Author : zebethcontrol

Digital assets marketplace Creative Fabrica launches generative AI tool • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 31, 2022Posted in AI art, Creative Fabrica, Creators, Generative AI, StartupsNo Comments

Creative Fabrica, a marketplace for digital files like print-on-demand assets, fonts and graphics, announced today it will launch its own generative AI tool. Called CF Spark, it’s already seen three million prompts generated, and more than 500,000 published by Creative Fabrica creators over the past three weeks. Like other digital assets on the platform, users can put up their generative AI files for paid use by other members, which Creative Fabrica says makes it the first generative AI that also allows creators to make money. Backed by investors like Felix Capital, FJ Labs and Peak Capital, Creative Fabrica has an agreement with Stable Diffusion, the image-generating AI system by Stability AI and is working on a partnership with OpenAI to include Dalle 2 in its ecosystem. CF Spark also uses the Dreamstudio API. Creative Fabrica CEO Roemie Hillenaar said this mix allows users to get different results and covers a broader range of styles. Creative Spark started building CF Spark before Stable Diffusion was released open source, Hillenaar told ZebethMedia. “We saw that DALLE and MidJourney where opening up their gates towards more beta users and we took the bet that OpenAI (make DALLE) will open up their API at any time. At the time we were betting towards the end of this year and we thought to build already the product as if the API would be available,” he added. But in the middle of that, Stability AI released Stable Diffusion open source and since Creative Fabrica was already in the process of developing CF Spark, it allowed it to take the new tool live more quickly. To use CF Spark, creators enter a prompt, which generates four images that they can chose to publish on their page. Other Creative Fabrica users can re-prompt the AI images to get different results and upload images of what they create with AI-generated art (for example, a T-shirt). CF Spark is available to Creative Fabrica’s four million users for free. In total, the platform has a library of almost six million fonts and graphics.

Google gets into the Halloween spirit with a ghostly multiplayer interactive Doodle • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 31, 2022Posted in Gaming, Google, google doodle, Media & EntertainmentNo Comments

If you want to take a break from work or the never-ending news cycle, Google is here to give you an escape. The search giant has launched a new Halloween-themed playable Doodle that opens up to a Snake-like game that you can play with your friends or random players from around the world. The goal of the game is to collect as many wandering spirit flames as you can in two minutes and return them to their homebase. After time’s up, the team that has collected the most spirit flames wins. Here’s the catch: opponents can intercept spirits from one another as they bring them back to homebase. Ghosts that collect the most spirit flames will also unlock special powers, such as speed boosts and night vision. You can host a game and invite up to seven friends to play with you via a custom invitation link or choose to play with randomized players. Google says the team that developed the Doodle build several systems to enable this multiplayer gaming, all running on the Google Cloud Platform. The team utilized Open Match, which is an open source matchmaking framework cofounded by Google Cloud and Unity. Google often uses its Doodles to commemorate historical dates and figures, but sometimes uses the feature to add a bit of fun when it comes to holidays. The new multiplayer Doodle is the sequel to Google’s “Great Ghoul Duel Doodle” from 2018. The 2022 version includes new characters, game maps, special power-ups and more.

These founders landed early checks by being savvy about social media • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 31, 2022Posted in Campfire, couplet coffee, EC TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, Social, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, VentureNo Comments

On first blush, founders building a coffee brand, a social networking app, and a fintech-focused venture fund wouldn’t appear to have much in common. But at ZebethMedia Disrupt, the founders, together on stage, credited their early success in raising venture capital to their use of social media platforms. It’s an interesting and increasingly necessary ingredient. While one founder, Nik Milanović, who launched a small fintech-focused media company and an associated venture fund, happens to enjoy the kind of profile that VCs tend to notice (Stanford grad, biz dev experience at Google, white), the checks the other two founders raised are something of a statistical anomaly. Gefen Skolnick, the founder of coffee brand Couplet Coffee, is a woman; just 2.4% of venture dollars flowed toward women-led companies in 2021. For a Black founder like Josh Ogundu, whose app Campfire invites users to create and share 30-second audio stories associated with pictures on their phones, the odds of getting a check were an even more abysmal 1.3% in 2021. (For Latin and Black women founders, the chances of receiving venture funding in 2021 were closer to zero.) Though Ogundu and Skolnick made the point that going to esteemed schools and logging time at brand-name companies helped even the playing field (he attended both Michigan State and the University of Southern California and had a stint at TikTok; she attended UCLA and worked at Tesla, among other internships), all three suggested that savvy use of social media can do more than make it easier to connect with investors and customers — it can keep a founder and their brand relevant and accessible, too.

