Monthly Archives: September 2021

News: AI-driven voice assistant PolyAI raises $14M round led by Khosla Ventures

• September 8, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

“Conversational AI” startup PolyAI, based out of London, has raised $14 million in a funding round led by Silicon Valley’s Khosla Ventures, with participation from existing investors (Point72 Ventures, Amadeus Capital, Sands Capital Ventures, Passion Capital and Entrepreneur First). This follows their $12m Series A, and will provide resources for further US expansion beyond its

“Conversational AI” startup PolyAI, based out of London, has raised $14 million in a funding round led by Silicon Valley’s Khosla Ventures, with participation from existing investors (Point72 Ventures, Amadeus Capital, Sands Capital Ventures, Passion Capital and Entrepreneur First). This follows their $12m Series A, and will provide resources for further US expansion beyond its existing US team. The startup has now raised $28m to date.

PolyAI builds and deploys voice assistants for automating customer services, which, claims the startup, sound like real humans. This helps companies get an infinite and cheaper supply of their best human voice operators, which reduces customer waiting times, and increases customer satisfaction and retention, says the company.

Co-founder Dr Nikola Mrkšić said: “The technical term for our technology is ‘multi-turn conversational AI’, but all the caller has to do is talk to it, like they would to a human. Compared to existing call centers, our assistants can boost customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores by up to 40% and reduce handling times by up to five minutes.”

“We build these systems very quickly (relative to the competition) — we get experiences like these up and running in 2-4 weeks thanks to our transformer-based language understanding models and the underlying dialog management platform,” he added.

In a statement, Vinod Khosla said: “PolyAI is one of the first AI companies using the newest generation of large pre-trained deep learning models (akin to BERT and GPT-3) in a real-world enterprise product. This means they can deploy automated AI agents in as little as two weeks, where incumbent providers of voice assistants would take up to six months to deploy an older version of this technology.”

A spinout from the University of Cambridge, PolyAI says it is is effectively ’pushing at an open door’ as the pandemic has led to staffing shortages in call centers, driving more companies to deploy smart voice assistants, which appear not to have been replaced chatbots at all, as consumer generally prefer to speak than type.

“We were expecting the system to handle 40% of calls, but at launch it handled 80%, and within two weeks it was up to 87%,” said Brian Jeppesen of Landry’s Golden Nugget Hotels & Casinos. “Callers think the AI agent is human”, Jeppesen continued, “which is great because the voice assistant never has a bad day, and is on 24/7. I wish I could hire more agents like that!”

Competitors include Nuance (recently acquired by Microsoft), IPSoft, Interactions, SmartAction, and Replicant. But PolyAI says its voice assistant can be turned live more quickly, in more languages, and charges on a per-minute basis.

Founded by Nikola Mrkšić (CEO), Tsung-Hsien Wen (CTO), Pei-Hao Su (Engineering Director), the three met while doing PhDs with Professor Steve Young, a leader in spoken dialog systems who pioneered many technologies that underpin voice assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa.

Recent PolyAI clients include Landry’s Entertainment, Greene King, Starling Bank, and Viasat. 

News: Reid Hoffman’s latest book gives us 10 ways to rethink entrepreneurship

• September 8, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

When you’re in the mood for a pep talk, who better to turn to than a well-networked, optimistic mentor who is naturally in your corner? That friendly shoulder is the role that “Masters of Scale” wants to play. Inspired by LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock partner Reid Hoffman’s hit podcast, the new book, co-authored by Hoffman

When you’re in the mood for a pep talk, who better to turn to than a well-networked, optimistic mentor who is naturally in your corner? That friendly shoulder is the role that “Masters of Scale” wants to play.

