Yearly Archives: 2021

News: Automakers race to design desire for luxury and tech

• September 7, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

In late summer, car collectors converged in Monterey, Detroit and, most recently, Oxford, England, in an annual tradition focused on ogling over — and oftentimes bidding for — luxury and historic vehicles. The outdoor luxury automotive events ruled in 2021 after a universal pause the year before due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The events, which

In late summer, car collectors converged in Monterey, Detroit and, most recently, Oxford, England, in an annual tradition focused on ogling over — and oftentimes bidding for — luxury and historic vehicles.

The outdoor luxury automotive events ruled in 2021 after a universal pause the year before due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The events, which included the Goodwood Festival Speed in July, Monterey Car Week and Woodward Dream Cruise shows in August, and the Salon Privé that wrapped up Sunday, showed off more than just swooping coupes and flashy hypercars.

The crowds, which amassed despite the delta variant, and their reaction to the vehicles that lined the plush grounds at each event reflected an unbridled fever for super-luxury cars from the past — but also from the future.

“There was a pent-up demand for a live auction,” Angus Dykman, an auction specialist for Gooding & Company, said. “We had a lot of interest in the live sales. Business has been booming. People were cheering for random cars.”

In this real-life setting, there was an underlying sense of urgency — both among newcomers and established brands — to show customers that their newest vehicles represent the future. The August stop in Monterey is still critical for luxury automakers to show off the designs of their next generation of models. Newcomers Rimac and Lucid Group invested in a Monterey presence, along with the legacy automakers like Bentley, Bugatti and Mercedes-Benz.

The throughline between the vintage and contemporary cars is the stunning designs, which are meant to woo new customers.

Collectors placed orders for the new editions of production cars before manufacturing had even started, all amid a microchip shortage and constrained fleets. They mingled with top executives from the brands. At least a dozen senior executives were spotted at Pebble Beach, including Jim Farley, CEO of Ford Motor Company; Mercedes-Benz U.S. President Dimitris Psillakis; Aston Martin CEO Tobias Moers; and Lamborghini CTO Maurizio Reggiani.

“It is the place to be when it comes to our luxury automotive business,” Moers said from the large stand Aston constructed overlooking the classic car show. “We see new customers here that we’ve never seen before. The brand stands for more than ever before with Formula 1.”

On display were the racy Astons of the future, with the Aston Martin Formula 1 car centerstage to the Valkyrie and Valhalla, an indicator of how Aston sees its way forward.

“It is a statement,” Moers said. “Last year everyone thought the company is done, and then Lawrence Stroll stepped in and put a lot of money in the company. We are back and we are stronger than ever before engaging with the customers.” While much of the U.K. was shut down, he hired new department heads from Bentley, Ford and Porsche.

As a new CEO who took charge during the pandemic, it was also Moers’ first time meeting his North American employees, dealers and customers.

Moers comes from Mercedes-AMG and presents as a confident executive who believes his experience in electrification gives him an edge. “Aston is an ultra-luxury business. They’d always been famous for beautiful cars. With new technologies that are available, there’s no compromise anymore,” he said.

While impressing the Pebble Beach crowd matters, he’s also focused on Aston’s business in China, and how to leverage Mercedes engineering into an expanded Aston portfolio.

“In China, you face different customers than North America, a young population of customers. You have 18 to 30s, and then the 60s upwards, and in between is not existing at the moment. The pace of China is unbelievable. When it comes to the growth of the global wealth pocket, China and Asia are going to be number one.”

For Aston, the future means electrification, rethinking the user experience in the car, and scrapping past plans to draw from the last generation Mercedes-Benz technology on the car.

“We decided not to use the infotainment, the HMI of Mercedes. If you build an HMI for the future, it must be a bit more engaging.” Instead of incorporating Mercedes MBUX infotainment, he said they’re building a new infotainment system with ART, an Italian supplier that has done work for Lamborghini and Apple. “We create our own environment. Our own ecosystem.”

Aston Martin will use Mercedes’ V8 engine technology to become more efficient to meet industry requirements as a transition to electrification.

Power, passion and tech

A theme emerged among car company executives at Pebble Beach to convert to a new way of powering cars to reach compliance standards, while maintaining passion for cars among customers and attracting new ones with up-to-date in-car experiences.

No one can go it alone — the small bespoke ultra-luxury makers rely on the investments of large automakers or parent companies to supply engines and electronic platforms, which are reliant on a competitive talent pool to develop. Then these small luxury brands must push harder to be unique from the large companies.

“One of the most important and expensive developments for the past year and for the future is what is called the electronic platform,” said Lamborghini CTO Reggiani. “The electronic platform is something that no one can touch and no one can see. It’s the real nervous system of the car. This is what we try to use from the group. This allows us to use the most carryover, the systems or components that are not possible to recognize.”

Lamborghini is owned by the Volkswagen Group, and some of its chief competitors are part of the same company, including Bugatti, Bentley, Audi and Porsche.

“We take what the group can offer, but we try to be different,” he said. Lamborghini was the first auto brand to embark on an Amazon Alexa partnership, which opened doors for future thinking, he said, because customers embraced the Alexa integration. “The sound is the way to create a filter for the voice recognition. Imagine in the future, you have trouble, a lamp switches on and you ask Alexa, tell me what I need to do. I need to stop the car, I need to call the service assistant. You create artificial intelligence,” Reggiani says. He said they are working to gather data to build new ways to use sound design and voice.

But for the discerning Lamborghini customer, expensive technology must be shown in attractive designs that can’t look too dated. “Design is the first reason to purchase Lamborghini,” Reggiani says. “Design is not like in the past, but a pure design. More and more design is an integration of engineering inside aesthetics. Every single component of the car must have functionality. Aerodynamic meets cooling. Now with the arrival of PHEV, the cooling will become more and more complicated. You can imagine that battery management will be super complicated. Design must fulfill the requirements in a way that is cool.”

Tech and design in the modern era

The vintage cars at Monterey Car Week were a reminder that aerodynamics and weight distribution always ruled car design principles and pushed progress forward, particularly on cars used for motorsports. But technology and design in the modern era means speed, electrification, ADAS, and connectivity housed in a system that’s sleek and timeless. “One of the most important points is to guarantee emotion and this is a requirement,” said Reggiani.

Designing the future means communicating where it’s all going. In a world that’s moving fast, luxury automakers have their work cut out to keep up with the pace. It’s a tall order. Tesla, the automaker that wasn’t present, timed its AI announcements to overlap with the week and is still the company that everyone is chasing to electrification.

In Monterey, driving vintage cars that are immaculately cared for, available in limited quantities and therefore worth millions of dollars can be an intoxicating sport. I test-drove a 1957 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, an elegant manual-transmission roadster, along a Pacific Ocean road, which gave me a small glimpse into this hallowed world, where the price of entrance is prohibitive, especially during a pandemic.

Goodwood, Woodward and Salon Prive, which wrapped this weekend, were equally alluring. Now with the posh outdoor events in the rearview mirror, the automotive industry has shifted its gaze — for the moment — to shows solely focused on the future of transportation.

The IAA Mobility show, which kicked off this week in Munich, has so far featured a more immersive and hands-on experience as automakers try to reimagine the tired auto shows of the past. The array of electric models and concepts on display is a reminder that one thing that money can’t predict is the speed of progress.

News: AI as a service to solve your business problems? Guess again

• September 7, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

The process to train algorithms to detect wear and tear would be different for factories that produce different products; after all, a shoe is not a smartphone is not a bicycle.

