Author : zebethcontrol

Investment in space continues to drop, but some sectors more resilient than others, report finds • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in Space, Space CapitalNo Comments

Private investment in space continues to be battered by larger macro-economic trends, like high interest rates and inflation, but not all sectors of the space industry are affected equally, a new report from New York-based VC firm Space Capital found. While broader market conditions are disproportionately affecting funding in deep tech — which includes high capex industries like launch and “emerging industries” (think private space stations and orbital debris mitigation) — geospatial intelligence and remote sensing companies are well positioned to withstand these trends, the quarterly report found. Overall, $3.4 billion was invested in 79 space companies this quarter, representing a 44% decline from the same period last year. While total investment declined, early-stage investments increased by 24% versus the same period. Total rounds also saw a 26% decrease YTD compared to the same quarter last year. In some ways, the large drop in investing seems to be a correction to what Space Capital founder and managing partner Chad Anderson called the “market mania and irrational exuberance” of 2021, where companies were closing huge deals at sky-high valuations. Last year saw record investment in emerging industries “and most of that was invested by VCs who were investing in the space economy for the first time,” Anderson said. “Nobody was doing any diligence,” he said. “This year, everyone’s tune has completely changed. Everywhere you go, every VC is talking about the importance of diligence.” This market correction was likely even if the larger macro trends were not in place, Anderson said, but the Fed raising interest rates no doubt had a direct impact on the pricing of venture deals and the larger private market. While investing dropped, it’s not all bad news: Anderson said he’s starting to see a pickup in deals, with more capital likely being deployed in the next quarter. Space technologies that play an increasingly important role in the global economy, like remote sensing, are also likely to grow over the coming years. “This is demonstrating how the space economy is really counter-cyclical and resilient to some of these macro market conditions,” Anderson said. “As the world becomes more dynamic and more uncertain, with the war in Ukraine, geopolitical issues elsewhere, supply chain issues, enterprises and governments want more information, not less. These companies are providing that critical information to them.” Space Capital tracks 1,753 companies that have raised a cumulative $267.9 billion over the past 10 years. The report divides the space industry into three categories: infrastructure (with a subsection, emerging industries); distribution; and application. Much of the investing activity in launch was in later-stage companies, while early-stage rounds made up over three-quarters of the investment in emerging industries. The leading verticals in emerging industries were space stations, “transport” (like ispace’s lunar landers) and debris mitigation.

Circular Genomics uses RNA to stop depression meds being a guessing game • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in Battlefield, battlefield 2022, Biotech & Health, circular genomics, Disrupt, rna, StartupsNo Comments

