Labor Day Special: One extra week on early-bird pricing for Disrupt SF 2019
Happy (almost) Labor Day to all the hardworking members of the early-startup community — entrepreneurs, founders, investors, engineers and everyone in between. We know how hard you work to build your dream, so we’re cutting you a break and extending our early-bird pricing on passes to Disrupt San Francisco 2019 through 11:59 p.m. (PST) on September 6. One extra week to save up to $1,300.
Don’t fritter away this absolute last opportunity to save big bucks on our flagship event, where you’ll find more than 10,000 attendees, 400 media outlets and a passel of eager investors. Get your early-bird tickets now.
Disrupt events always feature incredible speakers, and we’ve got an amazing agenda lined up for you this year. Let’s take a look at just some of the discussions and interviews you’ll enjoy over the course of three Disruptive days.
Reigniting the Space Race: Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith intends to return the U.S. to crewed spaceflight, with a goal of doing so this year with its first suborbital trips. Hopefully, we can also get Smith to tell us the ticket price for a trip, once it begins taking on paying customers.
Could the U.S. Government Be Your Next Investor: No founder likes dilution, which is why the U.S. government is becoming an increasingly popular source for early-stage, ambitious venture capital. Hear from Steve Isakowitz (The Aerospace Corporation) along with other VC leaders and founders who have navigated the process to discover your next source of non-dilutive capital.
How to Build a Sex Tech Startup: As the old adage goes, sex sells. Cyan Banister (Founders Fund), Cindy Gallop (MakeLoveNotPorn) and Lora Haddock (Lora DiCarlo) will discuss the opportunities — and challenges — of building a successful sex tech startup, and how to capitalize on a market that’s projected to be worth more than $123 billion by 2026.
The Grass Is Greener: The cannabis industry is projected to reach $50 billion in 10 years. Keith McCarty (Wayv) and Bharat Vasan (Pax Labs) represent two of the biggest names in the market. Hear the duo talk about an industry with undeniable potential, but plenty of red tape to deal with, too.
Quite the appetizer, no? Then there’s the big event that everyone wants to watch — Startup Battlefield. Which awesome startup will outshine the rest and take home $100,000?
Want to meet and greet even more top early-stage startups? Be sure to stop by Startup Alley and connect with the TC Top Picks — and hundreds of other cool startups. This year, our editors hand-picked 45 companies that represent the very best in their tech categories. Check the list of winners right here so you can see which ones you want to meet IRL.
Disrupt San Francisco 2019 takes place October 2-4. Enjoy your Labor Day weekend, but be sure to take advantage of the one-week early-bird price extension. Buy your passes to Disrupt SF and save up to $1,300 — but only if you beat the new deadline: September 6 at 11:59 p.m. (PST).
Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt San Francisco 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.
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Bear Robotics is raising big bucks for robots that deliver food to restaurant patrons
Some days, it feels like there’s almost no end to the number of jobs that might be replaced altogether or in some part by smart machines, from radiologists to truck drivers to, gulp, journalists. You might be tempted to sob about it to your friendly restaurant server, but wait! It’s a robot, too!
So it may be if the 25-person, Redwood City, Calif.,-based startup Bear Robotics has its way. The two-year-old company makes “robots that help,” and specifically, it makes robots that help deliver food to restaurant customers.
It’s a market that’s seemingly poised for disruption. As Bear says in its own literature about the company, it was founded to address the “increased pressure faced by the food service industry around wages, labor supply, and cost efficiencies.”
CEO John Ha, a former Intel research scientist turned longtime technical lead at Google who also opened, then closed, his own restaurant, witnessed the struggle firsthand. As the child (and grandchild) of restaurateurs, this editor can also attest that owning and operating restaurants is a tricky proposition, given the expenses and — even more plaguing oftentimes — the turnover that goes with it.
Investors are apparently on board with the idea with robot servers. According to a new SEC filing, Bear has so far locked down at least $10.2 million from a dozen investors on its way to closing a $35.8 million round. That’s not a huge sum for many startups today, but it’s notable for a food service robot startup, one whose first model, “Penny,” spins around R2-D2-like, gliding between the kitchen and dining tables with customers’ food as it is prepared.
At least, this is what will theoretically happen once Bear begins lining up restaurants that will pay the company via a monthly subscription that includes the robot, setup and mapping of the restaurant (so Penny doesn’t collide with things), along with technical support.