Twitter’s app has only generated $6.4M in consumer spending to date • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 31, 2022Posted in Apps, Elon Musk, op-ed, Social, Twitter, verificationNo Comments

Elon Musk has a new plan to generate revenue for Twitter. Reportedly, the social media company’s new owner intends to revamp the Twitter Blue premium subscription, currently an optional $4.99 per month for a handful of perks, by upping the price to $19.99 per month while giving subscribers the coveted verification badge. While this plan is problematic for a number of reasons — buying verification devalues it, removing verification from existing users who can’t pay, like journalists and various notable figures, will aid the spread of misinformation — it’s also worth noting that Twitter Blue as it stands today has not been a success. The subscription itself is certainly due for a revamp — just not a completely misguided, ill-thought-out revamp like this. Launched in June 2021, initially in Canada and Australia, before expanding to the U.S. and New Zealand that November, Twitter Blue was meant to help the social media platform diversify its revenue and reduce its reliance on advertisers, who today account for more than 90% of Twitter’s total revenue. The idea with Blue has been to entice Twitter’s heaviest users — its power users — to pay a small monthly fee in order to gain access to a handful of exclusive features such as tools to organize bookmarks, the ability to read news articles without ads, custom icons and navigation, early access to new features, a way to quickly fix a typo, and most recently, the long-awaited Edit button. But so far, none of these options have offered a strong enough incentive to generate significant revenue for Twitter. If anything, Twitter users believe the Edit button should be a feature of the site itself, not an exclusive, paid-only option. And they’ve protested this decision by collectively not jumping to sign up for Twitter Blue, app store data indicates. What’s more, Twitter has oddly chosen at times to roll out new, in-demand features to non-subscribers first instead of to Twitter Blue’s paying customer base, as had been promised. For example, when Twitter this month expanded access to its experimental Status feature, which lets users tag tweets with a sentiment like “Don’t @ me,” “spoiler alert,” “breaking news,” and more, it didn’t include the option in Twitter Blue. That meant paid Twitter users had to watch as a random subset of Twitter’s user base, including many free users, got to play with a fun, new addition to Twitter they couldn’t use. A truly bizarre choice on the company’s part, and one that misunderstands what its power users value. The lack of demand for Twitter Blue can be seen in the insignificant amount of revenue it’s managed to pull in to date. According to data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower, Twitter’s mobile app has only seen approximately $6.4 million in worldwide consumer spending to date. By comparison, Twitter’s annual revenue in 2021 was $5.08 billion. In the second quarter of this year, Twitter generated $1.18 billion in revenue, $1.08 billion of which was from advertising. (Twitter also generates revenue from data licensing and other sources, so even the difference between these two figures can’t be chalked up to subscriptions alone). Of course, it’s impossible to tell from third-party data exactly how much consumer spending in the Twitter app was directed at Twitter Blue specifically, as Twitter also offered in-app purchases for “Ticketed Spaces” — that is, paid entry into a special event as a part of Twitter’s live audio streaming product. But we can estimate that Ticketed Spaces revenue was only a small fraction of that total, if anything at all, as Twitter found that feature had seen so little adoption it decided to shut it down last month, Twitter recently confirmed to ZebethMedia. Sensor Tower additionally noted that the Twitter Blue monthly subscription was the top in-app purchase, indicating that likely the bulk of the in-app consumer spending comes from Blue subscribers, not those paying for the virtually unused Ticketed Spaces feature. Twitter Blue’s lack of traction isn’t just a symptom of an app with a small user base. Year to date, the company has seen 153 million worldwide installs, slightly down by 3% over the 158 million seen during the same period last year (Jan. 1 through Oct. 27), Sensor Tower said. As of Q2 2022, Twitter had 237.8 million monetizable daily active users (mDAUs), it said during earnings. Meanwhile, another social app with a similar subscription model is far outpacing Twitter Blue, despite being live for only a few months. Snapchat also launched its first premium subscription offering this year with Snapchat+. Like Twitter Blue, the $3.99 per month Snapchat+ subscription (cheaper than Blue) is aimed at the app’s power users and offers its own set of exclusive perks. Snapchat+ subscribers today can change the app icon, see who rewatched their Stories, pin someone as their ‘Best Friend,’ change the visibility duration of their Stories, use custom notification sounds, and much more. It’s a good comp for how a social subscription offering could work, if fairly successful. As of Q3 2022, Snapchat+ reached over 1.5 million paying subscribers across more than 170 countries, the company said. Following its June 29, 2022 launch, Sensor Tower data indicates Snapchat+ has generated a little more than $28 million in worldwide consumer spending. It’s also attracting users who are willing to commit to paying for longer periods of time. The Snapchat+ monthly subscription is the top in-app purchase, but the second most popular option is the annual subscription, the firm noted. In other words, in roughly 4 months’ time, Snapchat+ pulled in more than quadruple the revenue that Twitter Blue has over a 17-month period. Even accounting for the fact that Snapchat has 363 million daily active users to Twitter’s 237.8 million (though yes, a slightly different metric as Twitter only counts users who can view its ads — mDAUs, not DAUs), it’s clear that Twitter Blue has not been a smashing success. So, in a sense, Musk would not be wrong to suggest that Twitter Blue needs a