For many people who live with depression, medication is an important part of managing the condition. But knowing which will work for you can be a difficult months-long process. Circular Genomics claims its new form of genetic testing can identify which medications will work for a patient in a fraction of that time. As some of our readers no doubt already know — depression affects hundreds of millions, after all — finding the right medication is basically a crap shoot. Your provider picks one that they think meets your needs, then slowly ramps up the dose over a month or two, and if it doesn’t work, ramps it down again and tries a new one. If you’re lucky, the first one works; if not, it could be many months before you find a working dose — if it isn’t a resistant condition. And all that time you’re living with inadequately treated depression, possibly even exacerbated by the disruptive process of a constantly shifting drug regimen. Circular Genomics, which presented today as part of the Startup Battlefield at ZebethMedia Disrupt, is taking aim at this huge problem with a new testing method that relies on a molecule in our body we’ve known about for decades but only recently started paying attention to: circular RNA. DNA, as we all know, encodes our genes using a base code; when it’s time to actually make things, that code is processed and it produces RNA, which more directly describes the proteins that will eventually be created, but is much easier to read than either DNA or the proteins themselves. The problem with RNA is that it degrades quickly, more or less by design: the ends of each strand are reactive and the whole thing starts getting unraveled by enzymes within a few hours. But sometimes those two ends join and form “circular RNA”: the same molecule, but it lasts much, much longer. “Circular types were discovered 5-10 years ago; we’ve known they existed since the 70s, but until deep sequencing technologies advanced we were never able to pull them out of the data,” explained Circular Genomics co-founder and president Alexander Hafez. “The stability increases substantially, you go from 18-24 hours to a week.” This matters because if you want to know what’s going on in the brain, RNA expression is your best bet — but you can’t extract it directly, and by the time blood carries it out of the brain, it’s already started to fall apart. DNA and protein analysis aren’t much help either. But with the advent of new sequencing tools, that’s all about to change. “Circular RNA is the first reliable biomarker that lets us look at brain conditions,” Hafez said. Depression is the first target, in particular what type of medication would likely work best for a person. The company has undergone two clinical studies so far: “We used blood samples, and got an idea of class response — for example, whether they would respond to an SSRI or not. Then we did another where we were able to look at whether a patient would respond to Zoloft specifically.” (Zoloft is a commonly prescribed antidepressant.) Having a starting place for what medication is mostly likely to work cuts out a huge amount of unnecessary care: not just the meds themselves but appointments, paperwork, insurance scuffles, risk of hospitalization, and so on. The all-inclusive cost of 6-12 months of care as someone works through the options is considerable, and that’s without reckoning with the more subjective costs of the process. Hafez did say that circular RNA is rapidly expanding its presence in the biotech world. “When we first started the company, there weren’t a lot of publications available; now it seems like every week there’s an article about how they’re useful biomarkers for cancers and other things.” Circular Genomics has a few patents pending, though, and are holding onto a some of the IP, like the actual identification process — this isn’t something anyone can just do with a sequencer and a bit of free time. The company is currently working on getting additional clinical testing done so the product can be confidently brought to market. But there are other applications on the horizon as well. Hafez said that they may also have located biomarkers for depression itself — something that could be immensely helpful. “Our society has a big stigma around depression diagnosis,” and mental illness in general, he said. But if depression, like so many other conditions, could be shown on a simple blood test, it would help remove that stigma. People who have trouble accepting depression as the cause of their or another’s experiences — or stubborn insurance companies, for that matter — may find a + sign on a blood test more convincing. Of course that opens the door to requiring biological markers as proof of mental illness, but we can cross that bridge when we get there. In the meantime the company is still working out the best way to get the technology in patients’ hands. At first it may be an optional test not covered by insurance, with a cost around $1,000. Obviously that’s not accessible to everyone, but like many new approaches not yet qualified for reimbursement, there are grants and other offsets that can be brought into play if the benefits are substantial.

Apple unveils new entry-level iPad that looks just like the iPad Pro • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in Apple, Gadgets, iPad, tabletNo Comments

Apple released a new version of its entry-level iPad that Apple simply calls “the iPad.” It’s a dramatic refresh as Apple is swapping the familiar design with rounded edges and a home button. Instead, the iPad now looks more like the iPad Air and iPad Pro. But there are some compromises. The new iPad starts at $449, which is much more expensive than the previous version that costs $329. But you get a larger 10.9-inch display (2360×1640 resolution), better specs and compatibility with some new accessories. It comes in four different colors — blue, pink, yellow and silver. Let’s stat with specifications. Apple is updating the system-on-a-chip in the device and swapping the A13 with an A14 Bionic. It’s the same system-on-a-chip that you can find in the iPhone 12 lineup. There are two cameras on the device — the front-facing camera is a 12MP ultrawide camera and it is now integrated in the landscape edge of the iPad, which will make you look better when you make video calls in landscape mode. On the back of the device, there is another 12MP camera. This iPad still supports Touch ID. In order to use it, you have to rest your finger on the the top button. For the first time, the entry-level iPad is getting a USB-C port for charging and various accessories. This device still supports the first-generation Apple Pencil with its built-in Lightning connector. And that’s probably the biggest drawback of the new device. Yes, you will need an adapter to charge the Lightning pencil with your new iPad. If you never had an Apple Pencil, Apple now includes this adapter with newly sold first-generation Apple Pencils. But if you already have a Pencil, you’ll have to pay $9 to get a USB-C to Apple Pencil adapter. You plug the Pencil on one side and you plug a USB-C cable on the other side. And it looks like this: Image Credits: Apple On the connectivity front, the iPad supports Wi-Fi 6 and you can also get an iPad with cellular connectivity that supports 5G networks. When it comes to accessories, Apple has designed a new Magic Keyboard Folio with a trackpad. It features full-size keys with 1 mm of travel and a row of function keys to adjust the volume, control media and more. Interestingly, the Magic Keyboard Folio is a two-piece accessory. You can attach the keyboard at the bottom of the device. The back cover with a built-in stand is a separate piece that magnetically attaches to the back of the device. Users can also fold the keyboard behind the device when not in use. This keyboard is quite expensive as the Magic Keyboard Folio costs $249. There is also a keyboard-less version of the cover for $79. Orders for the new iPad starts today and the device will be available on October 26. Image Credits: Apple

