TechCrunch Disrupt 2022

Kayhan Space is making orbit safer with timely, automatic collision warnings for satellites • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in Battlefield, battlefield 20, Disrupt, Kayhan Space, Space, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

The orbital economy is heating up, but the infrastructure that supports it is starting to creak. Kayhan Space is a startup that makes sure your satellite doesn’t crash into another — or a launch or piece of space trash, for that matter — using modern data crunching techniques and a web-accessible platform. Kayhan presented today at Disrupt SF as part of the Battlefield, and the business is considerably further along than when we first covered them; at the time, they were raising a pre-seed round, but now they’ve got their feet under them and are raising again. Founded by old friends Araz Feyzi and Siamak Hesar, who came together to the U.S. from Iran for school years ago, the company is taking on the natural result of the last decades order-of-magnitude increase in satellite launches: traffic. Space may seem like a big place, but low Earth orbit is actually pretty crowded, relatively speaking. With thousands of satellites zooming around on all kinds of trajectories, and tens of thousands of pieces of space junk as well, the chances your spacecraft will have to juke a bit to avoid a screw going 20,000 mph or so are getting higher. When orbits overlap to the point that a collision is possible, it’s called a “conjunction” — a more neutral term than “collision course,” certainly. “There are a lot of satellite-on-satellite conjunctions; it’s less than 10% today but the paradigm is shifting,” Feyzi told ZebethMedia. “The sheer number of conjunctions is increasing, because we’re tracking more objects and there are more active satellites — and we expect that to get worse.” Worse not just in terms of frequency, he explained, but in the decreasing amount of time before a potentially catastrophic event occurs. This lead time is very important, because last-minute maneuvers are both hair-raising and waste fuel — what could have been avoided by a tiny impulse hours ago becomes a longer emergency burn. Normally satellite operators report their positions and orbits to Space Command — sounds impressive, but imagine a control tower at an airport that suddenly grew to 10 times its normal size. They can only do so much, so fast, and they rely on operators calling in the latest data and changes. With thousands of satellites in the sky, de-conflicting orbits over a period of hours or days — and deciding what to do via phone call — is no longer a realistic option. Kayhan’s Pathfinder orbital tracking platform. Kayhan is working to automate the process as much as possible using the freshest data available. Some of that is the high precision object database maintained by the government, yes, but there are other tracking sources too, plus the real-time info coming from customers and anyone who makes it available. Their Pathfinder platform provides situational awareness, conjunction warnings, recommended new orbital paths — if you have the right thruster, it’ll even provide the impulse. “We use all of this data, and we’ve developed a large amount of proprietary algorithms and processes. For example, we’ve developed a modern prediction engine that predicts the paths of objects, that allows us to very rapidly calculate, simulate and re-simulate the motions of objects in space,” Feyzi said. The turnaround time for a conjunction response is measured in minutes instead of days, but it’s no less carefully considered, Feyzi continued: “When you go on Pathfinder and you look at the recommendations prepared for you, you can be sure they’re safe — we’ve screened them — and second, it’s feasible for you because it fits all the constraints you have: your propulsion system, your ground contacts.” Image Credits: ZebethMedia He also emphasized that these capabilities aren’t limited by, for example, how fast a radar dish can turn. Being a data-based product, it can scale arbitrarily. “The beauty of software, and the way we have designed our infrastructure is it is easily scalable. We could onboard every satellite available today and it wouldn’t be a problem for us,” Feyzi said. Integrations with other satellite and mission management platforms are coming as well — not everyone wants to work with a whole new tool, so the data will be available via SDK. You may wonder whether a pure data play is defensible as a business. Feyzi admitted that others may very well attempt the same type of system, but Kayhan’s head start and expertise is not to be underestimated. “We have five Ph.D.s in astrodynamics on our team today. The amount of data we process and the amount of processing we do is extremely heavy; unless you develop these core capabilities to run effectively and efficiently, you won’t be able to achieve what we are achieving,” he said. “If you have the data, the capital, the people, yes, maybe in two years, you could develop the platform — no one has done it so far, but where we’ll be in two years is very different from where we are today.” To that point, Kayhan itself is expanding its capabilities with a now product it calls Gamut, meant to offer the same kind of automated safety checks but for launches. Image Credits: Kayhan Space Scheduling launches isn’t just about waiting for good weather — you have to thread the needle to put the payload in the right orbit and place, perhaps among dozens or hundreds of peers. As the number of satellites rises, the prospect of a ride-share mission hitting several different orbits quickly becomes a very complex logistical problem. And the kicker is, if you miss your launch window by a few minutes, you need a new solution. “We invented a new method that leverages GPU processing to process launch screening an order of magnitude faster,” Feyzi said. That means launch companies can be prepared for more eventualities, and hit fast forward on the paperwork and other official processes one has to get through to send a rocket into space. Gamut is still in development and testing, but you can expect to hear more about it soon as

