Tuesday, 31 July 2018

Test.ai nabs $11M Series A led by Google to put bots to work testing apps

For developers, the process of determining whether every new update is going to botch some core functionality can take up a lot of time and resources, and things get far more complicated when you’re managing a multitude of apps.

Test.ai is building a comprehensive system for app testing that relies on bots, not human labor, to see whether an app is ready to start raking in the downloads.

The startup has just closed an $11 million Series A round led by Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI-focused venture fund. Also participating in the round were e.ventures, Uncork Capital and Zetta Venture Partners. Test.ai, which was founded in 2015, has raised $17.6 million to date.

“Every advancement in training AI systems enables an advancement in user testing, and test.ai is the leader in AI-powered testing technology. We’re excited to help them supercharge their growth as they test every app in the world,” Gradient Ventures founder Anna Patterson said in a statement. “In a couple years, AI testing will be ingrained into every company’s product flow.”

The company’s technology doesn’t just leverage AI to cut down on how long it takes for an app to be tested; there are much lengthier processes it helps eliminate when it comes to developers readying lists of scenarios to be tested. Test.ai has trained their bots on “tens of thousands of apps” to help it understand what an app looks like and what interface patterns they’re typically composed of. From there, they’re able to build their own scenario list and find what works and what doesn’t.

That can mean, in the case of an app like our own, tracking down a bookmark button and then deducing that there are certain process that users would go through to use its functionality.

Right now, the utility is in the fact that bots scale so broadly and so quickly. While a startup working on a single app may have the flexibility to choose amongst a few options, larger enterprises with several aging products having to grapple with updated systems are in a bit more of a bind. Some of Test.ai’s larger unnamed partners that “make app stores” or devices are working at the stratospheric level having to verify tens of thousands of apps to ensure that everything is in working order.

“That’s an easy sell for us, almost too easy, because they don’t have the resources to individually test ten thousand apps every time something like Android gets updated,” CEO Jason Arbon tells TechCrunch.

The startup’s capabilities operate on a much more quantitative scale than human-powered competitors like UserTesting, which tend to emphasize testing for feedback that’s a bit more qualitative in nature. Test.ai’s founders believe that their system will be able to grapple with more nebulous concepts in the future as it analyzes more apps, and that it’s already gaining insights into concepts like whether a product appears “trustworthy,” though there are certainly other areas where bots are trailing the insights that can be delivered by human testers.

The founders say they hope to use this latest funding to scale operations for their growing list of enterprise clients and hire some new people.



Gusto raises $140 million to go after small business payroll and benefits with more gusto

Gusto, which sells payroll, benefits and human resources management and monitoring services to small businesses, has raised $140 million in its latest round of funding.

The company said it will use the money to add new services to increase payment flexibility for employees. The company launched a new service called Flexible Pay, which gives employees a way to get paid no matter when a company’s pay schedule dictates. It seems sort of like a payday loan, where a percentage of the salary is taken by Gusto for providing money upfront.

The late-stage round was led by T. Rowe Price Associates portfolio, MSD Capital (the family investment fund for Michael Dell), Dragoneer Investment Group and Y Combinator’s Continuity Fund.

Previous investors, including General Catalyst, CapitalG, Kleiner Perkins, 137 Ventures and Emergence Capital, also participated in the round.

The company claims that it processes tens of billions of dollars in payroll and offers a range of benefits, including health insurance, 401(k) plans and college savings plans.



What every startup founder should know about exits

The dream of a startup founder can often be summarized by the following well-intentioned, and mostly delusional, quote: “We’ll raise a few rounds and in a few years we’ll IPO on Nasdaq.”

But a more likely scenario looks something like this:

You invest a few years of hard work to build something of value. One day you receive an acquisition offer out of the blue. You’re elated. And you’re not prepared. You drop everything to focus on this opportunity. Exclusive due diligence starts. Your company is a mess (IP, contracts, burn). Days become weeks; weeks become months. You’ve neglected business and fundraising. You’re running out of money. M&A is now your one and only option. The buyer says they found a bunch of cockroaches in the walls and drops the price. Now what?

Sounds unlikely?

This is still a favorable situation: you had an offer! Think about how much time you invested in your various funding rounds. The hundreds of names and Google spreadsheet or Streak-powered quasi-CRM process.

Have you spent even a fraction of that on understanding exit paths? If you’d rather not live the situation described above, read along.

The E-word: A strange taboo

Investors live by exits, but many founders keep dreaming of unicornization and avoid the “E-word” until it’s too late. Yet, in 2016, 97% of exits were M&As. And most happened before series B.

Exits matter because that’s when you, your team and your investors get paid. Oddly enough, and to use a chess metaphor, we hear a lot about the “opening game” (lean startup), the “mid-game” (growth) but very little about this “end game”.

As a result, founders miss opportunities or leave money on the table. This is a shame. Our fund, SOSV, has over 700 companies in portfolio. We want the best possible exit for each of them. And fortune favors the prepared! Now, how to get 700 exits (and counting)?

To explore the topic, organized a series of Masterclasses tapping corporate buyers, bankers, investors, lawyers, and startup CEOs with M&A or IPO experience in San Francisco. It was a group that included the founders of Guitar Hero — bought by Activision; JUMP Bikes — a SOSV portfolio company bought by Uber, Ubiquisys  — bought by Cisco, and Withings — bought by Nokia. Each one for hundreds of millions).

Their observations can be summarized below.

Maximize optionality

“Founders must be aware of what contributes to an exit. This means understanding partnerships and how they are formed in the business space the entrepreneur is working in,” said one MasterClass participant.  

As founders, you build your product, your company and… optionality. You need to understand the options open to your company, and take steps to enable them.

The most likely one is an acquisition but there are others like IPO (including small cap), RTO, SBO, LBO, Equity Crowdfunding and even ICO.