Drivetrain is the “Google Maps for business growth” • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in accounting, business growth, DRIVETRAIN, financial planning, StartupsNo Comments

Businesses usually plot their growth strategies on spreadsheets, but Drivetrain wants to provide a faster alternative for financial planning and decision making. The startup, which calls itself “Google Maps for business growth,” announced today that it has raised $15 million from Elevation Capital, Jungle Ventures and Venture Highway, plus 25 angel investors. One of Drivetrain’s goals is to help companies identify performance issues before it affects their finances. It integrates with 200 business tools, including Salesforce, Netsuite, Quickbooks, Workday and Looker, and delivers a “system of metrics” in simple formulas, to help companies create financial models and visualizations. Drivetrain currently focuses on finance teams at mid-market and enterprise B2B tech businesses. CEO Alok Goel, co-founded Drivetrain with CTO Tarkeshwar Thakur, was formerly a partner at Elevation Capital, which has $670 million assets under management. During his six years at the firm, Goel evaluated hundreds of SaaS companies and served on many of their boards. “One question that fascinated me was ‘what makes the execution of a company predictable’? How does a company consistently achieve targets quarter after quarter? Why do some companies grow faster while others get stuck?” he said. He saw that top-performing companies used data in their decision making. “Fundamentally because complex businesses like SaaS have this jigsaw nature to them, where pieces need to fall in place at the right time for an outcome to occur later,” Goel added. “This requires a systems thinking and a data driven approach.” Drivetrain’s software showing revenue and customer buildup report with line items for analysis and insights By connecting to different software, Drivetrain is able to aggregate data and make it easier for teams to understand, aiding them as they create financial plans, do plan-versus-actual tracking, create what-if scenarios and perform root cause analysis. To do that, Drivetrain created a language called DTML (Drivetrain Modeling Language), or programs that capture how businesses are run in an easy-to-understand spreadsheet user interface. One of its clients, Airmeet, used Drivetrain to cut down on the time it spent exporting and consolidating data across its Quickbooks accounts, Excel files and Chargebee data. By automating its financial reporting and monthly forecasting, Airtrain was able to make its financial data and business metrics accessible to everyone, increasing collaboration because teams no longer had to wait for monthly reports from the finance team. Drivetrain’s team Another client, MindTickle, used Drivetrain to automate data gathering and consolidation for its sales, marketing and revenue operations teams. This makes accurate numbers accessible at all times, and means employees no longer have to go through reams of individual spreadsheets. There are legacy tools like Anaplan and Adaptive for enterprise users, but Goel says they require heavy customization and consultants to implement over a 6 to 12 months period. Drivetrain improves on the process by integrating quickly with ERPs, CRMs, marketing software and HRIS. Goel says it is usually ready to use in two to four weeks, with customers expanding into new use cases, like sales performance management, headcount planning and what-if scenarios, after they get a handle on its planning and monitoring modules. In a prepared statement, Venture Highway partner Priya Mohan said, “We have struggled to put together Excel sheets for portfolio companies to predict revenue growth, structure the go-to-market plan, and understand levers that would affect revenue and margin growth. Spreadsheets and existing tools fail to do this in real-time. Drivetrain’s scientific approach to scaling business predictably resonated with us.”

Omneky uses AI to generate social media ads • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in Battlefield, battlefield 2022, Disrupt, Media & Entertainment, Omneky, Social, StartupsNo Comments

