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20 takeaways from Meeker’s 294-slide Internet Trends report
This is a must-read for understanding the tech industry. We’ve distilled famous investor Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends report down from its massive 294 slides of stats and charts to just the most important insights. Click or scroll through to learn what’s up with internet growth, screen addiction, e-commerce, Amazon versus Alibaba, tech investment and artificial intelligence.
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The Microsoft Launcher for Android now lets you track your kids’ whereabouts
Microsoft is launching an update to its Android launcher today that gives parents the ability to track their kids’ location. This is one out of a number of parent- and kid-focused announcements the company made today. Others include the ability to block sites in Microsoft Edge on Android and the launch of MSN Kids, a new curated news website for children.
At the core of these new features are Microsoft’s family group settings that already allowed you to do things like track a child’s activity on Windows 10 and Xbox One devices or limit screen time in general.
“As a mother to a young and curious daughter, I deeply understand the need for tools to help balance the use of technology in the home as well as out of the home,” writes Shilpa Ranganathan, the General Manager of Microsoft’s Mobile Experiences group, in today’s announcement. “It’s especially near and dear to me as leader of a team building experiences for mobile devices. We emphasize the idea of transparency as a guiding principle for these new experiences.”
The new tracking tool is rolling out with today’s update of the Microsoft Launcher for Android and will put the latest known location of your kids right in its personalized news feed.
I’m not sure how useful blocking access to sites in Edge for Android really is, but if you manage to lock your kids out from Chrome or any other pre-installed browser — and block them from downloading them — then I guess this could work.
As for MSN Kids, Microsoft notes that the site will curate information from trusted sources, including Time for Kids, Popular Science, Sports Illustrated for Kids, National Geographic, and USA TODAY. It’s worth noting that there is no sponsored content or advertising on the site.
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More speakers, panels at The Europas, and how to get your ticket free
The Europas Unconference & Awards is back on 3 July in London and we’re excited to announce more speakers and panel sessions as the event takes shape. Crypto and Blockchain will be a major theme this year, and we’re bringing together many of the key players. TechCrunch is once again the key media partner, and if you attend The Europas you’ll be first in the queue to get offers for TC events and Disrupt in Europe later in the year.
You can also potentially get your ticket for free just by sharing your own ticket link with friends and followers. See below for the details and instructions.
To recap, we’re jumping straight into our popular breakout sessions where you’ll get up close and personal with some of Europe’s leading investors, founders and thought leaders.
The Unconference is focused into zones including AI, Fintech, Mobility, Startups, Society, and Enterprise and Crypto / Blockchain.
Our Crypto HQ will feature two tracks of panels, one focused on investing and the other on how blockchain is disrupting everything from financial services, to gaming, to social impact to art.
We’ve lined up some of the leading blockchain VCs to talk about what trends and projects excite them most, including Outlier Ventures’ Jamie Burke, KR1’s George McDonaugh, blockchain angel Nancy Fenchay, Fabric Ventures’ Richard Muirhead and Michael Jackson of Mangrove Capital Partners.
Thinking of an ICO vs crowdfunding? Join Michael Jackson on how ICOs are disrupting venture capital and Ali Ganjavian, co-founder of Studio Banana, the creators of longtime Kickstarter darling OstrichPillow to understand the ins and outs of both.
We’ve also lined up a panel to discuss the process of an ICO – what do you need to consider, the highs, the lows, the timing and the importance of community. Linda Wang, founder and CEO of Lending Block, which recently raised $10 million in an April ICO, joins us.
We are thrilled to announce that Civil, the decentralised marketplace for sustainable journalism, will be joining to talk about the rise of fake news and Verisart’s Robert Norton will share his views on stamping out fraud in the art world with blockchain. Min Teo of ConsenSys will discuss blockchain and social impact and Jeremy Millar, head of Consensys UK, will speak on Smart Contracts.