SaaS, PaaS – and now AIaaS: Entrepreneurial, forward-thinking companies will attempt to provide customers of all types with artificial intelligence-powered plug-and-play solutions for myriad business problems.

Industries of all types are embracing off-the-shelf AI solutions. According to industry experts, global AI software revenue — most of it online artificial intelligence as a service software (AIaaS) — is set to grow by an astounding annual rate of 34.9%, with the market reaching over $100 billion by 2025. It sounds like a great idea, but there is a caveat — “one-size-fits-all” syndrome.

Companies seeking to use AI as a differentiating technology in order to gain business advantages — and not merely doing it because that’s what everyone else is doing — require planning and strategy, and that almost always means a customized solution.

In the words of Sepp Hochreiter (inventor of LSTM, one of the world’s most famous and successful AI algorithms), “the ideal combination for the best time to market and lowest risk for your AI projects is to slowly build a team and use external proven experts as well. No one can hire the best talent quickly, and even worse, you cannot even judge the quality during hiring but will only find out years later.”

That’s a far cry from what most online off-the-shelf AI services offer today. The artificial intelligence technology offered by AIaaS comes in two flavors — and the predominant one is a very basic AI system that claims to provide a “one-size-fits-all” solution for all businesses. Modules offered by AI service providers are meant to be applied, as-is, to anything from organizing a stockroom to optimizing a customer database to preventing anomalies in production of a multitude of products.

There are several companies that claim to provide AIaaS for automated industrial production. Most of the successful data presented by these providers is based on individual case studies, with problems involving limited data sets and limited, generic objectives. But generic AI solutions are going to produce generic results.

For example, the process to train algorithms to detect wear and tear would be different for factories that produce different products; after all, a shoe is not a smartphone is not a bicycle. Thus, for “real” AI work — where intelligent modules actually managed and changed production in response to environmental and other factors — the companies developed customized solutions for their clients.

Many customers who were “burned” by bad experience with AIaaS will be more hesitant to try it again, feeling it is a waste of time. And use cases that did require heavier AI processing did not yield the results expected — or promised. Some have even accused the cloud companies of deliberately misleading customers — giving them the impression that off-the-shelf AI is a viable solution, when they know very well that it isn’t. And if a technology doesn’t work enough times, chances are that those who could potentially benefit from real AI solutions will give up before they even start.

The objective is to standardize a solution that performs well almost immediately and does not require extensive know-how. AIaaS’ success so far has been in enabling researchers to run complex experiments without requiring the services of an entire IT team to figure out how to manage the necessary infrastructure.

In the future, AIaaS will hopefully enable individuals who are not AI experts to utilize the system to get the desired results. That said, online automated AI services even at their current levels can greatly benefit industrial production — if it is done right.

AI properly done could provide great benefits for industry. Instead of giving up on AI, companies should do a deep dive on the AI services they are thinking of utilizing. Does the solution provide for customization? What kind of support does the service provide? How is the algorithm trained to handle data specific to your use case? These are the questions that companies need to ask when shopping around for AI services. Providers that can furnish substantial answers — and back up their claims with real data on success rates — are the ones companies should work with.

Like all new developments that enhance business activity, AI applications require a high level of expertise. The engineers who work for the big cloud companies indeed have that expertise — which means that they could be providing much more value for customers by helping them develop customized solutions. Whether that can be done “as a service” needs to be examined — but the system in place right now is not the answer.

News: 5 factors that can make or break a startup’s growth journey

• September 7, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Not all startup growth is equal, and there are a few key aspects that make the difference between a startup reaching its full potential or falling short.

The “health” of a startup’s growth can be a strong predictor of how large and valuable it can become. Our generation’s most valuable startups have all sustained a high rate of user/revenue growth over an extended period of time. As such, founders, employees and investors are all trying to figure out if their startup can achieve sustainable growth to create a large and enduring business over time.

Simply looking at top-line growth tells you relatively little. Two startups that are currently growing users or revenue 300% every year can each have different long-term prospects. It’s almost like looking at two people of the same age, height and weight, and projecting the same quality of life and longevity for both — there are many more factors that can help you make better predictions. Startups are similar, and it’s important to dig deeper into the health of a startup’s early growth and work to build the right foundation from an early stage.

Prior to becoming a VC at Defy, I founded two companies and was Eventbrite’s VP of growth for over six years from startup through IPO. Working across all stages from founding through to public company and advising many other startups along the way, I’ve landed on five critical factors for healthy and sustained growth that can be the difference between a startup failing, getting to a modest exit or building a valuable and enduring billion-dollar company.

Healthy engagement and retention are key

At its core, any successful product or service delivers more value to the user/customer than it costs to use (money or time). To see if your product is delivering true value, ask if it is achieving strong user engagement and customer retention. My friend and growth guru Casey Winters captures this well: “Product-market fit is retention that allows for sustained growth.”

Consumer startups can evaluate this via through cohort-based retention analysis of how frequently customers use the service, and how long they are retained for. SaaS businesses should be talking with customers often to gauge their happiness while also looking at logo retention as well as gross and net revenue retention — ideally, the business should show early signs of being a net-negative churn business, wherein revenue from existing customers actually grows over time, even after accounting for churned customers.

Many people incorrectly think “startup growth = customer acquisition.” In reality, retention is the most fundamental aspect underlying sustainable growth.

Customer obsession creates “pull” from the market

Customer obsession, plus organic pull from the market, are indicators of early product-market fit and signals of future growth potential.

Here are a couple ways to measure this:

See if a healthy percentage of the business is growing without paid spend, generally through word of mouth or some other form of virality. If your business is seeing more than 50% organic growth at a fast rate (200% to 300%+ year over year), you’re solving people’s needs well enough that they’re now sharing with others and creating a positive viral effect.

News: Extra Crunch roundup: Options pool rules, voice tech hurdles, keeping employees engaged

• September 7, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Don’t wait to be blindsided: Put an action plan in place to assess employee engagement. Remember, seven out of the next 10 people you see on a video call might be polishing their resumes.

“In today’s cash-rich environment, options are more valuable than cash,” says Allen Miller, a principal at Oak HC/FT. “In turn, managing your option pool may be the most effective action you can take to ensure you can recruit and retain talent.”

In an article squarely aimed at early-stage founders, Miller shares best practices for protecting your option pool, lists the mistakes many founders make and offers multiple tips for course-correcting “if you made mistakes early on.”

As we’re just returning from the Labor Day holiday, today’s newsletter is quite brief. We have much more planned for this week, so thanks very much for reading.

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist

---

Full Extra Crunch articles are only available to members.
Use discount code ECFriday to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription.

---

To commercialize, voice tech must first solve its ‘cocktail party problem’

Voice and speech recognition is expected to be a $26.8 billion global market by 2025, but there’s still a long way to go before voice can be fully commercialized.

Developers are deploying natural language processing and conversational AI to overcome current limitations, but “solving these problems requires voice tech to meet the human standard for voice and match the complexities of the human auditory system.”

How engaged are your employees?

According to a recent survey, more than 70% of workers are actively hunting for a new job or are giving the matter serious consideration.

In a startup environment, employee development takes a back seat to priorities like scaling growth. As a result, few managers have any experience or interest in helping employees acquire new skills or advance their careers.

Don’t wait to be blindsided: Put an action plan in place to assess employee engagement. Remember, seven out of the next 10 people you see on a video call might be polishing their resumes.