Meet Omneky, a startup that leverages OpenAI’s DALLE-2 and GPT-3 models to generate visuals and text that can be used in ads for social platforms. The company wants to make online ads both cheaper and more effective thanks to recent innovations in artificial intelligence and computer vision. Omneky is participating in Startup Battlefield at ZebethMedia Disrupt 2022. While many fields have been automated in one way or another, creating ads is still mostly a manual process. It takes a lot of back and forth between a creative team and the person in charge of running online ad campaigns. Even when you manage to reach a final design, the new ads might not perform as well as expected. You often have to go back to the drawing board to iterate and create more ads. Omneky aims to simplify all those steps. It starts with a nice software-as-a-service platform that centralizes all things related to your online advertising strategy. After connecting Omneky with your accounts on Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Snapchat, the platform pulls performance data from your past advertising campaigns. From this analytics dashboard, you can see how much you’re spending, how many clicks you’re getting, the average cost per click and more. But it gets more interesting once you start diving a bit deeper. Omneky lists your top-performing and worst-performing images and text used in your ads. Customers can click on individual ads to see more details. Omneky automatically adds tags to each ad using computer vision and text analysis. The result is a dashboard with useful insights, such as the dominant color you should use, the optimal number of people in the ad and some keywords that work well in the tagline. This data will be used to generate new ads. Customers write a prompt and generate new visuals using DALLE-2. Omneky also helps you with those prompts as it also uses GPT-3 to generate prompts based on top-performing keywords from past campaigns. Customers then get dozens of different AI-generated images that can be used in online ads. Similarly, Omneky can generate ad copy for the text portion of your ads. If you have a strong brand identity, Omneky can take this into account. On the platform, customers can upload digital assets and historical ads so that the platform acts as the central repository. “Customers can upload the brand guidelines, the font, the logo. All of this is integrated into our AI to generate content that is on brand,” Omneky founder and CEO Hikari Senju told me in a call before ZebethMedia Disrupt. Of course, some images and text don’t work well for one reason or another. That’s why Omneky doesn’t run any ad campaign without the customer’s approval. Team members can add comments, provide feedback and request approval from the platform directly. As soon as customers approve a new ad, it is automatically uploaded and displayed on social platforms — Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Snapchat. After that, you are back to square one. You can track the performance of your new ads from the analytics dashboard, iterate and improve your ad performance. The company charges a subscription fee that varies depending on the number of integrations with social platforms that you want to use. Omneky’s long-term vision expands beyond advertising. There’s a lot of data involved with online ads, that’s why it’s easy to automate some of the steps needed to run an online ad campaign. But the startup thinks it could apply the same methodology to other products, such as AI-generated landing pages. If you extrapolate even more, it’s clear that AI-generated content will cause a revolution in the martech and adtech industries — and Omneky plans to participate in that revolution. Image Credits: Omneky

Marc Lore shares exclusive details on Jump Platforms, his stealth sports ticketing startup • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in Commerce, Disrupt, dynamic pricing, Marc Lore, Sports, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

Today at ZebethMedia Disrupt, serial entrepreneur Marc Lore disclosed exclusive details about a new dynamic ticketing startup, still in stealth, that he founded with former New York Yankee all-star Alex Rodriguez. Called Jump Platforms, the company will sell access to seats that free up when people leave midway through a game. Fans already at the game are alerted when better seats become available. Pricing starts high and drops depending on demand in a reverse auction format. Lore, who co-owns the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves with A-Rod, has applied for a patent that is still pending. He said he started looking into dynamic ticketing years ago when he was attending various sporting events. “I just felt like wow, why are all the seats empty close to the field or close to the arena? And why, when people leave, like when they leave the baseball game in the eighth inning, and all these incredible seats — why do they have people that don’t let anyone go down?” he said, referring to event security staff. “Nobody’s sitting there.” “So I thought, why couldn’t you — this was the patent — dynamically in real time make these seats available so that people could could jump to any new seat so they would always be filled in. Everybody from the top would naturally come down because there would be a reverse auction,” Lore said. “I call it dynamic real-time ticketing. There’s lots of other things you can do with that technology.” Lore assigned the patent to the company and is an investor in the startup. Jump is still in stealth mode, according to CEO Jordy Leiser’s LinkedIn profile. According to incorporation papers filed in Delaware, the company was founded in August 2021.

NXgenPort aims to detect early signs of infection in cancer patients before symptoms arise • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in Battlefield, battlefield 2022, Biotech & Health, Disrupt, NXgenPort, StartupsNo Comments

