During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest, Victoire Laurenty, Associate at Kerala Ventures in Paris who discussed the French eco-system. Probus Sense As for the entrepreneur pitch session,...
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Sramana Mitra: Are you looking for unicorn-style investments or are you also interested in the smaller niche plays that are going to have smaller exits. Let’s say $50 million to $100 million exits....
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Niantic's new Harry Potter-themed game is out. Matt Weinberger/Business Insider
Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Friday.
Slack went public through the unorthodox method of direct listing, with its stock price soaring 50% on its first day of trading. The company is the latest high-profile unprofitable technology firm to make its public debut this year. Slack hired 10 different banks to participate in its direct listing, and all but three didn't do anything besides providing research on the company, sources familiar told Business Insider. Some of the less active banks agreed to take less than half their normal fees as part of the deal, one person said. Google will no longer pursue making its own tablet devices. According to a Google spokesperson, the company has halted the production of two unreleased tablet devices and will not come out with a successor to the Pixelbook Slate. Startups continue to accept billions in funding from SoftBank's Vision Fund in the wake of journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder, despite the fund's close financial ties to Saudi Arabia. Gympass' CEO, who just raised $300 million led by SoftBank, told Business Insider that the value lay in being able to do business with other SoftBank-funded firms such as WeWork and Uber. Facebook is making its Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus employees get new @fb.com email addresses. Facebook's family of apps have historically been able to operate semi-independently, but it is now moving to integrate them ever-more closely together. The UK porn block has been delayed for six months, the British government has confirmed. The delay comes after the government failed to inform European regulators about the guidance it had drawn up around the block. Apple launched a voluntary recall program for certain 15-inch MacBook Pro laptops over battery safety issues. In some instances, the battery could overheat and pose a safety risk, Apple said. "Harry Potter: Wizards Unite," a new mobile augmented reality game from the creators of "Pokémon Go," is live now Android and iOS devices. The game was originally scheduled to launch on Friday, June 21, but the downloads went live in the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store earlier Thursday. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said at an event on Wednesday that the fastest way to get to Mars is by settling on the moon first. Bezos said it's an "illusion" to skip going back to the moon before heading to Mars, saying it provides a much better launchpad for reaching the red planet than Earth. A teenager suffered from a shattered jaw after a vape pen exploded in his mouth, as documented in a new report from The New England Journal of Medicine. The incident once again raised concerns about the safety risks associated with battery-powered vape pens that can be prone to overheating.Have an Amazon Alexa device? Now you can hear 10 Things in Tech each morning. Just search for "Business Insider" in your Alexa's flash briefing settings.
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Ethiopia is flexing its ambitions to become Africa’s next startup hub.
The country of 105 million with the continent’s seventh largest economy is revamping government policies, firing up angel networks and rallying digital entrepreneurs.
Ethiopia currently lags the continent’s tech standouts — like Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa — that have become focal points for startup formation, VC and exits.
To join those ranks, the East African nation will need to improve its internet environment, largely controlled by one government-owned telecom. Last week Ethiopia’s government shut down the internet for the entire nation.
Ethiopia has the workings of a budding tech scene. Much of it was on display recently at the county’s first Startup Ethiopia event held in Addis Ababa.
On the startup front, ride-hail ventures Ride and ZayRide have begun to gain traction (Uber has not yet entered Ethiopia). Their cars are visible buzzing throughout the capital and ZayRide will expand into Liberia in August, CEO Habtamu Tadesse confirmed to TechCrunch.
While in Addis, I downloaded and used Ride — founded by female entrepreneur Samrawit Fikru — which quickly flashed connections to nearby drivers on my phone and allowed for cash payment.
This month’s Startup Ethiopia also showcased high-potential early-stage ventures, such as payment company YenaPay and online food startup Deamat. YenaPay has worked to build a digital payments imprint in Ethiopia’s largely cash-based economy. The startup has onboarded more than 500 merchants, including ZayRide, according to co-founder Nur Mensur.
Deamat blends e-commerce and agtech. “We connect small-holder farmers with consumers. People can use their phone, pay with their phone, get any kind of agricultural products they want and we deliver,” co-founder Kisanet Haile told me after pitching to judges that included Nigerian angel investor Tomi Davies and Cellulant CEO Ken Njoroge.
Ethiopia has several organizing points for startup, VC and developer activity. Tech talent and startup marketplace Gebeya is located in Addis Ababa (with offices globally), and offers programs and services for ventures and tech professionals to gain developer skills and scale their digital businesses.
BlueMoon is an Ethiopian agtech incubator and seed fund. Its founder Eleni Gabre-Madhin has extensive experience working abroad, and played a central convening role in the debut Startup Ethiopia event.
In terms of developer and co-working type spaces, Ethiopia has iCog Labs — an AI and robotics research company — and IceAddis, one of the country’s first tech hubs. Founded in 2011, IceAddis’s mission is to develop Ethiopia’s IT ecosystem, co-founder and CEO Markos Lemma told me during a tour. The hub runs programs such as Ice180, a six-month startup accelerator bootcamp that has graduated 40 ventures. IceAddis also offers a 24-hour co-working space with internet access for techies and startups that want to burn the midnight oil.
Startup Ethiopia featured two angel and support networks for Ethiopia’s startups. Tomi Davies and Ethiopian diaspora returnee Shem Asefaw announced the first Addis Ababa Angel Network, supported by African Business Angels Network, which is expected to accept startups this year.
Startup Ethiopia also showcased Ethiopians in Tech, an entrepreneur support group with Silicon Valley roots. SV-based Bernard Laurendeau, a director at data analytics firm Zenysis and EiT founding member, made the trek from San Francisco to meet with local startups. So did Stackshare founder Yonas Beshawred.
Talk of leveraging Ethiopia’s diaspora, which is particularly strong and successful in the United States, for tech was mentioned several times at Startup Ethiopia, including on my panel.
The biggest hurdle for Ethiopia’s startup community (that I could identify) is the situation with local internet.
Mobile and IP connectivity in the country is managed by state-owned Ethio Telecom, though the government — led by newly elected Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and President Sahle-Work Zewde — has committed to privatize it.
