Author : zebethcontrol

Asset management firm Stone Ridge launches Bitcoin-focused accelerator program • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in accelerators, Bitcoin, Crypto, Startup Accelerator, web3No Comments

Asset management firm Stone Ridge has launched a startup accelerator, In Wolf’s Clothing (Wolf), that will be dedicated to growing Bitcoin-focused applications, the team exclusively told ZebethMedia. The program will bring four cohorts per year, each consisting of about eight to 12 teams, or about 30 to 50 founders, to New York City from around the world for eight weeks at a time to focus on building on the Bitcoin-centric Lightning Network and Taro protocol, Kelly Brewster, CEO of Wolf, said to ZebethMedia. The Lightning Network is a layer-2 payment system built on top of Bitcoin that aims to enable faster payment transactions. Separately, Taro is a protocol that launched in April of this year to help issue digital assets on Bitcoin’s blockchain that can then be transferred to Lightning Network instantly in low-fee transactions. “They’re both generic and usable enough in such a wide range of applications that it’s like saying you’re starting an accelerator focused on HTTP,” Brewster said. “It’s a specific technology but the business use cases can be incredibly broad ranging. The fact that we’re very focused is a big part of the leg up and can be a big draw for founders.” Teams in the accelerator will range from small startup teams to early-stage companies. They will receive individual investments of $250,000, while one winner of the cohort will get an additional $500,000 for a total of $750,000, Brewster said. Some themes Brewster is interested in seeing startups expand upon include micropayments and tipping through Lightning and Taro. NYDIG, a subsidiary of Stone Ridge, is also supporting the accelerator, alongside mentorship and investments from Bitcoin-focused venture capital firms and operating companies. The names of companies providing outside capital will not be released, Brewster said. However, he added that all investors and mentors are already working with Bitcoin and Lightning. “That ranges from specialized VCs dedicated to Lightning up through public companies in fintech and banking.” Prior to this role, Brewster was NYDIG’s chief marketing officer and he has worked for Stone Ridge for about six years. Before that, Brewster spent almost 10 years at Goldman Sachs “in a variety of roles,” he said. “Over the past six years, I’ve had the opportunity to help start a number of businesses and I’ve fallen in love with the process of taking an idea and turning it into a real thing.” Lightning Network is a layer-2 payment protocol built on top of Bitcoin that aims to provide instant payments and scalability at a low cost for the blockchain. It allows users to send or receive Bitcoin quickly by making transactions off the main blockchain network or, as Coinbase said, “like an HOV lane on a highway.” “At Stone Ridge, we’ve been watching Lightning for quite a while now,” Brewster said. “The network has hit critical mass over the last 12 months and there’s enough capacity now you can do real-world things pretty robustly on the network.” In the past, the network has been implemented by Twitter for users to send and receive Bitcoin “tips” through Lightning Network-focused payments app Strike. It has also been implemented in the El Salvador government-created wallet, Chivo, so citizens can complete cross-border transactions. “The growth in Lightning over the past year has been extraordinary,” Brewster said. “In some ways, it’s the perfect moment to step back and see where there is signal or just noise. Some of the clearest signals are coming from Lightning. The growth and network capacity has been hockey-sticking.” The news comes at an interesting time for NYDIG, which recently laid off about 33% of its staff, according to a Wall Street Journal report last week. In December 2021, NYDIG raised $1 billion, which valued the company at over $7 billion it said. Brewster declined to comment on the layoffs, but said, “The launch of Wolf should be a clear signal of Stone Ridge’s long-term belief and investment in Bitcoin. It’s obviously a difficult environment out there, but this is the time to make investments looking a couple years out.” There are a number of crypto accelerator programs budding across the ecosystem. Some range from layer-2 blockchain-specific accelerators like Polygon’s to general web3-focused programs like Alliance DAO. While some offer capital like Wolf plans to, others invite investors to demo days in hopes that they invest in the startups’ projects. “In times like this, the companies that get built will capture these secular trends and really take hold as they accelerate,” Brewster said. “So we think this is the perfect moment to build rather than try to do something ourselves at Stone Ridge — we want to help and empower hundreds of other founders.”

