations are often the first line of support for Black entrepreneurs yet reap few benefits from their success over time.

“They receive very little support and very little funding,” she said. “It’s almost like they do all the heavy lifting, they plant seeds and do all the cultivation but they don’t really get to benefit once that founder and that startup has really taken off. This is an opportunity for us to stabilize these organizations to help them build their own capacities and capabilities so that that organization can be sustainable.”

Resource is supported by a national coalition of funders committed to supporting entrepreneurs of color. The initial coalition includes Moody’s, The Sorenson Impact Foundation, Travelers and UBS.

In related news, on Tuesday we covered New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s proposal for a $10 million allocation in the state budget to create a seed fund for Black and Latinx startups.

In that piece, we noted that there are a number of organizations out there that are committed to funding diverse founders.

In February, several national and Chicago-based organizations banded together to support early-stage Black and Latinx tech entrepreneurs through a new program dubbed TechRise. The nonprofit P33 launched the program in partnership with Verizon and 1871, a private business incubator and technology hub, among others, with the goals “of narrowing the wealth gap in Chicago, generating thousands of tech-related jobs and giving $5 million in grant funding to Black and Latino entrepreneurs,” according to the Chicago Sun Times. (Disclosure: Verizon is TechCrunch’s parent company).

Also in Austin, DivInc is a nonprofit pre-accelerator that holds 12-week programs for underrepresented tech founders. Founded in 2016 by former Dell executive Preston James, the organization aims to “empower people of color and women entrepreneurs and help them build successful high-growth businesses by providing them with access to education, mentorship and vital networks.”