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Activism platform actionable helps users be proactive about the causes they love
In 2016, when the world felt like an entirely different place, Jordan Hewson launched a platform called Speakable. It was meant to let news readers take action on a cause or issue in the very moment they cared most: while reading a news article about it. The company partnered with publishers and NGOs to deliver an action button, right on the publisher’s website.
Skip forward to today, and people have become far more proactive about the causes they care about. That’s why Hewson is launching a new product called actionable, a library of actions mapped across dozens of causes, giving the user a clear view into how they can do something about the things they care about most.
Though donations are an option across the platform, there are other methods by which users can take action, including volunteering, contacting your representatives and signing petitions.
“We were founded before the 2016 election,” said Hewson. “And Speakable was based on the hypothesis that if we didn’t make action easy, people wouldn’t do it. But so much has changed, politically and socially, that people are really breaking down the doors to find out ways that they can help in this moment that we’re in. So we really wanted to be able to provide our users with a platform where they can proactively seek out things that they want to do and deepen their community experience.”
Issues on the platform include Education, Equal Rights, Environment, Health, Migration, Politics, Poverty, Racial Justice and more. When a user clicks on an issue, actionable breaks the results down into the type of action the user might take, from donating to volunteering to signing petitions. The platform also drills down into the specific mission of the organization to give users a clear look at how they’re spending their resources.
When Speakable launched, it offered its services for free in the hopes of scaling up rapidly. Today, the platform charges a 3% service fee for donations made through the platform, but Hewson doesn’t see that as the company’s primary revenue generator.
Rather, Speakable is partnering with brands to sponsor action buttons for their own purpose-based initiatives. Hewson explains that might take the form of a matching campaign or sponsoring the ability for you to reach out to your legislator on a certain issue, giving the publishers another way to generate revenue, as well as Speakable, while scaling campaigns and initiatives on behalf of the brand partners.
The company is currently partnered with about 90 publishers and, via an API, aims to list all the nonprofits that exist in the States.
Interestingly, actionable doesn’t necessarily rank or curate the NGOs on its platform in an effort to maintain neutrality among nonprofits, according to Hewson.
Speakable has raised $2.5 million since inception. It has also powered 10 million actions, with the majority of those actions coming in 2020, with 5.2 million actions taken this year. Just this past week, in fact, Speakable facilitated more than $1.3 million in donations in a single day to Feeding America in partnership with the TODAY show.
The team is about 15 people. Sixty percent identify as women at the female-founded company, with 20% identifying as BIPOC and 10% identifying as LGBTQI+.
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Astroscale ships its space junk removal demonstration satellite for March 2021 mission
Japanese startup Astroscale has shipped its ELSA-d spacecraft to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazahkstan, where it will be integrated with a Soyuz rocket for a launch scheduled for March of next year. This is a crucial mission for Astroscale, since it’ll be the first in-space demonstration of the company’s technology for de-orbiting space debris, a cornerstone of its proposed space sustainability service business.
The ELSA-d mission by Astroscale is a small satellite mission that will demonstrate two key technologies that enable the company’s vision for orbital debris removal. First will be a targeting component, demonstrating an ability to locate and dock with a piece of space debris, using positioning sensors including GPS and laser locating technologies. That will be used by a so-called “servicer” satellite to find and attach to a “target” satellite launched at the same time, which will stand in for a potential piece of debris.
Astroscale intends to dock and release with the “target” using its “servicer” multiple times over the course of the mission, showing that it can identify and capture uncontrolled objects in space, and that it can maneuver them for controlled de-orbit. This will basically prove out the feasibility of the technology underlying its business model, and set it up for future commercial operations.
In October, Astroscale announced that it had raised $51 million, making its total raised to date $191 million. The company also acquired the staff and IP of a company called Effective Space Solutions in June, which it will use to build out the geostationary servicing arm of its business, in addition to the LEO operations that ELSA-d will demonstrate.
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Liberis, the embedded finance provider for SMEs, raises additional £70M in debt
Liberis, the U.K.-based fintech that provides finance for small businesses as an alternative to a traditional bank loan or extended overdraft, has replenished its own coffers with £70 million in funding. The round is a mixture of debt and venture debt, although the company is declining to disclose the percentage split, so we can likely chalk this up as mostly debt to fund the loans Liberis issues.