Acquia jumps on headless CMS bandwagon with open source starter kit • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in Acquia, content management, drupal, Enterprise, headless CMS, open sourceNo Comments

Over the last decade or so, content management systems have evolved from monolithic systems managed by IT to a set of services made available to developers through an API. The more modern approach separates the presentation layer on the front end from the management on the back end. Today, Acquia, the company behind the open source Drupal project, announced its official entry into the headless CMS market, and not surprisingly it’s based on Drupal and open source. The company is calling this offering a “starter kit,” a way to take advantage of headless features as needed, says Jim Shaw, SVP and GM for Drupal at Acquia. “If you come to Acquia and you’re starting a digital experience project, we normally offer you Acquia CMS as the starting point to start with Drupal. But now we’re also offering a headless kit inside of that, so that you can use headless features to move content through an API,” Shaw told ZebethMedia. He points out that while it is releasing the headless kit, the company sees this as part of a hybrid strategy that includes the full-blown Acquia CMS working together with the headless piece. “And for us this is less about having a dedicated headless product that only does headless. It’s about having those capabilities available from the platform that allows you to do hybrid as well as headless,” he said. In fact, Shaw doesn’t see many customers going full-on headless. “I think it’s unlikely that people will go 100% headless, that they will have only headless use cases. I think what we see is people doing both, and as a result what we’re doing is we’re we’re building these capabilities inside the Acquia platform,” he said. In addition to the headless starter kit, the company is also introducing a kit for next.js, an open source web development framework, to help developers build a front end too. “[We’re also offering] a starter kit for next.js that primes the pump in terms of getting a next.js front end working with a headless back end,” he said. He says some customers have been taking this approach on their own, and the company wanted to build something to make it easier to do this without building a full-blown product. “So that’s why we offering these are starter kits, not entire new product. They are layers inside, things that we have that then allow our customers — and hopefully new customers — to accelerate those headless projects on our platform and still have all the options available to them in terms of having a hybrid approach available as well.” The two kits are being announced today at Acquia Engage, the company’s customer conference taking place in Miami this week. The kits will be available for download today.

Make 4 promises to hire better staff for your startup team • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in EC Future of Work, EC How To, hiring, Paul English, StartupsNo Comments

“When I hire someone, I make two promises. And I ask for two promises in return,” said Paul English — currently the co-founder of Boston Venture Studio but perhaps best known as the co-founder and CTO of travel platform Kayak. “I promise them that they will have the most fun they’ve had at any job.” What he means by “fun,” he explained, was that he likes to give people the freedom to do what they need to do — to try things out. “The second promise is that your skills will accelerate faster than at any other company,” he added, suggesting that he really values investing in staff and trusting what they do. A micromanager, he said, is failing at both of those promises: It isn’t fun, and the team isn’t trusted to work toward their goals. “Are all the people sitting around you energy vampires, or do you have fun with them? Do they enhance your ideas? Do they stimulate you? Or are you sitting with someone who’s kind of an asshole?” Boston Venture Studio co-founder Paul English “If you are micromanaging, you are already failing to realize that a person is no longer a good fit for the team. It doesn’t mean they aren’t talented — it may be just a case of the wrong person, wrong place.” We caught English as he was talking at a conference organized by venture fund Baukunst in Boston yesterday. We wrote about the new fund’s first close back in April; yesterday, the fund announced that it had closed its full $100 million fund — the largest amount raised for a debut fund at the pre-seed stage. So what does English ask from his employees? That’s where things get truly interesting.

Yes, Chief • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in carolyn childers, chief, equity, lindsay kaplan, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, 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. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha is bringing one of her favorite Disrupt panels to your ears. She sat down with Chief co-founders Lindsay Kaplan and Carolyn Childers to talk about the future of their private membership club for women in leadership positions. (Shout out Bryce for this amazing live illustration he did while we were all on stage!). The conversation touches on outlasting competitors, pandemic-defined community, the duality unicorn valuations and the word girlboss. If you love the conversation, share it with a friend. And if you want more on Chief, read a recap post that my colleague Ron Miller wrote about all things membership community and waitlists. Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, 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, a show that details how our stories come together and more!