News: Ford hires Apple executive who led its secret car project

• September 7, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Ford Motor has hired Doug Field, the engineering executive who was leading Apple’s special projects team, as the automaker seeks to gain an edge in software and other advanced technology. Field, who previously was senior vice president of engineering at Tesla, was named Tuesday as Ford’s chief advanced technology and embedded systems officer. Field was

Ford Motor has hired Doug Field, the engineering executive who was leading Apple’s special projects team, as the automaker seeks to gain an edge in software and other advanced technology.

Field, who previously was senior vice president of engineering at Tesla, was named Tuesday as Ford’s chief advanced technology and embedded systems officer. Field was most recently vp of Apple Special Projects, a team that was also working on its so-called Titan car project.

In this new position, Field will report directly to Ford President and CEO Jim Farley and oversee the company’s embedded software and hardware organization, which today consists of vehicle controls, enterprise connectivity, features, integration and validation, architecture and platform, driver assistance technology and digital engineering tools. This means Field will be responsible for the design, development and implementation of the entire tech stack used in Ford and Lincoln branded vehicles, including infotainment, navigation, driver-assist technology, connected services and vehicle cybersecurity.

The hire could be a boon for Ford, which wants to show customers and investors that it can offer cars, trucks and SUVs with a level of embedded technology that competes with the likes of Tesla and other newer entrants. Field’s experience at Tesla, specifically with the Model 3, could also prove critical for Ford as it develops and rolls out new electric vehicles.

Ford said that Field will work closely with Hau Thai-Tang, Ford’s chief product platform and operations officer, to create the next generation of Ford’s connected products and experiences. Thai-Tang will continue to oversee product development, purchasing, design, research and advanced engineering, EPLM / D-Ford, advanced manufacturing and Ford Ion Park.

The job marks a return for Field who began his career at Ford as a development engineer from 1987 to 1993.

“I’ve always felt a deep connection to Ford. Ford products have been in my life as long as I can remember — F-150s on my dad’s farm, a ’65 Continental picking us up at my wedding and my thrill when I discovered the brilliant elegance in the design of the Model T,” Field said in a statement. “I’m grateful for the opportunity to help the team build the next generation of iconic Ford vehicles and prepare Ford for the next hundred years.”

News: Solid Power expands production capacity to deliver test batteries to BMW, Ford in 2022

• September 7, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Solid Power, a battery developer backed by Ford and BMW, is expanding its Colorado-based factory footprint as it prepares pilot production of its solid state batteries early next year. The new production facility will be dedicated to manufacturing one of the company’s flagship products, a sulfide-based solid electrolyte material, by up to 25 times its

Solid Power, a battery developer backed by Ford and BMW, is expanding its Colorado-based factory footprint as it prepares pilot production of its solid state batteries early next year.

The new production facility will be dedicated to manufacturing one of the company’s flagship products, a sulfide-based solid electrolyte material, by up to 25 times its current output. The new facility will also make room for the first pilot production line of its commercial-grade, 100 ampere battery cells. Those pouch cells are expected to go to Ford and BMW for automotive testing in early 2022, with the aim of getting them into driver-ready vehicles by the latter half of the decade.

Solid state batteries have long been considered the next breakthrough in battery technology. They lack a liquid electrolyte, the material that moves ions between the cathode and anode in traditional lithium-ion batteries, as TechCrunch writer Mark Harris has explained. The gains from such technology, SSB developers say, include increased energy density, reduced costs and a superior battery life expectancy.

Developers also say they’re safer – an important consideration in light of incidents like GM’s three-times recall of Chevrolet Bolt vehicles due to fire risk. It’s the liquid electrolyte that serves as “the spark that leads to thermal runaway,” Solid Power CEO Doug Campbell told TechCrunch. “We believe very strongly that these issues that both Hyundai and GM are now facing would be addressed with a solid-state battery.”

While the startup will be building out a new battery cell pilot production line, Solid Power’s ultimate plan is to eventually only produce the electrolyte material and license out the cell to OEMs and battery manufacturers.

“Long term, we’re a materials company,” Campbell said. “We want to be the industry leader in solid electrolyte materials.” To that end, this current expansion to cell production will likely be the company’s last, he said. The forthcoming pilot production line will produce enough to supply multiple OEMs with cells for automotive qualification testing, with the intent of larger production scales being undertaken by automakers and battery cell producers.

The decision to license the battery cells to partners, rather than produce them all in-house, is an asset-light model born from commonsense, he added.

“Let’s face it, what’s the probability that little Solid Power is going to grow up and displace the likes of Panasonic, LG, CATL?” While some companies are attempting it, like Sweden’s Northvolt, Campbell added that the material business margins are higher and don’t include direct competitors that are all but behemoths. “It’s capital-light, but it’s also realistic.”

The startup said in June it would go public via a $1.2 billion reverse merger with blank-check firm Decarbonization Plus Acquisition Corp. III. The transaction, which is anticipated to generate around $600 million in cash, should give the company enough funds through 2026 or 2027, Campbell said.

The company will need plenty of capital to take it through the rest of the decade, especially as it aims to produce enough electrolyte material to support 10 gigawatt-hour annual cell capacity by 2207. For that, it’ll need “orders of magnitude” more electrolyte production capacity than was even announced today (which is itself an order of magnitude increase), Campbell said.

Solid Power doesn’t even plan on stopping at electrolyte production. Campbell hinted that the company is also at work developing a low-cost cathode material – one that contains no nickel or cobalt, two of the costliest raw battery materials.

“[The industry] is going to be dominated by the cost of materials and the cost of materials is going to be dominated by the cost of that nickel- and cobalt-containing cathode material,” he said. “This particular chemistry that we’ll be disclosing later this year is extremely low cost, we’re talking 1/20th, 1/30th the cost of today’s [nickel manganese cobalt cathodes].”

News: Locals share why Vilnius, Lithuania is becoming an international startup hub

• September 7, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

There are plenty of reasons why Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital city, has an increasingly visible startup sector.

There are plenty of reasons why Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital city, has an increasingly visible startup sector. The country’s startup-friendly regulatory environment, a beautiful medieval town center, over 20 business hubs and accelerators and strong rankings in intellectual property production are most obvious at a high level. But what are the locals excited about on the ground?

Our survey respondents said the city was strong across a broad range of tech industries, particularly those with practical applications: cybersecurity, energy and sustainability, fintech, health care and medtech, edtech and silver tech among others.

Respondents said the effect of the pandemic on working practices would mean that many expats would be moving back to the city, which is affordable, and more foreign companies are relocating there due to favorable government policies, although “rental prices are going through the roof.”

In addition, the oppressive regime in nearby Belarus has provided an influx of significant tech companies, such as Wargaming, as well as the associated talent.

In five years, respondents said the city and country will continue to generate and attract great tech startups, but also tech talent and entrepreneurs. However, one said: “The ecosystem still lacks local funding for the late Series A and beyond rounds.”

