Shrunken unicorn Fair cancels car leasing to Uber drivers

When Fair laid off 40% of its staff in October, CEO Scott Painter promised it wasn’t shuttering leasing services to on-demand fleets. But just a week later, Painter was removed and replaced in the interim with Adam Hieber, a CFA from Fair investor SoftBank. Today, according to two sources, Fair announced at an all-hands meeting that it would end its Fair Go program that helped Uber drivers lease cars. The program will cease in April. Uber now confirms the news to TechCrunch.

Formerly valued at $1.2 billion after raising over $2 billion in equity and debt financing from SoftBank and Lightspeed, Fair laid off 40% of its staff in October. It had bought Uber’s XChange leasing program in early 2018. The deal lets drivers lease an Uber eligible car with subscriptions to roadside assistance and maintenance for as low as $130 per week with a $500 start fee.

But Uber had sold the leasing program because it was unprofitable and adding to its losses at a tough time for the rideshare giant. As additional fees stacked up, Fair didn’t fare much better operating it.

A source tells us Fair Go was profitable. It was an important focus for the company as it retools its subscription services for traditional drivers. Another source says at one point Fair Go was adding about 250 to 300 car leases per day and had thousands of active leases. But Fair Go was facing higher insurance rates from carriers, which make sense since Uber drivers can be on the road far, far longer than traditional car owners.

Rather than trying to pass those fees along to drivers, many who are already cash-strapped, Fair told employees it would cease to lease to Uber drivers. That’s a respectable choice, since it could have pushed Uber drivers into debt if they didn’t fully comprehend what their total costs would be.

Attempts to reach Fair for comment were complicated by many of its in-house PR team being hit with October’s layoffs. An agency representative was asked for comment on the shut down but did not provide comment before press time.

Fair, the SoftBank-backed car subscription startup, lays off 40% of staff, sacks CFO

However, an Uber spokesperson confirmed the shut down of Fair Go and their partnership, telling TechCrunch that “Unlocking options for vehicle access so drivers can earn with Uber remains a top priority. We’re thankful for Fair’s collaboration, and their contributions to our vehicle rental program. We’re  continuing to invest in rental partnerships, and building more flexibility beyond hourly, weekly, and monthly options available today.” 

Uber tells me it remains committed to offering leasing options to drivers through partnerships with Hertz, Avis, ZipCar and Getaround, and they may be able to work with Uber drivers formerly leasing from Fair.

The news is the latest low point for the SoftBank portfolio in the wake of the WeWork implosion. That’s caused potential repeat LPs for SoftBank’s massive Vision Fund to tighten their purse strings and other late stage investors to focus on sustainable unit economics. Late-stage startups have been left scrambling to cut their burn rates, often through layoffs.

SoftBank’s portfolio, which may have trouble raising on good terms after what many saw as inflated valuations propped up by the megafund, has been hit the hardest. This week TechCrunch broke the news that Flexport was laying off 3% of staff, or 50 employees. Other SoftBank-funded company layoffs include Zume Pizza (80% of staff laid off), Wag (80%), Getaround (25%), Rappi (6%), and Oyo (5%).

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Netflix begins streaming in AV1 on Android

{rss:content:encoded} Netflix begins streaming in AV1 on Android https://ift.tt/376cBZ8 https://ift.tt/37394uG February 06, 2020 at 08:19PM

Netflix announced this week that it has started to stream titles in AV1 on Android in what could significantly help the two-year-old media codec gain wider adoption.

The world’s biggest streaming giant said on Wednesday that by switching from Google’s VP9 — which it previously used on Android — to AV1, its compression efficiency has gone up by 20%.

At the moment, only “select titles” are available to stream in AV1 for subscribers “who wish to reduce their cellular data usage by enabling the ‘Save Data’ feature,” the American firm said.

Netflix hasn’t shared much about the benefit AV1 will provide to customers, but the new media codec’s acceptance nonetheless sends a message by itself.

Tech giants, including Google, have spent years developing and improving media codecs as consumption of data skyrocketed and low-cost devices began to sell like hotcakes. But they just can’t seem to settle on one media codec and universally support it.

