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Samsung announces ‘Lite’ versions of the Galaxy S10 and Note 10

Published January 3, 2020

Seems Samsung couldn’t wait a few more days for CES to arrive. The hardware giant this morning just announced the launch of “Lite” versions of its popular handsets, designed to bring key features from the Galaxy S10 and Note 10, without breaking the bank.

The devices are a clear response to a sea change in consumer demand over the last several years. While Samsung has long offered mid-range devices, the additions of the Galaxy S10 Lite and Note 10 Lite are an appeal to users looking for something in the flagship ballpark. While Samsung has yet to offer specifics on pricing, one imagines they’ll fall somewhere between its mid-range A series and the $1,000+ cost of the high-end products.

Notably, both devices appear to feature actually the same display, a 6.7-inch full HD+ at 394 PPI, with a hole-punch “Infinity-O” camera up top. The downgraded screen is one of the clear cost-cutting measures here. Aside from some fairly minor spec differences, the Note’s S Pen and some camera differences appear to be the primary distinction between the products.

Both feature a three-camera array on a large, rectangular bump on the rear. Each version has their strengths. The S10 has a five-megapixel macro, 48-megapixel wide angel and 12-megapixel ultra wide (123-degree). The Note, meanwhile, has a 12-megapixel ultra wide, 12-megapixel wide-wide-angle and 12-megapixel telephoto.

Inside, both sport a hefty 4,500 mAh battery (with some differences from market to market), coupled with either 6 or 8GB of RAM and a default 128GB of storage. There’s some differences in the processor, though both are 64-bit octo-core models. They’ll both ship with Android 10.

“The Galaxy S and Galaxy Note devices have met consumer wants and demands around the world. These devices represent our continuous effort to deliver industry leading innovations, from performance and power to intelligence and services,” Mobile CEO DJ Koh said in a release tied to the news. “The Galaxy S10 Lite and Galaxy Note10 Lite will introduce those distinct key premium features that make up a Galaxy S and Galaxy Note experience.”

That’s about all we know for now on either, though one imagines that Samsung will offer up more info, including pricing and availability, next week at CES. From the looks of it, both prices appear to still be fairly premium (more after some hands-on time next week), which likely means the pricing won’t vary too far from the premium models.

We’ve written plenty about slowing smartphone sales in the past couple of years. There are plenty of factors driving the trends, including slowed pace of innovation and longer shelf lives for older models, but the tendency of big companies to bump up premium prices above $1,000 is a pretty key factor. Google, for one, has found success with its Pixel A series, helping jumpstart slow sales. Samsung has previously taken a swing at the market with the Galaxy S10e, though the product was still positioned alongside its premium devices. The downgraded display puts the device in the company of products like Apple’s iPhone XR and 11.

ByteDance & TikTok have secretly built a deepfakes maker

Published January 3, 2020

TikTok parent company ByteDance has built technology to let you insert your face into videos starring someone else. TechCrunch has learned that ByteDance has developed an unreleased feature using life-like deepfakes technology that the app’s code refers to as Face Swap. Code in both TikTok and its Chinese sister app Douyin asks users to take a multi-angle biometric scan of their face, then choose from a selection of videos they want to add their face to and share.

With ByteDance’s new Face Swap feature, users scan themselves, pick a video and have their face overlaid on the body of someone in the clip

The deepfakes feature, if launched in Douyin and TikTok, could create a more controlled environment where face swapping technology plus a limited selection of source videos can be used for fun instead of spreading misinformation. It might also raise awareness of the technology so more people are aware that they shouldn’t believe everything they see online. But it’s also likely to heighten fears about what ByteDance could do with such sensitive biometric data — similar to what’s used to set up Face ID on iPhones.

Several other tech companies have recently tried to consumerize watered-down versions of deepfakes. The app Morphin lets you overlay a computerized rendering of your face on actors in GIFs. Snapchat offered a FaceSwap option for years that would switch the visages of two people in frame, or replace one on camera with one from your camera roll, and there are standalone apps that do that too, like Face Swap Live. Then last month, TechCrunch spotted Snapchat’s new Cameos for inserting a real selfie into video clips it provides, though the results aren’t meant to look confusingly realistic.

