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Google Cloud’s COO departs after 7 months

Published July 3, 2018

At the end of last November, Google announced that Diane Bryant, who at the time was on a leave of absence from her position as the head of Intel’s data center group, would become Google Cloud’s new COO. This was a major coup for Google, but it wasn’t meant to last. After only seven months on the job, Bryant has left Google Cloud, as Business Insider first reported today.

“We can confirm that Diane Bryant is no longer with Google. We are grateful for the contributions she made while at Google and we wish her the best in her next pursuit,” a Google spokesperson told us when we reached out for comment.

The reasons for Bryant’s departure are currently unclear. It’s no secret that Intel is looking for a new CEO and Bryant would fit the bill. Intel also famously likes to recruit insiders as its leaders, though I would be surprised if the company’s board had already decided on a replacement. Bryant spent more than 25 years at Intel and her hire at Google looked like it would be a good match, especially given that Google’s position behind Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud wars means that it needs all the executive talent it can get.

When Bryant was hired, Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene noted that “Diane’s strategic acumen, technical knowledge and client focus will prove invaluable as we accelerate the scale and reach of Google Cloud.” According to the most recent analyst reports, Google Cloud’s market share has ticked up a bit — and its revenue has increased at the same time — but Google remains a distant third in the competition and it doesn’t look like that’s changing anytime soon.

Alan launches Alan Map to find doctors around you

Published July 3, 2018

Health insurance startup Alan has launched a new product in France called Alan Map. It’s a dead simple way to find GPs, dentists, ophthalmologists and more around you.

You first type your address and the name of a doctor or the type of doctor you’re looking for. There’s a big map front and center with dots representing doctors around you.

If you click on a dot or a name in the right column, you can learn more about this doctor. Alan Map currently lists the name, address, phone number, opening hours and average price. You also can find out if you can see this doctor without booking an appointment, and if they accept national healthcare cards.

This is already so much better than searching through a directory. But Alan doesn’t plan to stop there. The company will soon launch an integration with MonDocteur so you can book an appointment from Alan Map directly. MonDocteur is one of the leading healthcare scheduling services in France along with Doctolib.

But compared to Doctolib and MonDocteur, Alan Map doesn’t stop at doctors that use their own scheduling systems. Alan has partnered with the official health directory from France’s national healthcare system. You’ll find more than 245,000 health professionals on Alan Map, with pricing information for nearly half of them.

The main advantage compared to Ameli.fr is that it looks much better and it’s much easier to find what you’re looking for. Design can be important, even for health products. It can be the main difference between an obscure directory on an official website and a useful map.

Eventually, Alan plans to add more data to its mapping product. For instance, as Alan is a health insurance startup, the company knows how much users are paying when they visit a specific doctor. You could anonymize and leverage this data to get exact pricing information.

Alan Map is a free product. It’s a good way to promote the company’s health insurance product and get inbound traffic. For instance, it should give an SEO boost and you might see Alan in your Google search results.

As for Alan users, they can find a doctor and know how much they’ll get back from the national healthcare system and from Alan. This way, there’s no surprise when you get reimbursed.

Planck Re scores $12M Series A to simplify insurance underwriting with artificial intelligence

Published July 3, 2018

Planck Re, a startup that wants to simplify insurance underwriting with artificial intelligence, announced today that it has raised a $12 million Series A. The funding was led by Arbor Ventures, with participation from Viola FinTech and Eight Roads. Co-founder and CEO Elad Tsur tells TechCrunch that the capital will be used to expand Planck Re’s product line into more segments, including retail, contractors, IT and manufacturing, and grow its research and development team in Israel and North American sales team.

The Tel Aviv and New York-based startup plans to focus first on its business in the United States, where it has already launched pilot programs with several insurance carriers. Tsur says that Planck Re’s clients generally use it to help underwrite insurance for small to medium-sized businesses, including business owner policies, which cover property and liability risks, and workers’ compensation.

Founded in 2016 by Tsur, Amir Cohen and David Schapiro, Planck Re poses its technology as a more efficient and accurate alternative to the lengthy risk assessment questionnaire insurers ask clients to fill out. Its platform crawls the internet for publicly available data, including images, text, videos, social media profiles and public records, to build profiles of SMBs seeking insurance coverage. Then it analyzes that data to help carriers figure out their potential risk.

Before launching Planck Re, Tsur and Cohen founded Bluetail, a data mining startup that was acquired by Salesforce in 2012, where it served as the base technology for Salesforce Einstein. Schapiro was previously CEO of financial analytics company Earnix.

There are already a handful of startups, including SoftBank-backed Lemonade, Trōv, Cover, Hippo and Swyfft, that use algorithms to make picking and buying insurance policies easier for consumers, but AI-based underwriting is still a nascent category. One example is Flyreel, which focuses on underwriting property insurance and recently signed a deal with Microsoft to accelerate its go-to-market strategy.

Tsur says Planck Re is developing more dedicated algorithms to meet the evolving needs of insurance providers. For example, many underwriters now want to know if clients in photography use aerial imaging equipment, so Planck Re’s imaging process capabilities automatically check images for that information.