Providing the financing are previous backers British Business Investments, Paragon Bank and BCI Europe, along with new partner Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). It brings the total funding raised by Liberis to £200 million, including more than £50 million in equity funding. “The new funds will be used to fuel company growth, launch new products and markets, and provide additional customer financing solutions,” says the fintech.
To date, 2007-founded Liberis has provided over £500 million in financing to 16,000 SMEs across Europe, the U.S. and the U.K. (the product is available in five new countries: U.S., Finland, Sweden, Czech Republic and Slovakia). However, lending has really picked up lately, with £250 million lent in the past two years alone.
Liberis provides SMEs with funding from £1,000 to £300,000 based on projected credit and debit card sales. However, the clever part is that the loan is paid back via a pre-agreed percentage of the business’ digital transactions. In other words, bar any minimum monthly payment agreed, the repayment schedule is directly tied to the size and pace of a business’ card transactions.
Noteworthy, the go-to-market strategy has shifted toward B2B2B — or “embedded finance” — with Liberis now predominantly partnering with marketplaces, software providers and acquirers, such as Worldpay from FIS and Global Payments. These partners integrate with Liberis to offer personalised pre-approved revenue-based financing to their end customers.
“Liberis’ core business is to enable partners to offer embedded business finance to their customers,” Rob Straathof, CEO of Liberis, tells TechCrunch. “Back in 2015, we launched one of the world’s first embedded business finance partnerships with Worldpay from FIS, and have significantly expanded our partnerships across the globe over the past years, including Global Payments, Opayo (Sagepay), EPOS Now and Worldpay U.S.”
Straathof says that by integrating Liberis’ business finance platform into a partner’s existing ecosystem and customer experience, the fintech is able to provide “instant value” for its partners and the SMEs they support.
“Through our single API integration, we receive privileged data from our partners which enables Liberis to offer hyper-personalised and pre-approved finance to SMEs,” he explains. “By making finance more personalised, intuitive and accessible for SMEs, we in turn empower our partners to unlock greater customer value by improving engagement, satisfaction and loyalty which lowers churn. Ultimately, everyone wins”.
Comments Folake Shasanya, SVB’s head of EMEA warehouse financing: “We are pleased to become a new funding partner to Liberis and have been impressed with their ability to embed financing solutions across technology platforms, payments providers and more. At SVB, supporting innovation is in our DNA and we are delighted to provide this global growth opportunity to Liberis through our warehouse and venture debt products”.
Article updated to clarify the round is a mixture of debt and venture debt, without any pure equity funding.
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As 2020 ends, new unicorn formation continues to impress
Here in the final few working days of 2020, a surprising number of new unicorns have come to light. The mad scramble that investors are seeing in seed-stage startups appears to be reflected across the later stages as well.
That deal-making is still alive is not a surprise, but the cadence at which the market is crowning new unicorns is slightly startling, given the time of year. I’ve given up expecting a slowdown in venture capital, but I did anticipate some deceleration in huge rounds and resulting unicorn valuations this close to Christmas.
The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.
This morning after contrasting a PitchBook-derived $500 million, post-money valuation for Bolt’s Series C that its CEO had said was roughly doubled in its Series C1, TechCrunch discovered that the online checkout software company likely landed a new valuation right around the unicorn mark. Bolt’s PR team declined to share a new valuation or grade our math, saying that its framing was “fine.”
One new unicorn — or near-unicorn, perhaps — was not enough for the day. The Information broke news this afternoon that Ironclad, which sells contract management software, put together a round worth “at least $100 million,” valuing the company at “more than $950 million.” Akin to Bolt, this unicorn-or-just-under valuation is also a doubling or better from its last private round.
In fact, two new unicorns were insufficient: a third company also made the mark today, namely Qualia, which trumpeted the valuation achievement in a release. Qualia builds real estate software.
Three unicorns in one day is busy. To see three come to light on December 21st is a little bonkers.