Valence Security raises fresh capital to secure the SaaS app supply chain • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in Enterprise, M12, Microsoft, SaaS, startup, Startups, Valence SecurityNo Comments

Valence Security, a company securing business app infrastructure, today announced that it raised $25 million in a Series A round led by M12, Microsoft’s corporate venture arm, with participation from YL Ventures, Porsche Ventures, Akamai Technologies, Alumni Ventures and former Symantec CEO Michael Fey. The new capital brings the company’s total raised to $32 million, and co-founder Shlomi Matichin says it’ll be put toward product development and doubling Valence’s 25-person headcount by the end of the year. Matichin co-founded Valence Security with Yoni Shohet in 2021. A two-time entrepreneur, Shohet previously co-launched SCADAfence, an industrial Internet of Things security startup. Matichin, for his part, was one of the founding members of Capester, a platform for cataloging videos of civic violations. “In recent years, malicious actors have placed their focus on the interconnectivity between software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, leveraging its potential for their attack campaigns, as we saw in the SolarWinds breach,” Matichin told ZebethMedia in an email interview. “Organizations struggle to secure this [app] mesh — a growing, complex and interconnected environment of SaaS apps, third-party integrations, identities, privileges and data.” Matichin and Shohet built Valence to address these challenges around visibility into the SaaS supply chain, including misconfigurations, risk prioritization and remediation. The platform attempts to detect all of a company’s SaaS apps and contextualize them with vendor risk assessments, offering tools to spot improperly configured security controls and drifts from established policies. Valence can also help manage risky, inactive and overprivileged authentication keys, third-party integrations and no- and low-code workflows, Matichin says — in addition to potentially insecure public-facing files and emails forwarded externally. Identity security flows within Valence, meanwhile, aim to ensure users are managed by a central identity provider, using multi-factor authentication and are properly offboarded. According to Matichin, driving the demand for these services is the increasing threats companies face — and general SaaS app sprawl. The average enterprise uses around 80 SaaS apps, with BetterCloud estimating that businesses with more than 1,000 employees use more than 150 apps. This opens firms to attack. According to a Dimensional Research survey commissioned by ReversingLabs, a cybersecurity vendor, just over half (51%) of IT security teams report being able to protect their software from supply chain attacks. The impact of such attacks can be devastating. In a recent paper, Kaspersky estimated the cost of a supply chain software attack to an enterprise at $1.4 million. That doesn’t factor in the lost revenue from additional downtime arising during remediation, which can substantially add to costs (to the tune of thousands to millions of dollars) and affect a firm’s reputation. “Beyond security concerns, the repercussions of SaaS supply chain attacks are at the top of business priorities in light of the growing number of high-profile SaaS supply breaches over the past two years,” Matichin said. “These breaches can expose multiple interconnected SaaS applications for a single organization as well as threaten the business-critical data stored in those applications. This risk to business objectives, as well as to business continuity and efficiency due to the significant impact these breaches have on SaaS use, should be top-of-mind for the C-suite.” Tel Aviv-based Valence competes with a number of vendors in the supply chain SaaS app security space, including Canonic Security, Atmosec (which has raised $6 million), Astrix Security ($15 million), Wing Security ($26 million), AppOmni ($123 million), Obsidian Security ($119.5 million) and Adaptive Shield ($34 million). When asked whether that concerned him, Matichin responded by highlighting what he sees as a growing need for visibility and control over SaaS assets and remediation of the risks. “As remote working conditions accelerated the adoption and use of SaaS applications, a unique and unaddressed risk surface uncovered a growing need for SaaS security solutions targeting the sprawling SaaS mesh,” Matichin said. “In this respect, Valence was strongly positioned to address the unique security and business needs at the height of the pandemic, [and] Valence will continue to set the standard for SaaS security going forward.” Matichin didn’t reveal the size of Valence’s customer base or projected revenue. But even if it’s lower than that of the company’s close competitors, VCs seem ready and willing to throw their weight behind security vendors. In the first half of 2022, there was $12.5 billion in venture capital invested across more than 530 deals, according to a report from investment firm Momentum Cyber — in line with H1 2021’s $12.6 billion invested.

