Author : zebethcontrol

Google is integrating Lens directly into its search box • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 2, 2022Posted in Apps, Google, google lensNo Comments

Google is adding its Lens image search right into its home page, letting users access the advanced image recognition tool directly from the search box. The search giant first announced Lens at I/O 2017 and has since integrated it into several of its services, including Google Photos, Chrome and more. Now, as first noted by 9to5Google, the company is adding the visual search tool to the Google homepage. The change is significant, according to Rajan Patel, a vice president of engineering at Google who’s in charge of Search and Lens. In a tweet, Patel noted that the Google homepage doesn’t change often, but that the company wanted to expand the way users can ask questions. On the surface level, Google’s homepage is pretty similar to what it was many years ago, so any addition is noteworthy. The google homepage doesn’t change often, but today it did. We’re always working to expand the kinds of questions you can ask and improving how we answer them. Now you can ask visual questions easily from your desktop. pic.twitter.com/p9ldYvXnTK — Rajan Patel (@rajanpatel) November 1, 2022 “The google homepage doesn’t change often, but today it did,” Patel wrote. “We’re always working to expand the kinds of questions you can ask and improving how we answer them. Now you can ask visual questions easily from your desktop.” Once you click on the Lens button, the page will prompt you to upload an image or paste the URL of an image. After doing so, you will see a Lens results page. Although Google Images has allowed users to search similar photos, Lens goes a step beyond that by surfacing information about the photo, shopping results and more. Lens can also identify plant or animal species. You can also drag in images of text, after which Lens will digitize it and translate the text if it’s in a foreign language. The results page will be familiar to people who are used to the Lens app. Google has been working to better integrate its visual search tools from Google Lens into its other products, and by adding it directly into its homepage, it’s introducing the tool to people who may have been unaware of it or just haven’t tried it yet.

Xata gives Jamstack developers access to a serverless data platform with an API call • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 2, 2022Posted in developer tools, Enterprise, JAMstack, Monica Sarbu, Postgres, XataNo Comments

A couple of years ago, Xata founder Monica Sarbu was putting together a passion project called Tupo.io, a platform she was building to help women in tech find mentors. She wanted to include a Postgres database with Elastic search in the Tupo web application, and as a side project, she wanted it to be fairly self-sufficient because volunteers were helping to build and run the site. As she looked for a serverless database, she realized that there was nothing really out there that met her requirements, and like any good entrepreneur, she started building it. That project would become Xata, a serverless data platofrm that is generally available starting today. The platform is built from from several open source components including a Postgres database with Kafka for data streaming and Elastic for search. Web application developers, particularly those building Jamstack applications, can simply connect to it through an API and they are good to go. “What we’ve done is build this data platform for you, so you don’t have to hire a team of developers internally to work on building a data platform. Instead, we built this for you and offer it as a service, and you can access everything you need over an API,” Sarbu told ZebethMedia. She says that companies like Netlify and Vercel have made it simple to build and launch a Jamstack web application in production, but what’s been missing is a simple way to connect to a data platform, a hole that Xata is attempting to fill. “Unfortunately, what’s missing is the data part. There isn’t really a way to preview and test your data before merging into production. So we want to complete this workflow and offer the best experience for web developers,” she said. Today, developers typically create this kind of data platform from scratch every time, and the idea with Xata is to have this serverless data platform that reduces all of the complexity related to building it yourself. Sarbu says this lets companies and development teams do more with less, a goal of every organization, especially in today’s economic climate. But more than that, they can also put those limited resources to work building the best application, rather than fiddling with the data stack components. “There is such a shortage of talent on the market, and everyone is fighting for the few developers. My philosophy is that companies need to build more with less resources. They need to concentrate on building the features that matter for their product, rather than building the [data stack]” she said. Xata has been in beta, but starting today, it will be generally available to all developers to use. The product includes a free tier to get started with a small project in production, and as the product grows companies can shift to pay plans. Prior to launching Xata and Tupo.io, Sarbu co-founded a monitoring company called Packetbeat, which was acquired by Elastic in 2015. She launched Xata last year and has raised $35 million, per Crunchbase.