Our Pathfounders Startup Zone is focused purely on startups. Our popular Meet the Press panel is back where some of tech’s finest reporters will tell you what makes a great tech story, and how to pitch (and NOT pitch them). For a start, TechCrunch’s Steve O’Hear and Quartz’s Joon Ian Wong are joining.
You’ll also hear from angels and investors including Seedcamp’s Carlos Eduardo Espinal; Eileen Burbidge of Passion Capital; Accel Partners’ Andrei Brasoveanu; Jeremy Yap; Candice Lo of Blossom Capital; Scott Sage of Crane Venture Partners; Tugce Ergul of Angel Labs; Stéphanie Hospital of OneRagtime; Connect Ventures’ Sitar Teli and Jason Ball of Qualcomm Ventures.
Sound great? You can grab your ticket here.
All you need to do is share your personal ticket link. Your friends get 15% off, and you get 15% off again when they buy.
The more your friends buy, the more your ticket cost goes down, all the way to free!
The Public Voting in the awards ends 11 June 2018 11:59: https://theeuropas.polldaddy.com/s/theeuropas2018
We’re still looking for sponsor partners to support these editorially curated panels.
Please get in touch with Petra@theeuropas.com for more details.
SPEAKERS SO FAR:
Jamie Burke, Outlier Ventures
Jeremy Millar, ConsenSys
Linda Wang, Lending Block
Robert Norton, Verisart
George McDonaugh, KR1
Eileen Burbidge, Passion Capital
Carlos Eduardo Espinal, Seedcamp
Sitar Teli, Connect Ventures
Michael Jackson, Mangrove Capital Partners
Min Teo, ConsenSys
Steve O’Hear, TechCrunch
Joon Ian Wong, Quartz
Richard Muirhead, Fabric Ventures
Nancy Fechnay, Blockchain Technologist + Angel
Candice Lo, Blossom Capital
Scott Sage, Crane Venture Partners
Andrei Brasoveanu, Accel
Tina Baker, Jag Shaw Baker
Jeremy Yap
Candice Lo, Blossom Capital
Tugce Ergul, Angel Labs
Stéphanie Hospital, OneRagtime
Jason Ball, Qualcomm Ventures
The Europas Awards
The Europas Awards are based on voting by expert judges and the industry itself. But key to the daytime is all the speakers and invited guests. There’s no “off-limits speaker room” at The Europas, so attendees can mingle easily with VIPs and speakers.
Vote for your Favourite Startups
Public Voting is still humming along. Please remember to vote for your favourite startups!
Awards by category:
Hottest Media/Entertainment Startup
Hottest E-commerce/Retail Startup
Hottest Marketing/AdTech Startup
Hottest Enterprise, SaaS or B2B Startup
Hottest Platform Economy / Marketplace
Hottest Cyber Security Startup
Hottest Internet of Things Startup
Fastest Rising Startup Of The Year
Hottest GreenTech Startup of The Year
Best Angel/Seed Investor of the Year
Hottest VC Investor of the Year
Hottest Blockchain/Crypto Startup Founder(s)
Hottest Blockchain Protocol Project
Hottest Corporate Blockchain Project
Hottest Blockchain ICO (Europe)
Hottest Financial Crypto Project
Hottest Blockchain for Good Project
Hottest Blockchain Identity Project
Hall Of Fame Award – Awarded to a long-term player in Europe
The Europas Grand Prix Award (to be decided from winners)
The Awards celebrates the most forward thinking and innovative tech & blockchain startups across over some 30+ categories.
Startups can apply for an award or be nominated by anyone, including our judges. It is free to enter or be nominated.
Instead of thousands and thousands of people, think of a great summer event with 1,000 of the most interesting and useful people in the industry, including key investors and leading entrepreneurs.