At Startup Ethiopia, I moderated and sat on panels with Ethiopian government representatives to discuss the country’s ‘net situation. This was to the backdrop of the tech event’s Wi-Fi not functioning properly over two days — something that was readily pointed out during Q&A by Ethiopian techies and Liquid Telecom CTO Ben Roberts, who flew in from Nairobi.
Several officials, such as State Minister of Innovation and Technology Jemal Beker, named specific commitments to improve the country’s internet quality, access and choice within the next year, with Ethiopia’s Ministry of Innovation and Technology — Getahun Mekuria — seated in the front row.
Shortly after officials made these public pledges, the government shut down the country’s internet to coincide with national exams.
The government didn’t issue an official reason for the shutdown — and an official in charge of ICT policy did not respond to a TechCrunch inquiry — but press reports and a source speaking on background said the stoppage was done to prevent students from cheating.
Valid reason or not, I received several messages from local techies and startup heads (when the internet was intermittently switched back on) complaining about how the shutdown had totally crippled their businesses.
It appears the situation with internet in Ethiopia may be a bit of a step back before steps forward. After shutting things down, the government announced policy steps last week to break up the national telecom and IP monopoly and issue individual telco licences by the end of 2019.
On the upside of Ethiopia’s bid to become a tech and startup hub, the country has a strong demographic and economic thesis — in its large population and economy — to support the scale-up of problem-solving digital businesses. Ethiopia’s large and entrepreneurial diaspora populations, with strong ties to Silicon Valley, could also become a bridge to capital and capacity for its early-stage ventures.
And another edge Ethiopia could have over other African tech hubs is its advances in developing a manufacturing industry (and higher-paid workforce) that’s now pulling some assembly from China. That includes a mobile assembly plant in Addis Ababa for Tenssion’s Tecno, Africa’s leading mobile phone brand.
Ethiopia’s startup scene will be stuck in the mud, however, without changes to the internet landscape. As we discussed on the Startup Ethiopia stage, the tech and startups of tomorrow — in Africa and globally — won’t just be driven by IoT, or the Internet of Things.
Tech ventures and their end-users are shifting toward an IoEA future: the internet-of-everything-all-the-time. And it’s impossible for Ethiopia’s startups to move in that direction in a market with one state-controlled mobile provider and IP that has the power to arbitrarily nix connectivity.
So on the policy side, the single most effective thing the government of Ethiopia can do to provide an enabling environment for startups is open up its internet market to improve penetration, choice, cost and reliability.
Do that and it’s likely the other tech pieces assembling around the country — ventures, angels, hubs and entrepreneurs — will sort out the rest.
Oracle has been going through a major transistion as it revamps itself into a cloud computing player.
On Wednesday, the company reported its Q4 earnings, and its highest executives â CEOs Safra Catz and Mark Hurd, and foudner/chairman/CTO Larry Ellison â were all smiles, happily reporting that cloud growth is going well.
Hurd, the CEO that runs sales, reported that Oracle's two most popular cloud software businesses, apps for enterprise resource planning (ERP, basically for financial analysis) and human capital management (HCM, basically for the human resources field), were on track to have annual revenue of $2.9 billion, with various of its wider selection of individual cloud apps growing between 25% and 44%.
That puts Oracle's cloud apps business roughly on equal footing with one of its biggest competitors, Workday, which reported annual revenue of $2.82 billion in February and is growing at 33% as of its most recent quarter. There are some differences: Workday is unprofitable while Oracle is highly profitable, although Oracle doesn't report its cloud business in enough detail to see if these units are, by themselves, profitable.
Ellison offered some promising background on Oracle's new database, running on its Generation 2 cloud, too. He said that there were 5,000 new test databases that launched on that cloud last quarter alone.
Oracle calls this new database an autonomous database, or self-driving database, because it can automatically perform tasks that used to have to be done manually by a human administator. This includes applying security updates or grabbing more computing power as it needs it.
Companies are not yet paying for all of those database trials â both Ellison and Hurd admitted that paying customers for the new cloud database are still really low.
However, Ellison says that once an Oracle customer gives the new database a try, the project often grows from there.
"Within 60, 90, 120 days, that becomes a $120,000 projects and within another few months that becomes a half a billion [dollar] project. So we're really optimistic about this business."
He added: "The thing that I find fascinating are the consumption data curves, which shows our consumption rate growing much faster than the fields currently anticipating. To me, that's just wonderfully encouraging. And hopefully this is the beginning of the trend. We'll find out soon."
And this is where Oracle's potential really shines, should it be able to convince its customers to use its new database cloud.
That's because only a small percentage of Oracle's database customers have selected a cloud provider for their Oracle databases, according to exclusive data shared with Business Insider from enterprise software review site G2 Crowd. Only 17% of over 500 Oracle database customers who have left reviews on G2 Crowd have moved their database to the cloud.
This, even so it is possible for companies to put their Oracle database on Amazon's or Microsoft's clouds. There's an entire ecosystem of consulting companies dedicated to helping people do just that.
Better still for Oracle, its sales teams managed to convince its app cloud customers to sign up for longer-than-typical cloud contracts of 30 months, G2 Crowd also finds. While those long contracts pertain to its apps cloud business, the same might be true for database clouds.
The process of Oracle convincing its customers to use try its cloud, as we've previously reported, isn't always so friendly. Oracle sales has been known to use all kinds of tactics to convince customers to add cloud to their contracts, wanted or not.
So, like Ellison said, the most important statistic is usage numbers. If Oracle begins to share them and is excited by them, then it really may have turned a corner.
G2 Crowd Relational Database Spring 2019G2 Crowd
Are you an Oracle insider with insight to share? We want to hear it.
When Index Ventures signed on to Slack's $160 million Series E funding round in 2015, the popular workplace chat app was already one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley.
But on Thursday it also became one of the hottest startups in a new category: a directly listed public company.
Online music company Spotify made waves when it decided to go public via direct listing in February 2018, but Slack's board of investors already knew it would pursue a similar path when the time came for the fast-growing company to make its own debut.
