Tag Archives: Blog

News: Hear CEOs from Green Li-Ion, AMP Robotics and Material Evolution discuss high-tech solutions to waste management

According to the EPA, the U.S. alone produces 292.4 million tons of municipal solid waste a year. That figure works out to around 4.9 pounds per person, per day. To say the world – and the United States in particular – has a waste problem is putting it mildly. No one solution is going to

According to the EPA, the U.S. alone produces 292.4 million tons of municipal solid waste a year. That figure works out to around 4.9 pounds per person, per day. To say the world – and the United States in particular – has a waste problem is putting it mildly. No one solution is going to address this growing issue – but thankfully, we’ve seen a number of innovations surface in recent years.

This year, we’re playing host to the Extreme Tech Challenge Global Finals on July 22. The pitch-off competition will feature some of the most innovative forward-looking startups across a range of categories, including many dealing with sustainability. The day will also feature panels, including a number hosted by TechCrunch editors.

One highlight worth tuning in for is “Waste Matters.” The conversation will include a trio of folks from companies taking unique approaches to managing the waste stream.

Leon Farrant is the co-founder and CEO of, Green Li-Ion, a company dedicated to dramatically accelerating the process of recycling lithium-ion batteries. It’s a key issue as a wide range of different consumer electronics grow more ubiquitous around the world.

Matanya Horowitz is the founder and CEO of AMP Robotics. The Denver-based company uses AI and robotics better sort a wide range of recyclables from waste. Material Evolution co-founder and CEO Elizabeth Gilligan will also join us to discuss her company’s novel and sustainable approach to creating concrete.

Join us on July 22 to find out how the most innovative startups are working to solve some of the world’s biggest problems. And best of all, tickets are free – book yours today!

News: YouTube TV adds a $20 monthly upgrade for 4K support and offline viewing

With less than a month to go before the Olympics kick off in Tokyo, cord-cutting services like YouTube TV are attempting to woo new subscribers who are looking for a way to watch summer sports. But whether or not you’re eager to watch Simone Biles defy gravity, YouTube TV’s latest upgrades enhance the product with

With less than a month to go before the Olympics kick off in Tokyo, cord-cutting services like YouTube TV are attempting to woo new subscribers who are looking for a way to watch summer sports. But whether or not you’re eager to watch Simone Biles defy gravity, YouTube TV’s latest upgrades enhance the product with audio and video improvements.

Today, YouTube TV announced a 4K Plus add-on package with offline downloads, 5.1 Dolby audio, and features that make it easier to watch live sports. The company previously teased these features in February.

YouTube TV is already one of the pricier streaming services out there — at $64.99 per month, you might not save much money by choosing YouTube in lieu of your cable service. Hulu + Live TV is priced the same, but offers a Disney+ and ESPN+ add-on for a total of $72.99 per month. But if you want to kick your video quality (and your monthly bill) up a notch, you can now enable 4K streaming for an extra $19.99 per month, bringing your grand total to $84.98 monthly.

The 4K Plus add-on package will also allow subscribers to download shows from DVR to watch offline — currently, that’s not possible on the standard $64.99 per month package. Subscribers will be able to try out the package for free for a month, then pay $9.99 per month for a year before the price increases to $19.99. This is pretty consistent with YouTube TV’s continual price hikes over the years.

Meanwhile, the 5.1 Dolby audio capabilities will be a free addition for all YouTube TV members — in a blog post, the company says this has been one of users’ “biggest requests.” Over the coming weeks, these surround-sound audio capabilities will begin rolling out to select devices.

The sports upgrades also come at no additional cost — one new feature will let viewers jump to key plays and specific highlight moments when watching a DVR recording or trying to catch up live. So, if you’re tuning in an hour late, you can view key moments from the game, then jump right in live. YouTube TV will also let users search for specific sports to add to their DVR, which has no storage space limit. So, again, if you’re determined not to miss a single Simone Biles floor routine, it will be easier to make sure you’re in the loop. There will also be a Medal count view during the Olympics within the app.