Google’s wildfire detection is available in US, Mexico, Canada and parts of Australia • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 2, 2022Posted in AI, Apps, Climate, Google, WildfireNo Comments

At an AI-focused press event today in New York, Google announced that it’s bringing its AI-powered wildfire detection system to the U.S. Canada, Mexico and parts of Australia. It’s one of several “AI for good” efforts the company detailed this morning, which also included Google’s efforts to expand flood forecasting to more regions around the world. The previously announced system utilizes machine learning models trained on satellite data to track fires in real-time and predict how it will spread. The feature is initially focused on helping first responders determine how best to control the fire. We’ve trained ML models using satellite imagery to identify and track wildfires in real time and predict how they will evolve to support first responders.( We’re announcing our wildfire detection system now works in the US, CAN, MX and parts of AUS.(3/5) pic.twitter.com/TX1BnvUjeN — Google AI (@GoogleAI) November 2, 2022 This time last year, Google announced that the technology was being added as a layer in Google Maps. The company noted at the time, [W]e’re now bringing all of Google’s wildfire information together and launching it globally with a new layer on Google Maps. With the wildfire layer, you can get up-to-date details about multiple fires at once, allowing you to make quick, informed decisions during times of emergency. Just tap on a fire to see available links to resources from local governments, such as emergency websites, phone numbers for help and information, and evacuation details. When available, you can also see important details about the fire, such as its containment, how many acres have burned, and when all this information was last reported. The feature joins a similar ML-based flood forecasting feature announced back in 2018. That feature is now being expanded to an additional 18 countries.

On average, CTOs make more than CEOs at early-stage startups • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 2, 2022Posted in salary, salary data, StartupsNo Comments

New data from Kruze Consulting’s salary data from more than 200 startups show that CTOs, on average, are on higher salaries than their CEO counterparts. On average, co-founders make the same, but where there is a difference, the balance typically tips in the favor of the technical co-founder. With a dataset of more than 200 startups, startup accountants Kruze Consulting found the balance leans toward the technical co-founder of a startup. Image Credits: Kruze Consulting (opens in a new window) The data suggest that differences vary by stage and by industry. At Series A and beyond, the salary typically tips in the CEO’s favor. It’s easy to imagine early-stage companies needing to pay their technical leadership more, as they have a higher opportunity cost; especially in the Bay Srea, high-quality technical co-founders have their pick of high-paying, high-prestige jobs across the entire industry, with starting compensation packages significantly higher than at a startup. Differences by stage. Data from: Kruze Consulting Comparing industry to industry, healthcare and pure software/SaaS startups see the biggest discrepancies. Again, that makes sense if the opportunity cost is a factor; the vast majority of skills needed to build a SaaS company is directly transferable to some of the highest-paying developer and product roles at pretty much every company you can mention. Data by industry. Data from: Kruze Consulting The interesting outlier in the data is healthcare; it seems as if here, healthcare technical co-founders are particularly lucrative, and are able to attract higher wages as a result. Of course, with a dataset of 200 or so, it’s possible there are some outliers in the data that skew things, but in terms of general trends, these numbers are congruent with the broader compensation numbers we are seeing across the ecosystem. Kruze Consulting also has a CEO salary report it published earlier this year, which can help you figure out what the market rate is for a CEO in the current financial climate, and a CTO salary report it published today.

Mozilla launches $35M venture capital fund for early-stage ‘responsible’ startups • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 2, 2022Posted in Firefox, Mozilla, Mozilla Ventures, Startups, VentureNo Comments