Unito, a platform for managing SaaS apps, raises $30M • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in Apps, Enterprise, funding, SaaS, software as a service, startup, Startups, UnitoNo Comments

Unito, a startup offering a service to bring together disparate software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms — for example, Jira and Trello — today announced it raised $20 million in a Series B funding round led by CDPQ’s Equity 253 fund with participation from Rainfall Ventures, Investissement Québec, Bessemer Venture Partners, Tom Williams and Mistral Venture Partners. The new cash brings the company’s total raised to $33 million, which CEO Marc Boscher says is being put toward product development and expanding Unito’s headcount from 65 people to 70 by the end of the year. SaaS tool usage is on the rise, with corporate teams now using 40 to 60 tools on average; a 2019 report from Blissfully found companies were spending around $343,000 per year on SaaS. But while SaaS apps have become the lifeblood of organizations, they can often be unwieldy. In a 2021 survey, enterprise architecture startup LeanIX found that businesses rarely have common standards when it comes to responsibility for SaaS management. On a mission to uncover a solution — or invent a new one — Boscher and Eryk Warren joined Montreal’s Founder Institute program in 2015. Boscher hails from the IT industry, while Warren has software engineering experience, having worked at startups in Montreal, including events ticketing system Outbox Technology and Fluential. Boscher and Warren founded Unito that same year, in late 2015, as they finally arrived at a way to help companies manage SaaS sprawl. Rather than build a new project management or collaboration platform, the two co-founders created two-way integrations with automatic syncing between existing SaaS tools. “The massive proliferation of online tools is causing nearly as many headaches as it solves,” Boscher told ZebethMedia in an email interview. “[T]ools made for collaboration can actually hinder collaboration, as they become virtual information silos … There are more SaaS tools than ever before and remote work is forcing companies to adopt these digital solutions, which leads to fragmentation and less control over tools as people work from anywhere on any device.” Configuring workflows using Unito’s cloud platform. Image Credits: Unito Unito attempts to ease this fragmentation by letting IT teams choose which apps they wish to connect — supported apps include GitLab, HubSpot, Google Sheets, ClickUp, Salesforce and Wrike — and authorize the Unito service to access them. Users with admin access can then map how other users, lists, custom fields and more travel among and leverage the various connected tools. On the back end, Unito provides analytics, including usage statistics and executive reporting for IT resource planning. The platform also acts as a secure gateway, limiting access to SaaS apps to only authorized users. Boscher argues that Unito can even save companies money by reducing seat requirements and “optimizing” software licensing. “Two-way syncing means developers can stay in their software development tools, and business teams in their project management tools — no doubling up on licenses to allow collaboration,” he added. “Eliminating hours of manual copying and pasting and always having the right information in your tools is key for agile and high-velocity teams.” True or not, many vendors claim to achieve this with their own tools for SaaS app management. Beamy recently raised $9 million to further develop its platform to detect and orchestrate SaaS apps. Torri, which is also venture backed, aims to bring businesses together around the cloud apps they use so they can discover all the apps they have — and automatically take action on those most appropriate for return on investment. Those are just the tip of the SaaS management iceberg — see BetterCloud, Lumos and Paragon for other examples. But Boscher believes there’s breathing room yet in the budding market. He points to findings from Gartner, which suggest 50% of organizations using multiple SaaS apps will centralize orchestration and usage of these apps using a SaaS management platform — an increase from less than 20% in 2021. “Unito’s competitors include integration software-as-a-service players like Zapier and its copycats, which boast thousands of easy to use but shallow one-way connectors, and integration platform-as-a-service players like Workato and Tray.io, which offer deeper one-way integrations but are difficult to use and need professional services and/or developers for implementation,” Boscher said, touting the ostensible advantages of Unito’s two-way syncing tech. “Unito’s two-way sync provides users with the most recent data from any work app and shares it in real-time based on customized fields and rules set by the user.” Boscher claims Unito has more than 50,000 users across 7,000 companies, including Atlassian, Corpay, Teamwork, the Cincinnati Reds and Wrike, with workflows in IT, project management, sales, spreadsheets and the software development domains. This year alone, Unito’s inbound monthly sign-ups doubled in six months, he says. And while Boscher wouldn’t reveal revenue, he noted that Unito is still hiring. “Having taken startups through two recessions before, Unito founders are taking hiring slow and keeping the bar high … Unito has always kept burn in line with growth,” Boscher said. “Unito aims to become the universal translator for enterprises by letting any team or department set up deep integrations on their own, while keeping IT in control at the governance and security level.”

