According to a recent IDC report, healthcare, public sector, finance, retail and wholesale, and manufacturing sectors are estimated to have spent $37.5 billion on industry cloud solutions in 2018....

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Meet Majelan, a French startup that wants to make podcasts more accessible. Behind the scene, Majelan is the startup created by former Radio France CEO Mathieu Gallet and Arthur Perticoz. The app is launching today on iOS and Android in the coming days.

Given that Gallet was previously at the head of all French public radios, the company has already raised $4.5 million from Idinvest Partners, Jacques Veyrat, Kima Ventures, Fabrice Larue and others.

At a press conference, Gallet said that Majelan isn’t the Netflix of podcasts. “It’s an experience that is 99.99% free. We are a content aggregator, an RSS feed aggregator,” he said.

But it doesn’t mean that the company hasn’t been inspired by Netflix, Spotify, Molotov and other streaming platforms. So let’s unpack what all of this means.

A more personal podcast player

Podcasts are an interesting content format. If you listen to the same host for a while, it feels like you know them and they’ve become your friends. But many podcast players provide a dry experience that feels more like using Google News than interacting with people you listen to.

Majelan gets the basic rights when it comes to podcast players. Pretty much like the Apple Podcasts app, you can search for podcasts, download and listen to episodes. If you like what you’re hearing, you can subscribe to a podcast and get new episodes when they’re released. It’s a true podcast player as you can even paste a podcast URL to add any podcast you want.

But Majelan thinks Apple Podcasts and the iTunes podcast directory are reminiscent of a phone book — Apple Podcasts is by far the leading podcasting app right now. It’s hard to find content and you don’t get any customized recommendations.

In other words, you probably know someone who wants to get into podcasts but doesn’t know where to start.

“The homepage is completely editorialized by the Majelan teams — they create topic-based playlists. They have listened to hours and hours of content and we already have 50 playlists,” Gallet said.

Each playlist is a collection of podcast episodes based on a specific subject — for instance the S01E01 playlist is all about TV series. Some playlists are based on a mood, such as “tropical shower”. The editorial team will regularly update playlists, phase out some of them and add new ones. It works like Spotify playlists made by the Spotify team.

On the search page, Majelan is using a grid view of buttons so that you can find podcasts on your favorite subjects (cooking, soccer, crime stories, philosophy, romance, etc.).

The Majelan team has met with the French TV and radio archive institue INA to learn how to tag a giant library of content. They are now manually tagging thousands of podcasts with hundreds of tags so that you can find the perfect podcast for your.

After you listen to podcasts for a while, you’ll find personalized recommendations in a tab called “For You”. This is an algorithm-driven tab that will soon tell you why Majelan thinks you’ll like a particular podcast.

A premium podcast network

Majelan’s business model is as interesting as the app itself. The company doesn’t show you any banner ad and doesn’t insert audio ads. Instead, you can subscribe to Majelan+ for €4.99 per month, or €1.99 per podcast ($5.57 and $2.22 respectively) — companies can sponsor curated playlists though.

Subscribers don’t get any premium feature, but they can access Majelan+ content. The company doesn’t mix premium content with free content for now. You have to head over to the Majelan+ tab to see premium content and listen to teasers and episodes.

There are 20 premium podcasts at launch. Half of them have been produced and recorded in the Majelan studio, and half of them have been produced with partners. Majelan is distributing those podcasts and sharing revenue with those creators.

Launch partners include INA, Universal Music, Society, Sara Yalda’s conferences and Clique.TV interviews. When it comes to in-house content, there are podcasts for kids, teens and adults.

For instance, Mautpassant(s) features short stories written by Mautpassant and read by famous TV anchors. “Tu deviendras grand” talks about the childhood of historical figures.

It’s all about data

By controlling the player, Majelan is collecting a ton of data about podcasts. For instance, the startup knows when people usually stop listening to a podcast. They can spot some trends and adjust their premium content based on what users want.

On each episode, you can react with various emojis, such as a heart, a thumbs up, a fire emoji, etc. Majelan plans to let podcast creators access this data in the Majelan back end. The company doesn’t want to monetize this data itself.

