Month: December 2019

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

1. Away CEO is stepping down in light of reports of toxic culture

Steph Korey is stepping down from her role as CEO, although she will remain on-board as executive chairman. She’ll be replaced by Lululemon COO Stuart Haselden.

The timing of the announcement comes just a few days after The Verge published an in-depth story about management practices at the luggage startup, which included extensive quotes from Korey’s Slack messages. However, the company says that the executive search has been underway for months.

2. VSCO acquires video editing startup Rylo

The photo-sharing app behind the 2019 meme craze “VSCO girls” has acquired Rylo, a video editing startup founded by the original developer of Instagram’s Hyperlapse. Founded in 2015, Rylo is best known for its 360° camera capable of creating cinematic video in 5.8K resolution.

3. Apple Card’s interest-free iPhone installment plan goes live, now with 6% back on Apple holiday purchases

The company already announced its plans for the program — allowing cardholders to purchase a new iPhone, then pay it back over 24 months with no interest — but now it’s actually opening up to all Apple Card customers. In addition, Apple is sweetening the deal with 6% back on all Apple purchases made from December 10 through December 31.

4. India proposes new rules to access its citizens’ data

India has proposed new rules that would require companies to obtain consent from Indian citizens before collecting and processing their personal data. At the same time, the new rules also state that companies would have to hand over “non-personal” user data to the government, which would also hold the power to collect any data about its citizens without consent.

5. Waze adds unplowed road reporting feature for better awareness of winter driving hazards

Waze says it developed this update after it received a recommendation from the Virginia Department of Transportation, working with the municipal agency through its “Waze for Cities Data” partnership and data-sharing program.

6. Jiji raises $21M for its Africa online classifieds business

Buyers and sellers use Jiji to make purchases ranging from real estate to car sales. The classifieds site says it has 2 million listings on its Africa platforms and hit 8 million unique monthly users in 2018.

7. AWS is sick of waiting for your company to move to the cloud

AWS held its annual re:Invent customer conference last week in Las Vegas, where CEO Andy Jassy made it clear he’s tired of the slow pace of change inside the enterprise. The company also announced some big bets designed to accelerate cloud adoption. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

Source: Tech Crunch

We’ve talked about securing your startup, the need to understand phishing risks and how not to handle a data breach. But we haven’t yet discussed one of the more damaging threats that all businesses large and small face: the insider threat.

The insider threat is exactly as it sounds — someone within your organization who has malicious intent. Your employees will be one of your biggest assets, but human beings are the weakest link in the security chain. Your staff are already in a privileged position — in the sense that they are in a place where they have access to far more than they would as an outsider. That means taking data, either maliciously or inadvertently, is easier for staff than it might be for a hacker.

“Organizations need to understand that the threats coming from inside their organizations are as critical as, if not more dangerous than, the threats coming from the outside,” said Stephanie Carruthers, a social engineering expert who serves as chief people hacker at IBM X-Force Red, a division of Big Blue that looks for breaches in IoT devices before — and after — they go to market.

Insider risks can become active threats for many reasons. Some individuals may become disgruntled, some want to blow the whistle on wrongdoing and others can be approached (or even manipulated) by career criminals over debts or other matters in their private life.

There are plenty of examples, many not too far back in recent history.

Source: Tech Crunch

Today, Microsoft announced a public preview of Microsoft Teams for Linux, the first Office 365 tool that’s available for the open source operating system.

The hope is that by making it available for preview, the company can get feedback from the community and improve it before it becomes generally available. “Starting today, Microsoft Teams is available for Linux users in public preview, enabling high quality collaboration experiences for the open source community at work and in educational institutions,” the company wrote in the blog post announcing the release.

The goal here ultimately is to help get Teams into the hands of more customers by expanding the platforms it runs on. “Most of our customers have devices running on a variety of different platforms such as Windows 10, Linux and others. We are committed to supporting mixed environments across our cloud and productivity offerings, and with this announcement, we are pleased to extend the Teams experience to Linux users,” the company wrote in the blog post.

This announcement significant for a couple of reasons. For starters, Microsoft has had a complicated history with Linux and open source, although in recent years under Satya Nadella it has embraced open source. This shows that Microsoft is willing to put its tools wherever customers need them, regardless of the platform or operating system.

Secondly, since it marks the first Office 365 app on Linux, if there is positive feedback, it could open the door for more apps on the platform down the road.

The announcement also comes against the backdrop of the company’s on-going battles with Slack for enterprise collaboration platform users. In July, Microsoft announced 13 million daily active users on Teams. Meanwhile, Slack has 12 million DAUs. It’s worth noting that Slack has been available on Linux for almost two years.

Source: Tech Crunch

AWS held its annual re:Invent customer conference last week in Las Vegas. Being Vegas, there was pageantry aplenty, of course, but this year’s model felt a bit different than in years past, lacking the onslaught of major announcements we are used to getting at this event.

Perhaps the pace of innovation could finally be slowing, but the company still had a few messages for attendees. For starters, AWS CEO Andy Jassy made it clear he’s tired of the slow pace of change inside the enterprise. In Jassy’s view, the time for incremental change is over, and it’s time to start moving to the cloud faster.