Contract lifecycle management vendor Icertis secures $150M in debt to stave off rivals • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 31, 2022Posted in contract lifecycle management, Enterprise, Fintech, Icertis, silicon valley bank, StartupsNo Comments

It’s Halloween. And, if you’re contract management software company Icertis, it’s payday. After raising $115 million in 2019, Icertis today secured $150 million — $75 million in convertible debt and a $75 million revolving credit facility — in a combined tranche from Silicon Valley Bank that brings the company’s total capital raised to $520 million. By going the debt route, Icertis avoids having to answer the tricky question of valuation in an especially challenging economic environment. (Icertis was valued at $2.8 billion as of March 2021 and reportedly as high as $5 billion earlier this year, but valuations in tech are on a steep downswing.) Convertible debt allows Icertis to pay its loan obligation with equity or stocks, while the credit facility lets it borrow and repay on an ongoing basis. CEO Samir Bodas was rather vague about the plans for the new cash, but told ZebethMedia in an interview that it would involve “accelerating the application of transformational technologies like artificial intelligence, natural language processing, machine learning and blockchain to deliver material, unique and consequential value to customers.” That’s all rather ambitious (and, truth be told, a little buzzwordy), but Bodas asserted that Icertis is well-positioned to fend off rival startups in the cutthroat contract management space. “Industry analysts like Gartner and Forrester refer to our category as contract lifecycle management (CLM), but Icertis differentiates from traditional CLM vendors,” Bodas said. “We not only deliver efficiencies in contract creation and negotiation, but we use AI and natural language processing to structure contract information into on-demand data and connect that data to operational systems … to automate processes, maximize contract value and ensure compliance.” Founded in 2009 by Bodas (a veteran of Microsoft and Aztecsoft) and Monish Darda (previously an executive at BladeLogic), Icertis provides cloud-hosted tools for managing procurement, sales and corporate contracts — including tools that can read and analyze contracts to deliver risk management reports and automatic obligation tracking. The platform systemizes contracts and the associated documentation, extracting data like contact information and clauses to figure out contractual commitments and monitor them to ensure compliance. Ingested contracts can be used to model commercial relationships in Icertis, letting users identify contracts missing clauses necessary to complying with regulations like GDPR. Bodas claims the AI systems powering this and other features of the Icertis platform are among the most capable of their kind, able to process over 7,000 different types of contracts across 11 verticals. Icertis’ contract management software, which runs in the cloud. Image Credits: Icertis “We are forging and leading a new category of technology — contract intelligence — which uses AI to automate processes and deliver insights with structured, connected contract data to digitally memorialize the purpose of every commercial relationship and ensure the intent of those agreements is fully realized,” Bodas said. That’s a bold statement. But it’s true Bellevue, Washington-based Icertis is already one of the larger and more successful contract management software vendors to emerge in recent years. Bodas says that the company exited 2021 with an annual recurring revenue north of $100 million and recently surpassed $200 million in recurring revenue. He declined to disclose the size of Icertis’ customer base, but he noted that current clients include Microsoft, Boeing, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, Mercedes-Benz and Qantas and unnamed public sector agencies. This year, Icertis announced a partnership with SAP to make Icertis the CLM solution of choice for SAP customers. (Alongside SoftBank, SAP holds a minority stake in Icertis.) Bodas says it’ll create a contract management “ecosystem” for SAP clients through integrations with SAP solutions like Ariba, Fieldglass, S/4HANA and SuccessFactors. “In this economic downturn, we believe contracts, which govern every dollar in and out of the enterprise, will emerge as the go-to asset because they are an untapped source of invaluable business value to reduce costs, manage risk, ensure compliance and drive revenue,” Bodas said. “We are bullish that contract intelligence will emerge from this downturn as the fifth system of record in the enterprise, and that Icertis is positioned to lead it for the long term.” Investors see promise in contract management legal technology for procurement, sales, finance, legal and HR like Icertis’ — perhaps because of the enormous addressable market. The contract management lifecycle market is expected to grow from $1.5 billion in 2019 to $2.9 billion by 2024, according to Markets and Markets. The early adoption metrics certainly have been promising, with one recent Bloomberg Law survey showing that more than half of in-house lawyers were using contract management programs in 2020. Bodas says that Icertis’ platform alone has handled more than 10 million contracts worth over $1 trillion in more than 40 languages and over 90 countries. “Contracts are an invaluable source of original data — documenting and governing the entitlements and obligations between a company and its suppliers, customers and employees. In other words, contracts provide a single source of truth for commercial relationships,” Bodas said. He gave an example: “Recently, customers have been turning to Icertis to help them navigate inflation as best they can. Do their contracts have clauses that enable them to adjust prices in the event of inflation, how often can they raise prices, and by how much? We deliver these insights instantly, so every entitlement within a company’s contracts can be realized for maximum value.” Among Icertis’ competitors are ContractPodAI and SirionLabs, which raised $55 million in July and $85 million in May, respectively, for their automation-fueled contract management software. Another formidable rival is LinkSquares, which landed $100 million in April to grow its platform that combines legal analysis with contract lifecycle capabilities. For what it’s worth, Icertis dwarfs them in size, with more than 2,000 employees spread across its offices in New Jersey, Chicago and elsewhere.