As the Olympics draw nearer, we can expect other cord-cutting services to up the ante on their live sports offerings — the $9.99 monthly Paramount+ Premium plan includes a wide range of international soccer matches, but no word on the Olympics yet. Still, the service is far less expensive than YouTube TV and already offers 4K, HDR, and Dolby Vision. YouTube TV had 3 million subscribers as of October 2020, but did not offer an update for Q1 of 2021. As of March, Hulu had 4.1 million subscribers to its Live TV service, which will also air the Olympics.

 

News: Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley steps back from the company

Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley has announced that he is stepping back of his full-time role at the company. During the first seven years of the company, he was the startup’s Chief Executive Officer. In 2016, Crowley moved to an executive chairman position. He’s also been running the Foursquare Labs R&D group since then. Going forward,

Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley has announced that he is stepping back of his full-time role at the company. During the first seven years of the company, he was the startup’s Chief Executive Officer. In 2016, Crowley moved to an executive chairman position. He’s also been running the Foursquare Labs R&D group since then.

Going forward, Crowley won’t be working full-time at the company. He’ll remain on the Board of Directors as co-chair with Factual founder Gil Elbaz.

In 2009, Foursquare was better-known for its location-based social network. People would check in to locations to share what they’ve been up to with their friends. Users would earn badges and mayorships.

Over the years, the most active users had amassed thousands of checkins. Foursquare became a great app to keep track of places you like. You could also use it to discover your friends’ favorite places.

That’s why the company decided to split its main app into two separate apps — the Foursquare City Guide and Swarm. At the same time, the company started workin on developer APIs and SDKs so that other companies could take advantage of Foursquare’s location data.

That business in particular has been quite lucrative. With the company’s Pilgrim SDK, developers can build location-aware apps. For instance, an advertiser can send a personalized notification based on where you are. Foursquare tries to be as accurate as possible and can sometimes even figure out when you enter or exit a venue.

That SDK enables many different possibilities. It’s easy to track the impact of an advertising campaign on online sales — but what about offline interest?

Foursquare’s SDK can help advertisers and brand see whether an advertising campaign has an impact on foot traffic. Of course, you can also combine that data with other customer data.

The company has become an important advertising and marketing platform focused on location. Overall, the company has generated more than $100 million in revenue in 2020. And it plans to grow in 2021 and beat that number.

Dennis Crowley mentions two reasons why he’s leaving now. According to him, the company is doing well, and he’s been working on the same thing for twelve years already.

“Foursquare hasn’t just found its way… it leads the way. I used to say that my goal was to make the name ‘Foursquare’ synonymous with ‘innovation in contextual aware computing’… And, here in 2021, we’ve built the tools and frameworks that can make that so,” Crowley writes in a blog post.

“Also, twelve years is a lot of time. I have lots of things I still want to build — many of which don’t fit neatly into the Foursquare of 2021 (and, hey fellow founder, it’s fine to feel this way!),” he adds. He’s also going to spend some well-deserved time with his family.

Crowley has been an iconic startup founder during Web 2.0 era. He managed to attract tens of millions of users. It’s clear that he’s been a great product CEO during the early years of the company. And now, the company is also generating revenue. So it’s going to be interesting to see what he builds next.

News: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is coming to Disrupt

Brian Armstrong, the founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, is coming to Disrupt this September 21-23, and given how much there is to discuss, we couldn’t be more excited to host him. As some industry observers will know, Armstrong, a native of San Jose, Calif., whose parents were both engineers, nabbed two degrees from

Brian Armstrong, the founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, is coming to Disrupt this September 21-23, and given how much there is to discuss, we couldn’t be more excited to host him.

As some industry observers will know, Armstrong, a native of San Jose, Calif., whose parents were both engineers, nabbed two degrees from Rice University in Texas before joining Airbnb as a software engineer in 2011 as a technical product manager focused on fraud prevention.

The role gave him the opportunity to learn about payment systems — and payment problems — across the world. It relatedly fueled a then-burgeoning interest in cryptocoins, which he began to buy and store and, more important, he began to believe would ultimately replace fiat money. In fact, after just 14 months with Airbnb, Armstrong left the company to join Y Combinator and found Coinbase.

He wasn’t focused on making money, by his telling. Instead, as he told Forbes last year, “I wanted the world to have a global, open financial system that drove innovation and freedom.” Either way, along the way, Armstrong became very wealthy, as have many Coinbase employees and investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, which built the biggest stake in Coinbase over the years and whose position was valued at a reported $11 billion at the time of Coinbase’s direct listing this past April.