We surveyed:

• Gerda Sakalauskaitė, managing director, The Lithuanian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association

• Lukas Inokaitis, business development, NFQ Technologies

• Andrius Milinavicius, founder, Baltic Sandbox

• Gytenis Galkis, partner, 70V

• Gabriele Poteliunaite, associate, Change Ventures

• Rokas Tamošiūnas, partner, Open Circle Capital

• Donatas Keras, founding partner, Practica Capital

• Tomas Martunas, founding partner, Iron Wolf Capital

• Alex Gibb, partner, Katalista Ventures

• Jone Vaituleviciute, partner, Startup Wise Guys

• Lukas Kaminskis, CEO, Turing College

---

Gerda Sakalauskaitė, managing director, The Lithuanian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
The Vilnius startup ecosystem is mainly dominated by startups developing business management systems (B2B, SaaS) and financial technologies. Vilnius is becoming a solid hot spot of fintech companies in Europe having more than 200 fintech companies established here. Other growing industries would be deep tech, life sciences, mobility, and the game industry.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Vinted (first Lithuanian unicorn, secondhand fashion online marketplace which raised €128 million in an equity funding round, valuing the company at over €1 billion in 2019).
Other notable startups: NordVPN, CGTrader, TransferGo, Trafi, Kilo Health, CityBee, Brolis Semiconductors, PIXEVIA, Oxipit.
Rising stars that also should be looked at: PVcase, Droplet Genomics, ZITICITY.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?
I think local tech investors are taking more risks and becoming global scene players. Investors had their 10 years of market experience and now they are ready to invest into ideas and businesses that would change the global scene or even tackle issues as complex as they come — environmental, biotechnology or deep tech industries. Moreover, the local investor community is quite dynamic. We seek to have our investor landscape as diverse as possible, so we are working toward gender equality in VC and other important diversity causes to accomplish that.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
I think COVID-19 created more opportunities for Vilnius than risks in this regard. The coronavirus crisis, in general, hasn’t affected the Vilnius startup ecosystem in the same way as the rest of Europe. In addition, Vilnius has made headlines worldwide with its creative solutions to tackle the pandemic challenges. For instance, Vilnius became one large open air cafe. This shows Vilnius being a quirky, hip and interesting city to live in, so we are expecting more expats to lay their eyes on Vilnius. Especially expats from our Eastern neighbors who are negatively affected by an ongoing political crisis (Belarus).

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
Founders:
Justas Janauskas, Milda Mitkutė, Mantas Mikuckas (Vinted)
Henrikas Urbonas, Simona Andrijauskaitė (Interactio)
Dalia Lašaite (CGTrader)
Tomas Okmanas, Eimantas Sabaliauskas (Tesonet)
Tadas Burgaila (Kilo Health)
Daumantas Dvilinskas (TransferGo; Forbes 30 under 30)
Martynas Gudonavičius (Trafi)
VC investors:
Rokas Peciulaitis (Contrarian Ventures)
Donatas Keras (Practica Capital), Arvydas Bložė (Practica Capital)
Jone Vaituleviciute, Dmitrij Susunov (Startup Wise Guys)
Kasparas Jurgelionis (Iron Wolf Capital)
Gytenis Galkis (70Ventures)
Viktorija Vaitkevičienė (Coinvest)
Legal experts:
Rūta Armone (Ellex)
Akvilė Bosaite (COBALT Legal)
Eva Suduiko (COBALT Legal)
Mantas Petkevičius (Sorainen)
Laimonas Skibarka (Sorainen)
Linas Sabaliauskas (TRINITI JUREX)
Andrius Ivanauskas (GLIMSTEDT)

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
Vilnius will definitely gain momentum as the tech startup city of the region. The number of startup people they employ will grow exponentially. We will have one or two extra unicorns born here. And of course quite more foreign talent coming to Vilnius to work in startups!

Lukas Inokaitis, business development, NFQ Technologies

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
Mobility, fintech, energy, cybersecurity, healthcare. Weak in AI, data science.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Vinted, Tesonet, Kilo Health, Pored Banda, Hostinger.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?

Local and with small funds, mostly subsidized by government and EU. Need large private ones and more angel investors.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
The city [has been] growing for a decade each year. No reason to slow down as more international talent is moving to Vilnius from other EU and Asian countries.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
One-two unicorns every year and leading EU in fintech, mobility and energy.

Andrius Milinavicius, founder, Baltic Sandbox

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
Sustainability, silver tech, women in tech.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Tesonet (NordVPN), Vinted, Traffi, Kilo Health.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?

Deep tech, SaaS, sustainability.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
Everyone stays. Vilnius is a very green and vibrant ecosystem, with multiple co-working [locations] and easy access to forests, parks and nearby lakes.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?

Many of them, starting from Contrarian Ventures — Rokas Peciulaitis, Practica Capital — Arvydas Bloze, continuing to Tesonet co-founder — Tomas Okmanas, Eimantas Sabaliauskas, followed with Kilo Health — Tadas Burgaila and more.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
4x at least. Very rapid growth

---

Help TechCrunch find the best growth marketers for startups.

Provide a recommendation in this quick survey and we’ll share the results with everybody.

---

Gytenis Galkis, partner, 70V

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
1. Lithuania is now fourth in the global fintech ranking after the U,S,, the U,K, and Singapore.
2. Lithuania’s life sciences sector is gaining prominence.
3. Life sciences companies in Lithuania are among the most profitable in the country, with 90% of their output exported worldwide, yet the market remains unsaturated. Lithuania is 16th in the Global Innovation in Biotechnology ranking according to Scientific American WORLDVIEW international biotechnology ranking 2019.

According to McKinsey study on B2B startups, Lithuania’s B2B startups generate more value per funding than the U.S. and other European counterparts, resulting in the highest capital efficiency in the region!

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Larger ones would be: Vinted, Tesonet, Kilo Health, Bored Panda, Brolis Semiconductors, Cujo. Interactio recently has raised a $31 million Series A round — the largest ever Series A for a company headquartered in the Baltics. Upcoming stars: Whatagraph, Ondato, ZITICITY, Eneba, Robolabs, CAST AI, Foros, Billo, Biomatter Designs, #walk15, Boommio.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?

The tech investment ecosystem has been evolving very rapidly during the past five years. The early-stage companies are able to get funding from the Lithuanian Business Angel Network (LitBAN), which unites over 150 active private investors. Coinvest Capital invests along angel investors and provides them lucrative leverage. This is how the Lithuanian government supports the angel ecosystem. Then there are two active accelerators — 70V (Revenue Accelerator) and Startup Wise Guys providing funding in the pre-seed/seed stages. Other local funds — Practica Capital, Iron Wolf Capital, Verslo Angelu Fondas and Open Circle Capital provide seed and Series A funding. The ecosystem still lacks local funding for the late series A and beyond rounds. Most of it is covered by foreign funds. The local ecosystem is too small to have a specific focus. However, I’d say that a lot of focus goes to B2B/enterprise software.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
Since 2012 Vilnius’ population has been steadily growing 0.3% every year. I believe that during COVID and events related to Belarus have even further boosted the growth of Vilnius, especially in terms of the tech ecosystem. There had been major moves from Minsk to Vilnius. For example, Wargaming has moved a significant amount of their employees with families to Vilnius and even bought 76 luxury flats in downtown Vilnius. Other Belarusian companies are following. Furthermore, Vilnius is one of the greenest capitals in Europe with a unique medieval old town, which makes it one of the coziest places to live. It is estimated that Lithuania still lacks over 10,000 tech talents, which could be a great opportunity for savvy explorers to join the rapidly growing tech scene!

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
Vilnius is a small town and it is well connected, there are a lot of people that made this ecosystem flourish. Just to name a few: Jean-Baptiste Daguenè, Donatas Keras, Mantas Mikuckas, Tomas Okmanas, Rita Sakus, Vladas Lašas, Viktorija Vaitkevičienė, Tomas Martunas, Dmitrij Sosunov, Evaldas Remeikis, Evaldas Petraitis, and many more that I should mention.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
I strongly believe that Vilnius will further expand on its unique angle of tech entrepreneurship. I strongly estimate further growth in fintech, life sciences and B2B ecosystem. In my vision, I believe exports driven by Lithuanian startups will at least double within the next five years while bringing a few new unicorns.

