Aug
07

Removing consumer choice in the name of sustainability

Brooklinen, the direct-to-consumer bed linens brand, has today announced the opening of a four-month pop-up shop in NYC.

The company has been around for four years thus far, and recently hit $100 million in revenue after raising just $10 million in funding.

Part of the company’s success comes down to its attention to detail. The process of shopping for sheets is often difficult for new adults who don’t understand how to weigh quality and price, and usually don’t get much help in stores like Bed Bath & Beyond.

Brooklinen isn’t necessarily inexpensive — 270-thread-count sheets start at $129 for a queen, and 480-thread-count sheets start at $149 for a queen — but the process of purchasing quality sheets is leaps and bounds more convenient. Brooklinen handles fulfillment, including the packaging, and has invested in customer service to ensure that there are no hiccups from the point of purchase to the point of making the bed.

Moreover, Brooklinen has designed many of their sheets to easily mix and match with other sets, creating an environment that begs for repeat purchases.

That said, there are still customers who either need the instant gratification of a purchase or to touch and feel the product before converting. Which is why Brooklinen is launching the pop-up shop on Spring Street in Soho.

Co-founder and CEO Rich Fulop explained to TechCrunch that the timing of the pop-up was very intentional.

“We’re doing a four-month pop-up to learn as much as we can and talk to customers,” said Fulop. “We understand that shopping picks up ahead of the holidays, so we set it up to go through the holidays and then into the slower time following the holidays. We want to see the difference between holiday season and through to February so we don’t get a false positive in terms of the model.”

Interestingly, Brooklinen is opting to hold inventory in the store so that purchasing customers can take home their wares. Many pop-up shops offer portals to purchase items and have them shipped as opposed to holding inventory. The company wants to capitalize on any customer who’s flirting with the idea of purchasing and believes holding inventory is the best way to do that.

However, Brooklinen expressed no interest in going the wholesale route, selling inventory to other retailers. Controlling every step of the process, from design all the way to fulfillment, is part of what makes Brooklinen successful, according to the founders.

The 2,000-square-foot space is at 119 Spring St. and officially opens on Friday.

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Nov
07

Spotlight on Entrepreneurship in Florida - Sramana Mitra

We have done several spotlight posts on entrepreneurship in different parts of the world: Colorado, Utah, Czech Republic. Today, we will turn the spotlight on Florida. As usual, we start with a...

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Original author: Sramana Mitra

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Jan
24

The Montana Future In A Dream

Fraugster, the Berlin-based startup that uses artificial intelligence to prevent fraud for online retailers, has raised $14 million in a Series B funding. The round is led by CommerzVentures, the venture capital subsidiary of Commerzbank, alongside early Fraugster investors Earlybird, Speedinvest, Seedcamp and Rancilio Cube.

Notably, Munich Re/HSB Ventures, the VC arm of global reinsurer Munich Re, also participated in the round. That’s because Munich Re is insuring Fraugster’s “Fraud Free” product, which takes on the full liability for each transaction to ensure retailers utilizing Fraugster’s fraud detection technology never lose out — a sign that the company is pretty confident in its machine learning.

Selling its wares to payments companies — including Ingenico ePayments and Six Payments — the Fraugster AI technology takes data from multiple sources, then analyzes and cross-checks it in a fraction of a second to determine whether a transaction is fraudulent or not.

The idea isn’t just to block any potential fraud, which rules-based systems can already do, but to actually let more transactions through. That’s because false-positives (i.e. accidentally preventing perfectly valid purchases) is the real bane of the industry.

Citing industry average stats of false positives, Fraugster CEO and co-founder CEO Max Laemmle tells me that for every dollar lost to fraud, $17 is lost through transactions that are wrongly turned down, leading to lower revenues for merchants. He says that Fraugster’s technology has already got that down to $2.

Meanwhile, the anti-fraud startup says it will use the new funds to continue expansion into new markets. This includes the U.S., Asia and Europe, where retailers are facing “an accelerating battle against fraud.”

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Nov
07

Storyblocks makes it easier for developers to integrate its stock media services

Storyblocks, formerly known as Videoblocks, is a stock media service that offers videos, images and audio for creatives. One feature that always made it stand out from the competition is its flat-rate model that gives you unlimited access to all of the media files in its library (though there’s also a pay-as-you-go marketplace). Last year, Storyblocks started making similar flat-rate deals with developers who wanted to integrate its library into their own creative applications. Those were pretty bespoke integrations, but starting today, developers will be able to take the Storyblocks library for a test drive and try it in their apps without having to pay a fee or talk to a salesperson.

The new Storyblocks developer portal, which is launching today, allows developers to generate an API key, integrate the Storyblocks API and then, when they are ready, talk to the company to set up a commercial partnership. Developers who want to integrate the service will get full access to the Storyblocks library and because they are paying the flat fee for that service, users won’t have to get a Storyblocks account or worry about the licensing.

Many of the developers who would most likely be interested in using this service likely find themselves in competition with Adobe, which offers a rich set of creative tools and an integration with its own Adobe Stock service. With the Storyblocks API, developers will be able to offer similar integrations to their users, something Storyblocks CEO TJ Leonard also acknowledged when I talked to him ahead of today’s announcement.

