During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest David Lambert, Managing Director at Right Side Capital Management, a firm that invests small chunks of capital in capital efficient ventures. The...
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Oracle founder and CTO Larry Ellison has been talking up his latest, greatest database for a couple of years now â but on Thursday the company gave an update as to how well the recently introduced cloud version is selling.
Oracle calls this product the Autonomous Database, because it automatically applies security patches and "tunes" itself to improve performance. The database was first announced in 2017, but a new service that Oracle calls Gen2, which offers the database in Oracle's cloud along with a bunch of special security features, was announced in October.
As part of the company's FY 2019 third-quarter earnings report, Ellison said on Thursday that the database now has nearly 1,000 customers, and is undergoing 4,000 user trials elsewhere.
"It's early days, but this is the most successful introduction of a new product in Oracle's forty year history," Ellison said.
He further explained on the quarterly conference call with analysts that the database is key to Oracle's future.
"Oracle's future rests on two strategic businesses: cloud applications and cloud infrastructure," he said.
Read: How Oracle inadvertently helped Nvidia spend $6.9 billion to win a deal away from Intel
To date, most of Oracle's cloud revenue is based on its cloud applications business, which includes its financial applications (known as enterprise resource management, or ERP) and its HR apps (known in the enterprise app world as as human capital management, or HCM).
But the new database is the lynchpin of the "cloud infrastructure" piece, Ellison says, and it is how the company plans to take on cloud mega-giant Amazon Web Services.
AWS offers its own cloud databases, including Aurora and Redshift, and has been very deliberately targeting Oracle's customers â going so far as to build a tool that makes it easy to switch your database from Oracle to AWS.
Ellison is ready for the fight. Touting better security and faster performance is how Oracle is attempting to woo companies to sign on with its cloud, and not defect to Amazon.
"Our infrastructure technology is highly differentiated from AWS. Each one of our cloud computers has a separate security processor and memory to insulate customers from intruding upon each other," he said on the call.
Ellison likes to say that this speed and power will save customers money. AWS executives counter that their databases work better for how customers are actually building their software in the cloud. Indeed, Amazon likes to trash talk Oracle's business model and its treatment of its customers.
On the Thursday analyst call, Ellison discussed one customer, a university that he didn't name, which ditched AWS for Oracle's cloud and database.
"We've got one customers who's done a series of tests. They were AWS users. We've got these AWS ads that promise 'cut your bills in half.' They found we're running 11.5 times faster than they were running on AWS and they cut their bill by 80%," he said.
This was a university running an app that used machine learning and computer vision to look at tissue samples and cells for cancer. So, its worth noting, that's not a typical way to use a database, compared with, say, storing lists of employee information or sales transactions.
This sunny view of Oracle's important database product was part of Oracle's third quarter earnings, which offered a healthy beat on revenue and earnings versus Wall street estimates.
Oracle reported revenue of $9.61 billion, down by 1% from the year-ago quarter, that beat expectations by $20 million. Non-GAAP earnings per share was 87 cents, beating expectations by 3 cents. GAAP EPS was 76 cents.
Oracle no longer breaks out its cloud revenue so it's difficult to see how that all-important business is doing in terms of sales. Management discussed "double digit" growth rates, which would be table-stakes growth for a company transforming itself from an old-school software maker to a cloud company.
The options available to women who want to avoid getting pregnant today are bad. Most, like the widely used birth control pill, feed man-made estrogen and progestin hormones to women, which are capable of causing a number of awful side effects.
YourChoice Therapeutics — a startup launched by a team of Berkeley researchers, including two experts in sperm physiology and sperm-egg interactions — dreams of producing a unisex, non-hormonal alternative to existing contraceptives. The company has raised $400,000 in funding to date, plus a $150,000 check from Y Combinator. YourChoice will make its big pitch at Y Combinator Demo Days next week.
It’s seeking $2 million in venture capital funding to continue research on its sperm cell-targeting novel method of contraception, as well as to build out its team of chemists. Founders Akash Bakshi and Nadja Mannowetz tell TechCrunch they plan to have a contraceptive ready to market by 2025. Together, with co-founder and advisor Dr. Polina V. Lishko of Berkeley’s department of cell and molecular biology, they hope to reach women and men all over the world, in the process tapping a market expected to be worth $37 billion by 2023.
“There are perhaps ways that we could cut that time in half or just get something to market,” said Bakshi, YourChoice’s chief executive officer, whose background is in technology commercialization, research and development within the life sciences industry. “But we need to do this right so that we can benefit as many women as possible.”
Their first product will be a vaginal contraceptive to be applied before intercourse, then, the startup plans to release oral contraceptives for both genders. The team has discovered that the natural compound lupeol is capable of blocking a protein on sperm that is required for fertilization. YourChoice‘s non-hormonal approach doesn’t impact a cells’ ability to function or gene expression, so women and men are not at an increased risk of blood clots, cancer or other side effects associated with mainstream birth control methods’ use of added hormones.
