Sramana Mitra: What are the key inflection points? What strategic moves have you made that led to this? Sean Dawes: For us, it was being able to offer similar content generation that we were used to...
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If you are looking for a great book to read this weekend, I recommend Ian McEwanâs Machines Like Me. I read it last weekend and am still thinking about it.
McEwan is a magnificent writer. When the hardcover ended up on top of my infinite pile of books to read, Amy said, âWow, youâll love Ian McEwanâs writing.â Whenever Amy says something like that, I know Iâm in for a treat.
The setting is London in 1982. But itâs a parallel universe. Alan Turing chooses jail over chemical castration, lives, and has created massive innovations that are 40 years ahead of their time. Lennon and JFK didnât die. Jimmy Carter wins a second term. Margaret Thatcher gets booted after botching the Falklands War.
Thatâs the backdrop for the introduction of our protagonists Charlie and Miranda. Charlie uses his inheritance to buy an Adam, one of 25 first production models of artificial humans (13 Eves, 12 Adams are available â the Eves sell out immediately so Charlie ends up with an Adam.)
I love the narrative feature of a parallel universe. Amy and I started watching Season 2 of The OA last night which aggressively jumps to an alternative universe. Some of todayâs best near term sci-fi writers are using this as a basis for their writing, although they are often less explicit about how they are twisting current reality to the alternative universe.
McEwan isnât subtle about the twists, which makes the book awesome. You quickly feel that this 1982 is the real 1982 and things take off from there. Every time McEwan drops another new reality fragment, more pieces fall nicely into place.
The result is a very provocative journey through the introduction of an artificial human into the evolving relationship of two existing real humans.
If you are a reader, especially one who likes (a) sci-fi and (b) literary fiction, youâve got a fun weekend ahead of you if you grab Machines Like Me.
For the third year as president, France’s president Emmanuel Macron talked to the French tech ecosystem at VivaTech in Paris. This time, he used this opportunity to defend his policies so far and say that tech startups have nearly everything they need to succeed
Frichti’s Julia Bijaoui, TransferWise’s Flora Coleman, OpenClassrooms’ Pierre Dubuc, Vinted’s Thomas Plantenga and UiPath’s Daniel Dines shared the stage with Macron and each asked one question about funding, European regulation, talent, the digital single market, etc.
Just like last year, Macron took a strong stance when it comes to corporate taxes. “In order to compete with American giants, you need to make sure that competition is fair. You pay taxes, so the tech giant that is competing against you should pay taxes too,” Macron said.
France recently approved a tax on tech giants. If you generate more than €750 million in revenue globally and €25 million in France, you have to pay 3 percent of your French revenue in taxes, even if your company is registered in Ireland, Luxembourg or the Netherlands.
“It’s a temporary measure because we want a tax at the European level, and more generally at the OECD level,” Macron said.
When it comes to funding, things look much better now than a few years ago. There are now more than a handful of French unicorns. And Macron defended his taxation policies, such as a the flat tax on capital gain and the end of the wealth tax on your shares in public or private companies.
And yet, it’s still complicated when it comes to exits — if you want to go down the public road, you most likely have to IPO in the U.S. “We have to build a European financial capital market,” Macron said. “It’ll require some modifications and deeper European integration,” he added later.
Given that Europe is about to vote for the European Parliament, a lot of Macron’s solutions involved the European Union. It sometimes felt like Macron was campaigning for his own party by saying that he wants to go further, but you need to vote for his party first.
When it comes to talent, Macron emphasized the quality of French universities and engineering schools. “We are competitive in terms of human capital and it’s no coincidence. A few years ago, everybody was saying ‘there are a lot of French people in Silicon Valley’. French people living in France are the same, but they cost much, much less,” Macron said.
He then mentioned the French Tech Visa to attract foreign talent, a special visa for tech talent and their families. The program has been overhauled a couple of months ago.
When it comes to regulation, Macron says that the European Union should follow the GDPR model. “What we did on privacy, one regulation for all, we have to do it for other areas,” he said. “On competition, on taxation, on data, we need to regulate.”
Macron concluded by defending a third way to regulate and foster tech companies, which is different from China and the U.S. “Europe can become the tech leader of tomorrow because we are building a tech ecosystem that is compatible with democracy,” he said.
According to him, China doesn’t do enough when it comes to individual rights and human rights, which could eventually backfire for tech companies. And American companies have become too powerful and out of control for the U.S. government.
In his blistering New York Times op-ed last week, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes recalled Mark Zuckerberg's refusal to sell an embryonic Facebook to Yahoo for $1 billion in 2006.
Not all of Facebook's staff agreed with Zuckerberg. Yet - whatever you think about Facebook's rise - he saw its potential for growth where his colleagues got dazzled by dollar signs.
There is an art to knowing when to sell, something which few people in Silicon Valley have more experience of than Peter Yared. He might not be a household name like Zuckerberg, but the 48-year-old has founded and sold no fewer than six enterprise software companies, raising $500 million for investors in the process.