And this is the challenge with all podcast startups. Apple has been a neutral actor and its podcast directory has been open to anyone. For instance, you can create a podcast player and leverage Apple’s podcast directory for free. But many creators in the podcast community don’t want to see a well-funded private actor ruin everything.

So far, Majelan has had a cautious approach. Sure, you won’t be able to access Majelan+ content from another podcast player. But Majelan isn’t alienating the podcast ecosystem by monetizing free podcasts with audio ads for instance. It’s a fine line, so let’s see if the startup can keep the right balance over time.

Eventually, Majelan thinks audio content isn’t just about podcasts. The company plans to launch audiobooks and play with different formats to make audiobooks more accessible.

Everything has been designed to work in other languages and you can already switch the app to another language. And the startup should launch curated playlists and premium content in other languages soon.

Sramana Mitra: How big a role does the backend fulfillment play in this particular case study that we are discussing. Does Amazon fulfillment also kick in gear in this kind of a situation? Ethan...

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Jumia held its first post-IPO earnings call and weathered a short-sell assault in May, with Wall Street showing confidence in the Pan-African e-commerce company.

On the numbers, key takeaways were that Jumia’s Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) — the total amount of goods sold over the period — grew by 58% to €240 million. Marketplace revenue grew 102% to €16 million, and gross profits as a percentage of GMV grew by 6.5% in Q1 2019.

Overall, Jumia’s operating losses for the period widened to €45.4 million from €34.3, and negative EBITDA increased to €39.5 million from €30.2.

So the startup’s still losing money — see the big losses reported in the IPO filing — but is improving its ability to earn.

CEO Sacha Poignonnec also shared a longer-term revenue strategy on Jumia’s Q1 earnings call. The startup plans to convert its JumiaPay and Jumia Logistics capabilities to standalone services across Africa.

Founded in Lagos in 2012, the company currently operates multiple online verticals in 14 African countries — from B2C consumer retail to travel bookings.

For Jumia, going public has been an up and down affair. After becoming the first tech startup operating in Africa to list on a major exchange (the NYSE in April), the company saw its share rise 70% after listing on the NYSE in April at $14.50.

Then in May, Jumia’s stock tumbled when it came under assault from a short-seller, Andrew Left, who accused the company of fraud. On the earnings call the startup’s CEO responded to the short-seller claims saying, “Jumia stands by our prospectus and audited financials…and will not be distracted by those who look…to profit at our expense.” Poignonnec later took to media and refuted claims as “market rumors rather than facts.”

Citibank analyst Andrew Howell published his own response, much of it discrediting Citron Research.

Overall, Wall Street seemed confident in Jumia’s post-IPO results and outreach, with Raymond James and Berenberg upgrading their Jumia stock recommendations to buy-equivalent ratings. Jumia’s stock has remained stable since, closing at $25.81 Monday.

When it comes to e-commerce in Africa, Jumia may face stiffer competition from DHL. The shipping giant teamed up with MallforAfrica to expand its Africa eShop app to 20 countries in May.

DHL went live with the digital retail app in April, bringing more than 200 U.S. and U.K. sellers — from Neiman Marcus to Carters — online to African consumers.

Africa eShop operates using startup MallforAfrica.com’s white-label fulfillment service, Link Commerce.

There’s a competitive e-commerce scenario brewing between the two platforms. DHL Africa eShop touts itself as “Africa’s Largest Online Shopping Platform.” Jumia said, “We believe that our platform is the largest e-commerce marketplace in Africa,” in its SEC F-1 filing.

DHL’s partner for the new app, MallforAfrica, brings experience collaborating with a number of big-name retailers, including Macy’s and Best Buy. MFA’s payment and delivery system serves as a digital broker and logistics manager for big-name retailers to sell goods in Africa.

As for the global e-commerce names, Alibaba has talked about Africa expansion, but for the moment has not entered in full.

Amazon offers limited e-commerce sales on the continent, but more notably, has started offering AWS services in Africa.

With Jumia’s commitment to offer its logistics and payments capabilities as services, DHL and MallforAfrica could be on a footing to compete with Jumia. All three could also find themselves either competing (or working) with big e-commerce names entering Africa.

