Author : zebethcontrol

Akeyless secures a cash infusion to help companies manage their passwords, certificates and keys • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 16, 2022Posted in Enterprise, funding, secrets, Security, startup, StartupsNo Comments

Back in 2018, Refael Angel, a former security software engineer at Intuit, had an idea for a new approach to protect encryption keys — the random string of bits created to scramble and unscramble data — on the cloud. He met with Shai Onn and then Oded Hareven, with whom Angel had worked five years earlier, to look for signs of product-market fit. After finding it, the three co-founders together built a service for managing passwords, API keys and digital certificates, which evolved into a fully fledged business — Akeyless — over the course of the next several years. Today, Akeyless is thriving, Angel tells me — despite fierce competition from incumbents like Hashicorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager and Google Cloud’s Secret Manager. Akeyless has customers across the retail, fintech, insurance and gaming sectors, among others, including Wix and Outbrain. And the company’s revenue has increased 350% over the past year. “The pandemic and resulting workforce trends, such as work-from-home initiatives, have only increased the need for employees to access corporate IT resources remotely and have accelerated the adoption of cloud technologies and increased the number of secrets needed,” Shai told ZebethMedia in an email interview. In software development, “secrets” refer to credentials like passwords and access tokens. “Similarly, the economic downturn and tech slowdown stand to only further encourage organizations to seek software-as-a-service-based solutions that offer faster deployment, low to zero maintenance, global auto-scalability, lower total cost of ownership and higher adoption rates.“ To lay the groundwork for future growth, Akeyless today closed a $65 million Series B round — $45.5 million in equity and $19.5 million in debt — led by NGP Capital with participation from Team8 Capital and Jerusalem Venture Partners. Bringing Akeyless’s total funding to date to $80 million, the new capital gives the company at least two and a half years of runway and will be put toward various sales, marketing, customer service and product development initiatives, Hareven said via email. “This will allow us to navigate the current economic climate and continue to provide our much-needed solution to the market,” he added. Akeyless’s co-founders attribute the startup’s success in part to the comprehensiveness of its product offerings. Akeyless both encrypts and signs the certificates, credentials and keys that organizations use to provide access to their systems, apps and data. The platform performs cryptographic operations using fragments of an encryption key that reside across different regions and cloud providers. The fragments are never combined — not even during the encryption and decryption process, Hareven claims — and one of the fragments is created on the customer side to ensure Akeyless has zero knowledge of the keys. An abstracted view of the Akeyless secrets management dashboard. Image Credits: Akeyless The core problem Akeyless attempts to tackle is what Hareven refers to as “secret sprawl.” As a company’s IT environment expands, so does the amount of passwords, API keys and certificates that the company uses to enable authentication between processes, services and databases, he notes. Those passwords and keys are found in code, configuration files and automation tools, introducing risk that could result in data breaches. According to a 2021 survey from code security platform GitGuardian, three code commits out of 1,000 expose at least one secret. GitGuardian estimates that app security engineers on average have to handle over 3,400 secrets occurrences. And in a separate report from Forrester published in the same year, developers revealed that 57% of their employers experienced a security incident related to exposed secrets within the past two years. Akeyless’s solution is centralizing secrets through plug-ins for existing IT, dev, and security tools and capabilities like disaster recovery, Hareven continued. Secrets stored by the platform are made accessible in all of a company’s environments. “While modern secret management solutions address the security challenges of [development] environments, many organizations are still forced to rely on siloed and disconnected tools for securing secrets in legacy environments,” Hareven said. “Our customers are expressing a need for the convergence of legacy tools to reduce risks and improve compliance across all environments and use cases.” Akeyless certainly occupies a large and profitable sector — Grand View Research predicts that the market for password management software will be worth up to $2.05 billion by 2025. But it’ll have to fend off rivals like Doppler, which recently raised $20 million for its platform to help companies manage their app secrets. Another challenge will be convincing holdouts to embrace secrets management as a discipline; according to one report, only 10% of organizations were using secrets management solutions as of 2019. If Akeyless’s co-founders have concerns, they didn’t show it. To the contrary, Hareven pointed to the team’s track record in cybersecurity — Onn’s previous security venture, Fireglass, was acquired by Symantec for $250 million — and noted that Akeyless is expanding, with plans to double its 80-person workforce by the end of next year. Hareven didn’t mention during our conversation, but Akeyless is also likely to benefit from the continued broader VC interest in cybersecurity. Venture capital investments in security startups eclipsed $13 billion this year, according to PitchBook data, up from $11.47 billion in 2020. “The fact that we are a software-as-a-service provider and free of the ‘on-premise technical debt’ of versioning and support makes our economics much more efficient, allowing us to respond faster to market needs and rapidly innovate,” Hareven said.