And they are hardly the only startups we’ve seen sprout horns and race about on four legs in recent days. There’s Boom, Zenoti and BigID also in the last week or so. That’s at least six new unicorns since roughly the mid-point of December. Wild!
Let’s talk about the rounds and see what we can learn from them.
Hello, new unicorns
Starting with Bolt, there are a few lessons for us to take away. First: not every company that secures a unicorn (or a near-unicorn valuation) wants to make noise about it. We’ve known this, but the company’s currently coy attitude underscores the point. Second from Bolt is that inside investors are more than willing to crown unicorns in their own portfolio.
According to CEO Ryan Breslow, after his company raised its Series C, the round’s lead investor offered the company another term sheet. But WestCap was not its only lead. General Atlantic came in as well, giving the $75 million investment two leads. Bolt had already decided to call its new round a Series C1 before General Atlantic entered the deal, the addition of which brought $15 million to what was previously a $60 million investment.
Bolt’s round fits neatly into a number of trends that we’ve been watching: inside rounds being bullish not bearish in 2020, the fastest-growing companies raising two rounds this year and the incredible focus by venture investors into startups that were not merely surviving COVID-19, but benefiting from how it shook up the market.
Turning to Ironclad, around $100 million at around a $950 million valuation is about as basic as a unicorn round can get. And because it has been more than a year since its last round, you might think that there is not that much to learn in its case.
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Despite economic downturn, space startup funding defies gravity
The COVID-19 pandemic might have upended the global economy, but according to Meagan Crawford at Spacefund and Chris Moran with Lockheed Martin Ventures, it didn’t dampen investment in space startups.
The space industry has enjoyed a honeymoon period with hundreds of startups popping up in the past five to seven years following SpaceX’s success.
Spacefund research conducted earlier this year found that there is almost no correlation between the global economy and the space industry, said Crawford, a managing partner at the VC firm, last Thursday at TC Sessions: Space 2020. Crawford and Moran both agreed that interest and investment in space will increase as more startups have successful exits.
“We looked back historically over the last decade and a little bit more, and it turns out that even during the 2008-2009 economic downturn, the space industry continued to grow at 7% per year,” Crawford said, adding that they saw almost no correlation between the performance of the Global S&P 1200 and the space industry.
“I think a lot of this has to do with a big portion of the industry coming from government budgets, which provides a lot of stability even in economically rough times, as well as the industry being in such high demand and going through such a high-growth phase right now that even the pandemic couldn’t really slow it down,” she said.
Early-stage investments did suffer at the beginning of the year, Moran noted after the event, but added that it appeared to be temporary.
“Firms were circling the wagons on their portfolios, in-person incubator programs went on hiatus, so there were fewer early-stage companies out there and less money for those companies,” he said, adding that Pitchbook data confirmed LMVC’s suspicions and showed a 25% to 27% drop in new company formation over that time.
Since September, LMVC has seen a spike in new companies. Meanwhile, incubators and accelerators have adapted to COVID-19 restrictions, Zoom made face-to-face meetings easy and life “as usual” started back up again, Moran added.
Exits are driving investments
The space industry has enjoyed a honeymoon period with hundreds of startups popping up in the past five to seven years following SpaceX’s success. Moran said this unabashed growth period will continue for a few years before narrowing.
“So like any any industry in VC, you see a lot of people jump in and then as business models collide and the need to generate some sustainable business happens there’s a lot of winnowing and narrowing of the field,” Moran said. “We’re probably still in that growth period, but I imagine over the next few years, we’ll start seeing this winnowing and really focus on the folks who have a technology and a business model that will be successful long term.”
Right now, the entire industry is funded on private capital, said Moran, who predicted investing is going to grow for some time as long as people see the excitement and promise of the industry. He added that easy access to public markets — notably the rise in mergers with special purpose acquisition companies — could drive even more money into space.
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3 VCs discuss space junk and what else they’re betting on right now
Space may be the final frontier, but in terms of investment, VCs are just getting started. With that in mind during TC Sessions: Space 2020 last week, we spoke to three investors who’ve been actively funding what could become tomorrow’s biggest companies to learn where they might focus next.
Sustainability is a major issue for all of their portfolio companies.