Say goodbye to the notch? OTI raises $55M for technology to remove screen obstructions • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in Apple, Hardware, LG, oled, Samsung, StartupsNo Comments

OTI Lumionics, an eye-catching startup out of Canada that has been working on display materials for device makers to create uninterrupted, full-view displays on their devices without the need for “notches” or cut-outs to account for camera technology — and whose name has been connected with Apple as a key supplier for a future notch-free iPhone — has raised $55 million in funding. The money will be used both to take its technology into production with a number of partners, and to develop a secondary line of operations that was borne out of the first: OTI credits the breakthrough that it had with its own work on display materials to a “quantum and AI-driven computational platform” that it built itself, and so the plan will be to productize that as well to help other technologists and engineers solve their own thorny material science conundrums. The funding is coming from a mix of strategic and financial backers that speak to its current business funnel, too: it includes LG Technology Ventures, Samsung Venture Investment Corporation, UDC Ventures (the venture arm of United Display Corporation), Anzu Partners and the Family Office of Lee Lau — LG, Samsung and UDC being some of the biggest names in display technologies. Areas where the display materials are likely to make an appearance in coming years include smartphones, tablets, laptops, AR and VR headset makers, televisions and potentially automotive applications. OLED screens have changed the game when it comes to connected devices, literally and figuratively, with brighter and more contrasting colors, and better responsiveness that all improve the experience in visually-intensive experiences like gaming and much more. But one of the shortcomings in their structure is that when they are used, typically in full-screen scenarios, manufacturers have had to create “notches” or other dark spaces to share that real estate with cameras and other technology needed for features like facial recognition, a challenge that becomes even more compounded when considering how and where newer technology, like transparent screens, might be used in the future (automotive windshields, for example, is one area where obstructing the viewing space would not work at all). It also means that there have been limitations in introducing features like touch ID on the smooth screens. OTI’s breakthrough is something that it calls CPM Patterning, a new material and approach that allows for the cathode display technology to essentially be knit together with the sensor technology in a seamless design, so that the screen essentially becomes one with the functionalities of the cameras or other sensors, which it says also produces a more efficient process that uses less power. Michael Helander, the CEO and president of OTI (pictured, above), said that the process of coming up with the material was something that OTI could not have done without building and using its own quantum computing-based algorithms — the platform that it is looking to productize alongside this specific material. Helander said the platform runs using “classic hardware” with some compute from third-party quantum companies like D-Wave. Beyond coming up with the design, the company has already gone through the process of getting the production method tested and qualified by manufacturers, meaning that one typically long step in bringing something new to the market has already been passed, and that OTI’s technology is “production ready.” And if the name OTI rings a bell, you might recall that it was named as a key partner of Samsung’s in a report earlier this year, subsequently picked up by others, that alleged the two were working on building screens using the technology for a future generation of Apple’s iPhone. This is a long-play game. In an interview, Helander would not comment on customers or where we might see OTI’s technology in action first, he did say that it was unlikely to be making its way to consumers’ hands for some years still. He added that although hardware companies are known to build and acquire IP technology all the time, there is an interesting opportunity here for more nimble startups that are focusing on and fixing very specific problems. A company like Samsung, he pointed out, has made a few acquisitions of material science startups, but “the challenge is that because of the timelines and work involved, if one device maker buys from one manufacturer [but not another], or changes its strategy, then the whole supply chain could shift. It’s a lot of investment and it’s a risk, so you see a lot of cases where display competitors will co-invest in supporting smaller companies, and even collaborating,” as LG, Samsung and UDC are doing here with OTI. “Even though they would like to have total exclusivity, supporting them together can be beneficial for everyone.” Robert McIntyre, LG Technology Ventures’ MD, said that the display material alone sealed the deal for investing in OTI, with the platform opening the door to more possible collaborations in the future. “OTI at its core has a materials discovery engine that we think is uniquely powerful, using AI and quantum computing to run simulations to arrive at material endpoints that were previously undiscovered,” he said. “The unique thing about the company is that it realizes the importance of bringing applications to market.”