“The bottom line is men don’t have good options and women apparently have so many choices, yet they are all really bad,” Mannowetz, a Ph.D. in sperm physiology, told TechCrunch. “They’re all based on that over 60-year-old idea of hormone-based drugs.”
YourChoice’s planned debut product will be applied directly in the vagina during the period of the month in which the woman is fertile. Whether that be a tablet, a gel or some other form factor is still up in the air. YourChoice’s second product will be an oral contraceptive because they believe that is the most convenient, universally accepted method.
“For women who have an implant … I understand that this might be a step backward, but women who have been on the pill for decades, for them, it wouldn’t be a big change,” Mannowetz said. “We totally understand we will not serve every woman out there but we need to get started with a product and then take it from there.”
“If the last 60 years have taught us anything, it’s that delivery is something that can continue to be developed,” she continued. “We need to develop a new mode of action.”
There are a number of startups innovating in the contraception space, as TechCrunch has written, though most of those businesses are focused on the access problem. Birth control can be very difficult for many to access and startups like The Pill Club or Nurx solve that problem by delivering the pill directly to women’s doorsteps. Other early-stage companies in the space lack experts in the field of reproductive biology necessary to improve contraceptive options. YourChoice’s team says seeking change to the actual medication with an advanced team sets them apart from other upstarts.
For YourChoice, it helps that venture capital investment in the reproductive tech space is increasing, making this a great time for YC to support these businesses (YourChoice isn’t the only reproductive tech startup in the latest YC cohort) and for YourChoice to successfully nab private investment.
“I personally think the industry is satisfied; they are making really good money, right? So why should they change anything,” Mannowetz said. “Millennials are the starting point of change happening. I think now, women stand up and say, ‘we are sick of it.’ ”
Most people spend the vast majority of their time in just a handful of apps. I'm no exception.
While I keep over 200 apps on my phone for minor things, there are only 14 apps that I regularly turn to. These are my go-to apps that make my life easier, more productive and more enjoyable. If you want to get the most out of your phone, I recommend having these essential apps.
Check them out:
Spotify's complaint against Apple over unfair competition could end up costing the iPhone maker billions of dollars.
The streaming music maker's allegations against Apple focus on the way Apple manages the App Store and the fees it charges developers who sell their apps and related items there. The complaint it filed with the European Commission on Wednesday increases the chances that Apple will have to lower its commission rates on app sales, warned financial analysts who cover the company.
If Apple is forced to reduce its rates, it's likely it would only have to cut them by a little, a move the company could easily swallow, said Mark Kelley, an analyst who covers the electronics giant for Nomura Instinet, in a research note on Thursday. But if Apple has to put in place a particularly large cut in its rates â which would require a "structural change" to its commission policies â the move could cost the company more than $8 billion in lost sales next year and about $1.25 a share in lost earnings, Kelley estimated.
"A structural change in Apple's take rate seems unlikely, but would prove more damaging" than a slight change in rates, he said.
Apple charges a 30% commission on most sales through its app store. For subscriptions charged through its store, Apple lowers its cut to 15% after the first year. Combining those two rates, the company on average gets a commission of about 27% on all the sales through the App Store, Kelley said. Google charges similar rates in its Google Play store and sees about the same overall commission rate, he said.
Epic Games, the maker of "Fortnite: Battle Royale" has been routing around app stores by distributing versions of the game through its website. "Fortnite"/Epic Games But the fees charged by Apple, Google, and other app store operators like Steam have been coming under increasing pressure. In recent years, both Netflix and Spotify stopped allowing customers to sign up for paid subscriptions inside their iPhone apps, instead encouraging new customers to sign up on their websites. Similarly, Epic Games has been routing around app stores with "Fortnite: Battle Royale," directing consumers on PCs and on Android smartphones to download the game from its website instead.
And now Spotify has filed a formal complaint with European regulators, asserting in part that the fees Apple charges are unfair and anticompetitive. While it had to pay a 30% fee to Apple on its subscriptions, Apple Music â the iPhone maker's rival subscription music service â has to pay no such fees, Spotify charged. To receive the same amount of revenue, Spotify says it would have to increase the cost of its subscription, which it argues harms consumers.
Spotify's complaint comes amid growing scrutiny of the business models of Apple and other tech giants. Just last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren said that she would seek to bar such companies from both operating a platform or marketplace and offering apps or services on that marketplace that compete with those from third parties.
"With growing calls from more robust regulation, we continue to view app store pricing as an area that could see more pressure," Ben Schachter, an analyst with Macquarie Research, said in a note late Wednesday.
