Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop service is now generally available

Published September 30, 2019

Microsoft today announced that Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD), its Azure-based system for virtualizing the Windows and Office user experience it announced last September, is now generally available. Using WVD, enterprises can give their employees access to virtualized applications and remote desktops, including the ability to provide multi-session Windows 10 experiences, something that sets Microsoft’s own apart from that of other vendors that offer virtualized Windows desktops and applications.

In addition to making the service generally available, Microsoft is also rolling it out globally, whereas the preview was U.S.-only and the original plan was to slowly roll it out globally. Scott Manchester, the principal engineering lead for WVD, also told me that more than 20,000 companies signed up for the preview. He also noted that Microsoft Teams is getting enhanced support in WVD with a significantly improved video conferencing experience.

Shortly after announcing the preview of WVD, Microsoft acquired a company called FSLogix, which specialized in provisioning the same kind of virtualized Windows environments that Microsoft offers through WVD. As Microsoft’s corporate VP for Microsoft 365 told me ahead of today’s announcement, the company took a lot of the know-how from FSLogix to ensure that the user experience on WVD is as smooth as possible.

Brad Anderson, CVP of Microsoft 365, noted that just as enterprises are getting more comfortable with moving some of their infrastructure to the cloud (and have others worry about managing it), there is now also growing demand from organizations that want this same experience for their desktop experiences. “They look at the cloud as a way of saying, ‘listen, let the experts manage the infrastructure. They can optimize it; they can fine-tune it; they can make sure that it’s all done right.’ And then I’ll just have a first-party service — in this case Microsoft — that I can leverage to simplify my life and enable me to spin up and down capacity on demand,” Anderson said. He also noted, though, that making sure that these services are always available is maybe even more critical than for other workloads that have moved to the cloud. If your desktop stops working, you can’t get much done, after all.

Anderson also stressed that if a customer wants a multi-session Windows 10 environment in the cloud, WVD is the only way to go because that is the only way to get a license to do so. “We’ve built the operating system, we built the public cloud, so that combination is going to be unique and this gives us the ability to make sure that that Windows 10 experience is the absolute best on top of that public cloud,” he noted.

He also stressed that the FSLogix acquisition enabled his team to work with the Office team to optimize the user experience there. Thanks to this, when you spin up a new virtualized version of Outlook, for example, it’ll just take a second or two to load instead of almost a minute.

A number of companies are also still looking to upgrade their old Windows 7 deployments. Microsoft will stop providing free security patches for them very soon, but on WVD, these users will still be able to get access to virtualized Windows 7 desktops with free extended security updates until January 2023. Anderson does not believe that this will be a major driver for WVD adoption, but he does see “pockets of customers who are working on their transition.”

Enterprises can access Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 7 Enterprise on WVD at no additional licensing cost (though, of course, the Azure resources they consume will cost them) if they have an eligible Windows 10 Enterprise or Microsoft 365 license.

WeWork withdraws its S-1 filing, will delay its IPO

Published September 30, 2019

WeWork’s parent organization The We Company just announced that it’s withdrawing the S-1 filing for its IPO.

The co-working company has had a turbulent month since the filing went public, around both the general state of its finances and the behavior of co-founder/CEO Adam Neumann.

As a result, Neumann stepped down down as CEO last week (he will continue to serve as non-executive chairman). In addition, the company is looking to focus on its core co-working business, which means it’s planning major layoffs and even reportedly looking to sell some of the companies it acquired over the last couple of years — namely Managed by Q, Conductor and Meetup.

So it was widely expected that The We Company would delay its IPO. Today, it made things official with the release of a statement from new co-CEOs Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham:

We have decided to postpone our IPO to focus on our core business, the fundamentals of which remain strong. We are as committed as ever to serving our members, enterprise customers, landlord partners, employees and shareholders. We have every intention to operate WeWork as a public company and look forward to revisiting the public equity markets in the future.