quit Twitter, or prepare to get “hardcore” • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 16, 2022Posted in Elon Musk, Social, TwitterNo Comments

Times are changing at Twitter. In about two weeks under Elon Musk’s leadership, Twitter has fired over 3,700 people, and a slew of high-ranking execs have resigned. But the company’s personnel changes aren’t ending there. According to a report from The Washington Post, Musk sent a late night email offering the remaining Twitter employees a choice: they can either resign and receive three months severance pay, or they can commit to a “hardcore” work environment. Twitter employees have until 5 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday to make up their minds. “Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore,” the letter reads. “This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.” Musk issued a similarly intense email to staff last week, when he ended remote work effectively immediately. In his short tenure, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has already set product deadlines so aggressive that deleted tweets from employees suggested that they had to sleep at the office. But after a botched rollout of Twitter Blue verification, he pushed that product re-launch back to November 29, at least according to his own tweets. Punting relaunch of Blue Verified to November 29th to make sure that it is rock solid — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 15, 2022 As Twitter employees weigh the ultimatum that landed in their inboxes late last night, Musk continues to find time to shitpost. On Tuesday, after several Twitter employees posted that they were fired for criticizing Musk, the “Chief Twit” posted a selfie with two actors who pretended weeks ago to be laid off Twitter employees. On the day after Musk took over the platform, the actors walked past a crowd of journalists who were camped outside the Twitter HQ, carrying boxes as though they were just fired. One claimed his name was “Rahul Ligma,” a clear giveaway that he was trolling (please, don’t make me explain the Ligma meme again), but unfortunately, the journalists on the scene were not very meme-literate and reported the layoff of “Ligma” as fact. At the time, Musk had not yet began conducting the anticipated mass layoffs. “Welcoming back Ligma & Johnson!” Musk tweeted two weeks later, posing with the trolls. “Important to admit when I’m wrong & firing them was truly one of my biggest mistakes.” The message is especially cringe-worthy given that Twitter asked some employees to come back after they were cut in the mass layoffs.

‘Hybrid meat’? Meatable wants to get lab-grown meat to market faster by combining with plant-based proteins • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 16, 2022Posted in Biotech & Health, Climate, Love Handle, Meatable, SingaporeNo Comments