Most problematic has been Chinese deepfakes app Zao, which uses artificial intelligence to blend one person’s face into another’s body as they move and synchronize their expressions. Zao went viral in September despite privacy and security concerns about how users’ facial scans might be abused. Zao was previously blocked by China’s WeChat for presenting “security risks.” [Correction: While “Zao” is mentioned in the discovered code, it refers to the general concept rather than a partnership between ByteDance and Zao.]

But ByteDance could bring convincingly life-like deepfakes to TikTok and Douyin, two of the world’s most popular apps with over 1.5 billion downloads.

Zao in the Chinese iOS App Store

Hidden inside TikTok and Douyin

TechCrunch received a tip about the news from Israeli in-app market research startup Watchful.ai. The company had discovered code for the deepfakes feature in the latest version of TikTok and Douyin’s Android apps. Watchful.ai was able to activate the code in Douyin to generate screenshots of the feature, though it’s not currently available to the public.

First, users scan their face into TikTok. This also serves as an identity check to make sure you’re only submitting your own face so you can’t make unconsented deepfakes of anyone else using an existing photo or a single shot of their face. By asking you to blink, nod and open and close your mouth while in focus and proper lighting, Douyin can ensure you’re a live human and create a manipulable scan of your face that it can stretch and move to express different emotions or fill different scenes.

You’ll then be able to pick from videos ByteDance claims to have the rights to use, and it will replace with your own the face of whomever is in the clip. You can then share or download the deepfake video, though it will include an overlayed watermark the company claims will help distinguish the content as not being real. I received confidential access to videos made by Watchful using the feature, and the face swapping is quite seamless. The motion tracking, expressions and color blending all look very convincing.

Watchful also discovered unpublished updates to TikTok and Douyin’s terms of service that cover privacy and usage of the deepfakes feature. Inside the U.S. version of TikTok’s Android app, English text in the code explains the feature and some of its terms of use:

Your facial pattern will be used for this feature. Read the Drama Face Terms of Use and Privacy Policy for more details. Make sure you’ve read and agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy before continuing. 1. To make this feature secure for everyone, real identity verification is required to make sure users themselves are using this feature with their own faces. For this reason, uploaded photos can’t be used; 2. Your facial pattern will only be used to generate face-change videos that are only visible to you before you post it. To better protect your personal information, identity verification is required if you use this feature later. 3. This feature complies with Internet Personal Information Protection Regulations for Minors. Underage users won’t be able to access this feature. 4. All video elements related to this feature provided by Douyin have acquired copyright authorization.

ZHEJIANG, CHINA – OCTOBER 18 2019 Two U.S. senators have sent a letter to the U.S. national intelligence agency saying TikTok could pose a threat to U.S. national security and should be investigated. Visitors visit the booth of Douyin (Tiktok) at the 2019 Smart Expo in Hangzhou, east China’s Zhejiang province, Oct. 18, 2019.- PHOTOGRAPH BY Costfoto / Barcroft Media via Getty Images.

A longer terms of use and privacy policy was also found in Chinese within Douyin. Translated into English, some highlights from the text include:

“The ‘face-changing’ effect presented by this function is a fictional image generated by the superimposition of our photos based on your photos. In order to show that the original work has been modified and the video generated using this function is not a real video, we will mark the video generated using this function. Do not erase the mark in any way.”
“The information collected during the aforementioned detection process and using your photos to generate face-changing videos is only used for live detection and matching during face-changing. It will not be used for other purposes . . . And matches are deleted immediately and your facial features are not stored.”
“When you use this function, you can only use the materials provided by us, you cannot upload the materials yourself. The materials we provide have been authorized by the copyright owner”.
“According to the ‘Children’s Internet Personal Information Protection Regulations’ and the relevant provisions of laws and regulations, in order to protect the personal information of children / youths, this function restricts the use of minors”.