In the meantime, Bear’s backers, which the startup has yet to reveal, may be taking a cue in part from Alibaba, which last year opened a highly automated restaurant in Shanghai where small robots slide down tracks to deliver patrons’ meals.
They may also be looking at the bigger picture, wherein everything inside restaurants is getting automated — from robotic chefs that fry up ingredients to table-mounted self-pay tablets — with servers one of the last pieces of the puzzle to be addressed.
That doesn’t mean Bear or other like-minded startups will take off any time soon in restaurants that aren’t offering a futuristic experience. One of the reasons that people have always headed to restaurants is for good-old human interaction. In fact, with take-out ordering on the rise, people — waiters, bartenders, restaurant owners who flit around the dining room to say hello — may prove one of the only reasons that customers show up at all.
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At-home blood testing startup Baze rakes in $6 million from Nature’s Way
By now, the venture world is wary of blood testing startups offering health data from just a few drops of blood. However, Baze, a Swiss-based personal nutrition startup providing blood tests you can do in the convenience of your own home, collects just a smidgen of your sanguine fluid through an MIT manufactured device, which, according to the company, is in accordance with FDA regulations.
The idea is to find out (via your blood sample) which vitamins you’re missing out on and are keeping you from living your best life. That seems to resonate with folks who don’t want to go into the doctor’s office and separately head to their nearest lab for testing.
Most health professionals would agree it’s important to know if you are getting the right amount of nutrition — Vitamin D deficiency is a worldwide epidemic affecting calcium absorption, hormone regulation, energy levels and muscle weakness. An estimated 74% of the U.S. population does not get the required daily levels of Vitamin D.
“There are definitely widespread deficiencies across the population,” Baze CEO and founder Philipp Schulte tells TechCrunch. “[With the blood test] we see that we can actually close those gaps for the first time ever in the supplement industry.”
While we don’t know exactly how many people have tried out Baze just yet, Schulte says the company has seen 40% month-over-month new subscriber growth.
That has garnered the attention of supplement company Nature’s Way, which has partnered with the company and just added $6 million to the coffers to help Baze ramp up marketing efforts in the U.S.
I had the opportunity to try out the test myself. It’s pretty simple to do. You just open up a little pear-shaped device, pop it on your arm and then press it to engage and get it to start collecting your blood. After it’s done, plop it in the provided medical packaging and ship it off to a Baze-contracted lab.
I will say it is certainly more convenient to just pop on a little device myself — although it might be tricky if you’re at all squeamish, as you’ll see a little bubble where the blood is being sucked from your arm. For anyone who hesitates, it might be easier to just head to a lab and have another human do this for you.
The price is also nice, compared to going to a Quest Diagnostics or LabCorp, which can vary depending on which vitamins you need to test for individually. With Baze it’s just $100 a pop, plus any additional supplements you might want to buy via monthly subscription after you get your results. The first month of supplements is free with your kit.
Baze’s website will show your results within about 12 days (though Schulte tells TechCrunch the company is working on getting your results faster). It does so with a score and then displays a range of various vitamins tested.
I was told that, overall, I was getting the nutrients I require with a score of 74 out of 100. But I’m already pretty good at taking high-quality vitamins. The only thing that really stuck out was my zinc levels, which I was told was way off the charts high after running the test through twice. Though I suspect, as I am not displaying any symptoms of zinc poisoning, this was likely the result of not wiping off my zinc-based sunscreen well enough before the test began.
For those interested in conducting their own at-home test and not afraid to prick themselves in the arm with something that looks like you might have it on hand in the kitchen, you can do so by heading over to Baze and signing up.
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Xbox Live is down for many (Update: It’s back up)
If you were trying to sneak in a quick game on Xbox Live during your Friday afternoon lunch break and found that you can’t get online: don’t worry, you’re not alone.
While Microsoft’s Xbox Live Status page still says all things are good to go (Update: Microsoft’s status page has now caught up with the outage, and says that it’s impacting sign-ins, account creations and searches), reports are pouring in of an outage keeping many users from logging in.
Microsoft acknowledged the problem on Twitter, saying that they’re “looking into it now.”
Update, 2:30 PM: It’s back up! The status page shows all lights as green again, and a Microsoft spokesperson says that services have been fully restored.
We’re aware that some users are unable to sign in currently & our teams are looking into it now. We’ll update when we have more info to share. Thanks for all the reports!