Alternative meat, seafood, and dairy products are all the rage in startup land, with countless companies raising bucketloads of cash and showcasing their first products throughout 2022. There are two broad categories within the meat-substitute space specifically: plant-based foods that strive to mimic the texture, look, and feel of real meat, and “lab-grown” cultivated meat that’s created from animal cells in a test tube. While each is effectively trying to solve similar problems, vis-à-vis saving the planet by weaning humans off their animal protein dependency, they each have their respective pros and cons. For starters, plant-based meat alternatives are already widely available to buy globally, whereas lab-grown meat is still in its relative infancy, with Singapore currently the only market in the world where cultured meat is permitted to be sold. The Asian city-state has emerged as a center of gravity of sorts for the burgeoning fake meat movement — just this week, Australia’s Vow announced a $49.2 million round of funding to bring its cultured meat product to Singaporean restaurants by the end of this year. It’s against that backdrop that Meatable, a VC-backed Dutch company that recently debuted its first product lineup in the form of synthetic sausages, today announced a partnership with Singaporean food startup Love Handle to create what it touts as “the world’s first hybrid meat innovation center.” This builds on Meatable’s recent expansion into the Singaporean market where it partnered with Esco Aster to develop cultivated pork products, with plans afoot to invest some $60 million in the next five years in the broader Singaporean market. Meatable’s fake sausages look like the real deal It’s (not) alive… The phrase “hybrid meat” in the context of a lab-grown meat company could perhaps stir some dystopian vision straight from the pages of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but when you learn that Love Handle is in fact a “plant-based butcher,” one can start to relax a little — Meatable isn’t stitching together components from different animals. The two companies are teaming up to blend the best of both their respective worlds — cultured meat and plant-based protein alternatives. What Meatable and Love Handle are striving for here isn’t entirely novel — others are working toward a similar end, and we’re seeing similar moves elsewhere to reduce animal consumption through products that mesh real meat with plant-based alternatives. The idea there is that while a burger might still contain real beef, it contains less of it, which can only be better for the environment (and people’s health). But what is the motivation, exactly, from a company such as Meatable which operates entirely off the back of its “fake real-meat” foundations? It all boils down to costs, and getting things to market more quickly. Cultivated meat is expensive to develop in a lab setting, and critics argue that there is little to suggest it will be affordable enough to scale at any meaningful level in the near future. On top of that, there are significant regulatory barriers (even in Singapore where it is approved for consumption), not to mention the mental barriers associated with eating meat grown in a lab. So by meshing cultured and plant-based meat alternatives, this could essentially lower all the barriers to entry. “We’ve decided to start launching with hybrid products in Singapore to help customers become acquainted with cultivated meat faster,” Meatable’s chief commercial officer Caroline Wilschut explained to ZebethMedia. “We know that the idea of consuming cultivated meat still requires further education in terms of what it is, how we develop it, and how we can produce it without harming animals, the planet, and people. The faster we launch, the faster we can start that education to build consumer acceptance and begin making an impact with harm-free meat.” Learning from electric cars It’s worth noting that Meatable isn’t going all-in on the hybrid model — it’s still very much continuing its lab-based work to rollout 100% lab-grown meat. But with the new innovation center in Singapore, it’s “seizing an additional opportunity in a supportive regulatory environment,” according to Wilschut. “Meatable continues with the development of full cultivated meat — however, we’ve also determined that hybrid products can be launched faster than entirely cultivated meat,” she said. “Meatable believes that a hybrid product will help gain acceptance amongst customers and maximise its reach within Singapore.” The goal here can perhaps be compared to something like that of a hybrid electric vehicle — it helps bring a nascent technology to the masses more quickly. And while there are a few other players dabbling with hybrids in terms of adding a bit of cultivated meat to a substantively plant-based product, Meatable says that it’s turning the tables on this concept. “In this instance, Meatable and Love Handle are taking a cultivated meat-led approach, which means they are starting with Meatable’s cultivated meat and adding Love Handle’s plant-based protein to develop a hybrid product that — in testing — has emerged as indistinguishable from real meat in taste and texture,” Wilschut said. This gets to the crux of why hybrid products could be a better idea. Purely plant-based meat alternatives typically lack the taste and texture of real meat, so by bringing together two distinct forms of animal-free meat alternatives, this could help everything scale for everyone involved — a win-win for both Meatable and Love Handle. This leads us back to the main thrust of today’s announcement. What, exactly, will the new innovation center in Singapore do? According to Wilschut, the lab is scheduled to open fully in 2023, with both companies co-investing in talent starting with around 10 new hires. It will sport a kitchen and a lab featuring all the machines and materials needed to bring hybrid food products to market, while it will also serve as a commercial front-end for everything going on behind the scenes, with space for consumers to try and buy products directly. “Both companies will invest in the lab, operate the innovation center, and will together hire the talent and resources to

SigmaOS raises $4 million to build a browser for productivity nerds • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 16, 2022Posted in Apps, Browser, Chrome, SigmaOSNo Comments

