Sramana Mitra: Can you give us an example? Maybe work through a customer use case so that we understand exactly what you are talking about. Martin Verwijmeren: I’ll also explain how we go to market....
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MeetFrank, aka a ‘secret’ recruitment app that uses machine learning plus a chatbot wrapper to take the strain out of passive job hunting and talent-to-vacancy matching, has closed a €1 million (~$1.1M) seed funding round to fuel market expansion in Europe.
Hummingbird VC, Karma VC, and Change Ventures are the investors.
The Estonian startup was only founded last September but says it has ~125,000 active users in its first markets: Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania, plus its most recent market addition, Germany, an expansion this seed has financed.
Around 2,000 companies are using the app to try to attract talent. In Germany employers on board with MeetFrank include Daimler, Eon, Delivery Hero, SumUp, Blinkist, High Mobility and MyTaxi.
“The average company profile we have at the moment is a start-up/scale-up company that develops their product in-house,” says co-founder Kaarel Holm.
“At the moment we are mainly focused on technology related companies — so positions you can find from average start-up or a scale-up,” he tells TechCrunch. “Around 50% of the position are engineering and other 50% is marketing, sales, customer support, legal, data science, product/project management etc.”
He names TransferWise, Taxify, Testlio, Smartly and High-Mobility as other early customers.
Here’s how MeetFrank works on the talent side: The person downloads the app and goes through a relatively quick onboarding chat with ‘Frank’ (the emoji-loving chatbot) where they are asked to specify their skills and experience — choosing from pre-set lists, rather than needing to type — plus to state their current job title and salary.
So while MeetFrank’s target is passive job seekers, these people do still need to actively download the app and input some data.
Hence the chatbot having a strong emoji + GIF game to convince talent that a little upfront effort will go a long way…
The bot also asks what would convince them to switch jobs — offering options to choose from such as a higher salary, more flexible or remote working working, relocation, a startup culture and so on.
The anonymous aspect comes in because there’s no requirement for users to provide their real name or any other identifying personal information in order to get matches with potential positions.
Talent is therefore assessed on its merits, at least at this stage of the job hunt.
And while people are asked up front to specify their current salary, which you might think puts them at a potential disadvantage during any pay negotiations, Holm says the aim of MeetFrank’s platform is also to encourage greater openness from employers and steer away from traditional pay negotiation situations.
“We use salary as one datapoint for matching and we try to make sure that offers we make to the user are match their preferences. In lot of cases the salary is the main deal breaker and we would like to present the information as early as possible,” he explains. “Companies on the other side of the marketplace disclose their salary for the users as well — in that case we can avoid the negotiating disadvantage.”
“The policy of MeetFrank platform is that companies have to be extremely open about the position they are trying to fill — this also includes the salary information,” he adds.
Employers are not at all anonymous on the platform. On the contrary, they have to write detailed job advertisements — including levels of pay for advertised roles.
And a pay range will be disclosed to applicants that the app deems potentially suitable — i.e. after its matching process — by displaying a percentage of how much more they could earn above their current salary.
So employers need to be comfortable showing their hand to people who may just be curious what’s out there.
For employers, MeetFrank takes over the ad placement process — using its machine learning to algorithmically match potential candidates to positions. So its proposition is automatic pre-selection across “thousands” of potential job applicants.
And also the possibility of reaching talent which might otherwise not realize that company is hiring. Or think about working for a certain brand.
The app is mainly focused on a “passive talent pool” — aka “currently or recently employed talent that is open for offers”, as Holm puts it. So it’s certainly cherrypicking easier types of jobs to match and fill.
“Entry level jobs is bit out of reach for us at the moment but we will launch a beta project with couple of universities in the autumn this year,” he adds when we ask if the app is open to matching people who don’t currently have a job or are looking for a first job.
Holm says MeetFrank is currently showing 50% MRR growth. It’s already out of the pre-revenue phase — so is charging employers to advertise (the service remains free for the talent side).
The main monetization model is a daily subscription, with employers being charged on a pay-as-you-go basis. Holm says the price per day for employers is €9, and MeetFrank lets them cancel at any time — with no minimum time commitment required to sign up.
“We believe that the new-aged classifieds will only monetize on that kind of on-demand model and should only pay when they find us useful. This also lowers the barrier of entry to most of the start-ups and allows them to vet the market and get visibility with low budgets,” he adds.
Mark Zuckerberg. Screenshot via MSQRD
Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Tuesday.
1. Facebook is facing increasing pressure from federal authorities as a result of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The US Department of Justice's investigation is now looking at Facebook itself, and the SEC and FTC have also joined the inquiry.
2. An engineer who was at the centre of a trade secrets lawsuit between Uber and Waymo now appears to be involved with a new autonomous truck startup called Kache.ai. According to TechCrunch, Anthony Levandowski is tied to the secretive Kache.ai despite not being listed in any of the company's business filings.
3. Ride-hailing company Lyft is officially moving beyond cars and getting into the bike-sharing business. The company is acquiring Motivate, the company behind New York Citi Bikes and San Francisco's Ford GoBikes.
4. Hundreds of app makers have access to millions of inboxes belonging to Gmail users, according to The Wall Street Journal. Gmail users who signed up for email-based services like shopping price comparisons and automated travel-itinerary planners are most at risk of having their private messages read.
5. Tesla has hit the important goal of producing 5,000 Model 3s per week. Tesla has struggled to ramp up production for the Model 3 since it was launched in July 2017, twice missing deadlines for its goal of producing 5,000 per week.
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6. Facebook had to warn 800,000 users that it accidentally unblocked people they had already blocked on the social network. The bug meant that the supposedly-blocked users could view the profiles of people who had blocked them, and send them messages â which isn't supposed to happen after you block them.