“You’ve got the changing profile of the content creator and they are demanding a more integrated workflow,” he said. “You’re seeing that materialize as Adobe Stock is integrated with Premiere and Photoshop — and Adobe launching [its new video editor] Rush. These are all about producing shorter-form content, distributing it quickly, but also without lowering the bar on the overall quality.” Leonard believes that what he described as “closed ecosystems” will own a large portion of the market, but he obviously also believes there is room for a player like Storyblocks to offer an alternative. And indeed, Leonard told me that API access already drives a double-digit amount of revenue for Storyblocks right now and, unsurprisingly, he expects that number to go up over time.

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Apr
02

A bug bounty alone won’t save your startup — here’s why

According to a Transparency Market Research published earlier this year, the global accounting software market was estimated at $5.7 billion last year. It is expected to grow to $11.8 billion this...

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Original author: MitraSramana

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Nov
07

Social media content and analytics startup PressLogic raises $10M from popular Chinese selfie app Meitu

PressLogic founders Ryan Cheung and Edward Chow

PressLogic, a Hong Kong-based social media content and data analytics startup, announced today that it has raised a $10 million Series A+ round from Meitu, developer of the popular Chinese selfie app. PressLogic will use the funds to launch its new lifestyle brand GirlStyle and enter e-commerce with its proprietary algorithms, which predict what topics will trend on social media among specific groups.

The new round brings PressLogic’s total raised to $15 million. Meitu first acquired a minority stake in PressLogic last year.

After launching a data-analytics service for social media managers called MediaLens in 2016, founders Ryan Cheung and Edward Chow began creating social media publishing and marketing brands in order to show potential clients how their technology could boost audience engagement. PressLogic, their social media publishing platform, now claims a total of 8 million Facebook and Instagram followers and more than 700 million monthly content impressions across its social media profiles and websites, with about 75 percent of its visitors aged 18 to 34.

MediaLens still serves as PressLogic’s core technology, underpinning its content brands, as well as the insights it provides to partners in order to increase their social media engagement and return on investment. CEO Cheung (Chow serves as PressLogic’s CTO) told TechCrunch that MediaLens “creates a pipeline from data sourcing to content suggestion to optimization” and has an edge against its competitors because it is able to make more granular suggestions about what content is likely to be popular among specific groups based on trending topics.

With its new round of funding, PressLogic will launch GirlStyle, a lifestyle and fashion-based social network targeted to young women, as an app and website in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, India, Korea and Malaysia by the end of this year. In terms of e-commerce, Cheung says the company will start by focusing on skincare and cosmetics by leveraging data from its online traffic and readers.

PressLogic hasn’t revealed if Meitu’s photo imaging technology will be integrated into its platform, but Cheung says it would like to extend MediaLens’ analytics to images, too, as data from photos and videos shared on social media is potentially valuable, but still difficult to transform into the kind of insights that help predict which content will go viral next.

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Nov
07

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Rafael Zakinov, CEO of Ruby Has (Part 3) - Sramana Mitra

Sramana Mitra: What is the cost implication of all this? What does it cost to deliver this level of service? Rafael Zakinov: By working with a third-party logistics provider, there’s obviously a lot...

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Original author: Sramana Mitra

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Nov
07

Facebook says Russia may have been behind a fresh plot to contaminate US democracy during the midterms

Facebook pulled down 115 Instagram and Facebook accounts this week over fears they were meddling in the midterms. Now, Facebook has said the accounts may be linked to Russia's notorious troll farm.

In a statement sent to Business Insider, and first reported by TechCrunch, the company said it removed the 85 Instagram accounts and 30 Facebook profiles because of suspected ties to the Russia-based Internet Research Agency (IRA).

Although Facebook was not categorical in drawing a link between the meddling and the IRA, it pointed to the fact that a website connected to the troll farm published a list of Instagram accounts they claim to have created.

Read more: Facebook built an election 'war room' to try to avoid repeating the mistakes of 2016 — here's what it's like inside

Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy, said (emphasis ours):

"Last night, following a tip-off from law enforcement, we blocked over 100 Facebook and Instagram accounts due to concerns that they were linked to the Russia-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) and engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior, which is banned from our services.

"This evening a website claiming to be associated with the IRA published a list of Instagram accounts they claim to have created. We had already blocked most of these accounts yesterday, and have now blocked the rest.

"This is a timely reminder that these bad actors won't give up — and why it's so important we work with the US government and other technology companies to stay ahead."

It is not the first time this year that Facebook has pulled down accounts over fears they were linked to the IRA. The social network announced in July it had banned 32 pages and accounts that were engaged in "coordinated inauthentic behavior." At the time, the firm said the accounts behaved in a similar way to the IRA and had "connected with known IRA accounts."

Facebook has been much more vigilant and transparent about suspected meddling than it was during the 2016 presidential election, when Russian operatives created fake Facebook accounts that pushed both right- and left-wing narratives in an attempt to sow political division. Facebook even set up a "war room" to monitor its billions of users in an attempt to weed out inauthentic behaviour.

Original author: Jake Kanter

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Nov
07

Portify raises £1.3M to help gig economy workers improve their financial well-being

Portify, a London fintech startup that offers an app and various financial products to help gig economy workers better manage their finances and in turn improve financial well-being, has raised £1.3 million in seed investment. The round was led by Kindred Capital and company builder and investor Entrepreneur First (EF), with participation from various unnamed angel investors.

