Author : zebethcontrol

Figma CEO Dylan Field on why he sold to Adobe • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in Adobe, Disrupt, Dylan Field, Enterprise, Figma, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

A month after Adobe announced its plans for acquiring Figma, the popular digital design startup, Figma CEO and co-founder Dylan Field sat down with our own enterprise reporter Ron Miller at Disrupt 2022 to discuss the deal and his motivations for selling to Adobe, a company that Figma’s own marketing materials have not always described in the most glowing of terms. “We were having a blast — we are having a blast — but then we start talking with Adobe and Adobe is a foundational, really impressive company and the more I’d spend time with the people there, the more trust we built, the more that I could see: ‘Okay, wow. We’re in this like product development box right now,’” Dylan said, surely making his media trainers happy with his non-answer. He noted that Figma today offers tools for ideation and designing mockups, with plans for launching additional tools for more easily taking those mockups and turning them into code. “I started to form a thesis of ‘creativity is the new productivity’ and we don’t have the resources to just go do that right now at Figma,” Dylan noted, giving the standard answer that 99% of founders tend to give when they sell to a bigger rival. “If we want to go and make it so that we’re able to go into all these more productivity areas, that’s gonna take a lot of time. “To be able to go and do that in the context of Adobe, I think gives us a huge leg up and I’m really excited about that.” Surely, the fact that this deal — assuming it closes — will also create generational wealth for Field was a bit of a motivator, but for some reason, founders always deny this. Asked about any potential pressure from investors, Field denied that this played any role in the sale — especially because Figma continues to double its revenue year over year. “That was never the consideration here,” Field said “It said it was: what’s the best opportunity to achieve our vision? The vision for the company is make design accessible to everyone. So design — is not just interface design. It’s creativity. It’s productivity. It’s you know making it so that we can all be part of the digital revolution that’s happening. The entire world’s economy is going from physical to digital right now. Are we going to leave a bunch of people behind or going to give everyone the tools. I feel a lot of pressure and I think it’s really important that we give all of these people these tools really fast.” The Figma PR team surely had a smile on its face after this answer. I don’t think that’s necessarily how Adobe feels about its $82.49/month Creative Cloud subscription package that surely not everybody can afford, but Field stressed multiple times that Figma will remain an independent company and that there are no plans for changing the company’s pricing plan. Adobe is paying $20 billion for Figma, though, so let’s see if that changes over time. “What Adobe’s told us is that they want to learn from Figma,” he said. “And I think in general, they’re going ‘okay how do you go to more of a freemium model? How do you make it so that you’re able to really be bottoms up?” Adobe isn’t paying all of that money for education, though. A Coursera marketing course is a lot cheaper than $20 billion, after all. Over time, the company has a responsibility to its shareholders to increase its revenue, so we’ll see how that plays out — always assuming the deal closes. That’s not a given in this current regulatory environment. Field, for what it’s worth, thinks this is a very offensive move by Adobe, whose XD Figam rival never quite caught with designers. “They’re trying to figure out: how do you make it so that you’re able to adapt the products they already have, but also to sort of bolster this new platform. And yeah, I don’t think that’s risk-averse in any way, ”

Battlefield bots • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in Actuator, Hardware, MIT, Robotics & AI, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