WeWork proves that (venture) capitalism works

Confluent adds free tier to Kafka real-time streaming data cloud service

Published September 30, 2019

When Confluent launched a cloud service in 2017, it was trying to reduce some of the complexity related to running a Kafka streaming data application. Today, it introduced a free tier to that cloud service. The company hopes to expand its market beyond large technology company customers, and the free tier should make it easier for smaller companies to get started.

The new tier provides up to $50 of service a month for up to three months. Company CEO Jay Kreps says that while $50 might not sound like much, it’s actually hundreds of gigabytes of throughput and makes it easy to get started with the tool.

“We felt like we can make this technology really accessible. We can make it as easy as we can. We want to make it something where you can just get going in seconds, and not have to pay anything to start building an application that uses real-time streams of data,” Kreps said.

Kafka has been available as an open-source product since 2011, so it’s been free to download, install and build applications, but still required a ton of compute and engineering resources to pull off. The cloud service was designed to simplify that, and the free tier lets developers get comfortable building a small application without making a large financial investment.

Once they get used to working with Kafka on the free version, users can then buy in whatever increments make sense for them, and only pay for what they use. It can be pennies’ worth of Kafka or hundreds of dollars, depending on a customer’s individual requirements. “After free, you can buy 11 cents’ worth of Kafka or you can buy it $10 worth, all the way up to these massive users like Lyft that use Confluent Cloud at huge scale as part of their ridesharing service,” he said.

While a free SaaS trial might feel like a common kind of marketing approach, Kreps says for a service like Kafka, it’s actually much more difficult to pull off. “With something like a distributed system where you get a whole chunk of infrastructure, it’s actually technically an extraordinarily difficult thing to provide zero to elastic scale up capabilities. And a huge amount of engineering goes into making that possible,” Kreps explained.

Kafka processes massive streams of data in real time. It was originally developed inside LinkedIn and open-sourced in 2011. Confluent launched as a commercial entity on top of the open-source project in 2014. In January the company raised $125 million on a $2.5 billion valuation. It has raised than $205 million, according to Crunchbase data.

Open-source leader Confluent raises $125M on $2.5B valuation

Spotify now lets you add podcasts to playlists

Published September 30, 2019

Spotify this morning announced a new feature that will allow users to add their podcasts to playlists. With the addition, users can create their own custom playlists of their favorite podcasts, or even those that combine music and audio — similar to Spotify’s own newly launched “Your Daily Drive.”

With “Your Daily Drive,” Spotify put its personalization engine to work to combine both music and news from select sources. But with the ability to now build your own podcast-filled playlists, you won’t have to rely on Spotify’s curation as much.

Instead, you can build your own podcast playlists by tapping the three-dot menu to the right of the podcast episode and then “Add to playlist.” You either can choose to add it a playlist you’ve already created, or you can build a new one from scratch. You can continue to add more content to this playlist, including music, if you prefer.

The company says this functionality is something users have regularly requested since the integration of podcasts to its streaming music service. However, it’s not necessarily the easiest way to tune into the latest episodes of your favorite programs, as it involves manual curation.

Many podcasts release new episodes every week or so — and don’t want to get stuck constantly building playlists for those. Instead, the feature makes more sense for curating a set of podcasts around a theme, or preparing yourself to binge your way through a few programs on a long commute or road trip, for example.

Spotify says today there are more than 3 billion user-generated music playlists on its service, so it believes that its users will embrace this new curation ability, as well.

Once a podcast playlist has been created, it can be shared with friends or the public, just like music playlists can be. This could make for an interesting marketing tool for podcasters, who could put together playlists of their best episodes or those with high-profile guest stars, for example, as a way to introduce newcomers to their shows. But it also could serve as a way for friends to recommend their favorite shows to others, by putting together a list of their all-time favorite episodes.

For those interested in tracking news and entertainment, they could build playlists of podcast episodes from different sources all focused on the same topic. For instance, a playlist offering everyone’s reviews of the new iPhone.

Over the past year or so, Spotify has heavily invested in the podcast market, including through acquisitions like Gimlet, Parcast and Anchor — as well as in its programming, like the deal with Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company, Higher Ground, for instance, and a quickly growing number of exclusives, windowed-exclusives and originals. It also hired former Condé Nast president of entertainment Dawn Ostroff to lead its content efforts.