“Exit is not a goal ​per se, but as a CEO it is something you should think about as early in your cycle as possible, while being business-focused,” said the London-based investor Frederic Rombaut, of Seraphim Capital.

Indeed, most participants said that exits should always be on the chief executive’s agenda, no matter how early in the process. “Exits should be on the CEO agenda. Not front and center, but on the agenda. M&A is a by-product of a great business and targeted BD. IPOs are always an option once you’ve built significant cashflow forecasting.”

It’s important to ask questions like: How many “strategic engagements” with potential buyers have you had this month? Is your message and value clear in their eyes? Have you considered an acquisition track in parallel to a fundraise?

It doesn’t stop there:

  • Equity crowdfunding might help close some gaps at seed stage.
  • Early IPOs on smaller exchanges can be an option to raise over $10M — the robotics startup Balyo went public and raised 40MEUR on Euronext to get rid of a critical ‘right of first refusal’ option held by one of its corporate investors.
  • Reverse mergers can work too: the medical exoskeleton company EKSO Bionics went public this way.

One thing is sure: the time to exit is not when you’re running out of money.

Companies are bought, not sold

Unicorn or not, the most likely exit is an acquisition.

As George Patterson, Managing Director at HSBC in New York said, “Good tech companies are bought, not sold. The question is thus: how to get bought?”

Patterson says it’s important to understand how mergers and acquisitions actually work; how to prepare a startup for an exit; and how to develop a “feel” for the market you’re exiting through and into. ;

How M&A works

Hearing from corp dev veterans from Cisco, Logitech, Dassault and IBM, a few key ideas emerged:

Motivations vary

It could be (from least to most expensive, or as a mix), as listed by Mark Suster, Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures:

  1. Talent hire ($1M/dev as a rule of thumb — location matters)
  2. Product gap
  3. Revenue driver
  4. Strategic threat (avoid or delay disruption)
  5. Defensive move (can’t afford a competitor to own it)

How corporates find you

Corporates find deals via the development of partnerships, investment (CVC), their business units, corp dev research, media, and investor connections.

Asked about the best approach, Todd Neville, Manager of Corporate Business Development and Strategy at IBM (who gave the most detailed description of the corp dev process), said, “Do something cool to one of the IBM customers. If they rave about even a POC, we’re interested.”

In other words, business development is corporate development. 

Get the house in order

Buyers typically want to know three things:

  1. Is your IP really yours?
  2. Is your team capable?
  3. Will your customers stick around?

For IP, they will check your contracts (staff and contractors), run some automated code analysis for proprietary code and open source use. They will evaluate potential IP infringement. No point buying you if you end up costing more in lawsuits!

For your team skills: sitting down with your engineers will tell them plenty enough without understanding the details of this or that algorithm. Be sure the last thing a corporate wants is to be accused of stealing!

Lawyers engaged early can help. The later the clean-up, the more costly and painful.

Develop a feel for your “market”

Develop relationships and create champions within corporates. It will help promote your deal when the time comes, and will let you keep your finger on the pulse of corporate strategy to time your moves.

Do you read the earning calls of Cisco or IBM (or others relevant to you)? This is where strategies are presented. Are your keywords coming up there or in their press releases?

Chris Gilbert, former CEO of Ubiquisys (sold to Cisco for over $300M) was very deliberate in planning his exit.

Selling start on day one and is a leadership-only function — work out who will be your buyer. Only the CEO can do this. Constantly articulate why a company should buy you,” Gilbert said. Bring clear messages into the acquiring company so it can be presented upwards: give them the presentation you would like them to show their boss! When the time is right, force decisions through competition. If you know they have to buy you, your starting position is strong.”

The dark art of price discovery

There are dozens of formulas (from DCF to comparables) to evaluate a deal  —  which also means none is ‘correct’. What matters is: how much would you sell for, and how much is the buyer ready to pay?

Gilbert, at Ubiquisys, described how close interactions with his banker helped drive the price up among the bidders assembled.

Just like buyers, we meet bankers and lawyers too rarely at startup events, but there is much to learn with them. They make deals happen, avoid value erosion and optimize price. They often also make introductions before you engage them, to build goodwill and earn your business.

And if you worry about fees, the right banker handsomely pays for itself by finding more bidders, and playing “bad cop” for you, avoiding direct confrontation with your future employer. Do you want a slice of the watermelon or the whole grape?

Final twist: Exits are not exits

When asked about what happens after an M&A or IPO, buyers said that they generally hoped the founders would stay with them for many years. Often using re-vesting, earn-outs or shares of the acquiring company to incentivize them. Neville, from IBM, mentioned a security company they acquired whose founder is now the head of one of the largest IBM divisions.

In the case of IPOs, supposedly the ultimate “exit”, any block of shares sold by founders would face extreme scrutiny and might cause a price drop.

So who’s exiting during those deals? Investors (and not always).

Eventually, if the average age of a startup at exit is 8–10 years, the active duty period of founders (if not replaced in the meantime) extends even more. Better love the problem you’re solving, and your customers!

Thanks to speakers, participants and supporters of this Masterclass series:

London: Frederic Rombaut (Seraphim Capital), Joe Tabberer (FirstBank), Chris Gilbert (Ubiquisys), Jonathan Keeling (Crowdcube), Fred Destin, Tony Fish (AMF Ventures, James Clark (London Stock Exchange), Denise Law (SGCIB).

Paris: Frederic Rombaut (Seraphim Capital), Manuel Gruson (Dassault Systemes), Pierre-Henri Chappaz (Rothschild Global Advisory), Christine Lambert-Goue (All Invest), Olivier Younes (EXPEN), Eric Carreel (Withings), Fabien Bardinet (Balyo), Xavier Lazarus (Elaia Partners), Pierre-Eric Leibovici(Daphni). Jean de La Rochebrochard (Kima Ventures), Jeremy Sartre (SmartAngels), Gwen Regina Tan (Entrepreneur First).

