ServiceNow pledges no layoffs in 2020
You don’t need your PhD in economics to know the economy is in rough shape right now due to the impact of COVID-19, but ServiceNow today pledged that it would not lay off a single employee in 2020 — and in fact, it’s hiring.
While Salesforce’s Marc Benioff pledged no significant layoffs for 90 days last month, and asked other company leaders to do the same, ServiceNow did them one better by promising to keep every employee for at least the rest of the year.
Bill McDermott, who came on as CEO at the end of last year after nine years as CEO at SAP, said that he wanted to keep his employees concentrating on the job at hand without being concerned about a potential layoff should things get a little tighter for the company.
“We want our employees focused on supporting our customers, not worried about their own jobs,” he said in a statement.
In addition, the company plans to fill 1,000 jobs worldwide, as well as hire 360 college students as interns this summer, as they continue to expand their workforce, when many industries and fellow tech companies are laying off or furloughing employees.
The company also announced that it is taking part in a program called People+Work Connect, with Accenture, Lincoln Financial Group and Verizon (the owner of this publication). This program acts as an online employer to employer clearing house for these companies to hire employees laid off or furloughed by other companies. The company plans to post 800 jobs through this channel.
Powered by WPeMatico
Pileus helps businesses cut their cloud spend
Israel-based Pileus, which is officially launching today, aims to help businesses keep their cloud spend under control. The company also today announced that it has raised a $1 million seed round from a private angel investor.
Using machine learning, the company’s platform continuously learns about how a user typically uses a given cloud and then provides forecasts and daily personalized recommendations to help them stay within a budget.
Pileus currently supports AWS, with support for Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure coming soon.
With all of the information it gathers about your cloud usage, the service can also monitor usage for any anomalies. Because, at its core, Pileus keeps a detailed log of all your cloud spend, it also can provide detailed reports and dashboards of what a user is spending on each project and resource.
If you’ve ever worked on a project like this, you know that these reports are only as good as the tags you use to identify each project and resource, so Pileus makes that a priority on its platform, with a tagging tool that helps enforce tagging policies.
“My team and I spent many sleepless nights working on this solution,” says Pileus CEO Roni Karp. “We’re thrilled to finally be able to unleash Pileus to the masses and help everyone gain more efficiency of their cloud experience while helping them understand their usage and costs better than ever before.”
Pileus currently offers a free 30-day trial. After that, the service shows you a $180/month or $800 per year price, but once you connect your accounts, it’ll charge 1% of your savings, not the default pricing you’ll see at first.
The company isn’t just focused on individual businesses, though. It’s also targeting managed service providers that can use the platform to create reports and manage their own customer billing. Karp believes this will become a significant source of revenue for Pileus because “there are not many good tools in the field today, especially for Azure.”
It’s no secret that Pileus is launching into a crowded market, where well-known incumbents like Cloudability already share mindshare with a growing number of startups. Karp, however, believes that Pileus can stand out, largely because of its machine learning platform and its ability to provide users with immediate value, whereas, he argues, it often takes several weeks for other platforms to deliver results.
Powered by WPeMatico
Google Play adds a ‘Teacher Approved’ section to its app store
Google today is making it easier for families to find quality educational apps with the addition of a new “Teacher Approved” section to Google Play. All apps found in this section are vetted by a panel of reviewers, including more than 200 teachers across the U.S., and meet Google’s existing requirements for its “Designed for Families” program.
That program requires apps to meet government regulations around data collection and ad targeting, and also limits the types of ads that can be displayed to children, if apps are ad-supported.
The apps chosen for the “Teacher Approved” section, however, don’t just meet the program’s minimum requirements — they’re also reviewed and rated highly by teachers. These may be apps teachers suggest for supplemental learning while others may just be used for fun.
The launch arrives at a time when most U.S. children are now out of school due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent school closures. To date, at least 55.1 million students are no longer attending their public or private school in-person, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. This change has left parents scrambling to fill their child’s time with educational activities. And even if distance learning is available in their school district, it isn’t typically enough to keep the child engaged throughout the day.
Google says it heard from parents that it was difficult to find kid-friendly apps they felt good about letting their children use, which is why it chose to launch the new “Teacher Approved” section on Google Play.
The company worked with academic experts, including lead advisors Joe Blatt (Harvard Graduate School of Education) and Dr. Sandra Calvert (Georgetown University) to create the framework for rating apps for kids. But the apps themselves are chosen by a panel with teacher involvement. The panel rates apps on various aspects like age-appropriateness, quality of experience, enrichment and whether kids enjoy using the app.
