The CEO of Amazon Web Services (AWS) has heralded a new generation of cloud computing-enabled businesses that have the power to change how the world around us operates.
Speaking at his opening keynote address for AWS re:Invent 2021 in Las Vegas, Adam Selipsky noted the seismic effect of cloud computing on almost every company operating today.
"The cloud has become not just another tech revolution, but an enabler of fundamental shift in the way that businesses actually function,” he noted. “There's no industry that hasn't been touched and no business that can't be radically disrupted, and every one of us here today is part of that movement."
Come a long way
Selipsky started his keynote with a look back, as AWS celebrates not just 10 years of its re:Invent conference, but 15 years as a separate entity.
“We sure have come a long way together in the past 15 years,” he noted. “It's hard to believe that when we first started, the concept of cloud computing barely existed.”
“Back then IT and infrastructure just weren't working. It was expensive. It was slow. It was inflexible. It suffocated innovation. And of course it was dominated by old guard vendors who loved the expense and the lock-in - but we knew there had to be a better path forward for all of us."
"I do remember perplexed looks and people's faces when I tried to explain AWS and the cloud - it was barely a concept yet and it was really hard to put into context. I can't tell you how many times I was asked, 'But what does this have to do with selling books?'”
Now, Selipsky notes that Amazon S3 stores more than three trillion objects and AWS offers over 200 fully-featured services to millions of customers around the world.
This year’s event is the first since former leader Andy Jassey moved to take over the top job at parent company Amazon following Jeff Bezos’ retirement, with Selipsky shifting into the leading cloud role with anticipation that further growth is assured.
"We're just getting started,” he said, noting that between only five and 15% of IT spending has moved to the cloud, and technologies such as 5G and IoT offering huge possibilities for the likes of AWS.
And with a customer list spanning the likes of Netflix to NASA, few would bet against AWS continuing that growth going forward, especially with hardware launches such as the newly-revealed Graviton3.
"Sometimes the work we do together can be hard,” Selipsky concluded. “But we love challenges...Ultimately what the cloud and AWS offer is the ability to transform.”
South Korea-based peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform PeopleFund announced today it has closed a $63.4 million (75.9 billion won) Series C round led by Bain Capital with participation from Goldman Sachs. Returning investors in the round include CLSA Lending Ark Asia and 500 Global.
The latest funding brings the total raised by PeopleFund to about $83.6 million (100 billion won) since it was founded in 2015.
The Series C will support hiring AI engineers and secure alternative data to advance its credit-scoring algorithm further. PeopleFund also will beef up its machine learning-powered credit scoring system, which is one of its key differentiators, that provides a quantitative scoring model (for credit valuation), a qualitative scoring model and a demand forecasting model (for near-primer borrowers).
PeopleFund wants to address the structural problem involving the risk of high interest-rate loans in the near-prime loan sector and offer more personalized financial products to sub-prime and near-prime borrowers with its data-driven technology platform, said CEO and founder Joey Kim told TechCrunch.
“For the past six years, we have been focusing on proving the performance of our data-driven risk management technology, which is the essence of consumer lending,” Kim said. “Our mission is to grow into the #1 player in the Korean non-bank lending market to provide better loan options for average Koreans that the banks underserve.”
The financing event comes five months after PeopleFund received its regulatory approval from South Korea’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) to register with the government.
In early June, only three Korean P2P lenders out of 41 applicants were granted licenses from the FSC to operate the business legally: PeopleFund, Lendit and 8 Percent. The FSC said it will continue to review other applicants.
South Korea has passed the first law in the world dedicated to digital lending, ‘The Marketplace Lending Act’, in August 2020 to regulate marketplace lenders, protecting P2P consumers. The new law enables the licensed P2P lending startup to operate as an authorized financial institution to lend, raise capital from international and domestic institutions, and provide loan referral services to its customers.
The number of marketplace lenders in Korea has fallen from 237 to 102, between August 2020 and May 2021, as per its annual report in 2020.
PeopleFund
PeopleFund, which connects borrowers with lenders to enable lending, provides loans at an average interest rate of 11.25 percent per annum, about 3 percent to 4 percent lower than other non-bank lenders. Near-prime borrowers are not qualified for bank loans thus have no choice but to resort to non-bank lenders like credit card loans (or saving banks), Kim said.
What sets PeopleFund apart from other competitors is the lowest delinquency rate in the industry, being managed by its own alternative credit scoring system, and having strong risk management capabilities, Kim said. PeopleFund claims it has managed over $1 billion in loans as of October 2021, with a delinquency rate of 2.06%.
Another differentiator is its credit scoring system optimized for mid-interest loans based on about 480,000 loan customers registered on its platform. PeopleFund built a credit scoring system (CSS) 4.0 for near-prime borrowers to provide more affordable mid-rate loans to borrowers, who use the funds to refinance existing loans taken from other second-tier lenders. The refinancing loans account for 66 percent of its total loans, he added.
Kim said that its clients include near-prime borrowers and individuals and institutional investors who expect 7%-9% the ROI per annum (before tax). Its lenders are mostly retail customers the company has through its partnership with Kakao Pay.
“For individual and institutional lenders, we offer diversified lending opportunities at an average annual return rate of 6 percent to 9 percent. For the borrowers and the lenders, [our] AI-based data-driven underwriting process has been the core of its competitive advantage, which has been outperforming other non-bank players by a 3 percent to 5 percent gap in loss rate,” Kim said.
PeopleFund targets the traditional personal credit loans market in South Korea, which is estimated at around $67 billion, according to the company.