Greetings from the bowels of Moscone Center West. As I type this, Kevin Hart just exited the stage and Serena Williams is presiding over a packed house. No exaggeration: I attempted to make my way to grab a seat in the few rows up front allotted to the ZebethMedia staff, but I physically couldn’t get through the crowd. A solid one-two punch to kick off this Wednesday morning. I’ve had a little time to walk the halls here, mostly scouring for hardware and robotics firms, as is my wont. It’s always fun to see the sorts of microcosms that develop at events like this, identifying groupings that are indicative of broader current and future trends in the startup world. I’m happy to say for my own edification that robotics firms, in particular, were well represented. Not sure that’s something I would have felt comfortable asserting five or so years back. Coupled with all of the various ongoing market indicators, it truly feels like we’ve comfortably entered a new era for robotics and robotic investing. Yesterday I hosted what amounted to a two-hour marathon pitch-off, which involved 30 startups offering two-minute pitches. It was a bit exhausting, frankly, but I’m looking forward to unpacking some of those offerings in the coming weeks. One definitely warrants mention in this week’s Actuator, because I ended up speaking with the CEO and profiling the firm late last week—Touchlab. Image Credits: Touchlab Touchlab was the winner of our TC Sessions: Robotics event back in July, so this thing is long overdue. One bit that’s especially interesting to me is how the company’s outward focus has shifted in that short time. The Edinburg-based firm originally pitched us on its robotic skin. The applications are pretty clear there — effectively adding another layer of sensing to supplement existing vision systems and the like. That’s still the core of the startup’s play, but Touchlab has also begun to implement its own technology into a robotic system. It showcased an eldercare robot that is essentially an off-the-shelf TIAGo++ robot, outfitted with its sensor technology. Eldercare makes sense, as a highly pressure-sensitive sensor is required to interact with human patients — the elderly in particular. “We have a layer of software that translates the pressure of the skin to the suit. We’re also using haptic gloves,” co-founder and CEO Zaki Hussein told me. “Currently, our skin gathers a lot more data than we can currently transmit to the user over haptic interfaces. So there’s a little bit of a bottleneck. We can use the full potential of the best haptic interface of the day, but there is a point where the robot is feeling more than the user is able to.” The haptic sensations are translated into a wearable suit donned by a VR-wearing operator. I’m interested in exploring the state of teleoperation a bit more. There’s a weird sort of stigma around this technology in a category where everyone seems to be constantly chasing full autonomy. Image Credits: RIF Robotics RIF Robotics (pronounced “riff”), another one of the entries in the Battlefield 200, operates in a similar space. Specifically, it’s building systems designed to streamline the disinfecting of medical equipment in-hospital. Co-founder Kevin DeMarco tells ZebethMedia: The major challenges that the sterile processing industry is facing are a lack of experienced surgical technicians, instrument-level tracking, infection traceability and cost traceability. Medical device manufacturers are interested in knowing how their equipment is used and degrades in the field. Instrument-level data will also help them to decide where to send sales reps. Hospitals are interested in instrument-level data because it will help them operate more efficiently by improving instrument-level tracking and instrument inspection. Currently, most hospitals only track at the tray-level, but the industry wants to be able to track at the instrument level. Image Credits: Katakem I’m starting to sense a theme emerging here — one more healthcare robotics firm from my time at the Showcase stage. Kyle’s headline really says it all here: “Katakem is developing a robot to automate drug development.” The firm has developed what it deems a “robot chef,” designed to create chemical reactions. It tells ZebethMedia: The production of a chemical product is strictly regulated and standardized. [But] the development phase between discovery and production is still carried out manually and no significant data is extracted. Through data, we can help companies develop new life-saving drugs faster and, of course, this means higher revenues and better margins for them … Data [from OnePot] is reliable, clean and immediately usable. Image Credits: Jasper Montreal-based Jasper is taking a unique approach toward a market controlled by the likes of Seamless, DoorDash and Uber Eats. The firm’s play revolves around the deployment of a proprietary chain of automated ghost kitchens designed to dramatically speed up food delivery. The robotics aspect comes in through the kitchen, allowing for minimal or no staff for the food preparation process. “Having good meals at home is expensive or time consuming … Food delivery is highly inefficient — restaurants or ghost kitchens prepare meals worth a few dollars and then pay someone to ship them across town,” CEO Gunnar Froh told ZebethMedia. “While most customers aren’t aware of this, about half of their dollars are spent on platform fees and delivery costs. By running robotic kitchens in or next to residential high-rises, Jasper eliminates labor and delivery inefficiencies to offer residents freshly prepared gourmet meals at the cost of home cooking. Jasper meals are plated on porcelain, which allows its clients to cut up to a third of their household waste.” Swap Robotics at ZebethMedia Startup Battlefield at ZebethMedia Disrupt in San Francisco on October 18, 2022. Image Credits: Haje Kamps / ZebethMedia A couple of robotics-focused firms made it onstage for the Battlefield pitch-offs as well. Swap has developed an electric mower specifically designed to cut vegetation around solar farms. “Right now, there are a couple of main challenges when cutting all of the vegetation in solar fields,” the company tells