San Francisco: Natasha Ligai (Logitech), Matt Cutler (Cisco),Will Hawthorne, (CODE Advisors), Ryan Rzepecki (JUMP Bikes), Charles Huang (Guitar Hero), Jeff Thomas (Nasdaq), Shahin Farshchi (Lux Capital), Ammar Hanafi (Moment Ventures), Adam J. Epstein (Third Creek Advisors), Nathan Harding (EKSO Bionics), Kate Whitcomb, Anthony Marino and Ethan Haigh (SOSV).

New York: Todd Neville (IBM), George Patterson (HSBC), Ryan Rzepecki (JUMP Bikes), Aaron Kellner (SeedInvest), Jeremy Levine (Bessemer Venture Partners), Taylor Greene (Collaborative Fund), Adam Rothenberg (BoxGroup), Eli Curi (Fenwick & West), Ian Engstrand and Salil Gandhi (Goodwin), Warren Spar(Sparring Partners Capital), Duncan Turner, Vivian Law and Sheng Ge (SOSV).



Google Has A Secret Way To Protect You From Hackers…And Other Small Business Tech News This Week

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(This post originally appeared on Forbes)

Here are five things in technology that happened this past week and how they affect your business. Did you miss them?

1 — Google’s secret to protect its employees from hacking is physical keys.

Google has announced a robust solution for phishing cyberattacks against its employees. The company says the adoption of physical Security Keys has stopped the attacks. Security Keys are small USB stick devices made by companies like YubiKey that function similar to two-factor authentication (2FA) methods its employees may already be using. With 2FA enabled, hackers need more than just a username and password for access. (Source: Popular Mechanics)

Why this is important for your business:

This item got a lot of media attention this week because…well, if it works for Google, then it must be something worthwhile – and it is. Considering all the ways your company’s data can be stolen, and all the costs associated with a data breach, it may make sense for you to do what Google does: spend a few bucks and equip your employees with Security Keys.

2 — Amazon report cites more than 1 million small business sellers on platform.

A recent Small Business Impact Report from Amazon shows that more than a million U.S.-based small and medium-sized businesses are selling on Amazon and have generated more than 900,000 jobs worldwide. These businesses are in all 50 states and 130+ countries, with more than 20,000 of them surpassing $1 million in sales on Amazon in 2017. The report also says that half the items purchased on Amazon are from SMBs. (Source: Forbes)

When it comes to small business impact, I’m on Team Amazon here. Sure, many small online merchants struggle against the ecommerce giant. But many, many more merchants – even with Amazon’s sometimes draconian rules and requirements – have realized the more lucrative opportunities when they become Amazon merchants. I believe that if you’re selling online, being an Amazon merchant should be at least one of your channels.

3 — Google announces Cloud Build, its new continuous integration and delivery platform.

Google just announced the launch of Cloud Build—its new Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery framework. The company describes it as a ‘fully-managed CI/CD platform that lets you build, test, and deploy software quickly, at scale.’ Cloud Build works across a variety of environments including VMs, serverless, Kubernetes, or Firebase. It also supports Docker containers and gives developers or operations the flexibility to build, test, and deploy in an increasingly automated fashion. (Source: Tech Crunch)

Why this is important for your business:

This new service impacts any business – big or small – that develops applications and can be an even bigger benefits to the companies that integrate their applications with Google apps like Gmail and G Suite.

4 — Windows 10: these two new builds deliver lots of bug fixes.

Microsoft has just released Windows 10 build 17134.191 for Windows 10 versions 1803 or the April 2018 Update, as well as Build 16299.579 for Windows 10 users on version 1709 or the Fall Creators Update. For users running either of the two latest versions of Windows 10, Microsoft has several bug fixes to improve the OS for enterprise environments. The update for 1803, called KB4340917, doesn’t introduce new features but does fix many issues that could be causing problems for administrators managing mobile devices. (Source: ZDNet)

Why this is important for your business:

Please, please…make sure your Windows operating systems on every desktop and server in your company are up to date. There are millions of bots worldwide looking for older Windows operating systems with security vulnerabilities and the best way to keep your network as secure as possible is by running the most recent versions of Windows software.

5 — How technology is revolutionizing underpants.

Technology is now transforming underwear, with high-performance undies that claim to do everything from filtering flatulence to emitting soothing vibrations. With advancements in fibre technologies and knitting manufacturing, underpants today can be high-tech, with the inclusion of haptic communication. For example, Sydney-born, NY-based company Wearable-X has teamed with condom manufacturer Durex to create interactive underwear called Fundawear—which has a “vibrating touch” that can be transferred from anywhere in the world through a smartphone app. (Source: Independent)

Why this is important for your business:

C’mon admit it, guys: we live in great world, don’t we?



Can Listables Help You Get More Done?

Can the Listables App Help You Get More Done?

If you want all the pieces of your business to work efficiently, you need processes. These processes don’t need to be complicated. In fact, a simple checklist can often work wonders to help you ensure that your whole team is following the specific steps you’ve laid out for a particular task or function.

That’s the very simple but essential problem that Listables aims to solve for small business. The company offers a collaborative checklist platform that you can use to create your own lists and even learn from those that others have created.

Introducing the Listables App

Founder and CEO Vivek Chugh said in a phone interview with Small Business Trends, “It lets small businesses or their team members create, share and track checklists. So it’s not just about making your own personal lists. But you can also use it to help with onboarding, as a way to show new employees how to handle a specific task. Or you can learn from what others on the platform have created.”

Chugh got the idea for the platform when he was working for a gaming company. And as the team would work on deploying new software, he saw the need for a specific set of best practices and a system for tracking and auditing which essential tasks had been completed.