Think of Safari and YouTube, for instance. You can’t stream YouTube videos in 4K resolution on Safari, because Apple’s browser does not support Google’s VP9. And Google does not support HEVC for 4K videos on YouTube.

AV1 is supposed to be the savior media codec that gets universal support. It’s royalty-free and it works atop of open-source dav1d decoder that has been built by VideoLAN, best known for its widely popular media player VLC and FFmpeg communities. It is sponsored by the Alliance for Open Media.

Who are the members of Alliance for Open Media? Nearly all the big guys: Apple, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Nvidia, ARM, Facebook, Microsoft, Mozilla, Samsung and Tencent, among others.

But that’s not to say there aren’t roadblocks in the adoption of AV1. Compared to HEVC — the format that AV1 is supposed to replace in popularity — encoding in AV1 was noticeably slower a year ago, as per some benchmark tests.

Adoption of AV1 by various browsers, according to analytics firm StatCounter. Safari is yet to support it.

Netflix’s announcement suggests that things have improved. The streaming giant said its goal is to support AV1 on all of its platforms. “In the spirit of making AV1 widely available, we are sponsoring an open-source effort to optimize 10-bit performance further and make these gains available to all,” it said in a blog post.

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Instagram gives unfollow suggestions in new ‘following categories’

{rss:content:encoded} Instagram gives unfollow suggestions in new ‘following categories’ https://ift.tt/36ZRtU9 https://ift.tt/2vO9IPx February 06, 2020 at 07:24PM

Instagram will now show you who you interact with least frequently in case you want to unfollow them. In an effort to help you keep your feed clean and relevant, today Instagram is launching ‘following categories’ that divides the list of who you follow into batches including “most seen in feed” and “least interacted with”. That way if someone annoying or boring is overwhelming your feed, or there’s someone who’s content you’ve proven to not be interested in, you can easily remove them. Time to axe those courtesy and pity follows.

“Instagram is really about bringing you closer to the people and things you care about – but we know that over time, your interests and relationships can evolve and change” a spokesperson tells me. “Whether you graduate, move to a new city, or become obsessed with a new interest and find a community, we want to make it easier to manage the accounts you follow on Instagram so that they best represent your current connections and interests.”

To access the feature, go to your profile, then “following”, then you’ll see the categories you can explore. You’re also able to sort who you follow by earliest to latest and vice versa in case you want to clear out your earliest adds or make sure you actually care about the latest people you followed.

By increasing the density of high quality posts in your feed and Stories by getting you to unfollow irrelevant accounts, Instagram could boost ad views. You’ll come across fewer lame posts that might make you close the app so you instead keep scrolling and fast-forwarding while racking up ad impressions. Instagram reportedly hit $20 billion in 2019 revenue according to Bloomberg.

I’ve been asking Twitter to build unfollow suggestions since 2013, but Instagram beat them to it. Even with filtered feeds, the algorithms can get things wrong and show too much of people you don’t care about.

Following back or adding someone who asks has become part of the modern day social contract. It can be rude and cause drama to refuse, so people just bloat their following list. Manually sorting through, trying to remember who people are and if you see them too often or constantly ignore them can be a slow and emotionally draining chore. With Instagram now 10 years old, Twitter 14, and Facebook 16, we’ve had a long time to accidentally screw up our social graph.

Perhaps unfollow suggestions took this long because no app wants to overtly shame specific people. But Instagram’s approach via clear, quantifiable categories is just vague enough that you probably won’t screenshot them and show the friends it said to nix. With that sensitivity, Instagram has pulled off the rare feat of improving the user experience while simultaneously benefiting its revenue engine.

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Instagram gives unfollow suggestions in new ‘following categories’

Instagram will now show you who you interact with least frequently in case you want to unfollow them. In an effort to help you keep your feed clean and relevant, today Instagram is launching ‘following categories’ that divides the list of who you follow into batches including “most seen in feed” and “least interacted with”. That way if someone annoying or boring is overwhelming your feed, or there’s someone who’s content you’ve proven to not be interested in, you can easily remove them. Time to axe those courtesy and pity follows.

