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Author : zebethcontrol

Solana’s web3 phone is an ‘opportunity’ against Google and Apple, co-founder says • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in Crypto, crypto ecosystem, cryptocurrencies, smartphones, SolanaNo Comments on Solana’s web3 phone is an ‘opportunity’ against Google and Apple, co-founder says • ZebethMedia

It’s been almost four months since the layer-1 blockchain Solana announced its web3-focused smartphone Saga and as the phone is approaching its official release date, the plan has shifted. “Our goal isn’t to sell 10 million units,” Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, said onstage at Disrupt 2022. “We would be very happy with 25,000 to 50,000 units sold in the next year, that would be awesome.” While it’s not easy to launch a new phone successfully — as we’ve seen with countless other companies’ efforts — Solana is looking to approach the launch differently, Yakovenko hinted. This is a tool to attract developers, Yakovenko added. “This is a developer play.” Prior to launching Solana, Yakovenko spent most of his professional career at Qualcomm and has helped other major tech companies like Facebook and Windows create mobile phones. It’s worth noting a bunch of those failed. But the main difference now is it’s not as capital intensive, Yakovenko said. “This is one of the moon shots,” Yakovenko said. “The reason why we can do this is because it’s cheap enough to try. It’s not going to break the bank or anything like that.” The phone market has matured to a point where teams can build a device quickly with small modifications to an Android so it can enable a web3 experience, Yakovenko noted. “The opportunity exists right now because we don’t need to get $10 million sales off the bat. We can actually target a very small niche audience which is crypto-heavy web3 users.” If there’s a web3 distribution channel for mobile crypto developers, it can open up opportunities for them to build experiences outside of the laptop-centric digital asset ecosystem, Yakovenko said. Users won’t have to sign into four different applications to create a crypto transaction, he joked. “Those are the flywheels we need for the next cycle.” “Imagine you have 50,000 to 100,000 people who trade daily on Magic Eden,” Yakovenko said. “That’s a more lucrative distribution channel for developers than the app stores with hundreds of millions of users. For web3 all the money is in these small niche groups right now.” Separately, the web3-focused phone will allow content creators and platforms to enable digital ownership rights to both organizations and users – opposed to handing over the 30% tax Apple and Google have for in app sales. The idea of true digital ownership means the digital items have to be treated like physical ones, and this isn’t something Apple or Google are built around, Yakovenko said. “They’re built around a rent-seeking model where all the content is owned by the creator and you as a user rent it. When you buy a video from Amazon, you don’t actually own it; everyone realizes that you don’t own it.” So neither Google nor Apple want to really take on web3 because true digital asset ownership disrupts their business models, Yakovenko said. “When you’re the content creator and you have an app on the iOS store, you can take the 30% fee and eat it and give it to Apple. Magic Eden can’t sell a $10,000 NFT for $13,000 on the iOS app, they can’t tack on tax nor can they eat it because that’ll destroy profits.” “The opportunity is here right now,” Yakovenko said. “Both Google and Apple, I don’t know what’s going to have to change internally for them to give up the 30% tax on apps. It’s just too good for them to give it up in the next five years.” So while those two mega companies continue implementing their 30% tax, there’s a “wedge that exists.” Saga plans to implement digital asset products and services, so users can transact with their cryptocurrency through the device, opposed to a laptop browser. In addition to the announcement of Saga, it is also launching Solana Mobile Stack, or SMS, which is a web3 layer for Solana built on the phone. “Let’s say crypto actually grows from 10 million monthly active users to 100 million monthly active users in the next five years I would imagine so does the SMS stack or the phone itself,” Yakovenko said. Then, maybe Google or Apple might change their mind on the tax and would allow for similar web3 experiences that Saga is hoping to have. “That would be a win,” Yakovenko said. “We would have won for everyone in crypto. That would be awesome.”