There is no doubt that Chrome, Safari, Edge, and Firefox attract the majority of browser users. But despite this dominance, smaller browser companies are trying to carve a niche, and even get users to pay for features. London-based SigmaOS is one such startup, which is building a Mac browser for productivity nerds. The company has raised $4 million in seed funding led by LocalGlobe and participation from Y Combinator, 7percent Ventures, Moonfire Ventures, Shine VC, TrueSight Ventures, Pioneer Fund, and Venture Together. Angel investors like Cocoa Ventures partner Carmen Alfonso Rico and EightSleep founder Matteo Franceschetti joined the round as well. Along with this, the startup is also releasing SigmaOS 1.0 after being in beta for more than a year with features like collaboration and focus mode. History The company was started by Mahyad Ghassemibouyaghchi, Ali Attar, and Saurav Mitra in 2021. Mahyad, who is diagnosed with ADHD, said that switching between different tabs and windows in legacy browsers was mentally heavy. So he wanted to build a browser that lets you do things from one place. Image Credits: SigmaOS “Context-switching is very mentally heavy, and having the segmentation that our browser provides, and being able to do everything from one place, really helps. Our idea is that you focus on doing your best work, while we take care of organizing and making you focused.” He said in a written statement. Shortly after building their first prototype, the team joined the Summer 2021 cohort of Y Combinator. Functionality At first glance, the browser looks different from Chrome and Safari as it stores tabs in a vertical format. When you are setting up SigmaOS, it will ask you to create a new workspace or choose a template workspace like writing, analytics, work chat, dev tools, and reading. Workspaces — which are like tab groups or tab folders — are at the core of SigmaOS’s experience. The app thinks of these workspaces as toolboxes where you will have some tabs related to the theme open all the time. And you can open some of them on the fly. Image Credits: SigmaOS The browser treats tabs like an email: most of the tabs are persistent, you can jump between them without closing any, and you can snooze them and mark them as done (to close them). To navigate around this interface, you can always hit the lazy search bar, which lets you search for tabs that are currently open within the browser or perform a search. You can also quickly shift a tab to a split screen view if you want to look at some information while doing another task like writing. Image Credits: SigmaOS With the new release, the company is also introducing a focus mode, which removes all toolbars and expands the view of the current tab to a full-screen mode. There is also a new collaboration mode available with the SigmaOS 1.0, which lets you share a workspace with friends or coworkers where all of you can see shared tabs. This is useful when working on new ideas with your team or planning a trip with friends. The workspace also has a private tab space for you. Notably, Apple introduced a shared tabs feature for Safari this year. Image Credits: SigmaOS All of these features and more are easily accessible through numerous shortcuts. However, if your workflow involves just a few tabs, or you are not a heavy productivity geek, the number of features and navigation around the interface can overwhelm you. Even for experienced macOS users, it takes time getting used to the quirks and flows of SigmaOS. In certain ways, you might need to tweak how you work in a browser to have information accessible to you quickly. To make the transition smoother from Safari and Chrome, the browser easily lets you import all data including passwords. The company is also testing support for Chrome extensions as a beta feature. It currently has a built-in extension store with limited apps, and it allows you to import extensions from Chrome. If they don’t work with SigmaOS, you can quickly flag it to the team to enable support for that. SigmaOS is built on WebKit and uses SwiftUI for its interface. This allows the browser to let people keep multiple tabs “open” without overloading the system resources. Mahyad told ZebethMedia that many of its users keep hundreds of tabs open in the background. The road ahead The browser’s free version gives you three workspaces, split-screen functionality, and a built-in ad blocker. Users can pay $10 a month (or $96 a year) to get unlimited workspaces and cross-device syncing. Teams can pay $15 a month (or $144 a year) for unlimited annual workspaces. Mahyad told ZebethMedia that the company is focused on bringing more features to the browser and growing in numbers. He didn’t specify the user numbers but said the app has many thousands of users and more than 30% of them are paying customers. SigmaOS’s closest competitor is probably the Amsterdam-based Stack browser, which raised $2.5 million from Lunar Ventures, Wayra X, Zemu Venture Capital, Peak Capital and Charles Songhurst in July. There is also the Browser Company, which is building the Arc browser. But while Stack is focused on being a mindful browser, SigmaOS is concentrating on catering to startup founders, students, and productivity nerds.

Backbone launches an Android version of its mobile gaming controller • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 16, 2022Posted in HardwareNo Comments

We tend to write fondly about Backbone’s mobile gaming controller around these parts, but the recommendation has always come with one asterisk: to date, it’s really been meant mostly for iPhones. You could use a cable to make it work with other devices — but Android users, for example, haven’t been able to just pop their phone into the controller’s stretchy grips and start playing. That’ll change soon. This week the company is starting to roll outs its Android-focused model, swapping out USB-C in place of the Lightning connectivity of the iPhone build. The Android version will go for the same $99 as its iPhone equivalent — and while shipping times might shift as orders roll in, the company currently says orders placed now will arrive by Christmas. If you were hoping for an Android-version of Backbone’s Playstation Edition — the Sony-approved build that comes in white rather than black, swaps the A/B/X/Y buttons for the PS5’s triangle/X/square/circle glyphs, and adds a PS logo on the back — it doesn’t seem to be an option so far. The company is also rolling out an Android-friendly version of the controller’s companion app, which acts as an access hub for your Backbone-friendly games, voice chat with friends, and allows you to record gameplay clips by tapping that orange button on the controller.