Still, the success of Coinbase — which has established itself as the clean, well-lit place to invest in cryptocurrencies — has also invariably led to greater scrutiny. The company has been widely accused by its customers of focusing on security at the expense of adequate customer service. Several of Armstrong’s managerial decisions, including to clamp down on political speech inside of Coinbase, has cost the company valued employees, while others have said they were treated unfairly because of their race or gender.

More, following a very long run, enthusiasm over cryptocurrencies has abruptly slowed over the last month or so. While Armstrong has seen enthusiasm for crypto grow and wane before, Coinbase is now a publicly traded company, and as questions bubble up about Bitcoin, Coinbase’s shares are down, too. (As of this writing, they are trading at around $217, almost half of where they were valued at their peak price in April of about $429.)

Little wonder Armstrong has been laser-focused on not only strengthening what Coinbase has already built but setting it up to become an even larger enterprise, including by acquiring a company early this year that sets up Coinbase to operate as a kind of AWS, enabling companies that, say, want to connect their wallet app to a blockchain to click a few buttons rather than hire a team of engineers to spin up the necessary nodes.

How else is Armstrong, 38, dealing with the markets ups and downs as he builds a completely new financial institution? Where does he want to take Coinbase over the next 12 months? How does he respond to criticisms about some of his very public decisions concerning Coinbase employees? These are among the many things we’ll talk with him about at this year’s Disrupt for an appearance that we know attendees won’t want to miss. We’re certainly excited to sit down with him.

Join him and over 10,000 of the startup worlds most influential people at Disrupt 2021 online this September 21-23. Get your pass to attend now for under $99 for a limited time!

News: SentinelOne’s upgraded IPO pricing is good news for Tiger, public markets and your local VC

The cybersecurity unicorn raised its IPO price range today. As a heat check on the larger IPO market, it’s a thermometer about to explode.

As the second quarter races to a close, we’re down to the wire for IPOs looking to get out before June ends. One such company is SentinelOne, a cybersecurity startup backed by Insight Venture Partners, Redpoint, Tiger Global Management, Data Collective and Anchorage Capital, among others.

SentinelOne raised an ocean of capital while private, including nearly $500 million across two rounds in 2020. Its debut is therefore a huge liquidity event for a host of investing groups. And today, the cybersecurity unicorn had good news in the form of an upgrade to its IPO price range.


The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.


Last week, The Exchange wrote that the company’s IPO would be a “good heat check for the IPO market” given its rapid growth and pace of losses. How investors valued it would help explain the public market’s current appetite for loss-making startups. Today’s news implies healthy appetites.

SentinelOne raised its IPO price range this morning from $26 to $29 per share to $31 to $32 per share, a sizable lift to its valuation and IPO raise.

This morning, we’re unpacking the company’s new valuation range, thinking about SentinelOne’s growth and revenue results compared to similar public companies, and working to understand if the company is inexpensive, neutrally priced or expensive compared to current comps. Sound fun? It will be!

What’s SentinelOne worth?

Recall that when SentinelOne last raised capital it was valued at $2.7 billion on a pre-money basis. The company was therefore worth just under $3 billion after the $267 million round. The unicorn is going to yeet that figure into space in its IPO, barring something catastrophic.

Its new IPO price range of $31 to $32 per share values the company on a much richer basis. With an anticipated simple share count of 253,530,006 after its IPO, inclusive of a private placement, the company would be worth $7.86 billion to $8.11 billion.

News: Tapcart, a ‘Shopify for mobile apps,’ raises a $50 million Series B

Shopify changed the e-commerce landscape by making it easier for merchants to set up their websites both quickly and affordably. A startup called Tapcart is now doing the same for mobile commerce. The company, which has referred to itself as the “Shopify for mobile apps,” today powers the shopping apps for top brands, including Fashion

Shopify changed the e-commerce landscape by making it easier for merchants to set up their websites both quickly and affordably. A startup called Tapcart is now doing the same for mobile commerce.