He says, “Sometimes there would be a specific group who had great checklists, and I thought there should be a system where we all could share our best practices with one another. When I started looking at different options in the market, I realized that there was something to this idea and I decided to pursue it.”

The idea of using checklists to manage daily tasks or training activities isn’t a new one. But Chugh adds that Listables is meant to be easier to use than putting together a Google spreadsheet or creating a list manually, especially if it’s for something that requires collaboration between team members.

In addition, Listables doesn’t only give you the opportunity to share lists within your own company. You can also learn from others who have chosen to share their tips on a particular subject. So if you’re interested in learning how to start a PPC ad campaign, for instance, you can search the platform to see lists that have already been created on that subject.

You can also create your own lists and use it to train new employees or keep a particular project on track.

Chugh says, “This methodology allows you to reduce errors, fix issues and create standard processes. It can be especially helpful for any kind of repetitive daily task that a small business needs done, like opening stores or closing stores. Those things are pretty standard, but you still don’t want to see mistakes or seemingly small things overlooked.”

The app is available in the App Store and Google Play as a free download. And there’s also a web version available. To use it, you simply download one of the apps or sign up online and then you can start with a new checklist or browse topics to find best practices from other members. Chugh also says that the company is working on creating some new features and functionality for the platform going forward.

Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "Can Listables Help You Get More Done?" was first published on Small Business Trends



Autonomous-aviation startup Xwing takes flight with $4 million in funding

Marc Piette had a revelation as he buzzed in and out of the Palo Alto Airport in pursuit of his pilot’s license. Instead of freedom, he saw restraint. He also saw potential.

“It became pretty apparent that there were major issues with the general aviation industry with smaller aircraft,” Piette said in a recent interview with TechCrunch. “And yet it had enormous potential to change the way people moved around.”

Now, Piette’s two-year-old autonomous-aviation startup Xwing is ramping up to unlock that potential. The company isn’t building autonomous helicopters and planes. Instead, it’s focused on the software stack that will enable pilotless flight of small passenger aircraft.

The company announced Tuesday that it has raised $4 million in a seed round led by Eniac Ventures. Array Ventures, along with Stripe founders John and Patrick Collison and Nat Friedman of Xamarin, Microsoft and GitHub, also participated in the round.

The funding will be used by the San Francisco-based company to scale operations and continue to hire aerospace and software talent.

The startup has about a dozen employees, including some uniquely talented folks who have experience with optionally piloted vehicles, unmanned systems and certified avionics. For example, the company’s CTO, Maxime Gariel, worked on autonomous-aviation projects such as DARPA Gremlins and the AgustaWestland SW4 Solo autonomous helicopter. Other members of the small team previously worked at Rockwill Collins, with the Naval Research Lab, Google, and McKinsey.

Piette, whose last company Locu was acquired by GoDaddy, sees several restraints to small passenger aircraft: the skill level required to fly a plane and the cost of earning a pilot’s license and accessing a plane. The relatively puny sales volume of small aircraft — just 3,293 general aviation aircraft, including helicopters, were delivered last year worldwide, in contrast to more than 80 million cars — has depressed innovation and kept prices high.

And even when people have both a license and an aircraft, they still must travel from a small airport to their final destination.

The company is focusing on the key functions of autonomous flight, such as sensing, reasoning and control.

Xwing isn’t pinned to one kind of aircraft. Piette said the system is designed to work across different kinds of aircraft. For instance, the company spent 18 months testing on a subscale fixed-wing aircraft. It tested on a helicopter more recently.

Xwing is developing and integrating those technologies for rotorcraft, general aviation fixed-wing and the emerging electric vertical takeoff and landing (known as eVTOL) aircraft.

The company’s sensor integration software enables aircraft to perceive the world around it and reliably detect ground-based and airborne hazards and precisely determine the vehicle’s position.

This perception technology is the building block for autonomous aircraft, and also can be used to increase the operational envelope of current-day piloted aircraft, according to Xwing.

From here, the company’s Autonomy Flight Management System (AFMS) allows the aircraft to act upon the information from its surroundings. The system will integrate with air traffic control, generate flight paths to navigate the airspace, monitor system health and address all contingencies to ensure passenger safety, the company says.

Now, Xwing is in discussion with various, and still unnamed, large companies about integrating the system into their aircraft.



TripAdvisor Report Stresses Importance of Digital Marketing for Destination Businesses

TripAdvisor Hospitality Sector Report Stresses Importance of Digital Marketing for Hospitality Businesses

The results of TripAdvisor’s 2018 “Hospitality Sector Report” reveals digital and mobile engagement has become increasingly more important.

The Importance of Digital Marketing for Hospitality Businesses

Hotels, restaurants, experiences, tours, and attractions, as well as other destinations listed on TripAdvisor, are placing more attention on their digital presence. These businesses are focusing on mobile marketing, online reputation management, and deploying their marketing efforts on the right digital platform.

With small business owners making up most of these restaurants, hotels, and destinations, the report provides insights into the digital trends in the marketplace. For owners, it means looking at the data and determining what works and doesn’t work to make an informed decision.

Martin Verdon-Roe, vice president of business-to-business product of TripAdvisor, said in a press release, the result of the survey shows a “Rare look into today’s evolving digital travel marketplace.”

Verdon-Roe goes on to say, “What’s clear is that the overwhelming majority of owners and operators are concerned about their presence online and how they are using mobile and social platforms to attract the right consumers.”

The Growth of Digital Engagement

More than 4 in five or 87% of the respondents said having a mobile-enabled website is important, with another 71% adding having online booking is also important. This goes hand in hand with the increased number of consumers who use their mobile device to access the internet.

Once online, the 97% of respondents said online reputation management is important to their business with another 98 and 92 percent stating online reviews and social presence is also important.