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RIF Robotics powers robots that inspect and organize surgical equipment • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in Battlefield 200, Biotech & Health, Disrupt, RIF Robotics, Robotics & AI, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments on RIF Robotics powers robots that inspect and organize surgical equipment • ZebethMedia

Several years ago, Kevin DeMarco’s aunt was an operating room nurse who asked DeMarco — knowing that he programmed robots for a living — if there was a robot that could prepare surgical equipment. After investigating the problem with a colleague at Georgia Tech, where DeMarco was working as a research faculty member, he decided to leave his position to create the robot that his aunt once mused about. In this quest, DeMarco ended up co-founding RIF Robotics, one of the startups in the ZebethMedia Disrupt Battlefield 200. Led by DeMarco, Sergio García-Vergara and a third co-founder, Collin Farill, who’s an industrial designer by trade, RIF Robotics seeks to use a combination of AI and robotics to relieve healthcare workers of the burden of mundane tasks so they can focus on clinical work. Image Credits: RIF Robotics Sterile processing — the cleaning of medical equipment — is also tough on technicians performing it, who have to spend hours each day inspecting and cleaning tools. Some equipment requires over 100 steps to disinfect, and the pace in busy hospitals can be relentless. The costs can add up, too. One study estimates that just 20 instrument errors that end up creating delays in the operating room can cost a hospital as much as $3,385. Extrapolating out to a year, the cost to the hospital would be about $48,000, the research found. RIF isn’t tackling cleaning. But the startup claims its prototype product, which was developed in less than two months, can save surgeons time by identifying, classifying and manipulating four different instruments and assembling a small surgical tray. Two machine learning systems — an image segmentation system and an object classifier, trained on sets of both real and synthetic images of surgical tools — help a robotic manipulator arm grasp and move the instruments. “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,” DeMarco told ZebethMedia in an interview. “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: RIF Robotics Future prototypes will be able to recognize more tools and determine if there’s any leftover “bioburden” (i.e., blood and bone) on instrument surfaces and evaluate instruments’ sharpness and overall condition. But even in its current form, DeMarco believes that RIF has built a product hospitals would use. “Three Atlanta hospitals and the Veterans Affairs are interested in our product,” he said. “We have a collaborative research and development agreement with the Veterans Affairs, which allows us to conduct customer discovery and pilot studies at their facilities … [We’ll deploy] three alpha versions of our systems at local Atlanta hospitals, where we already have existing connections.” RIF is currently bootstrapping — DeMarco claims that the company has a burn rate of less than $1,000 per month. But the team isn’t naïve about the long road ahead. RIF is going after an $800,000 debt pre-seed round and hopes to hire a medical device industry expert after the round concludes. The company, which is pre-revenue, also expects to require three rounds of funding and close to four years before it reaches profitability. RIF Robotics’ co-founders pose for a photograph in scrubs. Image Credits: RIF Robotics There’s also competition from vendors like RST Automation, which sells a semi-automated medical tool identification and organization system. Steris and R-Solution Medical — two other rivals, albeit not direct ones — are developing robots to transport and store surgical trays and equipment. DeMarco claims that RIF’s solution is more capable. But the proof will be in the pudding — RIF aims to turn its prototype into a manufacturable product by fall 2023. “The healthcare industry is starving for innovation,” DeMarco said. “We are protecting ourselves from the potential headwinds by developing products and solutions that are directly asked for by the industry and the end users.”

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US to launch ‘labeling’ rating program for internet-connected devices in 2023 • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in cybersecurity, Internet of Things, SecurityNo Comments on US to launch ‘labeling’ rating program for internet-connected devices in 2023 • ZebethMedia

The Biden administration said it will launch a cybersecurity labeling program for consumer Internet of Things devices starting in 2023 in an effort to protect Americans from “significant national security risks.” It’s no secret that IoT devices generally have weak security postures. Weak default passwords have allowed botnet operators to hijack insecure routers to pummel victims with floods of internet traffic, knocking entire websites and networks offline. Other malicious hackers target IoT devices as a way to get a foot into a victim’s network, allowing them to launch attacks or plant malware from the inside. As American consumers continue to fill their homes with more of these potentially insecure devices, from routers and smart speakers to internet-connected door locks and security cameras, the U.S. government wants to help educate them about the security risks. Inspired by Energy Star, a labeling program operated by Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy to promote energy efficiency, the White House is planning to roll out a similar IoT labeling program to the “highest-risk” devices starting next year, a senior Biden administration official said on Wednesday following a National Security Council meeting with consumer product associations and device manufacturers. Attendees at the meeting included White House cyber official Anne Neuberger, FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, National Cyber Director Chris Inglis and Sen. Angus King, alongside leaders from Google, Amazon, Samsung, Sony and others. The initiative, described by White House officials as “Energy Star for cyber,” will help Americans to recognize whether devices meet a set of basic cybersecurity standards devised by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Though specifics of the program have not yet been confirmed, the administration said it will “keep things simple.” The labels, which will be “globally recognized” and debut on devices such as routers and home cameras, will take the form of a “barcode” that users can scan using their smartphone rather than a static paper label, the administration official said. The scanned barcode will link to information based on standards, such as software updating policies, data encryption and vulnerability remediation. The announcement comes after the White House last year ordered NIST and the FTC to explore two labeling pilot programs on cybersecurity capabilities for IoT devices. It also comes after the U.K. government last year introduced an IoT security bill in Parliament, requiring device manufacturers, importers, and distributors to meet certain cybersecurity standards.