To access the new section, you can either visit the “Kids” tab on Google Play or you can look for the “Teacher Approved” badge on any given app to see if it met with teachers’ approval. In addition, Google Play Pass will offer subscribers a selection of “Teacher Approved” content under the “Apps and games for kids” section.
The apps will be grouped by age: 5 & under, ages 6-8 and ages 9-12. Google will also include information in the app’s listing about why it was rated highly.
At launch, Google tells us there will be around 1,000 Teacher Approved apps live in the Play Store and around 60 also included in Google Play Pass. The company says it’s working with its Play Pass partners to increase this number over time.
“I think it’s terrific that Google is taking this unprecedented stand – creating a unique space for apps that teachers have rated high in quality and value for kids and their families,” said Joe Blatt, senior lecturer and faculty director of the Technology, Innovation, and Education Program, in a statement about the launch. “Over the past three years, together with faculty colleagues and students, I have worked to pinpoint criteria for developmental appropriateness, learning impact, and appeal. Then we helped Google build a rating system that enables teachers to apply these criteria reliably. I’m really impressed with the dedication and professionalism that the Google team has invested in this project,” he added.
The new Kids tab with “Teacher approved” apps will roll out in the U.S. on Google Play over the next few days. Google says it will expand the experience internationally in the months to come.
Powered by WPeMatico
Niantic will make Pokémon GO more stay-at-home friendly with remote raids
Pokémon GO was built to be played outside, with friends, as you wandered around and explored interesting landmarks around you — or, you know, the exact opposite of what we’re supposed to be doing right now.
Niantic has been working on transitioning the game into something that can still be played from your couch (Pokémon StayTheHellAtHome, if you will), and today it detailed one of the bigger upcoming changes: remote raids.
Raids, first introduced in 2017, allow players to band together to take down massive, super-strong and often quite rare Pokémon. If the group wins, everyone gets the chance to catch the Pokémon.
Up until this point, raiding meant going to a specific location at a specific time to meet with up to 19 other players. That idea… doesn’t really work anymore. Thus, remote raids!
Here’s how it’ll work:
- Once the change goes live in the coming days, you’ll be able to join any raid you can see on your “nearby” screen. You won’t actually have to go to the location, just be close enough for the game to show it to you (a few blocks away, generally.)
- For achievements/tasks/etc., remote raids will count the same as standard raids.
- Taking part in a remote raid will require a remote raid pass which, of course, will be a premium item. They’ll cost 100 Pokécoins each when bought individually, or about a dollar.
- At first, remote raiders will be just as strong as those actually on-site. It sounds like as the need for remote raids goes away (that is, presumably, once shelter-in-place orders are eventually relaxed), remote raiders will still be welcome but won’t do as much damage as those on location.
- Eventually, Niantic says they’ll allow you to invite friends to raids regardless of where they are. Need an assist from a friend who is miles away? Hop into the raid, then invite them.
Niantic also mentioned that they’ll be giving each player one daily stay-at-home-centric “Field Research” task, and that Buddy Pokémon will now bring you item-packed gift boxes to send to friends rather than requiring you to visit Pokéstops. Items, meanwhile, will now be stackable in their duration. Know you want incense drawing Pokémon to your location for the next two hours but don’t want to have to remember to fire one off every 30 minutes? Trigger four at once, and they’ll stack.
Niantic hasn’t given a specific time frame for when remote raids will roll out, saying only that they’re “coming soon.”
Powered by WPeMatico
Microsoft’s new ‘Planetary Computer’ project will use global environmental data to support sustainability
Microsoft is embarking on a new sustainability initiative as part of its overall approach to support environmental protection measures, with a project it calls the “Planetary Computer.” This will actually be a computing endeavor that uses aggregated global environmental data collected from a number of sources as its input, and that will seek to employ machine learning and other techniques to better understand the challenges faced in planetary health, and provide answers to both Microsoft clients and scientists about how to plan for sustainability.
If all that sounds pretty esoteric to you, you’re not alone. But in a blog post, Microsoft president Brad Smith detailed some specific examples of what it hopes the Planetary Computer will actually be capable of doing. Those include things like providing searchable satellite imagery, machine learning and user-sourced data around actual on-the-ground forest borders for use in industrial construction site surveys or forest preservation efforts; providing accurate current measurement sand impact forecast for water use for agricultural planning; providing wildlife biologists with global species habitat information to support preservation efforts; and more.