Founded in May last year by EF alumni Sho Sugihara (CEO) and Chris Butcher (CTO), Portify is setting out to address the financial volatility many flexible or so-called gig economy workers face. The startup offers a number of tailored financial products, accessible via its mobile app, to help flexible workers get insights into their current financial status and income, as well as do short and long-term financial planning.

The app — primarily a B2B2C play — is distributed in partnership with various gig economy platforms and also includes earning “rewards” at partnering merchants or service providers. The current Portify website lists TransferWise, Amazon and Spotify as rewards.

“Portify’s vision is to enable financial security and well-being for independent workers,” Portify co-founder and CEO Sho Sugihara tells me. “While we’ve seen rapid growth in the numbers of independent workers (6 million in the U.K., and up to 162 million in the E.U. and U.S., according to McKinsey), there is still a large gap in the market for financial services to ensure these workers are secure, and have access to an economic ladder.

“We work with companies to help build access to financial products that enable this security and progression, and offer this through a mobile app which workers can port between different jobs.”

Sugihara says there are three elements to Portify’s mission: helping flexible workers control “immediate income volatility,” helping them budget effectively on a day-to-day basis and support with financial planning for the long term.

“Once a user gets access to our app, the first thing they do is securely connect their bank account,” he explains. “We then help control volatility by offering emergency credit with select stores to buy essential products if required. We also help our users manage cash flow and budget for tax and other recurring expenses. By building up financial security and well-being from the ground up, our goal is to improve our user’s financial standing over the long term, whether through saving for retirement or helping them invest into their own businesses and careers.”

To that end, Sugihara says Portify is currently being used by independent workers in the gig economy and temp staffing sector. This covers couriers, ride-hailing drivers, retail shop floor staff and hospitality workers, amongst others. Its B2B customers span large gig economy platforms and digital temporary staffing agencies “with global coverage.”

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Jun
19

Roundtable Recap: June 18 – Focused Startups with Precise Problems to Solve - Sramana Mitra

Home Made, the London premium online lettings agency, has raised a further £2 million in funding. The round is led by Athens-based venture capital firm VentureFriends, and follows the proptech startup’s £850,000 “pre-seed” round nine months ago.

Founded in 2016 by Asaf Navot, a former Bain strategy consultant and INSEAD graduate, and Nick Binnington, a former British Army Captain and LBS graduate, Home Made’s proposition is based on the premise that the letting agent model is broken. Specifically, that high-street agents offer average service and charge extortionate fees, while online agents typically charge low fees but offer a worse service as a result.

The company positions itself as the only estate agency in the U.K. that offers a premium service akin to a high-end traditional estate agent, including accompanied property viewings and working until 10 pm at night, on weekends and bank holidays — for a low online fee starting at £948 +VAT. However, competitor Rentify also occupies a more upmarket space, but charges a monthly fee and is fully-managed and provides a ‘rent guarantee’. At the lower end are startups like OpenRent and uPad that operate more more an à la carte model with various services to help you rent out your property.

To that end, Home Made says it plans to use the new funding to expand its offering and further develop its underlying technology, focus on growing its customer base in London “and beyond”. This will include hiring 20-25 new sales and marketing staff in the coming months.

The company’s proprietary online platform allows landlords to manage their properties from marketing to move-in. This includes full control during the marketing phase – landlords can add or remove marketing photos on the portals, write or enhance existing descriptions and change the price – and visibility of progress during tenancy progression.
 
International expansion has also begin: Home Made recently opened an office in Athens and says it is looking to develop several company functions in the country, including lead generation, tech support, and customer service and support. The startup says it has selected Greece for its first international office primarily due to “the growing Greek startup ecosystem which offers access to high caliber talent with international experience”.

Meanwhile, Home Made recently announced the launch of Sentinel, a tool that detects illegal subletting by tenants via short-let websites such as AirBnB. The idea is to help landlords tackle a growing illegal subletting problem that sees “tenants” rent out properties with no intention of ever ever staying in the property.

This activity commonly violates the terms of a Tenancy Agreement, and may also violate the building lease, local authority regulations, buildings insurance, and mortgage terms. It also withdraws these properties from the market for long-
term tenants, which in turn contributes to rental increases in London.

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Nov
07

10 things in tech you need to know today

Elon Musk agreed to build tunnels in San Francisco after Mark Benioff asked him on Twitter. Business Insider; Kimberly White/Getty Images for Fortune; Stephan Savoia/AP Images

Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Wednesday.