Twitter is a startup again, I guess • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 31, 2022Posted in Equity Monday, Equity podcast, Startups, twitter elon musk, VentureNo Comments

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Stocks are mixed around the world, notably lower in China on the back of some negative economic data, and down in the United States ahead of what is expected to be another rise in interest rates thanks to the Federal Reserve. Crypto prices have held onto recent gains. A busy weekend of Twitter leaks lead the news cycle. Precisely if, and if yes, how much, Twitter can charge for verified accounts to keep their badge is now a point of conversation. Other reports of development deadlines with termination held as a threat if they are not met are likely doing great things for staffer morale. It turns out that self-driving cars are still far away. I am crying. Startups Zebra Labs and Invygo raised money, showing that the global startup investment market has not frozen, and that there is still funding for more future-facing efforts like Zebra in the metaverse. Finally, we’re keeping close tabs on the Q4 venture capital cycle. If we don’t see a rebound soon, how many unicorns die? And that’s our show! More Wednesday! Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. ZebethMedia also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!

Contraline erects $7.2M for contraceptive implants for men • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 31, 2022Posted in Biotech & Health, contraceptives, Contraline, GVNo Comments

The cervix industry has had implants to prevent pregnancy since the late 1960s, but there hasn’t exactly been stiff competition to slow down the fallopian swim team at its source. In fact, Contraline claims it is the first major innovation in this space since the vasectomy was performed on a human some 125 years ago. The company calls its product ADAM, and it just raised a wad of cash to continue its trials. “The first-in-human male contraceptive implant is a major clinical milestone that opens up new possibilities for men who wish to take contraception into their own hands,” said Kevin Eisenfrats, Co-founder and CEO of Contraline. “The patient demand for the ADAM Study has been tremendous, with the entire trial oversubscribing within three weeks of opening enrollment. We are looking forward to advancing ADAM through clinical development and bringing this product to market to transform how people think about contraception.” ADAM works by injecting a hydro gel into the vas deferens (the little tubes that carry the sperm). Image Credits: Contraline. The company just raised $7.2 million in funding led by GV. The goal is to advance its in-human clinical trials of its injectable hydrogel designed to provide long-lasting, non-permanent contraception for men. The product uses a “hydrogel” designed to occlude sperm flow through the vas deferens for a predefined period of time, eventually degrading and thus offering a non-permanent contraceptive option. The company suggests that the contraceptive is long-lasting but non-permanent, and claims it has no hormonal impact on the patients. The company told ZebethMedia that four men were implanted with ADAM at a hospital in Australia, using a minimally invasive, no-scalpel approach, with ADAM being injected using a patent-pending delivery device. The procedure marks the first patient implanted in “The ADAM Study,” which is being conducted under Human Research Ethics Committee approval. The ADAM Study is assessing the safety of the ADAM Hydrogel, while monitoring the semen parameters of the study subjects over three years. “Contraline has the potential to fundamentally change the market for contraception,” said Cathy Friedman, executive venture partner at GV. “We look forward to working with the team as they continue developing a long-acting, reversible male contraceptive that empowers more people with more choices over family planning.” Contraline’s study in Australia continues, and its next, longer-term goal is to run a second study with a larger group of patients in the United States.

