Tech Blog - Page 1027 of 2384 - 1010Computers | Computer Repair & IT Support1010Computers

Arm acquires data management service Treasure Data to bolster its IoT platform

Published August 2, 2018

Arm, the semiconductor firm you probably still remember as ARM, today announced that it has acquired Treasure Data, a data management platform for large enterprise customers. The companies didn’t announce the financial details of the transaction, but earlier reporting by Bloomberg pegged the price at $600 million.

This move strengthens Arm’s IoT nascent play, given that Treasure Data’s specialty is dealing with the large streams of data that these systems produce (as well as data from CRM, e-commerce systems and other third-party services).

This move follows Arm’s recent acquisition of Stream and indeed, the company calls the acquisition of Treasure Data “the final piece” of its “IoT enablement puzzle.” The result of this completed puzzle is the Arm Pelion IoT Platform, which combines Stream, Treasure Data and the existing Arm Mbed Cloud into a single solution for connecting and managing IoT devices and the data they produce.

Arm says Treasure Data will continue to operate as before and continue to serve new clients as well as its existing users. “It will remain an important part of industry IoT enablement, providing the ability to harness new, complex edge and device data within a comprehensive customer profile to personalize their products and improve their experiences,” the company says.

Decentralized exchange Radar Relay raises $10 million

Published August 2, 2018

Meet Radar Relay, a cryptocurrency startup that just raised $10 million from Blockchain Capital and other investors. The company is taking advantage of the 0x protocol to change your tokens into other tokens without going through a traditional exchange.

Centralized exchanges have been one of the main weaknesses of the cryptocurrency industry for years. A centralized exchange can get hacked or shut down. Malicious users can also hijack your account and transfer all your tokens.

“I definitely hope centralized exchanges go burn in hell as much as possible,” Vitalik Buterin said in a recent TechCrunch interview.

So what is the solution? Decentralized exchanges that never hold your tokens on their wallets. As TechCrunch’s Josh Constine wrote, 0x is a protocol that makes this possible. 0x connects traders so that you can swap tokens without going through a centralized marketplace. It leverages smart contracts so that you don’t end up sending the tokens first and waiting for the other person to send you back their tokens — the transaction happens simultaneously.

Many companies are building projects on top of the 0x protocol, and Radar Relay is one of them. As the name suggests, Radar Relay helps you find other traders who are interested in your order.

For instance, if you want to exchange 10 MLN for 162 ZRX, you need to publicize your order somewhere so that other users can find it. If another Radar Relay user wants to make a similar transaction, but in the other direction, then the trade occurs.

Users connect wallet addresses on Radar Relay so that you stay in control of your tokens at all times. For instance, if you use a Ledger wallet, you can exchange tokens from one address on your Ledger to another. In the future, you can imagine integrations with wallet makers so that you can submit an order from your wallet directly.

In addition to leaving you in control of your tokens, you don’t need to create an account to use a decentralized exchange. Radar Relay is only compatible with ERC20 tokens as 0x has been designed for ERC20 tokens specifically. Since October, users have traded the equivalent of $150 million in 170 tokens.

While Blockchain Capital is leading the round, a ton of investors have put money in Radar Relay — Tusk Ventures, Distributed Global, Reciprocal Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Distributed Global, Reciprocal Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Elefund, Slow Ventures, SV Angel, Kindred Ventures, Breyer Capital, Digital Currency Group, V1.VC, Kokopelli, Village Global and Chapter One.

It’s an impressive list of investors. So let’s see if decentralized exchanges can shake up the big exchanges that everybody uses today.

Rent the Runway inks $200 million credit facility with Temasek

Published August 2, 2018

Rent the Runway today announced that it has partnered with Temasek for a $200 million credit facility.

Founded in 2009, Rent the Runway lets users rent items of clothing for special events or occasions, bringing runway styles to folks without the cash to purchase the clothing outright.

Rent the Runway started out by letting users rent their wares for about 10 percent of the item’s price. But in 2017, RTR introduced a subscription model, giving users unlimited rentals for $89/month.