Inspired by LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock partner Reid Hoffman’s hit podcast, the new book, co-authored by Hoffman along with podcast executive producers June Cohen and Deron Triff, came out this week. Riddled with anecdotes and actionable takeaways, the book’s strength is wholly related to the sheer diversity of entrepreneurs that are represented in the text. Beyond sticking to tech leaders, the book draws lessons from Spanx founder Sara Blakely, Starbucks founder Howard Schultz and Union Square Hospitality Group CEO Daniel Meyer. Like any good mentor, the book is realistic. Mentors know you aren’t Bumble’s Whitney Wolfe Herd or Airbnb’s Brian Chesky yet, but can extract universally applicable lessons from those leaders so that you can relate to them.

While press wasn’t a main character in the book, “Master of Scale” has already changed my perspective on how I interview founders. Lessons from Tristan Walker made me want to ask more questions about founders, and their most controversial beliefs, rather than how they plan to spend their new round of funding. A note from Andrés Ruzo made me realize that a startup that makes too much sense might be a comfortable read, but it might not be a moonshot that disrupts the world; in other words, pursue the startups that have too much seemingly foolish ambition — because they may be where the best strides, and stories, are made. Finally, it confirmed my belief that the best litmus test for a founder is if they are willing to talk about the hardships ahead of them in an honest, humble way.

Through every feel-good story, I waited for the pandemic to be addressed. The pandemic’s impact on startup advice was largely isolated to a single chapter about the art of the pivot. Instead of interspersing advice on how to deal with the pandemic’s impact on venture capital, funding and markets more broadly, the book limited its references to the cataclysmic event. This choice keeps the advice smartly evergreen. That said, I felt like the book’s choice to not talk much about the ugly within startupland creates an imbalance of sorts. It would have benefitted from talking directly about divisive dynamics, ranging from how WeWork’s Adam Neumann impacted the way we talk about visionary founders, Brian Armstrong’s Coinbase memo and what it means for startup culture, or even the role of the tech press today. One could argue that the book never claims to be journalistic, and instead wanted to play the role of a cheerleading mentor, not a cynical one.

Writing a book based on a hit podcast isn’t necessarily a walk in the park. Audio is an entirely different medium from written text, and it takes a certain finesse to translate into text the charisma and humility of vocal banter. Hoffman and the authors thus certainly shine brighter in some stories than others, leaning heavily on a repeated, yet effective storytelling arc throughout the text: introduce problem, present aha moment, offer solutions and share universal lessons.

I read the book over a weekend; I recommend the same move for any aspiring entrepreneur, techie or startup journalist looking to pick up a copy. Reid and the coauthors will do a fantastic job connecting the dots of over 70 entrepreneurs for you, but the real magic will come from what happens when you pause in between the stories — either to Google a founder you resonate with, to change up your interview style or to finally start working on the idea you one day may just blitzscale.

News: Fintech is transforming the world’s oldest asset class: Farmland

• September 8, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

While farmland is among the oldest investment classes around, the average investor hasn’t had access to farmland the way that billionaires and institutional investors have. That’s changing.

Farmland as an asset class has proven itself to be a stable investment decade after decade. Farmland’s negative correlation with the Dow Jones Industrial Average sits at an eye-popping -43% for a three-year hold period, making it an excellent hedge against market volatility.

The asset has also been a steady appreciator since 1987, when institutional investors began incorporating farmland into their portfolios. Equally, investments into sustainably managed farmland have the potential to transform agriculture from one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions to one of the largest carbon sinks.

However, while farmland is among the oldest investment classes around, the average investor hasn’t had access to farmland the way that billionaires and institutional investors have.

Revolutions in fintech and a host of startups are changing this.

Why farmland?

COVID-19 affected the world in ways we couldn’t have predicted, and the markets were no exception. The S&P 500 plummeted in mid-March and shed 34% of its pre-COVID peak value. But unlike past crises, the index rebounded just a month later.

This doesn’t mean that financial markets have fully recovered, however. We’ve seen plenty of volatility since, both in the form of rallies and losses. This has caused many investors to move some of their portfolio out of equities.

This is where farmland entered the discussion.

