Sramana Mitra: Given the situation that there’s 30 million people unemployed in America, it will take them a while to find their way back into the workforce. What would your risk model do when you...

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The Trump administration’s decision to extend its ban on issuing work visas to the end of this year “would be a blow to very early-stage tech companies trying to get off the ground,” Silicon Valley immigration lawyer Sophie Alcorn told TechCrunch this week.

In 2019, the federal government issued more than 188,000 H-1B visas — thousands of workers who live in the San Francisco Bay Area and other startup hubs hold H-1B and H-2B visas or J and L visas, which are explicitly prohibited under the president’s ban. Normally, the government would process tens of thousands of visa applications and renewals in October at the start of its fiscal year, but the executive order all but guarantees new visas won’t be granted until 2021.

Four TechCrunch staffers analyzed the president’s move in an attempt to see what it portends for the tech industry, the U.S. economy and our national image:

Danny CrichtonNatasha MascarenhasZack WhittakerAlex Wilhelm

Danny Crichton: Trump’s ban is a “self-inflicted” blow to our precarious economy

America’s economic supremacy is increasingly precarious.

Outsourcing and offshoring led to a generational loss of manufacturing skills, management incompetence killed off many of the country’s leading businesses and the nation now competes directly with China and other countries in critical emerging industries like 5G, artificial intelligence and the other alphabet soup of technological acronyms.

We have one thing going for us that no other country can rival: our ability to attract top talent. No other country hosts more immigrants, nor does any other country capture the imagination of a greater portion of the world’s top minds. America — whether Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Hollywood, Harvard Square or anywhere in between — is where smart people congregate.

Or at least, it was.

The coronavirus was the first major blow, partially self-inflicted. Remote work pushed employers toward keeping workers where they are (both domestically and overseas) rather than centralizing them in a handful of corporate HQs. Meanwhile, students — the first step for many talented workers to enter the United States — are taking a pause, fearing renewed outbreaks of COVID-19 in America while much of the rest of the developed world reopens with few cases.

The second blow was entirely self-inflicted. Earlier this week, President Donald Trump announced that his administration would halt processing critical worker visas like the H-1B due to the current state of the American economy.

This feature from TechCrunch covers a report from Newzoo that expects the global video games market to grow 9.3% to $159.3 billion. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links. Tech...

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I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I...

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Editor’s note: Get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7am PT). Subscribe here.

While the US tech industry relentlessly tries to do business with the rest of the world, this week it became further embroiled in national politics. High-skill immigration visas have been suspended until the end of the year by the Trump administration, precluding thousands of present and future startup employees and founders from coming to the US and building companies here.

Instead, the suspension is another accelerant to the global remote work trend that had already been a thing for many of us this decade, that has just been pushed to the mainstream because of the pandemic. For anyone trying to find great people to hire, the next funding check, or new markets, virtual solutions are often the only solutions available today.

Our resident immigration law expert, Sophie Alcorn, has been covering the issue in-depth this week, including an explainer about the crucial role of immigration in the economy for TechCrunch, and for Extra Crunch, an overview of what you can do if you’re affected. For subscribers, she also wrote about the impact of the Supreme Court overturning Trump’s termination of DACA.

On a personal note, our global editorial staff is looking forward to resuming our global events schedule as soon as possible regardless of these national political issues. We’re here for the startup world. In the meantime, here’s Alex Ames on how we’re connecting virtual Disrupt attendees this year.

New York tech after the pandemic

The big industries and big-city amenities that have made New York City what it is are going to help power it forward even as more people and jobs appear to be heading away from city centers. At least that’s my takeaway from reading the 11 investors who Anthony Ha talked to this week in an Extra Crunch survey about the future of the startup hub. First, even if you can work from anywhere, millions of people will prefer that place to be New York — with the big-city housing supply, networking opportunities and amenities to attract people like before. Second, many key industries like finance, real estate, enterprise software, health care, media and other consumer products are not dying but being reinvented, and appear to be maintaining their centers in the city. Here’s Alexa von Tobel of Inspired Capital:

I’ve seen NYC grow into the powerful startup hub it’s become over the last decade, and I think that momentum will continue. Now that we’ve learned high productivity is indeed possible remotely, we expect to see companies maintain some element of a remote workforce within their broad hiring plans. But for startups in their earliest stages, I think there’s still a power to sitting side by side as you build a business. When founders are making their first hires and inking their first deals, NYC remains an incredible place to do that.

Some of those industry reinventions are more exciting than others. In a separate survey, Anthony talked to 5 investors who have tended to focus on advertising and marketing tech… the good news is that advertising and marketing costs are dropping and tech-driven efficiency is improving for the world. For founders in the space, though, the challenges have only grown as the pandemic has forced more ad budget cuts on top of shifts to the largest platforms. As John Elton of Greycroft put it:

Only the next technology breakthrough will provide fertile ground for the next wave of innovation, just as mobile and internet breakthroughs gave rise to today’s giants. Perhaps machine learning is that type of breakthrough, so we are looking at companies that use machine learning to dramatically improve what is possible in the space. The issue there is the scaled players are also very good at machine learning, so it may not be a technology that provides the same opportunity as prior disruptions.