The model has already been proven by other businesses. RTR started giving users access to fashion in the same way that Netflix gives users access to video, Spotify gives access to music, or even the way ClassPass gives users access to studio fitness classes.

Since the subscription launch, RTR’s subscription business is up 150 percent year over year, and represents 50 percent of the company’s overall revenue.

According to the release, RTR will use the new funds to continue growing its subscription business, expand operations, and refinance its existing debt facility. As part of the deal, Temasek has received an observer seat on the board of directors.

In response to the question around why Rent The Runway chose a credit facility over traditional VC investment, CFO Scarlett O’Sullivan had this to say via email:

We are very pleased that the company has demonstrated the kind of business model, growth prospects and financial discipline that make it possible to access a credit facility of this size with an equity-minded long-term partner like Temasek – they have a proven track record of supporting disruptive high-growth companies.

We were specifically looking for debt for three key reasons:

1 – This facility gives us the ability to access more financing – we can draw capital as we need to, giving us flexibility to grow our subscription business more quickly

2 – We improved the terms of our prior facility which we refinanced with a portion of these funds — and debt for us is a lower cost option to finance the business

3 – It is less dilutive to our existing shareholders – we believe there will be significant value creation over the next several years as we continue to change consume behavior and help women put their closet in the cloud

Before this latest deal, Rent the Runway had raised more than $200 million in funding from investors such as Bain Capital, KPCB, Highland Capital, TCV, and more.

Stampli raises $6.7M in Series A funding to streamline invoice management

Published August 2, 2018

Stampli, an invoice management platform, announced today the closing of a $6.7 million Series A funding round led by SignalFire, with participation from Bloomberg Beta, Hillsven Capital and UpWest Labs.

If you’ve ever freelanced for a company, you know that the long, instant ramen-filled days between filing an invoice and having it completed can be grueling. Brothers Eyal and Ofer Feldman launched Stampli in 2015 to help solve this problem and bridge the communication gap between accountants, related internal departments and vendors. Aimed at mid to large-size companies, to date Stampli has helped a wide range of companies (from fashion to tech) manage more than $4 billion in invoices through its AI-driven interface.

“Invoice management is like an elephant,” co-founder and CEO Eyal Feldman told TechCrunch. “One person sees the head, one person sees the tail, one person sees the legs. It’s a process that different people see different versions of but the whole picture should include everybody. The ability for all of these people to be involved is really the core of the process.”

Traditional invoice management between vendors and internal departments in a company can be a tangled mess of email exchanges, lost messages and ultimately delayed payments. But, Stampli’s interface (which can be integrated directly into a company’s enterprise resource planning software like NetSuite, Intuit QuickBooks or SAP) allows for every step of the invoice’s journey to have a central landing page on which every relevant party can collaborate.

“We found that 85 percent of our users are not accounting people,” said Feldman. “[They] are all the managers around and all the other people involved. What we found in our research is that when the process works for them is when accounting is happy.”

This landing page not only provides easy access to pertinent information between departments, but Stampli’s built-in AI, Billy the Bot, helps invoice managers fill in relevant information by first learning the structure of the invoice and then learning through observation the user’s behavior and work flow. When Billy passes an 80 percent confidence threshold for its decision, it goes ahead and auto-fills the information. But, if it’s feeling unsure about its choice, Billy will leave it as a suggestion instead to avoid introducing any errors to the paperwork.

The more invoices users process through Stampli, the more Billy learns how to best streamline the process for that company.

In the arena of invoice management, Stampli faces competition from companies like Determine and Concur, which also offer all-in-one platforms for invoice management and, in the case of Concur, also incorporate machine learning to capture invoices.

According to Feldman, what helps Stampli stand apart from the competition is its emphasis on company collaboration and its no-fee installation of the software. With no upfront cost, the company only charges per invoice.

Kinside wants families to make the most of their dependent care flexible spending accounts

Published August 2, 2018

Kinside founders Rob Bircher, Shadiah Sigala and Abe Han

The cost of childcare is one of the biggest financial burdens American families face. Even dependent care flexible spending accounts, pre-tax benefit accounts meant to reduce caregiving costs, can be an extra stressor because they involve filling out many forms. Kinside, a startup in Y Combinator’s current batch, wants to help by automating the claims process. It also serves as a childcare management tool, letting parents pay their care providers with a Venmo-like feature while making it simpler for companies to offer childcare benefits, like matching costs, that can help attract talented employees. Kinside is still in beta, but it’s already been adopted by several tech companies, including Le Tote.