This is an evolution of Microsoft’s AI for Earth program, which was launched in 2017, and the actual development of the Planetary Computer will involve further investments in infrastructure, as well as participation from the existing AI for Earth grant recipients to built out analyses on the data collected. There’s also a new AI for Earth grant, valued at $1 million, provided to the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network to help act as a cornerstone for biodiversity data collection as part of the project.
To help, Microsoft is also partnering with Esri, a geographical mapping and information company that underpins a lot of the related technological institutes in that sphere. Geospatial data sets will be made available through Azure and Esri later this year for use by clients and institutions, and you can expect even more to come.
Powered by WPeMatico
WorldGaze uses smartphone cameras to help voice AIs cut to the chase
If you find voice assistants frustratingly dumb, you’re hardly alone. The much-hyped promise of AI-driven vocal convenience very quickly falls through the cracks of robotic pedantry.
A smart AI that has to come back again (and sometimes again) to ask for extra input to execute your request can seem especially dumb — when, for example, it doesn’t get that the most likely repair shop you’re asking about is not any one of them but the one you’re parked outside of right now.
Researchers at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, working with Gierad Laput, a machine learning engineer at Apple, have devised a demo software add-on for voice assistants that lets smartphone users boost the savvy of an on-device AI by giving it a helping hand — or rather a helping head.
The prototype system makes simultaneous use of a smartphone’s front and rear cameras to be able to locate the user’s head in physical space, and more specifically within the immediate surroundings — which are parsed to identify objects in the vicinity using computer vision technology.
The user is then able to use their head as a pointer to direct their gaze at whatever they’re talking about — i.e. “that garage” — wordlessly filling in contextual gaps in the AI’s understanding in a way the researchers contend is more natural.
So, instead of needing to talk like a robot in order to tap the utility of a voice AI, you can sound a bit more, well, human. Asking stuff like “‘Siri, when does that Starbucks close?” Or — in a retail setting — “are there other color options for that sofa?” Or asking for an instant price comparison between “this chair and that one.” Or for a lamp to be added to your wish-list.
In a home/office scenario, the system could also let the user remotely control a variety of devices within their field of vision — without needing to be hyper-specific about it. Instead they could just look toward the smart TV or thermostat and speak the required volume/temperature adjustment.
The team has put together a demo video (below) showing the prototype — which they’ve called WorldGaze — in action. “We use the iPhone’s front-facing camera to track the head in 3D, including its direction vector. Because the geometry of the front and back cameras are known, we can raycast the head vector into the world as seen by the rear-facing camera,” they explain in the video.
“This allows the user to intuitively define an object or region of interest using the head gaze. Voice assistants can then use this contextual information to make enquiries that are more precise and natural.”
In a research paper presenting the prototype they also suggest it could be used to “help to socialize mobile AR experiences, currently typified by people walking down the street looking down at their devices.”
Asked to expand on this, CMU researcher Chris Harrison told TechCrunch: “People are always walking and looking down at their phones, which isn’t very social. They aren’t engaging with other people, or even looking at the beautiful world around them. With something like WorldGaze, people can look out into the world, but still ask questions to their smartphone. If I’m walking down the street, I can inquire and listen about restaurant reviews or add things to my shopping list without having to look down at my phone. But the phone still has all the smarts. I don’t have to buy something extra or special.”
In the paper they note there is a long body of research related to tracking users’ gaze for interactive purposes — but a key aim of their work here was to develop “a functional, real-time prototype, constraining ourselves to hardware found on commodity smartphones.” (Although the rear camera’s field of view is one potential limitation they discuss, including suggesting a partial workaround for any hardware that falls short.)
“Although WorldGaze could be launched as a standalone application, we believe it is more likely for WorldGaze to be integrated as a background service that wakes upon a voice assistant trigger (e.g., ‘Hey Siri’),” they also write. “Although opening both cameras and performing computer vision processing is energy consumptive, the duty cycle would be so low as to not significantly impact battery life of today’s smartphones. It may even be that only a single frame is needed from both cameras, after which they can turn back off (WorldGaze startup time is 7 sec). Using bench equipment, we estimated power consumption at ~0.1 mWh per inquiry.”
Of course there’s still something a bit awkward about a human holding a screen up in front of their face and talking to it — but Harrison confirms the software could work just as easily hands-free on a pair of smart spectacles.
“Both are possible,” he told us. “We choose to focus on smartphones simply because everyone has one (and WorldGaze could literally be a software update), while almost no one has AR glasses (yet). But the premise of using where you are looking to supercharge voice assistants applies to both.”