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Here are the 5 finalists of Startup Battlefield at Disrupt 2022 • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in Battlefield, battlefield 2022, Disrupt, StartupsNo Comments on Here are the 5 finalists of Startup Battlefield at Disrupt 2022 • ZebethMedia

During the last two days, 20 startups pitched their companies as part of ZebethMedia’s Startup Battlefield at Disrupt 2022. These 20 companies were selected as the best of the brand-new Startup Battlefield 200 and competed for a chance to take home Battlefield Cup and $100,000. ZebethMedia editors and expert judges winnowed them down to the following five finalists who will be presenting in front of a whole new panel of judges on the last day of Disrupt, October 20, 2022: Advanced Ionics Advanced Ionics is striving to drive down the price of green hydrogen by slashing how much electricity is needed for electrolysis by as much as 50%. That’s an admirable goal, because despite all the talk of hydrogen as a “fuel of the future,” the industry is still filthy for the most part — driving climate chaos via pollution-spewing production methods. Most of the hydrogen gas that humans produce is “grey“; a classification that means the producers rely on methane (or worse, burning coal) to isolate the element for use in fertilizer and as fuel. But as awareness of climate change and interest in hydrogen-powered freight grows, so too has demand for an environmentally friendlier alternative. In contrast to the grey stuff, “green” hydrogen taps renewable energy and electrolysis to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. It’s a superior production method as far as the climate is concerned, but it is also costly because it demands a ton of clean energy. AppMap Boston-based AppMap wants to stop bad code from ever making it into production. The open source dynamic runtime code analysis tool, which the startup claims is the first of its kind, was built on the simple idea that developers should be able to see the behavior of software as they write it so they can prevent problems when the software runs. Unlike static analysis tools that don’t show runtime information, AppMap — which was built from the ground up over a three-year period — runs within the code editor to show developers which components are communicating with which components, at what throughput and latency, at what network speed and whether there are any errors between them, enabling developers to get actionable insights and make improvements quicker than before. Intropic Materials Plastics are great for so many things, but they stay around for an awfully long time. Intropic leaps to the rescue with a set of enzymes that can be added to plastics at the very beginning of their life cycle, before it is even turned into products. The additives the company makes have been proof-of-concept tested and it wants to upend how plastics are made and disposed of. Intropic’s additives make many of the most commonly used plastics biodegradable in normal commercial composting. The enzymes are added to the pellets or powders that are used in the normal course of plastic production. This gives plastics new, biodegradable capabilities without changing the manufacturing processes used to create plastic products. At the end of the lifecycle, when it’s time to get rid of the material, the products can be composted into their component parts. Minerva Lithium Minerva Lithium has produced Nano Mosaic, a coordinated polymer framework that looks a bit like black gravel and extracts critical materials from brine in just three days. Minerva says that it can extract one metric ton of lithium using just 30,000 gallons of water, and it can do it in three days. Evaporative brine processing needs to evaporate 500,000 gallons of water to get to the same amount of lithium. Just one gram of this absorbent material has a surface area equal to that of a soccer pitch, which should give you an idea of just how little you’d need to extract a large amount of minerals. Swap Robotics Swap Robotics manufactures electric grass-cutting and snow removal robots and detailed onstage how it’s making sustainable outdoor work equipment. For the next few years, 95% of the startup’s focus will be on facilitating robots that cut grass and vegetation on 1,000+ acre utility-scale solar farms. The company’s secondary focus is sidewalk snow plowing. The team decided it would be their mission to create a solution that could sustainably cut grass in a controlled environment. Swap Robotics was aware that solar vegetation cutting comes with its challenges, as it requires a unique type of cutting deck that is able to get underneath solar panels, and recognized that a robotic solution could address the problem.