"There was no hesitation that this was the right path for Slack," former Slack board observer and partner at Index Ventures Sarah Cannon told Business Insider on Thursday. "There was only one precedent, which was Spotify, so it was really brave of [Slack CEO] Stewart [Butterfield] to pursue it. There were a lot of risks because it hadn't really been done before."
A direct listing bypasses the traditional process that accompanies a public offering, and allows the shareholders in a startup to sell directly to the public on an exchange.
"A direct listing is more transparent to the public more so than the traditional route with investment banks and underwriters because a much broader set of people have access," Cannon said. "It democratizes the process."
Shares of Slack began trading Thursday at a price that was more than 50% higher than the $26 per share "reference price" that had been expected. The stock finished its first day of trading at $38.62. Cannon described the team's energy on the trading floor Thursday as "pure enthusiasm," and credits the leadership team's commitment to values as integral in the decision to pursue the direct listing.
"It's a philosophical choice, and the two driving factors were that Slack is an innovative and transparent company," Cannon said. "It's not surprising to me as a board member that this is the route they choose, because it is core to the product to be transparent and those were the guiding philosophies behind that decision."
Part of Slack's successful debut, according to Cannon, is that the brand was recognizable enough for the general public to want to purchase stock. It was also helpful that the company didn't need to raise money as would be the case in an IPO, she said.
"I imagine you will see more direct listings in the future, because as you have more of a sample set of these listings, more will consider it an option," Cannon said. "It's not right for everyone though because you need cash on your balance sheet and not have to need to raise money. You also need brand awareness so consumers are aware of the company and want to actually buy shares."
Although Cannon is no longer on Slack's board of directors, she insisted growth was still a priority for the company as it endeavors to become profitable and satisfy its public shareholders.
"When we invested four years ago, we invested because they were creating a category that didn't exist," Cannon said. "How we work is fundamentally changing. Growth is a priority for the company and as investors we are quite excited about the unit economics."
Google will no longer pursue making its own tablet devices, Business Insider has learned.
According to a Google spokesperson, the company has halted the production of two unreleased tablet devices and will not come out with a successor to the Pixelbook Slate. Instead, it will shift resources and focus more attention on its Pixelbook laptop line.
This doesn't mean that Chrome OS, Google's operating system for Pixelbook laptops and its most recent tablets, will be going anywhere. The company itself just won't be making tablets that run on that software anymore.
"Chrome OS has grown in popularity across a broad range of form factors, and we'll continue to work with our ecosystem of partners on laptops and tablets. For Google's first-party hardware efforts, we'll be focusing on Chrome OS laptops and will continue to support Pixel Slate," a Google spokesperson told Business Insider on Thursday.
Google employees working on the unreleased (and now discontinued) tablets were told of the news on Wednesday, according to the spokesperson. Many of these employees, the spokesperson said, have been shifted to work on its Pixelbook laptop line, while the rest were moved to "confidential projects."
News of Google foregoing its tablet production comes three months after Business Insider reported that "roadmap cutbacks" had forced dozens on the company's "create" team â which is responsible for its laptop and tablet products â to find new positions. At the time, one person familiar with the matter said the product group had a "bunch of stuff in the works" and that cutting its staff would most likely "pare down the portfolio" of products.
On Thursday, Google confirmed that two of those future products were tablets smaller than the 12.3-inch Pixelbook Slate it had released in October. These tablets were supposed to launch together sometime after 2019, the spokesperson said, but after quality-assurance testing didn't meet the company's standards, it decided to scrap the devices â and its entire tablet lineup.
Indeed, Google has had a history of struggling to produce a tablet that consumers loved. Its first tablet â known as the Pixel C â was launched in 2015 and received less than stellar reviews. The longtime tech reviewer Walt Mossberg said the Pixel C represented "an object lesson in what Google shouldn't do if it pursues home-grown integration of hardware and software." The company launched its Pixel Slate, a tablet that acts like a laptop and meant to compete with Microsoft's Surface Pro and Apple's iPad Pro, to a similarly cold reception.
With the move away from tablets, the company said to expect new Google-made laptops to be announced as early as this year.
Got a tip? Contact this reporter via Signal or WhatsApp at +1 (209) 730-3387 using a non-work phone, email at
One of the tried-and-true tactics to keep investors happy when a company is going through a big transition is the stock buyback.
Oracle has vigorously used this tactic in its last fiscal year. It spent a whopping $36 billion on share buybacks in its just-completed 2019 fiscal year alone, the company said on Wednesday.
Safra Catz, the Oracle CEO who runs finance, explained:
"This quarter, we repurchased 112 million shares for a total of $6 billion. Over the last 12 months, we have repurchased 734 million shares for a total of $36 billion. Over the last five years, we've reduced the shares outstanding by almost 25% with nearly 60% of the total reduction this past year in FY19."
Investors like stock buybacks for several reasons. For one, it gives them a ready buyer. It also rewards the steady, go-long investor because, as the company reduces the number of shares in circulation, each share represents a bigger piece of the corporate pie. Having fewer shares in circulations increases the earnings-per-share, which makes the company look healthy. Put this all together, and buybacks can keep share prices stable during a transition.
But massive buybacks have also been described as "financial engineering." Companies use them to beat Wall Street's expectations on earnings-per-share, as opposed to increasing profits the old fashioned way - by growing the business.
And these sorts of buybacks carry a real risk that the company is spending its money to placate investors, rather than investing in the business.
For example, in contrast to the $36 billion spent on stock buybacks, Oracle spent $1.66 billion on capital expenditures in 2019, down from the $1.73 billion it spent in 2018.
Remember, Oracle is trying to build itself into a cloud computing giant to take on the likes of mighty Amazon Web Services and, more importantly, keep itself relevant in an age where its customers want the cloud.
Building a cloud is extremely expensive, which is why its customers want their vendors to take on that expense for them. Data centers on the kind of massive scale that Oracle should need cost billions to build.
