Month: September 2019

As California moves ahead with what would be the most restrictive online privacy laws in the nation, the chief executives of some of the nation’s largest companies are taking their case to the nation’s capitol to plead for federal regulation.

Chief executives at Amazon, AT&T, Dell, Ford, IBM, Qualcomm, Walmart, and other leading financial services, manufacturing, and technology companies have issued an open letter to Congressional leadership pleading with them to take action on online privacy, through the pro-industry organization, The Business Roundtable.

“Now is the time for Congress to act and ensure that consumers are not faced with confusion about their rights and protections based on a patchwork of inconsistent state laws. Further, as the regulatory landscape becomes increasingly fragmented and more complex, U.S. innovation and global competitiveness in the digital economy are threatened,” the letter says.

The subtext to this call to action is the California privacy regulations that are set to take effect by the end of this year.

As we noted when the bill was passed last year there are a few key components of the California legislation including the following requirements:

• Businesses must disclose what information they collect, what business purpose they do so for and any third parties they share that data with.

• Businesses would be required to comply with official consumer requests to delete that data.

• Consumers can opt out of their data being sold, and businesses can’t retaliate by changing the price or level of service.

• Businesses can, however, offer “financial incentives” for being allowed to collect data.

• California authorities are empowered to fine companies for violations.

There’s a reason why companies would push for federal regulation to supersede any initiatives from the states. It is more of a challenge for companies to adhere to a patchwork of different regulatory regimes at the state level. But it’s also true that companies, following the lead of automakers in California, could just adhere to the most stringent requirements which would clarify any confusion.

Indeed many of these companies are already complying with strict privacy regulations thanks to the passage of the GDPR in Europe.

Source: Tech Crunch

JobTeaser, the graduate recruitment and career guidance platform, has raised £45 million in new funding to help it expand its careers service to more students across the U.K. and Europe.

The investment is led by Highland Europe, with continued backing from existing investors Alven, Idinvest Partners, Seventure Partners and Korelya Capital. It brings the total amount raised to £61 million since the company was founded all the way back in 2008.

JobTeaser says the funding will be used to expand JobTeaser’s partner network of schools and universities across the U.K. and Ireland.

That company’s aim is to become the official careers website for its education partners. The promise is that it can connect more students and graduates to the careers they seek and in turn help corporates and organisations plug gaps in the talent and skills they need.

“We believe the transition between University and the professional world is very difficult for young talent,” Adrien Ledoux, co-founder of JobTeaser, tells me. “A lot of young talent feel lost when it comes to choosing their career; in the survey that we conducted with WISE this year, we discovered that 9 out of 10 young people in Europe want better support to define their career choices”.

Ledoux says JobTeaser’s goal is to transform the way students and recent graduates find work by helping them choose a career path that fits with their aspirations and ambitions. “We are convinced that if each young talent puts their energy into the right job, all of society benefits from it,” he says

To achieve this mission, JobTeaser has built a platform that combines bespoke career guidance with internships, job opportunities and ongoing career and interview support.

In order to reach the largest number of students and recent graduates, JobTeaser provides its “Career Centre by JobTeaser” platform free of charge to universities. It then charges businesses a fee to advertise jobs to that captive audience.

“Businesses can access talent at the right place (the university) and at the right time (when they are looking for their first job),” explains Ledoux. “Our platform allows businesses to pay once to multi-post their job ads and employer-branded content in a single click, which then goes out to all of JobTeaser’s partner higher education institutions”.

It’s this business model that allows JobTeaser to reach businesses, universities and prospective young jobseekers across 19 European countries, says the JobTeaser co-founder.

Since its launch, JobTeaser says it has served 2.5 million students and recent graduates. The company works with more than 70,000 businesses, including Amazon, PWC, Deutsche Bank, Blackrock, L’Oreal and LVMH.

Source: Tech Crunch

Apple is doubling down on personalization to help better sell its latest products. In addition to an expanded array of iPhone colors — hello mint green, lilac, etc. — the company today announced the launch of Apple Watch Studio, which will allow consumers to create the Apple Watch case and band pairing that they want, instead of having to choose one designed by Apple.

Before today, Apple would pair its Apple Watch cases with select bands. If you didn’t like the band that came with your Watch, however, you’d have to buy another at your own expense either from Apple or a third-party seller.

Apple Watch Studio will change that by allowing you to pick the case and band style you prefer, when shopping.

“Apple has always been the best place to help you customize and personalize your products. And now we’re going to take it even further with Apple Watch,” said Deirdre O’Brien, Apple’s senior vice president of Retail + People, speaking at the Apple press event in Cupertino this morning.