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Theneo wants to bring Stripe-like API documentation to all developers • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in API documentation, Battlefield 200, Disrupt, Enterprise, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, TheneoNo Comments on Theneo wants to bring Stripe-like API documentation to all developers • ZebethMedia

A new company is taking a leaf out of Stripe’s API playbook with a platform that makes it easy for any company to create clear API documentation, while also allowing non-technical team members to contribute to the process. Demoing as part of the Battlefield 200 cohort at TC Disrupt this week, ZebethMedia met up with Theneo to find out how they plan to get their slice of the $4.5 billion API management market — a figure that’s predicted to rise to nearly $14 billion within five years. APIs, or “application programming interfaces,” are the glue that hold most modern software together. They’re what allow Uber to offer in-app messaging without building the entire infrastructure themselves from scratch, fitness apps to visualize your running history through maps and online merchants to support payments powered by Stripe. Internally, companies also create their own APIs to connect all manner of back-end systems and data stores. In short, APIs are the hidden, often unsung heroes of the modern technological era. But creating an API that’s easy to use and adopt by developers comes with inherent challenges. It isn’t enough to just build the API — its features, functionality and deployment instructions need to be recorded and presented in a format that’s easy to follow. Getting the API documentation right is imperative, which is where Theneo is hoping to make its mark. Sample API documentation from Theneo. Image Credits: Theneo Stripe-like API docs Theneo co-founder and CEO Ana Robakidze said that she’d worked on hundreds of APIs in a previous role heading up an engineering team, concluding that quality API documentation is often lacking. “I personally witnessed the effect API documentation had on our project’s delivery, cost, and efficiency,” Robakidze said. “As a result, as a team leader, I spent a considerable amount of time and effort searching for a tool that would assist us in creating excellent API documentation — similar to what Stripe has, as it is considered one of the best in the industry. The problem with most of the tools is that they were either time-consuming or had too many limitations.” The root of the problem, according to Robakidze, is that developers aren’t necessarily technical writers — they’d much rather “create another API than document it,” she said. Consequently, a lot of internal APIs specifically (i.e. APIs built for connecting a company’s internal systems and apps) either go completely undocumented, or if they are documented, aren’t synchronized and maintained as the API evolves. This issue is compounded as developers come and go within a company, often leading to an unwieldy mess. “Theneo was created through frustration, with the aim of making high-quality API documentation quick to generate, and simple to maintain,” Robakidze said. With Theneo, developers connect their GitHub repository or upload their API collection, and Theneo then analyzes everything and delivers the required API documentation. It also offers an AI assistant that uses natural language processing (NLP) to improve the documentation, including automatically describing the different API attributes, which are basically the parts of the API specification that developers need to request, send and delete data, and so on. So a “create customer” object, for example, contains various attributes each with a definition so that the user (i.e. developer) knows exactly what the attribute is for. “Our AI assistant develops descriptions for these fields, which often take a developer or technical writer a significant amount of time to create, especially when there are thousands of fields in your APIs,” Robakidze explained. Theneo: Sample API document showing fields / attribute descriptions. Image Credits: Theneo While Theneo is designed to automate the process as much as possible, it’s clearly not going to deliver a gift-wrapped API documentation entirely off its own volition — it acknowledges that developers and other team members will need to fine-tune formats and wording, add more images or whatever it needs. “We analyze the API, parse it, and then return an already well-structured API doc,” Robakidze said. “The user can then choose whether to add more details, such as images, and different API widgets, and add team members so they can collaborate.” While the engine underpinning Theneo is the same across both internal and external APIs, the company provides additional tooling for the latter, acknowledging that third-party developers appreciate a slicker interface that’s easier to follow. So this basically amounts to a white-label product that can be tailored and branded in accordance with the company’s requirements. In terms of pricing, Theneo currently has a basic plan that costs around $20 per month per user, rising to $45 per month for unlimited API projects on the business plan. It also offers an enterprise plan that unlocks features such as customized branding and the ability to self-host. It’s also working on a completely free version, though Robakidze said this wasn’t ready for prime time quite yet. Theneo co-founder and CEO Ana Robakidze. Funding The Y Combinator (YC) graduate has already raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding since it was founded exactly a year ago, and this week confirmed it’s in the process of raising further funding. And it also unveiled an updated documentation editor, which Robakidze described as something akin to “Figma for APIs,” designed for everyone involved in a software project to contribute, regardless of their technical prowess. “We realized that there are multiple players when it comes to building APIs or API docs, and that it is crucial for these users to collaborate,” Robakidze explained. “Similar to what Figma did with collaboration, our API documentation editor allows users to collaborate, so managers and non-technical members can easily work together on content and produce high-quality documents.” Robakidze said that the company is pretty much open to working with any size and type of business, and it’s currently working with some 3,000 companies, spanning everything from fintechs and government agencies to agriculture companies. “Our biggest customers are fintech companies, usually with 20-plus developers,” Robakidze said. It’s somewhat fitting that Theneo is seeing particular traction within fintech, given that it’s looking