Take a look at the the number-two player in cloud, Microsoft. It has already successfully transformed itself itself from a mostly old-school software vendor to a cloud giant. It's not in Oracle's position of trying to play catch-up.
Still, Microsoft spent almost $9.9 billion in just its first nine months of FY 2019 investing in "additions to property and equipment" also known as capital expenditures (CapEx), according to its last quarterly report.
Now, you might argue that Oracle is keeping a tight lid on its CapEx, even as it tries to become a cloud player, because it wants to control long-term costs and remain a highly profitable company. Oracle's management keeps insisting that as it grows its cloud business, it will be more profitable than its competitors because its costs are lower.
But you can't argue that Oracle didn't have the cash to invest in its reinvention. Ironically, Oracle almost could have bought Workday ( currently valued at $50 billion) with what it spent on share buybacks in 2019 ($36 billion) and 2018 ($11 billion) combined.
Some Oracle bears, like Nomura's Christopher Eberle, have noticed. Eberle, who downgraded the stock in March, wondered in his research note if "underinvestment remains at the expense of an elevated capital return program."
On top of that, a massive share repurchase plan isn't sustainable. After three quarters of spending $10 billion a quarter, Oracle slimmed down to $6 billion in Q4, and some analysts believe it will have to spend even less in the future.
"Buyback cadence is now slowing & cloud looks quite sluggish; as such we think accelerated revenues and DD [double digit] EPS growth in FY'20 will be difficult," wrote neutral analysts Sarah Hindlian from Macquarie Capital.
In the first three years of the company, people would laugh at JFrog, a startup that helps developers update their software faster and more often.
At the time, JFrog CEO and co-founder Shlomi Ben Haim recalls, investors and other people were "afraid" it wouldn't scale. But now, it's a $1.2 billion startup that helped define DevOps, or a term that combines software development and operations.
JFrog already has customers like Google, Amazon, Netflix, and Facebook, and Ben Haim believes it can become the company that powers all the software updates in the world.
"When Apple releases an iPhone, you have something to hold in your hand," Ben Haim told Business Insider. "When you do something so fundamental that powers all of [the major applications], it's very hard to explain why this company is so important. What I hope people will understand is JFrog enables everything they use...We are the guys behind the scenes."
Now, JFrog wants to provide software updates not only to web and mobile applications, but also to other connected devices, such as automobiles. On Wednesday, JFrog unveiled over-the-air updates for cars, an important innovation that the company hopes will give it an edge in an increasingly important market.
Although cars like Teslas require software updates, they can't update while the cars are being driven. Updates can also take hours, trapping people on the road. And in extreme cases, like the Boeing 737 Max crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, when software doesn't update, it can be fatal. With JFrog's over-the-air updates, cars can stay in motion while the software is being updated.
"Most of the challenges is what happens when you have your MacBook, air conditioner and car supported by software," Ben Haim said. "There is a real pain of software updates to all these vendors. Everything is powered by software today. Over-the-air is a big thing for all of us."
Before software powered everything, Ben Haim says, the biggest worry for a passenger on an airplane was whether or not the pilot was adequately trained.
"Now we're sitting in the aircraft thinking, is this big monster that goes in the air, is the software updated?" Ben Haim said.
Ben Haim co-founded JFrog to address the frustration he faced as a Java developer struggling to manage software files. Other software developers felt the pain, too, and when Haim created JFrog, word spread throughout the software community.
"We were addressing the pain," Haim says, comparing the software's creation to the development of new medicine to cure a disease.
Although investors have murmured about the possibility of JFrog getting acquired, Ben Haim says he has other goals for the company: for it to stay independent and become something larger.
So instead of looking into acquisitions, he raised a series D round of funding totaling $165 million, which JFrog announced last October. In total, the company has raised $228 million. He says an IPO might happen, but it's not the goal right now.
"If there was a chance that JFrog would be acquired and we would have a nice exit," Ben Haim said. "We are after a much bigger dream. If we are going to be the one that powers all the software updates in the world, this is the biggest dream I can think of. I am very excited about the opportunity, but more excited to change the way software is being consumed today."
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Just shy of three years ago, Pokémon GO took over the world. Players filled the sidewalks, and crowds of trainers flooded parks and landmarks. Anywhere you looked, people were throwing Pokéballs and chasing Snorlax.
As the game grew, so did the company behind it. Niantic had started its life as an experimental “lab” within Google — an effort on Google’s part to keep the team’s founder, John Hanke, from parting ways to start his own thing. In the months surrounding GO’s launch, Niantic’s team shrank dramatically, spun out of Google, and then rapidly expanded… all while trying to keep GO’s servers from buckling under demand and to keep this massive influx of players happy. Want to know more about the company’s story so far? Check out the Niantic EC-1 on ExtraCrunch here.
Now Niantic is back with its next title, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. Built in collaboration with WB Games, it’s a reimagining of Pokémon GO’s real-world, location-based gaming concept through the lens of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter universe.
I got a chance to catch up with John Hanke for a few minutes earlier this week — just ahead of the game’s US/UK launch this morning. We talked about how they prepared for this game’s launch, how it’s built upon a platform they’ve been developing across their other titles for years, and how Niantic’s partnership with WB Games works creatively and financially.
Greg Kumparak: Can you tell me a bit about how all this came to be?
John Hanke: Yeah, you know.. we did Ingress first, and we were thinking about other projects we could build. Pokémon was one that came up early, so we jumped on that — but the other one that was always there from the beginning, of the projects we wanted to do, was Harry Potter. I mean, it’s universally beloved. My kids love the books and movies, so it’s something I always wanted to do.
Like Pokémon, it was an IP we felt was a great fit for [augmented reality]. That line between the “muggle” world and the “magic” world was paper thin in the fiction, so imagining breaking through that fourth wall and experiencing that magic through AR seemed like a great way to use the technology to fulfill an awesome fan fantasy.
The iPhone is such a sophisticated tool that it has its own built-in auto-brightness system. This system automatically darkens the iPhone's screen when you're looking at it under a bright light, and lightens it when trying to use your phone in a dark room.