Kinside’s three founders—CEO Shadiah Sigala, COO Rob Bircher and CTO Abe Han—were motivated to launch the startup after realizing that dependent care FSAs (which can also be used for other caregiving-related costs, like elder care) are vastly underutilized.

“Even though upwards of 70% of companies offer this FSA, we found in our conversations with numerous companies that maybe 10% of eligible parents are using this benefit,” Sigala says. “From an employee experience perspective, we are really taking on a very onerous, traditional FSA product and streamlining the payments process, not only for employers to offer this benefit very seamlessly, but also streamlining the process for parents to take advantage of this benefit.”

One reason eligible employees forgo their dependent care FSA benefits is the claims process, which can take weeks to process and involves collecting receipts and uploading them onto a website (snail mail and fax are other options). As parents, Kinside’s founders have experienced firsthand the headache of dealing with dependent care FSA forms at previous jobs.

“Some of the products we’ve seen already look a decade old, with multiple screens of input. They are really clumsy, so from a modern Web app and UX experience, Kinside brings it up to speed,” says Han.

Kinside also takes advantage of the trio’s past experience in the payments and benefits space. Before launching Kinside, Sigala co-founded HoneyBook, a CRM for entrepreneurs in creative fields. Han also worked at HoneyBook as lead software engineer, while Bircher was senior vice president of sales and marketing at healthcare benefits tech company Picwell.

The team’s goal is to not only encourage use of dependent care FSAs, but also relieve the mental load for harried parents. To sign up for Kinside, they enter their childcare provider’s information on its Web app and connect a bank account. Kinside then makes automated childcare payments with funds from their FSAs and bank accounts or sends payment reminders. It keeps receipts and at the end of the year provides parents with a tax form.

“This couldn’t be done five years ago because there wasn’t a modern payroll. There weren’t modern payments services that existed and we didn’t have APIs for payment and payroll services,” says Sigala. “A lot of employers offer dependent care FSAs already, but they are very receptive to our service because they are looking for products that will improve the experience.”

Kinside is targeting other tech companies first, since many are at the forefront of building family-friendly policies. Several, including Netflix, Facebook and Etsy, have made headlines for offering parental benefits that are considered very generous by American standards, like longer paid leave, flex time and childcare subsidies. This doesn’t just help parents. It also helps companies build diverse workforces by attracting more millennials and women (the high cost of childcare is a big reason why many new mothers leave the workforce, even if they don’t want to. They simply can’t afford to work).

“They know that you have to offer more than a trivial benefit like free lunch or a foosball table,” says Sigala. “Childcare is more expensive than healthcare, or as expensive as rent. Childcare is eating up to 20% of a Bay Area family’s income.”

One of Kinside’s selling points is enabling small to mid-sized businesses to offer competitive benefits, too. “You see solutions that cater to larger employers, like on-site daycare centers, that are very inaccessible to smaller to mid-sized companies,” says Bircher. “We want to fill a void that we thought existed for SMBs and this was one way to do it.”

As more companies turn to better family benefits to boost recruitment and retention, it’s conceivable that other startups will also look at ways to make using Dependent Care FSAs easier. Sigala says one advantage Kinside has is the founding team’s prior experience, which means they know the right distribution channels. The startup is looking at ways to help parents get more use out of the money they put in their FSAs by partnering with eligible childcare-related services. It also wants to work with companies that pre-screen providers, so Kinside can potentially address all steps of the childcare process, from finding a trustworthy carer and paying them on time to preparing year-end tax forms.

“Parents are going to pay an arm and a leg for childcare already,” says Sigala. “If we can help them get tax-free dollars toward childcare, that’s what we want to do.”

UK report highlights changing gadget habits — and our need for an online fix

Published August 2, 2018

A look back at the past decade of consumer technology use in the UK has shone a light on changing gadget habits, underlining how Brits have gone from being smartphone dabblers back in 2008 when a top-of-the-range smartphone cost ~£500 to true addicts in today’s £1k+ premium smartphone era.