• No secret VIP rooms, which means you get to interact with the Speakers
• Key Founders and investors speaking; featured attendees invited to just network
• Expert speeches, discussions, and Q&A directly from the main stage
• Intimate “breakout” sessions with key players on vertical topics
• The opportunity to meet almost everyone in those small groups, super-charging your networking
• Journalists from major tech titles, newspapers and business broadcasters
• A parallel Founders-only track geared towards fund-raising and hyper-networking
• A stunning awards dinner and party which honors both the hottest startups and the leading lights in the European startup scene
• All on one day to maximise your time in London. And it’s sunny (probably)!
That’s just the beginning. There’s more to come…
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Nvidia launches colossal HGX-2 cloud server to power HPC and AI
Nvidia launched a monster box yesterday called the HGX-2, and it’s the stuff that geek dreams are made of. It’s a cloud server that is purported to be so powerful it combines high-performance computing with artificial intelligence requirements in one exceptionally compelling package.
You know you want to know the specs, so let’s get to it: It starts with 16x NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs. That’s good for 2 petaFLOPS for AI with low precision, 250 teraFLOPS for medium precision and 125 teraFLOPS for those times when you need the highest precision. It comes standard with a 1/2 a terabyte of memory and 12 Nvidia NVSwitches, which enable GPU to GPU communications at 300 GB per second. They have doubled the capacity from the HGX-1 released last year.
Chart: Nvidia
Paresh Kharya, group product marketing manager for Nvidia’s Tesla data center products, says this communication speed enables them to treat the GPUs essentially as a one giant, single GPU. “And what that allows [developers] to do is not just access that massive compute power, but also access that half a terabyte of GPU memory as a single memory block in their programs,” he explained.
Graphic: Nvidia
Unfortunately you won’t be able to buy one of these boxes. In fact, Nvidia is distributing them strictly to resellers, who will likely package these babies up and sell them to hyperscale data centers and cloud providers. The beauty of this approach for cloud resellers is that when they buy it, they have the entire range of precision in a single box, Kharya said.
“The benefit of the unified platform is as companies and cloud providers are building out their infrastructure, they can standardize on a single unified architecture that supports the entire range of high-performance workloads. So whether it’s AI, or whether it’s high-performance simulations, the entire range of workloads is now possible in just a single platform,”Kharya explained.
He points out this is particularly important in large-scale data centers. “In hyperscale companies or cloud providers, the main benefit that they’re providing is the economies of scale. If they can standardize on the fewest possible architectures, they can really maximize the operational efficiency. And what HGX allows them to do is to standardize on that single unified platform,” he added.
As for developers, they can write programs that take advantage of the underlying technologies and program in the exact level of precision they require from a single box.
The HGX-2 powered servers will be available later this year from partner resellers, including Lenovo, QCT, Supermicro and Wiwynn.
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Coffee Meets Bagel raises $12M for international expansion and live events
Coffee Meets Bagel scored a $12 million Series B this week. The round, led by U.K. VC firm Atami Capital, brings the popular dating app’s total up to just under $20 million since launching back in 2012.
The San Francisco-based dating app has worked to distinguish itself from competitors like Bumble and Tinder by limiting the number of matches it offers during a 24-hour window. Late last year, it expanded its offering with a video feature, to add an extra dimension to profiles. This month, it introduced additional CMB Experiences to bring users together in the real world.
Of course, Coffee Meets Bagel is battling a juggernaut in the form of the billion-dollar Match Group, which currently owns OkCupid, Tinder, PlentyofFish and Match, among others. According to the company, this latest round will drive investments into more CMB Experiences along with international expansion for the service, along with other “product innovation.”
Co-CEO Arum Kang also notes that the Series B brings a number of VC firms with “prominent female investors,” including Gingerbread Capital. “We’re excited for the next phase of Coffee Meets Bagel, and are pleased to have some wonderful international and female investors on board,” Kang says in a release tied to the news. “Given our focus on female experience, it was very important that we have a female perspective at the investor level.”
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Here’s Mary Meeker’s essential 2018 Internet Trends report
Want to understand all the most important tech stats and trends? Legendary venture capitalist Mary Meeker has just released the 2018 version of her famous Internet Trends report. It covers everything from mobile to commerce to the competition between tech giants. Check out the full report below, and we’ll add some highlights soon. Then come back for our slide-by-slide analysis of the most important parts of the 294 page report.