— Xbox Support (@XboxSupport) August 30, 2019
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Skype upgrades its messaging feature with drafts, bookmarks and more
Skype is best known for being a video calling app and, to some extent, that’s because its messaging feature set has been a bit underdeveloped. Today, the company is working to change that image with a series of improvements to Skype’s chatting features aimed at further differentiating it from rival apps.
One of the most useful of the new features is support for Message Drafts.
Similar to email, any message you type up in Skype but don’t yet send is saved within the conversation with a “draft” tag attached. That way you can return to the message to finish it and send it later.
It’s a feature that would be great to see other messaging clients adopt, as well, given how much of modern business and personal communication takes place outside of email.
People have wanted the ability to draft and schedule iMessage texts for years — so much so that clever developers invented app-based workarounds to meet consumers’ needs. Some people even type up their texts in Notepad, waiting for the right time to send them.
In another email-inspired addition, Skype is also introducing the ability to bookmark important messages. To access this option, you just have to long-press a message (on mobile) or right-click (on desktop), then tap or click “Add Bookmark.” This will add the message to your Bookmarks screen for easy retrieval.
You’ll also now be able to preview photos, videos and files before you send them through messages — a worthwhile improvement, but one that’s more about playing catch-up to other communication apps than being particularly innovative.
And if you’re sharing a bunch of photos or videos all at once, Skype will now organize them neatly. Instead of overwhelming recipients with a large set of photos, the photos are grouped in a way that’s more common to what you’d see on social media. That is, only a few are displayed while the rest hide behind a “+” button you have to click in order to see more.
Unrelated to the messaging improvements, Skype also rolled out split window support for all versions of Windows, Mac and Linux. (Windows 10 support was already available.)
As one of the older messaging apps still in use, Skype is no longer the largest or most popular, claiming only 300 million monthly active users compared to WhatsApp’s 1.5 billion, for example.
However, it’s good to see its team getting back to solving real consumer pain points rather than trying to clone Snapchat as it mistakenly tried to do not too long ago. (Thankfully, those changes were rolled back.) What Skype’s remaining users appreciate is the app’s ease-of-use and its productivity focus, and these changes are focused on that direction.
Outside of the expanded access to split view, noted above, all the other new features are rolling out across all Skype platforms, the company says.
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Credit Sesame, a platform for managing loans and credit scores, picks up $43M en route to IPO
Household debt in the U.S. continues to rise and as of this year now stands at nearly $14 billion. Now, one of the startups that’s building tools to help consumers better cope with that is announcing a round of funding and plans for an IPO — signs of the demand for its services, and its success to date.
Credit Sesame — which lets consumers check their credit scores and evaluate options to rebalance existing debts and loans to improve that score and thus their overall “financial health,” in the words of CEO and founder Adrian Nazari — has raised $43 million. With the company already profitable and growing revenues 90% each year for the last five, Nazari said that this round is likely to be the last round the company raises before it goes public.
Credit Sesame is not disclosing its valuation, in part because this round is likely to have some more money added to it. But Nazari noted that it’s on track to be valued at over $1 billion when it does close in the coming months. It has now raised $110 million in total.
The round is a mixture of equity and debt, and includes both strategic and financial investors. Led by growth-stage investors ATW Partners, it also includes participation from previous investors. Past backers of Credit Sesame include Menlo Ventures, Inventus Capital, Globespan Capital, IA Capital Groups, Symantec, Capital One Ventures and Stanford University. There also will likely be new investors coming to the company when the round does expand.
The reason the startup is raising both equity and debt is worth a note: Nazari said Credit Sesame is profitable and has been “for some time,” so when it raises money now, it would prefer to do so with less dilution. The funding will be going toward continuing to work on Credit Sesame’s artificial intelligence algorithms, and to continue expanding this business, but not likely acquisitions: there are a lot of companies in the fintech arena that are working on products adjacent to what Credit Sesame does, but Nazari said that it would likely only start to work on some M&A and consolidation plays after it IPOs, using the proceeds from that to fuel that.
In addition to a number of companies building tools and products to help people manage their money better, there are direct competitors to Credit Sesame, too, including Credit Karma, NerdWallet, Experian, ClearScore, Equifax and many more. Nazari’s view is that while Credit Sesame may be targeting a similar initial function, its approach and how it helps you manage your credit score is what differentiates it.