7. Some Samsung smartphone users reported that their devices randomly sent photos to their contacts without their knowledge and without any record. The issues appear to be exclusive to the most recent Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus, and it's unclear whether other models are affected.
8. Facebook is close to acquiring a London-based start-up called Bloomsbury AI to help it combat fake news, according to TechCrunch. Bloomsbury AI specialises in natural language processing technology, and has developed an AI called "Cape," which can read text documents and answer questions about their contents.
9. MoviePass has filed paperwork to raise up to $1.2 billion to stay afloat. The money will help keep the cinema subscription business going, but will also help fund some acquisitions.
10. Facebook is shutting down an anonymous app for teens it bought less than a year ago. The app, called tbh, was aimed at American high school and college students, and described itself as "the only anonymous app with positive vibes.
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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.
One last thing: Business Insider wants your nominations for the coolest people in the British tech industry. Please get in touch if you know someone who should be included in our UK Tech 100.
After months of boardroom battles, publicly hinted about in SEC filings and news articles, VMware Pat Gelsinger has won the war with his boss Michael Dell.
Dell's enormous tech company, Dell Technologies, will not be gobbling up VMware outright in a reverse merger. It has instead entered into a less-intrusive deal that accomplishes much of the same goal.
Dell Technologies will swap shares of itself for the publicly traded "tracking" shares of VMware, owned by a wholly owned subsidiary of Dell. Dell is essentially buying this subsidiary.
Those tracking shares were created as part of Dell's massive, complicated $65 billion buyout of EMC, originally issued to EMC shareholders, as a way to reduce the amount of money Dell needed to borrow to pay for EMC. It gave EMC shareholders something of value besides more cash to represent their stake of VMware.
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VMware is a publicly traded company with about 80% of its shares owned by EMC following Dell's buyout. So Dell Technologies controlled that 80% after buying EMC, with about half of that equity publicly traded through the tracking stock.
The tracking stock was publicly trading. By swapping shares of Dell Technologies, formerly a private company, for the tracking shares, Dell will become a public company again.
This deal is mostly a big win for VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger as it essentially maintains the status quo of VMware's ownership.
Dell still controls most of VMware, but the 20% of VMware that is public will remain public and VMware will continue to be an independent company.
Dell had previously been talking about a "reverse merger" with VMware, in which Dell would have essentially sold itself to the smaller company. This too, would have made Dell public again, but VMware would not have been independent anymore, and its shareholders would be responsible for the roughly $50 billion of debt Dell still has on its books.
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In practice, it would have been a fully-owned unit of Dell under CEO Michael Dell.
Dell wanted VMware for a number of reasons, including to get his hands on VMware's cash and help him pay off Dell's debt more quickly.
Being closely aligned with VMware has been good for Dell. Dell and VMware have been making their products work well together, which lets them compete better with joint rivals like Nutanix.
But operating independently is also extremely important for VMware's survival. VMware's flagship software for servers needs to be able to work well on all sorts of hardware, even hardware sold by Dell's rivals like Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
So there was a lot of backlash to the reverse merger idea from the VMware crowd, with Wall Street analysts panning the idea, and VMware shareholders openly revolting against the idea.
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This deal allows Gelsinger to sidesteps that potential death sentence to VMware's future. It also means he won't be demoted, a situation that may have pushed him into the arms of his former employer, Intel, who is looking for a new CEO.
That nuance wasn't lost on Michael Dell. People have been talking about Gelsinger as Intel's next CEO so much that when Gelsinger publicly tweeted he wasn't interested in the job, that tweet was immediately noticed by his boss, Michael Dell.
But there's a big caveat to this win: VMware is footing the bill for it.
Stockholders of the tracking stock can opt to tender their shares for $109 in cash, a 29% premium over Friday's closing price, if they don't want the 1.3665 shares of Dell Technologies in exchange. Dell has capped the budget it will pay for these stocks at $9 billion.
That money is coming from VMware, with a special massive dividend of $11 billion paid to all of its shareholders, using up its stash of cash.
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Before Dell bought EMC, its former CEO Joe Tuchi and one of its board members promised that Dell wouldn't raid VMware's cash. That promise obviously didn't last, although VMware also emphasized that this is to be a one-time deal.
Still, it was an artful escape by Gelsinger and his board.
And Gelsinger's official comment hints as much (emphasis ours): "We remain laser focused on our strategy to deliver innovative software that drives customer success as a strategic and growing independent entity," he said.
Getty/Eamonn M. McCormack
As the US population ages at a rapid rate, a new target demographic is emerging: those aging into the hands of Medicare.
For months, it's seemed like Walmart and Amazon could be entering into a war in order to capture this new and growing market of patients over 65 who are eligible for Medicare. Squaring up for battle, Amazon's recent purchase of digital-pharmacy startup PillPack could put it a step ahead, according to a note released Monday by analysts at Morgan Stanley.
In November, those same analysts wrote, "We note too that the older demographic still under-indexes toward Prime membership...which speaks to the opportunity for Pharma to help Amazon further penetrate the ~80 million 55+ population in the United States."
Morgan Stanley's research shows Amazon Prime has the lowest penetration in the demographic of customers over 55. The average American over the age of 65 has around 37 prescriptions per year, the report estimated. The acquisition of PillPack, which works with Medicare plans, could tackle this market and add to Amazon's Prime subscribers. The more members, the more profit. This move could further Amazon's attack on the over-the-counter pharmacy space.
Morgan Stanley
Compared to the traditional model of retail pharmacy, companies like PillPack, which incorporate more technology into their services, have market share of less than 1%. That's mainly because they are relatively new and it takes a while to generate a customer base.