Today, Spotify says it has “hundreds of thousands” of podcasts available to stream on its platform.

The new podcast playlist-building feature is mobile-only for now. On desktop, you can only stream the playlists you made, but can’t build them yet, Spotify says.

Tencent to take 29% stake in multiplayer games maker Funcom

Published September 30, 2019

Chinese social media and gaming giant Tencent is taking a 29% stake to become the largest shareholder in Oslo-based Funcom.

The indie games developer is responsible for multiple adaptations involving the “Conan the Barbarian” franchise, such as “Age of Conan” and “Conan Exiles,” as well as a number of other multiplayer titles — including a forthcoming open world sandbox game that will be set in the “Dune” sci-fi universe.

The news that Tencent has entered into a share purchase agreement to acquire almost a third of the company was announced in a press release today. The Chinese giant has agreed to acquire all the shares belonging to the Norway-based KGJ Capital AS, which is currently the largest shareholder in Funcom.

Commenting in a statement, Funcom CEO Rui Casais said: “Tencent has a reputation for being a responsible long-term investor, and for its renowned operational capabilities in online games. The insight, experience, and knowledge that Tencent will bring is of great value to us and we look forward to working closely with them as we continue to develop great games and build a successful future for Funcom.”

Tencent, which has a substantial games operation of its own, also holds stakes in a number of other major games makers — including Riot Games, Epic, Supercell, Ubisoft, Paradox, Frontier and Miniclip.

A prolonged games licensing freeze in China dented Tencent’s profits last year. And earlier this year, while it reported record profits in its Q1, it also recorded its slowest revenue growth since going public.

Regulatory risk at home is one reason for Tencent to expand its stakes in overseas games developers and tap into a global audience to stoke growth.

Amboss, the knowledge platform for medical professionals, scores €30M Series B

Published September 30, 2019

Amboss, the Berlin-based “medtech” startup that originally offered a learning app for students but has since pivoted to a knowledge platform for medical professionals, has raised €30 million in Series B funding.

The round is led by Partech’s growth fund, with Target Global acting as a co-investor. Existing investors Cherry Ventures, Wellington Partners and Holtzbrinck Digital, also participated.

Launched in 2014 as a study platform for medical students, Amboss has since evolved to offer what it claims is the “most comprehensive and technologically-advanced” knowledge platform for medical professionals. It has been developed by a group of 70 doctors and 40 software engineers who work together in small cross-functional teams.

“Medical Knowledge does not find its way into practice efficiently,” argues Amboss co-CEO Benedikt Hochkirchen. “This has two main root causes: the way we educate doctors is outdated, and the way doctors access knowledge is inefficient.”

Specifically, he says that medical students are still taught to memorize facts, which become outdated quickly, and there isn’t enough emphasis on understanding and application. In contract, Amboss’ “smart learning” technology claims to not only help students achieve higher scores in their medical exams but furthers their contextual understanding and therefore lays the foundation “to be better prepared for clinical practice.”

“In clinical practice, doctors would adapt 50% of their decisions if they had the latest and precise knowledge at hand,” says Hochkirchen. “In real life on the wards, doctors lack the time to research and find the relevant knowledge. For them, Amboss’ smart guidance app is there to provide instant, convenient and reliable medical knowledge to carry out the best possible care.”

The end result, says the Amboss co-CEO, is that the startup’s app reduces the average research time needed for doctors to make a clinical decision from 30 minutes to 30 seconds. Crucially, its knowledge base contains the most recent medical facts and guidelines “in every single case.”

“Young doctors have to take over a lot of responsibility early in their career,” adds Hochkirchen. “Career starters are regularly the first touch point with a doctor when a patient enters a hospital. Often young doctors do not feel properly prepared for the real-life challenges in those situations. Amboss is the source of choice to master those decisions, e.g. with emergency algorithms and lead symptoms.”