Amazon employees are gearing up to confront CEO Jeff Bezos at an all-staff meeting this week about selling facial recognition software to law enforcement. Employees are urging their colleagues to put pressure on the company at an all-staff meeting Thursday by inundating CEO Jeff Bezos with questions, Recode reports. Reddit's Alexis Ohanian says "hustle porn" is "one of the most toxic, dangerous things in tech right now" at Web Summit on Tuesday. "Hustle porn" is the fetishization of extremely long working hours, and Ohanian said he let his own mental health go when he built Reddit. Marc Benioff invited Elon Musk to dig tunnels in San Francisco for a new transportation system, and the Tesla founder accepted. The Salesforce CEO asked Musk on Twitter whether the Boring Company could come to San Francisco, and Musk replied: "Sure, we can do it." Facebook said that the 100 accounts it removed ahead of the midterm elections for "inauthentic behavior" may well be Russian. Facebook's head of cyber security policy told TechCrunch that the company blocked over 100 accounts after receiving a tip-off from law enforcement that they could be connected to the Russia-based Internet Research Agency. A federal judge ruled that chip seller Qualcomm must license some of its technology to competitors. The preliminary ruling came in an antitrust lawsuit against Qualcomm brought by the US Federal Trade Commission in early 2017. The FCC is calling for all phone carriers to implement effective caller ID by 2019. The FCC's Chairman Ajit Pai said this was important in combating "illegal robocalls." The president of Samsung says "we should really worry about ethics" as artificial intelligence moves into your DNA. Samsung Electronics president Young Sohn told Business Insider about his concerns around AI exploits health and DNA data. One of Microsoft's fastest-rising stars is leaving the company with the intention of "getting back to building new things." Javier Soltero, who came to Microsoft after his startup, Acompli, was acquired in 2014, is leaving after four years. Samsung is hinting that it will reveal its long-awaited foldable phone on November 7. Samsung's foldable phone has been nicknamed "Galaxy F" and "Galaxy X." Tinder's paying user base went up from 3.8 million last quarter to 4.1 million this quarter, and is projected to bring in $800 million in revenue this year. Tinder's parent company Match Group surpassed its forecasted revenue for Q3.

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.

Original author: Isobel Asher Hamilton

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Nov
07

Starbucks says it's taking lessons it learned from it’s 'long game' in China and rolling them out in the US

Starbucks' president and chief executive Kevin Johnson said on Monday that the company would look to improve its delivery services in the US after experimenting with new delivery technologies in China, CNBC reported.

Among those innovations are delivery services designed to closely resemble the experience customers enjoy inside Starbucks retail stores.

The coffee chain says it has developed methods for delivering coffee products that have the same quality customers would normally get at a Starbucks store, by utilizing tools like heat-retaining packaging and spill-proof lids.

When customers receive their orders, "the beverage is the same temperature as if the barista just prepared it and handed it to them," Johnson told CNBC.

Johnson further explained to CNBC that China's food delivery industry was growing "faster than any other part of the world."

China is Starbucks' second-largest market, after the US.

Original author: John Walsh

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Jun
19

Alexis Ohanian has left Reddit's board in a 'long overdue' move. Here's how he launched Reddit into a $3 billion behemoth and became an outspoken activist in the tech world.

Before votes could even be counted on Tuesday in San Francisco for the highly debated Proposition C — which would tax the city's largest corporations to provide more funding to homeless services — the measure's number one backer, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, was already on to the next issue: transportation.

This time, however, instead of personally spending over $2 million to support a ballot measure, he took to Twitter and invoked the help of none other than Elon Musk.

The tweet was a reply to the video Musk posted last Saturday, showing off the tunnel that The Boring Company (a subsidiary of Musk's SpaceX) had created under the streets of Los Angeles. The project is the company's "test tunnel," used to demonstrate how its "pod" vehicles and "lifts" will work.

The Boring Company's overall purpose is to create alternative modes of transportation to help reduce city traffic.

Read more: Elon Musk shares first look into The Boring Company's 'disturbingly long' tunnel

A little over an hour after Benioff's request to have the Boring Company build similar tunnels throughout the Bay Area — and even one that extended over 350 miles south to Los Angeles — Elon agreed, nonchalantly.

The Boring Company did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

In 2008, California voters passed Proposition 1A which earmarked $9 billion to initiate construction on a high-speed rail system that would connect San Francisco to Los Angeles. Construction for that project has already begun.

Original author: Nick Bastone

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Nov
06

It looks like the smash-hit game that paved the way for 'Fortnite: Battle Royale' is finally coming to PlayStation 4 (SNE)

It looks like "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds," the game that is largely credited with sparking the popularity of battle royale shooting games like "Fortnite: Battle Royale," is set for release on PlayStation 4.

While Bluehole, the game's developer, has yet to confirm a PS4 release date, fans have discovered files on PlayStation 4 consoles and in Sony's online PlayStation Network store. Last month the South Korean Game Rating and Administration Committee leaked ratings for a PlayStation 4 version of the game as well. A representative for the game declined to comment.

"PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds," or "PUBG," was officially released on PC in May 2017 and has been console exclusive to the Xbox One since December 2017. The game was in Microsoft's Xbox Game Preview program until September 4th, when version 1.0 was officially released. The mobile version of the game is also one of the most popular video games in China.

Read more:The company behind 'PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' has reportedly dropped its lawsuit against the wildly popular 'Fortnite'

Like "Fortnite: Battle Royale" and other games that it inspired, "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" throws 100 players onto a single map with scattered resources. Players need to find weapons and items to defend themselves as the safe areas of the map begin to shrink. The last player or team surviving at the end of the round is the winner.

Though "PUBG" helped pioneer the battle royale genre, the game has seen its star wane, even as rivals like "Fortnite" have skyrocketed to success and challengers like "Call of Duty's" Blackout and "Battlefield V's" Firestorm continue to crop up. and. "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" has a smaller development team than those games and has struggled to keep up with the demands of a massive community.