There’s been a lot of market movement in Africa’s motorcycle ride-hail space over the last year-plus. Uber began offering a two-wheel transit option in East Africa in 2018, around the same time Bolt (previously Taxify) started motorcycle taxi service in Kenya.

Uganda-based motorcycle ride-hail company SafeBoda moved into Kenya in 2018 and last month raised a Series B round of an undisclosed amount on plans to further expand into in East Africa and Nigeria.

In Lagos, there’s already motorcycle ride-hail company Gokada, which raised a $5.3 million Series A round in May.

Gokada has trained and on-boarded more than 1,000 motorcycles and their pilots on its app that connects commuters to moto-taxis and DOT-approved helmets.

The startup has completed nearly 1 million rides since it was co-founded in 2018 by Fahim Saleh — a Bangladeshi entrepreneur. Gokada will use the financing to increase its fleet and ride volume, while developing a network to offer goods and services to its drivers, Saleh told TechCrunch in this exclusive.

Gokada differs from other ride-hail ventures in that it doesn’t split fare revenue with drivers. Gokada charges drivers a flat-fee of 3,000 Nigerian Naira a day (around $8) to work on their platform. The company looks to generate a larger share of its revenue from building a commercial network around its driver community.

More American sports celebrities are getting involved in African tech. Serena Williams invested in Andela, NBA star Andre Iguodala joined Jumia’s board and, in May, NFL hall-of-famer Joe Montana invested in African fintech startup Chipper Cash.

The Africa focused no-fee, cross-border payment startup raised a $2.4 million seed round led by Deciens Capital.

The payments company also persuaded 500 Startups and Liquid 2 Ventures — co-founded by Joe Montana — to join the round.

Chipper Cash’s Ugandan chief executive, Ham Serunjogi, pitched the U.S. football legend directly.

Based in San Francisco — with offices in Ghana and Nairobi — Chipper Cash has processed 250,000 cross-border, P2P transactions for more than 70,000 active users, according to Serunjogi.

In conjunction with the seed round, Chipper Cash is launching Chipper Checkout: a merchant-focused, C2B mobile payments product.

This side of the startup’s offerings isn’t free, and Chipper Cash will use revenues from Chipper Checkout to support its no-fee, Africa mobile money business.

Chipper Cash will expand beyond its current operations in Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda within the next 12 months.

Finally, in May, Facebook purged a network of hundreds of pages, groups and Instagram accounts it labeled as producing “coordinated inauthentic behavior” toward Africa.

The activity originated in Israel and was largely targeted toward Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Angola, Niger and Tunisia.

It was mostly political in nature and primarily paid for by Archimedes Group, a global political consulting firm, Facebook said.

The affair highlighted a pattern of fake news on social media platforms rearing its head in Africa. Cambridge Analytica, backed by U.S. big-data billionaire Robert Mercer, was found to have been involved in elections in Kenya and Nigeria before its controversial role directing pro-Brexit and pro-Trump online activity in 2016. Facebook later banned Cambridge Analytica from its platform.

Social media-driven fake news — primarily on Facebook and WhatsApp — became such an issue in Kenya’s 2017 elections the country’s parliament passed a bill in 2018, with specific punitive measures, to combat it.

Facebook has prioritized growth in Africa and grown Africa users to more than 200 million and Facebook-owned chat-tool, WhatsApp, is the most downloaded messenger app on the continent.

But Facebook’s recent Africa account purge shows when Facebook travels, so too does its list of pros and cons, including the ability of global actors to use it for nefarious uses in local settings.

More Africa-related stories @TechCrunch

African eech around the ‘net

Tink, the European open banking platform that recently raised €56 million in new funding, is disclosing that PayPal has become a strategic investor.

The online payments giant joins a long list of existing backers that includes U.S.-based Insight Venture Partners, Sunstone, SEB, Nordea Ventures and ABN AMRO Digital Impact Fund. Individuals such as Christian Clausen, former chairman of the European Banking Federation, and Nikolay Storonsky, co-founder of banking app Revolut, are also investors.

Originally launched in Sweden in 2013 as a consumer-facing finance app with bank account aggregation at its heart, Tink has since repositioned its offering to provide the same underlying technology and more to banks and other financial service providers that want to ride the open banking/PSD2 train.