We reached out to TikTok and Douyin for comment regarding the deepfakes feature, when it might launch, how the privacy of biometric scans are protected and the age limit. However, TikTok declined to answer those questions. Instead, a spokesperson insisted that “after checking with the teams I can confirm this is definitely not a function in TikTok, nor do we have any intention of introducing it. I think what you may be looking at is something slated for Douyin – your email includes screenshots that would be from Douyin, and a privacy policy that mentions Douyin. That said, we don’t work on Douyin here at TikTok.” They later told TechCrunch that “The inactive code fragments are being removed to eliminate any confusion,” which implicitly confirms that Face Swap code was found in TikTok.

A Douyin spokesperson tells TechCrunch “Douyin follows the laws and regulations of the jurisdictions in which it operates, which is China.” They denied that the Face Swap terms of service appear in TikTok despite TechCrunch reviewing code from the app showing those terms of service and the feature’s functionality.

This is suspicious, and doesn’t explain why code for the deepfakes feature and special terms of service in English for the feature appear in TikTok, and not just Douyin, where the app can already be activated and a longer terms of service was spotted. TikTok’s U.S. entity has previously denied complying with censorship requests from the Chinese government in contradiction to sources who told The Washington Post that TikTok did censor some political and sexual content at China’s behest.

Consumerizing deepfakes

It’s possible that the deepfakes Face Swap feature never officially launches in China or the U.S. But it’s fully functional, even if unreleased, and demonstrates ByteDance’s willingness to embrace the controversial technology despite its reputation for misinformation and non-consensual pornography. At least it’s restricting the use of the feature by minors, only letting you face-swap yourself, and preventing users from uploading their own source videos. That avoids it being used to create dangerous misinformational videos like the slowed down one making House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seem drunk, or clips of people saying things as if they were President Trump.

“It’s very rare to see a major social networking app restrict a new, advanced feature to their users 18 and over only,” Watchful.ai co-founder and CEO Itay Kahana tells TechCrunch. “These deepfake apps might seem like fun on the surface, but they should not be allowed to become trojan horses, compromising IP rights and personal data, especially personal data from minors who are overwhelmingly the heaviest users of TikTok to date.”

TikTok has already been banned by the U.S. Navy and ByteDance’s acquisition and merger of Musical.ly into TikTok is under investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in The United States. Deepfake fears could further heighten scrutiny.

With the proper safeguards, though, face-changing technology could usher in a new era of user-generated content where the creator is always at the center of the action. It’s all part of a new trend of personalized media that could be big in 2020. Social media has evolved from selfies to Bitmoji to Animoji to Cameos, and now consumerized deepfakes. When there are infinite apps and videos and notifications to distract us, making us the star could be the best way to hold our attention.

How two-year-old Loft nabbed $175M led by Andreessen Horowitz

Published January 3, 2020

Loft may have better product market fit in Brazil than Opendoor does in the U.S. And now the São Paulo-based property tech company has growth funding to prove it.

Andreessen Horowitz is doubling down on its first Brazil investment with Loft, a two-year-old real estate marketplace. The $175 million Series C was co-led by Vulcan Capital.

In the U.S., sites like Opendoor give us visibility into how much your house or properties you’re interested in are worth. That transparency doesn’t exist in Latin America.

Loft founder and co-CEO Mate Pencz describes the residential real estate market in Latin America as a $6 trillion opportunity. As it exists now, lack of data transparency around property listings results in low-quality listings, disproportionately high asking prices and prolonged selling times. This creates a painful experience for buyers, sellers and brokers. The market is locked up, but Loft thinks it can create transparency and liquidity with open data sets for property value.

Loft has been supported by some pretty big Silicon Valley names since its genesis in 2018. Loft raised equity capital from angel investors such as Max Levchin of PayPal, Joe Lonsdale of Palantir, Opendoor founder Eric Wu, Mike Krieger of Instagram, David Vélez of Nubank and Josh Kushner of Thrive Capital, whom Pencz met during undergrad studies at Harvard. It helped that Loft was not Pencz’s first entrepreneurial rodeo — the founder started web-printing company Printi, which exited to Vistaprint in 2014 for a $25 million stake.