Our guests — Tess Hatch of Bessemer Venture Partners, who has long focused on the commercialization of space; Mike Collett of Promus Ventures, a venture firm that invests in deep tech software and hardware companies; and Chris Boshuizen of the venture firm DCVC and a cofounder of Planet Labs — had a lot of intriguing observations on topics, including the dangers of orbital debris, the merits of space manufacturing, and how they’d rate the U.S. government when it comes to fostering space-related innovations.
For those who missed the event, we’ve posted a video of our conversation below.
Space junk could affect long-term sustainability
Hatch, who recently co-authored an informative piece on the topic, said there’s little consensus about whether space junk is a critical matter that deserves more regulatory attention or an issue that will resolve itself through tech advancements, even while startups like Astroscale and D-Orbit are focused on the issue. The commercial industry’s expectation seems to be that space companies can regulate themselves and launch constellations without leaving pieces of launch vehicles or rocket stages in space, she said.
For her part, Hatch said it’s something to potentially invest in within a “handful of years.” At the moment, she added, “it’s not at the top of my list just due to looking for a shorter return on my investment for my LPs in the fund.”
Collett and the others stressed that in the meantime, sustainability is a major issue for all of their portfolio companies. “Everybody wants to do their job as a corporate citizen to make sure they’re not leaving anything else up there that doesn’t need to be there. Indeed, Boshuizen noted that at Planet Labs, best practices were taken very seriously.
Still, Boshuizen noted concerns about newer capital sources that might be less focused on the issue of space debris. “I don’t think everyone necessarily has the same space background,” he said, explaining that “we’re seeing a lot of outside investment from new people joining the industry, which is exciting, but also they don’t really know how important this is [and] it’s important for people to realize that they’ve got to pay attention to this.”
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Bolt adds $75M to its Series C, as the battle to rule online checkout continues
Bolt, a startup that offers online checkout technology to retailers, announced this morning that it has added $75 million to its Series C round, bringing the financing to a total of $125 million.
WestCap and General Atlantic led the new tranche, which Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow told TechCrunch was raised at around twice its Series C valuation. PitchBook pegs the company’s Series C at a post-money valuation of $500 million, implying that the Series C1 values Bolt at around $1 billion.
The company is calling the latest check its “Series C1.” Why not just call it a Series D? According to Breslow, Bolt’s future Series D will be much larger.
While Bolt’s creatively demarcated Series C1 is interesting, the capital event is in line with how the checkout space is growing in aggregate right now. There’s a lot of money being put to work on solving a particular e-commerce pain point.
Fast, a competing online checkout software provider, raised $20 million in March. And this June, Checkout.com, which is based in England but has a global stable of offices, raised $150 million at a $5.5 billion valuation.
Bolt, meanwhile, announced the first $50 million of its Series C in July. The company’s C1 event, therefore, represents not only the fourth major investment into checkout tech this year, but it also fits into a now-regular trend of fast-growing startups raising two checks in 2020 — companies like Welcome, Skyflow, AgentSync and Bestow also completed the feat this year.
But enough talking about its market. Let’s dig into what Bolt is building and why it just took on another truckload of cash.
Series C1
Bolt offers four connected services: checkout, payments, user accounts and fraud protection.
The company’s core offering is its checkout product, which it claims is both faster than comparable industry averages and has higher conversion rates. The startup’s payments and fraud services fits into its checkout universe by ensuring that transactions are real and that payments can be accepted. Finally, Bolt’s user accounts (shoppers are prompted to save their credentials when they first execute a purchase with the startup’s tech) boost the chance that someone who has checked out online using its tech will do so again in the future, helping Bolt to sell its service and ensure customers benefit from it.
The more shoppers that Bolt can attract, the more accounts it will have in the market feeding more data into its anti-fraud tool and checkout personalization technology.
And Bolt is reaching more online buyers, with the company claiming a roughly 10x gain of the number of people who have made accounts with its service this year. According to Breslow, the number was around 450,000 last December. It’s around 4.5 million now, he said, and Bolt expects the figure to reach 30 million next year.