The company, which has referred to itself as the “Shopify for mobile apps,” today powers the shopping apps for top brands, including Fashion Nova, Pier One Imports, The Hundreds, Patta, Culture Kings, and thousands more. Following a year of 3x revenue growth, in part driven by the pandemic, Tapcart is today announcing the close of a $50 million round of Series B funding, led by Left Lane Capital. Having clearly taken notice of Tapcart’s traction with its own merchant base, Shopify is among the round’s participants.

Other investors in the round include SignalFire, Greycroft, Act One Ventures and Amplify LA.

Tapcart’s co-founders, Sina Mobasser and Eric Netsch, have worked in the mobile app industry for years. Mobasser’s previous company, TestMax, offered one of the first test prep courses on iOS, while Netsch had more recently worked on the agency side to create mobile and digital experiences for brands. Together, the two realized the potential in helping online merchants bring their businesses to mobile, as easily as they were able to go online with Shopify.

Tapcart’s founders Sina Mobasser and Eric Netsch at their Santa Monica HQ

“Now, you can launch an app on our platform in a matter of weeks, where historically it would take up to a year if you wanted to custom build an app,” explains Mobasser. “And you can do it for a low monthly fee.”

Tapcart’s platform itself offers a simple drag-and-drop builder that allows anyone to create a mobile app for their existing Shopify store using tools to design their layout, customize the product detail pages, integrate checkout options, include product reviews, and even optionally add other branded content, like blogs, lookbooks, videos (including live video) and more. Everything is synced directly from Shopify to the app in real-time, so the merchant’s inventory, products and collections are all kept up-to-date. That’s a big differentiator from some rivals, which require duplicate sets of data and data transformation.

Tapcart, meanwhile, leverages all of Shopify’s APIs and SDKs to create a native application that works with Shopify’s existing data structures.

Image Credits: Tapcart

 

This tight integration with Shopify helps Tapcart because it doesn’t have to focus on the e-commerce infrastructure, as the way things are structured around inventory and collections are roughly 90% the same across brands. Instead, Tapcart focuses on the 10% that makes brands stand out from one another, which includes things like branding, content and design. Its CMS allows merchants to create exclusive content, change the colors and fonts, add videos and more to make the app look and feel fully customized.

Beyond the mobile app creation aspect to its business, Tapcart also helps merchants automate their marketing. Through the Tapcart platform, merchants can communicate with their customers in real-time using push notifications that can alert them to new sales, to encourage them to return to abandoned carts, or any other promotions. The marketing campaigns can be automated, as well, which helps merchants schedule their upcoming launches and product drops ahead of time. The company claims these push notifications deliver click-through rates that are 72% higher than a traditional email or SMS text because of their interactivity and branding.

Image Credits: Tapcart

The platform has quickly found traction with SMB to mid-market enterprise customers who have reached the stage of their business where it makes sense for them to double down on customer retention and conversion and optimize their mobile workflow.

“Our sweet spot is when you have maybe a couple hundred customers in your database,” notes Netsch. “That’s a perfect time to now focus less on the paid acquisition portion of your business and more on how to retain and engage those existing customers, [so they’ll] shop more and have a better experience,” he says.

During the past 12 months, over $1.2 billion in merchant sales have flowed through Tapcart’s platform. And in 2020, Tapcart’s recurring revenue increased by 3x, as mobile apps grew even faster during the pandemic, which had increased consumer mobile screen time by 20% year-over-year from 2019. Mobile commerce spending also grew 55% year-over-year, topping $53 billion globally during the holiday shopping season, the company says. Tapcart’s own merchants saw mobile app orders at a rate of more than once-per-second during this time, and it believes these trends will continue even as the pandemic comes to an end.

Today, Tapcart generates revenue by charging a flat SaaS (software-as-a-service) fee, which differentiates it from a number of competitors who charge a percent of the merchant’s total sales.

Image Credits: Tapcart

With the additional funding, Tapcart plans to focus on its goal of becoming a vertically integrated mobile commerce suite of tools, which more recently includes support for iOS App Clips. It will also soon release an upgraded version of its insights analytics platform and will offer scripts that merchants can install on their mobile websites to compare what works on the site versus what works in the app.

Later this year, Tapcart plans to launch a full marketing automation product that will allow brands to automate and personalize their notifications even further. And it plans to invest in market expansions to make its product better designed for mobile, global commerce.