In addition to monitoring and managing their online reputation, businesses have to choose the right marketing channel. Depending on the market, demographic and location, different platforms perform better.

Knowing which platform is better suited for your customer base is key to ensuring your marketing efforts and expenditure will not be wasted. The survey reveals the majority of the respondents are aware of the differences.

Eighty percent of the respondent said working with the right online marketing service is important and 89% echoed the sentiment regarding keeping up with online marketing.

The survey also highlighted other key travel industry trends in 2018.

As to where they should focus, 27% said customer service and retention, 25% staffing, and another 20% marketing efforts.

When it comes to forces which they expect will have a positive impact, 43% said hiring the best staff followed by 30% global economy, and 29% said the dealing with the challenges of over-tourism.

The survey points out digital engagement is key to acquiring and retaining customers.  And this applies to virtually all industries in today’s digital ecosystem, not just the hospitality segment.

Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "TripAdvisor Report Stresses Importance of Digital Marketing for Destination Businesses" was first published on Small Business Trends



CallPage lets you call your website visitors

Poland-based CallPage offers something other customer interaction apps don’t: the ability to call your website visitors as soon as they click on your page. In a world where the difference between a sale and a click past your site onto Facebook, this is a pretty cool little feature.

CallPage began in 2015 when the founders, Ross Knap, Sergey Butko, and Andrew Tkachiv, tried to figure out why website visitors would leave their sites. They started out as a consultancy and the product was born out of some after-hours tinkering by the team. Instead of messaging users, they thought, why not let managers talk to them on the phone?

“Our widget analyzes user behavior on your website,” said CEO Knap. “Then when it sees an interested visitor, it offers him a free callback in 28 seconds. The interested visitor leaves a phone number on your site, our widget calls to the first available manager’s mobile phone and then the next one if no one picks up. After the conversation client will receive an SMS of thanks. It doesn’t require any extra work.”

The team raised a $4.5 million Series A from TDJ Pitango Ventures, Innovation Nest, and Market One Capital. They have 3,000 customers and it makes 280,000 calls monthly. The team started with a $50,000 seed check from an early investor.

Knap and the team have big plans.

“CallPage will continue the realization of our development plan,” said Knap. “The company is going to change into a product more from the perspective of ‘All your company calls in one place.’ The R&D department have already started working on using machine learning and AI which allows analyzing of hundreds of thousands of calls through the CallPage system. Thanks to this, companies will be able to run their communications more effectively.”



Discord’s Jason Citron to chat it up at Disrupt SF

In September of 2013, Jason Citron hopped on to the Disrupt Startup Battlefield stage to pitch Fates Forever, a multiplayer online battle arena game for the iPad. Now, five years later, Citron is gearing up to join us once again on the Disrupt stage to discuss the stellar growth of Discord.

Though Fates Forever had all the components to be a great mobile game, users simply never took much interest. The company struggled to monetize, and like any good startup, the team began to reassess its own situation.

The conversation turned to communication, where the space contained a few players with lack-luster products.

“Can we make a 10X project?,” said CMO Eros Resmini, relaying the tale of the company’s pivot to TechCrunch. “Low-friction usage, no renting servers, beautiful design we took from mobile.”

That’s how Discord was born. The platform launched in 2016, and has since grown to 90 million registered users, and has raised nearly $80 million in funding.

Coming from the publishing side, the Discord team had a keen awareness of what gamers want and need: a clean, secure communications platform. Since launch, the team has launched features that let game developers integrate Discord chat into their own games, as well as video-chat and screen-sharing.

But the progress has not been without discord. The company shut down several servers associated with the alt-right for violating the terms of service, bringing Discord to the center of the on-going conversation around censorship and political bias.

That said, Discord has seemed to find its stride, forming partnerships with various esports organizations for verified servers.

There is plenty to discuss with Jason Citron at Disrupt SF, and we hope you’ll join us to check out the conversation live.

The full agenda is here. Passes for the show are available at the early-bird rate until August 1 here.



Skyline AI raises $18M Series A for its machine learning-based real estate investment tech

Skyline AI founders Iri Amirav, Or Hiltch, Guy Zipori and Amir Leitersdorf

A mere four months after coming out of stealth mode with $3 million in seed funding, real estate investment startup Skyline AI announced that it has raised an $18 million Series A. The round was led by Sequoia Capital, a returning investor, and TLV Partners, with participation from JLL Spark, a division of real estate investment management firm JLL. The strategic funding will allow Skyline AI to add more asset classes to its platform, which uses data science and machine learning algorithms to help institutional investors make better decisions about properties.

Skyline AI says its technology is trained on what it claims is the most comprehensive data set in the industry, drawing from more than 100 sources, with market information covering the last 50 years. Its technology is meant to provide faster and more accurate analysis than traditional methods, so investors can react more quickly to changes in the real estate market.

Co-founder and CEO Guy Zipori told TechCrunch in an email that the startup decided to raise its Series A so soon after coming out of sleath because of positive response from investors, adding that the round was oversubscribed. “The timing of the round also worked out perfectly with our current deal flow and expansion plans. The round was significant, putting us in a great position to move forward,” he said.

Skyline AI has had a busy few months since emerging from stealth. In June, it teamed up with an unnamed partner in the U.S. to acquire two residential complexes in Philadelphia for $26 million. Zipori said they decided to make an unsolicited offer after Skyline AI’s platforms determined the properties were being mismanaged. Then in July, Skyline AI announced a partnership with Greystone, a real estate lending, investment and advisory firm, to collaborate on improving the dealmaking and loan underwriting processes.

JLL and other strategic investors in Skyline AI’s Series A will allow the startup to add analysis and underwriting for new asset classes, including industrial, retail and office properties, to its platform. “This in turn will enable us to deepen and strengthen cooperation with the leading commercial real estate investment firms across the U.S.,” said Zipori. Some of the capital will also be spent on growing its research and development, data science and AI teams in Tel Aviv, and its recently opened sales and real estate office in New York.