Apple is particularly susceptible to potential changes in app-store fee rates. The company is banking much of its future on growth in its services business. Not only has that segment been growing faster than Apple's overall hardware business, it's more profitable too.
Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, which filed a competition complaint against Apple in Europe on Wednesday. Michael Loccisano/Getty Images/Spotify Apple's App Store commissions make up the biggest component of its services business, accounting for about 30% of its total revenue, Kelley estimated. Consumers spent around $47 billion on apps and other items in its store last year, and the iPhone maker pulled in about $12.6 billion in revenue from those sales, Kelley estimated. Both of those figures are about double the comparable ones for Google.
A slight reduction in Apple's App Store rates won't hurt the company very much, Kelley said. If its overall commission rate falls to about 25%, Apple's store revenue next year would be about $1.4 billion less than it would be otherwise, while its earnings per share would be about 20 cents lower, he said. But those hits would represent less than 1% of the company's expected overall revenue next year and only about 1.5% of its expected per-share earnings.
But bigger cuts in its commission rates would lead to much sharper reductions in Apple's expected sales and profits, Kelley said. If its commission rate drops to 20% overall, Apple would take a $5 billion hit to its total sales next year and would see its earnings per share cut by 75 cents, or about 6%, he said. If its fee rate falls to 15%, Apple's overall revenue in 2020 would be cut by 3%, or $8 billion, and its earnings per share would be reduced $1.25, or nearly 10%.
Schachter thinks there's a chance it could fall even further than that, suggesting Apple's commission rate might drop to just 12%. That would cut its earnings before interest and taxes by 15% next year, he said.
"Pressure on [the] app distribution model [is] building," Schachter said.
Got tip about Apple or other tech companies? Contact this reporter via email at
Domo and Cloudera, two enterprise companies without much else in common, reported their quarterly financials on Wednesday â and saw dramatic stock moves the day after.
Cloudera, which makes software for analyzing large amounts of data, dipped $2.90, or almost 20%, on Thursday after reporting revenue well above Wall Street expectations but disappointing future guidance. Analysts were watching this quarter especially closely because it was the first report after Cloudera's merger with rival Hortonworks.
Meanwhile, Domo, which helps businesses keep track of all of their metrics in one place, beat expectations on revenue and gave guidance that was in line with what analysts wanted to see.
Analysts told Business Insider that Cloudera's tumble is a sign of the skepticism around its merger with Hortonworks, while they believe that Domo's rising fortunes are a sign that its new sales strategy is working.
Cloudera beat Wall Street estimates on Wednesday, reporting revenues of $144.5 million, versus estimates of $121.1 million.
However, Cloudera estimated revenue for the next quarter of $187 million to $190 million, while analysts forecasted $189.9 million â right at the top of that range. For fiscal year 2020, Wall Street is expecting to see $851.87 million in revenues, which is also toward the top of Cloudera's new estimates of $835 million to $855 million.
Cloudera and Hortonworks sealed the deal and officially merged in January, which means that investors were paying even closer attention to this report than normal, said Dan Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities. And when Cloudera reported disappointing guidance, it "fanned the flames of those worries."
"When you make an acquisition like this, these two companies combining, Hortonworks and Cloudera, in the first 3-6 months of an acquisition, everything needs to be flawless in the eyes of the Street in order to get confidence," Ives told Business Insider. "They definitely stumbled over their shoelaces in terms of guidance. That's really been the focus of investors." Cloudera CEO Tom Reilly.YouTube/EnterpriseCIOForum
Ives said that it's possible that Cloudera was just being conservative in its estimates, and Wall Street may be worried over nothing. He's bullish on the merger of Cloudera and Hortonworks because it makes sense on paper and could be a major step forward â especially in an era where similar tools from the likes of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are picking up steam.
However, he said Cloudera needs to execute much better next quarter to prove the naysayers wrong and show that the companies are successfully integrated.
"The knee-jerk reaction is a bit of an overreaction," Ives said. "In order to see the stock move significantly higher, there's a lot more wood to chop in terms of sales acquisition and proving to the Street that this is a 1+1=3 acquisition and not 1+1=1.5."
As for Domo, it reported quarterly revenues of $39.4 million on Wednesday, beating Wall Street's predictions of $37.75 million. It also forecast revenues of $40 million to $41 million for the next quarter, compared with Wall Street's estimates of $40.4 million, putting its guidance right in line with expectations.
For the full fiscal year 2020, Domo predicts revenues of $173 million to $174 million, compared with Wall Street estimates of $173.86 million, also in line with expectations.
Domo's beat proves that its new sales plan is working, J. Derrick Wood, managing director at Cowen, said. Domo is a client of Cowen, according to the firm's disclosures.
Before, Domo was selling to all sorts of businesses, from small- and medium-size ones to major enterprises. It spent its resources on research and development to build its platform, but the company wasn't selling and showcasing its products correctly, he said.