- Internet adoption: As of 2018, half the world population, or about 3.6 billion people, will be on the internet. That’s thanks in large part to cheaper Android phones and Wifi becoming more available, though individual services will have a tougher time adding new users as the web hits saturation.
- Mobile usage: While smartphone shipments are flat and internet user growth is slowing, U.S. adults are spending more time online thanks to mobile, clocking 5.9 hours per day in 2017 versus 5.6 hours in 2016.
- Mobile ads: People are shifting their time to mobile faster than ad dollars are following, creating a $7 billion mobile ad opportunity, though platforms are increasingly responsible for providing safe content to host those ads.
- Crypto: Interest in cryptocurrency is exploding as Coinbase’s user count has nearly quadrupled since January 2017
- Voice: Voice technology is at an inflection point due to speech recognition hitting 95% accuracy and the sales explosion for Amazon Echo which went from over 10 million to over 30 million sold in total by the end of 2017.
- Daily usage – Revenue gains for services like Facebook are tightly coupled with daily user growth, showing how profitable it is to become a regular habit.
- Tech investment: We’re at an all-time high for public and private investment in technology, while the top six public R&D + capex spenders are all technology companies.
Mary Meeker, analyst with Morgan Stanley, speaks during the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2010. This year’s conference, which runs through Nov. 17, is titled “Points of Control: The Battle for the Network Economy.” Photographer: Tony Avelar/Bloomberg via Getty Images
- Ecommerce vs Brick & Mortar: Ecommerce growth quickens as now 13% of all retail purchases happen online and parcel shipments are rising swiftly, signaling big opportunities for new shopping apps.
- Amazon: More people start product searches on Amazon than search engines now, but Jeff Bezos still relies on other surfaces like Facebook and YouTube to inspire people to want things.
- Subscription services: They’re seeing massive adoption, with Netflix up 25%, The New York Times up 43%, and Spotify up 48% year-over-year in 2017. A free tier accelerates conversion rates.
- Education: Employees seek retraining and education from YouTube and online courses to keep up with new job requirements and pay off skyrocketing student loan debt.
- Freelancing: Employees crave scheduling and work-from-home flexibility, and internet discovery of freelance work led it to grow 3X faster than total workforce growth. The on-demand workforce grew 23% in 2017 driven by Uber, Airbnb, Etsy, Upwork, and Doordash.
- Transportation: People are buying fewer cars, keeping them longer, and shifting transportation spend to rideshare, which saw rides double in 2017.
- Enterprise: Consumerization of the enterprise through better interfaces is spurring growth for companies like Dropbox and Slack.
- China: Alibaba is expanding beyond China with strong gross merchandise volume, though Amazon still rules in revenue.
- Privacy: China has a big opportunity as users there are much more willing to trade their personal data for product benefits than U.S. users, and China is claiming more spots on the top 20 internet company list while making big investments in AI.
- Immigration: It is critical to a strong economy, as 56% of top U.S. companies were founded by a first- or second-generation immigrant.
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Pokémon Quest hits the Nintendo Switch with two more Pokémon titles on the way
Much like the unique and forking joy of catching an eevee you plan to evolve, Poké trainers have some exciting branching paths ahead of them.
In a dedicated press event in Tokyo, the Pokémon Company, Nintendo and Niantic announced three new Pokémon games, with another on the way in late 2019. The first game, a casual “free to start” RPG called Pokémon Quest, is already available for download on the Nintendo Switch.
With a team of up to three Pokémon, you can explore the secrets of Tumblecube Island. Battle wild Pokémon, gather treasure, and even befriend new Pokémon—if you have the right ingredients, that is! #PokemonQuest puts the power in your hands. pic.twitter.com/BuVVenFAYR
— Pokémon (@Pokemon) May 30, 2018
Pokémon Quest revisits the well-loved core cast of ‘mons from the Kanto region (think Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow era) but with a cubist twist. The game will hit the Switch first (it’s already there!) before expanding to iOS and Android later in June. Cube charizard, be mine.
