News: Controversial WhatsApp policy change hit with consumer law complaint in Europe

• July 12, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Facebook has been accused of multiple breaches of European Union consumer protection law as a result of its attempts to force WhatsApp users to accept controversial changes to the messaging platforms’ terms of use — such as threatening users that the app would stop working if they did not accept the updated policies by May

Facebook has been accused of multiple breaches of European Union consumer protection law as a result of its attempts to force WhatsApp users to accept controversial changes to the messaging platforms’ terms of use — such as threatening users that the app would stop working if they did not accept the updated policies by May 15.

The consumer protection association umbrella group, the Beuc, said today that together with eight of its member organizations it’s filed a complaint with the European Commission and with the European network of consumer authorities.

“The complaint is first due to the persistent, recurrent and intrusive notifications pushing users to accept WhatsApp’s policy updates,” it wrote in a press release.

“The content of these notifications, their nature, timing and recurrence put an undue pressure on users and impair their freedom of choice. As such, they are a breach of the EU Directive on Unfair Commercial Practices.”

After earlier telling users that notifications about the need to accept the new policy would become persistent, interfering with their ability to use the service, WhatsApp later rowed back from its own draconian deadline.

However the app continues to bug users to accept the update — with no option not to do so (users can close the policy prompt but are unable to decline the new terms or stop the app continuing to pop-up a screen asking them to accept the update).

“In addition, the complaint highlights the opacity of the new terms and the fact that WhatsApp has failed to explain in plain and intelligible language the nature of the changes,” the Beuc went on. “It is basically impossible for consumers to get a clear understanding of what consequences WhatsApp’s changes entail for their privacy, particularly in relation to the transfer of their personal data to Facebook and other third parties. This ambiguity amounts to a breach of EU consumer law which obliges companies to use clear and transparent contract terms and commercial communications.”

The organization pointed out that WhatsApp’s policy updates remain under scrutiny by privacy regulations in Europe — which it argues is another factor that makes Facebook’s aggressive attempts to push the policy on users highly inappropriate.

And while this consumer-law focused complaint is separate to the privacy issues the Beuc also flags — which are being investigated by EU data protection authorities (DPAs) — it has called on those regulators to speed up their investigations, adding: “We urge the European network of consumer authorities and the network of data protection authorities to work in close cooperation on these issues.”

The Beuc has produced a report setting out its concerns about the WhatsApp ToS change in more detail — where it hits out at the “opacity” of the new policies, further asserting:

“WhatsApp remains very vague about the sections it has removed and the ones it has added. It is up to users to seek out this information by themselves. Ultimately, it is almost impossible for users to clearly understand what is new and what has been amended. The opacity of the new policies is in breach of Article 5 of the UCTD [Unfair Contract Terms Directive] and is also a misleading and unfair practice prohibited under Article 5 and 6 of the UCPD [Unfair Commercial Practices Directive].”

Reached for comment on the consumer complaint, a WhatsApp spokesperson told us:

“Beuc’s action is based on a misunderstanding of the purpose and effect of the update to our terms of service. Our recent update explains the options people have to message a business on WhatsApp and provides further transparency about how we collect and use data. The update does not expand our ability to share data with Facebook, and does not impact the privacy of your messages with friends or family, wherever they are in the world. We would welcome an opportunity to explain the update to Beuc and to clarify what it means for people.”

The Commission was also contacted for comment on the Beuc’s complaint — we’ll update this report if we get a response.

The complaint is just the latest pushback in Europe over the controversial terms change by Facebook-owned WhatsApp — which triggered a privacy warning from Italy back in January, followed by an urgency procedure in Germany in May when Hamburg’s DPA banned the company from processing additional WhatsApp user data.

Although, earlier this year, Facebook’s lead data regulator in the EU, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, appeared to accept Facebook’s reassurances that the ToS changes do not affect users in the region.

German DPAs were less happy, though. And Hamburg invoked emergency powers allowed for in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in a bid to circumvent a mechanism in the regulation that (otherwise) funnels cross-border complaints and concerns via a lead regulator — typically where a data controller has their regional base (in Facebook/WhatsApp’s case that’s Ireland).

Such emergency procedures are time-limited to three months. But the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) confirmed today that its plenary meeting will discuss the Hamburg DPA’s request for it to make an urgent binding decision — which could see the Hamburg DPA’s intervention set on a more lasting footing, depending upon what the EDPB decides.

In the meanwhile, calls for Europe’s regulators to work together to better tackle the challenges posed by platform power are growing, with a number of regional competition authorities and privacy regulators actively taking steps to dial up their joint working — in a bid to ensure that expertise across distinct areas of law doesn’t stay siloed and, thereby, risk disjointed enforcement, with conflicting and contradictory outcomes for Internet users.

There seems to be a growing understanding on both sides of the Atlantic for a joined up approach to regulating platform power and ensuring powerful platforms don’t simply get let off the hook.

 

News: Ex-SafeBoda executive Babajide Duroshola joins M-KOPA to lead expansion into Nigeria

• July 12, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

On June 18, Babajide Duroshola, ex-Country Head, SafeBoda Nigeria, stepped down from his role two years after taking the job post-Andela. Less than a month later, the executive has found a new role as General Manager in Kenyan company, M-KOPA. His appointment coincides with M-KOPA’s broader expansion strategy, which includes a move to Nigeria. In

On June 18, Babajide Duroshola, ex-Country Head, SafeBoda Nigeria, stepped down from his role two years after taking the job post-Andela.

Less than a month later, the executive has found a new role as General Manager in Kenyan company, M-KOPA. His appointment coincides with M-KOPA’s broader expansion strategy, which includes a move to Nigeria.

In 2019 when SafeBoda hired Duroshola, the Ugandan ride-hailing company was in the news for its imminent expansion to Nigeria. To the company and most of the public, Lagos was the obvious option. But Duroshola and his on the ground team chose to stay away from one of Africa’s most viable tech ecosystems and launch in neighbouring city Ibadan.

Although it was considered a huge risk, the gamble looks to have paid off. While major ride-hailing platforms in Lagos like ORide, MAX.ng, and Gokada completely halted their operations in the state after a ride-hailing ban, SafeBoda thrived in Ibadan. By the time Duroshola left the company, it had onboarded 5,000 drivers and completed more than 1.5 million rides in a full year of operation.

SafeBoda runs an asset-financing model when offering smartphones to its riders. M-KOPA has used this concept since its inception and it played a major role in Duroshola’s decision to join the company.