Netmaker connects servers spread across multiple locations with WireGuard • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in Enterprise, enterprise networking, Netmaker, Startups, vpn, WireGuardNo Comments

Meet Netmaker, a startup that can help you create and manage a virtual overlay network that works across the internet. In other words, Netmaker is a layer that makes it feel like different machines are right next to each other and connected to the same local network. Behind the scenes, Netmaker relies heavily on WireGuard, a VPN protocol with great performances. Compared to older VPN protocols like OpenVPN or IPsec, WireGuard is faster, more secure and more flexible at the same time. Netmaker is the orchestration part of the equation. It spins up and manages WireGuard tunnels across your network. When you push a configuration change, it propagates that change to all the machines in the network. Similarly, if there’s an update, Netmaker can push updates to all the clients in your setup. So how can you use Netmaker? For instance, if you are running an internet-of-things company, chances are you have devices that are spread out in different physical locations. With Netmaker, you can make these devices communicate with each other much more easily. If you are a company with a distributed workload across multiple clouds or you have a hybrid infrastructure, you can use Netmaker as a sort of flexible VPC that isn’t limited to one cloud account. The best part is that you don’t have a lot of performance overhead when you use Netmaker. “It’s just the performance of WireGuard and we come really close to WireGuard’s performance,” co-founder and CEO Alex Feiszli told me. Based in Asheville, North Carolina, the startup raised $2.3 million after graduating from Y Combinator in a round led by Lytical Ventures, Uncorrelated VC and SaxeCap, with Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund and others also participating. Netmaker competes with other startups like Tailscale, ZeroTier and Defined Networking’s Nebula — some of them are well funded. Netmaker thinks it is faster than these competitors because these companies tend to use relay connections or have made different technical choices, such as running WireGuard in userspace networking mode. There are roughly 1,200 entities using Netmaker right now and a good portion of them are companies. The startup just launched the beta version of its paid version with more features. It’s clear that we are in the early days of a networking revolution that is going to change how computing infrastructure is designed. And Netmaker wants to be part of this new wave of startups. As Feiszli wrote in an email, “I think WireGuard has the power to reshape networking in the cloud and beyond, similar to how Kubernetes disrupted computing.”

Web Design & Development News: Collective #734

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in UncategorizedTagged frontend newsNo Comments

Would you like to send us some news? The Collective features the latest news and resources from the web design & web development community. If you have spotted or created something that you’d like see published in the next issue, just submit the resource or article here.

Draymond Green isn’t starting a fund, but is working with top VCs • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in Draymond Green, investments, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, VCs, VentureNo Comments