Beyond the cute cubey apéritif, a beginner-friendly set of games called Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee! will hit the Switch on November 16. According to its creators, the two titles “bring the experience of a classic Pokémon RPG to Nintendo Switch with gameplay that is easily approachable for newcomers to the series, but is also deep enough to keep veteran Trainers on their toes.” We’ll see about that.
Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu!, Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee!, and the #PokeBallPlus will be released on November 16, 2018 worldwide! https://t.co/kXLdxUMjjA #PokemonLetsGo pic.twitter.com/bUU3ZcnApi
— Pokémon (@Pokemon) May 30, 2018
The Pokémon Company also explained that the two games will tie into the hit mobile experience of Pokémon GO, though we don’t know the full extent of what that looks like yet:
There is a deep connection between Pokémon GO and Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee! For one thing, Pokémon originally discovered in the Kanto region that you have caught in Pokémon GO can be brought into these two new Nintendo Switch games. That’s not all, though. Look forward to more details at a later date.
Beyond the crowd-pleasing option to center either pikachu or eevee (let’s be real, you’re picking eevee), the Let’s Go games will showcase a new peripheral for the Switch known as the Poké Ball Plus that’s designed to simulate the evocative gesture that seasoned trainers know so well. Apparently, Nintendo put plenty of thought into that experience, so we’re hoping that it really brings to life the sensation of a wild animal wriggling rhythmically as its freedom seeps away, second by second.
You can use the #PokeBallPlus as a Joy-Con in #PokemonLetsGo! Good things may happen if you place one of your favorite Pokémon into the device and walk around with it in the real world. It will be able to connect to Pokémon GO as well! pic.twitter.com/I18Y55odpp
— Pokémon (@Pokemon) May 30, 2018
Pokemon CEO: Nintendo engineers helped make the Pokeball. The idea was to create the closest thing possible to an actual Pokeball that really felt like it has a Pokemon inside. Bless
— Yuji Nakamura (@ynakamura56) May 30, 2018
Again, these games aren’t the core handheld title that diehard pokéfans are after, but if you’re going to have to wait until 2019 for a proper main series Pokémon RPG experience on the Switch, today’s news should offer plentiful snacks to tide you over.
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Snapchat preps Snapkit platform to bring camera, login to other apps
Snapchat is secretly planning the launch of its first full-fledged developer platform, currently called Snapkit. The platform’s prototypes indicate it will let other apps offer a “login with Snapchat” options, use the Bitmoji avatars it acquired and host a version of Snap’s full-featured camera software that can share back to Snapchat. Multiple sources confirm Snap Inc. is currently in talks with several app developers to integrate Snapkit.
The platform could breathe new life into plateauing Snapchat by colonizing the mobile app ecosystem with its login buttons and content. Facebook used a similar strategy to become a ubiquitous utility with tentacles touching everyone’s business. But teens, long skeptical of Facebook and unsettled by the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal, could look to Snapchat for a privacy-safe way to log in to other apps without creating a new username and password.
Snap Inc. declined to comment on this story.
Years of developer neglect
Snapchat is making a big course correction in its strategy here after years of rejecting outside developers. In 2014, unofficial apps that let you surreptitiously save Snaps but required your Snapchat credentials caused data breaches, leading the company to reiterate its ban on using them. It also shut off sharing from a popular third-party music video sharing app called Mindie. In fact, Snap’s terms of service still say “You will not use or develop any third-party applications that interact with the Services or other users’ content or information without our written consent.”
A year ago I wrote that “Snap’s anti-developer attitude is an augmented liability” since it would be tough to populate the physical world with AR experiences unless it has help like Facebook had started recruiting. By December, Snapchat had launched Lens Studio, which lets brands and developers build limited AR content for the app. And it’s been building out its cadre of marketing and analytics partners with which brands can work.