Likewise, more experienced and specialised doctors can also find utility in Amboss, as guidelines and therapies of choice are constantly changing. “It is almost impossible for the doctor to stay up to date for every possible indication,” he says. “Amboss provides them with precise knowledge based on latest guidelines to ensure doctors choose the best therapy possible.”

Or, put a another way, Amboss is attempting to build a “Google for medicine.” “They are tackling a very exciting space which will have a positive impact on society, bringing knowledge levels and skillsets of medical doctors to a higher level,” Cherry Ventures’ Christian Meermann tells me.

Meanwhile, armed with new capital, Amboss says it will accelerate the global rollout of its product with a focus on the U.S. In addition, the startup will further develop its product, for both generalist and specialist doctors, “to help improve their daily clinical decision-making.”

Why is Dropbox reinventing itself?

Published September 29, 2019

According to Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, 80% of the product’s users rely on it, at least partially, for work.

It makes sense, then, that the company is refocusing to try and cement its spot in the workplace; to shed its image as “just” a file storage company (in a time when just about every big company has its own cloud storage offering) and evolve into something more immutably core to daily operations.

Earlier this week, Dropbox announced that the “new Dropbox” would be rolling out to all users. It takes the simple, shared folders that Dropbox is known for and turns them into what the company calls “Spaces” — little mini collaboration hubs for your team, complete with comment streams, AI for highlighting files you might need mid-meeting, and integrations into things like Slack, Trello and G Suite. With an overhauled interface that brings much of Dropbox’s functionality out of the OS and into its own dedicated app, it’s by far the biggest user-facing change the product has seen since launching 12 years ago.

Shortly after the announcement, I sat down with Dropbox VP of Product Adam Nash and CTO Quentin Clark . We chatted about why the company is changing things up, why they’re building this on top of the existing Dropbox product, and the things they know they just can’t change.

You can find these interviews below, edited for brevity and clarity.

Greg Kumparak: Can you explain the new focus a bit?

Adam Nash: Sure! I think you know this already, but I run products and growth, so I’m gonna have a bit of a product bias to this whole thing. But Dropbox… one of its differentiating characteristics is really that when we built this utility, this “magic folder”, it kind of went everywhere.

This Week in Apps: AltStore, acquisitions and Google Play Pass

Published September 28, 2019

The app industry shows no signs of slowing down, with 194 billion downloads in 2018 and over $100 billion in consumer spending. People spend 90% of their mobile time in apps and more time using their mobile devices than watching TV. In other words, apps aren’t just a way to spend idle hours — they’re a big business. And one that often seems to change overnight. In this new Extra Crunch series, we’ll help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps — including everything from the OS’s to the apps that run upon them, as well as the money that flows through it all.

This week, alternatives to the traditional app store is a big theme. Not only has a new, jailbreak-free iOS marketplace called AltStore just popped up, we’ve also got both Apple and Google ramping up their own subscription-based collections of premium apps and games.

Meanwhile, the way brands and publishers want to track their apps’ success is changing, too. And App Annie — the company that was the first to start selling pickaxes for the App Store gold rush — is responding with an acquisition that will help app publishers better understand the return on investment for their app businesses.

Headlines

AltStore is an alternative App Store that doesn’t need a jailbreak

An interesting alternative app marketplace has appeared on the scene, allowing a way for developers to distribute iOS apps outside the official App Store, reports Engadget — without jailbreaking, which can be difficult and has various security implications. Instead, the new store works by tricking your device into thinking you’re a developer sideloading apps. And it uses a companion app on your Mac or PC to re-sign the apps every 7 days via iTunes WiFi syncing protocol. Already, it’s offering a Nintendo emulator and other games, says The Verge. And Apple is probably already working on a way to shut this down. For now, it’s live at Altstore.io.

Very excited to officially announce AltStore: an alternative app store for iOS — no jailbreak required. Launching this Saturday, September 28, but you can download the preview TODAY https://t.co/M7nULBV28p

— Riles (@rileytestut) September 25, 2019

For the third time in a month, Google mass-deleted Android apps from a big Chinese developer.