In a press statement, Sequoia Capital partner Haim Sadger said “Over the last few years, we’ve seen AI disrupt a number of traditional industries and the real estate market should be no different. The power of Skyline AI technology to understand vast amounts of data that affect real estate transactions, will unlock billions of dollars in untapped value.”



10 Ways Your Small Business Can Use Voice Technology

10 Ways Your Small Business Can Use Voice Technology

For the modern small business, voice technology is a great way to streamline processes and boost customer service. However, according to recent statistics from Globant, while 45% of senior employees use voice-activated technology personally, only 31% use the technology at work. Further, only 55% are getting ready to implement these tools into their business operations.

How Your Business Can Use Voice Technology

Small Business Trends spoke with Diego Tartara, CTO Latin America at Globant, and Brent Leary, Co-founder and Partner of CRM Essentials LLC, for 10 ways your business can use voice tech.

To Simplify the Customer Experience  

“I think the main thing is providing the customer with the opportunity to use their natural language to get what they want,” Leary says.

The right technology does away with the typing, clicking and swiping through other types of customer service platforms. Voice technology is faster than other types and an enhanced client experience makes for more sales.

To Cut Down on Data Input Time

Voice technology like Apple’s Siri streamline the process for busy salespeople too. When they can find the forecasts, top sales figures and other data simply by using their voice, they can spend more time in the field cultivating contacts and making money. The technology brings all the important CRM info under one roof and makes it quickly accessible.

To Remotely Manage the Office

Google Home and other technologies like it can help small business owners keep an eye on things while they’re on the road. Security cameras, alarm systems and even smart locks can be voice controlled from your smartphone.

To Increase Forecast Accuracy  

Small business management sees a definite advantage to using voice technology. Once everyone like their sales teams and inside staff are on board, data gets entered more quickly and more accurately.

“When there’s more data and more accurate data in the system, management can do more accurate and complete forecasting,” Leary says.

To Create Reminders 

A successful small business owner is pulled in several directions daily.  Knowing what meeting you’ll need to be at next and which emails should be flagged for immediate contact can be challenging. The right voice technology like Alexa can help you to categorize everything and bring it up quickly at your convenience.

To Track Shipments and Packages  

Alexa can be integrated with UPS to track packages over the Amazon platform. Once again, simple voice commands get you all the information that you’ll need.

Diego Tartara, CTO Latin America, Globantm, sees these types of technologies carving out an even big niche soon.

“I expect voice, gestures, sentiment and thoughts to be standard ways of interacting with an experience at some point, the same way I expect keyboards and mice to become obsolete,” he says.

To Streamline Customer Ordering  

Leary points out that the bigger players who are successful using voice technology are always looking for a way to remove any friction that prevents their customers from buying things. Amazon Echo is a great example but there’s nothing to stop small businesses from implementing voice ordering too.    

“Voice technology is just another way of removing friction and making it easy for customers to order,” he says.

To Manage Your Books 

 Small businesses can use Alexa like an voice activated book keeper. You can get information on everything from orders to inventory simply by asking.

To Order Business Supplies   

You can also use voice-activated software to buy business supplies for your enterprise. Google home offers some good options that include alternate prices so you can comparison shop.

To Stay on Top of Client Demand  

Tartara stresses staying on top of changing customer preferences means keeping an eye on this evolving technology.   

“Investment in voice technology must be viewed through the eyes of the end user without losing perspective,” Tartara says.  “This means that small businesses need to make these investments with their customers in mind throughout the entire development and implementation process, but also keep an eye on the future.”

Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "10 Ways Your Small Business Can Use Voice Technology" was first published on Small Business Trends



Athena Club offers a cheaper way to prepare for your next period

For those of us unlucky enough to be forced to accommodate mother nature’s whims on a monthly basis, you know that — in addition to cramps, headaches and mood swings — it can be a challenge to find time in your schedule to buy the period products you need.

Desperate trips to the pharmacy when disaster hits can suffice, but the co-founders of the tampon subscription service Athena Club, Maria Markina and Allie Griswold, thought there had to be a better way to provide women the products they need in a cheap and empowering way.

“We’ve both had our fair share of tampon war stories,” Griswold told TechCrunch. “It’s something that every woman goes through at some point in her life and it’s a universal problem that we wanted to make easier. There are so many other amazing things that women can and should be doing than worrying about [where to get tampons] every month.”

Athena Club launches today after receiving $3.8 million in seed funding led by Henry Kravis of KKR. The company currently offers two tampon types (Premium and Organic) and a variety of absorbances (ranging from light to super+ for its Premium product and regular to super for its Organic one). The company also has plans to expand its products into pads and liners as the brand progresses.

In each order, customers can decide how many bags they need (each reusable bag includes 18 tampons), what type of tampon and what mix of absorbances they want, and how frequently they need them delivered. A selection of its Premium tampons cost $6.50/bag and its Organic selections are $7.50/bag.

For the founders, this level of customization was an important part of giving women autonomy over their periods.

“[We chose] the name Athena Club because we believe Athena is a really strong, fearless, independent woman and we’re very excited to bring that essence to our brand.” said Griswold. “Like Athena, women today have many passions and talents. They can’t all fit into one box and we want to provide [the option] to find the right customized package that works for their body.”

Athena Club also recognizes that for some women, access to tampons and period products is more than just a nuisance but a critical health issue. To help provide security and education surrounding periods and women’s health to women in need, Athena Club is committed to supporting groups like Period.org and Support the Girls. To date, Athena Club has already donated 10,000 tampons to women in need through Period.org and has plans to continue that support on a yearly basis.