Yet until now, Snapchat hadn’t created functionality that developers could use in their own apps. Snapkit will change that. We don’t know when it will be announced or launched, or who will be the initial developers who take advantage of it. But with Snapchat slipping to its lowest user growth rate ever after being pummeled by competition from Facebook and Instagram, the company needs more than a puppy face filter to regain the spotlight.
SnapPlat
According to sources familiar with Snap’s discussions with potential developers, Snapkit’s login with Snapchat feature is designed to let users sign up for new apps with their Snapchat credentials instead of creating new ones. Because Snap doesn’t collect much personal info about you, unlike Facebook, there’s less data to worry about accidentally giving to developers or them misusing. Displaying its branded button on various app’s signup pages could lure in new Snapchat users or reengage lapsed ones. It’s also the key to developing tighter ties between Snap and other apps, even if users sign up for apps another way.
One benefit of another app knowing who you are on Snapchat, which the company plans to provide with Snapkit, is the ability to bring your Bitmoji avatar with you. Snapchat acquired Bitmoji’s parent company Bitstrips for just $64.2 million in 2016, but the cartoonish personalized avatar app has been a staple of the top 10 chart since. It remains one of Snapchat’s most differentiated offerings, as Facebook has only recently begun work on its clone called Facebook Avatars.
While Bitmoji has offered a keyboard full of your avatar in different scenes, Snapkit could make it easy to add yours as stickers on photos or in other ways in third-party apps. Seeing them across the mobile universe could inspire more users to create their own Bitmoji lookalike.
Snapchat is also working on a way for developers to integrate its editing tool-laden and AR-equipped camera into their own apps. Instead of having to reinvent the wheel if they want to permit visual sharing and inevitably building a poor knockoff, apps could just add Snapchat’s polished camera. The idea is the photos and videos shot with the camera could then be used in that app as well as shared back to Snapchat. Similar to Facebook and Instagram Stories opening up to posts from third-parties, this could inject fresh forms of content into Snapchat at a time when usage is slipping.
Launching a platform also means Snapchat will take on new risks, as third-parties with access to user data could be breached. Snap also will have to convince developers that making it easier for its 191 million daily users to join their apps is worth the engineering resources, given how that community is dwarfed by the multi-billion user Google and Facebook login systems. Login with Snapchat could be especially popular with teen-focused anonymous, or dating, apps you don’t want connected to your Facebook profile.
Snapchat has struggled to get out of Facebook’s shadow despite inventing or acquiring what would become some of the hottest trends in social. Yet Snap Inc. could develop alliances with a platform that leverages its differentiators — a teen audience that doesn’t care for Facebook, inherent privacy and custom avatars. Through an army of developers, Snapchat might find the firepower to challenge the blue empire.
For more on Snapchat and its competitors, check out our other coverage:
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GIF lord Imgur caves to video to hasten profitability
Imgur is the internet’s best time sink, where 250 million monthly users silently consume an endless community-curated collection of absurd GIFs, inspiring tales, pop science explainers and giant meme dumps. But what it’s never had is video. That was a differentiator that made it ideal for quiet browsing in class, on public transit or in bed. Since none of the content required audio, you never had to worry about grabbing your headphones or disturbing those around you.
But the lack of video was also holding Imgur back. Sometimes you need to hear a crazy cat meow, or a baby giggling, or a crappy robot explode. So users would have to hunt down the “sauce,” aka the GIF’s source video, on another site. Oh, and advertisers love video and will pay a boatload more for it than a silent GIF or static image.
And so, Imgur is evolving with today’s launch of video. You can check them out, including this ream of popular GIFs reunited with their soundtracks, on the Imgur Unmuted channel.
The shift comes at a pivotal moment for the company. Launched in 2009, founder Alan Schaaf bootstrapped the startup to 130 million monthly visitors over the course of five years before finally taking a $40 million Series A from Andreessen Horowitz in 2014. Two years later it augmented its flimsy banner ads with full-screen promoted posts while trying not to damage the irreverent nature of the app.