Auto-brightness is just one of many features that enable you to get the most out of your iPhone at all times. While this option can be very convenient, it's also an extra drain on the battery and some people don't need the brightness controls to properly see their screen.
You can easily toggle it off and on to see if you can save that extra battery and still see your iPhone screen properly.
1. Click on the Settings app.
2. Scroll down to and tap "General."
3. Scroll down to and tap "Accessibility."
4. Scroll down to and tap on "Display Accommodations."
5. Tap on "Auto-Brightness" to toggle it on or off. If the button shows green, it's on.
You can switch off auto-brightness altogether. Ryan Ariano/Business Insider
You can also adjust the brightness of the screen manually. If your eyes are too sensitive for the brightness level or your screen seems washed out, try lowering the brightness. If you have trouble seeing details on the screen, it might also be time to raise it. There are two ways to do this.
1. Tap "Settings".
2. Scroll down to "Display & Brightness".
3. Move the Brightness slider at the top left or right depending on your preference.
Manually, you may still want to keep brightness low in dark places, and high in bright places. Ryan Ariano/Business Insider
1. Tap the bottom of the screen and slide it up to bring up the Control Center (or swipe up from the upper-right corner of your screen on an iPhone X or later).
2. Look for the Brightness icon (it's the sun-shaped icon to the left of volume).
3. Slide your finger up on the icon to brighten your phone or down to lower it.
You can change the brightness at any time from the Control Center. Ryan Ariano/Business Insider
There were 10 banks listed on Slack's S-1, the registration paperwork for its direct listing â but don't go calling them underwriters.
Slack started trading Thursday at $38.50, up from the New York Stock Exchange's own reference price, which it set at $26 a share on Wednesday evening. The stock finished the day close to where it started, at $38.62.
The role the banks played in the process was different to what they'd do in a traditional IPO, with many of the bankers hired by Slack doing virtually no work outside of committing to research coverage of the company, multiple people told Business Insider.
Some of the less active banks agreed to take less than half their normal fees as part of the deal, one person said. Even the banks with the highest-paying roles took home slightly less than in a normal IPO, another person told Business Insider.
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Allen & Company, however, hold the special title of financial adviser on the direct listing, which means they get a bigger check and have had considerably more control over the process.
Those three banks â which also ran the Spotify direct listing â worked with Slack to prepare its S-1 and risk factors, sources said. But unlike a traditional IPO, the banks won't provide any financing for the company in the process.
For their efforts, the three banks will split around 90% of the $22 million in banker fees, according to Bloomberg.
In a normal IPO, the underwriters manage the relationship between the company and potential investors. They coordinate the road show, in which investors meet with the executive team and customers at fancy hotels around the country for brunch and a dense slideshow full of financial stats. On this road show, companies answer questions, tell their story, and get the investors familiar with the particularities of how the business is run.
In the case of Slack's direct listing, all of the official relationship management was left up to the company, some of the people said. Slack's VP of investor relations, Jesse Hulsing, came from Goldman Sachs, where he was a vice president and equity research analyst, so the company had an insider on its team.
Read more: JPMorgan-backed $1 billion payments company Bill.com is picking bankers for an IPO
The lack of marketing around a direct listing is one of the reasons bankers say it doesn't work for most companies looking to enter the public markets. Ahead of Thursday, insiders and outsiders alike voiced concerns that as an office conversation platform, Slack's product might be too niche for a direct listing to be a success.
But Slack had already raised 10 rounds of funding on the private markets, the last of which involved institutional investors like Dragoneer Investment Group, T. Rowe Price, Wellington Management, and SoftBank. And the company has held intimate meetings with some institutional investors over the past six months, according to the people. Slack live streamed its investor day presentation on May 13.
Slack's banks handled much of the company's messaging.
As the lead bank, the Goldman Sachs team led by Nick Giovanni effectively played the role of project manager for the direct listing, according to people familiar with the deal. It handled things like the investor day presentations and video, according to one person familiar with the work.
And the banks involved spent a lot of time on risk mitigation around issues they would usually have more control over in a normal IPO, such as the number of shares available to trade and the pricing, the person said. Goldman sat in on over 100 prep calls ahead of the event, the person said.
Though direct listings don't "price" like traditional IPOs, the advisers also play a role in determining where the stock started to trade.
The Morgan Stanley team, led by Colin Stewart, was the named adviser to the direct market marker, Citadel Securities, according to Slack's filing. With Spotify, Morgan Stanley had the exclusive role, but with Slack the role was shared with the other two financial advisers. Citadel Securities also served as the DMM on Spotify's direct listing.
Ahead of the first trade, Morgan Stanley trader John Paci and Goldman Sachs trader Benny Adler had direct lines to the DMM, allowing them to give input on the timing, pricing, and volume of the opening trade, people told Business Insider.
While bankers don't build a book of demand for a direct listing the way they might for an IPO, there was a "ghost book" for Slack based off of unofficial conversations between the banks and investors, one person said.
Though most of the trading world is digital these days, Citadel Securities' human traders set the opening price for Slack just after midday on Thursday.
When "Pokémon Go" first launched in 2016, things did not exactly go smoothly. The servers melted down under the crushing weight of so many would-be Pokémon trainers all signing up for the game at once, and developer Niantic had to scramble to keep up.
This time out, with the new "Harry Potter: Wizards Unite," co-developed by Niantic and WB Games, things seem to be going a little bit more smoothly â perhaps reflecting the relative maturity of Niantic in the years since, as it's now valued at $3.9 billion as of a recent funding round.
At the time of writing, the game has been out for a few hours â and apart from a few stray hiccups here and there, everything appears to be proceeding as planned.
Speaking at a preview event for the game earlier this week, Niantic CEO John Hanke said that this is no accident, and that this is a sign of things to come: His team learned a lot from its experiences with "Pokémon Go," and Niantic intends to put all of those lessons to work in "Wizards Unite."
"Everything that works in 'Pokémon Go,' we're looking to take that and improve upon it in 'Harry Potter' and add some new stuff as well," Hanke said.
That spans from the game itself to the way that Niantic and WB Games got it ready for primetime.