It seems that every internet company and their dog have at least one venture capital (VC) arm under their wing, with the likes of Google Ventures (now GV), Microsoft Ventures (now M12), Salesforce Ventures, Twilio Ventures, and Zoom Ventures all serving their corporate namesakes potential cash cows via hundreds of equity investments. Today, it’s Mozilla’s turn to solidify its investment endeavors via a new dedicated $35 million VC fund targeted at early-stage startups. Formally announced at Web Summit in Portugal today, Mozilla Ventures builds on other recent investments the company has made as part of its Mozilla Builders startup incubator program, though in truth Mozilla has sporadically invested in nearly 20 companies over the past decade. More recently, Mozilla joined a $900,000 pre-seed funding round into password management startup Heylogin. While Heylogin confirmed Mozilla as an investor back in September, we now know that this represented one of the first three investments that Mozilla has made from its new fund. The other two include Block Party, which raised a $4.8 million seed round in September to combat online harassment, and Secure AI Labs which is reportedly in the process of raising $9 million for a product that fosters collaboration in the medical industry while safeguarding aggregated patient data. While it’s not disclosing exactly how much it’s plowing into these companies, the triumvirate of investments gives some idea as to what Mozilla Ventures is aiming for with the new fund. It’s focusing on seed to Series A stage startups, but more specifically it says that it’s targeting what it calls “responsible” tech companies that “push the internet and the tech industry in a better direction.” But first, let’s take a quick step back and look at how we arrived at “Mozilla the VC,” from a brand that is still pretty much best known for its web browser. The story so far The Mozilla “community” emerged from Netscape back in 1998, and today it constitutes a not-for-profit entity called the Mozilla Foundation and a for-profit subsidiary called the Mozilla Corporation. Mozilla’s open source Firefox emerged as a major player in the web browsing space, taking on the (then) mighty Internet Explorer and hitting the giddy heights of a circa-30% market share around 2010. In the intervening years, it has dwindled to around 4% market share, though this still places it in the top three browsers behind Chrome and Safari. Today, Mozilla is a vocal proponent of privacy and positions itself as the antithesis of Big Tech behemoths such as Google, even though it relies substantively on the internet giant for revenue. It has also introduced a bunch of new privacy products in recent years, including a virtual private network (VPN) and an email-masking service. It has dabbled in other projects too, such as the now-defunct operating system Firefox OS. But with the Firefox web browser recently hitting version 100, it’s clear that Mozilla is still heavily reliant on its browser for income. The organization makes around $500 million annually, the lion’s share arriving via a search engine partnership with Google. Other sources of cash include subscriptions (VPN and email-masking), advertising, and donations from the public. ‘People before profits’ This all takes us to today, with Mozilla now looking to extend its rake into the world of venture capital. The new fund is being spearheaded by managing partner Mohamed Nanabhay, a South Africa-based technology and media executive and investor, who also served as a Mozilla board member until August this year. Mozilla Ventures is keen to set itself apart from the pack by stressing its focus on “putting people before profits.” In truth, there are plenty of VC funds that can easily lay claim to a similar mission, whether it’s through investing purely in climate tech or other companies working in the environmental-social-governance (ESG) realm. Mozilla, however, is addressing slightly different areas of the technological spectrum, such as privacy; “trustworthy AI”; and products that ultimately help decentralize digital power, which could be code for web3. “There are a lot of funds focused on ethical investing in areas like climate and economic justice,” Mozilla Foundation executive director Mark Surman explained to ZebethMedia. “We’ve taken a lot of inspiration from funds like these. As far as we know, Mozilla Ventures is the first focused solely on responsible internet startups. And, while some other funds do have investments in this area, the startups we met through Mozilla Builders told us that much is needed here.” Mozilla’s experimental Builders incubator program was a short-lived initiative that pretty much started and ended in 2020, though Mozilla said it culminated in more than 80 small investments. “The Builders experiment made it clear that there are founders and teams out there hungry to ‘fix the internet,’ but they need support,” Surman said. “Earlier this year, we decided that Mozilla needs to make a sustained commitment to supporting people and projects like the ones we met through Builders. Mozilla Ventures is our first step in this direction.” It’s also worth noting that the initial $35 million fund is being provided entirely by the Mozilla Foundation for now, whose funds come from sources that include donations from the public — many of whom may donate purely to support their favorite web browser. However, Firefox is technically maintained by the Mozilla Corporation, with Surman stating that all the money the Mozilla Foundation receives from donations is put entirely to fund its advocacy and philanthropy efforts, including its Privacy Not Included guide and grants given to professors that teach about responsible technology programs. “Mozilla Ventures is being funded from Mozilla’s long-term savings,” Surman said. “In simple terms, we are moving funds from our existing investment accounts into an investment vehicle focused on companies whose mission is in line with Mozilla.” Nanabhay will be the only full-time member working on Mozilla Ventures at first, supported by a team of consultants in London, Boston, and San Francisco, but the process is currently underway to recruit more heads in the U.S. and Europe to bolster the fund’s investment