Imgur’s Chief Operating Officer Roy Sehgal, its Sheryl Sandberg, tells me that as of recently “we were cash flow positive” before revealing “we expect to be profitable this year.”
Video could push Imgur to that milestone. The more organic video posts from users, the easier it will be for Imgur to slide in lucrative video ads. Facebook printed money with the same strategy, rolling out auto-play video in 2014 to pave the way for video ads that command high prices from businesses. Imgur recently began allowing video ads, but they stuck out, seeming to violate the app’s code of silence. Now Imgur is training its users to tolerate or even embrace audio and video.
Next comes video editing
Starting today, everyone can watch videos on Imgur, while iOS users can post video, with that opening to more people soon. Wisely, sound is off by default so you won’t get accidentally blasted, and technically you could just pretend they’re GIFs if you don’t click the audio button in the bottom right. They’re also limited to 30 seconds, so you won’t have lengthy YouTube reposts or as many copyright concerns, and they can be trimmed in the uploader.
“We’ve been making the transformation from an image community to a community-powered entertainment platform,” says Sehgal. Video could keep Imgur’s legion of users growing, and make sure they can experience today’s hottest content in whatever format it’s made for.
“We realized there was a vector of content we were not supporting that we thought our users would want,” Sehgal notes. The launch comes following the addition of much-requested Favorites folders and chat, and the Snapchat Stories-esque Snacks GIFs that no one asked for.
But video will bring a new sense of FOMO to those watching discretely. They’ll either have to swipe past the videos or miss the aural dimension. That could splinter Imgurians, who are otherwise united by a homescreen that shows identical top-rated content to everyone, unlike the fractured and personalized landing pages of most social networks. Some of Imgur’s funniest content relies on inside jokes powered by everyone having the right prerequisite knowledge from seeing the same things.
“They are definitely surprised,” says Sehgal, but he claims “the reaction has been very positive.” That’s not exactly clear from reading the Imgur Most Viral homepage, which just got a desktop redesign with bigger previews and easy access to popular tags you can explore. GIFs and still images still dominate and I’ve hardly seen any videos.
That could change as Imgur plans on equipping users with new editing tools to help them turn generic clips into weird and wacky stuff people love to upvote. Imgur’s existing Video-To-GIF creation tool has been a hit. Hopefully future editing tools will let people add custom subtitles, stickers, interjected titling screens and more. Those will be crucial to keep video from making Imgur generic.
Alan Schaaf, founder of Imgur, and his sister/community director Sarah Schaaf, speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt
The pivot to video may be inevitable for all online content. Combined with every app from Instagram to Netflix to Airbnb adopting Snapchat’s Stories, there’s an unsettling convergence going on. Video may be the most vivid and emotive medium. Yet we’ll lose something if there’s a social network singularity where they all have the same features.
Imgur is looking to become a business that’s palatable to a mass audience with video. But it must take care not to forfeit esoteric absurdity that’s made it a vacation from the overwhelming news and envy spiraling of other feeds.
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The well-funded startups driven to own the autonomous vehicle stack
At some point in the future, while riding along in a car, a kid may ask their parent about a distant time in the past when people used steering wheels and pedals to control an automobile. Of course, the full realization of the “auto” part of the word — in the form of fully autonomous automobiles — is a long way off, but there are nonetheless companies trying to build that future today.
However, changing the face of transportation is a costly business, one that typically requires corporate backing or a lot of venture funding to realize such an ambitious goal. A recent funding round, some $128 million raised in a Series A round by Shenzhen-based Roadstar.ai, got us at Crunchbase News asking a question: Just how many independent, well-funded autonomous vehicles startups are out there?