Growth-stage funding will enable Loft to scale

Pencz says they’ve transacted on 1,000 properties in their key market of São Paulo, and plans to tackle new cities with the “Uber growth model” of replicating the same service in new cities, like Mexico City. Loft is currently operative in Brazil, and has big plans for Mexico in 2020. Penzc has poached the Latin American head of Uber Eats, Juan Pablo Ramos, to launch Loft’s services in Mexico City within the next two to four months. As Loft mobilizes in Mexico, this could mean trouble for Flat, an existing Opendoor clone in Mexico, which will now fight for market share against a heavily funded competitor.

Loft’s São Paulo HQ

When it comes to marketing, Loft isn’t thinking about Facebook or SEO performance advertising. Pencz sees more value in physically integrating the Loft brand into the fabric of new neighborhoods through festival sponsorships and community events, while leveraging broker channels. “Partnering with brokers and being perceived as a positive brand with a high NPS are the two key pillars of Loft’s expansion strategy,” says Pencz.

The founders began by physically measuring buildings and making estimates about how much houses and apartments were worth. The founders didn’t stop there — they envision the future of Loft as a one-stop shop with services like renovations, property financing for mortgages and insurance through banks. The company wants to completely upend real estate in Latin America, and those big ambitions have piqued investor interest.

Andreessen Horowitz and Vulcan Capital co-led the Series C, with participation from QED Investors, Fifth Wall Ventures, Thrive Capital, Valor Capital and Monashees.

So, what is a16z’s Latin America strategy?

Andreessen Horowitz general partner Alex Rampell notes that while Loft marked the firm’s entry into Brazil, the fund has been active in Latin America for a few years: a16z invested in Colombia’s delivery unicorn Rappi, Uruguayan restaurant management platform Meitre and Colombian point of sale lender ADDI. And, a16z joined in Loft’s $70 million Series B that closed in March 2019.

Why is Andreessen Horowitz (and everyone else) investing in Latin America now?

Rampell, who previously invested in Opendoor and sits on the board of TransferWise, says that a16z doesn’t really have an investment strategy when it comes to Latin America. Instead, the idea with Loft was that while the iBuyer Opendoor for transactional multiple listing services isn’t by any means a proprietary business model, it may work better in a country like Brazil — where buyers and sellers are slowed down by bureaucratic policies and lack of fair market value data — than in the U.S. To put it simply, Loft has better product market fit in Brazil than Opendoor does in the U.S.

Loft hopes its customer-friendly Nubank-esque branding will win over new users

Rampell references the U.S.’s Groupon and Korea’s Coupang for comparison. The Groupon model blew up in Asia as Coupang’s valuation reached $9 billion. Groupon rose fast and fell hard, and now its founders are on to their next entrepreneurial ventures.

“There’s a lot of value in multiple listings services, and the opportunity might be better for a market like Brazil, especially if you back the right entrepreneurs — because that’s all that really matters in the end,” says Rampell.

Loft monetizes through the sale of properties and ancillary products. Cuts from referral and partnership fees from banks or insurance companies will continue to help Loft monetize, in addition to the $275 million in capital it has raised during its two short years in existence.

Pencz declined to comment on Loft’s valuation.

Samsung shipped more than 6.7 million Galaxy 5G smartphones in 2019

Published January 3, 2020

Samsung Electronics announced today that it shipped more than 6.7 million Galaxy 5G smartphones in 2019, surpassing expectations set by the company earlier.

During remarks at IFA in September, Samsung Electronics vice president JuneHee Lee suggested that more than two million Samsung 5G smartphones had already been sold, and that the company expected to double that number by the end of the year.

The company also said today that its devices made up 53.9% of the global 5G smartphone market, according to a report by Counterpoint Research. It will release its next 5G device, the Galaxy Tab S6 5G, in South Korea during the first quarter of 2020.

Let’s talk Samsung Galaxy S11

The company is expected to launch Galaxy S11 models with 5G in February. While no iPhones currently have 5G support, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo forecast in July that all three versions of the device expected to be unveiled by Apple this year will support 5G. The release of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865 and 765 means more manufacturers will be able to offer mid- and high-tier smartphones with 5G support this year, and that may help revive sluggish sales.