Image Credits: FarmTogether (opens in a new window)

A historically stable asset class

Wild stock market fluctuations existed well before COVID-19. The latest era of volatility began in 2018 and continued even as the economy grew prior to the pandemic. Given the unpredictability of the equities market, investors need to counterbalance what’s in store for stocks and funds.

News: Debt versus equity: When do non-traditional funding strategies make sense?

• September 8, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

How can debt be stable and reliable? Seems like an oxymoron, but the reality is that while equity investors are looking for growth, debt investors just want to get paid back with interest.

The U.S. produces more new startups and unicorns each year than any other country in the world, but 90% of startups fail, with cash flow often being a major challenge.

Entrepreneurs trying to raise funding for their new businesses are faced with a maze of options, with most taking the common route of equity rounds. There’s clearly a lot of venture money to be raised — and most tech entrepreneurs happily take it in exchange for equity. This works for some, but too often founders find themselves diluting their equity to unrecoverable portions rather than considering other financing options that allow them to hold on to their company — options like debt capital.

Despite the VC flurries of 2020 creating an ecosystem of seemingly endless equity, it’s important for entrepreneurs and founders to understand that there is no one-size-fits-all model for raising capital. Debt capital, which refers to capital raised by taking out a loan, is an alternative route that entrepreneurs should consider.

Understanding the real cost of venture debt and when it makes more sense than the traditional equity route relies on an understanding of what you and your company hope to achieve.

Understanding your goals

We mainly see two kinds of startups today: Those that want to try something new, and the ones that focus on making things faster, cheaper or simpler. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are good examples of the first kind — social media didn’t exist before the internet. Discount airlines, cell phones (not smartphones) and integrated circuits are good examples of the “faster, cheaper, simpler” variety, because they simply displaced familiar incumbents.

Many entrepreneurs are eager to be the next “try something new” success story, and I applaud them for feeling that way. Carving out your own market is a fast-track to entrepreneurial stardom if you’re successful. But unless your main goal is to be famous, it’s often impractical and distracting.

People tend to think that category creation is less risky than incumbent disruption. However, as long as you’re truly faster, cheaper and simpler, patience and strategy can propel you to where you want to be.

Just as there are different market approaches, there are a number of funding strategies that work best for your goals. Landing investments from leading VC firms has benefits and is a good avenue to opt for if you’re a young startup carving out a market and in need of validation and experience. These firms bring trusted advisers that are laser-focused on growth and have the resources and experience to navigate the murky waters of category creation.

News: SEC wants to regulate Coinbase’s crypto yield product, Coinbase disagrees

• September 8, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has reacted strongly to the company’s current relationship with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. According to him, the SEC is threatening to sue the cryptocurrency exchange if it launches its yield-generating product called Coinbase Lend. With this new product, Coinbase wants to compete with popular decentralized finance (DeFi) products, such

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has reacted strongly to the company’s current relationship with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. According to him, the SEC is threatening to sue the cryptocurrency exchange if it launches its yield-generating product called Coinbase Lend.

With this new product, Coinbase wants to compete with popular decentralized finance (DeFi) products, such as Compound and Aave. The company wants to operate a lending pool focused on USD Coin (USDC), a stablecoin that is pegged to USD.

If the company manages to launch Coinbase Lend, users will be able to contribute to the lending pool by sending crypto assets to Coinbase Lend. Eventually, the company plans to lend out those crypto assets. What Coinbase users get in exchange to contributing to the lending pool is high interests. Coinbase promises 4% APY on its preview page.

According to Brian Armstrong, the company reached out to the SEC before releasing it. “They responded by telling us this lend feature is a security,” he said on Twitter.

“They refuse to tell us why they think it’s a security, and instead subpoena a bunch of records from us (we comply), demand testimony from our employees (we comply), and then tell us they will be suing us if we proceed to launch, with zero explanation as to why,” he added.

Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal also wrote about the events on the company’s blog. It appears that the company decided to move forward and pre-announce the new feature despite the SEC saying that Coinbase’s Lend program is a security.

“The SEC told us they consider Lend to involve a security, but wouldn’t say why or how they’d reached that conclusion. Rather than get discouraged, we chose to continue taking things slowly. In June, we announced our Lend program publicly and opened a waitlist but did not set a public launch date,” Paul Grewal wrote.

Here’s a pro tip for entrepreneurs reading this post. If the SEC tells you that you can’t launch something, don’t put up a waitlist with the words ‘coming soon’.

To no one’s surprise, Coinbase says that the SEC decided to open a formal investigation after that. One employee also had to spend a day with the SEC to answer questions.

“They asked for documents and written responses, and we willingly provided them. They also asked for us to provide a corporate witness to give sworn testimony about the program. As a result, one of our employees spent a full day in August providing complete and transparent testimony about Lend,” Grewal wrote.

As a result, Coinbase is now mad and has chosen to launch a PR campaign against the SEC. Brian Armstrong’s main argument is that other companies have been offering lending pools already, so there’s no reason why some companies can offer such a product and not Coinbase.

“Meanwhile, plenty of other crypto companies continue to offer a lend feature, but Coinbase is somehow not allowed to,” he tweeted.

This is a risky strategy as Coinbase could end up alienating the crypto ecosystem at large. There could be increased scrutiny on DeFi and industry-wide enforcement of stricter rules, as Sar Haribhakti pointed out.

“Ostensibly the SEC’s goal is to protect investors and create fair markets. So who are they protecting here and where is the harm? People seem pretty happy to be earning yield on these various products, across lots of other crypto companies,” Brian Armstrong said.

If you read the fine print, Coinbase doesn’t protect investors with its Lend program. Here’s what it says at the bottom of the Coinbase Lend page: “Lend is not a high-yield USD savings account, and Coinbase is not a bank. Your loaned crypto is not protected by FDIC or SIPC insurance.”

That’s not very reassuring for investors. At some point, Coinbase and the SEC will have to sit at the same table to discuss crypto lending products because a tweetstorm won’t solve the issue.

News: Twitter wants you to tweet to interest-based communities, not just followers

• September 8, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Twitter is a useful place for following breaking news and keeping up with what the people you’re already interested in are doing, but its relative dearth of discovery features and a lack of organized community spaces make it pretty hard to connect with anyone you aren’t actively seeking out. The company is thinking about changing

Twitter is a useful place for following breaking news and keeping up with what the people you’re already interested in are doing, but its relative dearth of discovery features and a lack of organized community spaces make it pretty hard to connect with anyone you aren’t actively seeking out.

The company is thinking about changing that. Twitter is on a tear with new features lately and its latest experiment, called Communities, is designed to make it easier to connect around shared interests. Users will be able to join these new social hubs and tweet directly to other people with shared interests rather than their regular group of followers. Those tweets will still be public, but replies will be limited to other community members.

Communities will be user-generated, though Twitter says that will be “limited,” for now, so most people will have to wait a few months before starting their own groups. The earliest Communities will center around popular and generally benign topics on Twitter including “dogs, weather, sneakers, skincare, and astrology.” Twitter’s example images also include cryptocurrency, plants and Black women photographers.

The test begins Wednesday and will show up in a dedicated spot at the bottom of the iOS app or in the side menu on Twitter.com. Twitter says that Android users will be able to read Community tweets too, though “more functionality” is on the way soon — presumably a dedicated app tab and the ability to join and participate in the new groups.

Communities will be created and maintained by designated moderators, who will have the ability to invite other users to the group via DM and remove content posted within the group. Initially invites will be the only way into a Community, but it sounds like Twitter has some grand plans for discovery features that make it easier for people to find places they might want to hang out.