Through various APIs, Tink provides four pillars of technology: “Account Aggregation,” “Payment Initiation,” “Personal Finance Management” and “Data Enrichment.” These can be used by third parties to roll their own standalone apps or integrated into existing banking applications.

Meanwhile, with its investment, PayPal has agreed to partner with Tink to leverage its account aggregation technology to “improve product experiences” for PayPal customers. What this means in practice isn’t entirely clear, although it is likely PayPal could use open banking for easier and more secure on-boarding. Another obvious use case would be to check your bank balance prior to initiating a debit card payment or use your transaction history in relation to PayPal Credit.

Adds Jennifer Marriner, VP of global markets and partnerships of PayPal:: “Open banking is transforming financial services, allowing customers to more easily move and manage their money. Tink has developed the infrastructure and data services for this new financial world and we’re excited to work together to continue to democratise financial services”.

Today, Peloton is a bonafide success. The company, which sells $2,245 internet-connected exercise bikes, boasts a $4 billion valuation and a cult following.

That hasn’t always been the case. For years, Peloton battled for venture capital investment and struggled to attract buyers. Now that it’s proven the market for tech-enabled home exercise equipment and affiliated subscription products, a whole bunch of startups are chasing down the same customer segment.

Mirror, a New York-based company that sells $1,495 full-length mirrors that double as interactive home gyms, is closing in a round of funding expected to reach $36 million, sources and Delaware stock filings confirm, at a valuation just under $300 million. It’s unclear who has signed on to lead the round; we’ve heard a number of high-profile firms looked at Mirror’s books and passed. The company has previously raised a total of $38 million from Spark Capital, First Round Capital, Lerer Hippeau, BoxGroup and more.

Mirror declined to comment for this story.

Like Peloton, Mirror is sold for a hefty fee with a subscription to the service’s unlimited live and on-demand workouts that comes at an additional cost. The company hasn’t disclosed subscriber numbers, though The New York Times reported in February the business was selling $1 million worth of Mirrors — or some 650 units — per month.

The company has not only benefited from the Peloton effect, but also from a near-immediate interest from celebrities and influencers in its product. Kate Hudson, Alicia Keys, Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston and Gwyneth Paltrow are among the many celebrities to have publicly boasted about Mirror, undoubtedly boosting sales for the up-and-coming startup.

Venture capitalists were quick to show support for Mirror, too; in fact, the business attracted money at a $200 million valuation prior to launching its first product. Mirror began selling its sleek equipment, dubbed by The New York Times as “The Most Narcissistic Exercise Equipment Ever,” in September.

The round comes amid a distinct boom in funding for fitness-related startups evidenced not only by Peloton’s mammoth valuation and hyped-over initial public offering expected soon but by the rapid uptick in small upstarts looking to capitalize on rising interest in fitness apps and equipment. In total, VCs bet some $2 billion on U.S. fitness startups in 2018, a record amount of funding for the space. So far this year, nearly $500 million has been allocated to the growing sector, per PitchBook, as entrepreneurs strive to bring the gym into the home.

Tonal, which sells personal exercise equipment that combines on-demand training with smart features, is among a small class of venture-backed fitness companies to have accumulated a large following. The company has raised $91.7 million in equity funding at a valuation of $185 million, according to PitchBook, from investors including L Catterton, Shasta Ventures, Mayfield and Sapphire Sport.

When it comes to early-stage efforts, there’s no shortage of recent fundraises. Last week, Livekick, which gives customers access to one-on-one personal training and yoga from their home, closed a $3 million seed round led by Firstime VC. Two weeks ago, fitness startup Future secured an $8.5 million round led by Kleiner Perkins’ Mamoon Hamid. For a $150 monthly fee, Future assigns personalized workout plans and a coach who tracks customers’ fitness activity through an Apple Watch. To keep users committed to their workout regimens, Future sends daily text messages with motivational feedback.

The AI-based personal training company Aaptiv, Plankk, which sells live fitness lessons led by Instagram stars, and audio coaching app Eastnine, have also recently launched.