“Instagram is really about bringing you closer to the people and things you care about – but we know that over time, your interests and relationships can evolve and change” a spokesperson tells me. “Whether you graduate, move to a new city, or become obsessed with a new interest and find a community, we want to make it easier to manage the accounts you follow on Instagram so that they best represent your current connections and interests.”

To access the feature, go to your profile, then “following”, then you’ll see the categories you can explore. You’re also able to sort who you follow by earliest to latest and vice versa in case you want to clear out your earliest adds or make sure you actually care about the latest people you followed.

By increasing the density of high quality posts in your feed and Stories by getting you to unfollow irrelevant accounts, Instagram could boost ad views. You’ll come across fewer lame posts that might make you close the app so you instead keep scrolling and fast-forwarding while racking up ad impressions. Instagram reportedly hit $20 billion in 2019 revenue according to Bloomberg.

I’ve been asking Twitter to build unfollow suggestions since 2013, but Instagram beat them to it. Even with filtered feeds, the algorithms can get things wrong and show too much of people you don’t care about.

Following back or adding someone who asks has become part of the modern day social contract. It can be rude and cause drama to refuse, so people just bloat their following list. Manually sorting through, trying to remember who people are and if you see them too often or constantly ignore them can be a slow and emotionally draining chore. With Instagram now 10 years old, Twitter 14, and Facebook 16, we’ve had a long time to accidentally screw up our social graph.

Perhaps unfollow suggestions took this long because no app wants to overtly shame specific people. But Instagram’s approach via clear, quantifiable categories is just vague enough that you probably won’t screenshot them and show the friends it said to nix. With that sensitivity, Instagram has pulled off the rare feat of improving the user experience while simultaneously benefiting its revenue engine.

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2vO9IPx Instagram gives unfollow suggestions in new ‘following categories’ Josh Constine https://ift.tt/36ZRtU9
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AllVoices raises $3 million to build a platform for anonymous harassment and bias reporting

As the national conversation pushes companies to reexamine the HR processes suppressing sexual harassment and bias reporting, tech startups are looking to find a way to smooth out the process and encourage communication.

LA-based AllVoices is building an encrypted communications platform for offices that allows employees to anonymously send complaints to their human resources department that can then follow-up and track the cases in an easy-to-use dashboard. CEO Claire Schmidt tells TechCrunch that her company has just closed a $3 million seed round with funding from Crosscut, Greycroft, Halogen Ventures, Vitalize VC and others.

CEO Claire Schmidt

Schmidt was most recently a VP at 20th Century Fox, before leaving to start AllVoices after being inspired by Susan Fowler’s Uber blog post to create a platform that allowed employees at companies to anonymously offer feedback and file reports about internal toxicity. Schmidt says existing processes used for reporting can leave victims of harassment hesitant to come forward and risk damaging their career paths.

“We’re using this really outdated process, we’re basically telling people, ‘Okay, just come in and tell someone in HR, and hope for the best.’,” Schmidt told TechCrunch in an interview. “And to me that seemed especially unfair to the most vulnerable people in any given work environment because they’re junior they don’t have as much job security — they’re viewed as more expendable.”

Employees at companies that use AllVoices can log into a mobile app and anonymously submit reports and receive text notifications when they’ve gotten a response from the company, a streamlined process that Schmidt hopes can encourage people to “report in real-time.” HR people don’t see names or any other identifying information and AllVoices doesn’t know the name of the employee either with all communications being encrypted.

“We do encrypt all of our data in storage, in backup, in transit, at rest — at every level,” Schmidt says.

Sixty days after a complaint is made, AllVoices sends a notification to the employee asking whether they were aware of any action being taken by the company and how satisfied they were with it. The startup then aggregates that data and provides it back to the company so they can get a clearer sense of their own responsiveness.

AllVoices isn’t the only startup tackling this issue, in 2018 we profiled Spot which is also building an anonymous reporting platform. AllVoices’ platform goes beyond streamlining processes for sexual harassment, the startup has modules for general feedback, ethics and compliance issues, culture problems, diversity and inclusion concerns and harassment and bias complaints.