“Some conversations aren’t for everyone, just the people who want to talk about the thing you want to talk about,” Twitter Staff Product Manager David Regan wrote in a blog post announcing the feature. “… We want to continue to support public conversation and help people find Communities that match their interests, while also creating a more intimate space for conversation.”

With any user-driven community space on social media — particularly one where algorithmic discovery factors in — moderation is the big concern. Twitter says that anyone will be able to read, report and quote content posted in a Community, so you don’t have to be a member of a community to flag harmful content like you would in a private Facebook group. Twitter says that it is working on “new reporting flows, and bespoke enforcement actions” to proactively identify problem Communities.

The introduction of Communities pairs well with Twitter’s recent efforts to court creator communities. The company rolled out Super Follows, its paid subscription tool, earlier this month and also recently invited some users to sell tickets for audio rooms with Ticketed Spaces. It’s also testing one-time payments with a feature called Tip Jar that’s currently only available for a subset of accounts.

Communities are a pretty big departure for Twitter, which is obviously in the throes of reimagining the platform as a more dynamic place for community building. By carving out substantial space for subcommunities on Twitter, the company seems to be inching in the direction of a platform like Discord or Reddit, where everything revolves around self-moderating interest-based communities. Those platforms grapple with their own moderation headaches, but specific, interest-driven communities invite users to go deep in a way that makes interactions on Twitter look shallow by comparison.

The introduction of Communities is an interesting direction for a prominent social network that’s remained largely unchanged for more than a decade at this point. If the test sticks, Communities could build connective tissue between users and make the social network generally a more dynamic place to hang out — but that’s only possible if Twitter can strike the right balance between encouraging its newly imagined subcommunities to grow and keeping them safe.

News: Headout raises $12M, plans to hire 150+ people as domestic travel rebounds

• September 8, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

The travel industry was one of the hardest hit by the pandemic, and startup Headout was no exception. A marketplace that let tourists make same-day bookings for tours, events and activities, the app expanded around the world after launching in 2015. Then COVID-19 hit. But business is growing again thanks to rebounds in domestic travel and

The travel industry was one of the hardest hit by the pandemic, and startup Headout was no exception. A marketplace that let tourists make same-day bookings for tours, events and activities, the app expanded around the world after launching in 2015. Then COVID-19 hit.

But business is growing again thanks to rebounds in domestic travel and Headout claims it has grown 800% since January 2021. The company announced today it has raised $12 million led by Glade Brook Capital, which has also invested in marketplaces like Airbnb, Meituan, Uber and Instacart. The round included participation from returning investors Version One Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, FJ Labs, 500 Startups, Haystack and Ludlow Ventures, and new investors Espresso Capital and Practical VC. 

Headout says it reached profitable EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) in July. The new funding will be used to expand into 300 cities, product development and its product, business, marketing and operations teams. Headout plans to hire more than 150 employees around the world and is also looking for opportunities to acqui-hire travel and entertainment startups. 

This represents a massive turnaround from the beginning of the pandemic. In an email, co-founder and chief executive officer Varun Khona told TechCrunch “the pandemic was devastating as you’d imagine. Our business went from doing $250M+ to negligible scale in a matter of weeks.” 

But as travel gradually resumes, Headout identified “two massive tailwinds.” The first is an unprecedented demand for domestic travel. The second are travel experience providers who are digitizing for the first time. The company began focusing on domestic tourism in the last quarter of 2020. It’s seeing the highest demand in places with relatively high vaccination rates, like the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United Arab Emirates. 

“To win this space, we prioritized onboarding new experiences that are more diverse, local and niche to attract domestic travelers. We standardized these room and pop experience providers, upgraded their services and brought them online,” said Khona. “In conjunction, we worked hard on making Headout available in local languages—not just with machine translation but by actually ensuring we create content that is compelling and inspiring.” For example, 85% of bookings in Spain are sold in Spanish. 