The company, which accounted for about 57% of market share in the personal loan of the P2P lending market as of October, expects to generate profit in 2022, Kim said.
“While leading online lenders in the U.S. have grown to worth billions out of lending platforms such as Upstart and SoFi, Korea’s online lending is only just beginning, said Tim Chae, managing partner of 500 Global that participated in all fundraising since the seed round. “We strongly believe that PeopleFund will grow to become a clear winner with its proven track record, accelerating tech-driven innovations in the non-bank lending sector in Korea.”
The silicon brain that may be powering your next smartphone has just been unveiled, and unlike rumors had previously suggested it won't be called the Qualcomm Snapdragon 898.
Flights and accommodation for this launch event were funded by Qualcomm, but the views reflect the writer's own honest opinion.
But why has it been given a new name? The different naming structure may confuse people, especially as this isn't a first-gen product. In fact, Qualcomm has been making the chipsets powering some of the most popular phones since 2012.
We spoke to Qualcomm about the new name, and here's why the company decided to change it for 2021... and beyond.
First, how does this new name work? The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is the name of the new chipset, and future generations of lower-tier Qualcomm series will follow that convention – for example, the Snapdragon 4 Gen 1, or Snapdragon 7 Gen 1.
This change in naming structure will be used across all variants of the company's technology going forward from this release. It just so happens that it's introduced on the Snapdragon 8 series first.
It's still a sequel to the Snapdragon 888 Plus that was introduced earlier this year, and therefore it'll be the company's flagship product for 2022.
Ziad Asghar, VP of Product Management at Qualcomm, told TechRadar, “People know that 8 is basically the highest tier that we have. So we thought let’s simplify this – let’s call it the Snapdragon 8.
“This one will be called the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, and then as we go further we’ll call it Gen 2, Gen 3 and so on. I think it really simplifies it, and you don’t have to remember three numbers.”
Or, conceivably, four numbers, assuming they'd have to go higher after the Snapdragon 898.
Consumers prefer it, apparently
According to Qualcomm's research, the general public prefers this new naming structure by a ratio of 5 to 1. It may take some getting used to for phone fans, but the idea is that it'll make it easier for the average consumer to understand which silicon is running on their device.
Debra Marich, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Qualcomm, told TechRadar during a briefing for the new chipset, "We're strengthening our Snapdragon brand as a standalone product brand for consumers, and we'll be leveraging the equity we've built in the last Snapdragon brand for the past 10 years."
It isn’t just the overall name for the Snapdragon platforms that are changing. Asghar confirmed to TechRadar that the company is also changing the names of its other elements that make up the platform.
Asghar said, “Underneath, we used to have technologies like the Hexagon 780 processor. So we’ve taken away those [names] too, just such that they’re now associated with each generation of Snapdragon 8. It just makes it very simple.”
Expect to see this new naming structure across Qualcomm's products for the foreseeable future. We won’t be getting a Snapdragon 898, but this is the same chipset in all but name and we’ll be looking for a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 come the end of 2022.
If you’re a fan of Android phones then the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is a big deal, as this upcoming chipset will almost certainly power many of the best Android phones of 2022.
The latest innovation from Qualcomm is now here after the company introduced its new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 platform at its annual Tech Summit event. This is the new chipset that we expect to see powering a lot of the top-end phones in 2022 and beyond.
Flights and accommodation for this launch event were funded by Qualcomm, but the views reflect the writer's own honest opinion.
It's the sequel to the Snapdragon 888 (and its sibling the Snapdragon 888 Plus) that was introduced in 2020 and featured on smartphones like the Galaxy S21, OnePlus 9 Pro, Oppo Find X3 Pro and Xiaomi Mi 11.
That means we'll likely see it included in the next iterations of those phones, so we expect manufacturers like Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi, OnePlus, Motorola, Realme and many more to include this chipset in their absolute best smartphones.
This is top-end power, so it's reserved for the most expensive devices. If you're a smartphone fan, you've likely noticed that the new chipset also has a new naming structure, too. We expected this to be called the Snapdragon 898, but Qualcomm moved to what it believes is a more "simplified" naming structure.
What is it? The next top-end Android chipset from Qualcomm
When is it out? Expect it in phones in January 2022
Which phones will use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1?
A lot of phones are likely to use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, and many of them have already been rumored. These include the Samsung Galaxy S22 range, which will reportedly use this chipset in either most or all parts of the world.
That’s a change, as typically Samsung splits its Galaxy S models between the latest Snapdragon and the latest Exynos.
So far, no manufacturers have confirmed compatibility with the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. However, we can almost guarantee you'll see this chipset on a lot of top-end smartphones in 2021.
We'll include confirmed models here when we hear more, but we've yet to see any manufacturers state whether they'll be using the new chipset.
The Samsung Galaxy S22 range is likely to land in February, but before that we could see the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in the Xiaomi 12 in December (though that launch will probably only be for China, with the rest of the world getting it later).
The successor to the Xiaomi Mi 11 could be one of the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 phones(Image credit: Future)
A leak suggests a Motorola phone could join the Xiaomi 12 as one of the first with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, possibly also launching before the end of 2021. That leak didn’t name the phone, but more recently another source claimed that the high-end Motorola Edge 30 Ultra will land this year with that chipset.
Leaks also suggest that the Huawei P60 range could use this chipset. That’s slightly surprising as Huawei usually makes its own, but the US trade ban has complicated things there. Finally, there’s also evidence of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 being used in at least one Vivo phone.