Mirror was founded in late 2016 by Brynn Putnam, an entrepreneur behind Refine Method, a chain of boutique fitness studios located in New York. The former professional dancer spoke to TechCrunch’s Lucas Matney at Disrupt San Francisco in September about the future of the business.

“[We want] to enhance the human touch rather than to replace it,” Putnam said. “Our goal is not to be the next treadmill in your life, our goal is to be the next screen in your home,” Putnam said.

Ultimately, Putnam added, Mirror plans to scale beyond fitness content with potential extensions including physical therapy, fashion, beauty and education.

“We have the ability to create personalized premium content across a wide range of verticals, with fitness being our first vertical,” Putnam said.

Great Jones, a startup selling pots, pans and even an oven directly to consumers, is introducing a new way to get help in the kitchen.

Potline is a free text message service where anyone can ask for recipe ideas, or get advice when things are going wrong in the middle of the cooking process, or get tips on how to clean up afterwards. Great Jones co-founder Sierra Tishgart argued this is “a really natural extension” of the brand, particularly since the company has already been getting customer service queries that aren’t really about its cookware.

“It’s great to see someone write in to say, ‘Hey I’m cooking for my new girlfriend or boyfriend, and I want a roast chicken recipe,'” Tishgart said.

As for why it’s doing this via text message, she said, “We really want this to feel like that you are in the middle of making pasta and your sauce isn’t landing — how would you look for help there? I would text somebody. We really realized that is just the fastest, most immediate and natural form of communication.”

Initially, Potline will be available from 4pm to 8pm Eastern time on Monday and Wednesday evenings. That’s only eight hours each week, but Tishgart said you’re going to be getting real-time feedback from an actual human being — namely Great Jones customer experience lead Gavy Scelzo.

“We don’t have a large team doing this,” Tishgart added. “This is very much an experiment for us. Gaby is answering the questions. We’re on our own text thread with seven of us in the office contributing, but it’s really going to be relying on Gaby’s expertise [and] a large database of recipes.”

Of course, if it’s successful, Potline could eventually expand to other days and times. Meanwhile, you can try it out for yourself by texting 1-814-BISCUIT.

Flash, the micro-mobility startup from Delivery Hero and Team Europe founder Lukasz Gadowski, is re-branding today and disclosing that the e-scooter rental service has clocked up 1 million rides in just 4.5 months since launch.

This, the company claims, is a milestone passed quicker than any of its competitors, although Voi recently announced that it reached 2 million rides in less than 8 months, while I understand that Tier, which launched later than Voi, is on track to hit that same number any day now, if it hasn’t already. The takeaway: e-scooter rentals in Europe remains a hot and fast-growing market to be in.

Quietly launched in Zurich, Switzerland in mid-January this year, Berlin-based Circ says it has since expanded to 21 cities across 7 countries. The re-brand is in preparation for further international expansion, with Germany up next to coincide with new German regulations permitting e-scooter services.

With regards to the name change, I’m told the decision was both practical and more conceptual. When people think of “flash” they tend to think of lightning or comic book superheroes, while the word itself is intrinsically linked with connotations of speed. While newly named Circ has moved very fast to reach 1 million rides, riding fast is not what the company is about.

“We wanted a name that better reflects who we are and how seriously we take the responsibility of moving people. Circ is all about circles, connections and there is great symmetry with what we do, working with others to help people move around their city in a reliable, safe and enjoyable way,” a company spokesperson tells me.

Reading between the lines, it’s almost certain that the startup is also thinking about its brand beyond e-scooters alone. Gadowski has always described the company as a “micro-mobility” service that isn’t just concerned with scooters and one that wants to play an integral role within a city’s broader transportation system.

On that note, Circ says it has joined the Union Internationale des Transports Publics (UITP), the worldwide association for public transportation. It has also formed a partnership with Swiss public transport operator Swiss Federal Railways (Schweizerische Bundesbahnen, SBB).

“The comprehensive partnership entails the creation of designated parking spaces at key strategic locations in railway stations and explores digital integration as Circ and SBB introduce ways to create seamless mobility for rail and e-scooter users,” says Circ.

Events have increasingly become an important channel in the marketing mix, despite how notoriously “impossible” it is to measure the ROI, or return on investment. When people show up to your event, they are willingly giving you their attention for hours on end – not trying to avoid attention-grabbing ads.