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While physical pharmacies and digital pharmacies are almost equal in sales productivity, digital pharmacies tend to have lower operating costs and require less monetary investment. This means that digital pharmacies are easier and smoother to run.
Amazon â along with its recent purchase of Whole Foods, which doesn't have a pharmacy yet - could shift toward a combined approach to pharmacy that incorporates elements of both the traditional model of retail pharmacy and aspects of the hybrid model.
Investing in healthcare expands Amazon's core US retail total available market in terms of both revenue and gross profit. And with prescription drug spending, Amazon is adding even more revenue and profit.
Atlantic Media's six-year-old business news web outlet Quartz has a new home in Japan. Uzabaseâa Japanese business intelligence and media firmâhas agreed to purchase the publication for between $75 million and $110 million in cash and stock, depending on the site's performance for the remainder of 2018.
Quartz counts 215 staffers total, including 100 journalists that cover the global economy. It's particularly known for creating native ad formats and branded content designed for mobile.
Similar to other digital publishers like BuzzFeed and Vice that initially made their fortunes in custom advertising and have since reportedly missed revenue goals, Quartz has struggled to increase its annual revenue from advertising, according to a presentation from Uzabase explaining the sale. The firm's materials about the acquisition shows that Quartz made $30 million in 2016, dipping to $27.6 million in 2017. Quartz's revenue is expected to hit between $35 million and $38 million this year, per Uzabase.
"We'll quickly be developing paid products for the loyal audience Quartz has accrued over the past six years," wrote Quartz co-presidents Kevin Delaney and Jay Lauf in a memo sent to Quartz staff this morning. "While high-quality advertising will continue to represent the lion's share of Quartz's revenue in the coming years, we expect that the biggest source of growth in Quartz's next chapter will come from reader revenue."
Uzabase
In another memo distributed today, Atlantic Media chairman and owner David Bradley said that conversations about a deal started in March and were finalized this weekend. "I've known for some time that, eventually, I would write to tell you that I am selling Quartz," he wrote. "But, I would have guessed that day to be distant, say, in years not moments."
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Atlantic Media will continue to provide corporate support Quartz for at least a year and Quartz will keep its name and staff.
The Quartz team will begin running the U.S. version of NewsPicks, Uzabase's news curation app that pulls in content from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Politico and more through partnerships.
After amassing four million users and 70,000 subscribers in Japan, Uzabase rolled out a U.S. version of NewsPicks in November with the goal of shaking up how people consume news content on Facebook and Twitter. The app also has high-profile 'ProPicker' users like Thrive Global's CEO Arianna Huffington and former PepsiCo exec Brad Jakeman that help NewsPicker's editors choose the best stories to highlight in the app.
In six months, the U.S. version of NewsPicks has 150,000 downloads, meaning that it has grown faster than its Japanese counterpart.
Uzabase
"There's no place that satisfies the entire user experience," Ian Myers, CEO of NewsPicks USA, told Business Insider. For example, readers may first find articles on Flipboard or Google and then share it on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, he said. Instead, the idea behind NewsPicks is to be a go-to hub for all parts of news consumption.
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"We aggregate the content and the community leaves their commentary," said Myers.
The Japanese version of NewsPicks includes a subscription option for $15 a month to unlock original content. Myers said that the U.S. version of the app wants to replicate the same model, with the help of Quartz.
The U.S. version of NewsPicks is currently free and does not run advertisements but will be "creating high-quality branded content" going forward, Myers said.
Myers said that the team has not decided how much to charge for premium content within the U.S. app, but the Uzabase presentation materials show that the goal is to price content for "hyper-premium users" at $50 a month in addition to the lower $15 subscription level.
Uzabase
In terms of the type of original content that NewsPicks is looking for, the company is interested in "really long-form, in-depth content [like] open examinations of big companies, the life of entrepreneurs," Myers said. "Some of it tcould come close to a novella." The Japanese version of the app has a few such articles each week, Myers said.
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While details are scant, NewsPicks' U.S. team also plans to lean on Quartz's product and design teams that are known for building slick mobile products. "We expect to bring Quartz's mobile prowess to our content so it's more enjoyable," Myers said.
All charges against former Vungle CEO Zain Jaffer, including sexual abuse of a child, have been dropped. According to a statement from Jaffer’s representatives, San Mateo County Judge Stephanie Garratt dismissed the charges today. Jaffer was arrested last October and charged with several serious offenses, including a lewd act on one of his children, child abuse and battery on a police officer.
The dismissal is confirmed by San Mateo County Superior Court’s online records. The case (number 17NF012415A) had been scheduled to go to jury trial in late August.
Jaffer, whose full name is Zainali Jaffer, said in a statement that:
Being wrongfully accused of these crimes has been a terrible experience, which has had a deep and lasting impact on my family and the employees of my business. Those closest to me knew I was innocent and were confident that all of the charges against me would eventually be dismissed. I want to thank the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office for carefully reviewing and considering all of the information and evidence in this case and dropping all the charges. I am also incredibly grateful for the continued and unwavering support of my wife and family, and look forward to spending some quality time with them.
Vungle, the fast-rising mobile ad startup Jaffer co-founded in 2011, removed him from the company immediately after they learned about the charges in October. TechCrunch has contacted Vungle and the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office for comment.
Screenshots of the sort of questions that appeared on the app. Tbh
A lot can change in less than a year.
In October 2017, Facebook announced it was acquiring "tbh," an anonymous app aimed at teens that had been riding high at the top of the App Store charts for weeks.
Now, a little over eight months later, Facebook is closing the app permanently due to "low usage."