Prograph CSX, a client/server development environment Founded: 1993 Sold: 1995, to Prograph International (fee undisclosed)
JRad, an enterprise Java tools service Founded: 1995 Sold: 1997, to NetDynamics (fee undisclosed)
WaveMaker, commercial open source platform-as-a-service Founded: 2003 Sold: 2011, to VMware (fee undisclosed)
Transpond, social marketing apps and social engagement service Founded: 2007 Sold: 2011, to Oracle (fee undisclosed)
Postano, social post aggregator for websites and sports stadiums Founded: 2010 Sold: 2016, to Sprinklr (fee undisclosed)
Sapho, an employee portal for new and old applications Founded: 2014 Sold: 2018, to Citrix (for $225 million)
Yared says he has become addicted to the whole process of growing and selling companies. "Becoming a team, building a product, being part of a new market, the ups and downs â there's nothing like it," he says.
But this certainly isn't to say he sells recklessly, or for the thrill alone. Rather, for Yared, there are a set of specific circumstances in which selling your company becomes the obvious choice.
"There are certain inflection points where it is natural to sell a company," he explains.
"One is when you have a product in an interesting space and only a handful of customers, and an acquirer wants to move in the space quickly.
"A second is when you have built out the product and the initial customer base, and now need to scale up sales and marketing.
"A third is when you have a product and customers, and now need to add ancillary products and additional [sales] channels."
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. In 2011, Oracle bought Yared's third enterprise software startup, Transpond. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
At each of these steps it is rational to evaluate the sale of a company, he says. Yared reflected on his sale of Sapho to Citrix in 2014 for $225 million as being a good example of his second inflection point.
"Building technology and building a sales and marketing channel are two equally hard tasks," he continues. "A lot of the time, even with large public companies, when they get acquired it's by a better sales and marketing channel.
"If you look at my last company, Sapho, we had built some tech that took years to build; it was a really complicated app virtualization service. We had a list of Fortune 100 customers. But the next step was, 'How do we get this service to be used by all of the Global 2000?'
"So we ended up selling Sapho to Citrix because Citrix was already selling app virtualisation to the Global 2000. They already had a relationship with those companies, and they wanted something new and interesting that would accelerate their growth."
Finding the right cultural fit is also important, Yared says. "Usually an acquirer is looking to buy a product and then mix it in with other products in their portfolio and sell it through existing channels," he explains.
"If they do not have an existing channel it can get tough, as they are not accustomed to your space. It is rare for a large company to have the same culture as a startup. You do have to look for an ethical fit and directional fit."
Yared's seventh and latest startup is InCountry, a data platform helping businesses comply with national data regulations. Among those laws is the European General Data Protection Regulation, which came into force last year. Incorporated in January 2019, Yared's intention is to take InCountry "all the way" to a sale.
Yared's latest startup helps multinational businesses keep on top of data regulation such as the EU's General Data Protection Regulation. Christopher Furlong / Getty
Yared says, though, that selling comes with compromises. He thinks the idea that companies can continue to operate as they did pre-acquisition is a myth.
"You sold the company," he says. "You are now employees of the acquiring company. Ignore what the corporate development people said. Learn the culture, help your team transition to the new way of doing things, and do whatever it takes so that your team and product are integrated into the mothership."
Yared says the process of founding, building and selling "gets easier the more you do it." He declines to name names, but there is one sale he wishes had panned out differently.
"We were forced to sell by our investors, and it was a rushed sale," he explains. "The lead investor whom I had known for years was shoved out of the fund, and I inherited an older partner who would literally send me memos via email and did not get our space at all.
"Six months after we sold, the market got super hot, and 18-24 months later, all of the companies in the segment sold for hundreds of millions of dollars each."
And although Yared gets a thrill from selling, he's not always completely prepared to let go of the companies he has created. And, right now, running InCountry appears to be supplying him with just as big a buzz as signing off on a deal worth millions.
"I'm sad to sell companies, usually. I'm not motivated by money, necessarily. With InCountry, there's so many upsides: A lot of growth, basically no competition, amazing teams in 50 countries. I just don't see us saying 'oh, okay, we're going to sell it,' when we have such a complete diversity of people and talent."
Anyone could have come up with the concept. An app that brings you food whenever and wherever you want? It's the kind of thing any irate worker eating a squashed sandwich at their desk could dream up.
Will Shu, the American cofounder and CEO of Deliveroo, knows this. He told the "i" newspaper in 2017 that the idea was "not complicated ... anyone can have it."
But it was Shu and his cofounder Greg Orlowski who turned the desk dream into a reality in 2013, thanks to a ruthless focus on making food delivery as seamless as possible. Today, his simple idea has been rewarded with a $575 million investment from Amazon.
The Deliveroo app offers takeaway food from thousands of restaurants, many of which never offered delivery services before the startup came along. The eventual goal isn't just to make takeaway easier, but to kill off home cooking for most people altogether.
The startup has revolutionised food delivery. It was worth $2 billion prior to the Amazon deal, and is was once in talks to sell to Uber for billions of dollars. The Amazon deal probably puts its valuation north of $2 billion.
The road hasn't been easy, and Shu & Co. have had to contend with thorny issues such as workers' rights for the thousands of freelance drivers who deliver food and don't have access to benefits.
Here is the story of Deliveroo's story of success.