Byju’s eyes $1 billion IPO for physical tutor chain Aakash • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 2, 2022Posted in aakash, byju's, india, Startups, VentureNo Comments

Indian edtech giant Byju’s is engaging with bankers to put together a plan for the initial public offering of its physical tutor chain unit Aakash, which it acquired last year, a source familiar with the matter told ZebethMedia. The Bengaluru-headquartered firm is looking to raise $800 million to $1 billion in the initial public offering of Aakash at a valuation of over $3.5 billion, the source said, requesting anonymity as the details are private. The startup may file the paperwork for the IPO as early as February, the source said. The deliberations are at an early stage, so the terms of the deal may change or get completely abandoned, the source cautioned. Byju’s and its founder, Byju Raveendran, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A plan for the IPO of Aakash, which Byju’s acquired for nearly $1 billion last year, comes as the group firm has postponed its own listing plan amid the global market downturn. Byju’s seriously explored going public earlier this year through the SPAC route at north of $40 billion valuation but changed the plan after the market dramatically reversed most of the gains from the past 13 years of the bull run. Raveendran told ZebethMedia in an earlier interview that Byju’s was watching the macro market conditions closely and will file for an IPO in nine to 12 months. “I don’t think the markets will turn this year,” he said at the time. Another reason why Byju’s is considering listing Aakash on Indian stock exchanges is its apprehension about the consumer awareness of the Indian unit in the global markets, a person familiar with the matter said. The 34-year-old Aakash runs a chain of physical coaching centres across India. Prior to the acquisition, the firm was planning to list in the country. Aakash, which has been profitable for years, is on track to clock a revenue of over $360 million in the financial year ending 2024 at a 25% margin, the person familiar with the matter said.

Alation bags $123M at a $1.7B valuation for its data-cataloging software • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 2, 2022Posted in AI, Alation, data catalog, Enterprise, funding, startup, StartupsNo Comments