In November of 2017, "PUBG" was averaging 1.3 million players each day, according to SteamCharts, which tracks players on Steam, the most popular platform for PC games. The average number of daily "PUBG" players has since dwindled to about 450,000 over the last 30 days.

Still, "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" remains one of the three most popular games on Steam by a wide margin, alongside "Dota 2" and "CounterStrike: Global Offensive."

With "PUBG" available on multiple platforms, players are wondering if Bluehole will be able to implement cross-platform play. Earlier this year "Fortnite" became the first game to offer cross-platform play between the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC, and mobile devices. Bluehole has expressed interest in allowing cross-platform play in the past, but nothing has been confirmed.

"PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" is currently available on PC and Xbox One for $29.99. This hypothetical PS4 version will likely carry a similar price.

Original author: Kevin Webb

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Nov
06

This startup wants employers to stop giving its workers lavish perks and start helping them pay their student loans

While Greg Poulin, co-founder and CEO of Goodly, was attending Dartmouth, his father passed away unexpectedly. On top of the emotional toll, he also ended up having to borrow $80,000 in student loans to pay his tuition.

Poulin has since moved to San Francisco, the thriving-but-pricey hub of the startup world, and he's still chipping away at his loans with a monthly payment of about $900 a month. Frustrated by his experiences, he founded Goodly, a platform for companies to offer employees assistance with their student loans as a benefit.

Goodly allows companies to make a monthly contribution to their employees' student loans, similar to how companies often match 401(k) contributions. Based in San Francisco, Goodly was founded just this April, launched with a $120,000 seed investment as a part of the summer batch from famed startup program Y Combinator.

"Most employers don't know that student loan benefits exist. It's both a challenge and an opportunity for us," Poulin told Business Insider. "It's helped us completely define a new category of benefits."

Companies often offer perks like gym memberships, massage chairs and snacks, but the money can be better allocated to helping employees pay student loans, Poulin says. That way, student loan repayment won't be a large expense for companies. This benefit, he says, could help with both recruiting and retention.

"The problem is those employees are saddled with crippling student loan debt," Poulin said. "Gym memberships aren't going to cut it when it comes to recruiting employees."

Hemant Verma, co-founder and CTO of Goodly, also had to pay off debts from his own education in India.

"This is a massive problem for people," Verma told Business Insider. "It's the biggest problem our generation is facing...This was a mission we were energized with."

The scale of the problem

Today, 70% of college students graduate with debt, and over 44 million Americans collectively owe $1.5 trillion in student debt. An American Student Assistance survey reported that 76% of respondents said student loan repayment benefit would be a deciding or contributing factor to accepting a job offer.

The average college graduate has $37,172 in student loans, by some estimates, up $20,000 from 13 years ago. It makes sense that the demand for student loan benefits is rising.

"For millennials, they bear the grunt of student loans," Poulin said. "It's an issue where we see people of all backgrounds."

This could potentially impact diversity and inclusion at companies as well, as student loans disproportionately affect women and people of color. For example, research shows that women carry two-thirds of the nation's student debt load, and that African American students are four times more likely to default on their student loans than their white peers.

Poulin has seen Goodly's customers make contributions of $25 to $300 a month to repaying their employees' student loans. On average, employers contribute $100 a month.

"We've had companies of all sizes reach out to us," Poulin said. "We've been really blown away by the interest of companies we've seen. It's not surprising when so many are leaving the company in debt. This is a problem they've struggled with. It's exciting to see companies that are working to proactively help their employees solve this challenge."

Get started early

For Poulin, one thing that has helped him was making bi-weekly payments instead of monthly payments.

"Over the course of the year, you'll make an additional payment," Poulin said. "It could shave off two years over the repayment period."

Still, student loan repayments can impede employees from making future investments such as graduate school, buying a house, marriage and retirement. Poulin sees investing in retirement as his biggest challenge, especially when he first started working after graduation.

"I was contributing very little, if at all," Poulin said. "Student loan debt is a major barrier. When you delay contributing to the 401(k), there's a large compounding effect."

Having faced the issue of paying off student debt themselves, Poulin and Verma hope Goodly can help people slash the amount of time it takes to pay off loans.

"We want to make student loans obsolete," Verma said. "Student loans get a bad rep for most people. In terms of investments, it's still a good thing basically. You're able to upgrade your life. Our goal is not to get rid of it completely, but make sure you can pay it off as fast as possible."

Original author: Rosalie Chan

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Nov
06

I got to try the world's first foldable smartphone — but it feels more like a gimmick than a truly useful device

I just got to put my hands on what's supposed to be the future of smartphones.

My first impression: The future still needs some work.

The ostensible gadget of tomorrow is a foldable phone with a flexible screen. Samsung is widely expected to unveil its idea for just such a device at a conference on Wednesday. But it was beaten to the punch Monday night by Royole, a startup display and device maker.

Bill Liu, CEO of Royole, with a selection of devices that use his company's flexible displays.Troy WolvertonAt a small press event, company CEO Bill Liu showed off the FlexPai, which he dubbed the world's first commercially available flexible screen foldable phone. The device, when folded, looks something like a small notebook with a wraparound screen. When opened, it looks like a small tablet.

"We've been working on this a long time," Liu told Business Insider.

Royole designed the FlexPai to address two significant shortcomings of traditional smartphones — their screens are fragile, and they're not really big enough for many tasks, such as watching movies or editing documents.