Gabriele Poteliunaite, associate, Change Ventures

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
Well, probably most people will give the same answer, but Vilnius is huge on fintech. However, I would also go on to highlight other prospering sectors, such as edtech, AI-driven companies, medtech, energy tech — you name it … There are numerous sectors that we are quite strong in. As a generalist investor, we are mostly excited about driven and passionate founders. This brings me to another point that I would say the weakest link of the ecosystem is lack of entrepreneurial training and lack of educational initiatives inspiring youngsters (and not only) to go on to found their own companies and take risks. Risk aversiveness is the key weakness here. We are still lacking huge success stories, but this is slowly changing (Vinted, Tesonet).

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Interactio, Vinted, Memby and so many others — could go on listing them for days.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?

As it is a very tight-knit community, local tech investors are very collaborative and helpful with each other and entrepreneurs. However, I would say the main areas local investors still need to improve on is internationalizing and diversifying their investment teams (it’s 2021 already) and discouraging founders to be aggressive in their expansion to foreign markets and thinking globally very early on. Most investors are generalists, focusing on all three Baltic countries and doing mostly seed investments in software (some hardware) B2B companies.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
STAY and MOVE IN — no question there! I think COVID-19 pandemic has been a great stimulus for most expats — including myself, to move back to Vilnius and join forces in building this flourishing ecosystem. As far as I can tell, most people will stay, (rental prices are going through the roof) and more foreign companies are relocating here due to very favorable policies.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
Ugh, so many great people to highlight … which is obviously a sign that Vilnius has simply an overwhelming number of absolute stars! (Not a biased opinion obviously.)

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
I would venture to say something as daring as Vilnius becoming the global leader in generating and attracting not only world-class tech startups, but also tech talent and outstanding entrepreneurs. I might be getting a tad too excited, but I see so much authenticity in this region — and if we manage to cherish it, we may go really far!

Rokas Tamošiūnas, partner, Open Circle Capital

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
Strong: Marketplaces, fintech, life sciences, tech diversity (prop, fin, gov, mobility, AI). Weak: Internationalization, sales, marketing.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Vinted, Tesonet, Traffi, Omnisend, Billo, Whatagraph.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?

We have some generalists (Practica Capital), deep tech (Open Circle Capital and Iron Wolf Capital), green/energy (Contrarian Ventures) and accelerators (70ventures and Startup Wise Guys).
Investors are still early pre-seed/seed but are gradually maturing up. ICT (especially AI) still dominates, but other areas, such as photonics (lasers), new space and others.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
Gradually everyone moved to full remove in the tech community. Now people are back in offices (and mostly enjoying it), but I think most companies will do a mixed model from now on. Remote working did a lot of good in recognizing virtual teams and especially teams that have members based in different countries.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
Top are startup founders like J. Janauskas from Vinted, T. Okman from Tesonet, R. Lauris from Omnisend.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
We are going on a patch of diversity — dozens of microecosystems of different tech. I think we will have a very colorful scene in a few years.

Donatas Keras, founding partner, Practica Capital

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
As our young tech ecosystem matures, we can see an increasing number of startups from different industry sectors that are founded and headquartered in Vilnius are becoming global leaders in their categories. If we look more closely at specific industries, I would highlight:
Marketplaces (Vinted, CGTrader, Ovoko); cybersecurity (NordVPN); fintech (TransferGo, Ondato, Revolut EU headquarters); gaming (Nordcurrent, Game Insight, Wargaming); mobility (Trafi, ZITICITY); biotechnology (Biomatter Designs, Droplet Genomics); space (NanoAvionics); health tech (Kilo Health, Oxipit).
The strengths of our tech ecosystem are the fast growth of startups, global first mindset, seek for innovation and the resilience of the founders. And these are some of the things that excite me as an investor. Of course, with such fast growth, we can already see increasing competition for local talent. That can be considered as a weakness, which should be addressed right now at the state level.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
The most notable startups are – Vinted (The first Lithuanian unicorn), NordVPN, CGTrader, Interactio, TransferGo, Trafi, Kilo Health, CarVertical, Omnisend and many more. But I would also like to mention some of the rising stars that we should not overlook: Ondato, Ovoko, Biomatter Designs, Droplet Genomics, ZITICITY.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?

The investment scene shows the same signs of maturing as the whole ecosystem. And that is noticeable at all investment stages. It seems that now we are starting to “pick the fruits” of 10 years of hard work — companies becoming much more fundable, and investors tend to take risks and are more ready to do so. Business angels are becoming more active than ever, with 100+ deals made per year. And if a few years back the majority were experienced entrepreneurs of the so-called “old economy,” now an increasing number of tech entrepreneurs are picking up and investing in new startups at the very early stage. Business accelerators and pre-seed funds also playing an important role in the development of the ecosystem. They are mostly backed by the government and became very active in the last 3-4 years. Most notable: 70ventures, Startup Wise Guys, Baltic Sandbox.
Venture capital has around 10+ years of history in Vilnius and Lithuania. First, it was stimulated by EIF and the state money, now it’s picking up strongly and plays a crucial role in startups development at an early stage.
Most notable VCs:
Practica Capital is one of the most experienced and most active VCs in Vilnius and the whole region. With 10+ years of history, it grew together with the ecosystem, startups and the founders right from the start. The most notable deals are — Interactio, TransferGo, CGTrader, Trafi, Eneba, PVcase. The team has a high level of know-how and proven record in fintech, mobility, SaaS, marketplaces.
Open Circle Capital and Iron Wolf Capital are first-time funds, both active and doing a good job.
Contrarian Ventures is a small but active “green” tech-focused VC making a noticeable mark in the development of the ecosystem too.
Regional and international colleagues are also present at the events and co-investing quite actively with local investors (Karma Ventures, Trind VC, Change Ventures, Tera VC, ZGI and global powerhouses such as Intel, Accel, Creandum, Insight Venture Partners, Inreach).
Most of the VCs are generalists and looking into a broad spectrum of startups active in different sectors, with a few exceptions. Of course, some of the investors have a better-proven record in some categories than others.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
Lithuania is a small country, and Vilnius being the capital city, is still the center of attraction of everything in the country, and talent is not an exception. With further development and growth of the tech ecosystem, even more talent will be drawn to Vilnius. It is a great city to live in, work and build global tech companies.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
We will have more than five unicorns born/raised here, and Vilnius will become one of the European “hot spots” for tech investing. The tech ecosystem will grow at least three times. Vilnius will become a center of attraction for talent from all the region, CIS and other parts of Europe.

Tomas Martunas, founding partner, Iron Wolf Capital

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
Lithuania, and especially Vilnius, has established a very strong position in fintech being the No. 4 in Global Fintech Ranking. Vilnius has created a favorable environment for fintech startups to be established and developed, and managed to attract one of the largest fintech players, Revolut. Vilnius is also especially advanced in the laser industry. While lasers constitute only a small part of Lithuania’s export, their quality is making the country famous around the world. It is very exciting as the demand for lasers is forecasted to only increase. We believe that Lithuania’s laser industry has a very positive outlook and thus, we invested in laser manufacturer Litilit. Vilnius also boasts many strong SaaS startups with, for example, Interactio, which recently raised $30 million after seeing 12x growth between 2019 and 2020. I believe there is still a lot of untapped potential in deep tech and edtech in the Vilnius ecosystem and it is starting to uncover. With the Wargaming office opening, also together with the Unity branch, Game Insights office and independent game studios, the gaming cluster has good fundamentals to blossom.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Vinted, Tesonet, Turing College, Omnisend, Millo Appliances, NanoAvionics, Pixevia, Monimoto, Redtrack.io, Interactio, Litilit, Foros.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?