This quarter, Domo finally realized that its platform is best-suited for larger enterprise customers, Wood said. As a result, Domo coalesced over building a strategy targeting these types of companies, learned to effectively sell to enterprises, and hired new sales leadership.
"One thing they did was embrace the CIO in the sales cycle," Wood told Business Insider. "They can sell to marketing, they can sell to finance, but embracing the CIO at the same time was getting them to help customers realize the full potential of the platform and the endless use case possibilities around the platform."
When Domo first went public last June, some experts warned investors to stay away, citing its high spend on sales and marketing, among other factors. But now, investor confidence in Domo appears to be growing.
Read more: Domo went public and investors are biting but a watchdog warns 'stay away from this IPO'
Wood said Domo will continue to be promising. He said the analytics market looks encouraging, and if Domo keeps up with its strategy, it "absolutely can be successful" and accelerate its revenue growth. He said Domo is already planning to grow its sales team.
"We think all these vendors can be very successful and Domo has a very unique platform with a lot of technology investment, so the product is there," Wood said. "It's just a matter of figuring out how to sell it and how to take it to market. That's the key to unlocking success and growth and market share. That's where we're seeing early signs of improvement."
Insider Picks writes about products and services to help you navigate when shopping online. Insider Inc. receives a commission from our affiliate partners when you buy through our links, but our reporting and recommendations are always independent and objective.
For its annual sale, Lenovo is discounting devices from its entire range of products, with great deals on laptops, desktop PCs, accessories, and more.Prices range from the ultra-affordable to the more expensive, but no matter which device you end up buying, you're getting it at a much cheaper price than you normally would.Here are the 40 best deals from Lenovo's annual sale, which runs from March 14 through March 20, 2019.Lenovo has long been considered one of the most innovative and important companies in the world of PC computing for good reason.
For its annual sale, the company is giving massive discounts to some of its best products, so if you're in the market for a new computer, now is an excellent time to buy one. Deals range from nearly $400 off the high-performance Lenovo Yoga X1 Carbon laptop to up to 70% off accessories.
The sale runs from March 14 through March 20, with new doorbuster deals arriving each day. We've rounded up the 40 best deals from the sale so you don't have to filter through all the options.
After facing criticism, Marvel Studios apologized on Thursday for originally leaving the actress Danai Gurira's name off of the top of the latest "Avengers: Endgame" poster.
Marvel Studios tweeted a new version of the poster on Thursday, now with Gurira's name added to the top of it.
"She should have been up there all this time," it tweeted. The new poster is below.
The version of the "Avengers: Endgame" poster released on Thursday has Gurira's name at the top. Marvel Studios
The original poster sparked criticism because Gurira was the only person featured prominently on the poster whose name did not appear at the top. She appeared in the bottom credits. Benedict Wong was also featured in the bottom credits without being mentioned on top, but his character, Wong, doesn't appear on the poster like Gurira's character, Okoye, does.
Okoye first appeared in "Black Panther" last year and was one of the characters to survive Thanos' snap that wiped out half of humanity at the end of "Avengers: Infinity War."
Rolling Stone senior writer Jamil Smith was one of the prominent people to call out the original poster.
"BLACK PANTHER star Danai Gurira is the only actor pictured whose name isn't billed at the top," Smith tweeted. "Her image is larger than some actors who do get that billing. The only one from the franchise's best and most profitable movie, and yet? @MarvelStudios, this isn't difficult. Fix this."
Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images
China's demand for iPhones appears to be stabilizing according to data compiled by Morgan Stanley.The iPhone's increased market share in China is due to cutting prices amid a weakening smartphone market in the country.Apple earlier warned investors on fourth-quarter revenue, citing a steep drop in demand in China iPhone sales.Watch Apple trade live.iPhone demand in China, a key weakness driving down Apple's stock recently, appears to be stabilizing according to new research from Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty. Apple shares gain more than 1% on Thursday.
"After losing share in 4Q18, iPhone installed base shows market share recovering after price cuts in early 2019," Huberty wrote. "Combined with stabilizing iPhone supply chain data points, we now see an upward bias to our iPhone estimates in the March quarter."Â
Morgan Stanley
Huberty lists four reasons for the stabilization, based on preliminary data compiled by Morgan Stanley:
Apple gained market share over the past two months despite Chinese smartphone shipments hitting a six-year low in February as price cuts to the its latest model, the iPhone XR, provided a lift. The smartphone giant had lost market share in the fourth quarter.February was the first month since August that iPhone builds were not revised lower, signaling that inventories for the smartphones were no longer building.Build estimates are running ahead of forecasts for the first quarter, implying that sales forecasts may be conservative.Replacement cycles appear to have finally converged with personal computers, implying a stabilization of demand.Huberty maintained her overweight rating and $197 price target â a 7% increase from Thursday's close.