A prep checklist for startups about to undergo technical due diligence • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in Column, due diligence, EC Column, EC How To, fundraising tactics, Startups, technical debt, VentureNo Comments

Matt Van Itallie Contributor Matt Van Itallie is the founder and CEO of Sema, which provides codebase analytics for M&A. Previously, the author offered a detailed overview of the technical due diligence (TDD) process investors conduct before injecting cash into early stage startups. In this follow-up, he offers a detailed checklist for C-level executives and senior managers who are responsible for helping VCs determine whether their “codebase is safe enough for investment.” Product roadmap Explain how you collect user and customer feedback. Provide a sample subset of the most granular user/customer feedback you collect. Provide the results of the synthesis of user/customer feedback. Provide the last 12 months of product management data for Engineering (e.g. Jira tickets). How much was spent on new features / functionality compared to maintenance? What are the major items on the list? Explain the roadmap for the next 12 months. Code quality How much does Finance invest in tech debt prevention and remediation? In security risk prevention and remediation? In IP risk prevention and remediation? Which software languages do you use? Is the use of new languages managed? Is a refactoring being considered or possibly needed? Which testing methods do you use and what is their breadth? Do you perform unit tests, automated tests, manual QA testing, and user acceptance testing? Share the most recent results from each type of test. Is a line-level scanning tool such as SonarQube in place? If yes, share a sample report. Is third-party code managed through a manager, stored in the code, or both? Why? Describe your architecture and provide architectural diagrams. Intellectual property

Duolingo’s owl will now shout fractions at you • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in duolingo, edtech, luis von ahn, StartupsNo Comments

Duolingo is launching its math app to the public, and months after a beta version joined the app store. The math app, named Duolingo Math, is the first subject expansion that Duolingo has made beyond its original roots of language learning and literacy. And yes, it has punny notifications and nudges from Duo, infamous owl-turned cube (along with other characters evolved into mathematical figures), per lead engineer Sammi Siegel. It is available on iOS today, while Siegel said Android is on the radar once the app hits product-market fit. “Our mission has always been to provide high quality accessible education and I don’t think that necessarily stops at language learning,” Siegel said in an interview with ZebethMedia. “We’ve seen the stats on math, education and losses over the pandemic.” The engineer, who has been at Duolingo for four years, teamed up with four other colleagues to build the app with the goal of getting rid of adult and child “math anxiety” alike. Upon downloading the app, users are able to choose between an elementary version, which gets into basic math concepts such as multiplication and division, or an adult version, dubbed brain training, which focuses on similar concepts. Brain training is optimized for training mental math skills. Think less about division for the sake of division, and more about how to quickly compute the tip on dinner as the waiter hovers over your shoulder. While the app originally was built for children, Siegel said that the team introduced the more difficult, adult-focused version of the app somewhat recently. “We’ve noticed in our metrics, [that] brain training is slowly starting to creep up over elementary, but I think it’s still a little too early to tell exactly where those trends are going to go,” Siegel added. In the future, Duolingo’s math app may start to show even higher level math, such as linear algebra or college-level math; while its elementary focused app is more about gaining confidence in the classroom. Siegel said that the app is designed to include bite-sized lessons, interactive exercises, streaks and the same kind of “delight and animation” that has helped Duolingo scale to millions and millions of users. Image Credits: Duolingo The app, similar to its flagship language learning app, is free to use. Siegel said it will stay free for now, unlike Duolingo which launched a subscription tier over the past few years. As I said last year, language learning is a skill that is benefited by cultural context and nuance, while math revolves around the goal of getting to the one right answer. Siegel notes that the app does have questions, such as equivalent fractions, where there are a variety of answers, and that it progresses in difficulty as a user goes through the questions. Both areas of education require methodical thinking and the ability to apply functions to get to answers. In Duolingo’s whimsical product eyes, it seems like the team thinks both subjects could benefit from motivation and attention – even if it takes an Owl to get there. Synergies aside, the expansion puts Duolingo square into competition with math-focused edtech companies such as Khan Academy, Brilliant.org, Photomath, Numerade and the recently acquired Symbolab. It’s thus complicated how this new bet lines up with the fact that CEO and co-founder Luis Von Ahn mentioned that the majority of the company’s investment will remain on language learning products for the next 3 to 5 years. As mentioned in the Duolingo EC-1, von Ahn has always said that he and his co-founder, Severin Hacker, were thinking about making Duolingo a math app before they eventually decided on language learning. “I love math, but if you learn math, math itself can’t make you any money,” von Ahn said in a previous interview. “You learn math to learn physics to become an engineer, whereas knowledge of English directly improves your income potential in most countries of the world.”