A well produced experience provides a great way to reach outside of your existing networks, build a pipeline of new customers, transform existing customers into superfans, and position your brand as a thought leader. In 2017, only 7% of marketers said that events were their most important marketing channel. Last year, that number rose to 41% according to a survey done by Bizzabo.

As the founder of Happily, the largest network of event producers in the United States, I’ve had backstage access to thousands of events – some wildly successful like TED and others that didn’t ever get traction in building an engaged community.

What has defined the successful ones?

The experiential marketing industry has long struggled to measure success in a meaningful way. They propose all the same KPIs (key performance indicators), but rarely do those KPIs provide a benchmark to determine if an event is successful or give marketers the ability to tell what worked and what didn’t. They especially fall down when customers aren’t won until months after an event.

It’s a cautionary tale we hear far too often: Company A, hiring staff and growing rapidly, finalized a 10-year lease for office space. One week after move-in they had filled their space to the brim, with engineers sitting on top of sales staff, interns working in the hallways and the CEO operating out of a small conference room.

Company A had backed themselves into a corner, in desperate need for more room with no easy solution to the problem, and looking to swiftly dispose of their inadequate space.

In the startup environment, everything moves at a breakneck pace. Raising venture capital, hiring staff, assembling a board, etc. – all while working day-in and day-out to refine a product or service meant to disrupt the world. With senior staff pulled in different directions, there is little time for a strategic analysis of office space needs.

My team at Colliers specializes in working with technology companies at all stages, from pre-seed to IPO and beyond. We have advised dozens of companies literally from their first day of operations, to others whose market caps are well into the multi-billion dollar range.

We have developed some metrics and strategies that help our clients to grow without having to worry about scheduling an hourly team huddle at the downstairs Starbucks .

We have extensive experience working with companies with offices around the U.S. and world, but a majority of our work is in the New York City area. The analytics and strategy formation for each company is different dependent on a multitude of factors: budget, concrete or tentative headcount projections, timing, etc. – but there are a few baseline rules that can help jumpstart the education process and conversation.

From working with hundreds of technology companies in various states of flux (capital infusion, rapid growth, headcount reduction), we’ve become experts on which office may be the best fit for a company, from a month-to-month WeWork licensing agreement to a long-term lease.

Rarely in the commercial real estate world are issues black-and-white; and strategies are unique to each company. But there are several basic questions that need to be answered when evaluating office space:

Substack is launching a new feature called “community” — namely, the ability for newsletter publishers to create discussion threads, which can either be open to anyone or limited to subscribers.

The idea of starting a discussion thread where readers can argue about things like the season finale of “Game of Thrones” isn’t new — and even before now, Substack supported comments when newsletters are published online.

However, co-founder Hamish McKenzie said, “The dynamic that we’re seeing in the comments sections is completely different from the dynamics in these community discussions. They perform more like a Facebook Group.”

Co-founder and CEO Chris Best suggested that these threads are conducive to more substantive conversations, because Substack has worked on “getting the incentive structure right,” especially since you’re interacting with “like-minded peers” and an “author that you care about, and in a lot of cases are paying money to.”

And for authors, it’s a way to build that sense of community, engaging directly with their readers in an ad-free environment.

“Unlike Facebook Groups or other places where people gather online, the Substack author owns the member list, the author owns the platform,” Best added.

Substack has been testing these discussions with authors like Daniel Ortberg and Nicole Cliffe, and today is making them available to anyone with a Substack newsletter. While the startup launched in 2017 as a way for newsletter authors to charge a subscription fee, it’s been adding new features like podcast support. As Best put it, “Our vision for what Substack is, is bigger than just being newsletters.”

Marcin Kleczynski is a shining example of the American dream.

A Polish-born immigrant turned naturalized citizen, Kleczynski grew up in the Chicago suburbs spending much of his time on computers and the early days of the world wide web. He couldn’t afford to buy computer games; instead, he downloaded them from the internet — and usually malware along with it. Frustrated that his computer’s anti-malware didn’t prevent the infection, he took to seeking help from security message boards to troubleshoot and remove the malware by hand.