The report also highlights what seems to be, at times, a conflicted relationship between Brits and the Internet.

While nine in ten people in the UK have home access to the Internet, here in 2018, some web users report feeling being online is a time-sink or a constraint on their freedom.

But even more said they feel lost or bored without it.

Over the past decade the Internet looks to have consolidated its grip on the spacetime that boredom occupied for the less connected generations that came before.

The overview comes via regulator Ofcom’s 2018 Communications Market report. The full report commenting on key market developments in the country’s communications sector is a meaty, stat and chart-filled read.

The regulator has also produced a 30-slide interactive version this year.

Commenting on the report findings in a statement, Ian Macrae, Ofcom’s director of market intelligence, said: “Over the last decade, people’s lives have been transformed by the rise of the smartphone, together with better access to the Internet and new services. Whether it’s working flexibly, keeping up with current affairs or shopping online, we can do more on the move than ever before.

“But while people appreciate their smartphone as their constant companion, some are finding themselves feeling overloaded when online, or frustrated when they’re not.”

We’ve pulled out some highlights from the report below…

Less than a fifth (17%) of UK citizens owned a smartphone a decade ago; the figure now stands at 78% — and a full 95% of 16-24 year-olds. So, yeah, kids don’t get called digital natives for nothin’
People in the UK check their smartphones, on average, every 12 minutes of the waking day. (‘Digital wellbeing’ tools clearly have their work cut out to kick against this grain… )
Ofcom found that two in five adults (40%) first look at their phone within five minutes of waking up (rising to 65% of the under 35s). While around a third (37%) of adults check their phones five minutes before lights out (again rising to 60% of under-35s). Shame it didn’t also ask how well people are sleeping
Contrary to a decade ago, most UK citizens say they need and expect a constant Internet connection wherever they go. Two thirds of adults (64%) say it’s an essential part of their life. One in five adults (19%) say they spend more than 40 hours a week online, up from 5% just over ten years ago
Three quarters (74%) of people say being online keeps them close to friends and family. Two fifths (41%) say it enables them to work more flexibly

Smartphone screen addicts, much?

Seventy-two per cent of adults say their smartphone is their most important device for accessing the Internet; 71% say they never turn off their phone; and 78% say they could not live without it
Ofcom found the amount of time Brits spend making phone calls from mobiles has fallen for the first time — using a mobile for phone calls is only considered important by 75% of smartphone users vs 92% who consider web browsing on a smartphone to be important (and indeed the proportion of people accessing the Internet on their mobile has increased from 20% almost a decade ago to 72% in 2018)
The average amount of time spent online on a smartphone is 2 hours 28 minutes per day. This rises to 3 hours 14 minutes among 18-24s

Social and emotional friction, plus the generation gap…

On the irritation front, three quarters of people (76%) find it annoying when someone is listening to music, watching videos or playing games loudly on public transport; while an impressive 81% object to people using their phone during meal times
TV is another matter though. The majority (53%) of adults say they are usually on their phone while watching TV with others. There’s a generation gap related to social acceptance of this though: With a majority (62%) of people over the age of 55 thinking it’s unacceptable — dropping to just two in ten (21%) among those aged 18-34
Ofcom also found that significant numbers of people saying the online experience has negative effects. Fifteen per cent agree it makes them feel they are always at work, and more than half (54%) admit that connected devices interrupt face-to-face conversations with friends and family — which does offer a useful counterpoint to social media giant’s shiny marketing claims that their platforms ‘connect people’ (the truth is more they both connect & disconnect). While more than two in five (43%) also admit to spending too much time online
Around a third of people say they feel either cut off (34%) or lost (29%) without the Internet, and if they can’t get online, 17% say they find it stressful. Half of all UK adults (50%) say their life would be boring if they could not access the Internet
On the flip side, a smaller proportion of UK citizens view a lack of Internet access in a positive light. One in ten says they feel more productive offline (interestingly this rises to 15% for 18-34 year-olds); while 10% say they find it liberating; and 16% feel less distracted