Draymond Green, the two-time Olympic gold medalist and professional basketball player for the Golden State Warriors, says he’s working with well-known investors involved in the tech space. That wasn’t a massive secret — Green has historically been quite public about his portfolio companies, like SmileDirectClub — but until this morning at ZebethMedia Disrupt, he hadn’t previously named his go-to investing partners. When asked by ZebethMedia’s Brian Heater on stage whether he was looking to start an investment fund, Green replied that he wasn’t because he’s already involved with a group of prominent VCs, including Chamath Palihapitiya, Bill Gurley, Jason Calacanis and Bill Lee. Palihapitiya was an early investor at Facebook and backed Yammer and Slack through this fund, Social+Capital Partnership. Gurley, currently at Benchmark, has led investments in a number of high-profile companies including Nextdoor and OpenTable. Calacanis is an angel investor in various tech startups including mindfulness app Calm. And Bill Lee is one of the co-founders of Craft Ventures, alongside which Green has invested in the past. “I have some of the best friends in the world, especially when you’re speaking of funds, and so I don’t personally feel the need to go create my own when I have experts like that in my life that can help guide me,” Green said. “I take pride in learning and I never want it to come off as if I know more than them … It’s not something that I see for me, trying to start my own firm, but I do enjoy and appreciate being an LP in their funds.” Green — who once told CNBC that he wanted to become a billionaire by age 40 — has been an active investor in startups for several years, beginning in 2015 with the aforementioned SmileDirectClub. He’s poured money into Blink Fitness, which aims to bring affordable options for fitness to underserved communities; the tequila brand Lobos 1707; and Snackpass, a social food ordering platform. Green’s more recent investments span self-filtering water bottle brand LARQ and LeBron James’ company, Uninterrupted, a multimedia platform for athletes and general sports content. Not all of those investments have turned out to be strong long-term performers. For example, while SmileDirectClub raised over $400 million while private, the company ended up giving back most of its IPO-driven valuation gain after going public. Others appear to be going strong, however, like Snackpass, which last year raised around $70 million at an over-$400 million valuation as the platform crossed 500,000 users. As of June, Green had a reported net worth of $50 million.

Instagram is testing an in-app scheduling tool for posts and reels • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in Apps, InstagramNo Comments

Social media managers and creators have long relied on third-party tools to schedule posts on Instagram. But now the company is testing an in-app tool to schedule posts and reels. The company confirmed the development and said it is indeed experimenting with this. “We are testing the ability to schedule content with a percentage of our global community,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement. The company didn’t provide any detail about the feature’s general availability. Twitter user @WFBrother posted a screenshot showing how it works. Users who have this feature can go to Advanced Settings while creating a new post or a reel and turn on the toggle for “Schedule this post” to select a time and a date. They also noted that you can see scheduled posts through the “Scheduled Content” section accessible under the hamburger menu. The section also lets you reschedule content if needed. App researcher Alessandro Paluzzi noted that Instagram is working on a scheduling feature back in July. In August, the company told ZebethMedia that “This is an early prototype of an experience that we are not publicly testing.” In 2018, the company started offering businesses the ability to schedule posts through an API so third-party software like Hootsuite and SocialFlow could take advantage of it. Meta has been offering the Instagram scheduling feature through the Facebook Creator Studio since 2020. However, the new in-app tool for scheduling can benefit creators who don’t have access to special software for social media management. Instagram is late to introduce native scheduling as Twitter has had this feature for a few years now. Earlier this month, the company announced an increase in the ad load on the platform to combat Meta’s revenue decline.

Sensat raises $20.5M to build digital twins for infrastructure companies • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in digital twin, Enterprise, National Grid Partners, SenSat, StartupsNo Comments