Given the huge scale of its expected account creation, TechCrunch asked Breslow about his confidence interval in the number. He said 90%, thanks to Authentic Brands Group (ABG) linking up with Bolt, a deal that his company announced last month. Breslow said that ABG has 50 million shoppers; perhaps the 30 million figure is possible.
(Distribution for checkout tech is like oxygen, so competing companies in the space love to chat about their availability gains. Here’s Fast talking about being supported by WooCommerce from last week, for example. Fast declined to share processing growth metrics with TechCrunch after that announcement.)
Bolt’s historical shopper growth has paid dividends for its total transaction volume. The company told TechCrunch that it processed around $1 billion in transactions this year, up around 3.5x from its 2019 gross merchandise volume (GMV). That approximate pace of growth implies a roughly $286 million GMV result for Bolt last year; how far the company can scale that figure in 2021 will be our chief measuring stick for how well its ABG deal performs.
Breslow told TechCrunch that Bolt expects to 3x its GMV in 2021, which we read as implying a roughly $3 billion number.
But don’t just take that figure, apply a payment processing percentage and walk away with a revenue guess for Bolt. The company does make money from payments, but also from charging for its other services — like fraud protection — on a SaaS basis. So Bolt is a hybrid payments-and-software company, an increasingly popular model, though one that certain categories of software are slow to pick up on.
Underpinning Bolt’s plans to treble GMV and greatly expand its shopper network is its new capital. The $75 million cache of new dollars is going into handling market demand, moving upmarket and engineering, the company said. In short there’s a lot of in-market demand for better checkout tech — hence all the venture activity — and larger customers need more customizations and sales support. Bolt is going to spend on that.
Given that Bolt just reloaded, it would not be a surprise to see Fast or Checkout.com raise more capital in Q1 or Q2 of 2021. More when that happens.
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IBM snags Nordcloud to add multi-cloud consulting expertise
IBM has been busy since it announced plans to spin out its legacy infrastructure management business in October, placing an all-in bet on the hybrid cloud. Today, it built on that bet by acquiring Helsinki-based multi-cloud consulting firm Nordcloud. The companies did not share the purchase price.
Nordcloud fits neatly into this strategy with 500 consultants certified in AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform, giving the company a trained staff of experts to help as they move away from an IBM -centric solution to choosing to work with the customer however they wish to implement their cloud strategy.
This hybrid approach harkens back to the $34 billion Red Hat acquisition in 2018, which is really the lynchpin for this approach, as CEO Arvind Krishna told CNBC’s Jon Fortt in an interview last month. Krishna is in the midst of trying to completely transform his organization, and acquisitions like this are meant to speed up that process:
The Red Hat acquisition gave us the technology base on which to build a hybrid cloud technology platform based on open-source, and based on giving choice to our clients as they embark on this journey. With the success of that acquisition now giving us the fuel, we can then take the next step, and the larger step, of taking the managed infrastructure services out. So the rest of the company can be absolutely focused on hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence.
John Granger, senior vice president for cloud application innovation and COO for IBM Global Business Services, says that IBM’s customers are increasingly looking for help managing resources across multiple vendors, as well as on premises.
“IBM’s acquisition of Nordcloud adds the kind of deep expertise that will drive our clients’ digital transformations as well as support the further adoption of IBM’s hybrid cloud platform. Nordcloud’s cloud-native tools, methodologies and talent send a strong signal that IBM is committed to deliver our clients’ successful journey to cloud,” Granger said in a statement.
After the deal closes, which is expected in the first quarter next year subject to typical regulatory approvals, Nordcloud will become an IBM company and operate to help continue this strategy.
It’s worth noting that this deal comes on the heels several other small recent deals, including acquiring Expertus last week and Truqua and Instana last month. These three companies provide expertise in digital payments, SAP consulting and hybrid cloud applications performance monitoring, respectively.
Nordcloud, which is based in Helsinki with offices in Amsterdam, was founded in 2011 and has raised more than $26 million, according to PitchBook data.
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The US wants startups to get a piece of the $16 billion spent on space tech
The U.S. government is one of the biggest spenders in the nascent space industry, and the man who handles the money for the Air Force’s $16 billion checkbook wants startups to know that his door is open for them.