The startup has also aimed to make a free version of its product so that employees at companies that haven’t integrated AllVoices can still make anonymous complaints by entering in an email for someone in their HR department. Schmidt hopes that the free service will serve their broader mission and help them onboard new customers.

AllVoices says they now have nearly 50 companies using the platform, including Instacart, GoPro, Wieden+Kennedy, The Wing, and FabFitFun.

https://ift.tt/39fkq08 AllVoices raises $3 million to build a platform for anonymous harassment and bias reporting https://ift.tt/3bjercv

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Nuro’s new delivery R2 bot gets the first driverless vehicle exemption from feds

Nuro, the autonomous delivery startup that raised $940 million in financing from SoftBank Vision Fund last year, is the first company to receive a driverless exemption from the federal government.

The exemption granted by the the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is for Nuro’s newest — and until Thursday, unseen — low-speed electric vehicle called the R2 that will be used for local delivery service for restaurants, grocery stores and other businesses. It’s a milestone for Nuro, as well as the autonomous vehicle industry, and signals how the federal government might regulate this technology.

The R2 will soon join Nuro’s fleet of self-driving Prius vehicles in Houston, making deliveries to consumers on public roads, the company said. This deployment follows Nuro’s partnership in 2018 with Kroger to pilot a delivery service in Arizona. The pilot, which initially used Toyota Prius vehicles, transitioned to the R1 delivery bot.

Nuro’s second-generation low-speed delivery vehicle was designed to be unmanned and operates exclusively using an automated driving system. Without a human driver, the vehicle doesn’t need some of the traditional and federally required features found in passenger cars, such as side-view mirrors or a transparent windshield.

“Since this is a low-speed self-driving delivery vehicle, certain features that the Department traditionally required — such as mirrors and windshield for vehicles carrying drivers — no longer make sense,” U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao said in a statement.

The federal exemption allows the vehicle to operate without three features: side-view mirrors, windshield and a rear-view camera that shuts off when driving forward. This exemption is different from the one that GM is currently pursuing for its self-driving unit Cruise. That vehicle, which is not considered a low-speed vehicle, has a much longer list of exemptions.

The process was lengthy, even for those three exemptions. Nuro has been working with NHTSA for three years and submitted its application for an exemption in October 2018.

“What you have to prove is that even if the exemption is granted the vehicle will be at least as safe as other vehicles that are fully compliant,” Nuro’s chief policy and legal officer David Estrada said.

The new R2 delivery bot has a more narrow vehicle profile and rounded contours where the side mirrors would otherwise be placed. This design feature will create additional room for bicyclists and other “vulnerable road users,” Nuro said.

The R2 is equipped with lidar, radar and cameras to give the “driver” a 360-degree view of its surroundings. However, that required another exemption, Estrada explained. NHTSA’s exemption also allows the R2 to operate its rear-view cameras even as it moves forward. New passenger vehicles must have a backup camera that switches off once the human driver begins moving forward (to avoid distraction). Without a human on-board, those concerns are moot, Nuro argued. 

There are conditions to this exemption. Nuro has the exemption for two years on a conditional basis and is required to submit reports on the AV driving system and provide proper notice to communities where the R2 will be deployed. The exemption allows Nuro to produce and deploy no more than 5,000 R2 vehicles during the two-year exemption period.

The R2, which was designed and assembled in the U.S. in partnership with Michigan-based Roush Enterprises, has a more durable custom vehicle body than its predecessor and a pedestrian-protecting front end that absorbs energy and can collapse inward to better protect those outside of the vehicle, according to the company.

The vehicle also has redesigned doors and a larger exterior screen for customers to interact with the vehicle and unlock the storage compartments. It also has 65% more capacity than the R1 and its compartments  have temperature control to keep perishable goods fresh, including groceries or meals.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Nuro’s new delivery R2 bot gets the first driverless vehicle exemption from feds https://ift.tt/2GZFknF

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Registration is now open for Disrupt SF 2020

Time to mark September 14-16 on your calendar for the startup extravaganza that is TechCrunch’s Disrupt San Francisco 2020. Registration for our flagship, 10,000-person event is officially open, and pass prices will never be lower. Super early-bird passes are now available and if you reserve your seat today, you can save up to $1,800.