"Everything from the way that we are preparing to launch it, the way that we are testing the infrastructure, the things that we'd added to 'Pokémon Go' over the last two and a half years to improve that product and address things that we felt like it needed," have been reconsidered for the new game, Hanke said.
For instance: "Pokémon Go" only added social multiplayer features last year, after it began adding Pokémon trading and battling. "Wizards Unite," however, lets you add friends right out of the box â though, in these early days of the game, it's not clear what benefits doing so confers.
There's also the fact that "Wizards Unite" actually has a plot: Players are cast as investigators of the Great Calamity, where magical artifacts, creatures, and personages have been scattered across space and time. This is in very deliberate contrast to "Pokémon Go," which mostly gives players little direction beyond "catch 'em all," Hanke said.
"We found that that worked for a lot of people, but there were certainly people who wanted a little more structure to understand what to do next and to really measure their progress, so there's a lot more of that in 'Harry Potter,'" said Hanke.
"Harry Potter: Wizards Unite" is superficially similar to "Pokémon Go," but with lots of updates and tweaks that bring new gameplay. Matt Weinberger/Business Insider
Technologically speaking, too, "Wizards Unite" is benefiting from the work done on "Pokémon Go." The addition of head-to-head Pokémon battling required Niantic to totally redesign its multiplayer code to allow for faster response times.
Those improvements went straight into "Wizards Unite," Hanke said, where it enables a faster-paced experience in Wizarding Challenges, where players team up to fight Dark Wizards and magical beasts.
"You can cast spells and use potions which help the other people in your group, you can split up and tackle different opponents at the same time," Hanke said. "There's a lot more nuance to the multiplayer that's facilitated by that tech change."
Similarly, "Wizards Unite" owes a lot to "Pokémon Go" in terms of its augmented reality features, which uses your phone's camera to overlay the game's graphics over the real world.
Hanke said that as part of its Real World Platform, a set of tools for Niantic's customers to build their own games, it's unified its AR tech into one development kit, using "Pokémon Go" as the base. As it improves that AR development kit, he said, the augmented reality in both games will get better.
On the subject of the Real World Platform, Hanke said that actually building "Wizards Unite" was much different than the process for making "Pokémon Go."
Whereas Niantic built (and continues to build) everything in "Pokémon Go" from the ground up, "Wizards Unite" benefited from the collaboration with WB Games, Hanke said. This time out, "the animations, the art, the [user interface], a lot of that is coming from their team, and we're building more of the server and platform type stuff."
"Harry Potter: Wizards Unite" is a big bet on augmented reality, which overlays digital imagery over the real world. Matt Weinberger/Business Insider
It's reflective of where he sees Niantic's future heading, said Hanke. The ultimate goal is for Niantic to provide the tooling and platforms to help the rest of the industry build their own location-based, multiplayer, augmented reality games. The Real World Platform hasn't been released broadly to customers, yet, but the collaboration with WB Games is indicative of how Niantic's business could work.
"For us, it's a step on that journey to becoming a platform company where third-party developers can take our platform and independently build full games with us just providing the platform itself," Hanke said.
And more broadly, a big part of Niantic's mission statement is to get people off their couches and out exploring the real world, ideally making friends along the way. "Wizards Unite" is the latest manifestation of that goal, Hanke said, but it's much bigger than either of its mega-franchise crossover games.
"My take on it is that real-world games are a genre. It's not a game, it's not 'Pokémon Go' and 'Harry Potter,'" said Hanke. "It's a whole family, a whole world of games that can exist and our goal is to build the tools and technology that will let people go out and play that all the way out, explore all of the different permutations of what that can be."
YouTube can either be a place you go for entertainment, or it can become as useful as a Google search to learn something new.
I've been using YouTube alongside the old-fashioned Google Search for a couple years now, but it wouldn't be nearly as useful if I didn't know about some of the handy shortcuts I've learned about from my own experience, and even asking Google itself for some tips.
From useful keyboard shortcuts, to adding captions so I can watch a video without disturbing people around me if I forget my headphones during my commute, there are a bunch of good ways to make YouTube easier and better to use.
A new alliance spanning advertisers, agencies, and tech giants including WPP's GroupM, Unilever, Facebook, and Google formed this week to improve digital safety. It has some in the ad world worried.
To recap: The Global Alliance for Responsible Media was announced this week at the Cannes Lions Festival as talk of breaking up tech companies grows louder and governments in the UK, Germany, and elsewhere seek to regulate content on their platforms. The alliance, founded by Brussels-based World Federation of Advertisers members, is significant in that it's the biggest of its kind. Its first order of business was to create a working group to prioritize steps to create actions, processes, and protocols that would prevent nefarious content from spreading online, Axios reported.
Some industry insiders say this is a good first step to make the internet safe for advertisers and users â even Jason Kint, head of publisher trade group Digital Content Next and a regular critic of Google and Facebook, gave it mild praise.
To be sure, it's significant to have companies of this size work together. They have a lot at stake in fixing digital advertising. And some see it as important for the industry's biggest and most visible marketers like Procter & Gamble and Unilever to be pushing for online safety.
"Members of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media recognize the role that advertisers can play in collectively pushing to improve the safety of online environments," read the alliance's announcement. "Together, they are collaborating with publishers and platforms to do more to address harmful and misleading media environments; and to develop and deliver against a concrete set of actions, processes and protocols for protecting brands."
"It's pretty clear advertisers are taking more control and voting with their wallets and voices," said Robin Steinberg, former Publicis investment lead. "The key would be to consistently do this in order to get all onboard. If they are going to continue to spend and be a key partner to the platforms, there must be updated responsible business practices put in place. There are major implications to their brands and overall business putting them at risk."
But some see the idea of tech companies being involved in fixing the problem of toxic content they helped spread as problematic. After all, it was just this week that Facebook was the subject of a scathing report in The Verge that the moderators it contracted with to weed out unsavory content on its platform were working under deplorable conditions.
