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Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd is coming to Disrupt SF
Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd has always done things her own way.
Whether it’s standing up for her political beliefs, building a company with fully outsourced engineers or avoiding the usual startup fundraising runaround, Wolfe Herd follows her own instincts in building a business. Which is why we’re super excited to announce that Whitney Wolfe Herd will join us at TC Disrupt SF 2018.
Wolfe Herd first came on the scene as a co-founder and VP of Marketing at Tinder, where she helped grow the dating app into one of the world’s biggest dating platforms. But after a lawsuit over sexual harassment and discrimination, which was settled out of court, Wolfe Herd left the company to build an app focused on compliments and positive affirmations.
Originally, she wanted nothing to do with the dating space. But after meeting Andrey Adreev, Badoo founder and Bumble’s majority stakeholder, she realized that giving women a voice in digital dating could be revolutionary. And so, Bumble was born in 2014.
The app has grown to 30 million users, and continues to grow in popularity based on a simple premise: women make the first move.
But Wolfe Herd’s ambitions don’t stop at dating. The 28-year-old founder has added new verticals to the app, letting users find friends and make professional connections via Bumble.
And all the while, Bumble’s cap table has never changed, with Wolfe Herd’s 20 percent stake as yet undiluted. Wolfe Herd was named one of Time 100’s most influential people this year, and has herself become a brand that represents authenticity and self-empowerment.
We can’t wait to talk to Wolfe Herd at Disrupt SF 2018. You can buy tickets to the show here.
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Switchee raises £1.3M for its smart thermostat for social housing landlords
Switchee, an IoT startup based in London, has raised £1.3 million in “pre-Series A” funding for its smart thermostat and accompanying cloud-based service. However, unlike consumer offerings, such as Nest, Hive or Tado, the company’s product is targeting large landlords, initially within the social housing sector.
The idea is to help social landlords both tackle fuel poverty amongst their residents and as part of their social remit, and to provide a scalable technology solution for managing their properties. This includes something akin to an early warning system for common housing stock maintenance issues, such as mould, poor insulation, or a failing boiler.
Leading the round is Fair by Design Fund, a new £15 million fund managed by Ascension Ventures and backed by Big Society Capital and Joseph Rowntree Foundation. It specifically targets companies tackling the U.K.’s poverty premium.
Other backers of Switchee’s latest round include Contrarian Ventures, an early stage energy fund backed by Lietuvos Energija (the largest energy provider in the Baltics), and AU Capital Partners, a VC fund focused on the U.K.-India corridor and investing in technology companies in IOT, Smart Cities and fintech. Previously Mustard Seed, and ClearlySo invested.
“We solve two problems, one on the resident side the other on the landlord side,” Switchee co-founder Ian Napier tells TechCrunch. “For residents, fuel poverty and high energy costs, with 1 in 10 households in the U.K. having to make a choice between ‘heating’ or ‘eating’. For landlords, the poor or non-existent data about their housing stock and resultant maintenance and repair inefficiencies. To give an idea on cost, the average annual maintenance spend per property is £4,000. We have even seen examples of Housing Associations not knowing which houses they own”.
Interestingly, Switchee has decided to build its own hardware rather than, say, piecing together existing consumer smart home solutions or simply white labelling a competitor’s offering. This is something Napier says the startup has routinely debated internally but decided that to deliver a smart thermostat that truly fits the needs of social landlords, it was necessary to be fully vertically integrated, with bespoke hardware working in tandem with the Switchee cloud service and landlord analytics.
And that seems to be working out quite well so far. Following two years of commercial pilots, including successfully deploying Switchee on a national scale last winter, the company says it is now working with over 40 of the U.K.’s leading social landlords, including Flagship Group, The Guinness Partnership, and Peabody, in addition to a number of Local Authorities and Councils.
“We sell the hardware, which landlords give to their residents for free. We also sell access to our landlord SaaS dashboard which aggregates sensory data from Switchee thermostats and presents housing management and welfare alerts. These data insights allow landlords to better understand and manage their large housing portfolios, and the communities they house, more efficiently”.