Huberty's conclusion is aligned with that of UBS analyst Tim Arcuri, who last month posited the worst of the iPhone's demand issues are over. Arcuri also cited inventory and supply-chain data indicating that Chinese demand had stabilized.
Apple's shares slid 9% in January after the iPhone maker issued a rare revenue warning for the fourth quarter. The firm cited weakness in China iPhone sales as a key driver of the expected sales shortfall. The revenue warning was the first in 12 years for the company and led to a raft of downgrades by Wall Street analysts.
Apple was up 16% this year.
Business Insider
There's a massive shakeup in the leadership of Facebook underway.
On Thursday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Chris Cox â a longtime Facebook executive who most recently served as chief product officer â is leaving the company in what is the most significant departure at the embattled company in years.
Chris Daniels, the head of WhatsApp, is also leaving.
The news comes shortly after Facebook announced a significant shift in strategic focus to emphasize "privacy." Other changes in the leadership team are also afoot. Will Cathcart, the former head of Facebook's core app, is moving over to WhatsApp to take on Daniels' old role. And Fidji Simo is becoming the head of the Facebook app.
The role of chief product officer will not be filled by anyone. Instead, the heads of Facebook's various apps â Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram â will now report directly to Zuckerberg, cementing the CEO's hold over them as Facebook prepares to embark on an ambitious project to partially merge the apps.
Facebook, long criticized for eroding privacy norms, mishandling user data, and collecting vast reams of data on people for advertising purposes, has in recent weeks said it wants to pivot to focus more on protecting user privacy.
Zuckerberg repeatedly referred to this shift in his memo announcing the departures. "This is an important change as we begin the next chapter of our work building the privacy-focused social foundation for the future," he wrote. "I'm deeply grateful for everything Chris Cox and Chris Daniels have done here, and I'm looking forward to working with Will and Fidji in their new roles as well as everyone who will be critical to achieving this vision. We have so much important work ahead and I'm excited to continue working to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together."
Cox was one of the earliest Facebook employees, joining in 2005, and helped build core products, including the News Feed. His exit is the highest-profile executive departure at the company in years.
In a goodbye note posted to his Facebook page, Cox wrote: "As Mark has outlined, we are turning a new page in our product direction, focused on an encrypted, interoperable, messaging network. It's a product vision attuned to the subject matter of today: a modern communications platform that balances expression, safety, security, and privacy. This will be a big project and we will need leaders who are excited to see the new direction through."
Cox, a key lieutenant of the 34-year-old billionaire chief exec, had been planning to leave for "a few years" but stayed on to help respond to Facebook's successive scandals and crises, Zuckerberg said in a memo to employees that the company also shared publicly.
This story is developing...
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"A Note From Mark Zuckerberg
"Today Mark Zuckerberg shared the following post with employees.
"Hey everyone â I want to share some important updates as we organize our company to build out the privacy-focused social platform I discussed in my note last week. Embarking on this new vision represents the start of a new chapter for us.
"As part of this, I'm sad to share the news that Chris Cox has decided to leave the company. Chris and I have worked closely together to build our products for more than a decade and I will always appreciate his deep empathy for the people using our services and the uplifting spirit he brings to everything he does. He has played so many central roles at Facebook â starting as an engineer on our original News Feed, building our first HR teams and helping to define our mission and values, leading our product and design teams, running the Facebook app, and most recently overseeing the strategy for our family of apps. Along the way, Chris has helped train many great leaders who are now in important roles across the company â including some who will now take on bigger roles in our new product efforts.
"For a few years, Chris has been discussing with me his desire to do something else. He is one of the most talented people I know and he has the potential to do anything he wants. But after 2016, we both realized we had too much important work to do to improve our products for society, and he stayed to help us work through these issues and help us chart a course for our family of apps going forward. At this point, we have made real progress on many issues and we have a clear plan for our apps, centered around making private messaging, stories and groups the foundation of the experience, including enabling encryption and interoperability across our services. As we embark on this next major chapter, Chris has decided now is the time to step back from leading these teams. I will really miss Chris, but mostly I am deeply grateful for everything he has done to build this place and serve our community.
"At the same time, as we embark on this new chapter, Chris Daniels has also decided to leave the company. Chris has also done great work in many roles, including running our business development team, leading Internet.org, which has helped more than 100 million people get access to the internet, and most recently at WhatsApp, where he has helped define the business model for our messaging services going forward. Chris is one of the clearest and most principled business thinkers I've met and the diversity of challenges he has helped us navigate is impressive. I've really enjoyed working with Chris and I'm sure he will do great work at whatever he chooses to take on next.
"While it is sad to lose such great people, this also creates opportunities for more great leaders who are energized about the path ahead to take on new and bigger roles.