"It feels a little of the fox and henhouse," said Greg Paull, principal at R3 Worldwide, a consulting company to marketers. "Facebook is going to need to work overtime to really prove they are finally working in the interests of their revenue sources."
One of the goals of the alliance is to come up with a standard for all the platforms, which currently all have different rules. But coming up with one standard for all online content that would be considered "safe" to all brands seems like a tall if not impossible task.
Facebook seems to recognize it can't act alone, as it's calling for an industry standard to regulate online speech. "We want regulation in the areas of brand safety and content moderation," its head of sales Carolyn Everson said at an event announcing the alliance.
One stakeholder that knows something about content standards are publishers. But despite being mentioned in the announcement, traditional publishers were all but left out of the alliance, which was another source of confusion. The original announcement listed 17 advertisers. Under media companies, the only company with a traditional media arm listed was Verizon, parent of AOL and HuffPost; the others were, confusingly, considered by most to be tech companies. NBCUniversal was listed as being part of the alliance, but in its role as an advertiser, not a media company.
Missing from the WFA alliance are publisher-only trade groups like the News Media Alliance and Digital Content Next.
David Chavern, head of the News Media Alliance, which counts The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal parent News Corp as members, said his organization wasn't asked to join.
"It doesn't make sense that advertisers would be involved with content standards when it's the tech companies policies and algorithm that need to be fixed," Chavern said. "It seems to be entirely a conversation between the advertisers and tech companies, though they're not the only ones impacted. There seems to be a role for the media companies, because we create brand-safe content."
The reaction reflects the vast power the tech giants have amassed, the advertisers and their agencies that support them, and the interconnectedness between the two sides. The concern is that the ad side is too invested in the platforms to push for any meaningful change. (Advertisers in the alliance for their part insist they're looking out for consumers, not themselves.)
Facebook was the third-biggest destination for top holding company WPP's clients' spending in 2017. Unilever and Mars, two of the companies in the alliance that have also been making the interview rounds to talk it up, are two of WPP's biggest clients.
The tech giants in turn are big supporters of ad trade organizations like the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which is part of the alliance. WPP's former head Sir Martin Sorrell himself said last year that the backlash against Facebook hasn't hurt it with advertisers; the current WPP chief Mark Read recently argued against breaking up the tech companies.
It was GroupM that effectively set the industry standard for how much an ad has to be in view for it to be counted as a view. Then it loosened its standards for social media as Facebook and other social platforms started flooding their feeds with video.
Facebook declined to comment. Business Insider asked GroupM and the WFA for comment.
While it's true that the idea of insiders fixing the problem is fraught, it's good to see top marketers taking the lead in cleaning up the digital ecosystem, said Ian Schafer, cofounder and CEO of Kindred, a company that connects influencers and non-profits, and former CEO of the ad agency Deep Focus.
But he also said pressure needs to be applied by activists like Sleeping Giants, which call out objectionable content on tech platforms, he said. And alienating publishers would be "a big mistake."
"You need friction to move forward," he said.
A Google verification code is a short numeric code that's sometimes sent to your phone or email address, which you use to complete a task like password recovery.
It's an added security step that ensures only you (or someone else who is authorized to access your Google account) gains entry.
There are several ways you might receive a verification code from Google:
If you use Google Authenticator for iPhone or Google Authenticator for Android, you can start that app and get an authentication code there. Google Authenticator is a good option for keeping your account secure because you can keep the app on your mobile devices, and the code changes continuously, so any particular code is only valid for about 30 seconds at a time.Google Authenticator is a secure and convenient way to keep your account safe, since it generates verification codes whenever you need them. Dave Johnson/Business Insider
Google can also text a verification code to your mobile phone.If you have a recovery phone number on file with your Google account, you can get verification codes by text message. Dave Johnson/Business Insider
If you have two-step authentication turned on for your Google account, Google gave you some backup codes when you first set up your account's security.In normal, day-to-day use of your Google account, you likely won't need to contend with a verification code.
Here are the most common situations in which you may be asked for a code:
Password reset. If you lose or forget your Google password and try to reset the password, you may need to enter a verification code before you can change the password. Two-step authentication. Anytime you log out of your account and try log back in when you have two-step authentication enabled, you will receive a code from Google that you'll need to log in with. Signing into a new computer or device. Google keeps track of what devices you regularly use. If you have two-step authentication enabled and try to log in from a new device, Google will require a verification code before you can log in. You create a new Google account. Often, Google will send you a verification code to confirm you are not a robot if you create a new account.
I tested out some the BMW X7's more exotic technologies for an episode of Cars Insider's "Real Reviews." They were a mixed bag, and you can watch the whole thing here.
I also tested BMW's suite of driver-assist features, and those technologies worked as advertised, although the X7 is certainly not capable of driving itself.
Otherwise, the X7 provides what the Ultimate Driving Machine needed: a three-row hauler to slot in atop the X5. It's sort of a bimmer bus, but what ya gonna do? We're a long way from the turbo 2002 of the early 1970s.
The X7 serves up what you'd expect from a $100,000-plus SUV, from the elegant yet purposeful interior to the forceful output of the V8 motor and surefootedness of the all-wheel-drive system, yielding a 0-60mph time of about five seconds.
To this bimmerness, the X7 adds a cargo area that can be configured to work like a small pickup truck, while also seating two extra humans if the third row is deployed. It's all good, but these days I have to admit that I look at these large premium SUVs as a segment, rather than as individual vehicles. The X7 does the same job as the Audi Q7 or the Volvo XC90 or the Mercedes GLS. And so it goes and so it goes, and where it's going everybody knows: fatter profits for the luxury automakers.
My X7 tester came with nearly $10,000 of optional packages, and with the V8, it represents the highest expression of what BMW can do at this scale. It's impressive. It wasn't exactly fun to drive, but that â Gasp! â isn't really the point. And it was fun in a straight line and when passing semis on the freeway, when the X7 felt like a freight train.
If you consider the price as objectively as possible, you'd have to admit that you're getting a whole lotta SUV with the X7. I honestly guessed the sticker at $125,000. So if you can can live with the grille (and I could), the X7 might be the titanic Bimmer of your dreams.