The experience will be available starting with the launch of Apple Watch Series 5 at Apple retail stores and online.

O’Brien said the new experience will offer “over 1,000” different ways for customers to customize their Watch, thanks to the many variations of case and band styles now available.

The Series 5, also announced at today’s event, will offer aluminum models that come in silver, gold and space gray. Its stainless steel models will come in gold, silver, and space black and a ceramic model will come in white, plus an all-new titanium model. Apple has also now launched a range of new band styles, some which complement the new colors of the iPhone 11 line.

Effectively, it debuted a fall collection of bands, with bands featuring deeper jewel tones like pine green, midnight blue, and aubergine (purple), alongside a few brighter colors like lemons and oranges and of course some classic blacks and browns, among others.

While Apple will still sell Apple Watch case/band pairings on its site, if you scroll down the page you can try out the new Apple Watch Studio starting today. The site displays an image of an Apple Watch that you customize it by selecting the size, case, and band. These options appear in a horizontal scroll bar, so you can easily tweak the design by clicking over to the next option on the right or left.

When finished, you just click “I’m Done” and complete the checkout process.

It’s a small change but one that could see more customers sporting bands made by Apple instead of knockoffs, as they’ll get one they actually like at purchase.

Source: Tech Crunch

More than fifty percent of the Fortune 500 companies are now using the open-source Cloud Foundry Platform-as-a-Service project — either directly or through vendors like Pivotal — to build, test and deploy their applications. Like so many other projects, including the likes of OpenStack, Cloud Foundry went through a bit of a transition in recent years as more and more developers started looking to containers — and especially the Kubernetes project — as a platform to develop on. Now, however, the project is ready to focus on what always differentiated it from its closed- and open-source competitors: the developer experience.

Long before Docker popularized containers for application deployment, though, Cloud Foundry had already bet on containers and written its own orchestration service, for example. With all of the momentum behind Kubernetes, though, it’s no surprise that many in the Cloud Foundry started to look at this new project to replace the existing container technology.

Source: Tech Crunch

We’re excited to announce an addition to the Extra Crunch community perks. Starting today, annual Extra Crunch members can get 100,000 Brex Rewards points after signing up for a Brex corporate credit card. This offer is worth about $1,000 in credit card points.

Brex’s corporate credit card is designed for startups, and Extra Crunch was built for the startup ecosystem. We understand that startups are trying to be as frugal as possible with spending, and we felt that the Brex corporate credit card was the perfect way to stretch those valuable dollars.

Brex gives startup founders and finance teams higher credit limits than what they would get with any other business credit card option, and it does so without requiring a personal credit check or security deposit during the application. There are some impressive reward multipliers across categories like rideshare, travel, and restaurants. It also comes with $50,000 worth of partner offers from AWS, Salesforce and many more.

Full benefits with the Brex for Startups credit card include:

• 100,000 Brex Rewards points upon signup (equal to about $1,000)
• 7x points on ridesharing app charges
• 4x points on travel charges, including Airbnb
• Miles transfer program to six airlines (including Singapore Airlines, Qantas, Air France and more) and their loyalty programs
• 3x points on restaurant charges
• 2x points on recurring software charges like Salesforce, Slack and GitHub
• 1x points on all other charges
• Discounts on the top services for startups, including Zendesk, Google Ads, SendGrid, AWS, WeWork and more
• Automated receipt-capture and expense matching with the Brex mobile app, or via text and email
• Built-in integrations with QuickBooks and Xero
• And more

In order to qualify for the Brex credit card, companies need at least $100,000 in the bank and must meet Brex’s other qualification requirements. This offer is only available to annual Extra Crunch members in the United States. You can sign up for annual Extra Crunch membership here.

Extra Crunch membership offers exclusive access to analysis of successful startups, original research and reporting, resources on company building, lists of verified experts in key services, no banner ads on TechCrunch.com, conference calls with our writers and more. You can take a look at the types of articles we produce for Extra Crunch by heading here.

After signing up for an annual Extra Crunch membership, you’ll receive a welcome email with a link to the Brex offer. If you are already an annual Extra Crunch member, you will receive an email with the offer at some point today. If you are currently a monthly Extra Crunch subscriber and want to upgrade to annual in order to claim this deal, head over to the “my account” section on TechCrunch.com and click the “upgrade” button.

Once you receive the link, you’ll have the opportunity to sign up for the credit card. As a reminder, companies must have at least $100K in the bank to qualify, be based in the U.S., and meet Brex’s other qualification requirements. 