The Switchee device itself has temperature, light, motion, humidity and air pressure sensors, which it uses to learn occupancy and a property’s “thermal profile” i.e. how quickly it heats and cools. Based on this data, it then optimizes heating settings remotely — meaning that the Switchee device can be used passively, which Napier says is crucial for a non-direct to consumer offering — and as a result claims to reduce resident energy bills by up to 15 percent. It connects via 2G phone networks (in addition to WiFi) so as not to have to rely on a resident’s own internet connection.
“We can be passive ‘fit and forget’,” says Napier. “Switchee will automatically calculate optimum heating settings and regulate heating to reduce wastage and cut bills. Residents who receive a free thermostat can be less engaged than a consumer who chooses to buy a Nest or Hive… so we can’t rely on engagement. But we hope residents will love our technology and use it. We just don’t need them to if they have other things going on”.
The data the device collects is also used to produce a landlord dashboard displaying a range of welfare and maintenance KPIs and alerts such as mould risk, poor insulation, fuel poverty risk and boiler performance. “This facilitates a shift from reactive to pre-emptive maintenance, saving money and delivering better outcomes,” he says.
On the topic of data privacy, Napier says the Switchee team believe in using “data for good”. In this instance, to combat fuel poverty and to help social landlords care for properties and communities more effectively. “The real key to data privacy, we believe, is transparency and communication: we explain to residents what information we are collecting and why. And we always obtain consent before installing,” he says.
Asked specifically about the occupancy data the device collects and how it can be used, Napier says the company is not interested in the occupancy profiles that drive residents’ energy bill savings, only the outcome, i.e. lower energy bills. “Similarly, we don’t share raw occupancy with landlords, but we do have a couple of features derived from that occupancy. We can suggest convenient times for engineer, repair or other house visits. And we can alert landlords if we think a property has been abandoned,” he adds.
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Microsoft program provides a decade of updates for Windows IoT devices
If you have an essential Internet of Things device running Windows 10 IoT Core Service, you don’t want to be worried about security and OS patches over a period of years. Microsoft wants to help customers running these kinds of devices with a new program that guarantees 10 years of updates.
The idea is that as third-party partners build applications on top of the Windows 10 IoT Core Services, these OEMs, who create the apps, can pay Microsoft to guarantee updates for these devices for a decade. This can help assure customers that they won’t be vulnerable to attack on these critical systems from unpatched applications.
The service does more than provide updates though. It also gives OEMs the ability to manage the updates and assess the device’s health.
“The Windows IoT Core service offering is enabling partners to commercialize secure IoT devices backed by industry-leading support. And so device makers will have the ability to manage updates for the OS, for the apps and for the settings for OEM-specific files,” Dinesh Narayanan, director of business development for emerging markets explained.
It gives OEMs creating Windows-powered applications on machines like healthcare devices or ATMs this ability to manage them over an extended period. That’s particularly important as these devices tend to have a more extended usage period than say a PC or tablet.”We want to extend support and commit to that support over the long haul for these devices that have a longer life cycle,” Narayanan said.
Beyond the longevity, the service also provides customers with access to the Device Update Center where they can control and customize how and when the devices get updated. It also includes another level of security called Device Health Attestation that allows the OEMs to evaluate the trustworthiness of the devices before they update them using a third party service.
All of this is designed to give Microsoft a foothold in the growing IoT space and to provide an operating system for these devices as they proliferate. While predictions vary dramatically, Gartner has predicted that at least 20 billion connected devices will be online in 2020.
While not all of these will be powered by Windows, or require advanced management capabilities, those that do can be assured if their vendor uses this program that they can manage the devices and keep them up-to-date. And when it comes to the Internet of Things, chances are that’s going to be critical.
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Patreon acquires Kit to let creators bundle merch in subscriptions
If content creators want to sell pricier monthly content subscriptions, offering stickers, pins, signed photos or t-shirts can convince fans to pay a higher fee and keep them loyal with a physical connection. That’s why patronage platform Patreon just acquired Kit, a startup building a merchandise logistics backend so creators don’t have to fiddle with spreadsheets and stuff envelopes themselves.