"I'm excited that Will Cathcart will be the new head of WhatsApp. Will is one of the most talented leaders at our company â always focused on solving the most important problems for people and clear-eyed about the challenges and tradeoffs we face. Most recently he has done a great job running the Facebook app, where he has led our shift to focusing on meaningful social interactions and has significantly improved the performance and reliability of the app. In his career here, Will has helped lead our teams focused on security and integrity, and he believes deeply in providing end-to-end encryption to everyone in the world across our services.
"I'm also excited that Fidji Simo will be the new head of the Facebook app. She is one of our most talented product and organizational leaders â passionate about building community and supporting creativity, and focused on building strong teams and developing future leaders. She has played key roles in building many aspects of the Facebook app, including leading our work on video and advertising. She believes deeply in helping people get more value out of the networks they've built. She has already led this team for much of last year while Will was out on parental leave, and she is the clear person to lead these efforts going forward.
"Our family of apps strategy has been led jointly by Chris Cox and Javier Olivan. Chris managed the leaders of the apps directly and Javi has been responsible for all of the central product services that work across our apps, including safety and integrity, analytics, growth, and ads. Javi will now lead identifying where our apps should be more integrated. Javi is an incredibly thoughtful, strategic and analytical leader, and I'm confident this work will continue to go well. Since we have now decided on the basic direction of our family of apps for the next few years, I do not plan on immediately appointing anyone to fill Chris's role in the near term. Instead, the leaders of Facebook (Fidji Simo), Instagram (Adam Mosseri), Messenger (Stan Chudnovsky), and WhatsApp (Will Cathcart) will report directly to me, and our Chief Marketing Officer (Antonio Lucio) will report directly to Sheryl.
"This is an important change as we begin the next chapter of our work building the privacy-focused social foundation for the future. I'm deeply grateful for everything Chris Cox and Chris Daniels have done here, and I'm looking forward to working with Will and Fidji in their new roles as well as everyone who will be critical to achieving this vision. We have so much important work ahead and I'm excited to continue working to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together."
Facebook usage has declined for the first time in a decade, while video-centric apps like TikTok are being touted as the future of social media. Entering this redefined playing field comes Firework, a fast-growing social video app whose clever trick is something it calls “reveal videos” — a way for creators to take both horizontal and vertical video in one shot from their mobile device. Video viewers can then twist their phone as the video plays to watch from a new perspective and see more of the scene.
While Snapchat pioneered the idea of vertical video, newer companies are trying to free viewers from format constraints.
For example, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s mobile streaming service Quibi is pitching its ability to offer an ideal viewing experience no matter how you hold your phone. As Quibi CEO Meg Whitman explained last week in an interview at SXSW, the company has “created the ability to do full-screen video seamlessly from landscape to portrait,” she said.
That sounds a lot like Firework, in fact.
Firework has filed a patent on its own flip-the-screen viewing technology, which it believes will give creators new ways to tell stories. Besides letting viewers in on more of the action, “reveal videos” also provide an opportunity for things like unexpected plot twists or surprise endings.
The way this works is that creators hold their smartphone horizontally to film, and Firework places a vertical viewfinder on the screen so they know which part of their shot will appear to viewers when they hold their phone straight up and down.
This recording screen has some similarities to TikTok, as you can stop and start recording, reshoot the various parts and add music.
“Snapchat really pushed being vertical only,” explains Firework Chief Revenue Officer Cory Grenier, who joined the company from Snapchat, where he was the first director of Sales & Marketing.
“What we see is that most professional filmmakers want to show their work on Vimeo first, and second on YouTube. There isn’t this world where you can really frame the context and the characters of a cinematic story on vertical — it just can’t happen,” he says.
Beyond the technology involved with Firework’s new filming technique, the company is also aiming to carve out a space that will differentiate it from other short-form video — whether that’s TikTok or, soon, Quibi.
Firework’s videos are longer than TikTok’s at 30 seconds instead of just 15, but far shorter than Quibi’s eight minutes.
“Thirty seconds is really the sweet spot between the Snaps that are 10 seconds and something that’s longer-form,” notes Grenier. “Ten seconds is too short to really tell a story. You want to have a powerful opening, a clear middle and a really interesting or unexpected ending,” he says.
This format lends itself better to short stories, rather than the remixed, music-backed memes found on TikTok, the company believes. But it also remains user-gen, as opposed to the high production value “TV quality” content shot for Quibi using two cameras. (And a lot more money).
Instead, Firework is focused on what it calls “premium user-gen” — meaning it will feature a mix of professional creators and up-and-comers. To date, Firework has worked with names like Flo Rida, Dexter Darden (“Maze Runner”), model and Miss USA Olivia Jordan, Disney star Jordyn Jones, Frankie Grande and others.