He adds that being able to automate underwriting enables carriers to find new distribution channels, including allowing customers to apply for insurance online without needing to fill out any forms. Planck Re also continues to monitor and underwrite policies, which means if a customer’s risk profile changes, insurers can react quickly.

In a statement, Arbor Ventures vice president and head of Israel Lior Simon said, “We are excited to partner with Planck Re and the driven, entrepreneurial team. Insurance companies are thirsty for actionable data, to assess risk, gain real time insights and enhance customer understanding. Planck Re aims to empower them through a streamlined digital approach, which we believe will truly alter the insurance industry.”

A look back at HTC’s 10 most iconic devices

Published July 3, 2018

HTC is gone. The company of today is not the company that helped start the smartphone revolution. That’s a shame, too. In the early years of the smartphone, HTC released some of the best devices available.

Here’s a look back at 10 of the company’s most iconic devices.

Light is building a smartphone with five to nine cameras

Published July 3, 2018

Light, the company behind the wild L16 camera, is building a smartphone equipped with multiple cameras. According to The Washington Post, the company is prototyping a smartphone with five to nine cameras that’s capable of capturing a 64 megapixel shot.

The entire package is not much thicker than an iPhone X, the Post reports. The additional sensors are said to increase the phone’s low-light performance and depth effects and uses internal processing to stick the image together.

This is the logical end-point for Light. The company introduced the $1,950 L16 camera back in 2015 and starting shipping it in 2017. The camera uses 16 lenses to capture 52 megapixel imagery. The results are impressive, especially when the size of the camera is considered. It’s truly pocketable. Yet in the end, consumers want the convenience of a phone with the power of a dedicated camera.

Light is not alone in building a super cameraphone. Camera maker RED is nearing the release of its smartphone that rocks a modular lens system and can be used as a viewfinder for RED’s cinema cameras. Huawei also just released the P21 Pro that uses three lenses to give the user the best possible option for color, monochrome and zoom. Years ago, Nokia played with high megapixel phones, stuffing a 41 MP sensor in the Lumia 1020 and PureView 808.

Unfortunately, additional details about the Light phone are unavailable. It’s unclear when this phone will be released. We reached out to Light for comment and will update this report with its response.

Airbnb tests earlier payouts for hosts

Published July 3, 2018

Airbnb is testing a new payments feature for hosts, letting them get partially paid out at the time of booking.

This feature isn’t rolling out to everyone just yet, as Airbnb says that this is just a preliminary test to gauge interest. Invited hosts simply opt in to payout splitting to check out the feature.

Here’s how it works:

Normally, Airbnb hosts are paid 24 hours after their guest’s scheduled check-in time. With the new payouts test, hosts who have been invited and opt in will receive 50 percent of their cash three days after the guest has booked their stay, and the other half will be received 24 hours after check-in time.

For their trouble, Airbnb is taking a 1 percent fee of the booking subtotal for early payouts.

As per usual, hosts can opt out of early payouts at any time by making the change in their Payout Preferences.

If a booking is cancelled after an early payout has been received, the amount will be deducted from the host’s next booking.

This comes on the heels of Airbnb’s announcement in February to add new tiers and types of lodging to the platform, including boutique hotels and B&Bs. Airbnb classifies hosts with more than six listings on the platform as Professional Hosts, and early payouts are one way that Airbnb can help these hosts grow their business.

However, in certain housing-constrained markets like NYC, professional hosts aren’t necessarily welcome. In May, NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer released a report saying that Airbnb’s presence in NYC is driving up the cost of rent for full-time residents. The company and the Comptroller’s office went back and forth over the veracity of the report, but NYC isn’t the only market worried about the folks who make Airbnb their full-time job.

In 2017, the WSJ reported on a study surveying 100 of the largest metro areas in the U.S. that found that a 10 percent increase in Airbnb listings leads to a 0.39 percent increase in rent and a 0.64 percent increase in housing prices. That may sound small, but rental prices typically climbed by 2.2 percent per year without Airbnb, according to one of the survey’s authors. So Airbnb is accelerating the rate at which rental prices rise.

This very argument and the ensuing spats have led Airbnb to cut SF listings (almost in half) following the city’s kick-off of new short-term rental laws. And new, stricter laws may be coming to NYC.

Airbnb says that it works with its communities to stay on the right side of the law, but that professionally managed properties are integral in markets where tourism is a huge part of the economy.

“For decades, vacation rentals and professionally managed properties have been the backbone of the economy in vacation destinations like beach and ski towns and we welcome these types of listings in these types of communities,” said an Airbnb spokesperson. “Trials like these are one way we work to support our community. In some places, usually urban destinations, there can be rules around hosting multiple listings. We always want Airbnb to be a positive force in local communities and we make it clear to hosts that they need to follow these rules.”

The payouts test is geared toward professional hosts, but is being spread via an invite basis to both pro hosts and regular hosts.

Airwallex raises $80M for its international payment service for businesses

Published July 3, 2018

Airwallex, a three-year-old fintech startup focused on international payments for SMEs and businesses, is putting itself on the map after it raised an $80 million Series B round.