Elon Musk’s plan to charge for Twitter verification will be a misinformation nightmare • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 31, 2022Posted in Elon Musk, Jason Calacanis, Social, TwitterNo Comments

It’s been less than a week since Elon Musk became “Chief Twit” at Twitter, and he has already come up with ideas that are stupider than walking into HQ with a sink. According to a report from The Verge, the new owner of Twitter wants to charge users $20 per month for a verified blue check. This feature would be part of Twitter Blue, the existing subscription feature that launched last year. Musk has not been subtle about his distaste for the monthly $4.99 product, which admittedly is not very appealing to anyone beyond power users. Currently, subscribing to Twitter Blue gets you early access to some features like the edit button, as well as the ability to change the design of the Twitter app icon on your phone. You can also get ad-free access to certain news sources, as well as a feed of the most talked about articles from the people you follow, and the people they follow. “What committee came up with the list of dog shit features in Blue?!? It’s worth paying to turn it off!” venture capitalist Jason Calacanis texted Elon Musk in April. The exchange was revealed as part of discovery in the trial between Twitter and Musk. “Yeah, what an insane piece of shit!” Musk replied. Now, Calacanis — who changed his Twitter bio to say he is Chief Meme Officer at Twitter — is supposedly part of Musk’s “war room,” alongside Musk’s other VC buddies like David Sacks. Musk and Calacanis have continued toying with the idea of paid user verification since April. Calacanis, per the leaked texts, laid out a five-part plan to Musk, including the concept of a “membership team,” which would “remove bots while getting users to pay for ‘real name membership.’” He also complained that “no one is setting priorities ruthlessly” at Twitter, and that “12,000 people are working on whatever they want.” Musk responded, “Want to be a strategic advisor to Twitter if this works out?” The desire to “authenticate all humans” has been part of Musk’s plan since he initially made his takeover bid. Potential security flaws aside, this plan ignores the fundamental difference between verifying someone’s identity, and giving someone a blue check to denote that they are who they say they are. “You could easily clean up bots and spam and make the service viable for many more users — removing bots and spam is a lot less complicated than what the Tesla self driving team is doing,” Calacanis texted Musk. “And why should blue check marks be limited to the elite, press and celebrities? How is that democratic?” Musk and his buddies view this plan as a way to get people to actually give Twitter money. But by monetizing a symbol that currently has value, they will ultimately remove all of that existing value. Blue checks exist on social platforms as a means of combatting misinformation. Currently, if someone makes a fake account pretending to be a world leader, journalist or celebrity, it’s easy to tell it’s a fake if the account doesn’t have a blue check. But under this newly proposed system, there’s not much incentive to pay the $20 per month to stay verified, especially since the once-coveted symbol would be available to anyone willing to pay. It’s quite possible that bad actors trying to pose as journalists to spread fake news would be more incentivized to pay the $20 than actual journalists. The Chief Twit doesn’t seem to care very much about the dangers of misinformation, though. Just this weekend, Musk tweeted (and then deleted) a fraudulent conspiracy theory about the attack on Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband. Another avenue for this feature could be to charge corporations like Netflix or Steak-umm (which has a great Twitter presence) to be verified. Corporate clients are likely more willing than a local nonprofit newsroom to drop $20 a month per account to prove legitimacy. Yet this still doesn’t solve the misinformation issue, and if anything, it pressures companies into buying a product that they’ve gotten free for years in order to prevent a possible PR problem. For now, it doesn’t seem like Twitter users are particularly enthusiastic about this plan. Calacanis posted a poll asking how much people would pay to be verified, and at the time of publication, about 81% of over a million respondents said that they would not pay. But as our own Ivan Mehta wrote earlier, “Seven days is a long time in Elonverse and he might come up with a different verification tactic altogether.” Hopefully, that plan is a bit more thought-through than this one.