Another week, another cash-burning tech IPO in the U.S. Following on from Uber’s high-profile listing, ambitious Chinese startup Luckin Coffee has raised up to $650.8 million on the Nasdaq after it priced its shares at $17.
Despite concern at its high losses and little chance of near-term profitability, Luckin seems to have been greeted positively by investors. The company priced its shares at the top of its $15-$17 range and it upsized the share offering to 33 million, three million more than previously planned. That gives Luckin an initial net raise of $571.2 million, although that could increase to $650.8 million if underwriters take up the full additional allocation of 4.95 million “greenshoe” shares that are on offer.
The company will list on Friday under the ticker “LK.”
Luckin filed to go public last month, just weeks after it closed a $150 million Series B+ funding round led by New York private equity firm Blackrock, which interestingly holds a 6.58% stake in Starbucks. The deal valued Luckin at $2.9 billion and it took the three-year-old company to $550 million raised from investors to date.
The company has burned through incredible amounts of cash as it tries to quickly build a brand that competes with Starbucks, and the presence that the U.S. firm has built over the last 20 years in China. Through aggressive promotions and coupons, the company posted a $475 million loss in 2018, its only full year of business to date, with $125 million in revenue. For the first quarter of 2019, it carded an $85 million loss with total sales of $71 million.
We recently went in-depth on the business, which you can read here with a subscription to our Extra Crunch service, but we’ve long covered the startup’s “money is no object” approach to building a digital rival to Starbucks in China.
Deliveroo CEO Will Shu. Deliveroo Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Friday.
Amazon has invested in UK food delivery startup Deliveroo in a massive $575 million fundraise. The food delivery firm has raised $1.53 billion to date, making it one of the best-funded startups in Europe. Facebook is overrun with fake accounts impersonating tech execs like Tim Cook, Elon Musk, and Sundar Pichai. The existence of the accounts raise questions about Facebook's ability to police its app for malicious behaviour. Microsoft and Sony made a joint announcement that they would "explore joint development of future cloud solutions in Microsoft Azure to support their respective game and content-streaming services." This partnership came as a big shock: They've been fierce rivals since the first Microsoft Xbox challenged the Sony PlayStation 2 in 2001. Facebook is reportedly having a tough time recruiting, which could be an ominous sign for the company. CNBC reported that would-be employees are turning down job offers at significantly higher rates than before, but Facebook disputed the report. Instagram is heartbroken over reports a Malaysian teen killed herself after asking followers to help her choose life or death. "The news is certainly very shocking and deeply saddening, and our thoughts and prayers go out to the family of the young woman in Malaysia," said Vishal Shah, Instagram's head of product. How WeWork's CEO manages his ego after going from broke to a billionaire in under 10 years. After stepping away from his phone during Shabbat, and with the help of his wife, Rebekah, Adam Neumann was better able to curb his ego and focus on WeWork's greater mission. Donald Trump is being mocked on Chinese social media for giving Huawei free publicity. Trump declared a national emergency over "threats against information and communications technology and services" on Wednesday, sparking intense debate on Weibo. This futuristic flying taxi startup took a giant leap towards making $70 rides a reality within 6 years. Lilium, the German flying taxi startup, completed the first maiden flight for its prototype vertical take-off and landing electric jet. Uber scored a major victory when the US government ruled drivers aren't employees, but not everyone is happy. We reached out to drivers to see how they feel about the news. Few were surprised, and many see it as yet another slight from the ride-hailing giant. Former Apple retail chief Angela Ahrendts has joined Airbnb's board of directors. Ahrendts departed Apple in April for "new personal and professional pursuits."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.
You can also subscribe to this newsletter here â just tick "10 Things in Tech You Need to Know."
Amazon has taken a stake in British food delivery startup Deliveroo, acting as the main investor in a major $575 million round of financing.
The new funding takes the total raised by Deliveroo to $1.35 billion to date, making it one of the best-funded startups in Europe.
Deliveroo has not confirmed its current valuation. The company was last valued at $2 billion in a previous funding round, and Business Insider understands the company has been targeting a new valuation of at least $4 billion.
It isn't clear how much Amazon paid for its share of Deliveroo, nor how big that stake is. Other investors in the round include T. Rowe Price, Fidelity Management and Research Company, and Greenoaks.
Deliveroo CEO Will Shu said in a statement: "This new investment will help Deliveroo to grow and to offer customers even more choice, tailored to their personal tastes, offer restaurants greater opportunities to grow and expand their businesses, and to create more flexible, well-paid work for riders.
"Amazon has been an inspiration to me personally and to the company, and we look forward to working with such a customer-obsessed organisation. This is great news for the tech and restaurant sectors, and it will help to create jobs in all of the countries in which we operate."
The deal gives one of the world's most valuable companies a stake in one of the hottest European startups, and also in the fast-growing food-delivery space. Deliveroo is one of the biggest rivals to Uber Eats outside the US, operating across 14 markets including the UK, Australia, Hong Kong, and the UAE.