It’s also working with a handful of brands, including Refinery29 and Complex Networks. But the company doesn’t want to inundate the app with content from brands, it says.
In addition to the horizontal-to-vertical trick, Firework is also doing something different in terms of fan engagement: it’s ditching comments. Users can only privately message a video’s creator — they can’t comment on the video itself.
“Haters and trolls, they want an audience — they want to elicit a polarizing reaction. We remove that,” says Grenier.
And instead of “liking” a video, users can only bookmark the video or share it — an engagement that is styled like a retweet, as the video is posted to your profile with all the original credit intact.
Founded less than two years in Mountain View and now relocated to Redwood City with teams in LA, Japan and Brazil, Firework parent Loop Now tested a couple of apps that didn’t find product market fit before launching Firework.
Its team of 51 full-time today combines both tech talent and Hollywood expertise.
This includes: CEO Vincent Yang, a Stanford MBA and previously co-founder and CEO at EverString; co-founder and COO Jerry Luk, employee No. 30 at LinkedIn and previously at Edmodo; biz dev head Bryan Barber, formerly of Warner Brothers, Universal Pictures and Fox; and CRO Corey Grenier, noted above.
Unlike Quibi, Firework’s parent company Loop Now Technologies has raised “millions” — not a billion dollars — to get off the ground. Its early backers include original Snap investor Lightspeed, IDG Capital and an (undisclosed) early investor in Musical.ly. (Firework is poised to announce its Series A in a few weeks, so is holding off on investment details for now.)
The app launched last year and has been in an open beta until now.
According to data from Sensor Tower, it has 1.8 million installs on iOS, 55 percent in the U.S.
Firework claims it has 2 million registered users across iOS and Android.
French startup Stanley Robotics showed off its self-driving parking robot at Lyon-Saint-Exupéry airport today. While I couldn’t be there in person, the service is going live by the end of March 2019. And here’s what it looks like.
The startup has been working on a robot called Stan. These giant robots can literally pick up your car at the entrance of a gigantic parking lot and then park it for you. You might think that parking isn’t that hard, but it makes a lot of sense when you think about airport parking lots.
Those parking lots have become one of the most lucrative businesses for airport companies. But many airports don’t have a ton of space. They keep adding new terminals and it is becoming increasingly complicated to build more parking lots.
That’s why Stanley Robotics can turn existing parking lots into automated parking areas. It’s more efficient as you don’t need space to circulate between all parking spaces. According to the startup, you can create 50 percent more spaces in the same surface area.
If you’re traveling for a few months, Stan robots can put your car in a corner and park a few cars in front of your car. Stan robots will make your car accessible shortly before you land. This way, it’s transparent for the end user.
At Vinci’s Lyon airport, there will be 500 parking spaces dedicated to Stanley Robotics. Four robots will work day in, day out to move cars around the parking lot. But Vinci and Stanley Robotics already plan to expand this system to up to 6,000 spaces in total.
According to the airport website, booking a parking space for a week on the normal P5 parking lot costs €50.40. It costs €52.20 if you want a space on P5+, the parking lot managed by Stanley Robotics.
Self-driving cars are not there yet because the road is so unpredictable. But Stanley Robotics has removed all the unpredictable elements. You can’t walk on the parking lot. You just interact with a garage at the gate of the parking. After the door is closed, the startup controls the environment from start to finish.
Now, let’s see if Vinci Airports plans to expand its partnership with Stanley Robotics to other airports around the world.
Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Preeti Rathi was recorded in January 2019. Preeti...
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Nested, the London-based “data-driven” estate agency that provides a cash advance to help you buy a new home before you’ve sold your old one, has laid off 20 percent of its workforce, TechCrunch has learned.
According to sources, the more than 15 staff being let go were informed earlier today. The majority of departures are within Nested’s operations team, including sales, although I understand they also include a number of engineers and other product people.
Contacted by TechCrunch, Nested co-founder Matt Robinson confirmed the departures, citing the uncertainty of Brexit, and the impact this is having on liquidity in the housing market. It is understood that the layoffs are designed to place Nested in a better financial position and enable it to continue weathering the Brexit storm, and ultimately position the company to reach profitability in the future.
Robinson provided the following statement:
We have come off a record year and quarter but with continued uncertainty around Brexit market volumes have fallen significantly. We will continue to grow share, however, given the external environment we must remain cautious as we build the business for the coming years.
Launched in late 2016, Nested competes with high-end estate agents by providing all of the services needed to sell your house, but with a key difference. In addition to handling valuation, marketing and sales, the startup will loan you between 90 and 95 percent of the market value of your property as a cash advance so you can purchase a new home prior to your old one selling.
Before Brexit and the uncertainty it has caused with regards to U.K. house prices, that figure was “up to 97 percent” of the market value of the property.