Does Google Play have a malicious app problem? That appears to be the case as Google has booted some 46 apps from major Chinese mobile developer iHandy out of its app store, BuzzFeed reported. And it isn’t saying why. The move follows Google’s ban of two other major Chinese app developers, DO Global and CooTek, who had 1 billion total downloads.

Google Firebase gets new tools

Learn everything you can about mobility at Disrupt SF

Published September 28, 2019

Cars might still reign supreme, but things they are a changin’. And companies are lining up to provide new ways — and some recycled ones — for people to get from Point A to Point B.

The past several years have seen an explosion in startups, automakers and tech companies launching and testing products from scooters and electric bike shares to ride-hailing, electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles and even flying taxis. Or heck, even space travel.

Even as more mobility startups pop up, the shine of these new things is starting to fade, and companies are facing big technical challenges, regulatory hurdles, hiring and economic headwinds.

TechCrunch is at the center of this mobility storm and we’re bringing some of the industry’s leaders on stage at Disrupt SF, including Bird founder and CEO Travis VanderZanden, Kitty Hawk CEO Sebastian Thrun and Zoox CEO Aicha Evans, to hear firsthand how these companies are trying to change how people and packages move in the world and the challenges that lie ahead.

There are talks related to mobility on every stage, including the main stage and EC stage.

Disrupt kicks off October 2 with a 10:05 a.m. talk with Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith, who intends to return the U.S. to crewed spaceflight. Expect TechCrunch to ask Smith for details on what a ticket for a trip might cost, once it begins taking on paying customers.

Once this wraps up, head over to the ExtraCrunch stage for a 10:45 a.m. sponsored talk by mapping company TomTom to hear about its new partnerships with technology companies.

Back at the main stage, check out a space, autonomy, investment and defense-related talk with Lockheed Martin’s Marilyn Hewson at the main stage.

And for those interested in subscription-based businesses, which if you haven’t noticed are becoming more prevalent in the mobility world, be sure to check out the 3:45 p.m. talk on the Extra Crunch stage with Alex Friedman from Lola, Eurie Kim with Forerunner Ventures, and Sandra Oh Lin of KiwiCo.

October 2 is filled with mobility-related talks, including a morning chat with David Krane, CEO and managing partner at Gain Insights, a firm known for its bold bets on companies like Lime, Impossible Foods, Uber and Slack.

Don’t miss the mid-morning interview with Sebastian Thrun, an educator, inventor and serial entrepreneur, about the future of flight and Kitty Hawk Corporation, the urban air mobility company he leads. If you’ve ever seen Thrun before, you know not to miss this.

As Thrun walks off stage, VanderZanden of Bird walks on to talk about how the company is faring in scooter wars and it’s is doing to improve its unit economics.

Day 2 ends with an interview on the main stage with Zoox CEO Aicha Evans, who will talk about the self-driving car company and how it plans to work with cities to change how people live and work in these urban areas.

Don’t miss Day 3, because well Simone Giertz is going to be on the main stage. For the unfamiliar, Giertz has amassed a major YouTube following courtesy of her “sh*** robots” and other highly entertaining projects. One of her most recent projects was turning a Tesla sedan into a pickup.

And finally, in the mobility world packages matter too. Finish the day off with an interview on the main stage with Postmates co-founder and CEO Bastian Lehmann, who will talk about the on-demand delivery company’s uncertain future and how robotics will change the landscape of the on-demand world.

Get passes to Disrupt to put the pedal to the metal on everything happening in mobility.

Startups Weekly: Alpha Medical wants to rebuild women’s healthcare

Published September 28, 2019

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy news pertaining to startups and venture capital. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. I’ve been on a bit of startup profile kick as of late. Last week, I wrote a little bit about Landline, a bus network backed by Upfront Ventures. Before that, I profiled an e-commerce startup called Part & Parcel.

Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets. If you don’t subscribe to Startups Weekly yet, you can do that here.