What we know about Qualcomm’s next-gen Snapdragon 865 and 765 chips

These 10 enterprise M&A deals totaled over $40B in 2019

Published January 3, 2020

It would be hard to top the 2018 enterprise M&A total of a whopping $87 billion, and predictably this year didn’t come close. In fact, the top 10 enterprise M&A deals in 2019 were less than half last year’s, totaling $40.6 billion.

This year’s biggest purchase was Salesforce buying Tableau for $15.7 billion, which would have been good for third place last year behind IBM’s mega deal plucking Red Hat for $34 billion and Broadcom grabbing CA Technologies for $18.8 billion.

Contributing to this year’s quieter activity was the fact that several typically acquisitive companies — Adobe, Oracle and IBM — stayed mostly on the sidelines after big investments last year. It’s not unusual for companies to take a go-slow approach after a big expenditure year. Adobe and Oracle bought just two companies each with neither revealing the prices. IBM didn’t buy any.

Microsoft didn’t show up on this year’s list either, but still managed to pick up eight new companies. It was just that none was large enough to make the list (or even for them to publicly reveal the prices). When a publicly traded company doesn’t reveal the price, it usually means that it didn’t reach the threshold of being material to the company’s results.

As always, just because you buy it doesn’t mean it’s always going to integrate smoothly or well, and we won’t know about the success or failure of these transactions for some years to come. For now, we can only look at the deals themselves.

Exhibit your startup at TC Sessions: Mobility 2020

Published January 2, 2020

Mobility mavericks, get ready to strut your stuff at TC Sessions: Mobility 2020 on May 14. Don’t miss our second annual day-long conference devoted to technologies that move people and parcels around the world in new, exciting ways.

More than 1,000 of the industry’s mightiest minds, makers, innovators and investors will converge in San Jose for a mobile mind meld. That spells opportunity for early-stage mobility startup founders. Buy an Early-Stage Startup Exhibitor Package and plant your company in front of the influencers who can drive your mobility dreams to the next level.

Whether you’re racing to perfect autonomous vehicles or flying cars, developing AI-based applications, focused on improving battery technology — or you want to recruit a few brilliant engineers — exhibiting at TC Sessions: Mobility offers invaluable exposure and opportunity.

Your exhibitor package includes a 30-inch high-boy table, power, linen and signage. Even better — it includes four tickets to the event. That’s four times the networking power. And it gives you time to take in some of the show’s many panel discussions, fireside chats and workshops.

Because, of course, the day will be loaded with top-notch speakers who, along with TC editors, will discuss the opportunities and challenges — social, economic and regulatory — that come from creating new mobile paradigms.

We’re building our slate of speakers for this year’s event, and we’ll be announcing them on a rolling basis in the coming months. Know someone who should be onstage at this event? You can nominate a speaker here. In the meantime, here are just a couple of examples of what went down at last year’s Session.

Alisyn Malek, co-founder and COO of May Mobility, an autonomous transportation startup, talked about making transportation easier and accessible for everyone, and Jesse Levinson, Zoox CTO and co-founder, shared specifics on the company’s autonomous vehicle hardware design.

And here are just a few more of the speakers who graced the TC Sessions: Mobility 2019 stage:

Seleta Reynolds, head of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation
Caroline Samponaro, Lyft, head of Micromobility Policy
Ted Serbinski, Techstars, founder and managing director of The Mobility Program
Sarah Smith, Bain Capital Ventures, partner

You get the idea. And you can expect more high-caliber technologists, policy makers and investors to be in the house when TC Sessions: Mobility takes place May 14, 2020.

Plenty of reason to attend — and even more reason to exhibit. But don’t wait. Exhibition space is limited, and so are the number of packages available. Reserve your demo table here, and get ready to move your early-stage mobility startup in a whole new direction.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Mobility 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Apply to present your startup at TechCrunch’s CES Pitch Night

Published January 2, 2020

CES is a magical place full of gizmos, gadgets and communicable diseases.