Beyond the leaks and rumors, we also expect the OnePlus 10 and Sony Xperia 1 IV to use this chipset, based on past form, as probably will the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4, and many other phones.
Don't expect Pixel phones in 2022 to be using this as it's likely Google will continue using its own Tensor chipset. One oddity is a rumor that Samsung won't be using its Exynos chipsets in certain models of the Galaxy S22.
Basically, if you buy a high-end Android smartphone in 2022, there’s a good chance the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 will be at its heart.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is designed to offer a top-end flagship experience. Be aware though, not every manufacturer will use each of the features below.
A lot of the new features we talk about are now are an option for manufacturers to implement, but not every phone maker in 2022 will decide to introduce each of the below features. So don't expect these features to be guaranteed in your smartphone when you unpackage it in 2022.
How powerful is it?
(Image credit: Qualcomm)
Ziad Asghar, VP of Product Management at Qualcomm, told TechRadar during a briefing that the new chipset introduces, "The biggest changes that we've ever brought about in a product."
That's a big claim (and one we'd expect Qualcomm to make) so we'll be breaking down every feature we've learned about so far.
First off, the CPU has been improved by being 20% faster than the last generation; it also offers 30% power savings. That should hopefully result in better overall performance on your smartphone, and perhaps longer battery life.
The CPU (central processing unit) is the brains of your phone for everyday tasks such as booting up and running apps, or navigating around your phone's operating system. Improvements to the CPU performance should mean your phone is slicker and speedier than previous generations.
Those stats aren't the biggest jump in numbers we've seen from a new Qualcomm platform, but the Snapdragon 888 Plus was already one of the most powerful chips on the market so we didn't expect a huge improvement here.
Artificial intelligence features also remain a focus for Qualcomm, and the company is partnering with Google Cloud to introduce its Cloud Vertex AI Neural Architecture Search features into the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 platform.
A Qualcomm spokesperson said, "It allows [manufacturers] to apply Neural Architecture Search techniques, and would let [manufacturers] be able to optimize the model to the fullest extent to be able to get the most optimal models for best accuracy".
Essentially, you should expect the best possible artifical intelligence features from this latest Snapdragon platform. Plugging in Google Cloud's features should only offer improvements here, but it's currently unclear what exactly this will offer.
New camera features
Most of the exciting improvements for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1are in the camera, which opens up a whole new variety of features for manufacturers to introduce to your smartphone's snapper.
The image signal processor (ISP) has been improved on this chip with it introducing 4,096 times more camera data than previous models. It was previously a 14-bit ISP on the Snapdragon 888, and this features an 18-bit one.
Those four extra bits allow for improved dynamic range, which should mean you'll be able to take photos with brighter bright areas and darker dark areas.
Faster shooting in burst mode is now possible, and Qualcomm has doubled the number of photos you can take in quick succession. For example, in one second you can now take 240 12MP photos using the burst mode features.
Wide-angle photography may also be improved on your next phone. A new de-warp technology and Chromatic Aberration Correction have been introduced here, and they're designed to improve wide-angle shots.
Facial recognition technology has been improved on the latest Snapdragon with the company saying it's faster and more accurate than ever. We've yet to get any hard data specifically on that claim, though.
The company says it will better track the position of your nose, mouth, eyes, eyebrows, jawline and more. There are more than 300 facial landmarks now being used by the platform, but we're not clear on how many were used on previous generations.
The platform allows for you to shoot in 8K HDR for the very first time, and that's both HDR 10 and HDR 10 Plus. Not many smartphones currently offer 8K video recording – and it's rare you'll find a screen that is capable of making use of the footage – but it's a useful feature for future smartphones.
Sticking on video recording, and a new feature called Video Super-Resolution for Extreme Zoom should mean that your phone's telephoto camera can record better video. It's rare you'd want to shoot video at long distances, but this could be better on future smartphones.
(Image credit: Qualcomm)
The final video feature is a new bokeh engine that will allow for the blurred effect on the rear of your portrait shots. This will be like how it works on Portrait mode on many top-end smartphones, but the capability here is up to 4K video.
We've seen this introduced on the iPhone 13 series previously, although it was called Cinematic Mode. It'll be interesting to see which Android manufacturer includes this feature first.
Another big camera feature is the fact you can record video, but also take photos at the same time. This is up to 8K HDR video, while the camera also takes 64MP shots. It's not entirely clear how this would be implemented yet, but it's a feature you may find helpful when shooting certain moments that you also want photographs of.
Finally, you'll also be able to shoot in 18-bit RAW for the first time. This is likely a feature that will appeal to true camera enthusiasts who want to export raw images for editing.
What does it change for gaming?
Another big improvement is in gaming, which introduces an AI engine that offers 4x faster artificial intelligence performance than the Snapdragon 888. It'll be interesting to see how this works in real life.
The Adreno GPU is 30% faster than the last-gen chipset, while the Vulkan is 60% faster. That essentially means you'll be getting into your games quicker, and they should run better than your previous smartphones.
A new feature called Adreno Frame Motion Engine will allow you to double the frame rate in the games you're playing while maintaining the same power levels. Qualcomm also confirmed the feature would allow you to keep playing at the same frame rate, but you'd be using half the power.
There are further gaming features to be introduced on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, but we haven't heard about them in full yet. Expect to see more in this article at a later date.
Every other feature we've heard about so far
A new always-on camera is an impressive introduction with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. The idea here is your phone's camera would be able to constantly be running, and then software developers can introduce new features to make use of that.
As an example, Qualcomm suggested you could unlock your phone without having to press a button to start a facial recognition process.