AWS also placed a couple of big bets this year in Vegas to help make that happen. The first involves AI and machine learning. The second, moving computing to the edge, closer to the business than the traditional cloud allows.

The question is what is driving these strategies? AWS had a clear head start in the cloud, and owns a third of the market, more than double its closest rival, Microsoft. The good news is that the market is still growing and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The bad news for AWS is that it can probably see Google and Microsoft beginning to resonate with more customers, and it’s looking for new ways to get a piece of the untapped part of the market to choose AWS.

Move faster, dammit

The worldwide infrastructure business surpassed $100 billion this year, yet we have only just scratched the surface of this market. Surely, digital-first companies, those born in the cloud, understand all of the advantages of working there, but large enterprises are still moving surprisingly slowly.

Jassy indicated more than once last week that he’s had enough of that. He wants to see companies transform more quickly, and in his view it’s not a technical problem, it’s a lack of leadership. If you want to get to the cloud faster, you need executive buy-in pushing it.

Jassy outlined four steps in his keynote to help companies move faster and get more workloads in the cloud. He believes in doing so, it will not only continue to enrich his own company, it will also help customers avoid disruptive forces in their markets.

For starters, he says that it’s imperative to get the senior team aligned behind a change. “Inertia is a powerful thing,” Jassy told the audience at his keynote on Tuesday. He’s right of course. There are forces inside every company designed with good reason to protect the organization from massive systemic changes, but these forces — whether legal, compliance, security or HR — can hold back a company when meaningful change is needed.

He said that a fuller shift to the cloud requires ambitious planning. “It’s easy to go a long time dipping your toe in the water if you don’t have an aggressive goal,” he emphasized. To move faster, you also need staff that can help you get there — and that requires training.

Finally, you need a thoughtful, methodical migration plan. Most companies start with the stuff that’s easy to move to the cloud, then begin to migrate workloads that require some adjustments. They continue along this path all the way to things you might not choose to move at all.

Jassy knows that the faster companies get on board and move to the cloud, the better off his company is going to be, assuming it can capture the lion’s share of those workloads. The trouble is that after you move that first easy batch, getting to the cloud becomes increasingly challenging, and that’s one of the big reasons why companies have moved slower than Jassy would like.

The power of machine learning to drive adoption

One way to motivate folks to move faster is help them understand the power of machine learning. AWS made a slew of announcements around machine learning designed to give customers a more comprehensive Amazon solution. This included SageMaker Studio, a machine learning development environment along with notebook, debugging and monitoring tools. Finally, the company announced AutoPilot, a tool that gives more insight into automatically-generated machine learning models, another way to go faster.

The company also announced a new connected keyboard called DeepComposer, designed to teach developers about machine learning in a fun way. It joins DeepLens and DeepRacer, two tools released at previous re:Invents. All of this is designed for developers to help them get comfortable with machine learning.

It wasn’t a coincidence the company also announced a significant partnership with the NFL to use machine learning to help make players safer. It’s an excellent use case. The NFL has tons of data on its players, and it has decades of film. If it can use that data as fuel for machine learning-driven solutions to help prevent injuries, it could end up being a catalyst for meaningful change driven by machine learning in the cloud.

Machine learning provides another reason to move to the cloud. This shows that the cloud isn’t just about agility and speed, it’s also about innovation and transformation. If you can take advantage of machine learning to transform your business, it’s another reason to move to the cloud.

Moving to the edge

Finally, AWS recognizes that computing in cloud can only get you so far. In spite of the leaps it has made architecturally, there is still a latency issue that will be unacceptable for some workloads. That’s why it was a big deal that the company announced a couple of edge computing solutions including the general availability of Outposts, its private cloud in a box along with a new concept called Local Zones last week.

The company announced Outposts last year as a way to bring the cloud on prem. It is supposed to behave exactly the same way as traditional cloud resources, but AWS installs, manages and maintains a physical box in your data center. It’s the ultimate in edge computing, bringing the compute power right into your building.

For those who don’t want to go that far, AWS also introduced Local Zones, starting with one in LA, where the cloud infrastructure resources are close by instead of in your building. The idea is the same — to reduce the physical distance between you and your compute resources and reduce latency.

All of this is designed to put the cloud in reach of more customers, to help them move to the cloud faster. Sure, it’s self-serving, but 11 years after I first heard the term cloud computing, maybe it really is time to give companies a harder push.

Source: Tech Crunch

Berlin-headquartered streaming guide JustWatch has grown to more than 10 million users across 38 countries in less than five years. Now, it’s expanding its U.S. presence with the acquisition of New York-based rival GoWatchIt, from Plexus Entertainment. Deal terms were not revealed but were a mixture of cash and stock for the smaller operation, which had just eight people on board.

JustWatch says its interest was mostly in the commercial team based in New York. As a result of the acquisition, GoWatchIt founder and CEO David Larkin will remain in New York and will become JustWatch’s SVP Marketing and Strategy.