Athena Club is joining a fairly crowded feminine care subscription space, but the founders say that its price point will help it stand apart from the crowd. Tampon subscription companies like LOLA offer a subscription plan priced at $10/box for 18 plastic applicator tampons (the same type and count as Athena Club) and Cora offers 18 tampons for $13/box. Other more extravagant boxes, like Hello Flo incorporate add-ons like chocolate or underwear in their boxes and can be priced upwards of $40.

And, all of these models are up against long-term, reusable period solutions like Thinx period underwear (which can cost up to $39 for two tampons worth of absorption per use) and plastic menstrual cups like the Diva Cup (which retails for $40.99.)

With so many options, Athena Club presents itself as the cheap, no-fuss solution for women who are through letting periods disrupt their lives.

 



25 Ideas to Boost Your Business Curb Appeal

25 Small Business Curb Appeal Ideas

Why is curb appeal important for your store? An enormous 95% of customers say that the external appearance of a store is one of the main influences on their decision on where to shop.

Small Business Curb Appeal Ideas

But how exactly do you improve the appearance of your store, to make it welcoming and appealing to as many customers as possible? Follow these tips:

Put Some Greenery Out Front

A couple of hanging flower baskets or planters at either side of the door adds a splash of color and greenery to the entrance and makes the store look cared-for.

Get a Welcome Mat

A tiny, affordable change that makes every customer feel super welcome.

Rebrand

If you’re revamping your storefront, why not refresh your branding at the same time? This is the ideal way to signal a new start for your business.

Refresh your Signage

Peeling paint and faded colors say to customers ‘no one cares about this store, so why should you?’. Invest in a new sign and change that impression.

Add a Splash of Paint

Just like replacing your store sign, repainting walls and window frames gives your store a new lease of life. It makes it look brand new, cared about and fresh, which customers will love.

Sweep the Sidewalk Out Front Every Day

This simple task, which should be part of every store owners’ daily routine, is so often forgotten about. It takes just a moment, but instantly makes your store more appealing.

Inject Some Color

What better way to make your store stand out from the others from the street? Make your storefront vibrant, colorful and memorable.

Change your Window Display Regularly

This can keep regular passers-by interested in your store, eager to see what the display will be next. You might find it fun too!

Make it Clearer What your Business Does

Any passer-by should be able to tell immediately what it is that your business does or sells. If your signage or display doesn’t communicate this, you may need to go back to the drawing board.

De-clutter

Clutter looks untidy and can be confusing for the customer. Have a clear out and take out or down anything that detracts from the appeal and message of your store front.

Clean the Windows

Every store owner should have a regular cleaning schedule for their windows. Clean, sparkly windows make an enormous difference to the appeal of your store, while dirty, uncared-for panes are extremely off-putting.

Help your Neighbors to Tidy Up

You can only control how your storefront looks, right? Actually, you can help to improve the general area around your store by offering your neighbors (who may not be as tidy) to clean up.

Make Sure Parking is Well Lit and Signposted

This is a practical step that customers will really appreciate, as it makes finding your store and the parking lot easier.

Display your Most Appealing Goods

Your window display is no place for mediocre items and tatty goods from last year’s stock. It should be reserved for your most prized and appealing items, to lure customers in from the street.

Advertise Sales and Special Offers

Your main goal is to get customers through the door, and what better way to do it than with a big ‘sale – 50% off’ sign? No one can resist a bargain.

Consider Installing New Shop Furniture

Would an attractive new awning or sunshade give your store more curb appeal, or how about a brand-new door? It could be well worth the money for these larger projects if it means a better welcome for customers.

Don’t Forget about Maintenance

The smaller things like gutters and door handles are important, so make sure you pay attention to their maintenance.

Put your Trash Cans Out of Sight

While a trash can could help to keep the store front cleaner, it’s not the first thing you want customers to see when they approach your store. Tuck them away out of view, or at the back of the store, instead.

Use Seasonal Décor Carefully

It can be great fun during the holidays, but don’t forget to take it down on time.

Make your Store Cycle-friendly

Would your customers appreciate somewhere safe to store their bicycles? If so, install a bike rack out front or in the parking lot.

Be Dog-friendly Too

Even if you don’t permit dogs in the store, a bowl of water and somewhere to tether a dog are great ways to win over dog-loving customers.  

Be Accessible

If feasible, consider how you could make your store more accessible for disabled visitors, such as a ramp to the door.

Consider Landscaping

If you have outdoor space at the front of your store, look into how you can make the most of it with flowers, bushes and even trees.

Maintain Paths and Steps

Your customers need to be able to enter your store safely and easily.

Put Out a Sandwich Board

This helps you to catch the eye of customers further down the street, so they can see your special offers or branding before they even reach the store.

Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "25 Ideas to Boost Your Business Curb Appeal" was first published on Small Business Trends



Tractable is applying AI to accident and disaster appraisal

“Happy to spend 10 minutes on our vision and the journey we’re on, but then, really, 15 minutes on what we’ve got today, what it is we’ve achieved, what it is our AI does,” says Tractable co-founder and CEO Alexandre Dalyac when I video called him a couple of weeks ago. “You can probably speed up all of that,” I quip back.

The resulting conversation, lasting well over an hour, spanned all of the above and more, including what is required to build a successful AI business and why he and his team think they can help prevent another “AI winter.”

Founded in 2014 by Dalyac, Adrien Cohen and Razvan Ranca after going through company builder Entrepreneur First, London-based Tractable is applying artificial intelligence to accident and disaster recovery. Specifically, through the use of deep learning to automate visual damage appraisal, and therefore help speed up insurance payouts and access to other types of financial aid.