In short, not as many as you’d think. To investigate further, we took a look at the set of independent companies in Crunchbase’s “autonomous vehicle” category that have raised $50 million or more in venture funding. After a little bit of hand filtering, we found that the companies mostly shook out into two broad categories: those working on sensor technologies, which are integral to any self-driving system, and more “full-stack” hardware and software companies, which incorporate sensors, machine-learned software models and control mechanics into more integrated autonomous systems.
Full-stack self-driving vehicle companies
Let’s start with full-stack companies first. The table below shows the set of independent full-stack autonomous vehicle companies operating in the market today, as well as their focus areas, headquarter’s location and the total amount of venture funding raised:
Note the breakdown in focus area between the companies listed above. In general, these companies are focused on building more generalized technology platforms — perhaps to sell or license to major automakers in the future — whereas others intend to own not just the autonomous car technology, but deploy it in a fleet of on-demand taxi and other transportation services.
Making the eyes and ears of autonomous vehicles
On the sensor side, there is also a trend, one that’s decidedly more concentrated on one area of focus, as you’ll be able to discern from the table below:
Some of the most well-funded startups in the sensing field are developing light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technologies, which basically serve as the depth-perceiving “eyes” of autonomous vehicle systems. CYNGN integrates a number of different sensors, LiDAR included, into its hardware arrays and software tools, which is one heck of a pivot for the mobile phone OS-maker formerly known as Cyanogen.
But there are other problem spaces for these sensor companies, including Nauto’s smart dashcam, which gathers location data and detects distracted driving, or Autotalks’s DSRC technology for vehicle-to-vehicle communication. (Back in April, Crunchbase News covered the $5 million Series A round closed by Comma, which released an open-source dashcam app.)
And unlike some of the full-stack providers mentioned earlier, many of these sensor companies have established vendor relationships with the automotive industry. Quanergy Systems, for example, counts components giant Delphi, luxury carmakers Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz and automakers like Hyundai and Renault-Nissan as partners and investors. Innoviz supplies its solid-state LiDAR technology to the BMW Group, according to its website.
Although radar and even LiDAR are old hat by now, there continues to be innovation in sensors. According to a profile of Oryx Vision’s technology in IEEE Spectrum, its “coherent optical radar” system is kind of like a hybrid of radar and LiDAR technology in that “it uses a laser to illuminate the road ahead [with infrared light], but like a radar it treats the reflected signal as a wave rather than a particle.” Its technology is able to deliver higher-resolution sensing over a longer distance than traditional radar or newer LiDAR technologies.
Can startups stack up against big corporate competitors?
There are plenty of autonomous vehicle initiatives backed by deep corporate pockets. There’s Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, which is subsidized by the huge amount of search profit flung off by Google . Uber has an autonomous vehicles initiative too, although it has encountered a whole host of legal and safety issues, including holding the unfortunate distinction of being the first to kill a pedestrian earlier this year.
Tesla, too, has invested considerable resources into developing assistive technologies for its vehicles, but it too has encountered some roadblocks as its head of Autopilot (its in-house autonomy solution) left in April. The company also deals with a rash of safety concerns of its own. And although Apple’s self-driving car program has been less publicized than others, it continues to roll on in the background. Chinese companies like Baidu and Didi Chuxing have also launched fill-stack R&D facilities in Silicon Valley.
Traditional automakers have also jumped into the fray. Back in 2016, for the price of a cool $1 billion, General Motors folded Cruise Automation into its R&D efforts in a widely publicized buyout. And, not to be left behind, Ford acquired a majority stake in Argo AI, also for $1 billion.
That leaves us with a question: Do even the well-funded startups mentioned earlier stand a chance of either usurping market dominance from corporate incumbents or at least joining their ranks? Perhaps.
The reason why so much investor cash is going to these companies is because the market opportunity presented by autonomous vehicle technology is almost comically enormous. It’s not just a matter of the car market itself — projected to be over 80 million car sales globally in 2018 alone — but how we’ll spend all the time and mental bandwidth freed up by letting computers take the wheel. It’s no wonder that so many companies, and their backers, want even a tiny piece of that pie.
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