Unlike nearly all smartphones, the FlexPai screen isn't encased in glass. Its display is an OLED screen that's printed on a thin plastic material. The screen is scratch resistant and, because it doesn't use any glass, it's shatter-proof. It can be bent 200,000 times without breaking, Liu said.

"It's a significant breakthrough," he said. He continued: "Say goodbye to broken screens."

The FlexPai can act as a phone or a tablet

The FlexPai has a hinge in its middle that allows you to fold it to the point where its two ends touch or unfold it to a 180-degree angle. The hinge is stiff enough that it will maintain any angle in between those two points. So, one thing you can do with it is to fold it part-way to form an "A" shape and have it stand up on its two ends.

The device runs a custom version of Android that Royole calls Water OS that it designed specifically for the FlexPai's flexible screen. One thing it allows you to do is to show a different video on each side of the device's screen when its folded, so you and a friend could potentially watch two different things at the same time.

Read this: This Stanford grad's startup can make screens that are thinner than a sheet of copy paper — and he's gearing up to take on Samsung and LG in the display market

The FlexPai supports dual SIM cards. When it's folded in half, you can use the screens on the front and back as, essentially, two different phones, each associated with a different SIM.

The FlexPai's hinge will maintain any angle between 0 and 180 degrees. Royole But the flexible screen is perhaps most useful when you actually unfold it and you can see the full 7.8" display in its entirety. In that configuration, it's almost the exact size as the iPad mini. It's only slightly heavier and thicker.

So, basically, the FlexPai is a miniature tablet that actually fits in your pocket. It will allow users to save money and weight, because they won't need as many devices, Liu said.

You'll need "less and less devices to get the same user experience," he said.

Royole is already mass producing the device and taking preorders for it. It plans to start shipping it at the end of December.

The gadget is pricey and clunky

But you may want to wait before you buy one.

For one thing, the device is expensive. It starts at $1,318 for a version with 128 gigabytes of storage. If you want the 256-gigabyte version, it will set you back $1,469. That's more than the priciest iPhone XS Max — and that model comes with 512 gigabytes of storage.

For another, Royole doesn't yet have any U.S. carrier partners and isn't really selling the FlexPai to consumers here. Right now, it's targeting consumers in China instead.

Unfolded, the FlexPai is about the same size and shape as Apple's iPad mini. Royole But the gadget has more fundamental problems. It feels like a first-generation device. Although it's small and thin for a tablet, it feels big and clunky when folded in half. That's because it doesn't fold down flat. Instead it has a relatively thick bulge at its hinge. That could be annoying if you're trying to carry it around in your pocket.

Right before Apple introduced that iPad, I met with a small Silicon Valley company that showed off one of the first modern touchscreen tablets. I had been skeptical about tablets before then, but after seeing device — even in its rough shape — it was immediately clear why someone would want a gadget like it.

I was hoping to have the same experience with the FlexPai. I've been excited about the coming era of flexible screen devices since the first time I saw a demo of such a display around a decade or so ago. The idea of having a large screen device that you can fit in your pocket or roll up into a pen-like tube is really appealing in theory.

It feels like a gimmick

But right now, this flexible screen device feels more like a gimmick than a vision of the future.

I didn't really get to test the device, so I can't say how it performs or what it's like to use on a daily basis. But I'm dubious that in practice its flexible screen feature is really that compelling. Other companies have tried dual-screen phones, and they've never really caught on with consumers. I'm skeptical that people are going to like the trade off of having a thicker gadget in their pocket.

Sure, its larger screen can offer a better movie-watching experience. But the display still isn't big enough for the device to replace a laptop or a full-sized tablet. You're not going to want to edit documents or do other work on that sized screen.

Solving the problem of fragile screens is an important advance. But not at a $1,300 price point.

It was cool to see the FlexPai in person. I'm just hoping that future foldable devices do a better job of living up to the hype.

Now read:

Original author: Troy Wolverton

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Nov
06

Experts say the Trump immigration ad pulled by NBC and Fox exposes a flaw in the way political ads are reviewed — and it could become a problem for TV networks

Less than 24 hours after an advertisement that was widely condemned as racist aired during a Sunday Night Football game on NBC, the network issued a sweeping reversal, vowing to immediately remove the ad. NBC cited the ad's "insensitive" nature as the reason for its removal.

Shortly after, both Fox and Facebook, which aired the ad on their respective platforms, issued similar statements and pulled the ad.

The 30-second primetime advertisement released by President Trump's campaign attempted to draw a connection between convicted cop killer Luis Bracamontes, an undocumented Mexican immigrant who is now on death row, and the so-called migrant caravan now traveling up through Mexico toward the US border. There is no known connection, and Trump has frequently used the migrant caravan — a group of several thousand Central American migrants fleeing violence and poverty in their home countries — as a talking point to stoke fears about immigration in the US.

So how did the ad pass muster?

For one, it actually wasn't cleared by all the companies to which it was submitted. CNN, for example, rejected the ad, calling it racist.

NBC, Fox, and Facebook all have their own advertising standards teams that evaluate ads and originally accepted the Trump ad. Federal agencies, which have varying degrees of jurisdiction regulating ads, didn't flag anything as impermissible. It was a public rebuke that prompted a second review and the eventual pulling of the ad.