There’s been an explosion of enterprise data in recent years, accelerated by pandemic-spurred digital transformations. An IDC report commissioned by Seagate projected companies would collect 42.2% more data by year-end 2022 than in 2020, amounting to multiple petabytes of data in total. While more data is generally a good thing, particularly where it concerns analytics, large volumes can be overwhelming to organize and govern — even for the savviest of organizations. That’s why Satyen Sangani, a former Oracle VP, co-founded Redwood City–based Alation, a startup that helps crawl a company’s databases in order to build data search catalogs. After growing its customer base to over 450 brands and annual recurring revenue (ARR) to over $100 million, Alation has raised $123 million in a Series E round led by Thoma Bravo, Sanabil Investments, and Costanoa Ventures with participation from Databricks Ventures, Dell Technologies Capital, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Icon Ventures, Queensland Investment Corporation, Riverwood Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Sapphire Ventures and Union Grove, the company announced today. The all-equity tranche values Alation at over $1.7 billion — an impressive 15 times higher than the company’s previous valuation in a challenging economic climate. In an interview with ZebethMedia, Sangani said the new capital — which brings Alation’s total raised to $340 million — will be put toward investments in product development (including through acquisitions) and expanding Alation’s sales, engineering and marketing teams, with a focus on the public sector and corporations based in Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. “With the capital, we will continue to focus on engagement and adoption, collaboration, governance, lineage, and on APIs and SDKs to enable us to be open and extensible,” Sangani said via email. “We’re going to bring innovation to the market that will increase the number of data assets we cover and the people who will leverage and access Alation.” With Alation, Sangani and his fellow co-founders — Aaron Kalb, Feng Niu and Venky Ganti — sought to build a service that enables data and analytics teams to capture and understand the full breadth of their data. The way Sangani sees it, most corporate leadership wants to build a “data-driven” culture but is stymied by tech hurdles and a lack of knowledge about what data they have, where it lives, whether it’s trustworthy and how to make the best use of it. Alation’s platform organizes data across disparate systems. Image Credits: Alation According to Forrester, somewhere between 60% and 73% of data produced by enterprises goes unused for analytics. And if a recent poll by Oracle is to be believed, 95% of people say they’re overwhelmed by the amount of data available to them in the workplace. “With the astounding amount of data being produced today, it’s increasingly difficult for companies to collect, structure, and analyze the data they create,” Sangani said. “The modern enterprise relies on data intelligence and data integration solutions to provide access to valuable insights that feed critical business outcomes. Alation is foundational for driving digital transformation.” Alation uses machine learning to automatically parse and organize data like technical metadata, user permissions and business descriptions from sources like Redshift, Hive, Presto, Spark and Teradata. Customers can visually track the usage of assets like business glossaries, data dictionaries and Wiki articles through the Alation platform’s reporting feature, or they can use Alation’s collaboration tools to create lists, annotations, comments and polls to organize data across different software and systems. Alation also makes recommendations based on how information is being used and orchestrated. For example, the platform suggests ways customers can centrally manage their data and compliance policies through the use of integrations and data connectors. “Alation’s machine learning contributes to data search, data stewardship, business glossary, and data lineage,” Sangani said. “More specifically, Alation’s behavioral analysis engine spots behavioral patterns and leverages AI and machine learning to make data more user-friendly. For example, search is simplified by highlighting the most popular assets; stewardship is eased by emphasizing the most active data sets; and governance becomes a part of workflow through flags and suggestions.” According to IDC, the data integration and intelligence software market is valued at more than $7.9 billion and growing toward $11.6 billion over the next four years. But Alation isn’t the sole vendor. The startup’s competition includes incumbents like Informatica, IBM, SAP and Oracle, as well as newer rivals such as Collibra, Castor, Stemma, Data.World and Ataccama, all of whom offer tools for classifying and curating data at enterprise scale. One of Alation’s advantages is sheer momentum, no doubt — its customer base includes heavyweights like Cisco, General Mills, Munich Re, Pfizer, Nasdaq and Salesforce, in addition to government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and Australia’s Department of Defense. Alation counts more than 25% of the Fortune 100 as clients, touching verticals such as finance, healthcare, pharma, manufacturing, retail, insurance and tech. In terms of revenue coming in, Sangani claims that Alation — which has more than 700 employees and expects to be at just under 800 by 2023 — is in a healthy position, pegging the firm’s cumulative-cash-burn-to-ARR ratio at around 1.5x. Despite the downturn, he asserts that customer spend is remaining strong as the demand for data catalog software grows; for the past five quarters, Alation’s ARR has increased year over year. In another win for Alation, the investment from Databricks Ventures is strategic, Sangani says. It’ll see the two companies jointly develop engineering, data science and analytics applications that leverage both Databricks’ and Alations’ platforms. “The most successful data intelligence platforms will be adopted by everyone. Vendors that are jack-of-all-trades, but masters of none, promise everything and succeed at little. Similarly, point products achieve limited success, but only serve to create data silos that our customers are trying to avoid. The future of data intelligence is about connectedness and integration,” Sangani said. “We know that and will continue to put our money behind our beliefs.”

Picsart adds an AI Image Generator and AI Writer to its suite of creative tools • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 2, 2022Posted in AppsNo Comments

Digital creation company Picsart is adding an AI Image Generator and an AI Writer to create images and ad copy, the company announced on Wednesday. Picsart says that as text-to-image generators are growing in popularity, it’s bringing one directly into its platform. As with other models, Picsart’s AI Image Generator allows you to create images simply by entering a word, phrase or paragraph. The AI Image Generator is currently available in the Picsart platform on iOS. You can access the AI Image Generator by opening the iOS app and tapping the plus sign at the bottom of your screen to start a new project. Next, you have to scroll down to find the tool and select it. You can then enter a word, phrase or sentence about the image you want to generate. Or, you can select from the suggested keywords and tap “Generate image” to see your AI-created images results. Then, you can select your favorite image and continue editing it with Picsart’s other tools. Image Credits: Picsart The new AI Writer is designed to support small business marketers by making copywriting tools accessible to anyone. It includes an ad writer, social media bio creator, rephraser and marketing slogan maker. You can use it by entering a few prompts and then selecting the voice or tone you’re looking for, after which copy is generated in seconds. The feature is currently available via Picsart’s Quicktools. “Generative AI is a powerful new resource for visual creators and anyone who needs content,” said Picsart founder and CEO Hovhannes Avoyan in a press release. “There are two huge advantages of this technology: the first is making creativity accessible to new people and the second is increasing productivity for those who already create. The tools we’re launching today are the first of many generative AI features we plan to roll out.” Image Credits: Picsart Picsart’s new AI Image Generator and AI Writer will join the platform’s current AI tools, including its AI Enhance and AI-Generated Fonts features. The company hit unicorn status in August 2021 after announcing that it raised a $130 million round led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2. The platform has 150 million monthly active users and ranked #19 of the most downloaded apps in 2021, according to data from Sensor Tower. The launch of Picsart’s AI Image Generator comes as text-to-image AI generators are becoming increasingly popular, especially with the launch of OpenAI’s DALL-E 2. Picsart also isn’t the only platform to roll out its own text-to-image AI generator, as TikTok and mobile photo editing app creator Lightricks have both hopped on the the AI-generated art bandwagon.