“Increasingly, AR glasses include sensors to track gaze location (e.g., Magic Leap, which uses it for focusing reasons), so in that case, one only needs outwards facing cameras,” he added.
Taking a further leap it’s possible to imagine such a system being combined with facial recognition technology — to allow a smart spec-wearer to quietly tip their head and ask “who’s that?” — assuming the necessary facial data was legally available in the AI’s memory banks.
Features such as “add to contacts” or “when did we last meet” could then be unlocked to augment a networking or socializing experience. Although, at this point, the privacy implications of unleashing such a system into the real world look rather more challenging than stitching together the engineering. (See, for example, Apple banning Clearview AI’s app for violating its rules.)
“There would have to be a level of security and permissions to go along with this, and it’s not something we are contemplating right now, but it’s an interesting (and potentially scary idea),” agrees Harrison when we ask about such a possibility.
The team was due to present the research at ACM CHI — but the conference was canceled due to the coronavirus.
Powered by WPeMatico
Instagram rival VSCO lays off 30% of staff to reduce reliance on outside capital
VSCO, the popular photo editing app and Instagram rival, is the latest company to undergo layoffs attributed to the COVID-19 crisis, which has put a strain on venture-backed startups. According to a report from NPR, which was then confirmed by VSCO co-founder and CEO Joel Flory on LinkedIn, the company is laying off around 30% of staff, or 45 of its employees.
Though Flory didn’t reference the COVID-19 outbreak by name, his post described the rapid change to the economy which necessitated the layoffs.
“2020 was staged to be a year where we would continue to forward invest into our business,” Flory wrote. “Overnight our environment changed. We realized that we would need to shift towards running a self-sustaining business.”
In other words, VSCO is anticipating a future where venture capital is less readily available and is making the shift toward running a business that’s no longer reliant on outside capital or funding in order to operate. By laying off a portion of staff, VSCO believes it will be able to sustain its business for many years.
To date, VSCO has raised $90 million in outside funding, and sees its app used by more than 20 million active users per week. However, a smaller portion of those users are customers who pay for a VSCO Membership that offers an expanded array of features, tools, presets and other content. VSCO confirmed to TechCrunch in February 2020 that it had around 2+ million paid subscribers.
Late last year, VSCO had said it was on pace to surpass 4 million paid subscribers by 2020 and was approaching $80 million in annual revenue. However, these projections were tied to VSCO’s forward investment this year, and the shift towards becoming self-sustainable will impact these numbers, the company says.
PitchBook data valued the business at $550 million, NPR also reported — a number that’s made the rounds before, as well.
In 2020, VSCO has rolled out several features designed to better support video editing. It gave creators the ability to publish their video edits to the VSCO feed, and last month, for example, launched a more powerful and feature-rich video editing tool called Montage. The latter was meant to grow VSCO’s paid subscriber base, as it requires users to pay in order to save and publish their finished videos.
VSCO’s profile has also been raised beyond its core user base in recent months, after it became associated with a Gen Z meme that circulated on sites like TikTok.
Though perhaps not the marketing the company would have desired, the VSCO girl meme became a way to mock a certain type of girl — one who sports a messy bun, baggy shirts and scrunchies and carries around eco-conscious items like Hydro Flasks or metal straws. VSCO’s app for making your photos look good became associated with this persona, as it’s often used to filter and edit images in order to give them an aesthetic that teenage girls (VSCO girls) supposedly desired.
As for the layoffs, VSCO says its former employees will receive a minimum of seven weeks of severance pay, and a minimum of two months of COBRA health coverage. In terms of equity, VSCO is pro-rating stock option vesting and extending equity exercise periods post-term, it also notes.
Flory’s LinkedIn post additionally offered a way for those interested in hiring the laid-off VSCO employees to reach the company. He said the jobs@vsco.co email address could be used to make inquires about hiring its talent. The company will also be working to provide other job placement resources and support, it says.
“I am deeply saddened to let some incredible people go and am so grateful for everything they’ve done for VSCO and our community,” Flory wrote. “Our mission and vision remain unchanged. Our ability to provide a place for creative expression, inspiration and connection is even more important than ever right now,” he added.
Powered by WPeMatico
DoD Inspector General report finds everything was basically hunky-dory with JEDI cloud contract bid
While controversy has dogged the $10 billion, decade-long JEDI contract since its earliest days, a report by the DoD’s Inspector General’s Office concluded today that, while there were some funky bits and potential conflicts, overall the contract procurement process was fair and legal and the president did not unduly influence the process in spite of public comments.