That’s where Kleczynski thought he could do better, and so he founded Malwarebytes .

In early 2008, his company’s first anti-malware product was released. To no surprise, the very people on the message boards who helped Kleczynski recover his computer were the same championing his debut software. So much so that Kleczynski hired one of the people from the message board who helped him rid the malware from his computer as one of his first employees. Within months, Malwarebytes was turning over a couple of hundred thousand dollars, Kleczynski told TechCrunch.

By August came the question of whether he would run his company or go to university.

“After about a 15-second conversation with my mother, she quickly informed me that I would be attending university,” he said.

And so he did both.

Fast-forward to today, the company is a multi-million dollar anti-malware giant serving 150 million consumer customers and 50,000 paying small to medium-sized business and enterprise customers from its five offices — two in the U.S., as well as Estonia, Ireland and Singapore.

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Bill Bice was recorded in April 2019. Bill Bice,...

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Anyplace, a startup offering furnished rooms and apartments to anyone who’s not interested in signing a long-term lease, is announcing that it has raised $2.5 million in seed funding.

CEO Satoru Steve Naito said he co-founded the company to meet his own needs as a “digital nomad” who likes to move from city to city every few months.

“I wanted this product for myself: I hate to commit to a long-term contract, and I want utilities and wifi taken care of when I secure a room,” Naito said.

For him, that meant moving into a hotel, where he said the rooms are “easy-to-book and fully furnished.” And while Naito’s far from the first person to call a hotel room home (I did it myself for a summer journalism internship back in 2006), with Anyplace, he’s created an online marketplace where you can rent hotel rooms and other furnished housing on a month-to-month basis.

Naito said Anyplace normally negotiates a 30% to 50% discount with the hotels. (Checking the Anyplace website this morning, it looks like monthly prices in New York range from $1,331 to $4,157.) Those hotels then get a new source of monthly revenue, which may be particularly important as they try to compete with services like Airbnb.

And while the pitch might sound similar to a serviced apartment or a co-living space, Naito noted that Anyplace functions purely as an online marketplace, without operating any properties of its own. So it actually partners with apartments and co-living companies to bring them more renters.

Anyplace handles the booking and payment process, in return for collecting a 10 percent commission. It also reduces the risk for the hotel or property owner by performing basic background checks, and Naito also plans to introduce insurance that will cover eviction costs for up to $10,000.

And there are new features for renters in the works, including a “nomad loyalty program” that rewards frequent customers with things like airplane ticket discounts, and an online community to help you find friends when you’re in a new city.

“We don’t want to become boring housing rental marketplace,” Naito said. “We are not a housing business, we are a freedom business.”

When Naito and I met to discuss the funding, he estimated that there were around 100 people currently staying in Anyplace properties. He also said the service generated $1.3 million in bookings last year.

He acknowledged that while digital nomadism sounds appealing, it’s “a very niche and small group,” so Anyplace is also designed to serve anyone in need of temporary housing, whether they’re relocating for a new job, taking an extended business trip or moving somewhere for an internship.

The startup’s seed funding comes from Jason Calacanis, FundersClub, UpHonest Capital, East Ventures, Keisuke Honda, Kenji Kasahara Bora Uygun and Global Brain.

Twitter has just announced it has picked up London-based Fabula AI. The deep learning startup has been developing technology to try to identify online disinformation by looking at patterns in how fake stuff vs genuine news spreads online — making it an obvious fit for the rumor-riled social network.

Social media giants remain under increasing political pressure to get a handle on online disinformation to ensure that manipulative messages don’t, for example, get a free pass to fiddle with democratic processes.

Twitter says the acquisition of Fabula will help it build out its internal machine learning capabilities — writing that the UK startup’s “world-class team of machine learning researchers” will feed an internal research group it’s building out, led by Sandeep Pandey, its head of ML/AI engineering.

This research group will focus on “a few key strategic areas such as natural language processing, reinforcement learning, ML ethics, recommendation systems, and graph deep learning” — now with Fabula co-founder and chief scientist, Michael Bronstein, as a leading light within it.

Bronstein is chair in machine learning & pattern recognition at Imperial College, London — a position he will remain while leading graph deep learning research at Twitter.