First, there are significant sums of EU funding available for early-stage startups, especially for the ones having a strong technical foundation and innovative solutions. Overall, the Vilnius ecosystem has grown significantly over the past five years with many more VCs being established, a strong business angels network (LitBAN), accelerators launched and more focus dedicated to early stage and bolder investment ideas.
Many investors remain focused on the Baltics and CEE and still have some way to go to establish more global mindsets that are more prevalent in Nordics and Western Europe. But the Vilnius ecosystem is still growing and more foreign investors entering shows the attractiveness of the ecosystem in this way also providing founders with more opportunities.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
Vilnius is a very attractive destination. It boasts affordable housing (which many European capitals cannot offer), and when COVID-19 is reshaping our lives to remote work becoming a standard, many people will move out of expensive cities to more affordable ones, such as Vilnius. Also, it is an innovative city that has advanced a lot to easily compare with other European capitals (and overtake some of them) in terms of standard of living and career opportunities.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
Mantas Mikuckas, Tomas Okmanas, Eimantas Sabaliauskas, Toma Sabaliauskiene, Rytis Lauris, Vladas Lašas, Rita Sakus, Tadas Burgaila, Inga Langaitė, Roberta Rudokiene and of course Iron Wolf Capital founders 😉

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
I believe that Vilnius will continue on growing and advancing to become one of the key European startup hubs. With favorable business conditions and a good standard of living it is expected to attract more talents who will contribute to fostering the ecosystem. However, Lithuania is already experiencing a brain drain and should take some special efforts to bring talents back and retain them.

Alex Gibb, partner, Katalista Ventures

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
We’ve seen an explosion of companies offshoring from Scandinavia over the past 10+ years in LT, which has led to the growth of competence centers and specialist R&D facilities for intangible services. I’m excited by the tech sector’s growth, which is primarily software, development and engineering.  We’re too small to really have specific sectors but lasers have a trusted pedigree in LT.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Cogastro is servicing insect farms with CRM systems — that’s pretty original and niche! Bored Panda was No. 1 on the App Store last year and continues to boom, Tinggly (disclosure — I’m a co-founder) is growing again rapidly after COVID, serving the U.S. market primarily. Vinted is of course head and shoulders above the others — both in valuation terms, but also the positive impact on recycling and reusing.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?

We have a growing angel network with LitBAN that is boosted by the government’s co-invest fund — which recently facilitated a 34x return for early investors in Interactio. There is a good range of early-stage VCs in town, the gap comes in the 2 million+ space where startups need to go abroad for deeper pockets. The focus tends to be B2B but as we’re a small geography there are very few investors with a tight sector focus.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
Move in! Vilnius is a compact and cool city [with a] high quality of life here and [it’s] easy to get out to the lakes and forests to relax. I still think we’re figuring out the hybrid nature of work from here onward, so people will mix and match to what suits their lifestyles. The positive shift is more power to employees and employers taking into account what employees need for positive mental health.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
Greta Monstavice, CEO at Katalista Ventures — she’s top of the tree on all things sustainability related and passionate about empowering startups. JB Daguené at 70V is powering B2B startups with explosive growth tools. Sarune Smalakyte, head of Rockit, is nurturing fintech companies at their co-working space and blasting out many great (free) events for the community.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
I’m excited about the city’s prospects. We have a lot ahead of us with many new startups coming through. The key challenge will be to get the next generation of tech talent trained properly and ready for the demands of an already squeezed workforce.

Jone Vaituleviciute, partner, Startup Wise Guys

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
Vilnius is of course known on a global scale for its fintech ecosystem — though the majority of fintech “perks” come on a governmental/country level, Vilnius boasts a high number of banking, insurance and other financial services professionals, as well as fintech-focused startup hubs and a number of events. I am particularly excited to see a number of big foreign names (e.g., Revolut, SumUp and many other) moving their operations here; this way building up the ecosystem and level of fintech professionals. Gaming, edtech are also a few other up-and-coming areas, which signals that B2C is becoming more usual than not. On the improvement side, we still have not figured out how to include deep tech/R&D startups into the ecosystem and funding mechanisms. This is a challenge many cities have, but we hope Vilnius will move to the right direction, thanks to collaborations among universities and venture capital funds.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Well-known names: Vinted, Trafi, TransferGo and several not backed by venture capital — Bored Panda, Kilo Health.
Up-and-coming: ZITICITY (mobility), kevin. (fintech), Ondato (fintech), Turing College (edtech).

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?

Vilnius is a good representation of all Baltic venture capital ecosystems. We have several pre-seed/seed stage venture capital funds that are coming in with experience and good understanding of various verticals. However, for a long time we lacked a proper early-stage funding ecosystem. This is changing right now with accelerators supporting idea-stage startups and a number of business angels appearing from successful startups who are ready to invest decent tickets resembling more Western Europe rather than Baltic funding trends.
With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
I believe the pandemic has been rather favorable for small ecosystems like Vilnius. Mainly because remote investing/pitching/selling became an absolute norm and founders do not have to fly hundreds of miles for an event or a meeting to close a deal. Thus, I see many entrepreneurs sticking to Vilnius due to its great life quality and well-knitted ecosystem.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
We should be talking pre-seed/seed on the same level as West Europe or even the U.S. We are catching up with the standard, but with the maturity of the venture capital ecosystem, Vilnius should be a perfect city to kick-start your startup and take it to Series A with the same funding available. We should see more areas like fintech emerging with strong value proposition for foreign companies as well as initiatives for local ones to stay. Talent will be expensive, but this is how it should be. Second- and third-time founders will be creating more and more startups that will attract a number of foreign funds too.

Lukas Kaminskis, CEO, Turing College

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
Vilnius is well known for its fintech and blockchain ecosystems — companies such as Revolut have banking licenses registered here in Vilnius. We have several strong players in medtech and cybersecurity — Kilo Health and Nord Security — which are growing super fast. Nevertheless, we’re lacking behind with education. Explicitly speaking, most IT programs in Lithuanian universities aren’t focused on preparing students for international competition. This is why a lot of companies are establishing their internal academies to upskill students from universities.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Omnisend, Nord Security, Attention Insight, Turing College.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?

Lithuania has quite a good pre-seed/seed investment scene with investors like Iron Wolf Capital, Startup Wise Guys, Practica Capital, etc. Moreover, there is a VC fund — Co-invest Fund, which invests the sum equivalent to the multiplier of any accredited angel investor’s investment sum by 3x-5x. Investors in Lithuania are mostly industry agnostic.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
Tendencies in Lithuania are quite similar to the ones we see in the global scene. Companies plan to adapt hybrid type of work post-COVID, while maintaining remote type of work as primary while the pandemic is happening.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
Giedrius Kolesnikovas is the guy to know from the legal industry — he is the partner of Motieka & Audzevicius legal firm. From the investor’s perspective, there are several of them — Jone Vaituleviciute, Rytis Vitkauskas, Kasparas Jurgelionis and Arvydas Bložė. These guys can open doors to most of European/U.S. capitals.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
I see that Vilnius will become a tech talent center of Northern Europe. Edtech startups and private training initiatives are emerging in our market to solve educational problems that we face because of the poor performance of public education policies in the last 20 years. As well, I see that the current government is making a huge effort to attract international tech companies to establish their branches here in Lithuania. Great examples are Wargaming, Moody’s, which established huge centers here in Lithuania.