More broadly, the idea behind Nested is to eliminate much of the stress and uncertainty of selling and buying a home, including what your final budget will be, and also ensure that you’re never caught up in the dreaded property “chain” and miss out on your desired home. By becoming a cash buyer, it also puts you in a stronger position to negotiate your onward purchase.
Related to this, it is unknown to what extent the downward pressure on house prices in the U.K. has affected Nested’s market fit, or its ability to use data to accurately value the properties it lends cash against. However, the core value-add of not being stuck in a chain would seem to be just as useful in a downturn as it is in an overheated market.
Meanwhile, the downsizing of Nested comes just four months after the startup raised a further £120 million in funding, a combination of £20 million equity financing and £100 million in debt. The equity part of the round was led by Northzone and Balderton Capital, while the source of the debt financing, to be used primarily for the cash advances Nested provides to sellers, was not disclosed.
Previous backers in Nested include Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital, and London-based Passion Capital. The current listed directors are CEO Robinson, Rocket Internet’s Oliver Samwer, COO James Turford and Northzone’s Jeppe Heinrich Zink.
Separately — and unrelated to today’s layoffs — TechCrunch has learned that Phil Cowans, who co-founded Nested alongside CEO Robinson and COO Turford, stepped down as CTO of Nested in the last few weeks, although he remains at the company in a different role and as co-founder. He also resigned as a director of Nested on the 25th of February, according to a regulatory filing with the U.K.’s Companies House.
Yuval has been in the Content Marketing industry for a long time and has very specific insights on that industry’s evolution in the age of AI. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience...
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Today’s 435th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, March 14, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/4 p.m. CET/8:30 p.m. India IST. Click here to join. All are...
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ProdPerfect, a Boston-based startup focused on automating QA testing for web apps, has announced the close of a $2.6 million Seed round co-led by Eniac Ventures and Fika Ventures, with participation from Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator.
ProdPerfect started when co-founder and CEO Dan Widing was VP of engineering at WeSpire, where he saw firsthand the pain points associated with web application QA testing. Whereas there were all kinds of product analytics tools for product engineers, the same data wasn’t there for the engineers building QA tests that are meant to replicate user behavior.
He imagined a platform that would use live data around real user behavior to formulate these QA tests. That’s how ProdPerfect was born. The platform sees user behavior, builds and delivers test scripts to the engineering team.
The service continues to build on what it knows about a product, and can then simulate new tests when new features are added based on aggregated flows of common user behavior. This data doesn’t track any information about the user, but rather anonymizes them and watches how they move through the web app. The hope is that ProdPerfect gives engineers the opportunity to keep building the product instead of spreading their resources across building a QA testing suite.
The new funding will go toward expanding the sales team and further building out the product. For now, ProdPerfect simply offers functional testing, which uses a single virtual user to test whether a product breaks or not. But president and co-founder Erik Fogg sees an opportunity to build more integrated testing, including performance, security and localization testing.
Fogg says the company is growing 40 percent month over month in booked revenue.
The company says it can deploy within two weeks of installing a data tracker, and provide more than 70 percent coverage of all user interactions with 95 percent+ test stability.
“The greatest challenge is going to be finding people who share our company’s core values and are of high enough talent, ambition and autonomy in part because our hiring road map is so steep,” said Fogg. “Growing pains catch up with businesses as a team expands quickly and we have to make sure that we’re picky and that we reinforce the values we have.”
Today’s 435th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting in 30 minutes, on Thursday, March 14, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/4 p.m. CET/8:30 p.m. India IST. Click here to join. All...
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Bay Area photography startup Polarr announced this morning that it has raised an $11.5 million Series A. The new round of funding, led by Threshold Ventures with participation from Pear Ventures and Cota Capital, brings the startup’s total funding to around $13.5 million, according to the company.
At the moment, the company is probably best known for its photography app for iOS and Android, which utilizes machine learning and AI to improve image editing. The company says it has around four million monthly active users.
This round of funding will go toward research and development, engineering and partnerships, the latter of which are starting to become a big business for Polarr. In fact, it’s using the news to highlight the fact that it was tapped to bring its technology to the Samsung Galaxy S10’s native camera app. Polarr has previously teamed with other big hardware names, including Qualcomm and Oppo.
“As deep learning compute shifts from the cloud to edge devices, there is a growing opportunity to provide sophisticated and creative edge AI technologies to mobile devices,” CEO Borui Wang said in a release tied to the news. “This new round of financing is a tangible endorsement of our approach to enable and inspire everyone to make beautiful creations.”
Polarr’s tech is becoming increasingly valuable as phone makers look to differentiate their handsets’ imaging outside of the hardware. Notable recent generations of handsets from top companies like Samsung, Apple and Google have leaned heavily on AI and ML updates to stand out from the crowd.
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