O’Reilly talks investing beyond the VC financial bubble

Tim O’Reilly has been going a different route from much of Silicon Valley in recent years. While his publishing company, series of conferences, essays and investments have helped to shape the modern internet for decades, he says that venture capital has gone wrong. Here’s more from an interview on with Connie Loizos on TechCrunch this week:

[I]’ve been really disillusioned with Silicon Valley investing for a long time. It reminds me of Wall Street going up to 2008. The idea was, ‘As long as someone wants to buy this [collateralized debt obligation], we’re good.’ Nobody is thinking about: Is this a good product? So many things that what VCs have created are really financial instruments like those CDOs. They aren’t really thinking about whether this is a company that could survive on revenue from its customers. Deals are designed entirely around an exit. As long as you can get some sucker to take them, [you’re good]. So many acquisitions fail, for example, but the VCs are happy because — guess what? — they got their exit.

His firm, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, has instead been focused in recent years on funding founders who are creating a product that is valued by customers and generates sustainable cash flow, on terms that incentivize organic growth.

 

They wrote your first check

Last week we launched a new effort to highlight investors who were the first to back your big and (increasingly) successful idea. It’s gotten a great response so far. From Danny Crichton:

Well, the TechCrunch community came through, since in just a few days, we’ve already received more than 500 proposals from founders recommending VCs who wrote their first checks and who have been particularly helpful in fundraising and getting a round closed.

If you haven’t submitted a recommendation, please help us using the form linked here.

The short survey takes five minutes, and could save founders dozens of hours armed with the right intel. Our editorial team is carefully processing these submissions to ensure their veracity and accuracy, and the more data points we have, the better the List can be for founders.

Check out Danny Crichton’s full post on TechCrunch for answers to questions that we’ve gotten frequently so far.

Across the week

TechCrunch:

A look at tech salaries and how they could change as more employees go remote

Apple will soon let developers challenge App Store rules

China’s GPS competitor is now fully launched

GDPR’s two-year review flags lack of ‘vigorous’ enforcement

The Exchange: IPO season, self-driving misfires and a fintech letdown

Extra Crunch:

What went wrong with Quibi?

Four perspectives: Will Apple trim App Store fees?

4 enterprise developer trends that will shape 2021

Ideas for a post-COVID-19 workplace

Plaid’s Zach Perret: ‘Every company is a fintech company’

Volcker Rule reforms expand options for raising VC funds

Around TechCrunch

Register for next week’s Pitches & Pitchers session

Join GGV’s Hans Tung and Jeff Richards for a live Q&A: June 30 at 3:30 pm EDT/12:30 pm PDT

Airtable’s Howie Liu to join us at Disrupt 2020

Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan will speak at Disrupt 2020

How to supercharge your virtual networking at Disrupt 2020

#EquityPod

From Alex Wilhelm:

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week was a bit feisty, but that’s only because Danny Crichton and Natasha Mascarenhas and I were all in pretty good spirits. It would have been hard to not be, given how much good stuff there was to chew over.

We kicked off with two funding rounds from companies that had received a headwind from COVID-19:

Away raises new capital, reported to be $30 million to $40 million after revenue declinesSonder raises $170 million at a higher $1.3 billion valuation after seeing its hospitality business recover

Those two rounds, however, represented just one side of the COVID coin. There were also companies busy riding a COVID-tailwind to the tune of new funds:

Hopin raised a $40 million Series A as its virtual events business acceleratedDoNotPay raised an $18 million round at an $80 million valuation

But we had room for one more story. So, we talked a bit about Robinhood, its business model and the recent suicide of one of its users. It’s an awful moment for the family of the human we lost, but also a good moment for Robinhood to batten the hatches a bit on how its service works.

How far the company will go, however, in limiting access to certain financial tooling, will be interesting to see. The company generates lots of revenue from its order-flow business, and options are a key part of those incomes. Robinhood is therefore balancing the need to protect its users and make money from their actions. How they thread this needle will be quite interesting.

All that and we had a lot of fun. Thanks for tuning in, and follow the show on Twitter!

Sramana Mitra: Tell me a bit about what kind of heuristics you are using in doing the credit scoring for subprime. Jeff Zhou: One area that people are interested in is alternative data sources like...

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Sramana Mitra: What is your funding strategy? We talked about the $2.2 million round. What else have you done since then? Rich Waldron: We’ve raised a total of $109 million now. We raised a $5...

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Last year, monitoring and analytics platform provider Datadog (Nasdaq: DDOG) listed on the stock exchange. While the recent market turmoil may have hurt most companys’ stock, Datadog is quite the...