The social network announced it was shutting down tbh on Monday, alongside two other apps â fitness app "Moves," which it acquired in 2014, and "Hello," an app it launched in 2015 "to combine information from Facebook with contact information on [your] phone."
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"We regularly review our apps to assess which ones people value most. Sometimes this means closing an app and its accompanying APIs," the company said in a blog post about the closures.
"We know some people are still using these apps and will be disappointed â and we'd like to take this opportunity to thank them for their support. But we need to prioritize our work so we don't spread ourselves too thin. And it's only by trial and error that we'll create great social experiences for people."
Tbh, an acronym for "to be honest," was aimed at American high school and college students, and described itself as "the only anonymous app with positive vibes. It let users create quizzes their friends could vote on, and you can see how it worked in practice here.
"Tbh and Facebook share a common goal of building community and enabling people to share in ways that bring us closer together," a Facebook spokesperson said at the time of the acquisition. "With Facebook's resources tbh can continue to expand and build positive experiences."
It's not clear whether the apps' closures will lead to any layoffs, and a Facebook spokesperson did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
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The closures come at a time when Facebook is clearing house. Reeling from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the company has restricted third-party developers' access to its platform, and also on Monday announced it was deprecating more APIs used by developers.
Facebook says it will delete all the data from the three apps within 90 days.
A majority Americans believe in UFOs and just under half think extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth, according to a 2015 poll of about 1,000 adults in the US.
Though people in the US can barely pass a basic science quiz created by the government, it's tempting to climb aboard the extraterrestrial train: There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the visible universe, hundreds of billions of stars per galaxy, and untold numbers of planets around each star. It's easy to imagine that alien life, perhaps an intelligent kind, is out there somewhere.
But scientists aren't sure one way or the other.
Their go-to expression for this alluring possibility â and deep-seated doubt â is the Drake equation.
The Drake equation. Jenny Cheng/Business Insider
Astrophysicist Frank Drake drew up the famous formula on a chalkboard in 1961. This was at the dawn of a worldwide search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), and his thinking continues to influence the use of astronomical observatories to this day.
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The equation is more of an argument wrapped in seven variables. Multiplied together, these variables yield a calculation of the possibility that humanity might someday hear from an intelligent civilization.
"Although there is no unique solution to this equation, it is a generally accepted tool used by the scientific community to examine these factors," the SETI Institute says of the Drake equation.
The first letter of the Drake equation, on the far left, is its solution, "N." It represents the number of intelligent alien races within the Milky Way that could be broadcasting signals detectable to Earth.
Frank Drake and his famous equation, which is a way to estimate the likelihood of intelligent alien life existing in the Milky Way galaxy.SETI Institute
As you move right in the equation, the variables grow increasingly difficult to estimate.
The SETI Institute defines the seven variables in this way:
R* = The rate of formation of stars that are suitable for the development of intelligent life.
f p = The fraction of those stars with planetary systems.
n e = The number of planets per solar system that have an environment suitable for life.
f l = The fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears.
f i = The fraction of life-bearing planets on which intelligent life emerges.
f c = The fraction of intelligent civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.
L = The length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.
Scientists have a good handle on the first two variables, R* and f p, and are increasingly certain about the third, n e.
However, the other variables farther to the right all deal with the bold hypothetical of life actually existing elsewhere in the universe. This is something we have no definitive proof of â not even for a bacterium.
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As a result, all solutions to the Drake equation are enormously uncertain.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC/Caltech)
Scientists' uncertainty about intelligent alien life is illustrated by their extraordinary variety of solutions to the Drake equation.
In a draft study posted online in June, three researchers at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute looked at all the studies they could find that touched on Drake equation variables. Then they crunched some numbers.
The researchers found that about two thirds of studies guess that some 100 advanced alien civilizations might exist in the Milky Way galaxy.
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However, the highest estimates come in at 100 million civilizations per galaxy, and the lowest guesses are as low three civilizations per 10,000 Milky-Way-like galaxies. That is a 100-billion-fold difference in predicted abundances of intelligent, communicating beings.
"It is common to see carefully estimated astrophysical numbers multiplied by these ad hoc guesses," the authors wrote. "It has been noted that the final results seem to depend heavily on the pessimism or optimism of the authors."
In hopes of better lessening that uncertainty, the Oxford researchers â Anders Sandberg, Eric Drexler, and Toby Ordâ reformulated each Drake equation variable as a range of uncertainties. Their work produced a bell-curve-like distribution of results. And they were bleak.
The average probability (toward the middle of the curve) that we're alone in the Milky Way came to about 52%, with a 38% average chance that we're alone in the entire observable universe.
Even the most optimistic, better-than-average values were depressing: The authors calculated that there's a 41% chance we're alone in the galaxy and a 32% chance we're alone in the visible universe.
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"We find a substantial probability that we are alone in our galaxy, and perhaps even in our observable universe," they said.
So the next time you gaze at the stars and wonder if aliens are out there waiting to be found, flip a coin. That may be our best representation of the chances we're alone â and perhaps all the more reason to seed the cosmos with human life.
A post published to Medium on Thursday stirred a lot of debate about Google's ability â or, perhaps, inability â to provide adequate customer service to customers using its Google Cloud platform.
The situation has been resolved, and support people from Google's cloud have already responded, but not before some serious questions were raised about how Google Cloud does business.
The post was written by an anonymous administrator of a system that monitors "hundreds of wind turbines and scores of solar plants," it said. The admin wrote about receiving an email from Google on Thursday that said the company's website and other services were blocked because of "suspicious activity."
"All my systems have been turned off," wrote the anonymous administrator. "Everything is off. The machine has pulled the plug with no warning. The site is down, app engine, databases are unreachable, multiple Firebases say I've been downgraded and therefore exceeded limits."