Another example, and perhaps a more interesting implementation, would be for security purposes. The camera would be able to monitor if anyone is looking over your shoulder while you're using certain apps. If you're looking at confidential files, it would then be able to lock your phone to ensure no one else is able to peek over your shoulder.
That would only be possible for certain uses (for example, someone looking at an angle would likely not be picked up by the camera) but it's an interesting feature that could be useful.
There are improvements for audio, too. For example, Qualcomm is introduced CD lossless audio and Bluetooth LE audio into the platform for the first time.
Plus, a new feature called Android Ready SE is designed to allow you to include identification documents on your smartphone. This would allow for this process to be done securely, but there is little detail on how that would look for the average person.
The platform also includes the most advanced Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, so you may be able to experience a slightly faster Wi-Fi connection on your next smartphone.
Finally, 5G is improving on the Gen 1, but we've yet to hear many specifics about the features. Qualcomm has said this platform supports up to 10Gbps, which is likely to keep you connected without any concerns.
In a recently published five-year plan, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has called for improving the cross-border security management of big data till 2025, according to reports.
Reuters reports that strengthening the management of data flows across its borders, and more support for open source initiatives, are among the six key tasks outlined in the plan.
As part of the plan, MIIT reportedly estimates the scale of China's big data industry to exceed three trillion yuan (about $470.79 billion) by the end of 2025.
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The plan also called for improving the "marketization" of data, improving computing power, and playing a leading role in developing global technology standards.
Exercising control
Reuters says the plan, which builds off of China's 14th five-year plan published earlier this year, doubles down on the country’s stance of strengthening its regulatory framework for ferrying and storage of data.
The new plan helps confirm China’s view of data as a "factor of production," and a "national strategic resource.”
Notably, the new plan comes on the heels of two key data-centric legislations the country has brought into force this year, namely the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) and the Data Security Law, which, in essence, list a comprehensive set of rules that govern the collection, processing, storage, and protection of data.
On the face of it, the laws help detail compliance requirements for companies operating outside the mainland to help ensure users’ data is protected when it’s ferried outside of China. However, they are generally seen as a bid by the country to exercise control over how companies and organizations store and move data across the mainland.
Microsoft is working on a new update for its video conferencing software that will allow organizations with supported devices to use multiple cameras in Microsoft Teams.
There is a catch though as this new multiple camera feature will only work on select Microsoft Teams Rooms devices.
For those unfamiliar, Microsoft Teams Rooms is a dedicated hardware and software solution for video conferencing that was previously called Skype Rooms. Microsoft Teams Rooms devices include headsets, speakerphones, desk phones and Teams displays, collaboration bars, webcams and more.
According to a new post on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap, this feature is currently in development and is slated to roll out to Microsoft Teams Rooms devices like the Surface Hub 2S in January of next year.
Switching between multiple cameras
Once this new feature is available, organizations that have a meeting or conference room with more than one video camera connected to Microsoft Teams Rooms will be able to switch between them while in a video call.
To do so, they'll need to click on the icon that depicts an arrow going through a rectangle at the bottom of a Teams meeting to see a list of available cameras. From here, they'll be able to switch between cameras seamlessly without interrupting their meeting.
As more devices have built-in cameras than ever before, this new update to Microsoft Teams Rooms will allow organizations to take advantage of them. Some possible use cases include being able to switch between a wide group shot and having one individual on camera as well as being able to give attendees a close up view of a product or design.
Now that Microsoft is adding multiple camera support to Microsoft Teams Rooms, the company could eventually add this same functionality to regular Teams meetings so that individuals can also give their meetings more of a cinematic feel.
Lee Li is a project manager and B2B copywriter with a decade of experience in the Chinese fintech startup space as a PM for TaoBao, MeitTuan and DouYin (now TikTok).
Investment in fintech is surging back following a brief but notable drop during the COVID pandemic. As a result, countries worldwide are seeing a large influx of capital for fintech ventures, and both investment totals and deal counts in the fintech space are increasing rapidly.
Although a large part of fintech funding focuses on countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, smaller countries, particularly in Asia, are making their presence known. This is hardly surprising given that Asia leads the world in fintech adoption rates.
Singapore is one country building a solid reputation as a hub of fintech activity, and this reputation is generating substantial investment.
Singapore’s fintech investment surges forward
According to KPMG, total fintech funding worldwide in the first half of 2021 reached $98 billion from 2,456 deals, rebounding strongly from the COVID-inspired investing dip of 2020.
Not surprisingly, the U.S. accounted for most of the total investment at $42 billion. However, fintech funding also recovered well in Asia and the EMEA region.
For the first half of 2021, Asian fintech funding activity amounted to $7.5 billion despite the lack of any notably large deals. CBInsights estimates that Asian fintech funding in Q3 is strong at nearly $6 billion, trailing only the U.S.
Despite its small size (less than 5 million total population), Singapore is quickly reaching investment levels of countries many times its size. Although the KPMG data shows only $614 million during the first half, the Singapore Monetary Authority’s chief fintech officer, Sopnendu Mohanty, suggests a strong surge in the second half, pushing Singapore’s total to $3 billion. Given the record number of deals in the first half of 2021, Mohanty’s optimism seems justified.
Compare Singapore’s total to countries like Canada and the major European countries. In the first half, Canada’s total investment was $4.8 billion, while France and Germany were each in the $2 billion-$2.5 billion range. But these countries are six to ten times the size of Singapore and have similarly larger GDPs.