RIF Robotics powers robots that inspect and organize surgical equipment • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in Battlefield 200, Biotech & Health, Disrupt, RIF Robotics, Robotics & AI, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

Several years ago, Kevin DeMarco’s aunt was an operating room nurse who asked DeMarco — knowing that he programmed robots for a living — if there was a robot that could prepare surgical equipment. After investigating the problem with a colleague at Georgia Tech, where DeMarco was working as a research faculty member, he decided to leave his position to create the robot that his aunt once mused about. In this quest, DeMarco ended up co-founding RIF Robotics, one of the startups in the ZebethMedia Disrupt Battlefield 200. Led by DeMarco, Sergio García-Vergara and a third co-founder, Collin Farill, who’s an industrial designer by trade, RIF Robotics seeks to use a combination of AI and robotics to relieve healthcare workers of the burden of mundane tasks so they can focus on clinical work. Image Credits: RIF Robotics Sterile processing — the cleaning of medical equipment — is also tough on technicians performing it, who have to spend hours each day inspecting and cleaning tools. Some equipment requires over 100 steps to disinfect, and the pace in busy hospitals can be relentless. The costs can add up, too. One study estimates that just 20 instrument errors that end up creating delays in the operating room can cost a hospital as much as $3,385. Extrapolating out to a year, the cost to the hospital would be about $48,000, the research found. RIF isn’t tackling cleaning. But the startup claims its prototype product, which was developed in less than two months, can save surgeons time by identifying, classifying and manipulating four different instruments and assembling a small surgical tray. Two machine learning systems — an image segmentation system and an object classifier, trained on sets of both real and synthetic images of surgical tools — help a robotic manipulator arm grasp and move the instruments. “The major challenges that the sterile processing industry is facing are a lack of experienced surgical technicians, instrument-level tracking, infection traceability and cost traceability,” DeMarco told ZebethMedia in an interview. “Medical device manufacturers are interested in knowing how their equipment is used and degrades in the field. Instrument-level data will also help them to decide where to send sales reps. Hospitals are interested in instrument-level data because it will help them operate more efficiently by improving instrument-level tracking and instrument inspection. Currently, most hospitals only track at the tray level, but the industry wants to be able to track at the instrument level.” Image Credits: RIF Robotics Future prototypes will be able to recognize more tools and determine if there’s any leftover “bioburden” (i.e., blood and bone) on instrument surfaces and evaluate instruments’ sharpness and overall condition. But even in its current form, DeMarco believes that RIF has built a product hospitals would use. “Three Atlanta hospitals and the Veterans Affairs are interested in our product,” he said. “We have a collaborative research and development agreement with the Veterans Affairs, which allows us to conduct customer discovery and pilot studies at their facilities … [We’ll deploy] three alpha versions of our systems at local Atlanta hospitals, where we already have existing connections.” RIF is currently bootstrapping — DeMarco claims that the company has a burn rate of less than $1,000 per month. But the team isn’t naïve about the long road ahead. RIF is going after an $800,000 debt pre-seed round and hopes to hire a medical device industry expert after the round concludes. The company, which is pre-revenue, also expects to require three rounds of funding and close to four years before it reaches profitability. RIF Robotics’ co-founders pose for a photograph in scrubs. Image Credits: RIF Robotics There’s also competition from vendors like RST Automation, which sells a semi-automated medical tool identification and organization system. Steris and R-Solution Medical — two other rivals, albeit not direct ones — are developing robots to transport and store surgical trays and equipment. DeMarco claims that RIF’s solution is more capable. But the proof will be in the pudding — RIF aims to turn its prototype into a manufacturable product by fall 2023. “The healthcare industry is starving for innovation,” DeMarco said. “We are protecting ourselves from the potential headwinds by developing products and solutions that are directly asked for by the industry and the end users.”