Hinge’s new feature makes it easier for those seeking non-monogamous relationships • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 16, 2022Posted in Apps, dating app, Hinge, SocialNo Comments

Today, Hinge rolled out a feature that allows users to add their “Relationship Type” to their profile, whether that be “monogamous,” “non-monogamous,” or “figuring out my relationship type.” The update lets users express precisely what they’re looking for to more efficiently minimize unsuited matches. “Relationship Type” is available globally for all Hinge users starting today. Note that adding the feature to Hinge profiles is optional. If a user chooses to add their type, it will be in the “virtues” section of a profile. Like Hinge’s “Dating Intentions” profile feature, there’s a “Backstory” open-text option, so users can add more context about their relationship type. “Dating Intentions” launched over the summer and encourages users to select a dating goal like “long-term,” “short-term,” “life partner,” or “figuring out my dating goals.” Image Credits: Hinge “Hinge is the place for all daters to find intentional and meaningful romantic connections, and I want it to enter a new era of dating where the word ‘relationship’ defies traditional and heteronormative meaning,” said Michelle Parsons, Chief Product Officer at Hinge, in the announcement. “With the launch of Relationship Types, we are empowering users to openly share what kind of relationship they are looking for, and as a result, have a new way to know if someone’s dating goals match theirs from the moment they look at their profile.” Some non-monogamous users have found it difficult to use Hinge and other traditional dating apps because it’s more difficult to narrow down these like-minded daters. While there are dating apps dedicated to non-monogamy, like Feeld, #Open, MoreThanOne, and PolyFinda, Hinge is more well-known. Cosmopolitan contributor and non-monogamy educator Gabrielle Smith noted just how hard it is for a non-monogamous person to find partners on dating apps. “Dating apps aren’t the most conducive to finding partners as a non-monogamous person. It can be hard to sift through the noise and find partners who are on the same page. Plus, the dating pool can often feel tiny,” Smith wrote. Recently, there’s been a rise in non-monogamous relationships. According to 2022 data from Hinge, one in five Hinge users “would consider” an open relationship, BBC reported. One in 10 users said they had already tried open relationships. The “Relationship Type” feature will likely attract more non-monogamous users to the app.

Matter Labs, the company behind zkSync, raises $200 million to scale Ethereum • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 16, 2022Posted in Crypto, ethereum, L2, matter labs, zkSyncNo Comments

Matter Labs has raised a $200 million Series C funding round co-led by Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly. Matter Labs is better known for its work on zkSync, an Ethereum scaling solution that drastically reduces the cost of Ethereum transactions. LightSpeed Venture Partners, Variant and Andreessen Horowitz are also participating in the Series C round. Overall, Matter Labs has raised $458 million, including a $200 million ecosystem fund to foster zkSync adoption. It’s quite a large sum of money, which means that the company will be able to iterate on zkSync for a while even though we still don’t know the full aftermath of the collapse of FTX. Over the past couple of years, the biggest pain point with Ethereum transactions has been gas fees. In Ethereum lingo, gas fees are transaction fees. Every time you want to send some crypto assets on the Ethereum blockchain, you have to pay some gas fees. And those gas fees aren’t variable. If you try to send $10 worth of Ethereum or $10 billion, you will pay the same amount in gas fees. Those fees vary depending on network demand. But it can be quite discouraging if you’re getting started with cryptos or want to use your cryptocurrencies for small transactions. Many teams have been working on ways to solve this issue. They think that some transactions shouldn’t happen on the main Ethereum blockchain (the Layer 1). That’s what we call Layer 2 solutions. zkSync is one of those L2 solutions that have been gaining traction in the crypto ecosystem. Essentially, transactions are sent to Layer 2 nodes so that they can be processed and batched together. When there are enough transactions, a group of transactions is submitted to the main Ethereum blockchain. Once it’s on the main Ethereum blockchain, these transactions can’t be altered. zkSync is a zero-knowledge rollup implementation, meaning that validity proofs are generated based on hundreds of transactions and then posted to the main Ethereum blockchain. That’s the main security advantage as Layer 2 transactions can’t be altered because they won’t comply with the validity proof. zkSync’s latest release is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine. This way, decentralized app developers can make their apps compatible with zkSync with minimum work. And Matter Labs plans to open source zkSync 2.0 through an MIT Open Source license at some point in Q4 2022. So far, 150 projects have been using zkSync in one way or another. For instance, Chainlink, SushiSwap, Uniswap, Aave, Argent, 1inch, Gnosis and Curve have been implementing zkSync in their products. Ethereum scaling solutions are going to be incredibly important to make the crypto ecosystem truly decentralized. There are many reasons why centralized exchanges like FTX exist. They let you convert fiat currencies into cryptocurrencies. But many people also use these exchanges for crypto-to-crypto transactions. Projects like zkSync will make crypto transactions easy, secure and affordable even without using a centralized exchange.