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Then came the real scare. The admin says they got a message saying that if the account owner didn't correct the violation by filling out the Account Verification Form and supply identification within three days, Google may decide to permanently close the account. That indicated to him and many of the people reading the Medium post that Google was willing to totally destroy an app critical to the business with only three days of notice.
"I hope (the Google Cloud Platform) team is listening and changes things for the better," the admin wrote. "Until then I'm never building any project on GCP."
Google did not respond to requests for comment and Business Insider could not verify the authenticity of the Medium post. Nonetheless, the problems described in the post are not unprecedented: In 2016, there was a similar case with a company named DocGraph.
In this case, everything appears to have worked out. The admin returned the filled-in form and the operation was back up in 20 minutes. A note was later added to the Medium post that said the Google Cloud support team had written and "assured us these incidents will not repeat."
But before the situation was resolved, the panicked admin had tried to reach Google customer service reps but couldn't raise anyone by phone or by chat.
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And his post asked an important question: What would have happened if the person with the information Google required was away or otherwise out of touch for three days? Would Google have automatically followed through with its threat and shut the site down permanently?
The incident struck a chord with many developers, generating over 1,200 comments on message boards like Reddit and Hacker News about the quality of Google's cloud versus Amazon's. What many people seemed to agree on is that GCP needs to rely less on automated systems and provide more human support.
The lack of living, breathing customer-service help has long been a knock across many of Google's gadgets and services.
"This post is not about the quality of Google Cloud products," the admin wrote. "They are excellent, on par with AWS. This is about the no-warnings-given, abrupt way they pull the plug on your entire systems if they (or the machines) believe something is wrong. This is the second time this has happened to us."
In 2016, Fred Trotter, CEO of a healthcare startup called DocGraph, found himself in a similar situation. Trotter discovered that Google blocked access to the data he stored in the cloud after claiming one of his servers was involved in unspecified "intrusion attempts against a third-party."
Trotter tried to get information but again, his attempts to locate a human at Google Cloud were unsuccessful. Turns out the server in question had been hacked and was indeed used to launch attacks. And just like the recent case, Google then moved quickly to get Trotter's service working again. Steve Jennings/Getty
Google is trying to take on Amazon in the burgeoning cloud computing market. If successful, this is a huge growth area for Google. In 2015, Google's Urs Hölzle even predicted that Google may one day make more revenue on cloud than on ads.
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As it stands, Amazon's AWS is the clear leader, with Microsoft's Azure in second place, but Google has high hopes for the division. That's why the board hired Diane Greene to run its cloud business, buying out her still-in-stealth startup $380 million in 2016 to nab her and adding her to its board of directors.
Greene, who made her name as a cofounder of VMware, has a strong reputation in the enterprise IT world and has already done a lot to bring Google the kind of human support it needs to win corporate customers.
Often in the past, she has claimed that Google is cutting into Amazon's lead and possesses the better technology.
But technology aside, by not offering customer-service reps for emergencies for all levels of developers, or by using automated systems that fail to adequately address a problem, Google sabotages its efforts to overtake Amazon.
Interestingly enough, the author of the original Medium post writes that a Google Cloud engineer added in a private message that "there is a large group of folk (within Google Cloud Platform) interested in making things better, not just for you but for all GCP."
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That would seem to confirm there's a problem.
On Twitter, Gartner analyst Lydia Leong put a fine point on the matter in response to this incident:
"GCP is for businesses. There is no excuse for this kind of thing. Not a 'cloud' problem. AWS and Azure don't do this," Leong wrote.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pours a glass of water as he testifies before a joint hearing of the Commerce and Judiciary Committees on Capitol Hill in Washington. Andrew Harnik/AP
The US Department of Justice's investigation into Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal is now looking at Facebook itself, not just the defunct data firm that gained access to its user data, according to a report from The Washington Post.
Additionally, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission have joined the Justice Department and the FBI in the inquiry, according to the report. Among other things, the investigation is scrutinizing Facebook's public statements related to the scandal, The Post reported.
"We are cooperating with officials in the US, UK, and beyond," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement to Business Insider. "We've provided public testimony, answered questions, and pledged to continue our assistance as their work continues."
Facebook's stock dropped more than 1% in after-hours trading following the news, which came after the close of regular market trading.
Yahoo Finance
The months of speculation on Michael Dell's intentions towards VMware is over. Instead of Dell gobbling up VMware in a so-called reverse merger, VMware will be allowed to continue as an independent company.
Instead, Dell and VMware are doing something else. They are essentially getting rid of an awkward tracking stock for VMware, a financial vehicle Dell created to help it pay for its massive buyout of EMC. When Dell bought EMC, it inherited majority control over VMware.
With this new deal, Dell is offering owners of those tracking shares a choice of $109 cash or 1.35 Class C shares in Dell Technologies. That means that Dell will become a public company once again, in what the company says is a form of IPO.
This move comes with an interesting additional cost for Michael Dell: While Dell was privately held, he had job security for life, more or less. Now, after this move, he loses the ability to veto his own removal.
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Michael Dell is the owner of most of the company's outstanding Class A shares, while his private equity partners, Silver Lake Partners, own most of the outstanding Class B shares, Dell Technologies said in a regulatory filing.
Dell's Class A shares come with some special privileges, including control of three board seats and a special provision that gave them the exclusive power to veto any attempt to remove the CEO or to strip the CEO of the chairman title.
In other words, the only person who could fire Dell or remove him as chairman, was Dell himself.
But that provision rested on two stipulations. One was that Dell had to be alive and well. The second was that Dell Technologies could not have done an IPO.