Singapore’s investment level is also notable among countries in the Asia Pacific. The two most populated countries, China and India, generated only $1.3 billion and $2 billion, respectively. Australia had less than a billion. Singapore is swinging well above its weight when it comes to fintech investment.
Fintech adoption drives investment
Fintech adoption continues to grow rapidly, and the pandemic only provided additional fuel for the fire. Adoption rates in Europe, for example, accelerated by 72% in 2020 alone.
Jack Dorsey was Twitter’s first CEO — and also its fourth.
He led the platform from its launch in 2006 until he passed the torch to co-founder Ev Williams two years later. In 2015, Dorsey returned to the role after Dick Costolo’s stint, even though he was simultaneously serving as CEO of fintech platform Square.
Like many, I wondered how one person could adequately handle that level of responsibility. And apparently, so did Dorsey.
“There’s a lot of talk about the importance of a company being ‘founder-led,’” he wrote in a letter to employees.
“Ultimately I believe that’s severely limiting and a single point of failure. I’ve worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders.”
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Alex Wilhelm: A call to return to the old normal from the new normal
Natasha Mascarenhas: A reset would rewrite how VCs and entrepreneurs do business
Amanda Silberling: Founders aren’t rock stars
It’s too early to say whether the move will alter the founder-led ethic that permeates Silicon Valley.
Personally, I’m hoping it starts a trend where mature tech companies do a better job of recognizing and rewarding employees who innately understand their culture, products and services. Case in point: Former CTO Parag Agrawal was initially hired as a software engineer, but a decade later, he’s leading Twitter’s 5,500 employees.
Perhaps it should be pro forma for corporate boards in search of a new CEO to start by talking to the company’s longtime engineers, product managers and marketing leads.
Brazil-based Nubank initially indicated that it planned to raise a maximum of $3.66 billion in its upcoming IPO, but this morning, the Latin American neobank’s holding company lowered that to $2.86 billion.
This public offering was coming in hot; why throttle back now? In this morning’s edition of The Exchange, Anna Heim and Alex Wilhelm unpack the numbers for the new proposed valuation and ask, “Does the revision matter?”
Collecting data to optimize B2B marketing is notoriously difficult.
“Practitioners tend to see each new source of information about their potential buyers — each signal type — as a substitute for the last one that didn’t work,” according to Kerry Cunningham, senior principal at account engagement platform 6sense.
Embracing a product-led growth mindset allows organizations to look at users as signals, “just like form-fill leads, de-anonymized website traffic, visitors to your booth, and the rest,” says Cunningham.
News of the omicron coronavirus variant may have suppressed retail activity over the Thanksgiving weekend, but what’s the explanation for flat online spending?
This year, Black Friday e-commerce totaled just $8.9 billion, compared to $9 billion in 2020.
“Perhaps we should not have been surprised,” writes Alex Wilhelm. “There were warning signs.”
Looking back at missed Q3 estimates from companies like Shopify, Amazon and Pinduoduo, “somewhat softer e-commerce numbers simply should not be a surprise,” he concludes.
Due to supply-chain concerns and ongoing pandemic restrictions, retailers say consumers started shopping earlier this year. Still, this is the first time we’ve seen a decrease in Black Friday spending.
“The pandemic gaveth, and now seems less inclined to continue to giveth, even if e-commerce itself is still growing,” writes Alex. “It’s just that it’s growing more slowly than investors expected.”
International expansion counts as one of every startup’s milestones, but the path to realizing your global ambitions “is riddled with obstacles,” writes angel investor Marjorie Radlo-Zandi.
Drawing from over 20 years of experience leading and expanding a food diagnostics company to more than 100 countries, Radlo-Zandi shares four core strategies for companies looking to enter foreign markets:
The pandemic-fueled labor shortage has many causes, but inflexible and inadequate compensation is one of the most discussed.
However, employees don’t always leave because of pay. “An opaque model for allocating compensation” is often to blame for employees feeling unheard and unseen, writes Compright CEO Boyd Davis.
Davis explains how startups can tackle this issue by analyzing employee and market data to come up with compensation strategies that are transparent, equitable and fair.
The pandemic taught us to be flexible and “embrace change and be open to adjusting processes, [which] holds true for compensation planning as well,” Davis writes.
Music recognition service SoundHound more or less disappeared about five years ago, so it was a surprise when its SPAC backer announced the company’s IPO at a valuation of $2.1 billion.
That, Anna Heim notes, is five times as much as Apple paid for Shazam, its biggest competitor.
SoundHound turned down the volume as it quietly developed a conversational AI product it now sells to a number of leading brands. “If its SPAC deck is to be believed, it seems it is just doing magic in plain sight,” writes Anna.
Investors often get a bad rap for pushing companies to grow without burning too much cash, but according to Pilot CTO and founder Jessica McKellar, clear communication is key to soothing investor concerns.
In the latest episode of TechCrunch Live, McKellar and Index Ventures partner Mark Goldberg talked about their early tensions, and how communicating a clear road map helped the company deliver great customer experiences while giving a broad understanding of the long-term picture.
Longer-term energy storage is a drag, and a lot of battery tech has been focusing on “how quickly can we charge these batteries so I can drive my EV for another couple of hundred miles.” That’s a fundamentally different problem than trying to capture the power of the sun for 12 hours, before releasing the power for the next 12 hours while the moon is doing its lazy stroll against the nighttime sky.
Energy Dome today announced the close of its $11 million Series A fundraise, with the goal of deploying the first commercially viable CO2 battery in a demonstration project in its native Sardinia, Italy.