Meet NXgenPort, a Saint Paul, Minnesota-based startup that’s looking to remotely monitor cancer patients in between doctor visits using a port catheter. NXgenPort, which presented today at ZebethMedia Disrupt Startup Battlefield, is building an implantable chemo port that features added sensors and remote connectivity functions. The port combines chemo-port efficacy with sensor technology to measure and remotely monitor early onset of complications by reporting and tracking patient response over the course of their treatment. The goal of the port is to alert physicians to signs of infection, reduce hospitalizations and gather important physiological data to improve patient outcomes. NXgenPort is the brainchild of CEO and co-founder Cathy Skinner, who came up with the idea for the port based on her own experience after her father passed away from cancer 20 years ago. His diagnosis sent Skinner on a course to work in the oncology space and become a cancer exercise specialist. In 2016, she was working with a breast cancer patient and noticed that her condition had worsened from the last time Skinner saw her. The patient went to her doctor and learned that the medication she was taking to fight the cancer was also damaging her heart. “When she was telling me the story, I saw that she had an implanted chemo port in her chest for the drug, and I wondered, how come we couldn’t know sooner that the drug was damaging her heart,” Skinner told ZebethMedia in an interview. “I always knew that I had a good idea, but I needed a team to build around it.” That’s when NXgenPort COO Rosanne Welcher, PhD and CTO Mohamed Ali MD, PhD came into the picture. In 2019, Skinner was at a conference at Harvard and sat next to Welcher for lunch and the two began discussing their professions. Once Skinner found out that Welcher was a scientist with 25 years of experience working in cancer diagnostics and leadership, she shared her idea for the NXgenPort. Skinner and Welcher then formed the company in May 2020 and filed a non-provisional patent with an attorney in Utah. Their attorney had hired Ali to create drawings of the product for the patent, after which Ali shared his interest in the product and joined their team with his expertise in rehabilitative science and cardiac care. The NXgenPort is embedded with micro electronics and a battery. The device has optical sensors going through the catheter. Once the port is implanted in the chest and the catheter goes through a patient’s heart, the device captures images of blood cells and then compresses the data and sends it to the cloud, after which it is analyzed via machine learning. Skinner notes that cells are differentiated by their size and composition, so the company has trained the algorithm to count the different cells and then provide trends as to whether blood cells are changing in a good or bad way. “With the chemotherapy port being implanted and then with us embedding with technology for remote patient monitoring, we’re able to detect changes in red blood cells and white blood cells, cardiac output and vitals,” Skinner said. “Right now, if a patent needs to determine if they are eligible for their next chemo appointment, they have to drive to the clinic and get their blood tested. And if their blood cell counts are off, they’re ineligible and have to drive back home. We’re monitoring remotely and showing trends over time and seeing if the data shows signs of infection, if patients need to come in early for a blood transfusion or if chemo needs to be rescheduled.” NXgenPort is still in the process of receiving FDA approval, so the company can’t test on humans yet. The startup is going into animal testing this year, and is starting with swine. Skinner says the startup anticipates human testing to begin toward the end of 2025. “It’s a very hard and ambitious thing that we’re seeking to do by taking optical sensors that are used in labs to count cells, miniaturizing them and having them be activated in blood flow,” Skinner said. “So we’re facing some important challenges, but at the same time, when we accomplish this, it’s going to completely change how cancer patients are monitored. The timing when we come to market in 2025 will be well-suited because Hospital at Home models will be more mature and we’ll be ready to integrate.” In terms of funding, the startup closed a pre-seed round in March 2022 that included investment from the co-founders’ friends and family, mHUB accelerator and Edward-Elmhurst Health Ventures. NXgenPort is in the midst of raising a $4 million seed round, but is currently unable to disclose the lead investor. The company’s Series A investment round, which Skinner says will consist of $10 million, will occur in 2023. As for the company’s business model, Skinner says the startup will look at licensing the technology to port manufacturers, pharmaceutical manufacturers and virtual clinic trial companies. The NXgenPort itself will cost a bit more than a standard port, which is usually priced at around $270. In addition to the hardware, the startup will have a subscription model for its software that will collect and analyze results for physicians. Skinner says the software will be priced at around $40 or $50 per month and will be payable to the hospitals administering the ports. Although the startup is currently focused on cancer, Skinner says the startup aims to turn into an umbrella company with different product lines in the future. The startup sees opportunities in having implanted devices with optical sensors collecting patient blood counts and heart function in dialysis, cardiac care and veterinary care.

Kanye joins the ranks of arrogant billionaires buying their own echo chambers • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in EC News Analysis, kanye west, parler, social media, Startups, Twitter, VentureNo Comments

After a whirlwind month of spewing racism, antisemitism and just straight oddities, Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, announced his intention to buy right-wing extremist “free speech” platform Parler. Coincidentally, we’re sure, the app’s CEO is George Farmer, who is the husband of Kanye’s new best friend, conservative political pundit Candace Owens. In announcing the deal yesterday, Parler’s parent company said that Kanye made “a groundbreaking move into the free speech media space and will never have to fear being removed from social media again.” “The proposed acquisition will assure Parler a future role in creating an uncanceable ecosystem where all voices are welcome,” the company wrote in a statement. The deal is expected to close this upcoming quarter. The financial aspects of Kanye’s acquisition of Parler have not been disclosed. In the past, billionaires and racists could just say whatever they wanted, knowing the class they wished to oppress wouldn’t call them out in fear of retaliation or harm. These are not those days. With his agreement to buy Parler, Kanye represents yet another conservative billionaire attempting to wield control and influence over social media platforms, using the notion of free speech as a guise to continue fomenting hate speech and ginning up right-wing ideologues.