“Part of the things that excite me asides from ride-hailing is the credit space. I like asking questions on how to extend credits to people and help them build their digital footprints. That was why M-KOPA seemed attractive,” Duroshola said to TechCrunch. 

M-KOPA launched in Kenya ten years ago. The company is known to have kickstarted the wider pay-as-you-go (PAYG) solar market in the country. Over the years, M-KOPA has expanded its offerings to include televisions, fridges, other electronic appliances, and financial services to customers in Kenya and Uganda. Through its pay-as-you-go financing model, customers can build ownership over time by paying an initial deposit followed by flexible and affordable micro-payments.

So far, M-KOPA has sold over 1 million PAYG solar systems and provided $400 million in financing to millions of customers while raising over $180 million in equity and debt. Last year, the company added smartphone financing to its offerings in Kenya by partnering with Safaricom and Samsung.

Per a GSMA report, mobile technologies and services generated 9% of sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP in 2019, representing about $155 billion in economic value. And when you think about it, smartphones are used in people’s everyday lives more than solar systems, so it isn’t surprising that M-KOPA has already sold 500,000 smartphones, half the units solar systems have managed in a ten-year period.

Early this year, M-KOPA ran a pilot test in the Nigerian market by providing customers with its solar systems and smartphone financing options. Smartphone financing had a higher uptake as M-KOPA sold over 20,000 devices in Lagos, its first market. The company considered this a success, and the appointment of Duroshola is seen as a prerequisite for scaling the offering rapidly in Nigeria.

“We’ve been deliberate about finding the right person with a strong track record and in-depth knowledge of the Nigerian tech community to lead our team as we scale up our country operations. And the milestone coincided with Babajide’s appointment as we look to grow and expand into new regions,” Mayur Patel, M-KOPA’s CCO, said to TechCrunch in an email.

M-KOPA is now present in both Lagos and Oyo after expanding to the latter last month. Just as in Kenya, M-KOPA partnered with Samsung, but a different mobile network operator in Airtel, to make its smartphone financing accessible to Nigerian customers. 

According to Patel, both Nokia and Samsung provide entry- and mid-tier handsets at different prices to their customers. He argues that a top priority for MNOs on the continent is converting 2G/3G network users to 4G. To him, M-KOPA has a shot at tackling the challenge of 4G device affordability in Nigeria because 75% of its total customers are first time 4G smartphone owners.

“Our partnership with both these OEMs has allowed M-KOPA to offer affordable ownership of quality 4G smartphones for underbanked customers, who are otherwise excluded because they lack credit histories or salaried incomes,” he said.

In Nigeria, M-KOPA deals with various products in the Samsung A series (A02, A12, A22, A32) ranging from $80-$250 (~₦40,000 to ₦125,000). The company plans to include more devices and handset manufacturers, but the COO doesn’t say when. In Kenya and Uganda, however, M-KOPA sells Nokia phones in addition to the aforementioned Samsung products.

Although M-KOPA is focused on smartphone financing in the West African country, Duroshola wants to mirror what Kenyan M-KOPA’s customers enjoy (where other products asides from smartphones are sold) in Nigeria. He reckons it will help build their credit history and worthiness over time.  

The Kenyan company is currently recruiting for engineering roles in Nigeria and globally as part of its expansion plans. Duroshola will lead the charge in Nigeria in what can be described as his third stint of scaling African startups in the country. He seems to have a knack for it. Judging from our conversation, there’s an optimistic feel about the general manager in his ability to take on a market where PAYG models outside solar systems have had relatively low success.

“My vision as a person and what really typically drives me on a normal day is to help African startups scale and being that person that would help build, set up, get to the point where they’re able to think about their business strategy and how they can plug into the Nigerian space. What I’m looking to build with M-KOPA is a full credit machine. I want it to become a household name within the Nigerian market space where when people are thinking about pay-as-you-go financing for everyday use cases, M-KOPA is what comes to their mind.” 

News: Flipkart valued at $37.6 billion in new $3.6 billion fundraise

• July 12, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Flipkart said on Monday it has raised $3.6 billion at a post-money valuation of $37.6 billion in what is considered as the pre-IPO round for the Indian e-commerce conglomerate as it works to list in the public markets as soon as early next year. The new round of funding — by far the largest for

Flipkart said on Monday it has raised $3.6 billion at a post-money valuation of $37.6 billion in what is considered as the pre-IPO round for the Indian e-commerce conglomerate as it works to list in the public markets as soon as early next year.

The new round of funding — by far the largest for any Indian startup — was led by GIC, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Walmart, along with investments from sovereign funds DisruptAD, Qatar Investment Authority, Khazanah Nasional Berhad, Tencent, Willoughby Capital, Antara Capital, Franklin Templeton and Tiger Global.

The Monday investment marks the return of SoftBank as a shareholder of Flipkart. SoftBank had taken the exit from the startup when the Bangalore-based firm sold majority stakes to Walmart in 2018 at a valuation of $22 billion.

“At Flipkart, we are committed to transforming the consumer internet ecosystem in India and providing consumers access and value. This investment by leading global investors reflects the promise of digital commerce in India and their belief in Flipkart’s capabilities to maximise this potential for all stakeholders,” said Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Chief Executive Officer at Flipkart Group, in a statement.

“As we serve our consumers, we will focus on accelerating growth for millions of small and medium Indian businesses, including kiranas. We will continue to invest in new categories and leverage made-in-India technology to transform consumer experiences and develop a world-class supply chain.”

Flipkart had originally hit the market to raise money early this year and was initially looking to raise just about $1 billion, TechCrunch first reported.

The Bangalore-headquartered firm competes neck to neck with Amazon in India. The American e-commerce group has invested over $6.5 billion in the South Asian market.

Both the firms are struggling to aggressively expand their footprint in India, where physical stores continue to drive the vast majority of retail sales. Both the firms are also expected to be severely hit by India’s new e-commerce rules

E-commerce platform JioMart, a joint venture between Reliance Retail (India’s largest retail chain) and Google and Facebook-backed Jio Platforms (India’s largest telecom operator), launched last year in over 200 cities and towns across the nation.

At stake is one of the world’s fastest-growing e-commerce markets that is poised to grow even further as more first-time internet users begin to shop online. India’s e-commerce market is estimated to reach more than 300 million shoppers by 2025, according to estimates by Bain & Company. These shoppers would have bought items worth more than $100 billion from online platforms, the firm projected.