The company told us that a CO2 battery’s optimal charge/discharge cycle ranges from four to 24 hours, positioning it perfectly for daily and intra-day cycling. It points out that this is a fast-growing market segment, not well served by existing battery technologies. Specifically, the hope is to charge the CO2 battery during the daytime when there is a surplus of solar-generated power, before discharging during the peak evening and nighttime hours, when demand for electricity outpaces what solar can deliver. Because, well, I’d hate to feel the need to spell this out for ya — but there’s no sun at night.
Built using commodity components, the company claims that its CO2 battery achieves a 75%-80% round-trip efficiency. Perhaps more interestingly, though, is that the operational life for the batteries is projected to be in the neighborhood of 25 years. If you’ve been keeping an eye on other power-storage solutions, you’ll have made a mental note that the operational life of most other solutions starts to degrade significantly by the time it hits the one-decade mark. The company projects that considering the whole lifecycle cost of its product, the cost of storing energy will be about half of the cost of storing with similarly sized lithium-ion batteries.
The tech is pretty neat — the company is using CO2 in a closed-loop cycle where it changes from gas to liquid and back to gas. The company itself is named after the “dome” component of the solution — an inflatable atmospheric gas holder filled with CO2 in its gaseous form.
When charging, the system draws electrical power from the electric grid, which drives a compressor that draws CO2 from the dome and compresses it, generating heat. The heat is stored in a thermal energy storage device. The CO2 is then liquified under pressure and stored in liquid CO2 vessels, at ambient temperature, to complete the charging cycle. When discharging, the cycle is reversed by evaporating the liquid CO2, recovering the heat from the thermal energy storage system and expanding the hot CO2 into a turbine, which drives a generator. Electricity is returned to the grid and the CO2 reinflates the dome without emissions to the atmosphere, ready for the next charging cycle. The system has up to 200 MWh in storage capacity.
The round was led by deep tech VC firm 360 Capital, while a number of other investors round out the investment round, including Barclays’ Sustainable Impact Capital program, a division of the banking giant Barclays that takes an impact investment approach, Geneva-based multifamily office Novum Capital Partners and Third Derivative, a global climate technology startup accelerator founded by RMI and New Energy Nexus.
Lak Ananth is founding CEO and managing partner of the global venture capital firm Next47 and serves on the board of several companies that he has helped to grow beyond $1 billion valuations.
I recently wrote a piece discussing how all capital is not created equal and we are living in a period of super-abundant funding — in many ways, the best times ever for founders.
In this environment, every investor has a well-honed pitch on how they can uniquely add value. Being a founder of a high-growth startup means that you will encounter many situations you never have before, so choosing an investor who will be a partner in building the business is a key decision. In this context, promises of exclusive value-add resonate deeply.
Surprisingly, most founders find that the actual value they receive from investors is not always as promised. I have had the opportunity to work with amazing investors who build great thought partnerships with their founders, who are invaluable in making the decisions that change the trajectories of companies and have superpowers in attracting talent.
Venture investing is an apprenticeship business, and I am humbled whenever I get a chance to learn from a great investor. However, when I speak to founders, it’s more likely that the investors they picked exhibited a variety of post-funding archetype behaviors, all of which detract from value, not add to it.
In the spirit of helping founders look beyond the promises of value, let’s delve into some common archetypes of investor relationships that founders experience post-investment. I hope that both founders and investors will read through these archetypes with a sense of humor. Like a good episode of “Silicon Valley,” there is some exaggeration here for effect, but not much!
8 disappointing investor archetypes
The narcissist. Narcissists are completely full of themselves, and everything is always about them — how great their firm is and how great they are. They’re so enamored with themselves that they never take time to understand what founders really want or need. Some narcissists may be well past their glory days — just figureheads riding on their former successes — and they’re not going to add value to your startup.
The child with a hammer. This is the investor who tells you to follow their advice because, “We used to do this when I was at Google,” or, “When I was on Airbnb’s board, we did this.” They have a hammer, and every problem they see looks like the same nail to be pounded in — in the same way they did it in the one significant experience they previously had in their professional career. They lack the perspective that there could be 10 other ways to approach and solve the problem. Some investors also have a “fire the executive” hammer that can be particularly destructive.
The know-it-all. This is the investor in meetings who doesn’t want to hear anyone else’s opinions, including the founders’. “I invested in Facebook before their Series C, therefore I have all the answers.” They don’t respect founders or their fellow board members, which is damaging to vital relationships and board dynamics. They may also have silver bullets like “OKR” or “recurring revenue” that they are partial to without understanding whether these are a good fit for this business and situation.
The lapdog (aka the cheerleader). This is the investor who is never going to deliver the hard message to you — they’ll always try to be friends with the founders because they want a recommendation to the next company. They’ll pop in to a meeting and invite you out to dinner or on a lavish ski trip. Anytime there’s a difficult situation, however, they fall back on, “Whatever the founder wants is the right answer,” instead of being a thought partner and bringing a valuable perspective.
The service router. If you want someone with a fat Rolodex, then you’ve come to the right place with the service router. Need a CFO or a sales manager? The service router will point you to people but never aim for excellence or help a founder figure out what looks good, say, in a new VP of sales. Service routers are good at recirculating among their portfolio companies. The problem is that the talent might have done a fine job at one company but isn’t the right fit for your startup.
The Needy Ned. This investor will drive you nuts because they want to be involved in everything your company does, regardless of whether they’re adding value in the process. This might be the first company they’ve been on the board of, or they might be junior in the venture firm. You’ll know you’re dealing with a Needy Ned when they’re surprised and outraged when you haven’t told them every operational detail of your business. A more difficult version of Needy Ned is someone who not just wants to be involved but is trying to grab the wheel out of the founder’s hands and do things their way.