There are many different pass types to make Disrupt SF as accessible as possible for every budget. We have passes designed for founders and investors and if you don’t fit in either of those buckets, the Innovator pass is the one for you. Or if you’re a founder ready to exhibit on the show floor, grab a Startup Alley Exhibitor Package.

As always, we’ll feature big names speaking from the Disrupt Stage. Last year, attendees heard from Evan Spiegel (Snap), Sebastian Thrun (Kitty Hawk), Aaron Levie (Box), Shan-Lyn Ma (Zola), Jess Lee (Sequoia), Bob van Dijk (Naspers), Chris Dixon (a16z) and Cyan Bannister (Founders Fund) — to name just a few. Even tech-savvy celebrities like Ang Lee, Will Smith and Stephen Curry (SC30 Inc./Golden State Warriors) felt the thrill of speaking at Disrupt.

We’re building our agenda now, and we can’t wait to tell you about the speakers who will rock your world, so keep checking back.

This year, we’re doubling down and expanding programming on the Extra Crunch Stage. We’re talking essential how-to content designed to help early-stage startup founders succeed — nuts-and-bolts information from people who know their slice of the startup scene inside-out.  They’ll take the Extra Crunch Stage to share their hard-won insights with you and take your questions.

We’ll divulge this year’s speakers and presenters over the coming weeks and months, but these examples of Extra Crunch sessions from Disrupt SF 2019 will give you a sense of the topics and experts you can expect.

• How to Evaluate Talent and Make Decisions with Ray Dalio (Bridgewater Associates)
• How to get into Y Combinator with Ali Rowghani and Michael Seibel (Y Combinator)
• How to Build a Subscription Product with Alexandra Friedman (LOLA), Eurie Kim (Forerunner Ventures) and Sandra Oh Lin (KiwiCo)

What else can you expect? The Startup Battlefield pitch competition with its $100,000 prize, workshops, Q&A sessions and hundreds of early-stage startup and sponsors exhibiting in Startup Alley. Plus, we’re adding some new networking events and revamping our CrunchMatch networking platform — we’ll reveal more details soon.

Disrupt San Francisco 2020 takes place on Sept. 14-16 at Moscone West. Registration is now open, and this is your chance to score the best price on passes. Buy your super early-bird passes now and get ready to Disrupt!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt San Francisco 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

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Daily Crunch: LinkedIn is getting a new CEO

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Jeff Weiner will step down as CEO of LinkedIn June 1, product head Ryan Roslansky steps up

The changes are LinkedIn’s first big executive shakeup since the company was acquired by Microsoft in 2016. It’s notable that both of the new appointments (Roslansky and new product head Tomer Cohen) involve long-time LinkedIn executives — they’re not looking to rock the boat too much.

Weiner, meanwhile, says that LinkedIn was his “dream job” and that he’s moving on to the next “dream job” as executive chairman. But we expect to start seeing his name floated for other CEO roles very shortly.

2. Ancestry lays off 6% of staff as consumer genetic testing market continues to decline

The move from Ancestry follows job cuts at 23andMe in late January, which saw 100 staffers lose their jobs (or roughly 14% of its workforce). The genetic testing company Illumina has been warning of softness in the direct-to-consumer genetic testing market as well.

3. Twitter reports $1.01B in Q4 revenues with 152M monetizable daily active users

Twitter posted $1.01 billion in sales — the first time its revenues have broken past the billion-dollar mark — due to a strong quarter in advertising sales. However, net income and earnings per share both saw significant drops from the same period a year ago.

4. Google Maps adds more crowdsourced transit data and gets a new navigation bar

Google is updating Google Maps on Android and iOS with a revamped tab bar at the bottom, a new icon and a couple of new features. In particular, the company is putting more emphasis on user-generated content and recommendations.