It will take a ‘bulletproof’ startup to break the IPO logjam • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 31, 2022Posted in EC Newsletter, EC venture capital, IPOs, M&A, Startups, The Exchange, VentureNo Comments

That Intel managed to spin out Mobileye as a public company was good news of sorts for the technology exit market. But a single successful corporate spinout is not a sign that public-market tech debuts are back. Indeed, with news that Instacart is now pushing for a 2023 IPO, the upcoming calendar for tech exits (apart from M&A) is more than weak. It’s moribund. Perhaps that’s why the Twitter-Musk saga — an anti-IPO in that we’re seeing the social media company go private — is consuming so much oxygen: There’s not that much else going on when it comes to fascinating exits. Well, the UserTesting sale aside, I suppose. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on ZebethMedia+ or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday. What we care about is understanding when IPOs may return, as they could provide another method by which late-stage startups can raise capital. Currently, there’s concern that some unicorns are uninvestable and will therefore die. More capital to the cohort of billion-dollar startups could alleviate some of those pressures, not to mention help confirm the new pricing chart for startup shares.

How to launch a startup into a regulated market, according to Bradley Tusk • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 31, 2022Posted in Bradley Tusk, dibbs, Startups, Tusk VenturesNo Comments

Politician turned venture capitalist Bradley Tusk recently spoke at a ZebethMedia Live event on how startups should approach regulation. Dibbs CEO and co-founder Evan Vandenberg joined Tusk in the conversation. The event is embedded below, and it’s free to watch. Throughout the talk, the two guests expressed their firm stance on the power of utilizing regulations to build trust and utility. Tusk admits he’s known as the regulation guy — and for a good reason, too. Before starting his VC firm, Tusk was instrumental in Uber and Bird’s early days, helping the two companies bring their services to new markets in slash-and-burn style. Evan and his team’s attention to regulatory details lead to Tusk Ventures’s investment in the company’s Series A. As Tusk puts it during the event, he seldom hears startup founders like Vandenberg and Dibbs’ proactive approach to regulations. “Part of what our firm does is we invest but then we take on the regulatory communication challenges of our portfolio companies, and we work on them,” Tusk said. “And that’s because of my and my team’s background in politics. So the idea of ‘Here’s a company that’s proactively interested in new forms of regulations.’ That’s the kind of nerdy stuff my team, and I geek out about, so it was cool to have a founder like Vandenberg, too.” Tusk advises startups to answer the following questions when launching into a regulated market. What are the laws on the books? It may be that your thing is completely legal, allowed, or somewhere gray. So, for example, Bird when we launched Bird, in most markets, we didn’t ask for permission to come in because it wasn’t illegal, right? We tried to be nice about it, but electric scooters were banned in Illinois and New York. And we had to pass legislation in Springfield and Albany; once we did that, the scooters came in. So the first thing is what’s allowed because you may have a huge problem, you may have no problem, or it may be most likely somewhere in the middle. Who are you pissing off? Who are you going to be fighting with politically? Are you disrupting an entrenched interest? And if so, what’s their relative political power in that particular jurisdiction that you want to launch in? Or is it whitespace like what [Evan Vandenberg and Dibbs] are doing where no one’s ever done this stuff before? So the good news is, you don’t have pushback from the taxis or the casinos. The bad news is that nobody knows what to do. What relative strengths do you bring to the fight? For example, with Uber, the way we beat taxis in every market was to marshal our customers and have them directly reach out to their city council member, state senator, or mayor and say, ‘Don’t take this thing away from me.’ And because a couple of million people engaged in that for a couple of years, we went everywhere. How do you get elected officials on your side? Elected officials appoint regulators, and 99% of elected officials are desperately self-loathing, insecure people. And 100% of elected officials make every decision solely based on the next election and nothing else… So if politicians only care about re-election, what do you have to offer them that makes them think that legalizing your product will help them get reelected, or failure to do so will decrease their chance of reelected? Once you can convey that sentiment to the politician who appoints the regulator, the regulator will be told what to do.