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TuSimple, the self-driving truck startup backed by Sina, Nvidia, UPS and Tier 1 supplier Mando Corporation, is headed back into the marketplace in search of new capital from investors. The company has hired investment bank Morgan Stanley to help it raise $250 million, according to multiple sources familiar with the effort.

Morgan Stanley recently sent potential investors an informational packet, viewed by TechCrunch, that provides a snapshot of the company and an overview of its business model, as well as a pitch on why the company is poised to succeed — all standard fare for companies seeking investors.

TuSimple declined to comment.

The search for new capital comes as TuSimple pushes to ramp up amid an increasingly crowded pool of potential rivals.

TuSimple is a unique animal in the niche category of self-driving trucks. It was founded in 2015 at a time when most of the attention and capital in the autonomous vehicle industry was focused on passenger cars, and more specifically robotaxis.

Autonomous trucking existed in relative obscurity until high-profile engineers from Google launched Otto, a self-driving truck startup that was quickly acquired by Uber in August 2016. Startups Embark and the now defunct Starsky Robotics also launched in 2016. Meanwhile, TuSimple quietly scaled. In late 2017, TuSimple raised $55 million with plans to use those funds to scale up testing to two full truck fleets in China and the U.S. By 2018, TuSimple started testing on public roads, beginning with a 120-mile highway stretch between Tucson and Phoenix in Arizona and another segment in Shanghai.

Others have emerged in the past two years, including Ike and Kodiak Robotics. Even Waymo is pursuing self-driving trucks. Waymo has talked about trucks since at least 2017, but its self-driving trucks division began noticeably ramping up operations after April 2019, when it hired more than a dozen engineers and the former CEO of failed consumer robotics startup Anki Robotics. More recently, Amazon-backed Aurora has stepped into trucks.

TuSimple stands out for a number of reasons. It has managed to raise $298 million with a valuation of more than $1 billion, putting it into unicorn status. It has a large workforce and well-known partners like UPS. It also has R&D centers and testing operations in China and the United States. TuSimple’s research and development occurs in Beijing and San Diego. It has test centers in Shanghai and Tucson, Arizona.

Its ties to, and operations in China can be viewed as a benefit or a potential risk due to the current tensions with the U.S. Some of TuSimple’s earliest investors are from China, as well as its founding team. Sina, operator of China’s biggest microblogging site Weibo, is one of TuSimple’s earliest investors. Composite Capital, a Hong Kong-based investment firm and previous investor, is also an investor.

In recent years, the company has worked to diversify its investor base, bringing in established North American players. UPS, which is a customer, took a minority stake in TuSimple in 2019. The company announced it added about $120 million to a Series D funding round led by Sina. The round included new participants, such as CDH Investments, Lavender Capital and Tier 1 supplier Mando Corporation.

TuSimple has continued to scale its operations. As of March 2020, the company was making about 20 autonomous trips between Arizona and Texas each week with a fleet of more than 40 autonomous trucks. All of the trucks have a human safety operator behind the wheel.

Spot.IM, which offers a platform for publishers (including TechCrunch) to manage their user comments, announced this week that it’s rebranding as OpenWeb.

CEO and co-founder Nadav Shoval told me that the new name reflects a vision that’s far grander and more ambitious than the company’s initial product, a location-based messaging service.

“We all felt that this is the time to be proud of what we actually do,” Shoval said. “It’s about saving the open web.”

Specifically, Shoval is hoping to move more online conversations away from the big social platforms like Facebook and back to independent publishers. To illustrate this, he pointed to recent discussions about reexamining or revising Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a crucial legal protection for the big online platforms.

While you don’t have to take President Donald Trump’s complaints of Twitter censorship at face value, Shoval said the key is that “no one big tech company should control the conversation.”

To that end, the company has also unveiled an upgraded version of its platform, which includes features like scoring the overall quality of conversation for a specific publisher, incentivizing quality comments by allowing users to earn reputation points and even asking users to reconsider their comment if it appears to violate a publisher’s standards — OpenWeb describes these warnings as “nudges,” so you can still go ahead and post that comment if you want.

“We stopped focusing only on algorithms to identify bad behavior, which we’ve done for years and have become commodity,” said Ido Goldberg, OpenWeb’s senior vice president of product. “What we did here is, we put a lot of time into understanding how we should look at quality and scale in millions of conversations.”

A big theme in our conversation and demonstration was civility — for example, Goldberg showed me how OpenWeb’s nudges had convinced some users to adopt less incendiary language. But I argued that civility doesn’t always lead to quality conversations. After all, racist (and sexist and homophobic and otherwise hateful) ideas can be expressed in ostensibly polite language.

“For us, civility is the baseline,” Goldberg replied. “When things become incivil folks that want to [have a productive conversation] don’t want to be there.”

Shoval added, “There is no silver bullet for quality conversations.” He argued that OpenWeb is trying to encourage these conversations without being seen as “East Coast lefties who are censoring the internet” — a balance it tries to find by working with each of its publishers and being aware of different standards in different geographies. “What we want to do is a never-ending journey.”