5. Where top VCs are investing in open source and dev tools (Part 1 of 2)

We asked 18 of the top open-source-focused VCs to share what’s exciting them most and where they see opportunities. For purposes of length and clarity, responses have been edited and split (in no particular order) into part one and part two of this survey. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

6. Reddit partners with Tagboard to bring its content to TV broadcasts

Through this partnership, broadcast networks will be able to easily display Reddit’s content on TV. That includes Reddit’s unique content like AMA (Ask Me Anything) recaps and Photoshop battles, as well as popular posts and comments.

7. NASA astronaut Christina Koch returns to Earth after record-setting stay in space

Koch spent 328 consecutive days at the International Space Station. She’s second only to Scott Kelley, who spent 340 days in space, and she’s officially the woman with the longest stay in space worldwide, passing fellow U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson’s record of 289 days.

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2CoAoqu Daily Crunch: LinkedIn is getting a new CEO Anthony Ha https://ift.tt/31uWOSx
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Snafu Records is a music label using algorithms to find its next big artist

Snafu Records is bringing a new approach to finding musical talent — founder and CEO Ankit Desai described the Los Angeles-headquartered startup as “the first full-service, AI-enabled record label.”

It’s a world that Desai knows well, having spent the past five years working on digital and streaming strategy at Capitol Records and Universal Music Group. He argued that there’s still a vast pool of musical talent that the record labels are ill-equipped to tap into.

“If there’s some girl in Indonesia whose music the world is dying to hear, they’re never going to get the chance,” he said. “The bridge to connect her to the world doesn’t exist today. The music business is entrenched in a very old way of working, finding artists through word-of-mouth.”

There are other companies like Chartmetric creating software to help the labels scout artists, but Desai said, “I used to be the one buying the sevice. What always ended up happening was that we were trying to put 21st century technology into a 20th century machine.”

The machine, in other words, is the record label itself. So he decided to create a label of his own — Snafu Records, which is officially launching today.

The startup is also announcing that it has raised $2.9 million in seed funding led by TrueSight Ventures, with participation from Day One Ventures, ABBA’s Agnetha Fältskog, Spotify’s John Bonten, William Morris’ Samanta Hegedus Stewart, Soundboks founder Jesper Theil Thomsen, Headstart.io founder Nicholas Shekerdemian and others.

Spotify expands personalization to its programmed playlists

The Snafu approach, Desai said, uses technology “to essentially turn everyone listening to music into a talent scout on our behalf.”

The company’s algorithms are supposedly looking at around 150,000 tracks from unsigned artists each week on services like YouTube, Instagram and SoundCloud, and evaluating them based on listener engagement, listener sentiment and the music itself — Desai said the sweet spot is to be 70 or 75% similar to the songs on Spotify’s top 200 list, so that the music sounds like what’s already popular, while also doing just enough to “break the mold.”

This analysis is then translated into a score, which Snafu uses to go “from this firehose of music, distill it down to 15 or 20 per week, and then the human [team] gets involved.”

The goal is to sign musicians as Snafu artists, who then get access the company’s industry expertise (including advice from the label’s head of creative Carl Falk, who’s written songs for Madonna, One Direction and Nicki Minaj) and marketing support in exchange for a share of streaming revenue. Desai added that Snafu will share more of the revenue with artists and lock them in for shorter periods of time than a standard record contract.

Asked whether streaming (as opposed to touring or merchandising) will provide enough money for Snafu to build a big business, Desai said, “Economics-wise, streaming sometimes does get a bad rap sometimes. It’s a bit misunderstood — there’s still just as many artists making really, really good numbers through streaming, it’s just a different kind of artist.”

And while Snafu is only officially launching today, it’s already signed 16 artists, including the Little Rock-based duo Joan and the jazz musician Mishcatt, whose song “Fade Away” has been streamed 5 million times in the five weeks since it was released.

“There’s a major opportunity for Ankit and the Snafu team to build a new innovative and enduring music label at the intersection of technology and deep industry expertise,” said Hampus Monthan Nordenskjöld, Founding Partner at TrueSight Ventures, in a statement. “The music industry is going through a tectonic shift and we’re extremely excited to work with Snafu as they redefine what it means to be a music label in the 21st century.”