“Over 60 percent of today’s Patreon creators either want to or are already delivering some kind of physical merchandise,” says Patreon’s VP of Product, Wyatt Jenkins. Together, the startups could help Patreon creators develop merch items that fans subscribe to get ahold of, potentially shelling out for $10 or $20 per month tiers rather than basic $1 or $5 online content-only tiers.
The deal also could help Patreon stay ahead of YouTube and Facebook, which are encroaching on its subscription patronage model. Patreon now has 2 million patrons backing 100,000 creators. It paid out $350 million over its first five years through 2017, and expects to send creators another $300 million in 2018, while taking a 5 percent cut.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Ninety percent of Kit’s team, mostly product and engineering talent, will join San Francisco-based Patreon, though they’ll stay put in NYC as a satellite office the rest of the year. Kit had raised $2.5 million from Social Capital, Expa, #Angels, Precursor and Stanford’s StartX, as well as angels like Ellen Pao and Slack’s April Underwood.
“When we think about merch, it’s never been fully about the thing — the sticker or the t-shirt — there’s this relationship. This human-to-human connection,” says Kit co-founder and CEO Camille Hearst.
Kit was in the process of pivoting toward merchandise logistics and raising a Series A when it began talks with Patreon, leading to the acquisition. The startup was originally built as a way for social media stars and online celebrities to earn affiliate marketing fees by recommending products to fans through Kit, which took a cut of the referral dollars. Some creators showing off their “Kit” of camera equipment, sportswear or caffeination supplies were earning tens of thousands of dollars.
“We were at a stage where everything was going in the right direction. We had seen strong growth in monthly active users and how much creators were making,” Hearst says, noting Kit had reached $15 million in gross merchandise value. For what it’s worth, we hadn’t heard the startup was #crushingit and Patreon repeatedly refused to give even a ballpark figure for the price, so this might have been more of a soft landing.
“It just seemed like we would be able to accelerate what we were doing by joining with Patreon. Merch is very transaction-focused compared with a subscription,” Hearst explains, touting the high lifetime value of recurring payments over one-off purchases. “You can help creators earn a lot more money if you use merch to sell subscriptions.”
The pre-Kit Patreon team
The plan at Patreon is to build out a new open merchandise provider platform. Creators will be able to choose between a variety of merch partners ranging from those that turn their existing logo into physical goods to those that will design items based on merely vague ideas from the star. But in the meantime, Kit won’t be shutting down or ditching its affiliate program because “we don’t want to turn off any revenue streams” that creators depend on, Hearst promises.
“Right now creators have to choose between different merch partners,” without collective bargaining power or enough data to know what works, says Jenkins. “We can have set pricing for all those merch partners that will be lower than they can get on their own,” while alleviating creators from having to juggle spreadsheets of who gets what and mailing it all themselves.
The plan for Patreon to monetize merch is a little less clear, though Jenkins says, “We’re going to grow the pie and we want a piece of the growth.” The idea is that using Patreon’s merchandise platform will incur extra fees beyond the skimpy 5 percent it earns on subscriptions. If adding a merch item significantly boosts the subscriber number for a certain tier, Patreon will take a TBD cut. For comparison, YouTube takes a much more hands-off approach, merely listing suggested merchandise partners with whom to work.
“We want creators to make a living. That’s not a side hustle. You have to make more money year over year, You have to be able to do things like buy a house or get healthcare,” Jenkins concludes. “All the other platforms are ‘give us your content and we’ll give you a little side change.’ That kind of led us down the merch path. Creators are were begging for merch.”
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TransferWise’s next partnership could be with U.K. challenger bank Monzo
Hot on the heels of announcing that it has partnered with France’s BPCE Groupe, TransferWise could be about to unveil another partnership with a bank. According to sources, the international money transfer service and European unicorn is working with the fast-growing U.K. challenger bank Monzo.