In recent years, Flipkart and Amazon have made a number of bets to expand their reach in India. Both of them have rolled out support for Hindi language (Flipkart has added several additional Indian languages as well), and partnered with neighborhood stores.

“Flipkart is a great business whose growth and potential mirrors that of India as a whole — that’s why we invested in 2018 and why we continue to invest today,” said Judith McKenna, President and CEO of Walmart International, in a statement.

Flipkart says it has amassed over 350 million registered users across its services — including fashion e-commerce Myntra — in the country. “Flipkart’s logistics and supply chain arm, Ekart, employs more than 100,000 people and makes deliveries to more than 90% of the addressable pin-codes in India, which, coupled with strategic warehouse infrastructure investments, is one of the group’s core strengths. Venturing into the social commerce space, Flipkart recently announced the launch of Shopsy, which will encourage local entrepreneurship,” the firm said.

News: Dovetail, the venture studio that has worked with startups like Afterpay, is raising a new fund

• July 12, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Based in Sydney and Auckland, Dovetail is a full-service venture studio that works closely with founders who have a great idea, but may lack technical backgrounds. Dovetail helps them build companies from the ground up, preparing them for growth and more funding. Founded in 2014, Dovetail’s success stories include Afterpay, the Melbourne-headquartered unicorn that is

Based in Sydney and Auckland, Dovetail is a full-service venture studio that works closely with founders who have a great idea, but may lack technical backgrounds. Dovetail helps them build companies from the ground up, preparing them for growth and more funding. Founded in 2014, Dovetail’s success stories include Afterpay, the Melbourne-headquartered unicorn that is one of the highest-profile players in the buy now, play later space, along with Klarna and Affirm.

“People can think of us as the technical co-founder, responsible for driving and executing product strategy, design and the development of scalable products,” Dovetail co-founder Nick Frandsen told TechCrunch.

Dovetail is currently raising a $10 million AUD (about $7.5 million USD) fund that will be used for seed, Series A and Series B rounds in 15 of the most promising companies that have gone through its venture studio program. As an investor, Dovetail has written check sizes ranging from $150,000 to $1 million AUD.

One of Dovetail’s goals is prepare startups to seek funding from other VCs; firms that have invested in Dovetail’s portfolio companies include Blackbird, Qantas and Wavemaker.

“By the time we need to make an investment decision, we would have worked collaboratively on a day-to-day basis with them for at least three months prior to a seed round and 12 months for a Series A. This means we’re essentially investing with the informational edge of a co-founder,” said Frandsen. “Another trait that makes Dovetail unique is that we share our ownership in our portfolio companies with the entire team. This further drives unity, dedication and a desire to succeed from our team.”

Dovetail began working with Afterpay in 2017, when the company had less than 40 employees. Frandsen said Afterpay’s founders, Nick Molnar and Anthony Eisen, were looking for a digital product development partner to build and scale their mobile and web apps. While both had deep experience in financial services, they came from non-technical backgrounds. That’s where Dovetail came into play, building out Afterpay’s tech platforms and helping launch its consumer-facing products.

Some other notable startups that have gone through its venture studio program are resource planning SaaS platform Runn; one-click invoicing tool Marmalade; Provider Choice, a management platform for providers in Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme; Landmarks ID, a privacy-compliant mobile location intelligence platform for marketers; and Fluenccy, a service that helps importers and exporters save money on foreign exchange.

Before they started Dovetail, Frandsen and co-founder Ash Fogelberg’s startup, ticketing and payments platform 1-Night, was acquired by TicketDirect in 2013.

Dovetail’s venture studio is sector-agnostic (though it has strong experience in fintech, SaaS and marketplaces), and works with startups that may not have a product yet, but have founders who “are ambitious, commercially-savvy and bring industry expertise from the field in which they are trying to solve a problem,” said Frandsen.

When deciding what founders to work with, Dovetail considers at the viability and growth potential of their idea.This includes looking at how well-suited founders are to the issue, if there is enough market potential for the startup to grow into a large company and how much competition there is.

Dovetail has a product agency that serves mostly U.S. companies, but its venture studio is currently focused on Australasian startups, with plans to expand into North America in the future.

“We are actively seeking industries that are large yet underappreciated by the startup community,” Frandsen said. “We’re looking for ideas. that require hard-earned industry experience and can’t easily be replicated by teams of young aspiring entrepreneurs.”

News: Virgin Galactic and Richard Branson celebrate launch of first passengers into space

• July 11, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Virgin Galactic has successfully taken its first passengers to space, including its billionaire founder Richard Branson. The event, at Spaceport America in New Mexico, was a field day for press and employees, complete with an early-morning Khalid set and hero walk by Branson and the crew. “Just imagine a world where people of all ages,

Virgin Galactic has successfully taken its first passengers to space, including its billionaire founder Richard Branson. The event, at Spaceport America in New Mexico, was a field day for press and employees, complete with an early-morning Khalid set and hero walk by Branson and the crew.

“Just imagine a world where people of all ages, all backgrounds, from anywhere, of any gender, of any ethnicity, have equal access to space,” Branson said on returning. “Welcome to the dawn of a new space age!”

The remark is a bit premature, of course — that world is still some distance off, but it’s true that this flight marks a historic moment in the nascent space tourism industry. At present, leisurenauts are still an elite class, but the events of the day suggest we’re closer than ever to seeing that change.

After an incredibly early start to the day (shuttles to the Spaceport left at 2:45 AM from nearby Las Cruces), the festivities began in true space launch style with a delay. A thunderstorm overnight prevented the team from rolling out the spacecraft, which believe it or not can’t get wet. At the speeds and temperatures involved nothing can be left to chance — like ice forming from water in or on the chassis.

Soon the sun rose and crowds arrived: VIPs, employees, a bunch of local students, and Branson’s own guest list (reportedly numbering around 150). Elon Musk showed up as well, presumably to congratulate his fellow spaceman personally, billionaire to billionaire.

At 8:30 local time the engines started on VMS Eve, the “mothership” carrying VSS Unity, the rocket-powered spaceplane that Branson, along with Virgin Galactic’s Beth Moses (her second flight), Sirisha Bandla, and Colin Bennett, would ride to the edge of space.

Eve was wheels up at 8:40, commencing a wait on the ground while it climbed to about 36,000 feet. Unity detached and began its rocket-powered climb at about 9:24, reaching Mach 3 and after two minutes reached its peak altitude of about 282,000 feet — about 53 miles, as planned.