Spotify is buying The Ringer to boost its sports podcast content

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Netskope hauls in another $340M investment on nearly $3B valuation

Netskope has always focused its particular flavor of security on the cloud, and as more workloads have moved there, it has certainly worked in its favor. Today the company announced a $340 million investment on a valuation of nearly $3 billion.

Sequoia Capital Global Equities led the round, but in a round this large, there were a bunch of other participating firms, including new investors Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and PSP Investments, along with existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Accel, Base Partners, ICONIQ Capital, Sapphire Ventures, Geodesic Capital and Social Capital. Today’s investment brings the total raised to more than $740 million, according to Crunchbase data.

As with so many large rounds recently, CEO Sanjay Beri said the company wasn’t necessarily looking for more capital, but when brand name investors came knocking, they decided to act. “We did not necessarily need this level of capital but having a large balance sheet and a legendary set of investors like Sequoia, Lightspeed and Accel putting all their chips behind Netskope for the long term to dominate the largest market in security is a very strong signal to the industry,” Beri said.

From the start, Netskope has taken aim at cloud and mobile security, eschewing the traditional perimeter security that was still popular when the company launched in 2012. “Legacy products based on traditional notions of perimeter security have gone obsolete and inhibit the needs of digital businesses. Today’s urgent requirement is security that is fast, delivered from the cloud, and provides real-time protection against network and data threats when cloud services, websites, and private apps are being accessed from anywhere, anytime, on any device,” he explained.

When Netskope announced its $168.7 million round at the end of 2018, the company had a valuation over $1 billion at that time. Today, it announced it has almost tripled that number, with a valuation close to $3 billion. That’s a big leap in just two years, but it reports 80% year-over-year growth, and claims to be “the fastest-growing company at scale in the fastest-growing areas of cybersecurity: secure access server edge (SASE) and cloud security,” according to Beri.

The next natural step for a company at this stage of maturity would be to look to become a public company, but Beri wasn’t ready to commit to that just yet. “An IPO is definitely a possible milestone in the journey, but it’s certainly not limited to that and we’re not in a rush and have no capital needs, so we’re not commenting on timing.”

Netskope nabs Sift Security to enhance infrastructure cloud security

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Netskope hauls in another $340M investment on nearly $3B valuation https://ift.tt/2OucCQ0

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What to expect from Samsung’s S20 event

{rss:content:encoded} What to expect from Samsung’s S20 event https://ift.tt/2S3Miyn https://ift.tt/36Xkzni February 06, 2020 at 05:44PM

Next Tuesday, Samsung kicks off smartphone season with its Unpacked event in San Francisco. One of two tentpole events for the company, the big show brings with it the latest edition of the company’s primary flagship line, the Galaxy S.

Samsung played a fun little trick, holding the event on February 11th at 11AM PT, all while skipping the Galaxy S11 entirely. Granted, this is still firmly in the realm of rumors here, but evidence is mounting that the company is actually skipping nine full model numbers and going straight to the Galaxy S20.

Why? Well, reasons. It’s 2020, for one. Also, Apple skipped the iPhone 9 a while back, so Samsung can now do it nine better — and perhaps adopt a numbering system more akin to Huawei’s 10-at-a-time updates. Honestly, though, the most likely answer is the simplest: Smartphone sales have slowed for many manufacturers and this is a sneaky way to generate a little interest.

But what’s in a name, really? One thing that’s certainly in line with previous Galaxy releases is the veritable deluge of leaks leaving little to the imagination in the lead-up to the event. We’ve been seeing fairly consistent renders for weeks and months, and earlier this week, what appears to be marketing images have surfaced.

Along with the S20 name, the shots showcase a design scheme featuring a hole punch camera up front (the “Infinity O”) and a long, prominent camera array on the rear. The also-rumored Galaxy S20 Ultra appears to add an even more intense camera array to the mix, including a “Space Zoom 100x,” which would bring a pretty crazy level of zooming capabilities to the smart phone — through, one assumes, a hybrid of digital and optical.