The impact of (multifaceted and increasingly powerful and capable) smartphones can also be seen on some other types of gadgets. Though TV screens continue to compel Brits (possibly because they feel it’s okay to keep using their smartphones while sitting in front of a bigger screen… )

Ofcom says ownership of tablets (58% of UK households) and games consoles (44% of UK adults) has plateaued in the last three years
Desktop PC ownership has declined majorly over the past decade — from a large majority (69%) of households with access in 2008 to less than a third (28%) in 2018
As of 2017, smart TVs were in 42% of households — up from just 5% in 2012
Smart speakers weren’t around in 2008 but they’ve now carved out a space in 13% of UK households
One in five households (20%) report having some wearable tech (smart watches, fitness trackers). So smart speakers look to be fast catching up with fitness bands

BBC mightier than Amazon …

BBC website visitor numbers overtook those of Amazon in the UK in 2018. Ofcom found the BBC had the third-highest number of users after Google and Facebook
Ofcom also found that six in ten people have used next-day delivery for online purchases, but only three in ten have used same-day delivery in 2018. So most Brits are, seemingly, content to wait until tomorrow for ecommerce purchases — rather than demanding their stuff right now

What else are UK citizens getting up to online? More of a spread of stuff than ever, it would appear…

Less general browsing/surfing than last year, though it’s still the most popular reported use for Internet activity (69% saying they’ve done this in the past week vs 80% who reported the same in 2017)
Sending and receiving email is also still a big deal — but also on the slide (66% reporting doing this in the past week vs 76% in 2017)
Social media use is another popular but slightly less so use-case than last year (50% in 2017 down to 45% in 2018). (Though Twitter bucks the trend with a percentage point usage bump (13% -> 14%) though it’s far less popular overall)
Instant messaging frequency also dropped a bit (46% -> 41%)
As did TV/video viewing online (40% -> 36%), including for watching short video clips (31% to 28%)
Online shopping has also dropped a bit in frequency (48% -> 44%)
But accessing news has remained constant (36%)
Finding health information has seen marginal slight growth (22% -> 23%); ditto has finding/downloading information for work/college (32% -> 33%); using local council/government services (21% -> 23%); and playing games online/interactively (17% -> 18%)
Streaming audio services have got a bit more popular (podcasts, we must presume), with 15% reporting using them in the past week in 2017 up to 19% in 2018. Listening to the radio online is also up (13% -> 15%)
However uploading/adding content to the Internet has got a bit less popular, though (17% to 15%)

One more thing: Women in the UK are bigger Internet fans than men.

Perhaps contrary to some people’s expectations, women in the UK spend more time online on average than men across almost all age groups, with the sole exception being the over 55s (where the time difference is pretty marginal)…

Instagram’s CEO on vindication after 2 years of reinventing Stories

Published August 2, 2018

“I think the mistake everyone made was to think that Stories was a photography product,” says Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom. “If you look at all these interactivity features we’ve added, we’ve really made Stories something else. We’ve really innovated and made it our own.”

His version of the ephemeral slideshow format turns two years old today. By all accounts, it’s a wild success. Instagram Stories has 400 million daily users, compared to 191 million on Snapchat, which pioneered Stories. While the first year was about getting to parity with augmented reality filters and stickers, the two have since diverged. Instagram chose the viral path.

Interactivity > Photoshop

Snapchat has become more and more like Photoshop, with its magic eraser for removing objects, its green screen-style background changer, scissors for cut-and-pasting things and its fill-in paint bucket. These tools are remarkably powerful for living in a teen-centric consumer app. But many of these artistic concepts are too complicated for day-to-day Snapping. People don’t even think of using them when they could. And while what they produce is beautiful, the slides get tapped past and disappear just like any other photo or video.

Instagram could have become Photoshop. Its early photo-only feed’s editing filters and brightness sliders pointed in that direction. Instead, it chose to focus not on the “visual” but the “communication.” Instagram increasingly treats Stories as a two-way connection between creators and fans, or between friends. It’s not just one-to-many. It’s many-to-one, as well.