The problem for Dell is that the merger deal that turns Dell into a public company definitely qualifies as an IPO, according to the new charter Dell signed as part of this agreement.
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Therefore, once the deal is complete, Dell's Class A shareholders no longer have veto power if the company's board of directors wants to fire Michael Dell as CEO. Since Michael Dell is the largest Class A shareholder, that means he can no longer block his own hypothetical termination.
On top of that, his shares will no longer give him sole control the three board seats. All shareholders will collectively get to vote on the entire slate of directors, the charter says.
So has Dell completely put his head on the chopping block? Not really.
Those Class A shares still come with 10 votes per shares, as do Silver Lake's Class B shares. The company says that Dell owns 49% of the company's stock and has 66% of the total voting power.
So Michael Dell is still basically impossible to remove as CEO, even if he's no longer got a statement in the company's charter that gives him the right to veto his own removal.
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When asked for comment, a Dell spokesperson pointed to Michael Dell's public letter in which he said, "This transaction will have little impact ... as a public company, we will keep the same strategic focus on long-term growth that has helped us strengthen, reshape and grow our business."
A small number of people that own Samsung smartphones have reported that their devices randomly sent photos from their gallery to their contacts without their knowledge, according to several reports on Samsung's forums and Reddit that were first discovered by Gizmodo.
A Reddit user reported their Samsung phone sent their entire photo gallery to their girlfriend. Another reported that their device sent photos to their wife.
Specifically, the photos were sent over Samsung's stock text messaging app. Notably, there's also no record that the photos were sent from an affected users' phone, according to the Reddit user.
Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider
So far, some of the affected users have pointed fingers to a recent T-Mobile update that including advanced texting features, like read receipts and an indicator that shows when the contact you're messaging is typing. However, T-Mobile told Gizmodo that it's not a T-Mobile issue.
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The affected devices appear to be exclusive to the most recent Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus, and it's unclear whether other models are affected.
Samsung commented to Business Insider, saying: "We are aware of the reports regarding this matter and our technical teams are looking into it. Concerned customers are encouraged to contact us directly at 1-800-SAMSUNG."
This is clearly problematic. A Reddit user expressed their concern by saying "This sounds like a nightmare for me as I have lots and lots of clients in my phone. It would be very bad if they had access to my gallery."
One temporary solution is to use a different messaging app, like Google's own Android Messages app that comes standard on the Google Pixel 2 smartphones.
Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz pays top dollar for AI experts. Getty Images/Justin Sullivan
As the battle for artificial intelligence talent heats up in Silicon Valley, word on the street is that larger tech companies are using enormous pay packages to sway candidates away from less well-healed startups.
Oracle offered at least one candidate a $6 million package made up of salary and equity incentives to convince them to join the company, a source told Business Insider.
That candidate had other job offers but went with Oracle because of the higher pay, the source said.
We don't know this unnamed expert's job title at Oracle, or how many years of experience they brought into the job. From the size of that pay package, however, it seems safe to say that their skill set made them a big catch for Oracle.
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Oracle, which has a market cap of $182 billion, has deeper pockets than most. Safra Catz and Mark Hurd, Oracle's co-CEOs, each have annual pay packages worth around $41 million, according to company filings.
But it's not the only tech giant offering seven-figure packages to top talent.
In October, the New York Times reported that the typical salary for PhD-trained AI talent is around $300,000 to $500,000 in salary and equity, but that some well-known people in the field make double-digit millions â albeit with a four to five year vesting schedule on their stock offerings. With so few experts in the field, and so many companies trying to gain a competitive edge in AI, it's up to companies like Oracle to get competitive.
Oracle declined to comment.
Silicon Valley is still the global leader in startup creation, but Chinese cities Beijing and Shanghai are leading the pack over in Asia, hot on the heels of their Western counterparts.
Most of the "heavyweight hubs" â meaning cities with stable growth startups and a higher concentration of later stage rounds â are in the US, according to a survey conducted by CB Insights, but half of the notably "high growth" cities are located in Asia. The latter is defined by a few characteristics, namely higher dollar investments, and includes big-name cities like Tokyo and New Delhi. However, as this chart from Statista shows, Chinese cities most consistently see the results.
About 80% of the Asian startups that hit the $1 billion milestone (AKA unicorns) between 2012 and 2017 are based out of China, with Shanghai creating 29 and Beijing creating 17. For some perspective: Silicon Valley created 57 in the same period of time, but New York only created 13.
Beijing startups alone brought in $72 billion in funding since 2012, second only to Silicon Valley's $140 billion; New York brought in $36 billion and Shanghai brought in $23 billion.
Jenny Cheng/Business Insider
Although it may have seemed that Anthony Levandowski was done with the self-driving car business after being fired by Uber in the middle of a trade secrets dispute, it appears he might not be finished yet.
TechCrunch has discovered that Levandowski is tied to a new self-driving truck company, named Kache.ai, that will focus on commercial trucking. There isn't much information available about the company, and its website currently only features a picture of a lake with the company name imposed over it. Before, the website contained a picture of a commercial truck on a highway with the caption "Kache.ai â The Future of Intelligent Driving."
Kache is staying quiet and didn't respond to TechCrunch about the story â and it's stayed under the radar since being registered as a corporation seven months ago. Levandowski isn't listed anywhere in the corporate filings, but an address that belongs to his father and stepmother is listed in documents filed by Kache to the state. As TechCrunch reports, Levandowski's stepmother, Suzanna Musick, was the CEO of a company he founded called 510 Systems.
Before the website was scrubbed clean, it contained the following paragraph, explaining that Kache is hiring:
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"We're developing the solution for the next level of on-the-road self-driving trucks," the website read. "Our development philosophy is based on a fast moving, very aggressive agile team approach and we're seeking both software and hardware engineers that thrive in such an environment."