The numbers person. For this investor, business is a big, complex spreadsheet, and everything can be reduced to a number or a ratio. They usually come from private equity, investment banking or growth investing, and they typically throw around terms like revenue churn, ARR and “the magic number.” The trouble is, they don’t understand the story behind the numbers, and they don’t know what it takes to move them.
The drive-by. If you want your investor to stay out of your hair after they send some funding your way, then the drive-by is for you. They’re deal machines — even before your deal is sealed, they’re already on to the next one. By the time two years go by, they have completed 10 other deals and they’re not remotely interested in you as a founder or a company. They might attend a board meeting or two, but when they do, they’ll probably be checking their email to nail down their latest deal.
My thoughts for founders
Unfortunately, founders fall for these archetypes every day. As you consider your funding options, here are some things to keep in mind.
The person matters way more than the firm. Don’t buy the brand; buy the person. Perform due diligence on the person thoroughly and well. Talk to founders and dig into the references the investor gives you using your own back channels. Make sure there is a personality and style match among you, your co-founders and the existing board. In addition, make sure the investor’s knowledge and prior experience match your business.
Make sure both the person and the firm really understand your business. One good way to assess this is how much diligence they do on your product, and whether they personally talk to customers as opposed to reviewing call transcripts done by third parties. If an investor does not take the time to truly understand what you are building before they invest, what are the chances they will understand it after, and, more importantly, be a valuable thought partner?
Everyone is a good fair-weather sailor, but when there is a failure or small misstep (which, as I point out in my book, “Anticipate Failure,” will surely happen), the worst behaviors rear their ugly head. Examine how the person behaves when important decisions need to be made or when the going gets tough. One way to test is to ask the investor for references to their worst-performing companies and hear directly how they behaved when things were not going well.
Check for evidence of value-add and ask for it in writing in quantifiable ways in the term sheet. If they say they are going to help with hiring, ask them to write down goals for the first two quarters. If they say they can help with customers, ask exactly what amount of revenue they will commit to adding. If they say their brand will attract independent board members, ask to speak to board members they have placed.
If you take time to find a good fit with an investor, you will significantly maximize the chances of building something great. Even one bad investor on a board can significantly hurt the chances of your success, and I have unfortunately seen this happen a few times.
Don’t be lured by promises, valuations and check sizes — these are transitory, and the sugar highs from these shiny objects will last for but a short period. Keep your eye on the goal and pick your investor wisely.
Rhys Spence is head of research at Brighteye Ventures, a European edtech-focused fund, where he works with portfolio companies to help address priorities, with a focus on internationalization and HR.
Launched in 2003, LinkedIn quickly became the first global professional social media network by offering an easy way to make and track professional connections. At roughly the same time, Y Combinator (YC) and other accelerators emerged as a largely analog means for entrepreneurs willing to commit three months of time and ~6% of their company to receive en masse training and connections to mentors, peers and funders.
While both LinkedIn and Y Combinator are still going strong, a new crop of companies are looking to fill the gap between these two approaches via structured online experiences that provide a combination of training and connections to help people achieve their professional goals.
The ease with which like-minded professionals can receive training, coaching and participate in communities, largely thanks to improving and scalable digital offers, is a key part of the unbundling we are seeing.
The emergence of these companies is part of a broader trend of the democratization of professional development, sparked in part by increasing awareness and recognition of the mismatch between what traditional education is delivering to young people and what’s demanded by employers. Indeed, the OECD estimated in 2019 that at least 80 million workers in Europe are mismatched in terms of their qualifications and what’s demanded in the workforce across a wide range of industries.
It’s positive, then, that the unbundling process is improving access to high-quality professional education and development. Lower prices, shorter courses and content more closely tied to professions all make it easier for people to retrain and upskill where necessary.
Gone are the days when the only way to get a fantastic business education, for example, is via a $50,000-$250,000 MBA, and where the only route to highly skilled professions is via a $20,000-$300,000 university course. Similarly, within this increasingly democratized system, access to coaching and mentoring at the individual and group levels is improving.
New approaches range from companies like The PowerMBA, which offers an MBA alternative for $800-$1,000, to On Deck, which offers professional development courses and communities for about $3,000, and Dorm, which sells mentorship support and networks to entrepreneurs for $150 per month.
What do these approaches have in common? They are typically digital, not accredited by traditional academic institutions, and are shorter, condensed, focused and tightly linked to careers and outcomes compared with traditional education courses. Many providers communicate and market themselves on the “exclusivity” and focus of their communities. Further, there will typically be some content associated with the courses — the amount will largely depend on the purposes of the course and offer (i.e., content is shared, but not the central offers of most accelerators, incubators and mentoring providers).
The main avenues of differentiation for this new wave of companies are price (depending on the amount of personalization available and the pricing model), duration (short, intensive, bootcamp-style or an annual recurring subscription), method of delivery (asynchronous and on-demand or synchronous and live), content focus (content-driven or focused on relationships and mentorship), degree of accreditation (degree of formality around certification and accreditation), and, of course, whether providers focus on specific roles or broad topics. It’s important to point out that most of these avenues are spectra along which providers can place themselves.
With this in mind, Brighteye Ventures created a market map of the range of organizations supporting individuals to further their professional learning, with a particular focus on business and entrepreneurship education. It doesn’t aim to be exhaustive but rather highlights the broad range of groups operating in the space. We have, for indicative purposes, included total funding (including IPO) for the companies in each of the categories where suitable and available (via PitchBook).