The original airing, outcry, and then reversal by the networks show both the difference in rules around enforcement between commercial and political ads, and the growing indication that networks and platforms must appreciate the brand-safety issues that come with political advertisements.

Standards and practices

The teams at a network or cable company that review an ad for a commercial product and for a political candidate or cause tend to be the same. But the evaluation process is different, according to people familiar with it.

"I have to believe that in a sane world when a political party or candidate buys time, the assumption is you don't have to scrutinize ads same way you have to if someone is selling something," Preston Beckman, former NBC and Fox executive, told Business Insider. "Political ads are selling policy."

Ad agencies also note a perceived difference in the way ads are reviewed for commercial products and political issues.

"The FCC, the FTC, and the FEC leave the American people for dead when it comes to political advertising," Sarah O'Leary, lead strategist at Methods & Madness, told Business Insider. "They allow our public airwaves to be used to lie to us without any regulation."

The FCC administers political programming rules for TV, but it doesn't evaluate messaging in ads. Both the FEC and FTC oversee campaign finance laws, including the disclosure of funds raised to influence federal elections.

The network is the real evaluation point on ad messaging, according to O'Leary, who owns an ad agency.

In her experience, the process of getting a commercial ad submitted involves reading product research to understand what facts can be included in an advertisement, multiple layers of review by lawyers, and a final review by networks or cable companies to decide if the ad is legal and fact based, or misleading.

"The people at the networks know this process inside and out," O'Leary said. "They figured they'd take a chance."

Money is part of the equation, she said, and primetime slots fetch significant ad dollars. Trump spent $2.7 million on national TV ads last week alone, according to iSpot.TV.

The Trump ad was created by Jamestown Associates, a corporate advertising firm based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with National Media as the ad-buying agency, and aired three times on NBC properties and 14 times on Fox properties over the last week before it was pulled. At the time it was removed, it had been viewed more that 21 million times, according to iSpot.TV.

The review of a political ad shouldn't be any less stringent than it is for a commercial product, O'Leary said. "They're selling the most important thing to our society they are selling ideas and principles that are going to determine our government."

Reputational risk

Since federal agencies don't thoroughly review political ad messages, that leaves the evaluation of whether an ad is appropriate to broadcasters and cable companies. And that determination has proven difficult. NBC, Fox, and Facebook all removed the ad not because it spouted factual inaccuracies, but for less quantifiable reasons.

NBC used the term "insensitive." Facebook said the content was "sensational." In either case, the platforms seemed to designate the ad as a violation of social mores. And that may leave them exposed to a future mishap.

In the case of the most recent Trump ad that was removed, the damage seems contained.

"I don't think there's a reputational risk for the network and its other advertisers either way, unless an ad is so egregious that it somehow causes consumers to view other advertisers or the network negatively," Brian Wieser, senior analyst Pivotal Research, told Business Insider in an email. "Advertisers are concerned more about the content they are associated with than the brand company they keep."

YouTube is an example of a platform that faced backlash after advertisers noticed their ads running next to offensive or extremist content. It resulted in hundreds of advertisers pulling their ads from YouTube even though ads only rarely ran next to questionable content, Wieser said.

But advertisers usually only act when there's a direct correlation between content or brand safety and an ad.

Take Facebook's role in the genocide against the Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority group. On Monday, Facebook admitted it didn't do enough to prevent its platform being used to incite violence and hate against the Rohingya. But advertisers aren't boycotting Facebook the way they did YouTube.

"No advertiser has concern at this time because, I think, the connection is too indirect for most consumers to appreciate even if it seems plain as day to someone studying the business closely," Wieser said.

It may take someone putting together a clear argument that resonates with large groups of people for the connection to become more problematic, he said.

But brand-safety issues for networks and platforms could become more of an issue in the future because of changing expectations of consumers.

"I think millennials and young people want to align with platforms and brands that are extensions of their values and their principles," Joseph Anthony, CEO of New York based advertising firm Hero Group, told Business Insider.

"I think that the networks are not insulated from that, especially as you see more young people cut the cord and starting to look at more on demand platforms and there are a lot more options out there."

Original author: Abby Jackson

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Nov
06

The top trending Google search on Election Day was 'dónde votar' as historic Latino voter turnout is expected for midterms (GOOG, GOOGL)

The top trending Google search on Tuesday morning was unsurprisingly about the midterm elections — but the leading term wasn't in English.

Google reported that its top trending search the morning of Election Day was "dónde votar," Spanish for "where to vote."

According to a post on Twitter from Google Trends, the search engine saw a 3,350% spike in queries using this term.

Google doesn't report the number of times this term was searched, but the increase in traffic around "dónde votar" is significant.

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that Latino voters were more tuned in and enthusiastic about this year's election than the 2014 midterms.

About 7.8 million Latinos are expected to vote in Tuesday's election, according to estimates the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Education Fund.

That would a 15% increase in voter turnout from midterm elections four years ago, which saw 6.8 million Latinos cast a ballot.

LIVE UPDATES: Follow our live coverage of the 2018 midterm elections here

In the days leading up to Election Day, immigration has been a hot-button issue. President Donald Trump has stepped up his rhetoric on the matter, with the announcement of a plan to end birthright citizenship and verbal attacks against the caravan of Central American migrants.