The H8G offers access to an extensive collection of streaming apps. Amazon 65-inch VA LCD panel4K Ultra HD 3,840 x 2,160 resolution60Hz native refresh rateFull-array local dimming with 90 zonesDolby Vision, HDR10, and HDR10+ supportQuantum dot technology with wide color gamut capabilitiesMeasures 57.0×35.8×11.1 inches with feet stand attachedWeighs 44.1 pounds with feet stand attachedFour HDCP 2.2 compliant HDMI 2.0b inputs (one ARC)Android TV platform with Google AssistantWi-Fi and Ethernet connectivity10w x 2 speakersClick button remote with voice control

Setup

Like most modern smart TVs, setting the display up is a fairly simple process, but you will need an internet connection to get the TV updated and synced with your Google account. Once you turn the display on for the first time, the TV will walk you through a series of general configurations, terms of service agreements, and privacy setting options. It also offers a handy option to use an Android phone for the setup process, which easily lets you carry over your Google account info and Wi-Fi settings to the TV. 

After the initial configuration process, you can go ahead and access various streaming apps through the TV's interface, or switch inputs to your cable box, antenna, or other connected media devices. I use an Onkyo AV receiver connected to the TV's HDMI Audio Return Channel (ARC). The receiver is hooked up to an LG 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player, a Nintendo Switch, and an Xbox One X. All of my components are correctly passed through to the TV with full 4K HDR support when available.  

If you'd like to tweak the default image settings, the TV includes an extensive assortment of picture calibration modes. For the most accurate Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) out-of-box picture in a dark room, I recommend using the Theater Dark mode with Color Temperature set to Low and Local Dimming set to High. If you're watching in a brighter environment, you should use the Theater Day mode. Meanwhile, when watching HDR10 videos you should use the HDR Theater mode, and when watching Dolby Vision videos you should use the Dolby Vision Bright mode.

Picture performance

With local dimming and 700 nits of peak brightness, the H8G offers impressive HDR performance. Hisense

For a 4K TV in this price range, the Hisense H8G is a genuinely impressive display. It holds its own against other leading mid-range models, like the Vizio M-Series Quantum and the TCL 6 Series. Performance can't rival high-end TVs from LG, Samsung, and Sony, but the H8G actually looks better than several more expensive mid-tier models from those brands. 

The H8G's strong picture quality is largely a result of two display technologies: quantum dots and full-array local dimming. Quantum dots allow the TV to cover the DCI-P3 wide color gamut. This means that when you watch HDR movies on the TV, you're able to enjoy the full spectrum of colors you'd see in theaters. Full-array local dimming, meanwhile, allows the TV's LED panel to dim and brighten in specific sections across the screen. This results in deeper black levels and more precise highlights. 

LED TVs without these two features tend to produce washed out contrast and milky black levels. These flaws are less noticeable when watching TV in a bright room, but if you're someone who likes to watch movies in a dark home theater setting, then you'll definitely appreciate the benefits that local dimming and quantum dots provide.  

The H8G's implementation of local dimming uses 90 zones on the 65-inch model. Generally, the more zones a TV has, the better its  black level and contrast performance will be. So, 90 is a very solid number for a display in this class. For comparison's sake, the 65-inch Vizio M-Series Quantum also uses 90 zones, while the 65-inch TCL 6 Series uses 120 zones.     

In practice, the local dimming translates into strong black level performance, allowing dark scenes to appear nice and inky. It also helps the TV achieve a peak brightness of around 700 nits. A lot of HDR movies and shows are graded for 1,000 nits, so the H8G can get fairly close to covering the range that content creators have in mind.  

To test the TV's picture quality, I watched a variety of 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray discs and streaming titles, including many Dolby Vision, HDR10, and HDR10+ movies and shows. Though I initially ran into some odd issues with HDR10+ content, which resulted in images appearing desaturated, an update corrected this problem.

Overall, 4K HDR movies and TV shows look wonderful on the display, no matter what format they're in. Movies filled with bright colors, like "Aquaman", pop with impressive intensity while avoiding any color bleeding or harshness. The climactic underwater battle in "Aquaman" is an especially impressive showcase for the H8G's contrast and color performance, with specular highlights that dazzle and intricate fine details.

The opening scene of "The Matrix," meanwhile, offers a telling demonstration of the TV's local dimming and black level performance, resulting in inky shadows. As police officers search for Trinity in a dark apartment, their flashlights create bright highlights against deep blacks, without any noticeable artifacts.  

With that said, black level performance isn't perfect. Like all local dimming TVs, there are times when you can see the zones at work and blooming around bright objects is occasionally visible. A scene in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" where the kids are approaching Hogwarts in boats at night is a fitting example of this. The lights on the boats cause bright halos to bleed out into the shadows, giving the scene's contrast a patchy look.