The crew and passengers enjoyed a minute or two of microgravity, which they seem to have employed gainfully:

A planned mid-air speech by Branson proved impossible as the signal cut in and out, but the craft itself proved more reliable, touching down at 9:38.

In a celebratory stage appearance (following a brief Khalid concert) Branson expanded on the ideas cut short in transmission, beginning with: “It’s hot, I’m sorry,” but quickly moving on to more inspiring words. “I have dreamt about this moment since I was a child, but nothing could have prepared me for the view of Earth from space. We are at the vanguard of a new space age.”

At a press conference following shortly after, Branson fielded questions from elementary schoolers, and the crew described the view from space and whether they saw any planets. (No, just an alien that the pilot shook off during descent, Branson said. At least one kid I saw believed him.)

A long road to space

It’s a triumph long in the making for Virgin Galactic and Branson. The company was ahead of the curve in its space tourism ambitions, but in 2014 a test flight ended in a horrific crash and the death of one of the pilots.

Virgin’s engineers and leaders worked through it, however, and built a stronger, better spacecraft which was christened Unity by Stephen Hawking, who was then still living — and, not surprisingly, hoping to hitch a ride some day.

Pilots flew test flight after test flight over the years, slowly ratcheting up the power and finally, in 2018, touching the edge of space. On that note there is some slight controversy in that the exact altitude where the atmosphere gives way to space isn’t completely agreed upon. Some authorities place the Kármán line, as the imaginary boundary is called, at 100 kilometers above sea level, others at 50 miles, or about 80 kilometers.

Virgin uses the lower estimate, while its arch rival, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, uses the higher. This led Bezos to throw shade on Virgin’s flights, saying he didn’t want his customers to have an “asterisk” on their trip to space. When I asked about this before, a Virgin representative said they use the same standard that NASA and the U.S. Air Force does: pilots are given their “astronaut wings” if they pass the 50-mile mark.

Kármán quibbles aside, the race to send passengers to space has been heating up lately, and Bezos recently announced that he would be flying aboard the first crewed launch of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket on July 22 — with his brother, a mystery passenger who has paid $28M for the privilege, and Wally Funk, among the first women trained to be astronauts in 1961 but who never made it to space.

But Branson rained on his parade by announcing shortly afterward that he would fly aboard Virgin’s first passenger launch to space (crew and pilots have been up several times) about a week earlier.

While Branson has good-naturedly denied any competition between himself and Bezos (“We wish jeff the absolute best,” he said, adding that Bezos sent over a message of goodwill before the flight) it’s hard to believe that’s completely true. Though neither man has anything to prove at this point, there must surely be some satisfaction in Branson’s not merely going to space (a lifelong dream, as he tells it) but doing so before his upstart rival. However much he denies it, the narrative is too tempting to quash completely.

The direction forward for Virgin Galactic now is, clearly, towards paying customers, of which there are plenty lined up. Of course, they all have a quarter of a million dollars to spare, but you might not, and for you Branson has a special offer. They’ve partnered with Omaze, and donations to the chosen charity will enter you into a raffle of sorts, with the winner receiving two tickets on an upcoming Virgin Galactic flight. “And with my Willy Wonka hat on, a guided tour of Spaceport America, given by yours truly,” Branson added.

Branson expressed hope that this would become an ongoing thing as long as donations continue, so perhaps this is the answer to the question of how they hope to, as he so frequently promises, make space available to everyone.

You can watch the whole day unfold as it happened in Virgin Galactic’s archived livestream below:

News: How Retail Zipline’s Series A pitch deck ticked every box for Emergence Capital

• July 11, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

“She pointed to the screen projected behind her to help us stay on the most relevant piece of information. The way she did it really made us stay with her. Like, we couldn’t break eye contact.”

Melissa Wong spent more than a decade working for major retail brands before founding Retail Zipline. That kind of outrageous advantage — a complete understanding of the industry — is something that investors struggle to resist in a vertical SaaS company. At least, according to Emergence Capital investor Lotti Siniscalco.

Wong and Siniscalco joined us on a recent episode of Extra Crunch Live and went into detail on why Emergence was eager to finance Retail Zipline’s Series A round, walking us through Zipline’s Series A pitch deck and sharing which slides and bits clinched the deal.

Extra Crunch Live is a weekly virtual event series meant to help founders build better venture-backed businesses. We sit down with investors and the founders they finance to hear what brought them together, what they saw in each other and how they work together moving forward. We also host the ECL pitch-off, where founders in the audience can pitch their startups to our outstanding speakers.

Extra Crunch Live is accessible to everyone on a live basis, but the on-demand content is reserved exclusively for Extra Crunch members. You can check out the July slate here and see the full ECL library here.

Stand up, stand out

During Wong’s fundraising process, Zipline was also attending a big industry conference. Emergence suggested that they do a virtual pitch meeting while Wong was at the trade show, but Wong pushed back, insisting on an in-person pitch meeting. Not only did she know that she would deliver a better pitch in person, but she didn’t want to squander the limited amount of time she had at the trade show with potential clients and partners.

Once the in-person meeting did take place, Wong surprised the Emergence team. For one, she stood up to pitch. Wong explained that her co-founder is a bigger guy, and she’s a smaller woman, and she feels more confident and comfortable presenting from a standing position.

“She was one of the few or maybe the only CEO who ever stood up to pitch the entire team,” said Siniscalco. “She pointed to the screen projected behind her to help us stay on the most relevant piece of information. The way she did it really made us stay with her. Like, we couldn’t break eye contact.”

In terms of delivery, Wong had already made an impact. But the content of the deck, and her experience in retail, clinched the deal.

“I look for an unfair reason for a founder to be the perfect person to build this product,” said Siniscalco. “Wong gave us her background in the first slide, and I knew quickly that she was a credible person in the retail industry. Then, what I look for in a pitch, is customer love.”

Siniscalco said the combination of that unfair advantage and intense customer love is highly correlated with a very positive outcome for a company.

“When we first started out, I was really insecure because I came from the industry versus coming from a lot of Silicon Valley knowledge,” said Wong. “In retrospect, I really underestimated the competitive advantage of coming from the industry. People said it to me, but I didn’t understand what that resulted in. But it resulted in the numbers in our deck, because I know what customers want, what they want to buy next, how to keep them happy and I was able to be way more capital-efficient.”