With WhatsApp bringing out many new features this year, such as disappearing messages, an updated look and more, users had been wondering what else could be coming from the company
You can try it right now and decide whether you'll prefer to use WhatsApp on your laptop or tablet device instead. But so far the app has a lot of features that you most likely use on your smartphone each day anyway, so you may prefer to keep using the app.
However, the question will be, whether a dedicated app on Windows is necessary, when your phone is an arms-length away, alongside being able to use WhatsApp on your web browser.
Analysis: Turning the WhatsApp dial to 11
While we ironically use our web browsers for more than just browsing the web, having a dedicated app for WhatsApp can enable more features compared to using a web page.
The app in testing showcases this, with handwriting features and notifications that work with Windows 10 and 11, alongside Focus Assist.
There's plenty of apps coming to the Microsoft Store, and that's not forgetting about Android apps coming to it soon thanks to Amazon.
It could be very helpful if you use WhatsApp more than others, saving you to use your smartphone, and instead replying to a message through your laptop.
However, time will tell if users will be more comfortable in using an app on the desktop, rather than through a web browser, or again, through their phone.
Computing giant Intel reportedly operates a warehouse somewhere in Costa Rica where it stockpiles its older chips, and makes them available remotely to internal cybersecurity researchers.
Sharing details about Intel’s Long-Term Retention Lab, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) notes that Intel had the idea of having one in mid-2018, and had it up and running before the end of 2019.
Explaining the need for the facility, WSJ says that it helps Intel ensure that its older silicon, which might still be in use in the real-world, isn’t vulnerable to attacks.
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Anders Fogh, a Germany-based senior principal engineer at Intel, told WSJ that the lab has become an integral part of his work, and helps him replicate security flaws reported to Intel by outside researchers through its bug-bounty program.
Indispensable resource
According to WSJ, the warehouse stores around 3,000 pieces of hardware and software, going back about a decade.
Fogh shares that the facility can help him create an exact replica of the system that a security researcher used to find and report a vulnerability.
“I can make an exact replica of the submitting researcher’s system. Same CPU, same operating system version, microcode, BIOS,” said Fogh.
However, sourcing some components was a challenge when Intel originally planned the lab. One such hard to get platform were the Sandy Bridge microprocessors, discontinued in 2013.
“We had to actually go on eBay and start looking for these platforms,” Mohsen Fazlian, general manager of Intel’s product assurance and security unit told the WSJ.
The facility has now become a fundamental part of Intel’s product development, with technical documentation boldly announcing decade-long support for new Intel chips owing to the lab. In fact, Fazlian claims that new chips are sent to the lab even before they are released.
Getting your business up to speed with 5G could soon be easier than ever thanks to a new announcement from Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The company has revealed AWS Private 5G, a new managed service that allows enterprises set up and scale private 5G mobile networks in their facilities in days instead of months.
AWS says that with just a few clicks, customers can specify where the network will be, what kind of capacity they need, and then get everything they need, with the process taking just days rather than months as it may have done previously.
"Shockingly easy"
"There's nothing like AWS Private 5G network out there," noted AWS CEO Adam Selipsky as he unveiled the new offering at the company's re:Invent 2021 event in Las Vegas.
“You get all the goodness of mobile technology without the pain of long planning cycles, complex integrations and the high upfront costs,” he added.
Once all the demands are in, AWS will deliver everything needed, whether that's hardware or software-based - even right down to SIM cards for mobile devices.
AWS notes that there are no upfront fees or per-device costs involved with the new platform, with customers only paying for the network capacity and throughput they ask for.
All network set-up and deployment is automated, with the platform able to scale capacity when needed, such as if a customer needs to support additional devices and increased network traffic.
AWS Private 5G is only available in preview to customers based in the US for the time being, but will likely expand to other markets soon.
“Many of our customers want to leverage the power of 5G to establish their own private networks on premises, but they tell us that the current approaches make it time-consuming, difficult, and expensive to set up and deploy private networks,” noted David Brown, Vice President, EC2 at AWS.
“With AWS Private 5G, we’re extending hybrid infrastructure to customers’ 5G networks to make it simple, quick, and inexpensive to set up a private 5G network. Customers can start small and scale on-demand, pay as they go, and monitor and manage their network from the AWS console.”
Sharing files from OneDrive will soon be both easier and faster as Microsoft is currently working on a new update for its cloud storage service.
According to a post on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap, the software giant will soon allow users to pin and reorder shared libraries. When this new functionality becomes available next month, it will be easier for users to manage the list of places they've recently accessed or opened a file from.
OneDrive users will also have a simpler time picking up where they left off as they will be able to pin their frequently used shared libraries to the menu on the left side.
While this isn't a major update, it could prove especially useful for those that depend on Microsoft's online collaboration tools and office software as part of their daily workflow as they won't have to waste time trying to find a particular file or shared library.
Add to OneDrive shortcuts
In a separate post, Microsoft announced that users of its cloud storage service will also soon be able to organize their “Add to OneDrive” shortcuts.
Just like with the ability to pin and reorder shared libraries, this new file management feature will be available next month and with it, users will be able move their “Add to OneDrive” folder shortcuts into any private folder they create in OneDrive.
Microsoft has spent a good part of this year adding new features and functionality to OneDrive and it will be interesting to see what improvements the company has in store for its cloud storage service next year as more people begin upgrading to Windows 11.