As a whole, though, blooming and vignetting are actually pretty mild on the H8G. In fact, the TV seems to favor raising the black levels across the screen as a way to help combat uneven blooming. A test pattern of a moving starfield reveals this behavior. On other local dimming TVs I've reviewed, the starfield often appears patchy, with quadrants of stars visible against pitch black space. On the H8G, however, the starfield remains nice and uniform with all the stars visible, but the dark space between the stars isn't pitch black. 

In other words, black levels on the H8G are sometimes a bit lighter than some other local dimming TVs and overall contrast isn't quite as high. This gives the TV's image a slightly flatter look compared to the TCL 6 Series. But, on the plus side, uneven blooming is less frequent.   

Like most LCD TVs that use a Vertical Alignment (VA) panel, the H8G doesn't have particularly wide viewing angles. Colors and contrast distort when viewing the picture from the side. This is common for TVs of this type, however, and performance is on par with other mid-range models. Overall screen uniformity is decent, but I do notice some light vertical lines with slight brightness differences across the screen now and then, particularly when playing HDR video games. Again, artifacts like this are pretty common for TVs of this type, and I don't think most buyers will be distracted by these minor flaws. 

Android TV features

The H8G includes a voice remote with Google Assistant support. Hisense

Honestly, I've never been a huge fan of the Android TV platform. I find the interface to be a bit drab and performance has been very hit and miss across different devices I've tried. An older Hisense Android TV I reviewed was particularly problematic, with odd glitches related to the TV's settings menu that caused different modes to activate unintentionally, while also making it impossible to adjust the picture in certain apps.

Though I'm still not terribly impressed by the visual interface, my experience with Android TV has been a lot better on the H8G, and there are no major glitches to report. The platform seamlessly integrates with existing Google accounts, and includes access to a large selection of apps. Virtually any popular service you could want is featured, including Disney Plus, Netflix, Google Play, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and Vudu. HBO Max is also supported, which is noteworthy since that service is currently missing from Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices. The only major app that isn't currently available is Apple TV Plus.  

The interface is broken up into a series of rows, with sections for Apps, Play Next, and various recommendations. General navigation between menus is fairly responsive, but the Hulu app is unusually slow compared to other services on the display, and there can be some lag in other apps as well. 4K HDR playback and Dolby Atmos are also supported through most apps that offer such features. 

Google Assistant support is integrated, and the included voice remote works well. Content searches are accurate and the system does a nice job interpreting my spoken commands. That said, the results don't always include options for all the apps that titles are available on. Other queries, like weather and general questions, are also typically handled well, allowing you to ask the TV for details on everything from traffic to cocktail recipes.  

All things considered, the H8G's Android TV implementation is responsive and comprehensive enough that most buyers will find little need to supplement the TV with a separate streaming box or streaming stick.   

The bottom line

I've been less than impressed with some older Hisense TV models, but starting with the company's 2019 lineup, the brand has really stepped things up. Thankfully, that trend continues with its new 2020 65-inch H8G 4K TV. At $699.99, the display is one of the better 4K TVs you can buy in this price range.

Overall picture quality can't compete with flagship sets that cost over $1,000, but if you want an affordable 65-inch display with solid home theater capabilities, Google Assistant support, and a large collection of smart TV apps, the H8G is an excellent purchase.   

What are your alternatives? 

The Hisense H8G's primary competitors are the Vizio M-Series Quantum and the TCL 6-Series. All three TVs offer pretty similar performance and all three incorporate quantum dots and full-array local dimming. In general, the TCL can produce deeper black levels with better overall contrast, but it's a little more expensive and it tends to display more vignetting. Meanwhile, the Vizio is also a very strong performer, but I actually prefer the Android TV interface on the H8G compared to the SmartCast platform. 

If you're willing to pay over $1,000 for a 65-inch TV, there are better options from companies like LG, Sony, and Samsung, but in the $699.99 range, the H8G is better than any comparatively priced model from those brands. 

In addition to the 65-inch model we reviewed, the H8G is also available in a 75-inch size for $1,299.99, a 55-inch size for $499.99, and a 50-inch size for $399.99. The 50-inch model is especially noteworthy as it's becoming more difficult to find TVs with this level of performance at that size. 

Pros: Support for all three major HDR formats, 700 nits of peak brightness, local dimming, Android TV platform with a large selection of apps, voice remote with Google Assistant 

Cons: Overall contrast isn't quite as high as some competing models from TCL and Vizio, viewing angles are mediocre, smart TV navigation can be a little sluggish, no HDMI 2.1 ports

 

Andy Boxall/Business Insider Kygo's A11/800 headphones feature a fashionable design that all buyers can appreciate, but their style will appeal the most to fans of the Norwegian DJ behind the brand.With up to 40 hours of playback, the headphones' battery life is more than enough to last a week, even with a lengthy commute or listening session each day.There's plenty of volume and a rich sound with lots of bass, plus an app with an unusual graphic equalizer to help tailor the sound further. The regular $249 price is already a good value considering the features you get, but at a current sale price of just $170, the headphones are an even better buy. 