Troop rallies retail investors to get out the proxy vote • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 2, 2022Posted in ESG, Fintech, shareholder activism, StartupsNo Comments

Retail investors entered the stock market in droves over the past couple of years. Much ink has already been spilled analyzing competition between fintech companies such as Robinhood and Public.com to capture these new customers. But there’s another implication of this trend that’s less obvious: these new investors also have the power to introduce and vote on shareholder proposals that can shape the trajectories of publicly-traded companies. It’s a classic David-and-Goliath battle, though, as retail investors typically don’t stand a chance in organizing around their interests when they are going up against the behemoth fund managers that tend to hold the majority of shares in large, public companies through indexes. Troop, a New York-based startup, is optimistic that the balance of power can shift. Troop cofounders Seb Jarquin, Felix Tabary, Zen Yui Image Credits: Troop The company just announced it raised a $4.3 million seed round co-led by Northzone and BlockTower Capital for what it calls a “collective bargaining platform for everyday investors.” The raise brings its total funding to $6.1 million to date ahead of its private beta launch slated for later this month, co-founder and CEO Felix Tabary told ZebethMedia in an interview. Tabary started his career as a salesperson at Bloomberg, where he covered activist hedge fund clients. That experience opened his eyes to how shareholder advocacy can enact change at large companies, he said. The first time he thought to bring those tactics to retail investors through a new tech platform occurred years later in 2021 after small activist firm Engine No. 1 mobilized some of ExxonMobil’s largest shareholders to fill two of the company’s board seats with directors who were more conscious of climate risks. “Despite only owning a tiny bit of that company, they were able to kind of wrangle together a really interesting coalition to kind of push the company in the direction of sustainability for environmental and economic reasons,” Tabary said. “Motivated by seeing what was possible on the institutional level, and inspired by what happened in the Gamestop story, we figured, what can we do to combine these?” The ExxonMobil campaign was a watershed moment for socially-conscious activist investors. This year, the number of ESG (environmental, social and governance) proposals filed by shareholders at S&P 500 and Russell 3000 companies has surged. It’s quite uncommon today for retail investors to actually vote on proposals, though. Tabary and his co-founders, Seb Jarquin and Zen Yui, along with their 15 employees, are betting that building a stronger community of investors can lead to a more robust flow of information and therefore encourage a higher level of retail investor engagement. Troop’s platform seeks to take advantage of this trend by providing a home for retail investors to interact with one another where they can remain anonymous, but their shares are still verified on the platform, Tabary explained. Once users connect their brokerage accounts to the Troop app and become verified, they can connect with an “influential community of verified shareholders” to vote collectively on polls and campaigns that could eventually translate into formal shareholder proposals. “If you look at the landscape today, there really aren’t that many practical ways to align your finances, your personal wealth, your portfolio, your 401k, you name it, with, strictly speaking, your values, in a productive, impactful, measurable way. [Shareholder voting], I think, is a really concrete lever to try and hold companies to the best and highest possible standards,” Tabary said. While the tech is still in the early stages, Tabary said Troop’s plan is to monetize through B2B revenue by selling its platform to professional activist investors. “Professional activist investors are doing more and more activism, but they’re taking smaller and smaller stakes in the companies that they’re targeting, which means they need to build broader support from a larger number of people,” he said. There are some prominent firms such as ISS and Glass Lewis that provide proxy voting advisory services to institutions but haven’t historically focused on retail investors, Tabary explained. Publicly-traded fintech Broadridge, he added, is another player that does have a consumer-facing platform to aggregate proxy votes but in Tabary’s view, the company is constrained by highly specific rules that limit its ability to incentivize shareholders to actually vote. As a young upstart, Troop may have more latitude to experiment with different strategies to get retail investors on board. Ultimately, retail investors could end up making a decisive difference in important proxy votes, according to Tabary, which is why Troop is so focused on bringing them into the conversation. “The bulk of shareholder activism happens six to nine months ahead of the annual shareholder meeting, and it starts with small, incremental coalition-building. What we’re trying to do is very consciously build out the retail portion of that coalition that typically tends to only be involved at the very end to make up the 5-6% difference in vote swings,” Tabary said.