The company has coined the term “Personal Credit Management” (as opposed to personal financial management), and has built an algorithm it calls RoboCredit, which is based on a basic score provided by TransUnion (one of the big agencies that calculates scores, alongside Equifax and Experian), but also includes other factors that it calculates to show consumers which actions they can take to improve their scores. Checking initial scores is free on Credit Sesame, as are evaluating options for how to rebalance loans and other debts to help improve the score. But users that take products referred through the engine — such as refinancing a mortgage or taking a new credit and/or transferring your existing balance — or other premium services (such as an advanced level of identity theft protection), pay fees to do so.
The credit rating industry has seen some big setbacks in the last several years — first the big breach at Equifax, and then the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fining both Equifax and TransUnion for misrepresenting what kind of data it was providing to consumers, and for not being transparent enough in its charges. But Nazari said that in fact, this has had a positive impact on the company.
“The impact from Equifax has been net positive,” he explained. “Incidents like these create awareness and the need for consumers to watch their credit and be on top of that,” he noted. “Identity theft from breaches could happen any time.”
Indeed, online security has become a bit of an unknown variable for many of us: We can try to prepare as much as possible, but we never know what news of a new breach might come around the corner, or when one fragment of our disclosed information might be the missing piece to someone using it to steal something from us. On the other hand, the startup is giving more transparency at least to how some of the other aspects of our online financial identity work, and how it can be used by others to evaluate us as consumers.
“Credit Sesame is revolutionizing how consumers manage their credit. What once was a mystery and black box is now distilled by Credit Sesame’s PCM platform into easy to digest actionable insights that can effortlessly and meaningfully change a consumer’s credit and financial health,” said Kerry Propper, co-founder and managing partner at ATW Partners, in a statement. “We’re thrilled to open the gates to a new age of Personal Credit Management with the Credit Sesame team leading the space.”
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Daily Crunch: Apple will unveil the next iPhone on Sept 10
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. Apple will unveil the next iPhone September 10
Apple has sent out invites confirming rumors that its next major press event will happen on September 10. The event is expected to focus on the iPhone 11, unveiling three different models — the standard 11, as well as two Pro options.
If this happens, it would mark a subtle-but-significant shift in the way Apple structures its phone lineup. With a lower-priced flagship replacing the budget XR, the company could appeal to consumers who’ve been turned off by the rising prices for higher-end options.
2. Uber and Lyft are putting $60M toward keeping drivers independent contractors
In the event that California’s Assembly Bill 5 passes — forcing Uber and Lyft to make their drivers W-2 employees — each company is putting in $30 million to fund a 2020 ballot initiative that would enable them to keep their drivers as independent contractors.
3. Google lets David Drummond do the talking
Anyone wondering if Alphabet might reprimand its chief legal officer David Drummond for a long-ago extramarital affair with a former subordinate (which recently resurfaced in a much-discussed blog post), the answer seems to be . . . not right now.
Image via Getty Images / vladwel
Most new TVs come with a bunch of random junk turned on by default; things like motion smoothing that makes epic movies look like soap operas, or noise reduction that can wash out details and make an actor’s skin look cyborg-y. With Filmmaker Mode, you’ll be able to push a button and all that crap gets turned off.
5. Nike Huaraches get updated for the smartphone age
Slowly but surely, Nike has made its self-lacing motor technology more accessible. The next step: Bringing the tech to its Huarache line next month.
6. What is Andela, the Africa tech talent accelerator?
To put it succinctly, Andela is a startup — backed by $180 million in venture capital — that trains and connects African software developers to global companies for a fee. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
Benioff is coming to TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco to discuss how to build a highly successful business while giving back to the community.
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You can now share music from Spotify to Facebook Stories
Spotify this morning announced a new way for you to share music with friends (or fans, if you’re an artist) — by way of a new Facebook Stories integration that includes 15-second song previews. Viewers can also optionally tap on the “Play on Spotify” button in the Story to be redirected to the Spotify app to hear more.
The feature is designed largely with artists and their teams in mind, as it gives them another way to promote their new music across Facebook’s social network. Musicians and their managers often today use the Spotify app’s sharing feature to post their content across social media, including to Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, and elsewhere.
Last year, Spotify introduced a way to share music to Instagram Stories, including their albums, tracks, and playlists, as part of Facebook’s announcement that it was opening up sharing to Facebook and Instagram Stories from other, third-party apps.
At the time, the company said an integration with Facebook Stories was coming soon.
Since its launch on Instagram, the sharing feature has been mutually beneficial for both Spotify and Instagram alike, as it made users’ Stories more engaging while also sending traffic back to the Spotify app for further music discovery.