In all, Will Roper, the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, handles about $60 billion worth of budget for the Air Force — a mandate that includes spending money on the new tech initiatives the Air Force deems important.
Historically, the Department of Defense hasn’t been the greatest at working with startups — and many tech companies have been loath to work with the DoD. However, since much of modern civilian infrastructure is based on global positioning systems and other satellite technologies that fall under the Defense Department’s purview, those views on cooperation are changing on both sides.
“Space isn’t a quiet domain of communication and navigation and exploration anymore,” Roper told the audience at TechCrunch’s latest Sessions event, TC Sessions: Space 2020. “It’s increasingly becoming a hostile place… So we’re gearing up a new kind of competition on the military side that could extend to space and that’s creating a lot of new space programs.”
Roper emphasized that the interest from the Air Force and the government more broadly extends well beyond offensive capabilities and military priorities. As space becomes an economic opportunity, Roper sees the Air Force as an engine for driving technology development forward in ways that have commercial benefits.
“It’s a great, great time for innovation in new technologies that could help the military, but we want to do more than just help the military. That’s the old thinking in the Pentagon. That’s all that would help us win the Cold War in the 20th Century, but it’s not going to help us in the 21st, where technology is globalized and accelerating,” Roper said.
“We want to find ways where our military mission and our funding can help accelerate commercial markets too, so it’s competing on a much bigger stage. But we think it’s where we need to aspire to be, so that we’re playing the right catalyst role in this nation and with our partners around the world,” Roper said.
There are several programs that startups can tap to get those federal dollars. Two of the easiest points of entry are through the AFWERX and its recently announced SpaceWERX arm focused entirely on space technology.
“These look like any tech company,” Roper told the audience at the TechCrunch event. “They’re outside our fence lines. They’re easy to walk into… Now you don’t have to know the mission, we will help you find the mission and the customer — the warfighter associated with it. It’s a great model because it keeps the company focused on what they know best, which is their tech.”
Over the last three years, Roper estimated that the AFWERX program had brought 2,300 companies into the Air Force and Space Force programs, and most of them had never worked with the military before, he said.
Within AFWERX there are three programs that particularly relate to integrating startups into the procurement process, Roper said. One is the Spark program, which pairs military with private industry; one is the AFVentures program, which is designed to finance new innovations coming from private industry; and finally there’s the Prime program, which helps commercialize and certify technologies.
Roper pointed to the recent certification the Air Force gave to Joby Aviation for its flying cars. “So there’s a new military market that will hopefully generate a new commercial market,” Roper said.
In 2021, the Prime program will expand to space technologies, according to Roper.
As the demand for new tech grows, there’s no shortage of innovations Roper would like to see from private industry. From new autonomous innovations that could help co-pilot spacecraft to technology for refueling and in-space maneuverability, and reusable equipment from boosters to other components that can bring costs down.
Roper also acknowledged that the Pentagon has a long way to go to “hack the acquisition system” when it comes to dual-use technologies.
Entrepreneurs have pointed out that one of the biggest obstacles to the growth of the commercial space industry has been the inability of the U.S. government to open up the technology for use by private industry.
Roper hopes to change that. “We want to use our military dollars, our mission, and potentially our certifications to help get you there without changing your core product,” he said. “If you succeed as a commercial success, then we succeed as well, because now we’ve got a great tech partner, that hopefully we can continue to come to to solve problems in future. The thing that we’ll want to understand early on is how our military market and all those benefits I just mentioned, how can they help you get to commercial success? And what is it that we not need to do to pull you off that trajectory?”
Contracts with AFWERX are fixed-price and progress as companies hit certain milestones on the product roadmap. These orders increase incrementally as the technology proves itself, so a contract could start with the delivery of a prototype, then experimental usage, then a commercial contract, then broad adoption. “What we’re looking to do is see if you can move the ball forward on your technology, and if you do, then we do another contract. We step you up our process,” Roper said.
Roper sees the project as nothing less than the evolution of the aerospace and defense industry.