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Skuad manages hiring and compliance for building distributed teams • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in distributed teams, hiring, Singapore, Skuad, Southeast Asia, StartupsNo Comments on Skuad manages hiring and compliance for building distributed teams • ZebethMedia

Singapore-based Skuad helps companies hire employees in different countries while staying compliant with local employment regulations and processing cross-border payroll. The startup announced today it has raised $15 million in Series A funding. Skuad has signed up more than 350 employers so far, mostly from North America, Europe and Southeast Asia. This funding round, which brings Skuad’s total raised to $19 million, was led by NMVM and two global payments platforms. It also included participation from returning investors Beenext and Anthemis, plus angel investors Jitendra Gupta, Jupiter founder; Pine Labs CEO Amrish Rau; Credit founder Kunal Shah; Alok Mittal, co-founder and CEO of Indifi; Varun Mittal and Rafael Lopez. Skuad was conceptualized just before the pandemic in 2019 by founder Sundeep Sahi with the aim of simplifying international hiring. Since then, the company’s focus has been on helping employers deal with issues that make building distributed teams challenging, like variations in regulations from market to market, international payrolls and remote onboarding. Skuad also serves as a platform for workers to find employment. Sahi told ZebethMedia that traditional hiring and recruiting methods aren’t sufficient to deal with creating a team of people around the world. “Building distributed teams or hiring in another country requires you to establish a subsidiary, register as an entity, open local bank accounts, stay up-to-date with local employment laws, as well as hire local HR, legal and payroll teams. This process often takes months, if not years, and requires an investment of thousands of dollar,” he said. Skuad lets companies hire, onboard and pay employees and contractors in more than 160 countries without needing to set up local entities, and it manages local compliances, well also providing country-specific benefits and insurance packages. Most of its customers are from the tech and consulting industries that employ digital workers in different geographies to fill a talent gap or scale internationally. The startup now has customers from 34 countries, talent placed in about 94 companies and 3x growth in ARR since January 2022. One of Skuad’s clients is Indonesian fintech Akseleran, which needed to fill tech openings. It built a strong candidate funnel through a vetted talent portal called allremote.in, social job networks, recruiters and agencies. Skuad serves as the legal employer in India, since Akseleran doesn’t have a legal entity in the country, and manages local compliance for payments, taxes and benefits. Skuad monetizes through pricing plans that start at $199 per employee per month for payroll and $499 per employee per month for talent found through the platform or 12% of the compensation of the employee, whichever is higher. The company is currently finalizing its acquisition of Codejudge, a data-focused talent assessment platform that automates tech interviews, to expand it hiring and onboarding capabilities. Some competitors in the remote hiring space include Deel, Remote, Globalization Partners and Multiplier. Skuad serves as a hybrid of talent platforms, like Turing and Toptal, but with a focus on remote full-time jobs that are enabled by its network of local entities that process payroll compliantly, like Deel and Remote do. Sahi says it differentiates with its process transparency and the size of its tech-enabled talent platform, which can be used to manage the entire employment lifecycle.

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World’s largest Black-led VC fund leads $4M seed round for Nigerian retail automation startup • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in Daily Crunch, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments on World’s largest Black-led VC fund leads $4M seed round for Nigerian retail automation startup • ZebethMedia