Add some music to your story
Audio sharing to Facebook Stories is now available. pic.twitter.com/HSBgmxYd8G— Spotify (@Spotify) August 30, 2019
There’s likely not as much demand for sharing to Facebook Stories, however.
In order to share the 15-second clips to Facebook Stories, you’ll tap the “Share” button from the Spotify app and choose Facebook as the destination.
Side note: We’re not seeing the option to share to News Feed as the picture Spotify published shows (see above. Instead, tapping “Facebook” launches you right into the Story interface, as shown in the tweet above.
You can then customize your Story as you would normally using the Story editing tools and post it to your profile. Viewers will get to hear the 15-second song clip, and can then tap to go to Spotify to hear more.
Spotify had offered Facebook Story sharing in the past, but the access was later pulled.
Hi there! We’re afraid the “Share to Facebook Stories” feature is no longer supported on Spotify. Give us a shout if you have other questions /MT
— SpotifyCares (@SpotifyCares) January 30, 2019
These song previews only work when you’re sharing a single track to Stories. If you choose to share other content, like albums, playlists, or an artist profile page, viewers can click into that content, but won’t hear any preview, Spotify says.
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Minecraft Earth closed beta goes live on Android in five cities
When the beta for Minecraft Earth (think the building concepts of Minecraft mashed up with the real-world wandering/augmented reality/collecting concepts of Pokémon GO) first went live back in July, it did so with a catch or two: it only worked on iOS, and only players in Seattle or London were actually able to play.
The beta pool is expanding dramatically this morning, with players on Android finally being invited to jump in. Meanwhile, the region locks have expanded over the past few weeks to include Tokyo, Stockholm and Mexico City (along with Seattle and London).
Curiously, those new Android users will immediately get access to a fledgling feature that iOS players haven’t: the in-game currency, rubies. Rubies can be earned or bought, and allow players to buy more build plates upon which they can piece together their blocky creations. In a blog post on the beta expansion, the company promises that any rubies acquired during the beta will follow the player into the eventual public release, and that iOS support for rubies is coming “very soon.”
Alas, you can’t just hop in the Google Play store, hit download and get to building. It’s still a closed beta, so you’ll have to sign up and be invited in before you’ll be able to start.
We went hands-on with an early build of Minecraft Earth right after it was announced — check out our early impressions here.
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Disrupt SF prices increase tonight
Nobody likes them, but price hikes happen, people. Price hikes happen. And the early-bird price for passes to Disrupt San Francisco 2019 disappears tonight, August 30 at 11:59 p.m. (PST). Avoid the pain of paying more and enjoy saving up to $1,300. You have only a few hours left. Buy your Disrupt SF passes right now.
Why attend Disrupt SF? It’s simply the place to be for members of the early-stage startup ecosystem — no matter what your role. Take it from Luke Heron, CEO of TestCard Diagnostics. His company exhibited in Startup Alley at Disrupt SF ’17 and again at Disrupt Berlin ’18 — and recently closed on $1.7 million in funding.
“If you’re a startup founder or an entrepreneur,” said Heron, “attending Disrupt is a no-brainer.”
Need more reasons? Okay, we’ll break it down for you.
- Programming across four stages, workshops, Q&A Sessions, panel discussions and a roster of speakers representing a veritable who’s who of tech leaders, icons, makers and doers. Check out the Disrupt agenda.
- Startup Battlefield, where 15-30 outstanding early-stage startups launch on a world stage and vie for a $100,000 cash prize.
- Startup Alley, featuring more than 1,000 early-stage startups — and don’t forget to meet our hand-picked TC Top Picks — 45 incredible startups made the cut this year.
- Networking — especially but not exclusively in Startup Alley — is practically a contact sport at Disrupt events. And by that we mean you’ll find plenty of contacts to help drive your business forward. We even have a tool to help you… read the next bullet.
- CrunchMatch, a free, business match-making service that can help you cut through the thousands of people to find and connect with founders and investors who share similar business goals.
- The TC Hackathon, where up to 800 talented makers will compete for a $10,000 top prize, plus thousands more in cash and prizes from sponsored contests.
Disrupt San Francisco 2019 takes place October 2-4, and you have just a few short hours left to take advantage of early-bird pricing and save up to $1,300. Price hikes happen. Don’t let them happen to you. Buy your passes before 11:59 p.m. (PST) tonight, August 30.
Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt San Francisco 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.
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