When asked how Headout differentiates from other on-demand booking marketplaces, Khona said in 2018 it evolved from a traditional listings oriented marketplace, like Booking.com, to a “more managed marketplace” by standardizing, upgrading and branding experiences to ensure consistent quality. This increased conversion rates, which in turn “helped us provide more sales to our partners and hence command a higher take rate,” leading to profitable unit economics. 

News: Peloton’s CEO and chief content officer are coming to Disrupt

• September 8, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

It’s been a wildly unprecedented year and a half by any metric. The pandemic has utterly transformed many industries and made or broken others. In the world of technology, however, few categories were as well positioned to embrace a changed world than connected fitness. The space was well on its way prior to the arrival

It’s been a wildly unprecedented year and a half by any metric. The pandemic has utterly transformed many industries and made or broken others. In the world of technology, however, few categories were as well positioned to embrace a changed world than connected fitness.

The space was well on its way prior to the arrival of COVID-19, of course, and Peloton was largely seen as the tip of that spear. Founded in 2012, the company’s connected stationary bicycles have redefined the landscape for home workouts, through instructor-led live courses.

Demand for Peloton’s growing selection of fitness equipment saw a sharp spike as gyms all over the world shut down for indefinite periods, leaving many stuck at home to reimagine their workout experience.

But the period arrived with its share of challenges for Peloton’s executives. Increased demand saw the company battling supply chain issues, while in May, its treadmills were met with a pair of recalls over injury concerns.

On September 21-23 at Disrupt, Peloton CEO John Foley and Chief Content Office Jennifer Cotter will join us to discuss the company’s rise and successes and struggles amid the pandemic.

Foley is the former CEO of Evite.com and Pronto.com, and former president of BarnesandNoble.com. He co-founded Peloton in June 2012 and has served as CEO since its inception. Cotter joined the company in 2019 to oversee Peloton’s streaming content. Her background in television programming includes stints at the Home Shopping Network and Oxygen Media.

Foley and Cotter join a growing list of great guests, including Canva CEO Melanie Perkins, investor Chamath Palihapitiya, Calendly CEO Tope Awotona and Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield. Get your ticket for less than $100 for a limited time!

News: ‘Thin file’ loans startup Koyo closes $50M Series A led by Force Over Mass

• September 8, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Koyo, a fintech startup using open banking to offer loans to people with poor credit histories, has closed a Series A funding round of $50m in debt and equity led by Force Over Mass, with participation from existing investors Forward Partners, Frontline Ventures and Seedcamp. New investors in Koyo include Force Over Mass, Matt Robinson

Koyo, a fintech startup using open banking to offer loans to people with poor credit histories, has closed a Series A funding round of $50m in debt and equity led by Force Over Mass, with participation from existing investors Forward Partners, Frontline Ventures and Seedcamp. New investors in Koyo include Force Over Mass, Matt Robinson (founder of GoCardless, founder of Nested), and angel investors from the banking and lending sectors.  It last raised $4.9 million in 2019. With many sectors of the population having racked up debts during the pandemic, Koyo is likely to benefit from this underclass of consumer, normally rejected by the main loans companies.

The startup says it uses Open Banking data (bank transactions), rather than credit agency scores to underwrite risk for lending to consumers. In other words, it looks at how customers spend their money on a day-to-day basis, rather than what a credit agency says about them. The idea is to offer attractive rates and cheaper borrowing to a usually underserved market, usually known as ‘thin file’ customers (short or no credit history) or ‘near prime’ customers. The near-prime market equates to c13-15m people in the UK.

Thomas Olszewski, Koyo’s founder and a former VC with Frontline Ventures in London and Cavalry Ventures in Berlin, said in a statement: “Koyo launched at the start of the global pandemic and has proven that innovative use of open banking data results in better risk decisioning and ultimately has enabled us to grow the business during one of the toughest economic times the UK has faced. I’m proud to have continued to give many people in the UK access to competitively priced credit, during a time where most traditional lenders were quick to scale back their lending.”