The company offers a slick app through which customers can order food for delivery from local restaurants. A Deliveroo "rider" on a bicycle or motorbike will deliver the food, saving restaurants from having to employ their own delivery drivers. The firm has been criticised for employing its riders on a casual basis, meaning they are not legally entitled to minimum pay or other benefits, but does offer free rider insurance and online learning courses.
The round also shores Deliveroo up against its main rival Uber Eats, Uber's food delivery arm. Bloomberg last year reported that Uber was considering buying Deliveroo. A deal never materialized, and Uber floated on the New York Stock Exchange days ago.
Doug Gurr, Amazon's country manager in the UK, said: "We're impressed with Deliveroo's approach, and their dedication to providing customers with an ever increasing selection of great restaurants along with convenient delivery options."
On Thursday, Microsoft and Sony shocked the world with a joint statement that they would be teaming up â and on video gaming, no less, where the two have been fierce rivals ever since the original Microsoft Xbox picked a fight with the Sony PlayStation 2, way back in 2001.
In their own words, "the two companies will explore joint development of future cloud solutions in Microsoft Azure to support their respective game and content-streaming services," with the promise of more specifics to come in the future. They'll also work together to integrate Microsoft's Azure AI technology with Sony's ubiquitous image sensor business.
It's exciting times, right at a pivotal moment in the gaming industry.
The imminent launch of cloud gaming services like Microsoft xCloud and Google Stadia promise to stream even the most graphically intensive video games to any device, anywhere â from a game console down to the humblest of smartphones â by leveraging the computer processing brawn of the tech titans' massive data centers. Now, it seems, Sony is turning to Microsoft and its Azure cloud to get in on the action.
The two platforms have been rivals for going on two decades. Christian Petersen/Getty Images
It's really tempting to read a lot into this announcement: Have the two arch-rivals really put their beef behind them? Will you be able to play Xbox games on a PlayStation, or vice versa?
Let's not jump to conclusions. Over at Ars Technica, Kyle Orland has a convincing breakdown of why that's unlikely, mostly because the next Xbox and PlayStation are both already preparing for a not-so-distant launch, and it wouldn't make a lot of sense for either company to invest so heavily in rival hardware if they were planning on laying down their arms and embracing a joint cloud service.
Instead, here's my reading of this announcement: Sony needs Microsoft's help, because there's a lot keeping it from competing toe-to-toe with Microsoft xCloud, Google Stadia, or, eventually, Amazon's own planned game streaming service. And so, it had to turn to Microsoft, a competitor, to help it keep pace with the rest of the industry.
It's worth noting here that Sony has offered PlayStation Now, a game-streaming service, since 2014 â well before current Microsoft gaming boss Phil Spencer had his current job. To build PlayStation Now, Sony shelled out $380 million for startup Gaikai in 2012, and then opened its checkbook again for OnLive in 2015. However, PlayStation Now has never been a huge hit, despite Sony's investment. In February, Engadget said it " still isn't good enough."
It's also worth noting that around the same time that Sony launched PlayStation Now, it was reported that the company was "urgently seeking ways to build an infrastructure" to support its cloud ambitions. To make it happen, it was reported, Sony had sought contracts with data center facility providers to boost its capacity.
This gives a hint as to what might be driving Sony towards this Microsoft partnership.
One of the big reasons why Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are able to succeed in this cloud market â where companies like Dell, VMware, and Cisco have all backed down â is that they invested heavily in building their own data centers, and then further invested in making them as efficient and powerful as humanly possible.
Indeed, at Microsoft, former chief software architect Ray Ozzie gets the credit for convincing then-CEO Steve Ballmer that the company would never get anywhere in the internet age without owning its own data centers, despite the massive expense involved.
Now, under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella and cloud boss Scott Guthrie that investment is paying off: Microsoft has data centers all over the world, all running applications large and small, both for the company itself, and on behalf of the customers of Microsoft Azure.
Microsoft's Project xCloud promises to let you play even the biggest blockbusters from your smartphone or just about any other internet-connected screen. Microsoft
At the same time, Microsoft has tasked its leading researchers and engineers with finding new, innovative, bleeding-edge ways to improve efficiency, get more power, and even run the cloud in more eco-friendly ways. More recently, the company has launched Azure Game Stack, a package of services to help game developers capitalize on everything Microsoft has learned from operating Azure for about a decade now.
We haven't heard anything new about Sony's cloud infrastructure in a while. But it's hard to imagine that Sony's infrastructure is at the same scale as Microsoft's, let alone as efficient or as powerful. We don't know if Sony will use Microsoft to beef up PlayStation Now, or to build an entirely new gaming service, but it's not strange at all to think that the company might want Microsoft to at least partially power that future.
A weird effect of all of this is that the cloud has made for some strange partnerships, and some even stranger counter-partnerships.
Apple, for example, has been reported to use both Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud to power its iCloud service. Sony, too, could choose to use multiple clouds, if it isn't already.
On the flip side, Walmart famously asked its partners to stop using Amazon Web Services, as a line in the sand in the online retail wars. Target made its own move away from AWS at around the same time.
In gaming, though, there aren't many places for Sony to turn if it wants a cloud partner who won't also be a competitor. Google has its Stadia service, while Amazon is rumored to be working on its own game streaming service. DigitalOcean, probably the largest independent cloud platform, doesn't have the same scale as its competitors.