This is one of several new community perks we’ve been working on for Extra Crunch members. In addition to the Brex offer, Extra Crunch members also get 20% off all TechCrunch event tickets (email extracrunch@techcrunch.com with the event name to receive a discount code for event tickets). You can learn more about our events lineup here.

Expect to see more perks and deals like this in the near future. If there are other community perks you want to see us add, please let us know by emailing extracrunch@techcrunch.com.

Sign up for an annual Extra Crunch membership today to claim this community perk. You can purchase an annual Extra Crunch membership here.

Source: Tech Crunch

Fifty attorneys general are pushing forward with an antitrust investigation against Google, led by the Texas state Attorney General Ken Paxton.

In an announcement on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court building, Paxton and a gathering of attorneys general said that the focus of the investigation would be on Google’s advertising practices, but that other points of inquiry could be included in the investigation.

The investigation into Google comes as big technology companies find themselves increasingly under the regulatory microscope for everything from anticompetitive business practices to violations of users’ privacy and security, to accusations of political bias.

Last week, the New York State Attorney General launched an investigation into Facebook.

“Google’s control over nearly every aspect of our lives has placed the company at the center of our digital economy. But it doesn’t take a search engine to understand that unchecked corporate power shouldn’t eclipse consumers’ rights,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James, in a statement. “That is why New York has joined this bipartisan investigation of Google to determine whether the company has achieved or maintained its dominance through anticompetitive conduct. As with the Facebook investigation we are leading, we will use every investigative tool at our disposal in the Google investigation to ensure the truth is exposed.”

Action from the states follows movement from the federal government which is investigating just about every major technology company including Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook.

This story is developing.

Source: Tech Crunch

In 2001, Naspers, a media company that launched in 1915 and later evolved into a media holding company with pay TV interests, agreed to invest $32 million for a 46.5% stake in Tencent. The China-based company had been founded just three years earlier, and, as Quartz notes in a 2014 story about the deal, Tencent wasn’t a brand that many aside from users of its instant messaging platform, QQ, knew at the time.

Of course, given Tencent’s wild growth, it has largely come to define Naspers . Consider that today, Tencent is a roughly $410 billion company, and though Naspers has sold off some of its holdings in the company over the years, it still owns a little more than 30% of Tencent for a stake currently worth roughly $120 billion.

The story is not so unlike that of SoftBank, which made an early, $20 million bet on a nascent China-based company called Alibaba in 2000. Though SoftBank has sold some of its ownership in the company, including to fund an acquisition of acquisition of the British chip designer ARM in 2016, it maintains a 26% stake worth roughly $100 billion.

The bets have proved a blessing but also a challenge for both companies as they work to create valuable portfolios that correlate less closely with these home runs.

For its part, Naspers is finding a number of ways to buffer itself, including, most notably, carving out a new holding company called Prosus NV that’s due to list in Amsterdam this week and that features Nasper’s stakes in the online classifieds business OLX, the Craigslist competitor Letgo, as well as Nasper’s massive piece of Tencent.

Prosus also holds stakes in numerous social networking, food delivery, payments, online travel bookings, and other companies, packaging together its shares in roughly 20 different companies altogether.

It’s a huge deal for Naspers, which is spinning off Prosus to lessen its own dominance of Johannesburg’s stock exchange where it trades, and to minimize the valuation gap between itself and its stake in Tencent. It’s also a highly unusual listing, including because the value of the shares is largely established already (given that they currently trade within Naspers).

Luckily, CEO Bob Van Dijk is joining us at TechCrunch Disrupt in early October to talk about Naspers and Prosus and to help us understand this fairly novel and important effort for the company.

Yet that’s not all we want to know.  We want to better understand how the company thinks about new investments, including how it views different sectors and different geographies.

We want to hear what Naspers thinks of the SoftBank’s investing strategy. (Among other things, the two coinvested in Flipkart, which proved a lucrative bet for both. Naspers sold an 11% stake in the company last year for $2.2 billion after investing $616 million. SoftBank sold its 20% stake for roughly $4 billion after investing $2.5 billion into the company.)

We also want to learn more about Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa, the recently appointed CEO of Nasper’s South African unit — and the company’s first female and first black chief executive.

For these reasons and many others, we can’t wait to sit down with Van Dijk during our upcoming show. If you’re curious about where the big money is moving around the world, this is one conversation you won’t want to miss. Disrupt SF runs October 2-4 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Tickets are available here.

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Source: Tech Crunch