There were a number of issues along the way about whether the single contractor award was fair or reasonable, about whether there were was White House influence on the decision, and whether the president wanted to prevent Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, from getting the contract.
There were questions about whether certain personnel, who had been or were about to be Amazon employees, had undue influence on the contents of the RFP or if former Secretary of Defense showed favor to Amazon, which ultimately did not even win the contract, and that one of Mattis’ under secretaries, in fact, owned stock in Microsoft .
It’s worth noting that the report states clearly that it is not looking at the merits of this contract award or whether the correct company won on technical acumen. It was looking at all of these controversial parts that came up throughout the process. As the report stated:
“In this report, we do not draw a conclusion regarding whether the DoD appropriately awarded the JEDI Cloud contract to Microsoft rather than Amazon Web Services. We did not assess the merits of the contractors’ proposals or DoD’s technical or price evaluations; rather we reviewed the source selection process and determined that it was in compliance with applicable statutes, policies, and the evaluation process described in the Request for Proposals.”
Although the report indicates that the White House would not cooperate with the investigation into potential bias, the investigators claim they had enough discussions with parties involved with the decision to conclude that there was no undue influence on the White House’s part:
“However, we believe the evidence we received showed that the DoD personnel who evaluated the contract proposals and awarded Microsoft the JEDI Cloud contract were not pressured regarding their decision on the award of the contract by any DoD leaders more senior to them, who may have communicated with the White House,” the report stated.
The report chose to blame the media instead, at least for partly giving the impression that the White House had influenced the process, stating:
“Yet, these media reports, and the reports of President Trump’s statements about Amazon, ongoing bid protests and “lobbying” by JEDI Cloud competitors, as well as inaccurate media reports about the JEDI Cloud procurement process, may have created the appearance or perception that the contract award process was not fair or unbiased.”
It’s worth noting that we reported that AWS president Andy Jassy made it clear in a press conference at AWS re:Invent in December that the company believed the president’s words had influenced the process.
“I think that we ended up with a situation where there was political interference. When you have a sitting president, who has shared openly his disdain for a company, and the leader of that company, it makes it really difficult for government agencies, including the DoD, to make objective decisions without fear of reprisal.”
As for other points of controversy, such as those previously referenced biases, all were found lacking by the Inspector General. While the earliest complaints from Oracle and others were that Deap Ubhi and Victor Gavin, two individuals involved in drafting the RFP, failed to disclose they were offered jobs by Amazon during that time.
The report concluded that while Ubhi violated ethics rules, his involvement wasn’t substantial enough to influence the RFP (which again, Amazon didn’t win). “However, we concluded that Mr. Ubhi’s brief early involvement in the JEDI Cloud Initiative was not substantial and did not provide any advantage to his prospective employer, Amazon…,” the report stated.
The report found Gavin did not violate any ethics rules in spite of taking a job with Amazon because he had disqualified himself from the process, nor did the report find that former Secretary Mattis had any ethical violations in its investigation.
One final note: Stacy Cummings, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition Enablers, who worked for Mattis, owned some stock in Microsoft and did not disclose this. While the report found that was a violation of ethics guidelines, it ultimately concluded this did not unduly influence the award to Microsoft.
While the report is a substantial, 313 pages, it basically concludes that as far as the purview of the Inspector General is concerned, the process was basically conducted in a fair way. The court case, however involving Amazon’s protest of the award to Microsoft continues. And the project remains on hold until that is concluded.
Note: Microsoft and Amazon did not respond to requests from TechCrunch for comments before we published this article. If that changes, we will update accordingly.
Report on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (Jedi) Cloud Procurement Dodig-2020-079 by TechCrunch on Scribd
Powered by WPeMatico
Attentive raises another $40M for mobile messaging, will invest in helping customers respond to COVID-19
Mobile messaging startup Attentive continues to bring in new funding.
The startup raised a $40 million Series B last summer, followed by a $70 million Series C at the beginning of this year. Today it’s announcing that it’s extended the Series C by another $40 million, bringing the total round size to $110 million.
CEO Brian Long (who previously founded TapCommerce with his Attentive co-founder Andrew Jones and sold the company to Twitter) told me that the new funding closed just a week ago. He said the money comes from institutional investors who had wanted to participate in the Series C, but “for whatever reason, the timing didn’t work out.”