GoWatchIt is one of now several services that offer a comprehensive guide to movies and TV aimed at helping people find things to watch across an increasingly fragmented streaming landscape, which now includes new services like Apple TV+ and Disney+, and soon, NBCU’s Peacock and WarnerMedia’s HBO Max. As a result of all the new entries, it has become more difficult for consumers to know what’s available, where it streams and how much it costs. Plus, consumers also want help in finding new shows and movies across services that are personalized to their own interests.

This is where services like GoWatchIt and JustWatch came in.

GoWatchIt was founded in 2011 as a guide to streaming content, as well as digital content and even movies playing in theaters. The service additionally offered an API to partner sites that wanted to inform their visitors and readers where content was available. These partners included The New York Times, National Cine Media and Common Sense Media, among others.

According to JustWatch, the acquisition of GoWatchIt made sense as the U.S. had already grown to become JustWatch’s largest market in terms of user numbers. However, the acquisition wasn’t about gaining market share, the company tells TechCrunch. It was more about the B2B partners and clients and the commercial team, particularly founder David Larkin, whose new job will have him marketing JustWatch B2B products like the partner API, competitive VOD market intelligence and JustWatch’s entertainment advertising products in the U.S.

“We are very happy with the acquisition of GoWatchIt and to welcome David Larkin at JustWatch,” noted JustWatch founder and CEO David Croyé, in a statement. “We have already known each other for several years and I’m excited to work with David to increase our footprint in the US. His network in the streaming industry will help us find many more partners for our B2B data and API offerings,” he said.

GoWatchIt was backed by Scout Ventures and other private funding.

Its total team was just eight people, but only two are joining JustWatch, as the technical staff wasn’t needed. JustWatch today has a team of more than 50 in Berlin who will continue to run its product development and technology.

In addition, the GoWatchIt website will be closed in the near future, with traffic redirected to JustWatch.com instead. Partner sites using the GoWatchIt API will be transitioned to the JustWatch API, as well.

“I’m excited to join JustWatch from New York and help to accelerate the growth with my industry experience and network,” said Larkin. “Over the last years, JustWatch has grown very fast to become the biggest streaming guide worldwide. The streaming wars are heating up and the biggest growth will come from outside the U.S. JustWatch is the only truly international player to help users find out what to watch and where to watch it.”

JustWatch competes with a range of services in this market, including Reelgood, which just raised $6.75 million for its own streaming guide; TV Time, which has raised $65 million (according to Crunchbase); and many other apps and services, all aiming to be consumers’ go-to platform.

JustWatch is nearing the launch of new TV apps for Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Android TV, which will be available in the days ahead.

Source: Tech Crunch

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

1. China moves to ban foreign software and hardware from state offices

China has ordered the replacement of all foreign PC hardware and operating systems in state offices over the next three years, according to a report in the Financial Times. The government has previously ordered purges of western software, but they were more limited or related to certain security issues.

This time, the goal includes hardware as well, with tens of millions of devices targeted for replacement.

2. Snapchat Cameos edit your face into videos

Snapchat is preparing to launch a new feature that swaps out faces in videos with your own selfies. Some French users received a test version of the feature today.

3. The new Mac Pro goes up for order December 10

When Apple announced the new Mac Pro in June, it left out one key detail — when, precisely the latest version of the high-end desktop would arrive. Now Apple says orders will begin on December 10, although the shipping date remains unknown.

4. In wake of Shutterstock’s Chinese censorship, American companies need to relearn American values

By now, it’s well-known that China’s search engines like Baidu censor political photography. What we’ve been learning more recently, however, is that it isn’t just Chinese companies that are aiding and abetting this censorship.

5. Will the 2020s be online advertising’s holistic decade?

InMarket founder Todd Dipaola predicts that marketers will be held to a higher standard — both by clients demanding world-class performance and proof, as well as consumers who want relevancy, helpfulness and privacy from their brand relationships. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

6. See Atomico’s most senior VCs onstage at Disrupt Berlin

Atomico is among the most widely respected venture firms in Europe. And you’ll be able to hear from its leaders at TechCrunch’s big event in just a couple of days.

7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts

Equity takes a look at Harlem Capital, one of the largest funds that’s focused on backing minority entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, Original Content reviews the latest season of Netflix’s hit series “The Crown.”

Source: Tech Crunch

Early-stage startups have a massive problem: there are way, way too many things to do, and never enough people to do them. Whether it’s growth marketing, or product design, or software engineering or a myriad list of other tasks, something somewhere isn’t going to get done by the founding team and early employees.

And so it is only natural to seek outside help to assist with those tasks, part-timers (and sometimes full-timers) who can add their talent and experience to a company’s early success.

There’s just one problem: consultants are horrifyingly misaligned with startups, as a recent discussion about how to be a great consultant attests. And so if you are going to work with consultants as a founder, there are massive traps you must avoid in order to make effective use of these people.

I’m a big fan of The Browser, an email newsletter by Robert Cottrell which curates a list of five articles a day across the web that Cottrell thinks are the best of the day. One of his selections in a recent issue was part two of a four part series on being a great consultant written by Tom Critchlow, who is adapting lessons from the theater world into the work of being a consultant.

Source: Tech Crunch