Belkin’s $30 Continuity Camera accessory is now available for MagSafe iPhones • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in Belkin, Continuity Camera, Gadgets, Hardware, iPhone, macos, magsafeNo Comments

Continuity Camera was one of the odder additions that arrived in the last round of Apple operating system updates. It seemed like an awkward fix to a longstanding issue with Mac webcams, clipping your iPhone to the top of your laptop lid, but I’ve come to appreciate it in my recent travels. Today, Belkin announced the availability of the first official Continuity Camera solution, the memorably named Belkin iPhone Mount with MagSafe. This was the accessory Apple teased all the way back at WWDC this summer. It’s effectively a silicone circle with MagSafe magnets in the rear. Image Credits: Brian Heater That snaps onto the back of the iPhone, and the small retractable lip goes over the top of the screen. It’s intended to be used with the rear-facing cameras facing toward you — in fact, without that in place, you may have trouble firing up the feature at all. That big metal ring that looks like a soda can pop-top, on the other hand, isn’t actually connected to the feature. Instead, it’s intended for the rest of the time. The idea is you can keep it on the back of the phone and stick your finger through the loop for a better grip. The magnet certainly seems strong enough. There are two versions of the accessory, including a larger one designed specifically for desktops – that one is currently listed as “coming soon.” The difference owes to the thick of the larger displays. Unfortunately that means you won’t be able to use the models interchangeably. Image Credits: Brian Heater Belkin sent me a demo unit around the time of my first macOS Ventura writeup and the final model arrived just as I was leaving for Disrupt, so I plan to put it through its paces this week with all of the conference calls I’m going to have to jump on in the greenroom (sorry everyone else). The iPhone 14 Pro’s camera beats the latest Mac Air’s by a mile. Honestly, it isn’t even close. Obviously, best case scenario is just better webcams built into the systems themselves, but this certainly works in a pinch, especially when on the road. My biggest issue at the moment has less to do with accessory than the implementation of Continuity Camera. Specifically, the iPhone 14 Pro is heavy — and the Pro Plus even more so. The new MacBook Air’s hinge, meanwhile, doesn’t appear to have been specifically developed with this capability in mind. That means that, unless the lid is at or near a 90-degree angle, the screen has a tendency to start lowering under the weight. Something to keep in mind.

The Cloud Foundry Foundation gets a new chair • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in Cloud Foundry Foundation, EnterpriseNo Comments

The Cloud Foundry Foundation, the home of the Cloud Foundry open source development platform for cloud-native applications, today announced that Catherine McGarvey, a vice president of software engineering at VMware, is the new chair of its governing board. She succeeds Kubernetes co-founder and VMware VP of R&D Craig McLuckie, who took the role in late 2021. McLuckie recently left VMware, though (while former Cloud Foundry Foundation CTO Chip Childers recently joined it). Because it’s the Foundation’s members who make up the governing board, that also meant that the Foundation had to find a new chair. It’s worth noting that the governing board’s focus is on managing the Foundation’s business and IP. Technical decision making is handled by the Technical Oversight Committee and various working groups. McGarvey is no stranger to the Cloud Foundry ecosystem. At VMware, her work already involved working with a number of open source communities — including Cloud Foundry — and supporting projects like Spring, knative, carve, Kubernetes and RabbitMQ. “Catherine has been working with Cloud Foundry for more than 10 years in various capacities,” said Chris Clark, program manager, Cloud Foundry Foundation. “She brings a wealth of experience in both technical and managerial aspects of Cloud Foundry and other associated projects/products. Her experience with Kubernetes comes at a crucial time for projects like Korifi, which are critical to the success of the community as a whole. The Cloud Foundry Foundation is pleased to welcome Catherine, with her passion and product expertise, to lead the Governing Board.” The Foundation also today announced that it is now publishing open roadmaps for its working groups. The idea here is to improve the overall transparency of the project but also to make it easier for vendors and to participate in the development process. “The transparency added by open roadmaps for open source projects helps engineering teams plan their feature development and focus engineering efforts,” said Ram Iyengar, chief evangelist at Cloud Foundry. “For consumers of the project, it will facilitate better collaboration and allow them to contribute more freely to the project. Overall, the productivity and efficiency of the community goes up while allowing engineering teams to streamline their work.”