Fiat Ventures, with $25M for first fund, brings ‘insider’ approach to investing in early-stage fintechs • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 16, 2022Posted in Alex Harris, Drew Glover, Fiat Ventures, Fintech, Marcos Fernandez, VentureNo Comments

Fiat Ventures general partners Drew Glover and Alex Harris, along with managing partner Marcos Fernandez, are out to find and invest in fintech’s next generation of startups, and are leveraging their unconventional backgrounds to find equally unconventional founders. The early-stage VC firm started in 2021 is now armed with $25 million in capital commitments to close its first fund; the partners are targeting financial services and financial technology startups building for the 90% of Americans who don’t already have enough savings or don’t know how to start managing what they do have. And they don’t just want to invest capital. The firm has taken a unique approach in the way it works with its companies, coming in initially as more of a marketing and strategic partnership. This came about when the partners started Fiat. They didn’t have capital to invest right away, so they asked founders for advisory shares and the right to invest eventually, Glover said. As such, Fiat focuses on ownership percentage, taking about 2% to 2.5% in companies the firm invests in, Glover told ZebethMedia. That might look like a $100,000 to $500,000 check with available funds to double and triple down on some of its more successful companies. That initial approach turned into half of a business with partnerships, like affiliates, strategics and influencers, and the other half being everything that touches performance and growth. “Think of us as basically a turnkey fractional CMO where we can walk in and help with strategy and execution,” Glover added. “Don’t hire a $400,000 a year CMO, but let us come in with our team of former VPs and CMOs and work with you to build out your growth ecosystem.” Fernandez told ZebethMedia that he believes this approach is one of Fiat’s “greatest strengths and advantages,” and something that typical venture capital firms hire an operating team to do when they reach their third, fourth or fifth fund, not the first fund as Fiat has been able to do. The partners have formed this type of relationship with more than 100 companies so far, working with them for a minimum of three months. In 2021 when they established a more formal venture business, they say it gave them unique insight into the companies — the good, the bad and the ugly — which helped them pinpoint where best to deploy the capital, Harris said. “Two out of the three of our investments have been from these relationships,” Fernandez added. “It’s given us the extra due diligence to see if they have product market fit and to see founder dynamics, for example if they can raise funding, recruit and know where their gaps are. You can’t get that from getting on calls or data rooms.” Investors into the new fund include Invesco Private Capital, which anchored the fund, DAHG Capital Partners, Joint Effects LLC, Full Spectrum Capital, Temerity Capital Partners, Now Investments, Mountaineer Capital, Permit Ventures and a group of fintech founders, including Bestow’s Jonathan Abelmann, Chime’s Kyle Daley and Mulberry’s Chinedu Eleanya. Some notable investments among the 22 companies in Fiat’s portfolio so far include teen-focused banking app Copper, which raised $29 million in April; insurance company Breeze, which grabbed $10 million last year; and Sleek, a one-click checkout company that bagged $1.7 million earlier this year. In addition, the Fiat team itself has diverse backgrounds, and the partners said it was equally important to show that in the companies they invest in as well. Sixty-seven percent of investments are in underrepresented founders, 30% are female founders and 40% are minority led. “It really comes down to our backgrounds and that’s what we cherish the most,” Glover said. “Marcos is Hispanic-American, I’m African-American and Alex is 100% our people and also Jewish.” He went on to describe growing up in East Oakland with exposure to all forms of socioeconomic classes, and with parents who were deeply ingrained in civic action. Meanwhile, Marcus grew up in Texas and in a similar type of environment, while Alex grew up in Stockton. “We all grew up with this mindset of investing in the best ideas that are making the greatest impact,” Glover added. “The networks that we grew up in bred other networks and gives us the access to see some of the best underrepresented founders and ideas that are making the largest impact.”

EU’s Digital Services Act enters into force — but no confirm if Twitter will feel its full force yet • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 16, 2022Posted in Digital Services Act, Government & Policy, Social, Twitter, VLOPsNo Comments