The Zipline deck

Zipline’s entire deck (with some minor redactions) is embedded below. You can swipe on through at your leisure, but the real value here (in my humble opinion) is Siniscalco’s breakdown of how she reacted to the information in the deck. I’ll relay that here in text, but I also strongly suggest you watch (at least) the first half of the episode below to hear the founder/investor duo walk us through this deck.

News: Twitter appoints resident grievance officer in India to comply with new internet rules

• July 11, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Twitter has appointed a resident grievance officer in India days after the American social media firm said to have lost the liability protection on user-generated content in the South Asian nation over non-compliance with local IT rules. On Sunday, Twitter identified Vinay Prakash as its new resident grievance officer and shared a way to contact

Twitter has appointed a resident grievance officer in India days after the American social media firm said to have lost the liability protection on user-generated content in the South Asian nation over non-compliance with local IT rules.

On Sunday, Twitter identified Vinay Prakash as its new resident grievance officer and shared a way to contact him as required by India’s new IT rules, which was unveiled in February this year and went into effect in late May.

Earlier this week, the Indian government had told a local court that Twitter had lost the liability protection on user generated content in the country as it had failed to appoint compliance, grievance, and a so-called nodal contact officials to address on-ground concerns.

Other internet giants including Facebook, Google, and Telegram have already appointed these local compliance officers in India.

Internet services enjoy what is broadly referred to as “safe harbor” protection that say that tech platforms won’t be held liable for the things their users post or share online. If you insult someone on Twitter, for instance, the company may be asked to take down your post (if the person you have insulted has approached the court and a takedown order has been issued) but it likely won’t be held legally responsible for what you said or did.

Without the protection, Twitter — which according to mobile insight firm App Annie, has over 100 million users in India — is on paper responsible for everything those users say on its platform. Indian police have already filed at least five cases against the company or its officials in the country over a range of issues.

The new development should help assuage the tension between Twitter and the Indian government. A special squad of Delhi police made a surprise visit to two of Twitter’s offices in late May in what many perceived as an intimidation tactic. Twitter said at the time that it was “concerned by recent events regarding our employees in India and the potential threat to freedom of expression for the people we serve” and requested the Indian government to grant it three additional months to comply with the new IT rules.

Earlier this week, Twitter told an Indian court that it was working to “fully comply” with the new rules.

More countries are formulating similar requirements for tech giants in their nations. Russia President Vladimir Putin signed a law that mandates foreign social media giants to open offices in Russia. Any social firm with a daily user base of 500,000 people or more is required to comply with the new law.

News: Watch live as Virgin Galactic’s first passenger flight takes off with Richard Branson on board

• July 10, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Virgin Galactic is set to launch its first passengers to space tomorrow morning, and you can watch the whole thing right here. The launch is scheduled for 6 AM Pacific, with streaming festivities (including commentary by Stephen Colbert) starting on the hour. This launch is the 22nd for VSS Unity, Virgin Galactic’s first spacecraft to

Virgin Galactic is set to launch its first passengers to space tomorrow morning, and you can watch the whole thing right here. The launch is scheduled for 6 AM Pacific, with streaming festivities (including commentary by Stephen Colbert) starting on the hour.

This launch is the 22nd for VSS Unity, Virgin Galactic’s first spacecraft to leave the atmosphere. As before, Unity will leave the Spaceport attached to the belly of VMS Eve, which will take it up out of the thickest part of the atmosphere.

Unity will drop off and ignite its rocket engine, reaching speeds approaching Mach 3 until it reaches the 80 kilometer mark, the lowest altitude considered to be in space. When the engines shut off, the pilots and passengers will enjoy a short period of weightlessness and of course stunning views.

The whole thing will be livestreamed, from the ground and, connectivity permitting, from the craft itself. When they return safely there will be a triumphant press conference and, remarkably, live music from Khalid.

I’ll be there on the ground, but you can see what I see by tuning in to the official stream below:

News: This Week in Apps: Android ad prices jump, TikTok resumes, Google Play’s antitrust lawsuit

• July 10, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7 hours of live TV per day, but now spends four hours per day on their mobile devices.

Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re also a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. In 2020, investors poured $73 billion in capital into mobile companies — a figure that’s up 27% year-over-year.

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and suggestions about new apps and games to try, too.

This Week in Apps will soon be a newsletter! Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters

Top Stories

Android ad prices jump in wake of privacy updates on iOS

The Wall St. Journal reported this week how Apple’s privacy changes are changing the world of mobile advertising — in this case, ad pricing across platforms. The news outlet has been covering the broader impact of Apple’s decision to let users block apps from tracking them, noting how ad sales, including Facebook’s ad business, would be affected. (And how Apple’s own ad business would gain.)

This week, The WSJ says most users are declining tracking on iOS (less than 33% opt in), and as a result, mobile ad prices on iOS have fallen. The outlet cites data from ad measurement firm Tenjin which notes that spending on iOS mobile ads has dropped around one-third between June 1 and July 1. Around the same time, Android spending rose 10% — an indication that, for the time being, some portion of the ad market has just shifted platforms. Facebook ad spend also shifted to Android, with year-over-year growth of 46% for Android users in May to 64% in June.

The news follows a story this week from The FT, which noted that Chinese tech giants’ plan to route around the IDFA changes with CAID (the Chinese Advertising ID), had failed. Apple blocked updates to apps using CAID, which led to it losing support and the project’s failure.

For most app users, the ability to block tracking is a welcome change, as far too much user data had been shared behind-the-scenes without users’ informed consent. But the full impacts of how the update will impact app monetization long-term — and ultimately which companies then choose to build on iOS — still remain to be seen.

37 AGs target Google Play in an antitrust lawsuit

A group of 37 attorneys general filed a second major antitrust lawsuit against Google, accusing the company of using its market power to stifle competition. The suit takes aim at Google’s Play Store, which requires users to pay for apps and in-app purchases using Google’s own payments system — which gives Google a percentage of the revenue. In addition, the suit alleges that Google makes misleading security claims about the need for a walled garden app store like Google Play, in order to maintain its dominant position.

Google responded by calling the lawsuit “meritless” and noting that it ignores the openness of the Android platform, which permits other app stores and sideloading.

First Look: Pok Pok’s award-winning kids’ app Pok Pok Playroom shows off its sound design

Recently launched Pok Pok Playroom from Pok Pok, a spinout from app maker Snowman (Alto’s Adventure, Alto’s Odyssey, Skate City), just took home an Apple Design Award in the “Delight and Fun” category for its app launched just months ago. Unlike other kids’ apps, Pok Pok promises an app that’s more of a digital “toy” that encourages real and imaginative play, not a mobile kids game. Now the company is sharing some of the techniques that helped it build this award-winning experience.