Fabula’s chief technologist, Federico Monti — another co-founder, who began the collaboration that underpin’s the patented technology with Bronstein while at the University of Lugano, Switzerland — is also joining Twitter.

“We are really excited to join the ML research team at Twitter, and work together to grow their team and capabilities. Specifically, we are looking forward to applying our graph deep learning techniques to improving the health of the conversation across the service,” said Bronstein in a statement.

“This strategic investment in graph deep learning research, technology and talent will be a key driver as we work to help people feel safe on Twitter and help them see relevant information,” Twitter added. “Specifically, by studying and understanding the Twitter graph, comprised of the millions of Tweets, Retweets and Likes shared on Twitter every day, we will be able to improve the health of the conversation, as well as products including the timeline, recommendations, the explore tab and the onboarding experience.”

Terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed.

We covered Fabula’s technology and business plan back in February when it announced its “new class” of machine learning algorithms for detecting what it colloquially badged ‘fake news’.

Its approach to the problem of online disinformation looks at how it spreads on social networks — and therefore who is spreading it — rather than focusing on the content itself, as some other approaches do.

Fabula has patented algorithms that use the emergent field of “Geometric Deep Learning” to detect online disinformation — where the datasets in question are so large and complex that traditional machine learning techniques struggle to find purchase. Which does really sound like a patent designed with big tech in mind.

Fabula likens how ‘fake news’ spreads on social media vs real news as akin to “a very simplified model of how a disease spreads on the network”.

One advantage of the approach is it looks to be language agnostic (at least barring any cultural differences which might also impact how fake news spread).

Back in February the startup told us it was aiming to build an open, decentralised “truth-risk scoring platform” — akin to a credit referencing agency, just focused on content not cash.

It’s not clear from Twitter’s blog post whether the core technologies it will be acquiring with Fabula will now stay locked up within its internal research department — or be shared more widely, to help other platforms grappling with online disinformation challenges.

The startup had intended to offer an API for platforms and publishers later this year.

But of course building a platform is a major undertaking. And, in the meanwhile, Twitter — with its pressing need to better understand the stuff its network spreads — came calling.

A source close to the matter told us that Fabula’s founders decided that selling to Twitter instead of pushing for momentum behind a vision of a decentralized, open platform because the exit offered them more opportunity to have “real and deep impact, at scale”.

Though it is also still not certain what Twitter will end up doing with the technology it’s acquiring. And it at least remains possible that Twitter could choose to make it made open across platforms.

“That’ll be for the team to figure out with Twitter down the line,” our source added.

A spokesman for Twitter did not respond directly when we asked about its plans for the patented technology but he told us: “There’s more to come on how we will integrate Fabula’s technology where it makes sense to strengthen our systems and operations in the coming months.  It will likely take us some time to be able to integrate their graph deep learning algorithms into our ML platform. We’re bringing Fabula in for the team, tech and mission, which are all aligned with our top priority: Health.”

Fluree, a North Carolina startup that wants to bring the immutability of blockchain to the database, announced a $4.7 million seed round today led by ​4490 Ventures​ with participation from Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund​.

As CEO and co-founder Brian Platz explains, the database combines blockchain and graph database technologies to offer a new way of thinking about storing and querying data. “The real benefits it provides is immense integrity around the data, so you can prove it has never been tampered with, who put it in there, etc., something you can’t do with current databases or other data management technologies.”

He added, “It has the ability to make the data immensely collaborative by allowing multiple parties to actually interact with it and improve security,  and it really allows you, especially with how we’ve organized our database, to get better leverage out of the data.”

If you’re thinking such a database would be slow because of the nature of decentralized data, Platz says that it really depends how you choose to tune your blockchain. He sees blockchain technology on a spectrum with choices and tradeoffs between speed and decentralization.

“If you want 100% decentralization, something like Bitcoin, it’s going to be slow. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you need to, you can decrease the amount of centralization. So there’s a spectrum there, and we focus on giving people the knob to adjust that based on what they’re trying to do,” Platz explained.

Fluree has a free community edition and a paid enterprise version with some increased controls. The company currently has 17 employees based in Winston Salem, North Carolina, a number it will expand in the coming year with new funding.

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