The funding will allow Santa Monica-based Tapcart to hire another 200 people over the next 24 months, up from the 70 it has currently. These will include new additions across time zones and even in markets like Australia and Europe as it moves toward global expansion.

Shopify’s investment will open up a number of new opportunities as well, including on product, engineering, business strategy and partnerships. It will also help to get Tapcart in front of Shopify’s 1.7 million global merchants.

“There’s still quite a lot of merchants that need better mobile experiences, but have yet to really double down on the mobile effort and get something like a native app,” notes Netsch. “There’s a lot of different ways and methods that merchants are experimenting with mobile growth, and we’re trying to offer all of the best parts of that in a single platform. So there’s tons of expansion for Tapcart to do just that with the existing target addressable market,” he says.

“We believe brands must be where their customers are, and today that means being on their phones,” said Satish Kanwar, VP of product acceleration at Shopify, in a statement. “Tapcart helps merchants create mobile-first shopping experiences that customers love, reinforcing Shopify’s mission to make commerce better for everyone. We look forward to seeing Tapcart expand its success on Shopify with the more than 1.7 million merchants on our platform today.”

 

News: Pittsburgh’s mayor on the city’s startup community and the difficulty of attracting venture capital

This week, TechCrunch is turning its spotlight on Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with interviews, profiles, and an event featuring the outgoing mayor, CMU’s President, and local startups. The Rust Belt city has spent much of the past decade working to shed the image that arrived in the wake of the deindustrialization of the 1970s and 80s. Courtesy of

This week, TechCrunch is turning its spotlight on Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with interviews, profiles, and an event featuring the outgoing mayor, CMU’s President, and local startups.

The Rust Belt city has spent much of the past decade working to shed the image that arrived in the wake of the deindustrialization of the 1970s and 80s. Courtesy of world class universities like Carnegie Melon and the University of Pittsburgh, the Steel City has transformed itself into a vibrant startup ecosystem and a world class environment for robotics, AI, autonomous driving and other high-tech companies.

Ahead of tomorrow’s event, TechCrunch spoke to Bill Peduto, who has served as Pittsburgh’s Mayor since 2014, a role that has involved overseeing much of that transformation. The Mayor spoke on his efforts over the past half-dozen years, which will culminate in January when he leaves office.

Peduto will also be speaking at our City Spotlight event Tuesday, June 29, 2021. He’ll be joining Karin Tsai, director of engineering at Duolingo, and Carnegie Mellon University President Farnam Jahanian. Register for the free event here.


TechCrunch: What are the biggest initiatives that the city government is doing in order to really help foster the startup community?

Mayor Bill Peduto: We’ve been a partner throughout the past seven years, whether it was with the autonomous vehicle industry, the expansion of robotics or artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, we have engaged directly with the startup community, got them involved in city government and also opened up and provided access to public right of ways in order to see those industries expanding. Working with our universities, we’ve been able to recruit international companies to Pittsburgh: Bosch, Tata, Google, Facebook, Intel, Amazon. They have provided parallel advancements in the tech industry. Pittsburgh has become an innovation hub that people will come to not just for one job but because they know there is opportunity to advance in their careers here in specialized fields.

Many of these companies are coming out of CMU, in industries like robotics, automation and self-driving cars. What is your sense of how varied and diverse the startup community is. What is the breakdown of robotics and automation on one side and all of the other tech categories on the other?

I would say that the robotics and autonomous industries have positioned themselves much more visible on the global stage. But the other industries – especially within the startup industry – are competitive for a share of Pittsburgh’s economy. Obviously the partnership we created with Uber, Aurora and Argo AI – they all garnered attention as Pittsburgh became the first city in the world to have autonomous rideshare. But the fact is that CMU had already been testing their vehicles on our streets for a decade before. We became a city that was one of the first to be able to expand upon that. The competitive advantage that we have here is we don’t have to draw the talent here to build out the industries. We produce the talent.

It seems like there has historically been a problem keeping the talent in Pittsburgh. People often move themselves or their companies to a New York or Silicon Valley. Has that shifted? What initiatives have to made to ensure that people not only come to Pittsburgh, but that they stay in Pittsburgh?