Since Sony can't avoid the reality of competition, its best bet is probably to embrace it â by choosing a company that it at least understands and respects, thanks to their years of long competition.
After Nvidia shares rallied Wednesday on the company's upbeat first-quarter results, the chip giant followed rival Intel's lead by painting a hazy picture of the data center market.
The fuzziness apparently was so bad, the company opted not to offer a full-year guidance, even as CEO Jensen Huang declared that the spending "pause" that has hit other chip-makers "will pass."
Nvidia's stock, which jumped after the report, slid as Huang and CFO Colette Kress offered more color on the quarter. The stock was still up about 1% after-hours, after popping more than 5% in the immediate aftermath of the report.
"We're still experiencing uncertainty as a result of the pause" in data centers," Kress told analysts. "The data center spending pause will likely persist and visibility remains low."
"Things are worse so they're pulling the full-year guide," Bernstein Research analyst Stacy Rasgon told Business Insider. "It's not complicated."
Nvidia painted the same picture Intel presented last month when the chip giant disappointed investors with a downbeat report that also pointed to a weak data center demand. Intel CEO Bob Swan pointed to "a more cautious IT spending environment."
On the call with analysts, Huang said corporate customers need more time to "digest the capacity they have."
In other words, corporate customers simply bought too many chips. Nvidia sells processors that power data center and cloud computing platforms used by big corporations and organizations. But the expected buildout of cloud platforms stalled, causing a sharp dip in demand for datacenter chips.
"They took on too much capacity," he said.
But that digestion problem will continue to hang over Nvidia's head, Rasgon said.
"I don't know if I'd call it 'bleak,' but certainly uncertain," he said. The other gains Nvidia highlighted on the call, he added, were "not enough to make up for the digestion [problem] in the rest of the business."
Huang said Nvidia was on a roll on other fronts. He highlighted Nvidia's gains in gaming and AI, where the company has emerged as a leading player.
Analyst Patrick Moorhed of Moor Insights and Strategy said noted Huang's comments on gains in key segments of the AI chip market. "He expected data centers to kick back into buying more in the back of the fiscal year," he told Business Insider. "Intel told a very similar story and I think that makes sense."
And amid speculation that the widening trade war between the US and China could hit major US tech companies, Huang says the company is actually seeing growth in a key market, gaming.
"The gaming market in China is vibrant and continues to be vibrant," he said.
Marty Wolf, president of Martinwolf, told Business Insider Huang has done a good job "repositioning company under very cloudy skies," highlighted by the data center weakness. "The market has confidence in him."
Got a tip about Nvidia, Intel another tech company? Contact this reporter via email at
AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky
The Trump administration on Wednesday banned Huawei from buying parts from US companies without the government's approval.While some experts say the ban could have negative implications for US technology companies, including Apple, one analyst thinks the development may be mere "noise."Watch Apple trade live.The Trump administration's new ban against the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei could have dire implications for US technology investors, but one analyst said there's no need to panic just yet.
The US Commerce Department said on Wednesday it added Huawei to its "Entity List" that prevents the company from purchasing American parts and components without the government's approval first.
Of course, that could hurt the US suppliers that sell their parts to the telecom giant. The ban could also make international technology companies such as Apple particularly vulnerable to retaliatory measures from China.
"A tit-for-tat fight that could be disastrous for any company that sells a lot of goods into China, especially technology-based goods, if they get banned for any reason as part of a Chinese retaliatory move," the analyst Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies Inc. told Business Insider's Benjamin Pimentel on Wednesday.
Still, Apple shareholders shouldn't dump their shares because of the ban, the Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said. He sees the announcement as just "noise" for now.
"While we expect a lot more sand to be thrown in the sand box between the Beltway and Shanghai until the G-20 talks in late June around these trade tensions, we caution investors on Apple to not jump to conclusions and instead rationally digest the most likely scenario when analyzing the stock," Ives told clients in a note out Thursday.
Read more: Trump's Huawei ban could spark a tit-for-tat fight with Beijing that puts Apple in the crossfire
At the same time, Apple was already under pressure from increased trade tensions between the US and China, Ives said. He said the latter represented a critical "growth linchpin region" and would make up 20% of all iPhone upgrades over the next 12 to 18 months.
"Based on our analysis the way the tariff situation stands today on some lithium batteries and other input materials the cost of making iPhones currently will go up by roughly 2%-3%," Ives said.
"Taking a step back, we ultimately believe there is a low likelihood that Apple and its iPhones feel the brunt of the tariffs given its strategic importance domestically as well as Cook's ability to navigate these issues in the past with Trump and K Street," he added.
China on Monday said it would hike tariffs on $60 billion worth of US goods in a retaliatory measure after the US last week raised tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods.
Read more: Stocks plunge after China retaliates with duties on $60 billion of US goods
That trade spats slammed the US stock market earlier this week, though the major indexes have recouped their losses. Apple fell to a two-month low on Monday.Â
Despite the volatility, Ives maintains his "outperform" rating and $235 price target â 22% above where shares were trading on Thursday.