News: Microsoft launches a personalized news service, Microsoft Start

• September 7, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Microsoft today is introducing its own personalized news reading experience called Microsoft Start, available as both a website and mobile app, in addition to being integrated with other Microsoft products, including Windows 10 and 11 and its Microsoft Edge web browser. The feed will combine content from news publishers, but in a way that’s tailored

Microsoft today is introducing its own personalized news reading experience called Microsoft Start, available as both a website and mobile app, in addition to being integrated with other Microsoft products, including Windows 10 and 11 and its Microsoft Edge web browser. The feed will combine content from news publishers, but in a way that’s tailored to users’ individual interests, the company says — a customization system that could help Microsoft to better compete with the news reading experiences offered by rivals like Apple or Google, as well as popular third-party apps like Flipboard or SmartNews.

Microsoft says the product builds on the company’s legacy with online and mobile consumer services like MSN and Microsoft News. However, it won’t replace MSN. That service will remain available, despite the launch of this new, in-house competitor.

To use Microsoft Start, consumers can visit the standalone website MicrosoftStart.com, which works on both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge (but not Safari), or they can download the Microsoft Start mobile app for iOS or Android.

The service will also power the News and Interests experience on the Windows 10 taskbar and the Widgets experience on Windows 11. In Microsoft Edge, it will be available from the New Tab page, too.

At first glance, the Microsoft Start website it very much like any other online portal offering a collection of news from a variety of publishers, alongside widgets for things like weather, stocks, sports scores and traffic. When you click to read an article, you’re taken to a syndicated version hosted on Microsoft’s domain, which includes the Microsoft Start top navigation bar at the top and emoji reaction buttons below the headline.

Users can also react to stories with emojis while browsing the home page itself.

This emoji set is similar to the one being offered today by Facebook, except that Microsoft has replaced Facebook’s controversial laughing face emoji with a thinking face. (It’s worth noting that the Facebook laughing face has been increasingly criticized for being used to openly ridicule posts and mock people  — even on stories depicting tragic events, like Covid deaths, for instance.)

Microsoft has made another change with its emoji, as well: after you react to a story with an emoji, you only see your emoji instead of the top three and total reaction count. 

But while online web portals tend to be static aggregators of news content, Microsoft Start’s feed will adjust to users’ interests in several different ways.

Users can click a “Personalize” button to be taken to a page where they can manually add and remove interests from across a number of high-level categories like news, entertainment, sports, technology, money, finance, travel, health, shopping, and more. Or they can search for categories and interests that could be more specific or more niche. (Instead of “parenting,” for instance, “parenting teenagers.”)  This recalls the recent update Flipboard made to its own main page, the For You feed, which lets users make similar choices.

As users then begin to browse their Microsoft Start feed, they can also click a button to thumbs up or thumbs down an article to better adjust the feed to their preferences. Over time, the more the user engages with the content, the better refined the feed becomes, says Microsoft. This customization will leverage A.I. and machine learning, as well as human moderation, the company notes.

The feed, like other online portals, is supported by advertising. As you scroll down, you’ll notice every few rows will feature one ad unit, where the URL is flagged with a green “Ad” badge. Initially, these mostly appear to be product ads, making them distinct from the news content. Since Microsoft isn’t shutting down MSN and is integrating this news service into a number of other products, it’s expanding the available advertising real estate it can offer with this launch.

According to the iOS app’s privacy label, the data being used to track users across websites and apps owned by other companies includes the User ID. By comparison, Google News does not include a tracking section. Both Microsoft Start and Google News collect a host of “data linked to you,” like location, identifiers, search history, usage data, contact info, and more. The website itself, however, only links to Microsoft’s general privacy policy.

The website, app, and integrations are rolling out starting today. (If you aren’t able to find the new app yet — it replaces Microsoft News —  you can try scanning the QR code from your mobile device. We currently found the app had rolled out on iOS but the link pointed us to Microsoft News on Android. Your mileage may vary.)

 

News: Wright tests its 2-megawatt electric engines for passenger planes

• September 7, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Just like the automotive industry, aerospace has its sights set on going electric — but flying with battery-powered engines is a tougher proposition than rolling. Wright is among the startups looking to change the math and make electrified flight possible at scales beyond small aircraft — and its 2-megawatt engine could power the first generation

Just like the automotive industry, aerospace has its sights set on going electric — but flying with battery-powered engines is a tougher proposition than rolling. Wright is among the startups looking to change the math and make electrified flight possible at scales beyond small aircraft — and its 2-megawatt engine could power the first generation of large-scale electric passenger planes.

Electric cars have proven to be a huge success, but they have an advantage over planes in that they don’t need to produce enough lift to keep their own mass in the air. Electric planes have been held back by this fundamental conundrum, that the weight of the batteries needed to fly any distance with passengers aboard means the plane is too heavy to fly in the first place.

In order to escape this conundrum, the main thing to improve is efficiency: how much thrust can be produced per watt of power. Since reducing the mass of batteries is a long, slow process, it’s better to innovate in other ways: materials, airframe, and of course the engine, which in traditional jets is a huge, immensely heavy and complex internal combustion one.

Electric engines are generally lighter, simpler, and more reliable than fuel-powered ones, but in order to achieve flight you need to reach a certain level of efficiency. After all, if a jet burned a thousand gallons of fuel per second, the plane couldn’t hold the amount needed to take off. So it falls to companies like Wright and H3x to build electric engines that can produce more thrust from the same amount of stored energy.

While H3x is focused on small aircraft that will probably be taking flight sooner, Wright founder and CEO Jeff Engler explained that if you want to take on aerospace’s carbon footprint, you really have to start looking at commercial passenger jets — and Wright is planning to make one. Fortunately, despite the company’s name, they don’t need to build it entirely from scratch.

“We’re not reinventing the concept of the wing, or the fuselage, or anything like that. What changes is what propels the aircraft forward,” said Engler. He likened it to electric vehicles in that much of the car doesn’t change when you go electric, mainly the parts that have operated the same way in principle for a century. All the same, integrating a new propulsion system into a plane isn’t trivial.

Wright’s engine is a 2 megawatt motor that produces the equivalent of 2,700 horsepower, at an efficiency of around 10 kilowatts per kilogram. “It’s the most powerful motor designed for the electric aerospace industry by a factor of 2, and it’s substantially lighter than anything out there,” said Engler.

The lightness comes from a ground-up redesign using a permanent magnet approach with “an aggressive thermal strategy,” he explained. A higher voltage than is normally employed for aerospace purposes and an insulation system to match enable an engine that hits the power and efficiency levels required to put a large plane in flight.

Wright is making sure its engines can be used by retrofitted aircraft, but it’s also working on a plane of its own with established airframe makers. This first craft would be a hybrid electric, combining the lightweight, efficient propulsion stack with the range of a liquid fuel engine. Relying on hydrogen complicates things but it makes for a much faster transition to electric flight and a huge reduction in emissions and fuel use.

Several of Wright’s motors would be attached to each wing of the proposed aircraft, providing at least two benefits. First, redundancy. Planes with two huge engines are designed to be capable of flying even if one fails. If you have six or eight engines, one failing isn’t nearly so catastrophic, and as a consequence the plane doesn’t need to carry twice as much engine as you need. Second is the stability and noise reduction that comes from having multiple engines that can be adjusted individually or in concert to reduce vibration and counteract turbulence.

Right now the motor is in lab testing at sea level, and once it passes those tests (some time next year is the plan) it will be run in an altitude simulation chamber and then up at 40,000 feet for real. This is a long term project, but an entire industry doesn’t change overnight.