Filip Coen, Force Over Mass partner, said, “We invest in companies that combine transformational technology with strong business models, and Koyo indexed strongly in both of those departments. Koyo has built a first-class foundation over the last 18 months of operation, and we’re excited to be part of its future”.

News: Spotify playlist curators complain about ongoing abuse that favors bad actors over innocent parties

• September 8, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

A number of Spotify playlist curators are complaining that the streaming music company is not addressing the ongoing issue of playlist abuse, which sees bad actors reporting playlists that have gained a following in order to give their own playlists better visibility. Currently, playlists created by Spotify users can be reported in the app for

A number of Spotify playlist curators are complaining that the streaming music company is not addressing the ongoing issue of playlist abuse, which sees bad actors reporting playlists that have gained a following in order to give their own playlists better visibility. Currently, playlists created by Spotify users can be reported in the app for a variety of reasons — like sexual, violent, dangerous, deceptive, or hateful content, among other things. When a report is submitted, the playlist in question will have its metadata immediately removed, including its title, description, and custom image. There is no internal review process that verifies the report is legitimate before the metadata is removed.

Bad actors have learned how to abuse this system to give themselves an advantage. If they see a rival playlist has more users than their own, they will report their competitors in hopes of giving their playlist a more prominent ranking in search results.

According to the curators affected by this problem, there is no limit to the number of reports these bad actors can submit, either. The curators complain that their playlists are being reported daily, and often multiple times per day.

The problem is not new. Users have been complaining about playlist abuse for years. A thread on Spotify’s community forum about this problem is now some 30 pages deep, in fact, and has accumulated over 330 votes. Victims of this type of harassment have also repeatedly posted to social media about Spotify’s broken system to raise awareness of the problem more publicly. For example, one curator last year noted their playlist had been reported over 2,000 times, and said they were getting a new email about the reports nearly every minute. That’s a common problem and one that seems to indicate bad actors are leveraging bots to submit their reports.

Many curators say they’ve repeatedly reached out to Spotify for help with this issue and were given no assistance.

Curators can only reply to the report emails from Spotify to appeal the takedown, but they don’t always receive a response. When they ask Spotify for help with this issue, the company only says that it’s working on a solution.

While Spotify may suspend the account that abused the system when a report is deemed false, the bad actors simply create new accounts to continue the abuse. Curators on Spotify’s community forums suggested that an easy fix to the bot-driven abuse would be to restrict accounts from being able to report playlists until their accounts had accumulated 10 hours of streaming music or podcasts. This could help to ensure they were a real person before they gained permission to report abuse.

One curator, who maintains hundreds of playlists, said the problem had gotten so bad that they created an iOS app to continually monitor their playlists for this sort of abuse and to reinstate any metadata once a takedown was detected. Another has written code to monitor for report emails, and uses the Spotify API to automatically fix their metadata after the false reports. But not all curators have the ability to build an app or script of their own to deal with this situation.

Image Credits: Spotify (screenshot of reporting flow)

TechCrunch asked Spotify what it planned to do about this problem, but the company declined to provide specific details.

“As a matter of practice, we will continue to disable accounts that we suspect are abusing our reporting tool. We are also actively working to enhance our processes to handle any suspected abusive reports,” a Spotify spokesperson told us.

The company said it is currently testing several different improvements to the process to curb the abuse, but would not say what those tests may include, or whether tests were internal or external. It could not provide any ballpark sense of when its reporting system would be updated with these fixes, either. When pressed, the company said it doesn’t share details about specific security measures publicly as a rule, as doing so could make abuse of its systems more effective.

Often, playlists are curated by independent artists and labels who are looking to promote themselves and get their music discovered, only to have their work taken down immediately, without any sort of review process that could sort legitimate reports from bot-driven abuse.

Curators complain that Spotify has been dismissing their cries for help for far too long, and Spotify’s vague and non-committal response about a coming solution only validates those complaints further.