Others agree the US's Huawei ban may not stand to affect Apple but that it could undoubtedly hurt chipmakers with significant exposure to China.
Christopher Rolland, an analyst at the firm Susquehanna, told Markets Insider in an email that the Trump administration's announcement doesn't mean much for Apple. But earlier he told clients that shares in semiconductors like Skyworks and Qorvo are at risk.Â
"While the Huawei ban is not yet finalized and many details remain to be determined, we note increased risk and cut price targets for XLNX, SYNA, SWKS, and QRVO," he wrote.
Apple shares rose less than 1% on Thursday and were up 22% so far this year.
Read more coverage from Markets Insider and Business Insider:
The top false claims Trump makes about trade
Apple's big, flashy event underwhelmed investors. Here's why.
As more millennials have kids and try to balance work and parenting, they're facing a challenge that hasn't been solved by Silicon Valley's tech giants: how to find safe and affordable childcare.
When Sara Mauskopf and Anne Halsall â two ex-Googlers who met while working on the product team at Postmates â exchanged stories of their difficulties finding reliable childcare as new moms, they knew it was a problem they had to solve.
Their solution was Winnie, an online, centralized marketplace that connects parents with certified childcare providers. The pair told Business Insider in a recent interview that although some companies have made childcare listings a part of their offering, Winnie was the first when it started back in 2016 to entirely focus on helping parents find licensed daycare and preschool providers near them.
The childcare market, they said, was fragmented and the best option available for parents was often a simple Google search.
"Parents were left feeling like they don't have as many options as they do because over half of the providers are not listed online. Parents think that there's just not childcare for them," Mauskopf said. "We see moms especially dropping out of the workforce at very high numbers because of this and people paying a lot more than they have to to get into a big, popular center that they found on Google."
To date, Winnie has 150,000 childcare providers listed on its site and hopes, over time, to have every licensed provider in the country. Right now the founders say they're focused on user growth over profits, but they say they've seen success charging parents for early access to new openings, as well as offering the childcare providers preferred placement on its site for a fee.
Read more: Here are the pitch decks that helped hot startups raise millions
In April 2018, Winnie raised a $4 million seed round led by Reach Capital to help fund its ambitious vision for the future of childcare. In total, the San Francisco-based team of 10 has raised $6.5 million.
Mauskopf and Halsall say their fundraising secret is in their storytelling.
"We're both very data-oriented people, and our initial deck was very focused on graphs and numbers and traction. And that actually made the conversations a lot harder," Halsall said.
"After our first few pitches, we restructured the deck to be more aspirational about where we were going. Anyone who wants to talk about data, it's in the appendix. But what mattered was that we were in alignment [with investors] â this is a big problem, this is a big market, there's no good solution today, and this is a really big opportunity for the first company that gets there."
Here's the pitch deck that helped Winnie raise its latest $4 million seed round:
It sounds like Facebook might be having a tough time recruiting after the Cambridge Analytica scandal and its two years of crises.
On Thursday, CNBC reported that the Silicon Valley giant was running into difficulties in hiring new employees. Would-be workers are turning down job offers at significantly higher rates than those seen before the news broke in March 2018 that political research firm Cambridge Analytica misappropriated tens of millions of Facebook users' data, according to the report.
Facebook is disputing the report, and the spokesperson Anthony Harrison told Business Insider in an email that "these numbers are totally wrong." He did not immediately specify what was wrong about CNBC's figures. It's not clear whether Facebook is alleging that these figures are wildly inaccurate or that they are only slightly off. The CNBC reporter Sal Rodriguez told Business Insider that he stood by his reporting.
CNBC, citing unnamed sources, reported that software-engineer acceptance rates for the product team have dropped from around 90% to 50% between late 2016 and early 2019. Meanwhile, the acceptance rate from top universities "has fallen from an average of 85% for the 2017-2018 school year to between 35% and 55% as of December," the report said.
These figures would indicate that the historically prestigious tech giant is finding it significantly harder to hire fresh talent, which would likely increase the cost of recruiting and reflect the significant hit to Facebook's reputation that it has been taking over the past two years.
In addition to saddling the company with extra costs, trouble attracting top talent could have a damaging effect on morale internally â demotivating employees already with the company and potentially sparking other unpredictable consequences.
In an additional statement, Harrison said:
The assumption by unnamed sources that we are having challenges recruiting talent is completely inaccurate. The numbers speak for themselves. As a company, we grew 36% year over year from Q1-2018 to Q1-2019 ... Facebook regularly ranks high on industry lists of most attractive employers. For example, in the last year we were rated as #1 on Indeed's Top Rated Workplaces, #2 on LinkedIn's Top Companies, and #7 on Glassdoor's Best Places to Work. Our annual intern survey showed exceptionally strong sentiment and intent to return and we continue to see strong acceptance rates across University Recruiting.
He did not immediately answer a question on how the sentiment regarding Facebook's annual intern salary has changed over the past few years.
Got a tip? Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (650) 636-6268 using a non-work phone, email at
Retail Zipline, a startup aiming to improve communication between retail stores and corporate decision makers, announced today that it has raised $9.6 million in Series A funding.