A music producer making headphones? Well, it worked for Beats by Dre, so why not Norwegian DJ Kygo? In fact, I've only heard of Kygo due to his exploits in the world of tech, starting with headphones and speakers, and more recently a partnership with Skagen to produce a special edition Falster 3 smartwatch. 

Kygo's latest headphones are the A11/800, which sit at the top of the brand's range. The headphones feature Bluetooth support and active noise cancelling technology, just like you'd expect from a pair of expensive cans. Except, at a regular price of $249 and frequent discounts below $200, the A11/800 undercut many competitors. 

Should you be tempted? Apple's Beats line has cornered the market in DJ-backed headphones, and has steadily grown into a mega-brand with the tech to match its bold and bassy sound. Can Kygo and the A11/800 compete? I've been listening for a week to see if Beats should beat it. 

Specifications

Weight: 250 grams/8.8 ouncesDrivers: 40mmConnectivity: Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, 3.5mm Codecs: AptX, AptX LL, AACBattery: 40 hours without ANC, 19 hours with ANC, two hours charging using USB Type-CApp: Kygo Life for iOS and Android 

Andy Boxall/Business Insider

Design

The Kygo A11/800 are made from plastic with faux leather covering their memory foam ear cups, and a soft padded headband. My review model is in a stark white, and a black version is also available. The construction is solid, in that they don't feel badly made, but they do creak and groan when flexed and folded up. I noticed this especially when out walking and listening to spoken word, moving my head quickly when listening at home, and when unfolding the headphones before putting them on.

I like the simple, minimalist design. The all-white body looks cool, and the large Xs on each ear cup gives the headphones some visual interest, without going overboard with the branding. Wearing them isn't going to suddenly promote you as a huge Kygo fan, which increases the appeal to those who don't know who the DJ is. The cups are just the right size too, perfectly maintaining a sleek profile on your head, while the headphones fold down into a handy size when you're done. 

They have a vice-like grip on your head so they won't come loose. With that said, they aren't really suited for use in the gym or while exercising, as the ear cups quickly make your ears sweat. Combine this with the heavier than expected weight and a grip that won't give up, and the A11/800s aren't great for extended listening sessions. On the plus side, they don't pull on my glasses much, which is a pleasant change compared to other tightly fitting headphones.

Controls are located on the right ear cup and are a mixture of physical and touch sensitive buttons. The power, ANC, and ambient sound modes are controlled by three physical buttons on the side of the cup. These are easily located and you're told through the headphones the mode you're in, which is very helpful. 

The touch controls are less successful with an unacceptably slow reaction time, meaning I get caught in an endless play/pause loop. There's a proximity sensor to pause the music when you take the headphones off. This works well but only when you take the headphones off completely, not just off your ears to leave the headphones hanging around your neck.

Annoying creaks and limpet-like fit aside, the Kygo A11/800s are a stylish, fashionable pair of headphones that I'm proud to wear out and about. 

Performance

There is a 40mm driver inside each ear cup, and they are capable of delivering ear-splitting levels of volume. It's not the most detailed sound, but there's no question these are seriously loud. When listening to Spotify on an iPhone 11 Pro I have no need to take the headphones above half volume. This isn't really a complaint. It's nice to wear a pair of headphones that has power in reserve for when I really want to block out the world.

The balanced sound they deliver is really great, and the headphones clearly define vocals, mids, and bass in the soundstage. Where your typical Beats headphones prioritize the bass, the A11/800s add a similar degree of punch to a beautifully rounded soundstage. If my sweaty ears didn't make me take the Kygo's off after a bit, I probably wouldn't want to. The engaging, bright sound is really addictive. 

I listened to Twice's entire new "More & More" EP, with the excellent Shadow being the standout track. The A11/800s center the stunning, crystal clear lead vocals, and excite with some superb stereo separation. Listening to Clozee's "Inner Peace" further demonstrates the A11/800s' strengths, resulting in solid, punchy bass, bright mids, and a tight center-biased soundstage. Blackpink's bombastic "Kill This Love" encourages you to turn up the volume, and from the angry lyrics to the stream of low bass towards the end of the track, it sounds fantastic when you do. 

Performance isn't perfect though. I'm not hearing anything new through the A11/800s, and the sound can get muddled and harsh at higher volumes when listening to complex tracks. There is noticeable background hiss between tracks which concerns me, and with the ANC on it gets even worse. I don't think it makes any difference to the music, but it does make me concerned about why it's there in the first place. In addition to AptX, it's good to see AptX LL, the low latency codec designed for gaming, ensuring even with a wireless connection the on-screen action syncs with the audio. 