Sensat, a platform that helps physical infrastructure companies map and visualize all their data, has raised $20.5 million in a Series B round of funding. Founded in 2015, London-based Sensat is one of a number of so-called “digital twin” software companies that serve construction, mining, energy and similar industries with tools to replicate their physical footprint in the digital sphere. It’s all about converting the built world into a format that machines can parse to generate real-time insights into everything that’s happening on the ground. The digital twins are built using data garnered from physical sensors attached to assets, wearables, satellites, lidar and drones, among other publicly available datasets such as traffic. Sensat’s digital twin technology in action. Image Credits: Sensat For example, U.K. water supply company United Utilities recently started a pilot project with Sensat to automate the process of detecting water leakage, meshing thermal data captured by drones with high-resolution photogrammetry to build an algorithm that predicts where leaks may emerge. Sensat thermal imaging for leak detection. Image Credits: Sensat Ultimately, it’s all about helping companies better plan and manage major infrastructure projects, assess risk, predict outcomes and optimize efficiency before building work even begins. While not a new concept, digital twinning technology has emerged as a major attraction for investors around the world, with the likes of Disperse, PassiveLogic and SiteAware all raising in the region of around $15 million each in recent months. Elsewhere, Amazon’s cloud juggernaut AWS last year launched IoT TwinMaker, a service that helps companies easily create digital twins of real-world systems. It’s worth noting that all this jibes with the burgeoning metaverse movement, too, which at its core is all about transporting the physical world into a virtual environment. But with Sensat and its ilk, they are, at least, working on commercial implementations that Meta can only dream about for now. Infrastructure as a service Prior to now, Sensat had raised around $15 million in funding, including a $10 million Series A round from 2019 that was led by Chinese tech titan Tencent. The company’s latest $20.5 million funding round was led by National Grid Partners (NGP), the investment arm of U.K. multinational energy giant National Grid — a strategic investment if ever there was one. Indeed, Sensat said that it plans to use its fresh cash injection to double down on infrastructure projects spanning energy, telecommunications and rail, specifically. But National Grid’s presence and experience of the U.S. market will also be vital for Sensat as it looks to extend its reach further across the Atlantic. Sensat co-founder and CEO James Dean said since its commercial launch in summer 2021, it has been deployed on infrastructure builds amounting to more than $150 billion. “Civil infrastructure is an inherently physical industry that lacks the automation and transparency that has transformed online industries,” Dean said in a statement to ZebethMedia. “Accounting for roughly 8% of global GDP and the backbone of every global economy, civil infrastructure plays a critical role in societal development and our daily lives. This behemoth industry is one of humanity’s oldest and will be here for as long as we exist. But right now, it is undergoing seismic structural changes that are revealing latent opportunities the likes of which dwarf those seen over the past two decades.”

Mercedes-Benz partners with Canadian mining company for CO2-neutral lithium hydroxide for EVs • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in electric vehicles, EV, mercedes, Mercedes-Benz, mining, TransportationNo Comments

Mercedes-Benz AG will source carbon-neutral lithium hydroxide to build batteries for electric vehicles from a Vancouver-based mining startup. Starting in 2026, the agreement with Rock Tech Lithium will provide Mercedes-Benz AG with an average of 10,000 tons of battery-grade lithium hydroxide per year — enough for around 150,000 electric vehicles. Mercedes-Benz, which sells about two million vehicles worldwide annually, plans to go all-electric by the end of the decade. Automakers worldwide are scrambling to secure the lithium supply required to produce enough electric vehicles to meet their 2030 targets, especially as they bring more of the battery pack manufacturing process in-house. In September, Chinese EV maker Nio bought a 12% stake in Australian lithium mining company Greenwing Resources as it gears up to make its own battery packs beginning in 2024. The partnership with Rock Tech “will play a key role in securing the lithium supply for our battery production in Europe,” Markus Schäfer, chief technology officer for Mercedes-Benz AG, said in a statement. Under the agreement, Rock Tech will supply battery-grade lithium hydroxide to the automaker’s battery partners — including Envision AESC in the U.S., and ACC and CATL in Europe — from a converter based in Guben, Germany. The automaker also works with Farasis and CATL for its China operations. Over a five-year term, the agreement represents roughly $1.5 billion in sales and more than 40% of the expected annual production from the planned converter capacity in Guben, according to Rock Tech. Terms require that Rock Tech source from sites audited by the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurances, according to Mercedes-Benz. Both companies are expected to cooperate in “creating a roadmap to achieving CO2 neutral production” of lithium hydroxide by the end of 2030.