The tie-in will likely see TransferWise functionality offered within Monzo’s mobile banking app, courtesy of the TransferWise API. It will give Monzo customers the ability to send money in various supported currencies at the ‘mid market’ rate in addition to TransferWise’s low and transparent fees.
Along with the newly-announced partnership with BPCE Groupe — which won’t ship until next year — TransferWise is also working with Estonia’s LHV, and German challenger bank N26 (which also has plans to launch in the U.K.).
A partnership with U.K. challenger bank Starling was also announced last year, but integration with the bank’s app never materialised and TechCrunch learned last week that the partnership has now dissolved entirely. That is particularly noteworthy given that Monzo and Starling are direct competitors with an interesting shared history, shall we say.
Meanwhile, if confirmed, we can probably chalk this up as a decent win for TransferWise, which is best known for its consumer-facing international money transfer app, but has always had ambitions of being a broader platform play.
In fact, the company is attempting to position itself as entirely agnostic on how customers access the service: the more money moving via its infrastructure, the better, whilst economies of scale also mean potentially lower fees on specific routes.
This can be done directly via the TransferWise app and service for both consumers and SMEs, via third-party integrations, such as with incumbent and challenger banks, or via the company’s own Borderless account. In all three cases, TransferWise generates revenue, regardless.
I’ve reached out to both TransferWise and Monzo for comment and will update this post if and when I hear back.
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iOS 12 will let users register another person to their Face ID
From advancements in AR to Memojis to group FaceTime, there is plenty to be excited about with iOS 12. But one of the more practical updates to Apple’s mobile operating system, coming this fall, went unmentioned during the keynote at WWDC.
According to 9to5Mac, iOS 12 will allow for two different faces to be registered to Face ID.
Up until now, Face ID has only allowed a single appearance to be registered to the iPhone X. 9to5Mac first noticed the update when combing through the iOS 12 beta, where one can find new settings for Face ID that allow users to “Set Up an Alternative Appearance.”
Here’s what the description says:
In addition to continuously learning how you look, Face ID can recognize an alternative appearance.
While that’s about as unclear as a description might be, 9to5Mac tested and confirmed the update, with the following caveat. Users who choose to register two faces to Face ID will not be able to remove that face without starting over from scratch with their own FaceID registration. In other words, if you choose to reset the alternate appearance, you’ll also have to clear out all existing data around your own face, too.
That small inconvenience aside, the ability to add a second face to Face ID makes total sense. Couples often pass their phones back and forth as a matter of practicality, and parents often let their children use their phones to play games and check out apps.
Plus, this may hint at Face ID on the next generation of iPads, which tend to be shared amongst multiple users more often than phones.
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Hotel management platform Mews closes €6m Series A
Before we automate hotels with AI and robots (which will almost certainly happen) the first wave of this revolution will be brought by the software that runs hotels with humans.
Thus it is that
Mews, the hotel property management platform, has closed a €6m Series A funding round. The round was led by Notion.vc Capital, with participation from HenQ and Thayer Ventures.
The funding will be used to accelerate the business and open new offices around the world to support its global customer base.
Mews’ platform automates check-ins and payments as also covering booking management and staff training. It’s designed to be an open platform allowing other tools and apps to connect through its API. So, think ‘Slack for hotels’, perhaps.
Mews was founded in 2012 by entrepreneur and ex-hotelier Richard Valtr. Customers include Different Hotels, Machefert, Clink and Wombats, or 43,000 beds in 350 properties.
Valtr said: “Mews’ mission is to help hotels and hostels automate their operations so they can focus on their guests. We want to build the nervous system for hotels that all apps and tools for both guests and hosts can be plugged into. Until recently hoteliers were forced to rely upon a closed one-stop-shop PMS offered up by incumbent players who have held a luddite attitude towards the hospitality industry for years.”
Jos White, General Partner at Notion commented: “We think the hotel industry is at a tipping point in terms of the way it uses technology to better manage their operations and transform the guest experience.”
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Xiaomi CDRs, SoftBank’s successors and China’s Samsung investigation
The weekend provided no rest to news-wary reporters, with major announcements coming from Xiaomi, SoftBank and the Chinese government the past few days that will continue to change the global tech landscape.