Your Apple ID probably has a credit card on file to make it easy to make purchases in iTunes and the App Store.
And if you use Apple Pay, you probably have at least one credit card connected there as well, so you can make retail purchases with your iPhone.
If you ever need to remove a credit card from one of these services, it's easy to do with just a few taps.
1. Start the Settings app.
2. Tap "iTunes & App Store."
You may have one or more credit cards connected to your Apple ID. Dave Johnson/Business Insider
3. Tap your Apple ID at the top of the page and then tap "View Apple ID."
4. Tap "Manage Payments."
5. At the top of the Manage Payments page, tap "Edit."
6. Tap the red delete button to the left of the credit card you want to delete, and then tap "Remove" to confirm your choice.
When you remove a credit card from your Apple ID, that card can no longer make purchases in iTunes or the App Store. Dave Johnson/Business Insider
1. Start the Settings app.
2. Tap "Wallet & Apple Pay."
3. On the Wallet & Apple Pay page, you should see a list of all the credit cards you have connected to your Apple Pay account. Tap the credit card you want to remove.
You can remove credit cards from your Apple Pay account via the Settings app. Dave Johnson/Business Insider
4. Scroll to the bottom of the details page for the credit card and tap "Remove This Card." Confirm that you really want to remove it by tapping "Remove."
In a world where the enterprise market hovers around $500 billion in annual sales, is it any wonder that hundreds of enterprise startups launch into that fiercely competitive arena every year? It’s a thrilling, roller-coaster ride that’s seen it all: serious success, wild wealth and rapid failure.
That’s why we’re excited to host our inaugural TC Sessions Enterprise 2019 event on September 5 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Like TechCrunch’s other TC Sessions, this day-long intensive goes deep on one specific topic. Early-bird tickets are on sale now for $395 — and we have special pricing for MBA students and groups, too. Buy your tickets now and save.
Bonus ROI: For every ticket you buy to TC Sessions: Enterprise, we’ll register you for a free Expo Only pass to TechCrunch Disrupt SF on October 2-4. Sweet!
Expect a full day of programming featuring the people making it happen in enterprise today. We’re talking founders and leaders from established and emerging companies, plus proven enterprise-focused VCs. Discussions led by TechCrunch’s editors, including Connie Loizos, Frederic Lardinois and Ron Miller, will explore machine learning and AI, intelligent marketing automation and the inevitability of the cloud. We’ll even touch on topics like quantum computing and blockchain.
Tired of the hype and curious about what it really takes to build a successful enterprise company? We’ve got you. You’ll hear from proven serial entrepreneurs who’ve been there, done that and what they might like to build next.
We’re building the agenda of speakers, panelists and demos, and we have a limited number of speaking opportunities available. If you have someone in mind, submit your recommendation here.
This event is perfect for enterprise-minded founders, investors, MBA students, engineers, CTOs and CIOs. If you need four or more tickets, take advantage of our group rate and save 15% over the early-bird price when you buy in bulk. Are you an MBA student? Save your dough — buy a student ticket for $245.
TC Sessions: Enterprise 2019 takes place September 5 in San Francisco. Join us for actionable insights and world-class networking. Buy your early-bird tickets today.
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Within the next six months or so, Microsoft is going to pull the plug on supporting SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 â two outdated, but still reasonably common, server products.
For Amazon Web Services, Microsoft's chief rival in the cloud wars, this could mean a big opportunity. Indeed, the cloud giant says, it's already helped customers like Influence Health, Fugro, and eMarketer (a subsidiary of Business Insider parent company Axel Springer) move some of their critical Windows software from Microsoft's Azure cloud to AWS.
In fact, Sandy Carter, vice president of Windows and enterprise workloads at Amazon Web Services, goes so far as to say that its cloud is the best place to run Windows and Windows software. AWS has supported running Windows software since 2008, which was actually two years before the formal launch of Microsoft Azure.
"We do have a lot of customers right now that are switching," Carter said. "The number one reason is reliability."
Carter says that customers choose AWS for their Windows-in-the-cloud needs because it's more reliable and has less downtime than its competitors, including Microsoft Azure.
"That reliability really makes a difference for our customers because many of our Windows workloads are critical to our customers," Carter told Business Insider.
To Carter's point, too, there's evidence to suggest that more Windows software is being run on AWS than on Azure. According to analyst group IDC, circa 2017, 58% of software and services that run on Windows in the cloud were deployed on AWS infrastructure, while 31% were deployed on Azure infrastructure.
IDC's data does come with at least one big caveat: It only accounts for Windows, which itself only accounts for a relatively small percentage of overall cloud use. Instead, the free and open source Linux operating system and its variants are the dominant platform in the cloud.
As those older server products near their end-of-life, Carter says that Amazon has been helping companies make the switch.
"We've been helping customers both do the upgrade and migration and modernization and facing end of support decisions that are coming up for them," Carter said.
As customers move from Windows to AWS, Carter says it looks and feels the same.
"It look like how it does on Azure," Carter said. "That's a great thing. Customers can't retrain all their skills. That same feel and experience is very important. Our performance is much better."
Carter says that AWS has the "best customer experience," too, because it has the easiest way to migrate workloads to the cloud. In addition, she says that according to data from DB Best, AWS is as much as three times cheaper when running Microsoft SQL Server, its popular database, for the same performance as Azure.
"Because we're faster and have higher price/performance, we enable customers to enable better speed and performance," Carter said.
When Business Insider reached out to Microsoft for comment, John Chirapurath, general manager of Azure Data, Blockchain & Artificial Intelligence, said that the virtual machine speed and storage capacity configurations used in the DB Best study aren't a reasonable way to compare the two platforms.
He added that customers like AllScripts find Azure to be the best cloud for Windows software because of its pricing, and because of its integration with other Microsoft platforms and services.
"Before drawing conclusions about SQL Server on either cloud, the variables should be apples-to-apples," Chirapurath said in a statement. "The original post included the disclaimer that the tool used is not an official benchmarking tool that can be used to publicly compare benchmark results between database products or platforms."
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