Then, as the startup wanted to invest in new areas — particularly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic — Long reached out again. Once they saw Attentive’s numbers for the first quarter of 2020, the firms were willing to invest.
Apparently, the number of new customer sign-ups is only increasing, with Attentive now working with more than 1,000 businesses. Companies like Coach, Urban Outfitters, CB2, PacSun, Lulus and Jack in the Box use the platform to manage their mobile messaging, with tools around adding text message subscribers, creating engaging messages and tracking the results of those campaigns.
And while we’re at the beginning of what’s likely to be a dramatic slowdown in advertising and marketing, Long suggested that even if businesses pull back on acquiring new customers, they’ll still need to maintain a relationship with existing ones.
“CRM is such a critical channel for companies … email and text are the last thing you would shut down,” he said.
Sequoia Capital Global Equities and Coatue are the new investors in the Series C. Sequoia’s venture fund already led (or co-led) the Series C and the Series B, but Long said he was interested in working with the firm’s crossover fund — and with Coatue — partly because they invest in public companies as well.
Not that he has immediate plans for Attentive to go public, but he said, “It just creates optionality,” so that there are fewer financial pressures regardless of the route the company takes.
Other investors in the Series C include IVP, Bain Capital Ventures, NextView Ventures, Eniac Ventures and High Alpha.
“Attentive’s rapid growth is an indicator of how consumers are eager to find a more direct, personalized and efficient channel to interact with businesses,” said Jeff Wang, managing partner at Sequoia Capital Global Equities, in a statement. “We’ve been impressed by how quickly Attentive’s business has scaled, its strong customer momentum, and the expertise of the team. We are thrilled to increase Sequoia’s partnership with Attentive through our Global Equities fund.”
As for how Attentive is responding to COVID-19, the startup plans to create funds to help customers navigate the economic fallout. There will be more details released in the coming weeks, but Long said the idea is to launch funds focused on the e-commerce/retail, food/beverage and educational sectors, providing free access to Attentive tools and services “to help those companies get recharged.”
Long added that he hopes to grow Attentive’s headcount from 260 employees to more than 400 by the end of this year.
Powered by WPeMatico
Pinpoint releases dashboard to bring visibility to software engineering operations
As companies look for better ways to understand how different departments work at a granular level, engineering has traditionally been a black box of siloed data. Pinpoint, an Austin-based startup, has been working on a platform to bring this information into a single view, and today it released a dashboard to help companies understand what’s happening across software engineering from an operational perspective.
Jeff Haynie, co-founder and CEO at Pinpoint says the company’s mission for the last two years has been giving greater visibility into the engineering department, something he says is even more important in the current context with workers spread out at home.
“Companies give engineering a bunch of money, and they build a bunch of amazing things, but in the end, it is just a black box, and we really don’t know what happens,” Haynie said. He says his company has been working to take all of the data to try and contextualize it, bring it together and correlate that information.
Today, they are introducing a dashboard that takes what they’ve been building and pulls it together into a single view, which is 100% self-serve. Prior to this, you needed a bunch of hand-holding from Pinpoint personnel to get it up and running, but today you can download the product and sign into your various services such as your git repository, your CI/CD software, your IDE and so forth.
It also provides a way for engineering personnel to communicate with one another without leaving the tool.
Pinpoint software engineering dashboard. Image Credit: Pinpoint
“Obviously, we will handhold and help people as they need it, and we have an enterprise version of the product with a higher level of SLA, and we have a customer success team to do that, but we’ve really focused this new release on purely self service,” Haynie said.
What’s more, while there is a free version already for teams under 10 people that’s free forever, with the release of today’s product, the company is offering unlimited access to the dashboard for free for three months.
Haynie says they’re like any startup right now, but having experience with several other startups and having lived through 9/11, the dot-com crash, 2008 and so forth, he knows how to hunker down and preserve cash. At the same time, he says they are seeing a lot of in-bound interest in the product, and they wanted to come up with a creative way to help customers through this crisis, while putting the product out there for people to use.
“We’re like any other startup or any other business frankly at this point: we’re nervous and scared. How do you survive this [and how long will it last]? The other side of it is that we’re rushing to take advantage of this inbound interest that we’re getting and trying to sort of seize the opportunity and try to be creative about how we help them.”
The startup hopes that, if companies find the product useful, after three months they won’t mind paying for the full version. For now, it’s just putting it out there for free and seeing what happens with it — just another startup trying to find a way through this crisis.
Powered by WPeMatico