CEO Melissa Wong previously worked in corporate communications for Old Navy, where she said she saw “such a disconnect between what was decided in headquarters and what was decided in stores.” For example, management might decide on a big marketing push to sell any remaining Mother’s Day-related items after the holiday has passed, but then “the stores wouldn’t do it.”
“The stores would say there were too many messages, they didn’t see the memo, they didn’t know it was a priority,” Wong said.
So she founded Retail Zipline with CTO Jeremy Baker, with the goal of building better communication tools for retailers. Baker said that while they looked at existing chat and task management software for inspiration, those tools were “mostly built for people sitting at a desk all day,” rather than workers who are “on the floor, dealing with customers.”
Retail Zipline’s features include messaging and task management — plus a centralized library of documents and multimedia and a survey tool to track results and feedback from stores.
To illustrate how the software is actually being used, Baker outlined a scenario where an athletic shoe company is launching “a huge initiative,” with a big-name athlete signed on to promote the latest pair of shoes.
“In a traditional environment, someone might FedEx over a package to [the store], someone might send an email down, ‘Hey, look for a package on this day,’ someone else from the marketing team might say, ‘Hey guys, we’re doing a shoe launch,’ ” he said. “All of this in these disparate systems, where people have to piece together the story. It’s kind of like a murder mystery.”
Baker said that Retail Zipline, on the other hand, provides a single place to find all the needed materials and tasks “tied together with a bow, instead of a store manager spending 10-plus hours in the back room trying to piece this thing together, or even worse not seeing it.”
The company’s customers include Casper, LEGO and Lush Cosmetics. Wong said Retail Zipline works “with anyone that has a retail location” — ranging from Gap, Inc. with thousands of stores, to Toms Shoes with 10.
The funding was led by Emergence, with Santi Subotovsky and Kara Egan from Emergence both joining the startup’s board of directors. Serena Williams’ new firm Serena Ventures also participated.
“As someone with an incredibly active life, I understand the need to be dynamic, and capable of quickly adapting to shifting priorities, but I’m also aware of the stress a fast-paced work environment can impose,” Williams said in a statement. “Retail Zipline is tackling this issue head-on in retail – a notoriously stressful industry – by pioneering products that help store associates get organized, communicate efficiently, and deliver amazing customer experiences.”
Rent the Runway CEO Jennifer Hyman runs her business according to a simple rule.
"I haven't been given the permission or privilege to lose a billion every quarter," she told CNBC in an interview on Thursday.
Although Hyman's comments sound like a sensible enough business guideline, it can also be read as a not-so-subtle swipe at some of the other tech startups that have been in the headlines recently. Uber and Lyft, for example, were some of the most highly anticipated tech IPOs of 2019 even though both had operating losses of $1 billion or more in the past year.
Since going public, Uber and Lyft have both seen shares of their stock tank amid withering criticism that they were substantially overvalued on the private market.
Despite Hyman's quip about not having permission to lose $1 billion, it's not clear what Rent the Runway's financial statement looks like, including whether the 10-year old startup is profitable itself.
The company turned a profit on an adjusted basis in 2016, according to a Recode article at the time. But representatives from Rent The Runway refused to comment on the company's current financial condition when contacted by Business Insider.
Rent the Runway, which allows customers to rent designer clothing, recently raised $125 million in funding at a $1 valuation, according to the New York Times.
Hyman told CNBC that she hopes the new funding, led by Franklin Templeton Investments and Bain Capital Ventures, will give the company the flexibility to go public when the time is right instead of bending to investor pressure.
SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk, is trying to launch an internet revolution.
On Thursday between 10:30 p.m. and midnight ET (weather permitting), SpaceX plans to launch a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Crammed inside the nosecone will be 60 tabletop-size satellites designed to test an internet network called Starlink.
Starlink, once complete, would consist of nearly 12,000 satellites â more than six times the number of all operational spacecraft now in orbit. The goal is to finish the project in 2027, thereby blanketing the Earth with high-speed, low-latency, and affordable internet access.
Even partial deployment of Starlink would benefit the financial sector and bring pervasive broadband internet to rural and remote areas. Completing the project may cost $10 billion or more, according to Gwynne Shotwell, the president and chief operating officer of SpaceX. But Musk said during a call with reporters on Wednesday that it could net the company perhaps $30 to $50 billion per year.
It's not going to be easy to pull off, though, as Musk acknowledged.
"There is a lot of new technology here. So it's possible that some of these satellites may not work," he said. In fact, Musk added that there's a "small possibility that all of the satellites will not work."
During Wednesday's call, Musk also provided new information about Starlink. Industry experts have also used public Federal Communications Commission filings from SpaceX to make educated guesses about Starlink's workings and scope.
"This is the most exciting new network we've seen in a long time," Mark Handley, a computer-networking researcher at University College London who's studied Starlink, told Business Insider. He added that the project could affect the lives of "potentially everybody."
Here's how Starlink might work and how it could change the internet as we know it.
As a game designed for smartphones, "Call of Duty: Mobile" relies on touch screen controls. Players will be able to adjust how sensitive their controls are, their overall field of vision, and choose how their phone's gyroscope is used for aiming.