Our AI has already been trained on tens of millions of these cases, so that’s a perfect case of us already having distilled thousands of people’s work experience Alexandre Dalyac
Dalyac launches into what is clearly a well-rehearsed and evidently polished pitch. “We are on a journey to help the world recover faster from accidents and disasters. Our belief is that when accidents and disasters hit, the response could be 10 times faster thanks to AI. So what we mean there is, everything from road accidents, burst piping to large-scale floods and hurricane. Whenever any of these things happen, things get damaged.”

Those things, he says, broadly break down into cars, homes and crops, roughly equating to $1 trillion in damage each year. But, perhaps more importantly, livelihoods get impacted.

“If a car gets damaged, mobility is reduced. If a home gets damaged, shelter is reduced. And if crops get damaged, food is reduced. Across all of those accidents and disasters, we’re talking hundreds of millions of lives affected.”

It is here where a little lateral (and non-artificial) thinking is required. Accident and disaster recovery starts with visual damage appraisal: look at the damage, say how much it’s going to cost, unlock the funds and rebuild. The problem (and Tractable’s opportunity) is that having an appraiser look at a car, house or field can take days to weeks depending on availability — and therefore so can accessing funds to start rebuilding — whereas the claim is that computer vision and AI technology can potentially do the same job in minutes.

“When you assess, that is basically a very powerful but very narrow visual task, which is, look at the damage, how much is it gonna cost? Today, as you can imagine, these kind of assessments are manual. And they take days to weeks. And so you instantly know that with AI that can be 10 times faster,” says Dalyac.

“In some sense this is a perfect class of AI tasks, because it’s very heavy on image classification. And image classification is a task where AI can surpass human performance as of this decade. If you have instant appraisal, that means faster recovery. Hence the mission.”

Dalyac says that part of Tractable’s secret sauce is in the many millions of proprietary labels the company has produced. This has been aided by its patented “interactive machine learning technology,” which allows it to label images faster and cheaper than typical labeling services.

The team’s focus to date has been to train its AI to understand car damage, technology it has already deployed in six countries, seeing the startup work primarily with insurers.

Related to this I’m shown a simple demo of Tractable’s car damage appraisal tool. Dalyac opens a folder of car images on his laptop and uploads them to the software. Within seconds, the AI has seemingly identified the different parts of the car and determined which parts can be repaired and which parts need to be entirely written-off and therefore replaced fully. Each has an AI-generated estimated cost.

It all happens within a matter of minutes, although I have no way of knowing how difficult the pre-determined and fully controlled task is. It’s also unclear how an AI can possibly do the full job of a human assessor based on a limited set of 2D images alone, and without the ability to peek under the hood or undertake further investigations.

“We’re trying to figure out how much damage there is to a vehicle based on photos,” explains Dalyac. “There’s some really tough correlations to pick out, which are: based on the photos of the outside, what’s the internal damage? When you’re a human you are going to have seen and torn down maybe about a thousand to two thousand cars in your whole life of 20 or 30 years of doing that. Our AI has already been trained on tens of millions of these cases, so that’s a perfect case of us already having distilled thousands of people’s work experience. That allows us to get hold of some very challenging correlations that humans just can’t do.”

You need to find real-world use cases that will make a difference, where you can surpass human performance Alexandre Dalyac
With that said, he does concede that a photo doesn’t always contain all of the necessary information, and that it might only have a certain level of accuracy. “You might need to then get a tear-down of the car and get photos of the internal damage. You might even want to get some data from the dashboard. And you can think that as cars get more sensors… the appraisal will be not just visual but also based on IoT data. But that doesn’t detract from the fact that we are convinced that it will be AI that will be doing this entirely.”

What is abundantly clear is Dalyac’s commitment to developing AI technology with real-world use that is commercially viable. If that doesn’t happen, he believes it won’t just be Tractable that will suffer, but the continued belief and investment in AI as a whole. Here, of course, he’s talking about the prospect of another so-called “AI winter,” citing a recent Crunchbase report that says funding for artificial intelligence companies in the U.S. has levelled off and even started to decline at seed stage.

“If you’re trying to make the $15 billion that has been invested into AI not fuck up and lead to something successful that will prevent an AI winter that will lead to continuous improvement, you need a really good return on that asset class. And for that you need those businesses to be successful.

“To make an AI company successful, really successful — not just an acqui-hire, not just an IP exit but a real commercial success that’s going to prevent an AI winter — you need to find real-world use cases that will make a difference, where you can surpass human performance, where you can change the way things work,” he says.

The reference to acqui-hire or IP exit takes on more meaning when you consider that Tractable was in the same cohort at Entrepreneur First as Magic Pony Technology, the AI startup acquired by Twitter for up to $150 million for its image enhancing technology. And most recently, the team behind Bloomsbury AI, another EF company, was acqui-hired by Facebook for $20-30 million.

To ensure that Tractable can continue its mission of applying AI to accident and disaster recovery — and presumably not sell too early — the startup has closed $20 million in Series B investment in a round led by U.S. venture capital firm Insight Venture Partners. Existing investors, including Ignition Partners, Zetta Venture Partners, Acequia Capital and Plug and Play Ventures, also participated. The new capital is to be spent on accelerating growth, expanding its research and development and entering new markets.

(The Series B also included an additional $5 million in secondary funding, seeing some investors at least partially exit. I understand Tractable’s founders sold a relatively small number of shares as they were permitted to take money off the table. Dalyac declined to comment.)

As we wrap up our call, I note that all of Tractable’s main investors, not including EF, are from the U.S. — something Dalyac says was a deliberate decision after he discovered the gulf between European and U.S. valuations.

“That’s a shame, isn’t it?” I say with my European tech ecosystem hat on.

“It isn’t; it’s enormous exports for the U.K.,” says the Tractable CEO who is French-born but raised in the U.K. “We have, as of today, the vast majority of our headcount in London. The entire product team is in London. The entire R&D team is in London. But most of the revenue comes from the United States. We are making AI an export industry of the U.K.”