Little else is known about Kache at this time, but TechCrunch said multiple sources in the autonomous car industry have confirmed that Levandowski is tied to the company.
Levandowski was previously at the center of more than a year-long scandal, after Waymo accused him in 2017 of stealing trade secrets and bringing them to Uber. He had worked for Waymo, Google's former self-driving car project, for nearly 10 years before forming a startup, Otto, that was acquired by Uber. In a lawsuit, Waymo said Levandowski stole more than 9 gigabytes of information from them, which included more than 14,000 files related to the self-driving car project, just before he left the company to found Otto.
Levandowski was fired from Uber, and Uber paid a settlement and agreed not to use any of the information that he had taken from the Waymo project.
Levandowski also popped up in the news in the middle of the scandal, when he said he was founding a new church centered around worshipping AI called "Way of the Future," which he thinks will soon become god-like and smarter than humans, he said.
Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell discussed with CNBC on Monday the company's planned return to the public markets. John Locher/AP
Dell Technologies is going to be a publicly traded company again, thanks, in a way, to VMware.
But that doesn't mean it plans to merge with its independent subsidiary or that VMware's days of having its own publicly-traded stock are numbered.
Dell Technologies looked into whether it should combine the two businesses, company founder and CEO Michael Dell said Monday in an interview with CNBC's "Squawk on the Street." But it decided that VMware will continue to operate largely independently and its stock will continue to trade separately from Dell Technologies'.
"I love VMware," Dell told CNBC. "We want it to remain an independent public company. VMware is doing great."
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VMware's executive team, led by CEO Pat Gelsinger, have done a "fabulous job," and the company's business should get a big boost from Dell's 40,000-person-strong sales team, he said.
"VMware is extremely well positioned," he said.
Dell Technologies owns 81% of VMware.
The company's return to the public markets comes five years after it went private through a $25 billion buyout by its founder and the investment firm Silver Lake. More recently, Dell Technologies has been itching to return to the public markets and has been exploring several different possibilities.
One such scenario, which the company floated earlier this year, would have involved a reverse merger in which the smaller VMware would have acquired Dell Technologies. But Wall Street frowned on that prospect, so Dell Technologies decided instead to buy out VMware's tracking stock, DVMT, announcing the deal Monday morning.
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The company made the deal so it could simplify its capital structure, Dell said on CNBC.
"It's been too complicated, he said. "We have an extraordinary business that's doing incredibly well. We're winning, and so, it's a great time to ... do this."
Field oversaw the troubled rollout of Tesla's Model 3. Hollis Johnson/Business Insider
Doug Field, Tesla's head of engineering, won't return to the company after a taking a leave of absence, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Tesla confirmed Field's departure to Business Insider
"After almost five years at Tesla, Doug Field is moving on," a Tesla representative said. "We'd like to thank Doug for his hard work over the years and for everything he has done for Tesla."
On May 11, The Journal reported that Field would take a "six-week sabbatical." Tesla told The Journal Field was "just taking some time off to recharge and spend time with his family." At the time, Tesla told The Journal that Field had not left the company, but didn't specify when Field would return.
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Field joined Tesla in 2013 and led production for the Model 3, which the company struggled to ramp up in the months after it was launched in July 2017. In May 2016, CEO Elon Musk said he estimated the company would make between 100,000 and 200,000 Model 3s during the second half of 2017. However, Tesla only made 2,685 Model 3 vehicles in 2017.
In early April, The Information released a report that claimed there was turmoil at the upper levels of Tesla's management team. The report said Musk had pushed aside Field to assume control of the Model 3 production process.
Musk criticized the story on Twitter in a response to its author, Amir Efrati, while indicating that he had taken control of Model 3 production.
"Can't believe you're even writing about this," Musk wrote. "My job as CEO is to focus on what's most critical, which is currently Model 3 production. Doug, who I regard as one of the world's most talented engineering execs, is focused on vehicle engineering."
Crave co-founders Michael Topolovac (left) and Ti Chang listed their first product on crowdfunding site Kickstarter in 2012 and eventually was booted from the platform after being told the vibrator was "too offensive." Katie Canales/Business Insider
In 2012, co-founders Ti Chang and Michael Topolovac of luxury sex-toy maker Crave listed the first vibrator ever on Kickstarter.
The Crave Duet was the first product from the San Francisco startup, but after submitting the campaign, Kickstarted booted it from their site before it could go live. After some back-and-forth between Kickstarter and the cofounders, Kickstarter finally admitted why the product was dismissed: they were against vibrators.
"At least they were honest about it," Topolovac said.
Six years later, and Crave has since received $3.7 million in funding, providing women with a sleek line of discreet, high-quality products made of silicone, leather and stainless steel ranging in price from $35 to $149.
Every product is also designed to operate quietly and battery-free, thanks to its USB rechargability â users can simply pull apart the vibrator and plug it into a charging port like you would a flash drive or iPhone.
"The aesthetics of it focus on something that's sophisticated, something that is dignifying and beautiful; it's not something that a woman would be ashamed of," Chang said.
Chang travels with the Airstream as part of its 2018 Build-A-Vibe tour. The Crave Airstream was also a staple at SoCal's 2018 Coachella Music and Arts Festival. Courtesy of Crave
More recently, Crave has added retailer Urban Outfitters as a supplier and is beginning to be recognized by its 1961 Airstream and its "Build-A-Vibe" workshop.
Chang travels with the Airstream around San Francisco, and up and down the west coast for now, to provide curious folks with the "Build-A-Vibe" kits, guiding them through the process of assembling their own vibrators. The trek is all in an effort to connect with customers and destigmatize female sexual pleasure, an overall goal for the brand.