When set to Simple Mode, the game will unleash a barrage of automatic gunfire whenever an enemy enters your crosshairs, no extra touch required. While this might sound a bit too easy, it will use a ton of ammo and make your shots less accurate due to recoil.
Advanced mode has many more options, including choosing whether you aim down the sights of your weapon or fire from the hip with specific weapons, like a shotgun or assault rifle. Activision says there are 17 sliders for adjusting your aim settings, and even more for other options.
Players will also be able to adjust the position of different on-screen overlays. For example, if you can't see your ammo count in the corner of the screen, you can move it to the top for easy viewing.
With company cultures that celebrateâand even encourageâemployees bringing their dogs to work, it's no wonder that many of tech's biggest players are also parents to the cutest creatures known to man.
From Google to Facebook, dogs have taken over the hearts and Instagrams of the industry's most powerful leaders. Sure these people are setting the agenda for global business and politics, but even billionaires need a little TLC (tender loving cuddles).
And did we mention these dogs are darn cute?
Here's a round up of some of the tech industry's most powerful dogs:
OpenFin, which calls itself the operating system of finance, said Thursday that it had raised $17 million in its Series C fundraising round that was led by Wells Fargo, with participation from Barclays.
Designed to sit one layer above a computer's native OS, OpenFin is a platform where software applications can be deployed safely, seamlessly, and quickly. It's used by banks and asset managers to allow traders and portfolio managers to begin using a collection of apps in a way that begins to look and feel like the experience consumers have come to expect from their mobile devices.
"OpenFin is building the roads, bridges and communications infrastructure for financial apps that will allow capital markets to innovate like Silicon Valley," Matt Harris at VC firm Bain Capital Ventures and an OpenFin board member said in a statement.
OpenFin plans to use its new money to hire more people and expand into new products and geographies. The round brings the total funds raised by OpenFin to $40 million. The company declined to disclose its valuation.
The software already powers 1,000 applications on 200,000 computer workstations across more than 1500 banks and investment managers.
Here's the pitch deck that CEO and founder Mazy Dar used to raise his latest round of funding.
Facebook is a one-stop shop when it comes to networking online. Not only can we connect with colleagues, classmates, friends, and family, we can also play games, cross-post to Instagram, join community groups with people who share similar interests, and more.
But how much of what you do on Facebook are you handling with appropriate discretion? You may not be doing anything embarrassing or illegal, but not everyone wants their every move tracked online.
While you can't control the advertisers and other outside companies Facebook choses to sell your information to, there are ways to ensure that your activity and profile information on Facebook is limited when it comes to the general public and even those on your friends list.
It only takes a few minutes to secure your account and may be worthwhile to do. Here's what you need to know.
1. Go to Facebook.com and log into your account using the email address and password associated with your account.
2. Once on your news feed, which acts as your home screen, navigate to the arrow in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, and click on it to reveal a drop down menu of options.
3. Scroll down until you locate the "Settings" tab and click.
4. On the left-hand side of your screen, you'll see a long list of menu options. Locate "Privacy," which should appear as the fourth item down from the top, and click on it to launch your privacy settings on the right-hand side of the screen.
Navigate to the Privacy section of your Facebook settings. Jennifer Still/Business Insider
5. Note that Facebook allows you to change your privacy settings for individual website features. This means you can adjust the level of privacy for specific elements of the site such as how you're found and contacted on the site, who can see your posts, and even retroactively limit the audience of your past posts.
6. To change a particular privacy element, click the "Edit" option to the far right of each section. This will expand the section and allow you to choose who, if anyone, sees the relevant information. To keep anyone from seeing it, click on "Only me" under "Who should see this?"
"Only me" is the most secure privacy setting available. Jennifer Still/Business Insider
7. You can make your Facebook even more private by changing who can tag you in posts, who can post on your Timeline, and who can share the posts you make to their own profiles. The options for these can be changed as above, though they're found under the "Timeline and Tagging" section on the left-hand side of the screen, just below the "Security" option.
You can open the "Timeline and Tagging" section for even more privacy options. Jennifer Still/Business Insider
1. Locate and tap the Facebook app icon on your phone's home screen.
2. Tap on the three stacked horizontal lines in the lower right-hand corner of your screen to launch a menu of options, scrolling until you reach the "Settings and Privacy" section.
3. Tap on "Settings and Privacy" and then "Privacy shortcuts," which will appear beneath it, to customize your privacy options.
Tap on "Privacy shortcuts." Jennifer Still/Business Insider
4. On the "Privacy shortcuts" screen, you'll see a list of options underneath the "Privacy" header. Tap the bottom option, "See more privacy settings." This will launch the screen in which you can review and change your current settings.
5. To change who can see your activity including future posts, past posts, as well as people, pages, and lists you follow, tap on the relevant option under "Your activity." In the dropdown menu that appears, change your option to "Only me" so that it is completely private.
For the most privacy, change your visibility options to "Only me." Jennifer Still/Business Insider
6. Repeat step 5 for each of the options under "How people can find and contact you" to complete the privatization of your Facebook information.
7. Note that you can also manage your profile to make your birthday, relationships, and other profile information private as well under the "Manage your profile" section on the "Privacy settings" screen.
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