Based out of Melbourne, but with six offices in Asia and other parts of the world, Airwallex’s new funding round is the second-largest financing deal for an Australian startup in history. The round was led by existing investors Tencent, the $500 billion Chinese internet giant, and Sequoia China. Other participants included China’s Hillhouse, Horizons Ventures — the fund from Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-Shing — Indonesia-based Central Capital Ventura (BCA) and Australia’s Square Peg, a firm from Paul Bassat, who took recruitment firm Seek to IPO and is one of Australia’s highest-profile founders.

The financing takes Airwallex to $102 million raised. Tencent led a $13 million Series A in May 2017, while Square Peg added $6 million more via a Series A+ in December. Mastercard is also a backer; the finance giant uses Airwallex to handle its “Send” product, while Tencent uses the service to power an overseas remittance service for its WeChat app.

Airwallex handles cross-border transactions for companies that do business in multiple countries using international currencies. So it’s not unlike a TransferWise-style service for SMEs that lack the capital to develop a sophisticated (and expensive) international banking system of their own.

The service uses wholesale FX rates to route overseas payments back to a client’s domestic bank and is capable of processing “thousands of transactions per second,” according to the company. A use case example might include helping a China-based seller return money earned in the U.S. or Europe via Amazon or other e-commerce services, or route sales revenue back directly from their own website.

Airwallex CEO Jack Zhang (far right) onstage at TechCrunch Shenzhen in 2017

China is a key market for Airwallex — which was started by four Australian-Chinese founders — as well as the wider Asian region, and in particular Australia, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. With this new capital, Airwallex co-founder and CEO Jack Zhang said the company will increase its focus on Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, whilst also extending its business in Europe (where it has a London-based office) and pushing into North America.

Product R&D is shared across Melbourne and Shanghai, while Hong Kong accounts for business development, compliance and more, Zhang explained. However, Airwallex’s locations in London and San Francisco are likely to account for most of the upcoming headcount growth planned following this funding. Right now, Airwallex has around 100 staff, according to Zhang.

The company is also aiming to expand its product range.

The firm is in the process of applying for a virtual banking license in Hong Kong, a third-party payment license in mainland China and a cross-border Chinese yuan license. One goal, Zhang revealed, is to offer working capital loans to SMEs to help them scale their businesses to the next level. Airwallex is working with an undisclosed partner to underwrite deals in the future. Zhang explained that the company sees a gap in the market since banks don’t have access to critical data on clients for loan assessments.

More generally, he’s bullish for the future, despite Brexit and the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China.

“The trade war gives the Chinese yuan a lot of vitality, and we’ve seen more demand in the market. China’s belt road initiative has really taken off, too, and we’re seeing the impact in many, many of our payment corridors,” he explained. “Business has been booming, especially as traditional offline SMEs start to move online and go from domestic to global.”

“We want to be the backbone to support these new opportunities for businesses,” Zhang added.

MeetFrank nets $1.1M for its passive job matching chatbot

Published July 3, 2018

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, 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.

All charges against ex-Vungle CEO Zain Jaffer, including lewd act on a child, dismissed by judge

Published July 3, 2018

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.

Dell will soon be a public company (again)

Published July 3, 2018

Dell, which went private in one of the the largest leveraged buyouts in tech circa 2013, announced today that it will once again be going public through a relatively complex mechanism that will once again bring the company back onto the public markets with founder Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners largely in control.

Dell’s leveraged buyout largely marked the final page in the company’s storied history as a PC provider, going back to the old “dude, you’re getting a Dell” commercials. The company rode that wave to dominance, but as computing shifted to laptops, mobile phones, and complex operations were offloaded into cloud services like Amazon Web Services, Azure and Google Cloud, Dell found itself navigating a complex environment while having to make a significant business transition beyond the PC era. That meant Dell would be beholden to the whims of public markets, perhaps laden with short-term pessimism over the company’s urgent need to find a transition.

The transaction is actually an offer to buy shares that track the company’s involvement in VMWare, converting that tracking stock into Dell Technologies stock that would mark its return as a publicly-traded company. Those shares will end up traded on the NYSE, around five years later after its founder took the company private with Silver Lake Partners in a deal worth roughly $25 billion. Silver Lake Partners owns around 24% of the company, while Dell owns 72% and will continue to serve as the chairman and CEO of the company. This move helps the company bypass the IPO process, which would remove the whole time period of potential investors scrutinizing the company (which has taken on a substantial debt load).

Dell said in its most recent quarter it recorded revenue of $21.4 billion, up 19% year-over-year, and over the past 12 months the company generated $82.4 billion of revenue with a net loss of $2.3 billion. The company said it has also paid down $13 billion of gross debt since its combination with EMC back in 2016. All this has been part of the company’s transition to find new businesses beyond just selling computers, though there’s clearly still demand for those computers in offices around the world. As it has expanded into a broader provider of IT services, it’s potentially positioned itself as a modern enterprise tools provider, which would allow it to more securely navigate public markets while offering investors a way to correctly calibrate its value.