Instagram Stories arrived three years after Snapchat Stories, yet it was the first to let you tag friends so they’d get a notification. Now those friends can repost Stories you tag them in, or public posts on which they want to comment. You could finally dunk on other Instagrammers like you do with quote-tweets. It built polls with sliders friends can move to give you feedback about “how ridiculous is my outfit today?” Music stickers let you give a corny joke a corny soundtrack or share the epic song you heard in your head while looking out upon a beautiful landscape. And most recently, it launched the Question sticker so you can query friends through your Story and then share their answers there too. Suddenly, anyone could star in their own “Ask Me Anything.”

None of these Instagram tools require much “skill.” They’re designed not for designers, but for normal people trying to convey how they feel about the world around them. Since we’re social creatures, that perception is largely colored by someone’s friends or audience. Instagram lets you make them part of the Story. And the result is a product that grabs non-users or casual users and pulls them deeper into the Instagram universe, exposing people to the joy of creating something that lasts until tomorrow, not always forever.

Snap has been trying to get more interactive too, adding tagging for instance. It’s also got new multiplayer filter games called Snappables where you play with your face and can then post the footage to your Story. But again, they feel overly involved and therefore less accessible than where Instagram is going.

Stories express Instagram’s wild side

Mimicking Photoshop reinforces the idea that everything has to look polished. That’s the opposite of what Systrom was going for with the launch of Instagram Stories. “There will always be an element in any public broadcast system of trying to show off,” Systrom explains. “But what I see is it moving in the other direction. GIF stickers allow you to be way more informal than you used to be. Type mode means now people are just typing in thoughts rather than actually taking photos. Things like Superzoom with the TV effect or the beats — it’s anything but polished. If anything it’s a joke. Quantitatively people feel comfortable to post way more to Stories than to feed.”

Systrom is about to go on paternity leave, and has been using Stories from friends with kids to collect ideas about what to do with his own. When asked if he thinks Stories produces less of the dangerous envy inherent in the feeds of social media success theater we passively consume, Systrom tells me, “Just personally, it’s inspired me rather than it’s created any sense that I’m missing out.” Of course, that might be related to the fact that his life of attending the Met Gala and bicycling through Europe doesn’t leave much to envy.

AR filters have become table stakes for Stories. On the left, Instagram. On the right, Snapchat.

The sense of comfort powered by Instagram purposefully pushing Stories to diverge from its classy feed has contributed to its explosion in popularity — not just for Stories but Instagram as a whole. It now has more than 1 billion users, in part driven by it introducing Stories to developing countries Snapchat never penetrated.

“Remember how at the launch of Stories, I said it was a format and we want to make it original? And there was a bunch of criticism around us adopting this format?” Systrom chides, knowing a fair amount of that criticism came from me. “My response was this is a format and we’re going to innovate and make it our own. The whole idea there is to make it not just about photography but about expression. It’s a canvas for you to express yourself.”

At the time, Systrom also told me, regarding copying Snapchat, “They deserve all the credit.” But Stories has since emerged as how Instagram expressed itself too, allowing it to break away from the staid perfection of the feed, becoming something much more goofy.

That success has emboldened it to try something truly new. IGTV lets people share longer-form vertical videos up to an hour in length in an age when vertical is for 15-second Stories and lengthy clips only exist in landscape mode.

“What I’m most proud of is that Instagram took a stand and tried a brand new thing that is frankly hard to pull off. Full-screen vertical video that’s mobile only. That doesn’t exist anywhere else,” Systrom beams. “So the question is can we pull that off, and the early signs are really good.” We’ll see if that’s born out in the numbers. Stories benefited from early adopters immediately knowing what to post thanks to Snapchat. The price IGTV pays for originality is a steep learning curve.

Swallowing his pride saved Facebook

Last week when Facebook announced its revenue was decelerating as users shifted attention from its lucrative News Feed to Stories where it’s still educating advertisers, its share price tanked, deleting $120 billion in market cap. Yet imagine how much further it would have dropped if Systrom hadn’t been willing to put his pride aside, take Snapchat Stories, and give it the Insta spin? Instead, it led the way to Facebook now having more than 1.1 billion (duplicated) daily Stories users across its apps. That poises Facebook and Instagram to earn a ton off of Stories.