The company says it wanted to make sure there were no annoying sounds or repetitive music in the app that would bother parents or get stuck in kids’ heads. So it worked with its sound designer, Matt Miller, to ensure all the sounds in Pok Pok Playroom were sensory accessible and not overstimulating.

Miller often uses what he calls “found sounds” — that is, sounds he created by finding things to record — like a soup can, a vintage toy sourced from a local thrift shop, birds chirping, a spoon knocking on a pinecone and more. These give Pok Pok Playroom a more natural feel than other toys, which can sometimes feature loud or electronic-sounding noises that are overstimulating for kids and disruptive to those around them.

Weekly News

Platforms

A new Comscore study offers a look at how much people use their preinstalled apps from Apple and Google. Not surprisingly, these built-in utilities and services — like email, notes, messaging, maps, photos, clocks and more — dominate people’s app usage. 75% of the top 20 most-used apps on iPhone were made by Apple, and 60% of the top Android apps were made by Google, but here’s the funny thing: The study was paid for by Facebook, a company that’s looking for any angle to make it seem like it’s not a monopoly. So of course it had to find the only other bigger apps it could — the ones that ship with your smartphone.

OnePlus confirmed it’s throttling a number of popular apps on the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro in order to improve battery life. Apps such as Chrome, Twitter, Zoom, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Discord, Microsoft’s Office apps, Firefox and Samsung Internet, were affected. The issue was discovered due to inconsistent benchmarks in testing.

Fintech

PayPal was the most downloaded P2P payments app globally during the first half of 2021, according to Apptopia. Rounding out the top 10 were Google Play, Alipay, PhonePe, Cash App, Paytm, Venmo, Zelle, Western Union and Remitly.

Personal finance app Charlie launched a redesign and a new feature called Direct Pay, which allows users to add their credit cards to the app to make extra payments toward their debt at their own pace. Or they can let the app recommend when it’s best to make payments toward their credit card debt. The company notes its users are now saving $66 monthly, which has added up to $30K+ of interest saved over the lifetime of their loans.

Social

TikTok is piloting a new program that will allow U.S. users to apply for jobs using a TikTok video as a resume. Video applicants are asked to showcase their skillsets and experiences on video, then add #TikTokResumes to their caption. Pilot testers include a number of employers — like Chipotle, Target, WWE, Alo Yoga, Shopify, Contra, Movers + Shakers and others. The question is, will TikTokers feature these videos on the same account where they’ve posted personal content, dances and trends, or will this give way to a rise in Rinsta and Finsta-like TikTok accounts, where personal and more public content remains separated?

TikTok is also testing its own version of Cameo. The company was spotted testing a new feature that allows fans to pay for a shout-out video from their favorite creators directly in the app. According to screenshots of the feature, fans can request birthday wishes, pep talks and other messages, then pay using TikTok’s in-app currency.

Twitter shared a few more ideas it’s thinking about in terms of new features around conversation health and privacy. This includes a one-stop “privacy check-in” feature that would introduce Twitter’s newer conversation controls options to users, and others that would allow people to be more private on the service, or to more easily navigate between public and private tweets or their various accounts.

TikTok on Tuesday experienced a widespread technical outage that lasted for over five hours before services were restored. U.S. users found that many videos were not loading during this time.

TikTok parent company ByteDance launched a new business arm called BytePlus, which will license the company’s various technologies to other businesses. This includes its AR effects, computer vision and machine translation tools, analytics and testing tools, and its recommendation engine that supports over 1.5 billion users. The company’s tools are being used by GOAT, Wego, Chilibeli, GamesApp, Webuy, Lark, and others, in addition to TikTok.

Trump has now sued Facebook, Twitter and Google for being “censored.” The companies enforced their terms of service in taking down Trump’s account across top social media platforms in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Trump’s lawsuit claims his First Amendment rights are being violated. The First Amendment applies to government censorship, not actions taken by businesses, however. Trump likely knows this but wanted to stir up some headlines.

Photos

Popular photo-editing app PicsArt launched a brand refresh that includes a new name (Picsart), new logo, and a fresh new look across web and mobile, and more creator-friendly design flows. The app today has over 150 million monthly active users worldwide.

Everyone has thoughts on Instagram Head Adam Mosseri’s latest comments where he declared Instagram is “no longer” a photo-sharing app. His post was meant to alert users to upcoming tests that will see Instagram doing more experiments around how to better feature video in the app, but some are taking it as a sign that Instagram is more fully pivoting to a video-first experience.

Streaming & Entertainment

Reese Witherspoon’s media company, Hello Sunshine, is looking for an acquirer. The company has reportedly been in talks with multiple suitors, including Apple, The WSJ said. While the larger part of Hello Sunshine is it TV and movie film business, the company also operates the book club app, Reese’s Book Club, which serves as a place where many of the movie/TV deals are initially sourced.

More Spotify Premium users are reporting having gained access to the new feature, announced in May, that will allow them to download music to their Apple Watch so they can listen offline. The feature had been graduating rolling out, but appears to now be reaching a global audience.

Gaming

Pokémon Go revenue from player spending has topped $5 billion as the game celebrates its five-year anniversary. According to Sensor Tower, the AR game now generates $1 billion on average per year, putting it at the op of the Geolocation AR category globally, ahead of others like Dragon Quest Walk and Square Enix.

The Alto’s Adventure series from Snowman is getting a new installment in the form of an upcoming Apple Arcade release called Alto’s Odyssey: The Lost City. The game is like a special edition of Alto’s Odyssey (the sequel to Alto’s Adventure), as it include extra features and content that’s deeply integrated, not just tacked on, including a new location called the Lost City. The game arrives on Apple Arcade on July 16th.

Health & Fitness

Amazon launched a new, employee-only app called Amazon WorkingWell for its health and wellness program that includes Associate-facing support, education and safety-prevention information across text content, videos, podcasts, and more.

Vaccine passport apps have hit 10 million global downloads, according to data from Apptopia. The firm analyzed the downloads for top apps including NHS, VeriFLY, NYS Excelsior, and CommonPass.

Government & Policy

Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi was pulled from several apps stores in China, including Apple’s App Store. According to Chinese regulators, the app was illegally collecting users’ personal info. Didi said it was making “corrections” and is halting new user sign-ups, but the app for existing users remained operational. China’s cybersecurity watchdog also suggested the company delay its IPO, and the app was removed from China’s WeChat and Alipay apps for new users.