Needl wants to become the search engine for your accounts • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in Apps, productivity, Search, Startups, Y CombinatorNo Comments

Google, DuckDuckGo, and other search engines help you find information from the web. But it’s hard to find documents, messages, meetings, and emails from your own accounts. You need to go to different applications to find things that might be related to one project. A Y-Combinator-backed app called Needl is helping users with that. Needl is a cross-platform application that lets you search across your local filesystem and accounts like Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Notion, and Slack. The free version — available on the web, Windows, and Mac — lets you connect a single account per integration. If you need more account connections and integrations like Jira and Linear, you will need to pay $10 per month. The application is simple to set up and use: once you install it on your system, it will ask you to connect your Google, Slack, and Notion accounts. Once that’s done, you can search for files, events, emails, and other things across all these accounts and your local filesystem. You can filter these results by files, messages, events, tasks, and emails. Image Credits: Needl If you’re a keyboard ninja, the app has handy shortcuts for you to launch the interface and navigate around. Users can customize shortcuts to launch the app and jump to the home view. The default view on the app shows the Activity Feed, which will show you contextual information on different apps such as your upcoming meeting. Needl founders Max Keenan, Angela Liu, and James Liu are all Chicago university alums and met at a hackathon. They worked on a few side projects like a tool to write essays using GPT-2 and a TikTok for blog posts. After university, MaxKeenan in investment banking at Moelis while Angela Liu and James Liu joined Microsoft. The trio said that they had to become organized once they joined their jobs and meticulously follow naming systems and folder structures to easily find info. They wanted to solve this problem of constantly and manually reorganizing information through search. “We were looking for a problem that historically had never been solved, but improvements in language models would be able to solve. As we were onboarding virtually during the pandemic, it hit us right in the face — information was siloed across all of these different platforms and we could improve the search and discovery of info,” Keenan said in an email conversation with ZebethMedia. Image Credits: Needl Needl team wrote the first line of code in June when it was in the Y-combinator’s summer 2022 cohort. The company has raised $2.5 million from various investors including Fuse, Y Combinator, Palm Drive Capital, Liquid 2 Ventures, Collin Wallace and Nathan Wenzel. The company rolled out the product under a closed beta to around 200 users in August. Now the company is making it available to everyone under public beta. Keenan said the company wants to focus on improving its contextual and semantic search through large language models (LLM) over the next 12 months. Plus, the startup wants to add more premium integrations like Asana, Hubspot, and Salesforce. The startup considers Glean, a startup powering enterprise search across apps, as one of its major competitors. In May, Glean raised $100 million in its series C funding round led by Sequoia with participation from Lightspeed, General Catalyst, Kleiner Perkins, and the Slack Fund at a $1 billion valuation post-money. Keenan said that a major differentiation between Glean and Needl is the shorter setup time for the latter. “Biggest difference from Glean is that our product is self-serve and can be set up in under 2 mins by anyone, regardless of company size. Glean sells through sales-led processes that require full company adoption, can take months, and are inaccessible to individuals or small teams,” he said. Neeva, a search engine built by a former Google ad exec, also offers search features through app integrations. However, it is available only in the U.S. with European expansion underway. Keenan said in long term, Needl wants to pre-empt the need for search and present information through its own recommendation engine.