Andy Boxall/Business Insider

Noise cancellation and app

The sound quality is affected when you switch on the ANC, and worse, there is a noticeable increase in pressure around the ears when you use ANC. The Kygo A11/800s tightly seal around your ears and you definitely notice the change when the ANC kicks in. When out walking, the ANC minimizes the sound from traffic around me, but not as effectively as Sony's WH-1000XM3. In the home, the Kygos remove voices around you, and the ambient sound of washing machines and kettles. 

They provide a good escape, but the extra pressure does affect the sound quality a little too much. The sound is fuller, brighter, and more enjoyable with ANC off, and with deeper bass response when on. Download the Kygo Life app and you can switch on the ANC through it instead of using the button on the headphones. The app also allows you to activate the headphones' Awareness or Ambient mode. Awareness lets in 50% of the surrounding noise and all the voices, while nothing is filtered out using Ambient mode. 

The main reason you'll want to download the app is for the equalizer, but don't think you're going to get a few sliders and that's it. Instead of this, there are four cities (stay with me here) on the four sides of the screen — New York, Ibiza, Los Angeles, and Bergen. You move a spot around the screen to tune the sound, which Kygo says matches the vibe of the city, or something. It's partially successful, and I did manage to find a setting that sounds better than the flat curve, but most spots sound pretty bad otherwise. Overall, I recommend just leaving the equalizer settings as they come out of the box. 

Battery life and connection

Connection is quick and simple, and doesn't require the app if you don't want to download it. With that said, firmware updates may be delivered through the app in the future, so it's probably worth downloading either way. The Kygo A11/800s use Bluetooth 5.0 but I've found the range to be a little shorter than other headphones. I encounter stutters and pauses around 26 feet away from the device. However, with my phone in my pocket, the connection is rock-steady. 

The battery life is supposed to be around 40 hours without ANC, or 19 hours with ANC. I've used a mixture of modes during my review and the headphones passed 30 hours, which is excellent. I've only had to charge them once and that was after more than a week of daily use. Charge time is two hours and performed using a USB Type-C cable. A 3.5mm cable is included if the headphones run out of power and you still want to listen. The battery life is a serious benefit here, and I'm constantly surprised by how slowly the battery meter in the Kygo Life app seems to decrease. 

Andy Boxall/Business Insider

The bottom line

Ignore the creaky chassis and annoying background hiss, and the Kygo A11/800s deliver a fun, enjoyable sound with more volume than you'll ever want. The battery life is excellent and will definitely appeal to those who either forget to charge headphones, or want a set that lasts a week of lengthy commuting. The ANC works well, but does affect the sound, and these aren't the most detailed headphones available. For the price, the Kygo A11/800s are a good value, but if you spend more you can find a pair of headphones with much better sound quality. 

What are your alternatives?

The $299 Beats Solo Pro are the obvious competitor, sharing the ANC feature and delivering a bass-heavy sound with a lifestyle-driven design. The Sony WH-1000XM3s have better ANC and a sweet, detailed sound, but they will cost you around $350. 

We really like the sound delivered by Master & Dynamic's over-ear headphones as well, and recommend the $249 MH40s, but if you want ANC you'll have to splash out $499 for the MW65s. Sennheiser's $350 Momentum 3 headphones are very impressive all round, but are much larger and more expensive. 

Though overall performance isn't as strong as the competitors listed above, the Kygo A11/800 headphones offer a lot of value for their price. Buyers who want the best noise cancellation performance and sound quality will have to spend more, but the Kygo A11/800 are a solid purchase for listeners with less demanding audio needs.     

For even more headphone recommendations, check out our best noise-cancelling headphones guide.

Pros: Reasonably priced, effective noise cancellation, lots of volume, long battery life

Cons: Plastic case creaks, background hiss frustrates, can cause ears to get hot

Telemedicine is becoming more widely embraced by the day — and not just for humans. With a pet in roughly 65% of U.S. homes, there is now a dizzying number of companies enabling vets to meet with their furry patients remotely, including Petriage, Anipanion, TeleVet, Linkyvet, TeleTails, VetNOW, PawSquad, Vetoclock and Petpro Connect.

One of these — a two-year-old, 13-person, LA-based startup called Airvet — unsurprisingly thinks it is the best among the bunch, and it has persuaded investors of as much. Today, the company is announcing $14 million in Series A funding led by Canvas Ventures, with participation by e.ventures, Burst Capital, Starting Line, TrueSight Ventures, Hawke Ventures and Bracket Capital, as well as individual investors.

The pandemic played a role in Canvas’s decision, as did a smart model, suggests general partner Rebecca Lynn, who says she has looked at many telemedicine startups over the last 11 years and that she fell for Airvet after using the service for the animals that live on her own small farm. Plus, she adds, “COVID has been a massive accelerant to adoption.”

We asked Airvet’s founder and CEO, Brandon Werber, to make the company’s case to us separately.

TC: Why start the company?