Xiaomi Chinese Depository Receipts
One of the most important yet underreported stories of 2018 has been the development of Chinese Depository Receipts (known as CDRs). I wrote a comprehensive primer on the investment mechanism a few weeks ago, but the summary is that CDRs will give mainland Chinese investors access to overseas-listed stocks that set up the right custodian accounts. Due to domestic capital controls and relatively weak stock exchange rules in China, many Chinese tech giants are listed on overseas stock exchanges in New York and Hong Kong.
Beijing-based Xiaomi, which produces a line of phones and offers mobile software services, is launching one of the most anticipated IPOs of the year, with a valuation expected to top tens of billions of dollars. In its official filing, the company targeted a fundraise of $10 billion. While Xiaomi is a sterling example of the potential success of Chinese entrepreneurs, local retail buyers would likely have had no access to buy the stock, which will be listed in Hong Kong.
Fiona Lau and Julie Zhu at Reuters are now reporting that Xiaomi could be one of the first companies to take advantage of the new CDR mechanism, potentially reserving 30 percent of its new issue for CDR buyers. That would be about $3 billion if the assumptions of the fundraise play out.
If the CDR mechanism works as expected, Chinese companies and potentially many others could suddenly tap a vast new pool of capital, either in the IPO process or more generally. That could push valuations for many of these issues higher than they might otherwise go, since Chinese mainland investors have limited ability to invest in overseas stocks due to capital controls. A valuation that might cause a New York-based money manager to flee might be more than palatable to a Chinese investor.
While Chinese tech giants are likely to quickly offer CDR options to take advantage of their local brand power and increase upward pressure on their stock prices, the bigger question in my mind is how long it will take overseas companies to offer similar measures and get access to this capital market. While companies like Facebook and Google are blocked or mostly blocked from mainland China, other companies like Apple have strong brand presence in the country, and could theoretically offer a CDR as it strives for a $1 trillion valuation. There are huge legal and policy roadblocks to overcome of course, but such a debut would be a major milestone in China’s financial development.
SoftBank executive changes
Japan’s SoftBank Group, which owns a set of major tech and finance companies, announced a new group of senior execs late on Friday that sets up something of a leadership contest to succeed the group’s founder, Masayoshi Son.
Several years ago, Son had indicated that Nikesh Arora, who had spent a decade at Google and eventually rose to be the company’s chief business officer, would succeed him. Arora became president and chief operating officer of SoftBank, but would last less than two years before heading out from the role. As a sort of coda to that chapter, we learned late last week that Arora has joined Palo Alto Networks as its CEO.
Now, SoftBank has announced that three people will take leadership roles in the company, and all three will join its board of directors. Rajeev Misra, who runs the $100 billion SoftBank Vision Fund, will become an executive vice president (EVP) while maintaining his duties to the fund.
Katsunori Sago, who until recently was the chief investment officer of Japan Post, Japan’s largest savings bank with a $1.9 trillion portfolio, will join SoftBank as an EVP and chief strategy officer. Sago had been rumored to be considering leaving Japan Post just a few weeks ago. Finally, former Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure was named an EVP and SoftBank’s new chief operating officer. Claure was elevated to executive chairman of Sprint last month, while stepping down as CEO.
Each of the three are positioned around the key tentpoles of SoftBank. SoftBank’s core business remains telecom, on which Claure will presumably spend significant time. The group’s financial interests, which includes a 100 percent stake in Fortress Investment Group, will likely get significant attention from Sago. And the SoftBank Vision Fund, which has received splashy headlines with its massive investments in global unicorn startups, is obviously a key future pillar of the company, giving Misra a powerful perch in the group.
Masayoshi Son is 60 years old today. While retirement seems to be the least likely course of action for the energetic entrepreneur, clearly he is starting to think through succession in a more robust way than he did before with Arora. That should make SoftBank investors far more content, and also provide a little bit of a competitive dynamic at the top of the organization to drive the group’s results in the years to come.