Security & Privacy

9 Android apps with 5.8 million combined downloads were caught stealing users’ Facebook passwords. A security firm found apps offering photo editing, exercise, horoscopes and utilities that were tricking users into entering their Facebook credentials with the promise of removing ads from the app after signing into Facebook. Google has banned all the apps and their developers from the Play Store.

10 opioid addiction treatment apps were found sharing sensitive data with third parties, including a unique identifier on Android, unique device identifiers, phone numbers, and lists of installed apps. The apps have 180K combined downloads.

Google released its July 2021 security update for Pixel which patches a few “high”-priority (but not critical) vulnerabilities. The update is rolling out to a range of Pixel devices.

Funding and M&A (and a SPAC)

Publishing platform Hiber raised $15 million for its web platform that allows people to create user-generated games, similar to Roblox. The company also offers a creation app for Android devices and allows players to use Safari to create games on iOS.

Juni, a neobanking app for e-commerce and online marketing companies, raised $21.5 million in Series A funding. The round was co-led by DST Global and Felix Capital. The banking app has signed up 3,000 businesses on its waitlists, of which 200 have now joined.

Neighborhood social networking app Nextdoor said it’s going public via a SPAC. The company plans to merge with Khosla Ventures Acquisition Co. II, taking itself public at the same time. The transaction will value the business at approximately $4.3 billion, up from its 2019 valuation of $2.17 billion. The app has 27 million weekly active users across the U.S.

Pleo, a startup offering smart company cards for SMBs that automate expense reports, raised $150 million at a $1.7 billion valuation for its service that works across web and mobile.

Popshop Live raised $20 million in Series A funding at a $100 million valuation for its livestream shopping service, available on web and mobile. The round was led by Benchmark, and comes after 500% growth of the number of sellers on the platform in the last 3 months.

Live video shopping startup Talkshoplive raised $6 million in a seed extension round led by Raine Ventures. The company publishes an app that sellers can use with its live stream shopping platform.

Indian social commerce startup DealShare, which began as an e-commerce platform on WhatsApp, raised $144 million in Series D funding led by Tiger Global. The round values the company at $455 million post-money and will be used to help fund international expansion.

Indian edtech Teachmint raised $20 million in a “pre-Series B” round led by Learn Capital for its mobile-first, video-first tech platform.

European neobank Bunq, which offers a bank account you control from a mobile app, raised $228 million in Series A funding that values the business at $1.9 billion. The round was led by Pollen Street Capital and is the largest round for a European fintech.

Downloads

Rec Room (Android launch)

Social gaming platform Rec Room, which recently became the first VR unicorn, has launched on the Google Play Store. The platform originally targeted only the VR market but expanded to other platforms as VR headset sales remained slow. Similar to Roblox and others, Rec Room allows players to dress up their avatars and play games built by other creators. To date, the app had been available on iOS, PlayStation 4 and 5; Xbox Series X and Xbox One, PC (via Steam), Oculus Quests and other VR headsets. It’s now live on Android to serve the larger global market.

OnMail (Android launch)

Email service OnMail, which has previously been available on iOS, launched its app on the Google Play Store. The app aims to solve users’ biggest problems with email, including those with unwanted mail, email trackers, and more. As on iOS, OnMail lets you accept or reject senders before they hit your mailbox, blocks spy pixels, nudges you to follow up on emails, automatically organizes mail into smart folders (shopping, travel, packages, events), offers easy unsubscribe, monitors for refunds, checks grammar, makes it easier to send large attachments, and a lot more.

SwoonMe

A new startup called SwoonMe aims to fix the problem with superficial dating apps, where users primarily make decisions based on how someone looks in their photos. Instead, on SwoonMe, you take a selfie which the app converts into an avatar. This is what others will see when they come to your profile. You then record a voice clip to tell others about yourself and what you’re looking for in a partner. The result is that when people scroll through SwoonMe, they’re not making snap decisions based on what they’re seeing, but are rather making more thoughtful decisions based what they hear. When two people match, the app encourages them to continue to get to know each other using voice messages and soon, icebreaker games — not texting and photo-sharing. As they communicate, their avatar will slowly unveil their real photo.

Slide

A new app from gift card marketplace Raise.com, Slide, offers users 4% cash back on their purchases online and at over 150 popular stores, including Lowe’s, Petco, ULTA, Office Depot, Bed Bath & Beyond, Chipotle, Panera Bread, Chili’s, DoorDash, Domino’s, Aeropostale, Express, H&M, Foot Locker, Loft, REI, GameStop, AMC, Groupon, Southwest Airlines, Uber, AutoZone, and others. To use Slide and get 4% back, users open the app at checkout, choose their store, and enter their exact purchase amount. They’ll then show the barcode to the cashier, or if paying online, enter the code. The cash back can be transferred to Venmo or PayPal or saved for a future purchase.

Users should be aware the additional cash comes at a price: the data Slide collects from users will allow companies to retarget them with ads and offers across devices, according to the app’s Privacy Policy. The app is free on iOS and Android.

News: The 36 questions that lead to love (but with your co-founder)

• July 10, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

After months of beta testing, Y Combinator has launched a co-founder matching platform. The platform invites entrepreneurs to create profiles, which include information about themselves and preferences for a co-founder, such as location and skill sets. It digests that information and offers a number of potential candidates that fit those needs — kind of like

After months of beta testing, Y Combinator has launched a co-founder matching platform. The platform invites entrepreneurs to create profiles, which include information about themselves and preferences for a co-founder, such as location and skill sets. It digests that information and offers a number of potential candidates that fit those needs — kind of like Tinder for co-founders. To date, the accelerator says it has made 9,000 matches across 4,500 founders.

Y Combinator is obviously well positioned to execute this tool. The accelerator offers the popular Startup School, a free online program with resources and lectures surrounding how to start a company, to anyone who wants to start a company. The school has cultivated a community of 230,000 founders in 190 countries. A matching tool is thus an easy jump to make, one that could help the partners there move even earlier in aggregating and eavesdropping on nascent talent. Notably, two companies who met through the matching platform are part of the YC Summer 2021 batch. Yay ecosystems!

Here’s my hot take, though: The tool may appear as a neat, in-demand and simplistic tool that connects people to each other, but this is far harder to execute in a meaningful way than one may think — even if you’re an accelerator as famed and well known as YC. What follows is a list of suggestions, or rather wishes, for the tool, put together after I spoke to January Ventures co-founder Jennifer Neundorfer for her thoughts as well.