The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) enters into force today — setting the clock ticking on designations that will determine which larger Internet platforms face an extra layer of rules in areas likes algorithmic transparency and risk assessment. Larger platforms will also face centralized oversight by the European Commission in a marked change to the bloc’s decentralized (and much criticized) enforcement of data protection rules. Platforms have three months to report their active user numbers to the Commission (by February 17, 2023) so it can make these designations. The EU’s executive will use reported figures to determine which platforms are named VLOPs (very large online platforms) or VLOSEs (very large online search engines) under the DSA — and therefore subject to the tougher oversight. The main criteria for the special regime to apply is a platform or search engine reaches more than 10% of the EU population or has more than 45 million users. Although the DSA allows the Commission some discretion in the information it can use to inform designations. Likely candidates are platforms operated by the usual US Big Tech ‘FAANG’ giants — but some larger European tech firms should also fall into the category. VLOPs and VLOSEs face an accelerated compliance timetable for the DSA as it provides them with just four months for this once a designation is made by the Commission — after which the bloc will be able to start enforcements against rule breakers. This means the DSA regime is likely to be up and running in 2023 for these larger entities, assuming the Commission doesn’t delay making designations. The flagship reboot of the EU’s ecommerce rulebook will also apply to smaller platforms and digital services but they have longer to comply — until 17 February 2024. To support its supervision of VLOPs/VLOSEs, the Commission is setting up a European Centre for Algorithmic Transparency (ECAT) — to provide in-house and external multidisciplinary knowledge to help with algorithmic auditing. “The Centre will provide support with assessments as to whether the functioning of algorithmic systems are in line with the risk management obligations that the DSA establishes for VLOPs and VLOSEs to ensure a safe, predictable and trusted online environment,” it said today. Will Twitter be designated a VLOP? One very pressing question for European regulators (and citizens) is whether Twitter will be designated a VLOP under the DSA or not? The (relatively small) social networking firm is not expected to meet the bar for regulation under the DSA’s sister regime, the Digital Markets Act — an ex ante competition reform which will only apply to intermediaries with gatekeeper levels of market power. So the DSA is the main instrument the EU can use to clip Twitter’s wings. And given drastic changes to how the microblogging platform is operating under new owner, Elon Musk, the Commission is already facing pressure to ensure the fullest force of the DSA regime is brought to bear on it and soon. A report in today’s Financial Times couches the bloc’s regulators as being on a “collision course” with Musk’s chaotic piloting of the platform — citing sources familiar with EU regulators’ thinking saying there is concern in Brussels over the company’s ability to comply with the DSA, including in light of the mass sacking of 50% of its staff soon after he took over. MEP, Christel Schaldemose, who will chair a group on the implementation of the DSA, told the newspaper that Twitter could “very well be the case to test DSA for the first time” — and urged the EU to make sure the DSA rules apply for Twitter, warning that if it does not do this the regulation “would be a failure”, adding: “I hope and expect the EU commission to act fast and firmly.” ZebethMedia has also heard concerns about Twitter’s ability to comply with the DSA from another direction. A source familiar with how Twitter was preparing for dialled up EU regulation — pre-Musk takeover — told us “lots” of work had been done but said it’s all been “stymied” by the transition. We reached out to the Commission to raise concerns we’ve heard and ask about the question of Twitter’s compliance with the DSA. A Commission spokesman declined to confirm whether the company will be designated a VLOP — saying the list and number of VLOPs will only be provided after the designation step has been completed. But they added: “The designation is relatively straightforward. If a company is around the threshold, it’s a good decision to go for compliance rather than to hover in an area where they are not complying.” Despite the official EU line on whether Twitter will be a VLOP remaining ‘wait and see’, it’s notable that immediately Musk took over the company last month the bloc’s internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, tweeted to put him on public notice — warning that Twitter must “fly by” the EU’s rules. Which — at the least — demands that a meaningful set of rules gets applied. (And today Breton has doubled down with a Twitter subtweet in a DSA thread — writing: “Social media platforms will no longer behave like they are ‘too big to care’. Whether they have feathers or not 🐦”) Since then, plenty more has happened to increase regulatory concern over Twitter’s direction of travel under Musk — including the resignation last week of a number of senior privacy and security Twitter staffers who had held key compliance-facing roles. These departures included Twitter’s first (and until then only) data protection officer (DPO) — a role that’s required under long-standing EU data protection law. And yesterday we reported a further development: Twitter had informed its data supervisor in Ireland of the details of a replacement DPO. However it had only named an existing staffer as “acting” DPO. That’s notable since, under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, the DPO role is required to be quasi-independent — so the conditionality and precariousness of Musk-Twitter naming an “acting” appointee could raise

Airbnb rolls out a host of new perks for hosts • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 16, 2022Posted in Airbnb, Apps, brian chesky, travelNo Comments