To get a roundup of ZebethMedia’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. What’s uuuuup, you wonderful humans. We’re psyched to be reporting live from ZebethMedia Disrupt — without ignoring the rest of the world, natch. It’s been a super fun day, and we’re here to share some delightful morsels of news and shenanigans with you! — Christine and Haje The ZebethMedia Top 3 Go digital: Manual business processes were the norm, so it’s understandable that stepping away from what you know can be difficult. Enter Bumpa, a Nigerian retail automation platform that wants to do the heavy lifting for companies eyeing more digital operations. Helping it along is $4 million in new capital from Base10 Partners, Tage reports. Holiday, celebrate: The latest Airbnb ads show you can get just about any kind of house — epic pools, sleep on the side of a mountain, you name it — so it’s no surprise that vacation rental startups are popular. Case in point, Holidu grabbed $98 million in new funding to keep growing its vacation rentals business in Europe, Natasha L writes. Delivery system: Tage is back with another top story today, this time on MaxAB’s $40 million raise. The Egyptian e-commerce platform helps facilitate the grocery store relationship with suppliers. They have made 150,000 of those connections since 2018. Startups and VC Nourish Ingredients, a food tech company that creates animal-free fats using synthetic biology, secured $28.6 million in Series A funding, Christine reports. The round was led by Horizons Ventures and supported by Main Sequence Ventures and Hostplus. The multidecade rise in healthcare costs isn’t expected to reverse course any time soon. In search of a fix, Alaffia Health was founded in 2020. It’s one of the startups participating in the ZebethMedia Disrupt Battlefield 200, and it uses machine learning to try to identify fraud, waste and abuse in healthcare claims, Kyle reports. And here’s more from our Greatest Hits album from the past 24 hours: Startup Battlefield It’s day two of Disrupt and that means the second day of the Battlefield competition. Twenty companies pitched in all, and here’s who took the stage today: Ally Robotics: The company has developed a combination hardware and software solution designed to make it easier to deploy these automated solutions for those without coding/robotics experience. Nat4bio: Makes food-grade coating to protect fruit from microscopic threat. Minerva Lithium: Uses absorbent material to change the way we extract lithium. Reverion: Has developed a way to get more electricity out of biogas and existing fuel-cell technology. Incooling: Is building servers that use liquid to cool down. Intropic Materials: Intropic helps single-use plastics decompose from the inside out. BetterData: BetterData taps the blockchain to help create better synthetic data. Labby: Wants to make milk healthier and cows happier with better sensors. Advanced Ionics: Is striving to drive down the price of green hydrogen by slashing how much electricity is needed for electrolysis by as much as 50%. Kayhan Space: Kayhan Space is making orbit safer with timely, automatic collision warnings for satellites. Tune in to ZebethMedia.com tomorrow to watch the finalists pitch one more time before a panel of judges to find out who will take home this year’s Disrupt Cup and $100,000. News drop from Disrupt The Great Migration and the next 10-year cycle in cloud Image Credits: Tim Robberts (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Now that the public cloud market has undergone a correction after years of growth, will seasoned workers look for greener pastures at smaller companies? According to Andy Stinnes, general partner at Cloud Apps Capital Partners, we’re entering a decade-long cycle that will spark a Great Migration of talent. “The answer is clear once you think about it,” he says. “Companies are extending cash runways, and cloud leaders are feeling that pain as they lay off parts of their teams and face even more work and pressure.” A few more for you: ZebethMedia+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription! Big Tech Inc. Similar to our story from yesterday, Kyle brings us another one about how Adobe continues to unveil new features powered by artificial intelligence, including the ability to paste objects into photos and add realistic lighting and shadows. He mentions that he’s “no Photoshop wizard” but that Adobe told him “that compositing can be a heavily manual, tedious and time-consuming process,” and the new prototype will do away with that. And five more for you: Driving into acquisition: Mullen Automotive acquires ELMS for $240 million in a deal that helps out the bankrupt company, but also enables Mullen to build up to 50,000 electric vehicles each year, Jaclyn reports. Taking on TikTok: Pinterest is having a go at TikTok, of all social media platforms, by partnering with record labels so that users can add popular music to their “Idea Pins.” Sarah has more. Move over drivers, robots coming through: In a sign that the Alphabet subsidiary is ready for prime-time, Waymo tells us it plans to launch a robotaxi service in Los Angeles once it clears some regulatory hurdles, Kirsten writes. Home is where the insurance is: Amazon is entering the home insurance marketplace game in the United Kingdom by launching an insurance comparison site, Ivan reports. Klarna, Klarna, Klarna, Klarna, Klarna Kameleon: It’s been a while since we were able to use that, and it still does not disappoint. The buy now, pay later platform now has a new creator app for retailers and influencers to collaborate on features and shoppable video, Lauren writes.