"It's a huge part of the human experience; there shouldn't be a stigma, there shouldn't be shame," Topolovac said.
There aren't many entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley that pivot from enterprise software to luxury sex products.
Topolovac did though, transitioning first from an underwater camera lighting company to an enterprise cloud computing company and then to Crave.
"From Company A to Company B, there's a pivot that somewhat makes sense: you made software to run Company A and that software becomes Company B," Topolovac said. "Company B to Company C, the pivot isn't there; from enterprise software to sex toys wasn't the natural transition, it just happened to be what was worth pursuing."
The "Company B" was the cloud-based computing company Arena Solutions founded in 2000, which was a leader in enterprise cloud applications. Topolovac said he co-founded it around the same time that cloud computing giant Salesforce was born.
"I actually ran into Marc [Benioff] a couple years ago and he said, 'You know Michael, you were the first guy to see this cloud computing thing of the future' and I was like, 'I don't know Marc, you saw it when I saw it and last I checked you've got like ten more f--king zeros you make than I do,'" Topolovac said jokingly.
Leaving Arena to eventually manufacture sex products was more personal: He saw how a lack of high-end sex products impacted the women in his life. "It was odd that it looked like this massive market of women, but there weren't any brands to support that," Topolovac said. "You don't see that often where a market looks ready, but there are no companies to support that market."
Ti Chang already had experience designing sex toys before joining Crave. She's a trained industrial designer that had previously launched Incoqnito, a luxury sex toy maker specializing in integrating sex toys and jewelry. Topolovac acquired it in 2010, making Chang a Crave co-founder.
She brought her Incoqnito experience to the design of the Vesper, a slim vibrator worn in the form of a necklace. It's become a fan favorite, despite the snags Crave has hit with marketing its products on social media, specifically Instagram and Facebook. While they can post photos of their products on their accounts, they can't boost them as ads.
"I feel like they lump us all into this one big category of just nasty pornographers that sell porn, but it's not that at all," Chang said.
Topolovac said the cultural bias against female sexual pleasure exists on social media platforms, just as it does elsewhere, and large sites like Facebook are more likely to zero in on potentially offensive sex products than other matters.
"Violence, you kind of get away with, fake politics, fake news â that's all okay, but there's this paranoia around pleasure, particularly female pleasure, that we need to shut down," Topolovac said.
"This is pleasure, it's part of who we are as humans," he said. "We shouldn't be shaming the stigma, it should be elevated."
A worker sorts marijuana buds at Flow Kana's new manufacturing facility in Mendocino County. Flow Kana
Tech investors are seeing green in the marijuana industry.
Flow Kana, a craft marijuana brand based in San Francisco, has closed a $22 million round of financing to scale the supply chain across California. Combined with earlier funding from notable angel Roger McNamee, an early Facebook investor who served as an advisor to Mark Zuckerberg, the raise brings its total funding to $50 million.
It's one of the largest Series A rounds for a cannabis company to date, according to data and research firm Pitchbook, though deals of this size are becoming less rare.
Big money is coming for the emerging marijuana sector, which analysts say could eclipse soda sales by 2030. Marijuana is legal in nine states and Washington, DC.
Flow Kana was founded as a boutique delivery service in 2014. The company sources its marijuana from small farmers who grow outdoors without using pesticides, and is aimed at helping those farmers compete with Big Cannabis in the era of legalization.
This year the company opened a massive marijuana processing manufacturing hub on the site of a former winery in Northern California. Much like a winery that hosts tours and tastings, the Flow Cannabis Institute will eventually build experiences around the operation. Visitors will be able to tour the facilities where workers test, trim, process, and package marijuana for distribution; learn about the plant in seminars and pairing dinners; and stay on-site at a pot-friendly bed and breakfast.
Hundreds of millions of venture dollars flow into the marijuana sector every year, as fledgling startups chase funding to become the giants of their industry.
Flow Kana founder and CEO Mike Steinmetz. Flow Kana
Mike Steinmetz, founder and CEO of Flow Kana, said when he started raising seed money back in 2015, an investor writing a check for $50,000 seemed like "a big win." As investors warm to the marijuana industry, those check sizes are growing bigger.
Still, Flow Kana hasn't raised from any big-name firms on Sand Hill Road. While many VC funds may want to invest in the marijuana industry, their limited partners (LPs) â typically large, institutional pension funds or insurance companies â won't take the risk because cannabis is still considered illegal by the US federal government.
Steinmetz focused his fundraising efforts on marijuana-specific funds, family offices, and angel investors, though he would have liked to raise from Silicon Valley firms.
"Most VCs were locked behind their LPs," Steinmetz said.
Gotham Green Partners, a New York-based private equity firm focused on deploying capital into promising marijuana startups, led the Series A round with a $15 million investment. Poseidon Asset Management and Salveo Capital also participated.
American venture capital put $303 million into 79 marijuana industry deals in 2017, and 2018 is on pace to break last year's record. Most of the top venture-backed companies in the space are working on biotech solutions or ancillary services, like software platforms and payroll management. These deals are generally considered safer bets for investors, because the companies don't touch the marijuana plant.
In April, Tiger Global Management, a New York City-based investment firm with $22 billion under management, led a $17 million investment into software maker Green Bits. The firm's involvement was considered by some as a sign that big money is starting to take the marijuana sector seriously, in spite of the federal government's stance.
It may take longer for institutional dollars to reach Flow Kana, which handles the plant but does not grow it. The company plans to use the latest round of financing to increase production at the Flow Cannabis Institute and build distribution hubs.
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