TechCrunch is hosting another pitch-off event this year. Called Pitch Night, select early-stage companies will take the stage and have 60 seconds to present their wares to TechCrunch editorial and industry experts.

This event is free. Obtain a ticket here. Want to pitch at the event? Apply below.

This Vegas Pitch Night isn’t a polished show with massive screens, celebrity guests and life-changing cash prizes. This event is quick and efficient, held in a co-working event space outside of downtown Vegas. There will be coolers of beer, sodas and whatever snacks we can find at a 7-11.

We’ve held these events for years and they’re among our favorite to host. There are countless startups in town for CES and we just want to hang out away from the noise of the Vegas strip.

Space is very limited. Register as soon as possible.

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Moving storage in-house helped Dropbox thrive

Published January 2, 2020

Back in 2013, Dropbox was scaling fast.

The company had grown quickly by taking advantage of cloud infrastructure from Amazon Web Services (AWS), but when you grow rapidly, infrastructure costs can skyrocket, especially when approaching the scale Dropbox was at the time. The company decided to build its own storage system and network — a move that turned out to be a wise decision.

In a time when going from on-prem to cloud and closing private data centers was typical, Dropbox took a big chance by going the other way. The company still uses AWS for certain services, regional requirements and bursting workloads, but ultimately when it came to the company’s core storage business, it wanted to control its own destiny.

Storage is at the heart of Dropbox’s service, leaving it with scale issues like few other companies, even in an age of massive data storage. With 600 million users and 400,000 teams currently storing more than 3 exabytes of data (and growing) if it hadn’t taken this step, the company might have been squeezed by its growing cloud bills.

Controlling infrastructure helped control costs, which improved the company’s key business metrics. A look at historical performance data tells a story about the impact that taking control of storage costs had on Dropbox.

Why Dropbox decided to drop AWS and build its own infrastructure and network

The numbers

In March of 2016, Dropbox announced that it was “storing and serving” more than 90% of user data on its own infrastructure for the first time, completing a 3-year journey to get to this point. To understand what impact the decision had on the company’s financial performance, you have to examine the numbers from 2016 forward.

There is good financial data from Dropbox going back to the first quarter of 2016 thanks to its IPO filing, but not before. So, the view into the impact of bringing storage in-house begins after the project was initially mostly completed. By examining the company’s 2016 and 2017 financial results, it’s clear that Dropbox’s revenue quality increased dramatically. Even better for the company, its revenue quality improved as its aggregate revenue grew.

Kicking off 2020 with 4 new members of the $100M ARR club

Published January 2, 2020

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

Today we’re adding four new names to the growing $100 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) club. The firms — Sisense, SiteMinder, Monday.com, and Lemonade — add diversity to our current group of yet-private companies which have reached the nine-figure recurring revenue threshold.

Our goal in tracking the companies in this high-flying cohort is to keep tabs on the private firms (often unicorns, it should be said) that could go public if needed. While not every unicorn will or could go public, companies with nine-figure ARR have a clear path to the public markets provided that their economics are in reasonable shape.

And we’ve seen some remarkably efficient companies meet the mark, including Egnyte with just $137.5 million raised, and Braze, with only $175 million on its books. For growth-oriented, venture-backed companies, those are efficient results.

But let’s add a few more members to the club today. Please meet our new centurions, centaurs, or whatever we end up calling them.

Sisense: more than $100 million ARR

Sisense is a business intelligence company that merged with Periscope Data earlier this year. The combined firm has raised just over $200 million, according to Crunchbase, with the lion’s share of that landing in Sisense’s column (about $175 million).

What’s notable about the combination is that the two firms were public about saying that, when brought together, they would have combined ARR of $100 million. That was back in May. Today, Sisense has crested the $100 million mark by itself, according to an interview with TechCrunch. With Periscope added to the mix the company’s total ARR is naturally higher.

Sisense had a few original goals according to CEO Amir Orad, including helping businesses “take complex data and bring it together to get insights.” Its second focus is helping companies “take complex data sets and build [them out] as an analytical application in their products,” he said.