It’s incumbent upon local government to create an environment where people want to live. Quality of life matters and is a key indicator in building out a 21st century urban economy. All the different amenities that we add into city government matter. People want to live in a place that provides them with opportunities that don’t involve being at home or being at work. They want to have a place that has free and plentiful open spaces and areas that they can enjoy. Young people want to be around other young people. For decades, Pittsburgh lacked all three. It was a direct result of deindustrialization and disinvestment. We’ve worked very hard as a city government to build up all three and support locally built companies, whether they’re restaurants, stages or theaters, as a critical part not only of the arts and culture of the city, but also as a critical part of our economic development strategy.

I recently spoke to some startups around Detroit and it was kind of a mixed bag when it comes the legacy of having had the automotive industry based in the city. In 2021, what benefits are there to being a legacy industrial city as it pertains to building a startup ecosystem.

It depends on the company itself, not simply the industry. There are companies that have been around for over 100 years that are some of the most cutting edge within our city. They’ve diversified their portfolios and recognized the direction the world is moving and they have decided to become a competitive part of it. Other companies are more reliant on their success in the past as a model of their future development. As you look at cities like Pittsburgh and Detroit, you understand that their industrial past is something they take great pride in and they build of off.

Is there a sense when speaking to fossil fuel companies that they see the writing on the wall when it comes to pivoting to something more green?

Again, it doesn’t get defined by industry. It’s defined by company and, in most cases, CEO. In many cases in Pittsburgh, absolutely, yes. Everything from the creation to the transfer of energy, long established companies are looking to find a way to put Pittsburgh on the map when it comes to transferring to green hydrogen. The leaders in this are not just the universities, but the companies that have been long established in gas and, in some cases, oil.

What is your sense of how long term an impact Covid-19 will have when it comes to decentralizing some of these tech communities.

You used the exact term. I believe that post-Covid will be a decentralization from the coasts to the cities that have been able to create an environment where they would want to locate. When we’re looking at competition, we’re looking at Charlotte, Austin, Nashville. We’re putting ourselves up against those cities and what they can offer to the startup industry. We’re not as much concerned with the New Yorks and the San Franciscos – or even the Bostons. What we see is that we can be highly competitive against any other area that has research and development that is fueled by the education and medical industries.

What is the biggest hurdle when it comes to being an entrepreneur in Pittsburgh? And what are you doing to help address that?

I think the biggest hurdle remains access to venture capital, especially in this stage. I think we’ve been able to convince investors from the coast that the companies don’t need to leave Pittsburgh in order to be highly successful and see their investment pay off. However, I believe if we had more venture capital arriving here to help to take early stage companies into that critical next stage of expansion, it would build off itself and it would excel growth in all of the industry cluster, significantly.

Specifically what is the city doing to attract the attention [and money] of venture capitalists?

It’s more a partnership with the established intitutions like universities and hospital and our local VC community that have been at the forefront. The city provides the critical backing. I should also mention our corporate and philanthropic communities are also key partners, as well. Working together, we created the Pittsburgh Innovation District. It was a direct results of the Brookings report that came out a few years ago. It is a structural partnership between the city and county government, the philanthropic community, the universities and the UPMC. It is created not only to recruit startup companies, but also to recruit the funding and to be partners in the funding of our startup community.

 

News: SpaceX aiming for first orbital test launch of Starship in July

SpaceX is hoping to attempt to fly its in-development spacecraft Starship to orbit for the first time in July, according to company president Gwynne Shotwell. Shotwell shared the timeline at the International Space Development conference during a virtual speaking engagement. Starship has been in development for the past several years, and it has been making

SpaceX is hoping to attempt to fly its in-development spacecraft Starship to orbit for the first time in July, according to company president Gwynne Shotwell. Shotwell shared the timeline at the International Space Development conference during a virtual speaking engagement.

Starship has been in development for the past several years, and it has been making shorter test flights, but remaining within Earth’s atmosphere, since last year. Its most recent flight also included its first fully successful landing, which is a key ingredient in the development of the Starship launch system, which is designed to be SpaceX’s first that is fully reusable.