“There was a long time that desktop advertising worked really, really well, but we knew the future was mobile and we’d have to go there. There was some short-term pain. Everyone was worried that we wouldn’t monetize as well,” Systrom remembers. “We believe the future is the combination of feed and Stories, and it just takes time for Stories to get to the same level or even exceed feed.”

So does he feel vindicated in that once-derided decision to think of Stories not as Evan Spiegel’s property but a medium meant for everyone? “I don’t wake up everyday trying to feel vindicated. I wake up everyday trying to make sure our billion users have amazing stuff to use. I just feel lucky that they love what we produce,” Systrom says with a laugh. “I don’t know if that fits your definition of vindicated.”

Cisco is buying Duo Security for $2.35B in cash

Published August 2, 2018

Cisco today announced its intention to buy Ann Arbor, MI-based security firm, Duo Security. Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco is paying $2.35 billion in cash and assumed equity awards for Duo.

Duo Security was founded in 2010 by Dug Song and Jonathan Oberheide and went on to raise $121.M through several rounds of funding. The company has 700 employees with offices throughout the United States and in London, though the company has remained headquartered in Ann Arbor.

Co-founder and CEO Dug Song will continue leading Duo as its General Manager and will join Cisco’s Networking and Security business led by EVP and GM David Goeckeler. Cisco in a statement said they value Michigan’s “resources, rich talent pool, and infrastructure,” and remain committed to Duo’s investment and presence in the Great Lakes State.

The acquisition feels like a good fit for Cisco. Duo’s security apparatus lets employees use their own device for adaptive authentication. Instead of issuing key fobs with security codes, Duo’s solution works securely with any device. And within Cisco’s environment, the technology should feel like a natural fit for CTOs looking for secure two-factor authentication.

“Our partnership is the product of the rapid evolution of the IT landscape alongside a modernizing workforce, which has completely changed how organizations must think about security,” said Dug Song, Duo Security’s co-founder and chief executive officer. “Cisco created the modern IT infrastructure, and together we will rapidly accelerate our mission of securing access for all users, with any device, connecting to any application, on any network. By joining forces with the world’s largest networking and enterprise security company, we have a unique opportunity to drive change at a massive scale, and reshape the industry.”

Over the last few years, Cisco has made several key acquisitions: OpenDNS, Sourcefire, Cloudlock, and now Duo. This latest deal is expected to close in the first quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2019.

Duo Security’s Dug Song On Company Priorities | Disrupt NY 2017

Shedul, the booking platform for salons and spas, picks up $5M investment

Published August 2, 2018

Shedul, an online booking platform for salons and spas, has raised $5 million in funding. The round is led by Berlin’s Target Global, with participation from New York based FJ Labs. A number of individuals also invested personally, including Niklas Östberg (founder and CEO of Delivery Hero), and Hakan Koç (co-founder and co-CEO of Auto1 Group).

Launched in 2015, Shedul’s first product is a free SaaS designed to help salons and spas manage their day-to-day sales and operations. The platform’s features span managing appointment bookings, point-of-sale, customer records, inventory, and financial reporting. A second, more recent offering is the Fresha.com marketplace, and it here where the London-headquartered company generates revenue by charging merchants a small percentage fee on top of bookings.

“We’ve built the world’s best platform for beauty and wellness industry and given it to all businesses globally 100 percent subscription free,” says founder and CEO William Zeqiri. “Good free software has spread virally with users in the industry enabling us to acquire new merchants very fast”.

This has seen Shedul acquire salon and spa operator customers in more than 120 countries, primarily in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada. Around 6 million appointments are booked each month, growing at an average rate of 20 percent month-on-month, while the platform is on track to process $3.5 billion worth of appointment bookings by the end of 2018.

“Leveraging our existing pool of global merchants allowed us to bootstrap the consumer marketplace with a lot of liquidity,” explains Zeqiri. “This created additional value proposition for both merchants and marketplace customers. With our Free SaaS-enabled marketplace business model we are leveraging the critical mass of merchants and marketplace users to scale the platform exponentially”.