Theneo wants to bring Stripe-like API documentation to all developers • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in API documentation, Battlefield 200, Disrupt, Enterprise, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, TheneoNo Comments

A new company is taking a leaf out of Stripe’s API playbook with a platform that makes it easy for any company to create clear API documentation, while also allowing non-technical team members to contribute to the process. Demoing as part of the Battlefield 200 cohort at TC Disrupt this week, ZebethMedia met up with Theneo to find out how they plan to get their slice of the $4.5 billion API management market — a figure that’s predicted to rise to nearly $14 billion within five years. APIs, or “application programming interfaces,” are the glue that hold most modern software together. They’re what allow Uber to offer in-app messaging without building the entire infrastructure themselves from scratch, fitness apps to visualize your running history through maps and online merchants to support payments powered by Stripe. Internally, companies also create their own APIs to connect all manner of back-end systems and data stores. In short, APIs are the hidden, often unsung heroes of the modern technological era. But creating an API that’s easy to use and adopt by developers comes with inherent challenges. It isn’t enough to just build the API — its features, functionality and deployment instructions need to be recorded and presented in a format that’s easy to follow. Getting the API documentation right is imperative, which is where Theneo is hoping to make its mark. Sample API documentation from Theneo. Image Credits: Theneo Stripe-like API docs Theneo co-founder and CEO Ana Robakidze said that she’d worked on hundreds of APIs in a previous role heading up an engineering team, concluding that quality API documentation is often lacking. “I personally witnessed the effect API documentation had on our project’s delivery, cost, and efficiency,” Robakidze said. “As a result, as a team leader, I spent a considerable amount of time and effort searching for a tool that would assist us in creating excellent API documentation — similar to what Stripe has, as it is considered one of the best in the industry. The problem with most of the tools is that they were either time-consuming or had too many limitations.” The root of the problem, according to Robakidze, is that developers aren’t necessarily technical writers — they’d much rather “create another API than document it,” she said. Consequently, a lot of internal APIs specifically (i.e. APIs built for connecting a company’s internal systems and apps) either go completely undocumented, or if they are documented, aren’t synchronized and maintained as the API evolves. This issue is compounded as developers come and go within a company, often leading to an unwieldy mess. “Theneo was created through frustration, with the aim of making high-quality API documentation quick to generate, and simple to maintain,” Robakidze said. With Theneo, developers connect their GitHub repository or upload their API collection, and Theneo then analyzes everything and delivers the required API documentation. It also offers an AI assistant that uses natural language processing (NLP) to improve the documentation, including automatically describing the different API attributes, which are basically the parts of the API specification that developers need to request, send and delete data, and so on. So a “create customer” object, for example, contains various attributes each with a definition so that the user (i.e. developer) knows exactly what the attribute is for. “Our AI assistant develops descriptions for these fields, which often take a developer or technical writer a significant amount of time to create, especially when there are thousands of fields in your APIs,” Robakidze explained. Theneo: Sample API document showing fields / attribute descriptions. Image Credits: Theneo While Theneo is designed to automate the process as much as possible, it’s clearly not going to deliver a gift-wrapped API documentation entirely off its own volition — it acknowledges that developers and other team members will need to fine-tune formats and wording, add more images or whatever it needs. “We analyze the API, parse it, and then return an already well-structured API doc,” Robakidze said. “The user can then choose whether to add more details, such as images, and different API widgets, and add team members so they can collaborate.” While the engine underpinning Theneo is the same across both internal and external APIs, the company provides additional tooling for the latter, acknowledging that third-party developers appreciate a slicker interface that’s easier to follow. So this basically amounts to a white-label product that can be tailored and branded in accordance with the company’s requirements. In terms of pricing, Theneo currently has a basic plan that costs around $20 per month per user, rising to $45 per month for unlimited API projects on the business plan. It also offers an enterprise plan that unlocks features such as customized branding and the ability to self-host. It’s also working on a completely free version, though Robakidze said this wasn’t ready for prime time quite yet. Theneo co-founder and CEO Ana Robakidze. Funding The Y Combinator (YC) graduate has already raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding since it was founded exactly a year ago, and this week confirmed it’s in the process of raising further funding. And it also unveiled an updated documentation editor, which Robakidze described as something akin to “Figma for APIs,” designed for everyone involved in a software project to contribute, regardless of their technical prowess. “We realized that there are multiple players when it comes to building APIs or API docs, and that it is crucial for these users to collaborate,” Robakidze explained. “Similar to what Figma did with collaboration, our API documentation editor allows users to collaborate, so managers and non-technical members can easily work together on content and produce high-quality documents.” Robakidze said that the company is pretty much open to working with any size and type of business, and it’s currently working with some 3,000 companies, spanning everything from fintechs and government agencies to agriculture companies. “Our biggest customers are fintech companies, usually with 20-plus developers,” Robakidze said. It’s somewhat fitting that Theneo is seeing particular traction within fintech, given that it’s looking