There’s already a lot of camera literature to crawl through here, including the patenting of the term “nonacell.” That, understandably sounds like nonasense, but appears to use pixel binning to create 12-megapixel images from the 108-megapixel sensor. That seems likely to be reserved for the Ultra — one of the versions of the handset, which include the S20 and S20+. All are believed to have a 5G option — logical, given that Samsung was among the first to bring the technology to market.

Even more clear renders of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip, showing the Fingerprint sensor now. It will have special fibres inside the hinges to prevent dust from entering, the hinges would even have dual stops, at 90° and 180° enabling stuff like Hands Free (Duo) Video Calling. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/Pk8XNPpXAo

— Ishan Agarwal (@ishanagarwal24) February 6, 2020

We have less information about the Galaxy Z Flip, but Samsung’s second foldable appears destined to get some stage time at the show. The device could well be far more accessible than the original Fold. First, there’s the clamshell design that has more in common with the new Motorola Razr than the original Fold. It’s also believed to be a little more rugged — owing to…issues with the original version of the Fold.

Pricewise, the Flip is expected to be, well, pricey — but considerably less so than the Fold. Rumored at around $1,500, it’s $500 less than Samsung’s original foldable.

New versions of Samsung’s quite good Galaxy Buds are expected, as well. The Galaxy Buds+ reportedly offer a large bump in battery, up to a total of 22 hours. Also expected is multi-device connectivity and a $20 price bump.

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OptimoRoute raises $6.5M Series A to help businesses better plan their routes

Route planning sounds like it’s a problem for big logistics companies like Amazon, FedEx and UPS, but in reality, it’s something every small business with more than a few mobile employees deals with. OptimoRoute, which today announced that it has raised a $6.5 million Series A round led by Prelude Ventures, is tackling exactly this problem. Built by a team of former Google and Yelp engineers, the service allows businesses to set their specific constraints and then automatically creates daily routes for their drivers, no matter whether they are doing deliveries or cleaning pools.

What makes OptimiRoute stand out from some of its competitors in this space isn’t just its often significantly lower prices but also that it offers drivers and customers a mobile experience that includes live tracking and ETAs and the ability to change routes in real time as necessary. With OptimoRoute, companies can plan for specific days of the week or up to five weeks in advance. The company is also currently testing a pickup and delivery system for both passengers and goods, as well as support for multi-day long-haul routes.

As the company’s co-founder and CEO Marin Šarić told me, route optimization is obviously a popular academic problem. “On the one side, you do have these academic problems that are very proof of concept and minimalistic,” he said. “And then, in the commercial space, you have software that is running — in our estimation — algorithms that have been well known in the previous century, literally, you know there’s even things from the 80s. […] We at OptimoRoute really worry about the real-word constraints of what it means to build an effective schedule.”

OptimoRoute takes into account a number of variables (how much material can fit into a van, hourly wages, skills needed to perform a certain repair, etc.) and lets companies choose different priorities for optimizing their routes.

“We’re really focused on trying to make this technology available for everyone and this is appreciated even by very senior experienced logistics managers because they can focus on problems they’re trying to solve as opposed to working around hiccups with the software,” explained Šarić.

Currently, OptimoRoute has about 800 customers that range from small businesses to large energy companies like Southern Star Central Gas Pipeline, which manages the routes of more than 300 maintenance technicians with the help of the service. By reducing the mileage employees have to drive, users not only see increased productivity from their employees but, as Šarić noted, also reduce their overall carbon footprint.

The team spent a lot of time on developing the basic algorithms that power the service. The team, though, expected that a lot of its users would be very sophisticated logistics managers, but it turned out that there was a lot of demand from small and medium businesses, too.

“Prelude is excited to help OptimoRoute expand its reach and further develop its offerings for a multitude of mobile workforces,” said Victoria Beasley, partner, Prelude Ventures. “We strongly believe that OptimoRoute is set to have a huge impact on the route optimization market, saving time, money and resources, while also reducing carbon footprint, for their many diverse clients.”

https://ift.tt/2OxEPpb OptimoRoute raises $6.5M Series A to help businesses better plan their routes https://ift.tt/2S36ssa

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