July (aka next month) is an ambitious timeline for making the first orbital flight attempt of Starship, but in May SpaceX filed its planned course for the flight, which would lift off from the company’s Starship development site in south Texas near Brownsville (known as ‘Starbase’) and then eventually return to Earth with a splash down in the Pacific Ocean somewhere off the cost of Hawaii.

This first flight won’t end with a controlled landing, and the focus will be on reaching orbit and testing the spacecraft component through that part of the flight. Later tests will include a controlled landing of the Starship spacecraft, with the goal of eventually making the entire system, including the Super Heavy booster that will help propel it to orbit, fully reusable.

While Shotwell seemed to indicate high confidence that SpaceX is pretty much technically ready to begin orbital test flights of Starship, the company still needs to secure a license from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in order to perform orbital launches, since its existing license only covers suborbital flights. The FAA is currently in process on reviewing the requirements for that license, including an environmental impact review of what it would mean for the surrounding area.

News: Summer Sale: Save 10% on Extra Crunch membership

From now until July 5th, we are offering 10% off annual Extra Crunch membership. This offer is valid for readers in the U.S., Canada, Europe, UK, and Israel. Claim the deal by navigating here. Extra Crunch is a membership program from TechCrunch that helps startup teams get ahead. Benefits include: Discover how successful startups operate

From now until July 5th, we are offering 10% off annual Extra Crunch membership. This offer is valid for readers in the U.S., Canada, Europe, UK, and Israel.

Claim the deal by navigating here.

Extra Crunch is a membership program from TechCrunch that helps startup teams get ahead. Benefits include:

  • Discover how successful startups operate through deep-dive interviews with founders and investors.
  • Spot trends and opportunities with market analysis, investor surveys, and topical newsletters.
  • Get expert advice on fundraising, growth, and management from experienced entrepreneurs.
  • Improve your pitch skills with live weekly coaching and Q&A sessions, and watch replays on demand.
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Committing to an annual plan will allow you to save 20% on TechCrunch event tickets. Annual members can also access the Partner Perks program, which includes discounts on services from Crunchbase, AWS, Zendesk, Typeform, DocSend and more.

If you are a current monthly member and want to upgrade to annual, please reach out to customer support at extracrunch@techcrunch.com.

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News: How WesternUnion is fighting back against fintech startups

The saying goes that, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” That may or may not be true, but at least one “old dog” is working hard to disprove that saying. Western Union has been operating in the cross-border payments space for nearly 150 years (yes, you read that right – 150 years) and

The saying goes that, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” That may or may not be true, but at least one “old dog” is working hard to disprove that saying.

Western Union has been operating in the cross-border payments space for nearly 150 years (yes, you read that right – 150 years) and today, globally, it serves almost 150 million customers – representing senders and receivers.

In recent years, a number of fintech startups have emerged to challenge Western Union in the massive space – from Wise (formerly TransferWise) to Remitly to WorldRemit. But the payments giant seems up for the challenge and has been investing heavily in its digital operations in an attempt to beat fintechs at their own game

As we all know, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a massive acceleration of the trend of all things moving to digital in nearly all industries. Money transfer was no exception. In 2020, Western Union benefited from that acceleration. Its overall digital money transfer revenues – including WU.com and its digital partnership business – climbed by 38% to more than $850 million, up from over $600 million in 2019. 

Speaking of WU.com, the company’s online transactions site, it saw a nearly 30% gain in annual active customers to 8.6 million. 

This year, the company recently projected that its digital money transfer revenues are on track to exceed $1 billion in 2021 after first-quarter revenue growth of 45% to a new quarterly high of $242 million.

Today, Western Union claims to hold the largest cross-border, digital, peer-to-peer payments network in terms of scale, revenue and channels.

The emphasis on beefing up its digital operations – an initiative that actually began in the second half of 2019, according to the company – and expanding those digital offerings to more countries led to Western Union’s overall business profile shifting over the past 15 months. 

Digital channels in 2020 made up 29% of transactions and 20% of revenue for the company’s consumer-to-consumer (C2C) business, up from 16% and 14%, respectively, in 2019.

Western Union also “open sourced” its platform to third-party financial institutions in a move it says is a “step towards creating an end-to-end payments processing hub.”

TechCrunch talked with Shelly Swanback, Western Union’s president of product and platform, about the company’s digital strategy and what’s next beyond payments for the company (hint: it involves banking products). 