China initiates investigation into Samsung and other chip companies
The chip wars between China and the rest of the world continue to heat up. Now, it looks like Samsung, the world’s largest chipmaker, is in the crosshairs of Beijing, according to a Wall Street Journal report by Yoko Kubota. In addition to Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix were also ensnared in the investigation.
China has made building a strong indigenous chip industry a core pillar of its economic development strategy. In addition to a comprehensive plan known as Made in China 2025, the country has also been attempting to put together the world’s largest semiconductor venture capital investment fund, which in aggregate could have tens of billions of dollars in capital at its disposal.
The investigations against Samsung and the two chipmakers comes at the same time that China has also once again delayed the close of Qualcomm’s acquisition of NXP Semiconductors. Qualcomm has been waiting for months to get Beijing’s approval on that deal, which would provide the company a fresh source of revenue and a renewed product mix in strategic areas like automotive.
The use of economic investigations to help and hurt Chinese companies and their competitors is starting to become a mainstay. The United States used the negative conclusions of its investigation into Chinese telecommunications company ZTE in order to cut off its export licenses, practically killing the company. While the U.S. has now started to walk back that threat by floating the option of a large fine, it is clear that these sorts of tit-for-tat investigations are going to continue into the future.
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The new Gmail will roll out to all users next month
Google today announced that the new version of Gmail will launch into general availability and become available to all G Suite users next month. The exact date remains up in the air but my guess is that it’ll be sooner than later.
The new Gmail offers features like message snoozing, attachment previews, a sidebar for both Google apps like Calendar and third-party services like Trello, offline support, confidential messages that self-destruct after a set time and more. It’s also the only edition of Gmail that currently allows you to try out Smart Compose, which tries to complete your sentences for you.
Here is what the rollout will look like for G Suite users (Google didn’t detail what the plan for regular users will look like, but if you’re not a G Suite user, you can already try the new Gmail today anyway and chances are stragglers will also get switched over to the new version at a similar pace as G Suite users).
Starting in July, G Suite admins will be able to immediately transition all of their users to the new Gmail, but users can still opt out for another 12 weeks. After that time is up, all G Suite users will move to the new Gmail experience.
Admins can also give users the option to try the new Gmail at their own pace or — and this is the default setting — they can just wait another four weeks and then Google will automatically give users the option to opt in.
Eight weeks after general availability, so sometime in September, all users will be migrated automatically but can still opt out for another four weeks.
That all sounds a bit more complicated than necessary, but the main gist here is: chances are you’ll get access to the new Gmail next month and if you hate it, you can still opt out for a bit longer. Then, if you still hate it, you are out of luck because come October, you will be using the new Gmail no matter what.
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Apple adds camera effects like stickers, filters and Memoji to messages
Apple is invading Snapchat’s territory with new effects that let you embellish what you shoot through the Messages camera. Today at WWDC, Apple announced that iOS 12’s Messages camera will offer a variety of sticker packs, style transfers like a “comic book” filter, drawn shapes and both Animoji and the new personalized avatar Memoji.
These effects will also be available in FaceTime, which now supports group video conversations with up to 32 people. That could spell trouble for dedicated group video chat apps like Houseparty and Facebook’s Bonfire, as well as bigger apps that offer it like Snapchat.
These effects could make people who want more visual communication choose Apple’s native messaging app rather than third parties like Snapchat, Instagram Direct or Facebook Messenger. The new features will be available in iOS 12 that launches today in developer beta before a full release this fall.
Stickers were previously only available in message threads where they’d appear on a white background. But now you can overlay them on photos, videos and FaceTime. That opens opportunities for new fashion stickers that let you add sunglasses, hats, mustaches, clothes and more that only make sense when stuck to your selfie.
Apple is starting far behind here. Snapchat’s been adding creative features since 2013, and Instagram joined in with its clone of Stories in 2016, followed by Facebook in 2017. They’re all now equipped with GIFs, color filters, augmented reality and more. Animoji and Memoji are the Messages camera’s biggest differentiators, so Apple may need to aggressively promote the ability to overlay these on imagery if it wants to steal attention from Snap and Facebook.
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