Startup Spotlight

I’ve made a habit of highlighting one startup per week in this newsletter, so why stop now? This week, I want to talk about Alpha Medical, an early-stage healthtech startup on a “mission to rebuild women’s healthcare,” founder and CEO Gloria Lau tells TechCrunch.

The early-stage telemedicine business, which focuses on providing reproductive and dermatological care online, launched its membership program this week and expanded into three new states: Georgia, Washington and Virginia.

Alpha Medical co-founders Dr. J (left) and Gloria Lau.

The company, now active in nine states, has raised $11 million to date from DCVC and AV8, among others, including a recent $10 million Series A. It’s certainly not as well-financed as some of the top telemedicine businesses, like Hims, Ro and Nurx. But Alpha has had something special from the get-go: medical expertise. The company is led by a techie in Lau but its secret weapon is Dr. J. Co-founder and chief medical officer Mary Jacobson, or Dr. J, is an obstetrician, gynecologist and minimally invasive surgeon with extensive experience in clinical care, medical education, hospital operations and research.

There have been and will continue to be many “health tech” companies backed with millions by venture capitalists. But many of these are really just consumer brands with health buzzwords stamped on top. The real winners, I think, will be startups with true medical expertise coupled with tech know-how.

“We are female founders — women building this for women,” says Lau. “We understand the pain point so well.”

IP-woes

WeWork’s eccentric CEO/founder Adam Neumann stepped down this week amid pressure from board members (SoftBank) to exit the C-suite. Wall Street doesn’t think Neumann is fit to be CEO of a public company and if you don’t know why, read this WSJ piece. For more details, listen to this episode of Equity we recorded earlier this week.

What’s next for Peloton? International growth? Doubling down on original content? New hardware? Tell me what to write.

— Kate Clark (@KateClarkTweets) September 26, 2019

Peloton, the fitness tech company that sells really expensive stationary bikes and treadmills, debuted on the NASDAQ on Thursday. They raised more than a billion dollars in the process, so that’s good, but their stock is already struggling. For one, it opened at below its initial price of $29 and closed at about $25, or 11% down. That makes us a bit nervous for the company moving forward. Still, they are well-financed and have plenty of money to put to work.

VC deals

What else?

This was the biggest news week in history. Fortunately, I only need to tell you about startup news… Still, there was a lot of that too. Here are just a few other things I’ll highlight that might have slipped through the cracks.

DoorDash confirmed a massive data breach. Here’s what you need to know: It impacted 4.9 million customers, workers and merchants who were using the platform prior to April 5, 2018. The company is blaming the breach on a “third-party service provider,” but the third-party was not named…
All the scooters are coming back to San Francisco. Here’s what you need to know: JUMP, Lime, Scoot and Spin were all granted permits to operate their respective services in SF beginning Oct. 15 as part of the city’s longer-term permitting program for electric scooters. If you remember, Lime was previously denied a permit, while Skip was given the green light. This time around, Skip got the boot and Lime was given the go ahead. Oh how times have changed!
Uber launched an incubator. Here’s what you need to know: Uber wants to make sure some of its best, most entrepreneurial employees are happy and their tech is at its best. To do this, it’s created an incubator open to employees and those outside the organization to develop products and services on top of Uber’s platform.

Time to Disrupt!

TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, our flagship event, is right around the corner. Next week, October 2 through 4th, the entire TechCrunch staff will gather from all corners of the world to interview leaders in technology and venture capital. From Snap CEO Evan Spiegel to Joseph Gordon-Levitt, actor and founder of HitRecord, to a16z’s crypto expert Chris Dixon, we’ll have something for everyone.

Newsletter readers can get 20% off tickets by using this link. Hope to see you all there.

Finally, listen to Equity

We recorded not one but two Equity episodes this week because, well, the news just wouldn’t stop. The first was a guide on the WeMess. You can listen to that one here. In the second episode, we tried to hit on everything else that happened this week, from Peloton’s listing, to Vox & NYMag’s merger, to Bodega’s quiet funding and Kapwing’s $11 million Series A. Listen to that one here.

Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.