Periscope came into the picture when Orad and the smaller company’s CEO Harry Glaser (now Sisense’s CMO) started talking as friends about their respective markets. According to Orad, Glaser outlined a new sort of organization being built inside some companies that “were not traditional BI teams” or “traditional product teams,” but instead brought together “data engineers and data scientists and very capable individuals who [wanted] to make sense of [the] data sitting in the cloud.” Periscope had built “a very impressive business” supporting those new organizations, with “many hundreds of customers,” Orad said.

That meant that Sisense’s pair of focuses were somewhat two of out three, making the corporate combination an obvious bet.

Regarding what changed as Sisense grew, cresting the $50 million ARR mark and later the $100 million ARR mark, Orad told TechCrunch that what differed was “scale,” saying that at its size “what you do impacts more people, more individuals, more companies, [and] more customers.” (I have interesting notes on how the two companies managed their combination from a culture perspective, let me know if you’d like to read them.)

SiteMinder: AU$100 million ARR

The first Australian member of the nine-figure ARR club is SiteMinder, which we’re letting in on a technicality; the firm’s ARR figure is in Australian dollars, which works out to around $70 million USD. However, its growth curve appears steep so we’re not too worried about including it a little early from a domestic dollar perspective.

Lowkey.gg is an esports tournament platform for adult gamers

Published January 2, 2020

It’s tough to be a competitive gamer once you’re an adult. Simply fitting tournament time into a busy schedule is challenge enough, but even if you can make the time, where do you go to find other adults who are competitively playing the games you love?

That’s where Lowkey.gg comes in. Lowkey.gg is a tournament platform for adult gamers. The company is particularly focused on helping professional organizations set up their esports squads just like company basketball or softball teams.

One of the challenges here is that it’s incredibly difficult for adult gamers to find each other. Most of them don’t usually broadcast their affinity for video games. Searching for other competitive gamers who are above the age of 18 is a bit of a lost cause.

The hope for Lowkey is that they can connect adult gamers with one another to get the most out of their gaming experience. Everyone playing through Lowkey must be 18 years of age or older and have a full-time job.

Users can register as a solo gamer for $39, plus a subscription fee of $13/month, and get automatically matched with a team. Lowkey takes into account things like location, job, alma mater and other bits of information (all shown on your public Lowkey profile) to create teams with like-minded players. The company says this transparency reduces the toxicity around teammates. Conversely, users also can form a squad in real life and sign up as a pre-made team for $195/month.

Thus far, Lowkey has signed up teams from Google, Apple, Robinhood and Twitch.

Lowkey is launching with League of Legends as its first game, and Season 1 starts on January 13.

Seasons last a minimum of eight weeks, with players scheduled to play for one hour one night a week. Lowkey has also built a relatively sophisticated Discord chatbot that lets users check in to say they’re ready for a game and automatically puts the teams in a chat together to coordinate the match.

Like many startups, Lowkey is actually the result of a pivot. The company was originally called Camelot.

In March of 2017, Camelot launched out of YC to allow YouTube and Twitch audiences to pay to see what they want. Users could submit bounties to see their favorite YouTuber play a game with pistols only, or to play a game while standing on a skateboard.

Turns out, there were two big issues. Co-founder Jesse Zhang explained that it wasn’t sustainable to build a platform on top of a platform, particularly a platform that is incredibly top heavy and potentially overhyped.

“Sometimes hype can be misaligned with the size of the market, and it felt like streaming was one example of that,” said Zhang. “Even after we organically got several really large streamers using it, and the product performed almost perfectly, the volume is still not nearly the scale that you could turn into a real business.”

Which brings us to the second issue. The money that flows through Twitch from viewers to streamers is almost always based on altruism and emotion. It’s exciting to hear your favorite streamer thank you for a $5 donation or gifted sub. Viewers aren’t paying for the content; they’re paying for a connection.

So Camelot quickly went back to the drawing board and came out on the other side as Lowkey.gg.

Lowkey has raised capital but declined to share the amount. After the launch of League of Legends, the company plans to launch seasons for other titles, including Overwatch, TFT, DotA and Smash Ultimate.