“We have a lot of amazing companies today that helped build stealth bombers and space planes and all sorts of awesome stuff. They’re defense companies and we still need them,” Roper said. “What we’re hoping to help build in this century is a set of new companies that are just tech companies. They’re not defense, purely, and they’re not commercial purely. They’re just technology companies and they do a bit of business on both sides.”
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NextMind’s Dev Kit for mind-controlled computing offers a rare ‘wow’ factor in tech
NextMind debuted its Dev Kit hardware at CES last year, but the hardware is now actually shipping, and the startup shared with me the production version to take a test drive. The NextMind controller is a sensor that reads electrical signals from your brain’s visual cortex, and translates those into input signals for a connected PC. A lot of companies have developed novel input solutions that use either eye tracking or electrical impulse input from the body, but NextMind’s is the first I’ve tried that worked instantly and wonderfully, providing a truly amazing experience of a kind that’s hard to find in the current world of relatively mature computing paradigms.
The basics
NextMind’s developer kit is just that — a product aimed at developers that’s meant to give them everything they need to get building software that works with NextMind’s hardware and APIs. It includes the NextMind sensor, which works with a range of headgear, including simple straps, Oculus VR headsets and even baseball hats, along with the software and SDK required to make it work on your PC.
Image Credits: NextMind
The package that NextMind provided me included the sensor, a fabric headband, a Surface PC with the engine pre-installed and a USB gamepad for use with one of the company’s pre-built software demos.
The sensor itself is lightweight, and can operate for up to eight hours continuously on a single charge. It can charge via USB-C, and its software is compatible with both Mac and PC, along with Oculus, HTC Vive and also Microsoft’s HoloLens.
Design and features
The NextMind sensor itself is surprisingly small and light — it fits in the palm of your hand, with two arms that extend slightly beyond that. It features an integrated clip mount that can be used to attach it to just about anything to secure it to your head. In terms of fit, you just need to ensure that the nine sets of two-pronged electrode sensors make contact with your skin, which NextMind provides instructions on doing by essentially making sure it straps snugly to your head, and then “combing” the device slightly (moving it up and down to get your hair out of the way).
It wears comfortably, though you will notice the electrodes pressing into your skin, especially over longer use periods. The ability to use a standard baseball cap with the clip makes it super convenient to install and wear, and it worked with the Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest headstraps easily and instantly, too.
Image Credits: NextMind
Setup was a breeze. I was guided by NextMind’s co-creators, but the app provides clear instructions as well. There’s a calibration process during which you look at an animation being displayed on the host PC, which helps the sensor identify the specific signals your occipital lobe is emitting when performing the target behaviour that you’ll later use to actually interact with NextMind-optimized software.
Here’s where it’s worth pausing to explain how NextMind is actually “reading your thoughts”: The sensor basically learns what it looks like when your brain is engaged in what the company calls “active, visual focus.” It does this using a common signal that it overlays on controllable elements of a software’s graphical user interface. That way, when you focus on a specific item, it can translate that into a “press” action, or a “hold and move,” or any other number of potential output results.
NextMind’s system is elegantly simple in conception, which is probably why it feels so powerful and rich in use. After the calibration process, I immediately jumped into the demos and was performing a range of actions effectively with my brain. First was media playback and window management on a desktop, and from there I moved on to composing music, entering a pin on a number pad and playing multiple games, including a platform where my mind control was supplementing my physical input on a USB gamepad to create a whole new level of fun and complex gameplay that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.
This is a Dev Kit, so the included software is just a small sampling of what could be possible with NextMind eventually, now that developers are able to build their own. What’s amazing is that the included samples are breathtaking on their own, providing an overall experience that is mind-bending in all the best possible ways. Imagining a future where NextMind hardware is even smaller and a seamless part of an overall computing experience that also includes traditional input is tantalizing, indeed.
Bottom line
NextMind’s Dev Kit is definitely just that — a Dev Kit. It’s intended for developers who are going to use it to write their own software that will take advantage of this unique, safe and convenient form of brain-computer interface (BCI). The kit retails for $399, and is now shipping. NextMind has plans to eventually consumerise the product, and to work with other OEMs as well on implementations, but for now, even in this state, it’s an awe-inspiring glimpse into what could well be the next major shift in our daily computing paradigm.
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