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Date night? Relationship app Sparks wants to help you plan a lovely evening • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in Apps, Battlefield 200, Disrupt, sparks, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments on Date night? Relationship app Sparks wants to help you plan a lovely evening • ZebethMedia

There’s an abundance of dating apps on the market, but there aren’t many apps that aim to keep the spark alive after you enter a relationship. Enter Sparks, an app catering to existing couples looking to introduce new and fun experiences to their lives. The Barcelona-based startup, which exhibited as part of the Battlefield 200 at ZebethMedia Disrupt, debuted as an MVP in May 2021 and officially launched this week. The startup was founded by CEO Ankit Nayal, who came up with the idea for Sparks after reflecting on his relationship with his partner. He found that he and his partner were often too busy to find things to do together, and that it was impossible to find a new activity that they were both interested in. Drawing on this experience, Nayal decided to create an app focused on helping couples enhance their relationships by finding new experiences, whether it’s choosing a new movie, recipe, game, restaurant or vacation. “There are so many apps to help you find a partner,” Nayal told ZebethMedia. “But once you find a partner, you leave those apps and there’s nothing left to help you in your relationship. That’s where I noticed a gap and wondered why we don’t have a tool focused on improving relationships.” Some may wonder why they need an app to help them make decisions with their partner. To that, Nayal says the app isn’t trying to replace communication between couples, it’s instead looking to get rid of the hassle of planning dates or discovering new experiences. Image Credits: Sparks Sparks offers a curated selection of experiences and date ideas that you and your partner can parse through in a Tinder-like swipe interface. You can swipe through movie suggestions, new recipes, vacation ideas, etch. Once there’s a match, the app will let you know there’s something that both you and your partner are interested in doing. The startup is looking to raise a pre-seed round in the first quarter of 2023 and plans to use the funding to add more features to the app, while also integrating a deeper personalized experience for couples. In terms of the future, Nayal says he sees Sparks turning into a network of super-apps that are able to help couples in additional ways. “Long term, we have bigger goals,” Nayal said. “Living in China and operating businesses there, we got well-versed with the ecosystem of super-apps and one company being the holder of multiple key apps. We want to bring the same, but to relationships. Ideally we see ourselves creating different faces of Sparks, such as Sparks: The Long Distance Relationship App, The Parents App, The Couples Finance App and so on.”

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Rivian has fixed a ‘significant majority’ of its recalled vehicles • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in Disrupt, RJ Scaringe, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, TransportationNo Comments on Rivian has fixed a ‘significant majority’ of its recalled vehicles • ZebethMedia

RJ Scaringe, CEO and founder of electric vehicle maker Rivian, said Wednesday the company has fixed a “significant majority” of the more than 12,000 vehicles that were recalled earlier this month. On the ZebethMedia Disrupt stage, Scaringe gave the audience a postmortem on how Rivian solved the issue that caused the company to voluntarily recall the thousands of vehicles that had been delivered with a loose fastener. The fastener connects the front upper control arm and steering knuckle. Rivian issued the recall because of concerns it was not sufficiently torqued on certain vehicles. This could cause loose and vibrating tires, wheel tilt and loss of steering control. “There’s thousands of parts in the vehicle, and so there are certain types of joints which we call safety critical joints or critical joints, and every one of those has a torque measurement,” said Scaringe. “So when you put the fastener on, we actually record the torque, it goes into a database and we have traceability. And what had happened on this was the traceability element of this was lost in some of the way that the back end was working, so we had to check that.” Scaringe said Rivian has traceability on hundreds of fasteners in the vehicle, and the issue shouldn’t happen again. “Every manufacturer deals with some version of this and so for us, this was something where we identified a potential issue we said we want to get out as early as possible,” said Scaringe. “So the moment we saw a potential issue, we made a decision. It was on a Friday afternoon to make this move. And by Friday evening, repairs are underway. And we worked through a significant majority of the vehicles over the next 10 days.” Scaringe said Rivian’s direct-to-consumer model allowed the company to move quickly, rather than having to go through third parties or dealers. “We literally mobilized our whole service network to say let’s go move through these vehicles really quickly,” said Scaringe. “In this case, it was like a minute fix. It’s just checking the torque on a fastener.” Despite obvious frustration from customers at having to go through a vehicle recall, Scaringe said reaction has been positive. “We were authentic about it, we didn’t we didn’t sugarcoat it,” he said. “We said we’re gonna go fix this. And so there actually has been really quite positive.”

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