Currently in the initial rollout phase, Zeqiri says Fresha.com provides mobile apps for customers and real-time booking integrations through Instagram, Facebook and Google, along with in-app payment processing. It also incorporates intelligent features to help merchants grow revenues. This includes displaying price and availability options based on a customer’s purchase history and the merchant’s projected occupancy.

“With our two-sided Marketplace platform, we’re automating many processes of running a business in the beauty industry with powerful online booking features, marketing tools and access to our consumer marketplace to attract new clients. This frees up merchants to do what they do best and spend more face time with customers,” adds the Shedul CEO.

“We have salons where 80 percent of their bookings are now made though our online marketplace Fresha.com. Our technology helps businesses optimize their schedule with real-time online availability; in some cases it has increased merchant revenues more than 30 percent”.

Shedul counts its main competitors in the U.S. as MindBody, Vagaro, and StyleSeat. In Europe, the startup competes most directly with marketplace TreatWell.

Meanwhile, Shedul says the new capital will be used for product development and to support the continued rollout of the new marketplace offering. It brings the total amount raised by the company to over $11 million to date and should see it through to an upcoming Series B round.

RideOS raises $25M to become the traffic control center for self-driving cars

Published August 2, 2018

A mere sprinkling of autonomous vehicles exist in a few dozen cities today. A smattering in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. A dusting in the greater Phoenix area and Pittsburgh. A few drops in Boston, Detroit, Gothenburg, Shenzhen and Singapore.

And none of them — at least not yet — have been deployed as a true commercial enterprise.

While the bulk of this nascent industry fixates on the system of sensors, maps and AI necessary for vehicles to drive without a human behind the wheel, the founders of startup RideOS are directing their efforts to the day when fleets of self-driving cars hit the streets.

It’s there, where human-driven and automated vehicles will be forced to mingle, that RideOS co-founders Chris Blumenberg and Justin Ho see opportunity. And so do investors.

The company, which has existed for all of 12 months, has raised $25 million in a Series B funding round led by Next47, the venture arm of Siemens. Sequoia, an existing investor, and Singapore-based ST Ventures, also participated in the round.

The Series B round brings the company’s total funding to $34 million. RideOS announced in June that it was partnering with Ford Motor subsidiary Autonomic and had raised $9 million in a Series A round led by Sequoia Capital.

In July, RideOS announced it had partnered with ST Engineering to accelerate the deployment of autonomous vehicles in Singapore.

What did they build anyway?

Blumenberg and Ho contend that unless there’s a coordinating layer that can communicate information between all automated vehicles — like say how air traffic control works in aviation — there will be traffic congestion and accidents.

The founders, who met at Uber Advanced Technologies Group, have developed a cloud-based fleet-management platform that pulls mapping, traffic and detection data to suggest to all self-driving vehicles operating in a given geography the safest, most efficient routes. The aim is to be an independent platform that can orchestrate communication between self-driving vehicle services that may be competitors.

RideOS is taking a similar approach to Waze, explained Blumenberg, the company’s CTO and a veteran of Apple. “Except we’re not relying on human input; we’re relying on things that can be detected automatically such as critical interventions or what is captured from computer vision or GPS data.”

Present-day platform

However, RideOS isn’t sitting around for a day when automated vehicles hit the road en mass. The company’s platform is designed to work for human-driven fleets too. RideOS has already signed partnerships with mobility companies, Ho said without naming them.

“We’re working on this grand future, but there are many, many use cases we can support prior to that,” Ho said.

RideOS plans to use the additional funds to expand its services to global transportation markets. It just so happens that a team within Next47 is dedicated to helping startups tap into Siemens’ global network. In other words, RideOS stands to benefit from Siemens’ global footprint and partnerships, in addition to its access to capital.

Next47 will also join the RideOS board and will be integral in guiding RideOS in European transportation markets, the company said.

“There’s a tremendous amount of innovation in AVs at the moment,” Mike Vernal, a new partner at Sequoia Capital who led the company’s Series A round, told TechCrunch. “There’s probably 50, 60, 70 teams working on getting a single autonomous vehicle working. But no one is focused on what happens next.”