1. Co-founder matching tools are best for founders who don’t have built-in networks and need ways to find collaborators in their earliest days. Startup School is indeed a wide net, but because Y Combinator struggles with diversity and representation of minorities in its batches, it will need to find ways to make sure that doesn’t get compounded when matching founders with each other. Can there be a filter for gender or ethnic background? Should there be? It’s a slippery slope.
2. YC told me here that “we don’t ask for demographic information from Startup School participants with the exception of a recent open text box for gender; and a large percentage have yet to fill this out. Right now, we’re using this info within co-founder matching — if you’re a woman, we let you mark that you’re seeking a woman co-founder and we increase the chances the co-founder candidates you see are women.”
3. Adverse selection is a real thing. Neundorfer told me that in the past, co-founder matching tools only attracted founders without networks, which didn’t do much good once they combined their backgrounds and still couldn’t get meetings with VCs. How does a co-founder matching tool find its Goldilocks situation — attracting the star PM at a hot startup thinking about entrepreneurship and the ambitious post-graduate with a love for code but absolutely no connections to people in the Valley.
4. It’s never as easy as swiping right. Can YC figure out a way to help co-founders within the matching service learn easy ways to vet compatibility? A riff on 36 questions that lead to love, as popularized by the NY Times, but with your co-founder would be perfect.

In a blog post announcing the tool, YC addressed this last point. “You probably shouldn’t marry someone after just one date, and similarly, it’ll take more than one video call to decide whether to co-found a company with someone,” it reads. “We encourage matched co-founders to meet and, when appropriate, work together on a time-boxed trial project with clear expectations and goals in order to vet co-founder compatibility.”

All in all, I’m rooting for this because, well, who wouldn’t? As Neundorfer puts it, “founder matching tools are an interesting way to expand the supply of founders and diversify the base of founders.” It just matters that the tools are built with diversity and accessibility in mind.

In the rest of this newsletter, we’ll get into a rare executive shuffle at a pre-IPO company, an EC-1 that digs into the modern web delivery tech stack and Didi. You can find me at Twitter @nmasc_ and DM me for my Signal for tips (no pitches, please).

The Instacart shuffle

Instacart has hired Facebook executive Fidji Simo as its new CEO ahead of an expected IPO. The grocery delivery company, last valued at $39 billion, will transition current CEO and founder Apoorva Mehta to executive chairman.

Here’s what to know: A major executive shuffle ahead of a public debut is as rare as it is questionable. Instacart’s Mehta is leaving his original role before taking the company he founded nearly 10 years ago public. But, per The Information, Simo’s new job is yet another example of Instacart’s long-going “talent raid” of Facebook. The publication estimates that in 2021, Instacart has hired at least 55 engineers, product managers, recruiters, designers and data scientists from Facebook. Of course, Simo’s new job means that Facebook has lost one of its highest-ranking female executives, which is not a good look for a company that already struggles with diversity.

Speaking of chief executive drama:

• Why 2 CEOs are better than 1
• 3 guiding principles for CEOs who post on Twitter
• 3 analysts weigh in: What are Andy Jassy’s top priorities as Amazon’s new CEO?

The NS1 EC-1

Say that subhead five times fast. The latest EC-1, our deep dive into a company from origin to execution to challenges ahead, is all about NS1, which launched with a plan to disrupt the core of the modern web delivery tech stack.

Here’s what to know: It’s a key read even for those of us who aren’t the biggest nerds on IT and enterprise infrastructure. Why? Because the story talks about how a startup competes in a matured space full of well-funded Big Tech companies and VC-backed heavyweights — and why the need for a reengineering of internet traffic isn’t a niche one.

The breakdown:

• Origin story “1 napkin and 22 lines of code, or how NS1 rewrote the rules of internet infrastructure” (2,700 words/11 minutes)
• Product development and roadmap “WTF is NS1? It’s DNS, DDI, and maybe other TLAs” (2,700 words/11 minutes)
• Competitive landscape “The fight for the future of DNS is white hot” (2,300 words/9 minutes)
• Customer development “Outages, pandemics and the reengineering of traffic on the internet” (2,600 words/10 minutes)

And finally, Didi

The Equity team had an especially amazing episode this week — and I wasn’t even in it, so you can take my semi-less-biased word.

Here’s what to know: The most interesting part of the episode was the conversation around Didi, and its impact on Chinese companies listing in the United States. Regulatory problems have a way of lessening investor interest, and Didi isn’t the only example that we’ve had to point to in recent weeks.

Other things in the show via Alex’s notes:

• What’s going on with facial recognition tech? With AnyVision raising a $235 million round, Danny and Alex tangled over the future of privacy, and what counts as good enough when it comes to keeping ourselves to ourselves.
• Nextdoor is going public: Via a SPAC, mind, but the transaction had our tongues wagging about its history, growth and how hard it can be to build a social network.
• Dataminr buys WatchKeeper: In its first acquisition, Dataminr bought a smaller company to help it better visualize the data it collects. It’s a neat deal, and especially fun given that Dataminr should go public sooner rather than later.
• Two new venture capital funds: Acrylic has put together a $55 million fund for moonshot crypto work, while Renegade Partners has a $100 million fund for early-and-mid-stage generalist investments. Plus, an honorable mention to my scoop on GC’s Peter Boyce II leaving to start a new, $40 million fund.

Around TC

• Make sure to use code “STARTUPSWEEKLY” for a discount on ExtraCrunch, our premium subscription business where most of our deep analysis lives. The investment will break open access to some of the most interesting tidbits on the site, and support our team!
• Big shout out to all the amazing founders and builders who attended TC Early Stage this past week. For those who didn’t attend, recap posts are coming in the next weeks, so keep your eyes out for them.

Across the week

Seen on TechCrunch

Clearco gets the SoftBank stamp of approval in new $215M round

Dispatch from Bangalore

Mmhmm raises $100M, which is a fun thing to say to people who don’t follow tech

Why former Alibaba scientist wants to back founders outside the Ivory Tower

Seen on Extra Crunch

What I learned the hard way from naming 30+ startups

VCs discuss the opportunities — and challenges — in Pittsburgh’s startup ecosystem

Startups have never had it so good

Pakistan’s growing tech ecosystem is finally taking off

And that’s a wrap! This is my first dispatch from San Francisco in over a year, so if you’re in town, happy to be neighbors yet again 🙂

N