Ex-Bain investor launches $30M web3 consumer VC fund as solo female founder • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 2, 2022Posted in Crypto, female founder, web3No Comments

Magdalena “Mags” Kala, a self-described “lifetime degen,” is no stranger to beating the odds. Before she became an investor, she co-founded an all-female blackjack team that sought to exploit gender bias to make a profit through gaming, she told ZebethMedia in an interview. It’s fitting, then, that Kala was able to raise her first fund as a solo GP focused on early-stage consumer startups in the web3 space in just four months despite a broader downturn in the crypto market. Her Miami, FL-based firm, Double Down, blew past its initial fundraising target of $20 million in one month and closed its first fund with a total of ~$30 million this week, according to Kala. The fund has already made nine investments in web3 consumer startups, including Miami-based OnChain Studios, which makes Cryptoys, and Tally Labs, the company behind the Jenkins the Valet & Azurbala franchises. Kala’s fundraise is no small feat, especially considering that women are deeply underrepresented in venture capital, not to mention the added challenges that come with raising capital as a first-time fund manager in today’s depressed venture market. Women comprise less than 15% of decision-makers at VC firms — a number that’s almost certainly smaller in the crypto space, where less than 5% of entrepreneurs are women. Her success in putting together this fund is also, in part, a result of her deep background in the consumer space. She has been investing in consumer-facing companies for a decade on behalf of Bain Capital and its co-chair, Steve Pagliuca’s, family office. Kala said she decided to raise this fund as a “reluctant entrepreneur” after having conversations with investors and founders in web3 who encouraged her to leverage the relatively niche intersection of her interests in consumer and crypto. “I believe that the future of web3 is in consumer, and I recognize that one of the things that I think is limiting that is actually the lack of good storytelling and go-to-market strategies around that, and communicating the value to people who are outside of the crypto OG, crypto-native customer segments,” Kala said. “To me, it felt like a perfect investor-market fit, if you will … I thought, no one else in crypto was doing it, so I decided to launch the fund.” Double Down’s backers include crypto and venture heavyweights such as Chris Dixon and Marc Andreessen of a16z, Paradigm co-funders Matt Huang and Fred Ehrsam, Alexis Ohanian’s VC firm Seven Seven Six, and consumer-focused LPs such as Paris Hilton and Sara Blakeley. Kala says her LP base is made up of ~30% female LPs and ~30% BIPOC LPs. As a nod to web3 culture, Kala says she is releasing the full deck she used to raise this fund as a series of NFTs on OpenSea. She plans to airdrop pages to her LPs in the order in which they committed to the fund, starting with Pagliuca, Dixon and Ohanian, she added. Double Down is also launching a newsletter that will provide advice on marketing and branding to startups in web3, Kala added. “Consumer culture is essential for driving mainstream adoption of web3, and Mags brings a unique perspective as an experienced consumer investor, strategist, and marketer to invest in and support the next generation of top web3 startups on their journey to mass impact and scale,” Ohanian told ZebethMedia in an email. Kala says she plans to collaborate with some of the crypto-focused investors who are LPs of her fund on individual deals. The small size of her fund, she explained, will allow her to focus on the specific strengths she brings to the table rather than compete with larger firms. To her investors, Kala’s private equity experience is one such advantage, particularly in today’s market. “I’m used to doing real diligence and being disciplined, and I think with a lot of LPs that has resonated,” Kala said. “I’m not going to fly by the seat of my pants, especially given market conditions.”