BW: My dad is one of the most well-known vets in the U.S. — celebrity vet Dr. Jeff Werber. We saw the impact that telehealth was making in the human world and wanted to bring the same access and level of care we get for ourselves to our pets. Since I grew up in the pet space, I know it intimately and recognized a lot of inefficiencies in the delivery of care and how vets have been unable to meet the evolving expectations of pet owners.

TC: How are you connecting vets with their pet patients?

BW: We have two apps. One is for pet-owners to download to talk with a vet, and one is for vets to download to organize workflows and talk to their clients. We do not usurp any existing vet relationships. Instead, we partner with vet clinics and enable them to conduct telehealth visits and simultaneously enable pet-owners to have access to vets 24/7, even if they don’t live nearby a vet hospital.

A huge portion of pet owners in the U.S. don’t even have a primary vet. For serious health issues like surgery, animals still need to go in-person, and network vets can even refer them. We’ve also seen Airvet used as curbside check-in, where pet-owners can chat and follow their pet’s in-person vet appointment via live video from the parking lot.

TC: I see there is a minimum charge of $30 per visit. How do you make this model work financially for vets?

BW: Vets view us as an additional revenue-generating tool on top of their base income. We don’t hire vets. Our network of 2,600+ vets are largely the same vets who use Airvet within their own hospital. They can decide at will, like an Uber driver, to swipe online to be part of the on-demand network and take calls from pet parents anywhere in the country to generate additional income.

TC: What have you learned from startups that tried this model before?

BW: All the startups that came before us are not consumer-first and are just focused on building tools for vets, so their platforms cannot be used by every pet owner. Instead, they can only be used by pet owners whose own vets use that specific platform, which is a tiny fraction of vets and therefore a tiny fraction of pet parents.

TC: Do you have ancillary businesses? Beyond these vet visits, are you selling anything else?

BW: For now, just the vet visits, which range from a $30 minimum to higher, based on the vet and specialty. Over time, we have plans and partnerships lined up to expand into other pet health verticals.

A projected $99 billion will be spent on pets in the U.S. alone in 2020, and for us, telemedicine is only the beginning.

TC: Does Airvet involve specific practice management software?

BW: No. We provide the workflow layer enabling vets to schedule virtual appointments, which will soon be able to be fully integrated with their existing systems and workflows.

TC: When a customer calls a vet for $30, is there a time limit?

BW: There is no time limit and cases will usually stay open for three full days, so pet parents can continue to access the vet via chat for any follow-up questions or concerns.

TC: Are you competing at all on pricing?

BW: Our goal is to work alongside the hospitals, not to compete with them or replace them. You can’t take blood virtually or feel a tumor or do a dental. People always will need to go to the vet.

What we want to do is help [pet owners] understand when [to come in]. The average pet parent only goes to the vet 1.5 times a year. A huge segment of users on Airvet have already connected with a vet six times more than that and save time and stress in doing so.

It’s not about competing for us, it’s about being the provider of care in between office visits [and helping] pet parents who have used our service ultimately avoid an unnecessary emergency visit.

Brigette McInnis-Day, who oversees Google Cloud's hiring strategy, said the company looks for three big traits during interviews. Google Empathy 

As the Google Cloud Platform continues to grow, the team actively recruits engineers that it believes can build products based on what customers need, according to McInnis-Day . 

"We're in a unique time," she said. "From a technical perspective, it's really asking questions to understand the business issues, to make sure we know what we're solving for."

Listening to feedback and following through is a big part of retaining customers and building trust, McInnis-Day said, and the technology team is just as active in Google's relationship-building process as the sales and customer service teams are. The ability to translate customer feedback into concrete product decisions requires empathy. 

"It's very important that the solution is mirroring what's needed," she said. 

Self-reflection

Self-reflection and empathy go hand-in-hand, McInnis-Day said. As the coronavirus pandemic forced workers across the country to stay at home — and with more companies considering permanent remote work— Google Cloud engineers were pushed to think about how it would impact the long-term goals for their products. In some cases, that meant redefining what was important. 

"They're very self reflective and they know what they need or want." McInnis-Day said of employees. "They know what questions to ask." 

Honest, open reflection is key to building strong, intuitive products at any tech company, she said. Software engineers should always think beyond standard benchmarks and not be too proud to ask questions. McInnis-Day often asks herself, "Are they going to challenge the status quo?"

"We're also finding high-humility in the people — the candidates — we're seeing," McInnis-Day said. "They can tolerate ambiguity and also can take risks."

Willingness to collaborate

Collaboration is encouraged across tech companies and fostered through the open work environments, plentiful places for employees to relax, and mini kitchens littered throughout campuses at Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

The need for effective, enthusiastic collaboration has only increased since local stay-at-home orders went into place, McInnis-Day said. Employees leverage in-house tools to work with their teams and bounce ideas off each other. 

"I think the piece that's been so amazing to me coming in to work at Google is their collaborative tools," McInnis-Day said. 

Online collaboration has been a big part of Google Cloud's growth in the last few months during the pandemic, she said: "And then we look for that in the candidates as well."