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

TC: Let’s start out by hearing how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted your business, and what kinds of steps you took as a company to adapt?

Swanback: As COVID started playing out, just like any other company, I thought ‘What do we need to do to rally around our customers because our customers who rely on retail locations may not be able to get to their retail location as the COVID lockdowns started happening?’

One of the things we learned from that experience is this notion of everyday innovation. Innovation isn’t always blockchain or some emerging technology. Sometimes the best innovation is just about innovating every day with the products and services that you have. 

For example, we had some places in the world where we actually needed to figure out how we could do home delivery of cash. Delivering cash is different than delivering pizza as you can imagine, as there are a whole lot of regulatory items and security items. We very quickly figured out how we can deliver cash in Sri Lanka and Nepal, Jordan and some other places across the world. 

Another example lies in addressing how some folks were just a little intimidated by digital technology. I thought, ‘What if we set up a video digital location we called it where people could call in and do a video call with us and we could help them with their money transfer?’ It turned out that there actually wasn’t as much customer demand for that as we might have thought. 

But the great news — and this is a good lesson, I think, for many organizations — is what we actually did there in terms of KYC (Know Your Customer), which is a big thing in the financial services industry. So, all the technology we set up for this digital location for customers to upload their documents electronically and not have to be in front of an agent, we’re using today, just in a different way.

TC: I know Western Union has touted the fact that it has such a strong physical presence in so many locations actually benefits the growth of its digital operations as well as an expansion into other offerings beyond payments. Can you elaborate on that?

Swanback: The success and acceleration that we’re having in our digital business and of course the quarterly results are great, and we want to continue to do that. But for me, what’s most exciting is just the solid foundation and the basis gives us to build toward this idea of having a more meaningful account-based relationship with our customers and ability to offer them more than just money transfer. 

We have the fortune of having a trusted brand that’s known globally and trusted for something that’s very near and dear to our customers. What we’re hearing from our customers is they would trust us to provide additional services. So one of the things that we’re beginning to put plans in place for, and beginning to do some market tests on, is building an ecosystem or building a marketplace if you will. It will all be catered around the 270 million migrants across the world and really connecting them to each other, connecting them to their families and connecting them to merchants who want to sell them goods or provide them services that are very culturally relevant to them,  either where they happen to be living and working or providing them services back home to their families. 

Later in the fall, we’re going to be launching our first market test in Europe. We’re going to be offering a bank account, debit card, and multi-currency accounts tied of course into our money transfer services, as well as a few other things as we get closer to the market launch. But this really is our first test around providing a more comprehensive set of services.

TC: You recently announced a tie-up with Google Pay and some others. What is the significance of those partnerships?

Swanback: We want to be able to offer our cross-border capabilities and platform in more of a co-branded or white-label fashion, so that we can reach those customers that might still prefer to just be a customer of a bank. As an example, we recently announced that Google Pay users can log in to their app and can do cross-border transfers.

I think that’s an important part of our strategy– going after the direct relationship with customers and at the same time being able to offer our platform to others who already have a direct relationship with our customer. This is also part of our whole technology modernization right now of course. We’re very, very strong in the C2C segment, but the way we’re going about our technology modernization is one that provides us optionality to continue to expand in other segments  – whether it be consumer to business or business to consumer, or even business to business.

TC: Tell me more about this “modernization.”

Swanback: Like many financial organizations and many existing global organizations, part of our massive technology modernization program is moving to the cloud. So we were well on our way from migrating many of our applications to an AWS Cloud Platform. We’re pretty excited about the progress that we’re making there.

Also, over the last 12 to 18 months, we’ve migrated a good portion of our customer agent transactions, like the core of our data, to Snowflake. We;’ve mined 33 data warehouses, and we’ve got 20 petabytes of data in the cloud. And so, that in itself is just this is just the starting point. We’re modernizing our apps on top of this data foundation and really starting to use artificial intelligence and machine learning. But we’re not using it in the back end processes like many other organizations who were using it for operational interactions with our customers. We’re using it in the front office. For example, we launched a telephone money transfer product where a customer talks to a virtual assistant and it’s 100% digitized. It’s actually one of the best customer experiences we’ve seen.

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