Want to know how a dress looks on you? AIMIRR has your back… and front • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in AIMIRR, Commerce, Pritesh Kanani, Robotics & AI, Startups, virtual try onNo Comments

With many people buying clothes online versus in-store where they can try them on in the dressing room, finding the right fit can be a challenge. AIMIRR is taking on this challenge by bringing the dressing room to the customer with its real-time garment rendering technology that overlays images of clothing on a live video of the individual. Founder and CEO Pritesh Kanani was exhibiting Seattle-based AIMIRR’s technology as part of the Battlefield 200 at ZebethMedia Disrupt and announced that the company closed on an exclusive partnership with Chicago custom clothing marketplace Balodana Inc. for its fitting room technology. The company is also officially launching its first product and service in November after closing over 10 partnerships in Chicago and Seattle, including a collaboration with Fashionbar at Chicago Fashion Week, taking place this week. AIMIRR’s core virtual try-on technology shows the garment in 3D down to the size, shape and texture, including showing how the garment will fit as the individual moves. “We are not just designing apparel filters, we are developing a graphical digital fitting room experience that remains true to a shopper’s body over any online shopping website,” Kanani told ZebethMedia. He got the idea for the company in 2020 while he was getting married. His grandmother wanted to pass down her wedding dress to his fiancee, but then the global pandemic hit. With his grandmother in India and his fiancee in the United States, it was difficult to get the dress there and to know if it would fit. Kanani recalls looking for options to help and decided instead to leverage his seven years in the computer vision and graphics industry building vision video creation tools to start AIMIRR. He honed the idea while part of the University of Chicago’s Polsky Accelerator program through which he got $120,000 to develop the technology. The company has been operational for about four months now and has been offering a $49-per-month trial with a group of retailers to provide the technology on 10 of their garments. The clothing brands host the technology on their websites and are able to gather data about the fit and popularity of the garments from the app. Currently, customers scan a QR code with their phone to activate the technology using their device’s camera. Kanani said the next iteration will involve an embedded link to create the experience on a laptop. The company has largely been bootstrapped so far, but he has plans to attend two more accelerator programs and will raise a seed round in 2023. “Our next steps will be increasing revenue and getting from the small business segment to our enterprise partnership,” Kanani said. “In the next six to nine months we will complete our shipping to production on the partnership that we have, and then finish off with the partnerships we are targeting. Beyond that, we will acquire funding to get into an enterprise beyond those 10 garments.”

India fines Google $162 million for anti-competitive practices on Android • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in Google, Google India, Government & PolicyNo Comments

India’s antitrust watchdog fined Google $161.9 million on Thursday for anti-competitive practices related to Android mobile devices in “multiple markets” in a major setback for the search giant in the key overseas region. The Competition Commission of India, which began investigating Google several years ago after complaints from local firms, said in its order that Google requiring device manufacturers to pre-install its entire Google Mobile Suite and mandating prominent placement of those apps “amounts to imposition of unfair condition on the device manufacturers and thereby in contravention of the provisions of Section 4(2)(a)(i) of the Act.” India is Google’s largest market by users. The company in 2020 pledged to invest $10 billion in the South Asian market over the coming years and has backed the local telecom giants Jio Platforms and Airtel. The order also found: Google has perpetuated its dominant position in the online search market resulting in denial of market access for competing search apps in contravention of Section 4(2)(c) of the Act. Google has leveraged its dominant position in the app store market for Android OS to protect its position in online general search in contravention of Section 4(2)(e) of the Act. Google has leveraged its dominant position in the app store market for Android OS to enter as well as protect its position in non-OS specific web browser market through Google Chrome App and thereby contravened the provisions of Section 4(2)(e) of the Act. Google has leveraged its dominant position in the app store market for Android OS to enter as well as protect its position in OVHPs market through YouTube and thereby contravened provisions of Section 4(2)(e) of the Act. Google, by making pre-installation of Google’s proprietary apps (particularly Google Play Store) conditional upon signing of AFA/ ACC for all Android devices manufactured/ distributed/ marketed by device manufacturers, has reduced the ability and incentive of device manufacturers to develop and sell devices operating on alternative versions of Android i.e., Android forks and thereby limited technical or scientific development to the prejudice of the consumers, in violation of the provisions of Section 4(2)(b)(ii) of the Act. The watchdog said device manufacturers should not be forced to install Google’s bouquet of apps and the search giant should not deny access to its Play Services APIs and monetary and other incentives to vendors. (More to follow)