Original author: Paige Leskin

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Nov
06

18% of MoviePass subscribers say they plan to cancel, but many loyalists are still happy despite unpopular new features (HMNY)

MoviePass, the movie-ticket subscription service, raised howls of anger from customers after it capped the number of movies they can see every month and introduced other restrictions.

But while 18% of MoviePass current subscribers are planning to cancel, a large percentage are still happy with the service despite the new limits on movies and showtimes.

According to a new survey conducted by on-demand insights platform AlphaHQ for Business Insider, MoviePass has a surprisingly large group of loyalists who have not been turned off by the new restrictions. Out of 165 people surveyed who had subscribed to MoviePass in the last six months, 56% said they were either extremely or moderately satisfied with the service, while 18% had a neutral reaction.

As MoviePass has struggled to gain financial footing in recent months, it has rolled out new features designed to control its cash burn. The main ones still in a effect are a cap at three movies per month, and limitations on which movies (and showtimes) subscribers can go to.

"There are always movies that I want to see," one respondent said. "I feel it is a great value for the amount paid. Other friends have purchased based on my great experience."

Another, however, said they had become disenchanted with MoviePass: "It was amazing at first but became too restrictive at the end."

Despite laments about the product going downhill, these survey results are a far cry from the doomsday scenario social media would suggest was happening to MoviePass.

Read more: MoviePass competitor Sinemia has a new cheaper 'weekday-only' plan starting at $3.99 per month.

That said, 18% of 119 current MoviePass subscribers surveyed said they had plans to cancel, with 6% saying they already tried but were not allowed to (a common complaint Business Insider has heard).

Of 46 previous MoviePass subscribers who had already canceled, 54% cited the limitations on which movies they could go to as a reason.

"They changed it too much and you basically couldn't see movies when you wanted to which is why I stopped subscribing," one respondent said.

MoviePass announced in June that it had passed three million subscribers, so even with a double-digit drop the company would still have a sizeable user base.

But the more proximate worry for MoviePass and its parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics, is angry shareholders, some of whom have seen the value of their stakes drop over 99% in recent months.

Helios has twice delayed a crucial shareholders meeting where it will ask for authorization to perform a 1-for-500 reverse stock split to avoid getting delisted from the Nasdaq exchange. The meeting is now scheduled to take place on November 14.

Original author: Nathan McAlone

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Nov
06

Jeff Bezos on regulating giant tech companies: 'I expect us to be scrutinized'

Following is a transcript of the video.

Döpfner: But, your most prominent critic at the moment is the President of the United States. People are even saying that he may be willing to prepare initiatives to break up Amazon, because it's too big, it's too successful, it's too dominant in too many sectors, or for varied other reasons, including the fact that he doesn't like the "Post". Is this break up scenario something that you take seriously, or do you think it's just a fantasy?

Bezos: For me again, this is one of those things where I focus on and ask our teams to focus on what we can control, and I expect — whether it's the current US administration or any other government agency around the world — Amazon is now a large corporation and I expect us to be scrutinized. We should be scrutinized. I think all large institutions should be scrutinized and examined. It's reasonable. And one thing to note about is that we have gotten big in absolute terms only very recently. So we've always been growing very fast in percentage terms, but in 2010 just 8 years ago, we had 30,000 employees. So in the last 8 years we've gone from 30,000 employees to 560,000 employees. You know in my mind I'm still delivering the packages to the post office myself. You see what I'm saying? I still have all the memories of hoping that one day we could afford a forklift. So obviously my intellectual brain knows that's just not the case anymore. We have 560,000 employees all over the world. And I know we should be scrutinized and I think it's true that big government institutions should be scrutinized, big non-profit institutions should be scrutinized, big universities should be scrutinized. It just makes sense. And that's, by the way, why the work at the "Washington Post" and all other great newspapers around the world do is so important. They are often the ones doing that initial scrutiny, even before the government agencies do.

Döpfner: The general sentiment concerning the big innovative tech companies has changed. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple — they used to be seen as the nice guys in T-shirts that are saving the world. Now they are sometimes portrayed as the evil of the world. And the debate about the Big 4 or the Big 5 is heating up: Professors like Scott Galloway and "The Economist" are suggesting a split-up, other powerful people like George Soros are giving very critical speeches at Davos, and the EU Commission is taking pretty tough positions here. Do you think that there is a change in the mindset of society, and how should the big tech companies, how should Amazon deal with that?

Bezos: I think it's a natural instinct, I think we humans, especially in the western world, and especially inside democracies are wired to be skeptical and mindful of large institutions of any kind. We're skeptical always of our government in the United States, state governments and local governments. I assume it's similar in Germany. It's healthy, because they're big, powerful institutions — the police, the military, or whatever it is. It doesn't mean you don't trust them, or that they're bad or evil or anything like that. It's just that they have a lot of power and control, and so you want to inspect them. Maybe that's a better word. You kind of want to always be inspecting them. And if you look at the big tech companies, they have gotten large enough that they need and are going to be inspected. And by the way, it's not personal. I think you can go astray on this if you're the founder of a company — one of these big tech companies, or any other big institution. If you go astray on this, you might start to take it personally. Like "Why are you someone inspecting me?" And I wish that people would just say, "Yes, it's fine".

EDITOR'S NOTE: This video was originally published on May 4, 2018.

Original author: Alyssa Pagano

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