Engler was emphatic about the enthusiasm and support the company has received from the likes of NASA and the military, both of which have provided considerable cash, material and expertise. When I brought up the idea that the company’s engine might end up in a new bombing drone, he said he was sensitive to that possibility, but that what he’s seen (and is aiming for) is much more in line with the defense department’s endless cargo and personnel flights. The military is a huge polluter, it turns out, and they want to change that — and cut down on how much money they spend on fuel every year as well.

“Think of how things changed when we went from propellers to jets,” said Engler. “It redefined how an airplane operates. This new propulsion tech allows for reshaping the entire industry.”

News: The next Theranos should be shortable

• September 7, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Matthew Wansley Contributor Matthew Wansley is Assistant Professor of Law at Cardozo School of Law in New York A jury will soon decide whether former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes is guilty of a federal crime. But the deeper public policy questions that Theranos raised remain unanswered. How did a startup built on a technology that

A jury will soon decide whether former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes is guilty of a federal crime. But the deeper public policy questions that Theranos raised remain unanswered. How did a startup built on a technology that never worked grow to a valuation of $9 billion? How was the company able to conceal its fraud for so long? And what, if anything, can be done to prevent the next Theranos before it grows large enough to cause real harm—and burns capital that could have been invested in genuine innovations? I explore these questions in a forthcoming paper in the Indiana Law Journal titled Taming Unicorns.

While Theranos was publicly exposed in October 2015 by Wall Street Journal investigative reporter John Carreyrou, insiders knew that it was committing fraud many years earlier. For example, in 2006, Holmes gave a demo of an early prototype blood test to Novartis executives and faked the results when the device malfunctioned. When Theranos’ CFO confronted Holmes about the incident, she fired him. In 2008—roughly seven years before Carreyrou’s exposé—Theranos board members learned that Holmes had misled them about the company’s finances and the state of its technology.

Over time, a remarkable number of people, both inside and outside the company, began to suspect that Theranos was a fraud. An employee at Walgreens tasked with vetting Theranos for a potential partnership wrote in a report that the company was overselling its technology. Physicians in Arizona grew skeptical of the results their patients were receiving, and a pathologist in Missouri wrote a blog post questioning Theranos’ claims about how accurate its devices were. Stanford Professor John Ioannidis published an article in JAMA raising more doubts.

Meanwhile, rumors had spread in the VC community. Bill Maris of Google Ventures (since rebranded as GV) claimed that his fund passed on investing in Theranos in 2013. According to Maris, the firm had sent an employee to take a Theranos blood test at Walgreens. The employee was asked to give more than the single drop of blood that Theranos claimed its devices needed. After he refused a conventional venous blood draw, he was told to come back to give more blood.

So why did none of these doubts slow Theranos’ fundraising? Part of the answer is that it was a private company, and it’s nearly impossible to bet against private companies.

Until the last decade, most startups that grew to become valuable businesses chose to become public companies. Late-stage startups with reported valuations over $1 billion used to be so rare that VC Aileen Lee dubbed them “unicorns” in a 2013 article in TechCrunch. Back then, there were only 39 startups claiming billion-dollar valuations. By 2021, despite the surge in companies going public through SPACs, the number of unicorns had passed 800.

The rise of unicorns has been accompanied by corporate misconduct scandals. Of course, public companies commit misconduct too. Research hasn’t yet established whether unicorns are systematically more prone to commit misconduct than comparable public companies. However, we do know that the opportunity to profit from information about a company by trading its securities creates incentives to uncover misconduct. Since the securities of private companies aren’t widely traded, it’s easier for private company executives to conceal misconduct.

Consider the electric truck company Nikola, formerly a unicorn. In 2020, Nikola went public through a SPAC. Once it was public, short seller Nathan Anderson decided to investigate and ultimately issued a report alleging a pattern of corporate misconduct. He showed that a video Nikola had produced with its prototype truck traveling at high speed was staged—Nikola had towed the truck to the top of a hill and filmed it rolling downhill in neutral. After Anderson released his report, the SEC and federal prosecutors launched investigations into whether the Nikola misled investors. Its stock price lost more than half of its value. In 2021, Nikola’s CEO Trevor Milton was charged by the SEC and indicted by a federal grand jury. Nikola wouldn’t have been exposed so soon if it had stayed private.

Securities regulation restricts both the sale and resale of private company stock in the name of investor protection. Startups usually attach a contractual right of first refusal to their shares, which effectively requires employees to get the company’s permission to sell. Many late-stage startups practice “selective liquidity”: allowing key employees to cash out in private placements, while preventing a robust market from emerging. Consequently, those who have information about private company misconduct have little incentive to publicize it—even though the Supreme Court has held that an investor who trades on information shared for the purpose of exposing fraud can’t be convicted of insider trading.

VCs might seem well-positioned to police unicorn misconduct. But their asymmetric risk preferences undermine their incentive to expose wrongdoing. VCs invest their funds in a portfolio of startups and expect that most bets will generate modest or negative returns, and only a small number will grow exponentially. The outsize growth of the few successful startups will offset the losses of the balance of the portfolio. For VCs, the difference between a startup that implodes in scandal and the many startups that fail to develop a product or find a market is insignificant.

Venture investing is an auction with a winner’s curse problem. Startups pitch to many VC firms in each fundraising round, but they only need to accept funding from one bidder. In public capital markets, if most investors decide that a company is fraudulent or excessively risky, its stock price will decline. In VC markets however, if most investors decide that a startup is fraudulent, the startup can still raise funds from a credulous contrarian. VCs who pass won’t share their negative assessment with the public because they want to maintain a founder-friendly reputation. Maris only told the press that GV had passed on Theranos after Carreyrou’s article.

Congress and the SEC could strengthen deterrence of unicorn misconduct by creating a market for trading private company securities, in three steps.

First, the regulations constraining the secondary trading of private company securities should be liberalized. The SEC should eliminate Rule 144’s holding period for resales as to accredited investors—the individual and institutional investors that the SEC deems sophisticated and most able to bear risk. Congress should eliminate section 12(g)’s requirement that effectively forces companies to go public if they acquire 2,000 record shareholders who are accredited investors—a rule that leads private companies to limit trading.

Second, the SEC should attach a regulatory most favored nation (MFN) clause to all securities sold through the safe harbors commonly used for private placements. An MFN clause would require that, if a company allows any of its securities to be resold, it must allow all its securities to be resold, as long as the resale is otherwise legal. A regulatory MFN clause would ban the practice of selective liquidity and nudge companies to allow their shares to be traded.

Third, the SEC should require that all private companies that let their securities be widely traded make limited public disclosures about their operations and finances. A limited disclosure mandate would protect investors by ensuring they had basic information about the companies in which they could invest, without saddling unicorns with the costly disclosure obligations placed on public companies.

The net effect of these reforms would be to create a robust market for trading unicorn stock among accredited investors. Most large, private companies would likely decide to allow their shares to be traded. Short sellers, analysts, and financial journalists would be attracted to the markets. Their investigations would strengthen deterrence of unicorn misconduct. The limited disclosure mandate, combined with the requirement that investors be accredited, would protect investors.

When large, private companies commit misconduct, the natural response is to increase the penalty for the underlying misconduct, not to interfere with the tradability of the company’s securities. But the problem isn’t lax penalties. Holmes is facing 20 years in prison—a punishment more brutal than anyone deserves. The problem is that penalties only work when wrongdoers expect to be caught. Trading creates incentives to expose misconduct faster.