Airbnb has more than 4 million hosts managing accommodation and experiences on its platform. Now, as it looks to drive more bookings, it’s on the hunt for more. After introducing a major redesign for customers earlier this year, Airbnb is now turning its attention to improving the experience for new and existing hosts. Today, it’s launching new onboarding, payments features, and improved insurance tools. Alongside that, across North America it’s also rolling out its previously-announced anti-party tech to prevent disruptive bookings. Airbnb’s moves come on the heels of it posting growth last quarter, but it’s doing so amid a lot of challenging headwinds for travel overall. The world has moved from weathering a pandemic to weathering an economic crunch, and Airbnb has been operating between that rock and hard place. Back in 2020, it was one of the first big tech companies to cut employees as it figured out out how to operate its travel-dependent business during mass travel shutdowns and shelter-in-place orders. Now, it has to think of ways to make its tools and services relevant to a market that may not want to spend money on moving around for other reasons: to be more budget conscious. With hosts and hosting, Airbnb is translating that into a pitch for making more money. “Today, just like during the Great Recession in 2008, people are especially interested in earning extra income through hosting,” CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky told us in an interview. “That’s why we’re introducing an easy way for millions of people to Airbnb their homes.” (If this sounds familiar, it’s almost identical to his canned statement in his last earnings call… but we’re pretty sure we spoke to a real Brian Chesky.) But it’s not a perfect science: last quarter the company said Nights and Experiences booked were up 25%, with gross bookings value up 31%. But existing hosts have complained about drops in bookings per host, in part because of the rise in the number of hosts and in part because of the economic situation around the world. Overall, Airbnb’s aim appears to be: make hay while the sun shines. That is, add hosts now while people are keen to try to make extra income, so that the platform overall doesn’t find itself short on properties in future, or facing supply constrain, as it’s often described. “One of the things I don’t want to do is get to a supply-constrained era,” he said. “We’re predicting a lot of demand. We’re trying to get ahead of that.” However, he dodged the question of what that spells for Airbnb itself, specifically whether it will lay off or indeed hire more people amid the current wave of job cuts, which has seen hundreds of thousands of tech workers made redundant across Airbnb’s peers. “We have 6,000 employees and we did $3.3 billion for free cash flow,” he said. “In the last 12 months, we have generated nearly around half a million dollars in free cash flow per employee. And we’re generating more than a million dollars in revenue per employee. So we’re really lean.” More on the new features below: Hosting the hosts Airbnb launched a new workflow to easily onboard new hosts last year. Now it’s adding a new feature to Airbnb Setup, which pairs new users with Superhosts to guide them through the setup and hosting process. Airbnb said that 1,500 Superhosts — those who have had at least 10 bookings or 100 nights of booking, with a rating of 4.8 or more — have signed up so far to be “Ambassadors”. For context, Airbnb has 980,000 active Superhosts today; it will be interesting to see how many of them sign up. New hosts setting up a profile can contact specialized support via email, messages or video/audio chat — or now match with a nearby Superhost who has a similar type of property. Superhosts can be given access to listings to help tweak them directly. Superhosts, it should be noted, aren’t helping out of the kindness of their hearts; they can expect a little income bump from doing so, between $50 and $150 per host after the new host’s first guest checks out. Image Credits: Airbnb Host protection One of the gating factors for attracting hosts and hosting activity to Airbnb has the issue of protections, both in terms of who books and what happens if things go wrong. The first of these is getting a tweak, where new listing managers can now restrict initial availability only to experienced guests (someone with at least three bookings and no strikes against them), rather than vet after bookings are made. Alongside this, Airbnb is increasing the limit of AirCover — its damage protection program for hosts introduced last year — from $1 million to $3 million. The new protection will also cover damages to auto & boat, pets, and arts & valuables like fine art, paintings, jeweler, and collectibles at an appraised value. Payments In addition to more features to help and protect hosts, Airbnb is also sharpening its focus on hosts’ bottom line: that is, how they are paid. It’s introducting a new feature called Fast Pay in the U.S. — developed by Airbnb itself — to pay out funds less than 30 minutes to hosts who have registered a Visa or Mastercard payout method. The company charges a 1.5% fee with a cap of $15 at launch. This method is much faster than other payout systems like bank accounts or PayPal, which can take from one to seven business days — and it seems to be an iteration on a test from years ago to pay select hosts half the money three days after guests had booked their property. Airbnb already has in-built solutions to handle multiple currencies and payment methods, but Chesky said Airbnb wants to do more with payments. “We are not a payments company but we handle nearly $400 billion through our platform in 220 countries and 60 currencies. We hold billions of dollars of