Date night? Relationship app Sparks wants to help you plan a lovely evening • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in Apps, Battlefield 200, Disrupt, sparks, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

There’s an abundance of dating apps on the market, but there aren’t many apps that aim to keep the spark alive after you enter a relationship. Enter Sparks, an app catering to existing couples looking to introduce new and fun experiences to their lives. The Barcelona-based startup, which exhibited as part of the Battlefield 200 at ZebethMedia Disrupt, debuted as an MVP in May 2021 and officially launched this week. The startup was founded by CEO Ankit Nayal, who came up with the idea for Sparks after reflecting on his relationship with his partner. He found that he and his partner were often too busy to find things to do together, and that it was impossible to find a new activity that they were both interested in. Drawing on this experience, Nayal decided to create an app focused on helping couples enhance their relationships by finding new experiences, whether it’s choosing a new movie, recipe, game, restaurant or vacation. “There are so many apps to help you find a partner,” Nayal told ZebethMedia. “But once you find a partner, you leave those apps and there’s nothing left to help you in your relationship. That’s where I noticed a gap and wondered why we don’t have a tool focused on improving relationships.” Some may wonder why they need an app to help them make decisions with their partner. To that, Nayal says the app isn’t trying to replace communication between couples, it’s instead looking to get rid of the hassle of planning dates or discovering new experiences. Image Credits: Sparks Sparks offers a curated selection of experiences and date ideas that you and your partner can parse through in a Tinder-like swipe interface. You can swipe through movie suggestions, new recipes, vacation ideas, etch. Once there’s a match, the app will let you know there’s something that both you and your partner are interested in doing. The startup is looking to raise a pre-seed round in the first quarter of 2023 and plans to use the funding to add more features to the app, while also integrating a deeper personalized experience for couples. In terms of the future, Nayal says he sees Sparks turning into a network of super-apps that are able to help couples in additional ways. “Long term, we have bigger goals,” Nayal said. “Living in China and operating businesses there, we got well-versed with the ecosystem of super-apps and one company being the holder of multiple key apps. We want to bring the same, but to relationships. Ideally we see ourselves creating different faces of Sparks, such as Sparks: The Long Distance Relationship App, The Parents App, The Couples Finance App and so on.”

Rivian has fixed a ‘significant majority’ of its recalled vehicles • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 19, 2022Posted in Disrupt, RJ Scaringe, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, TransportationNo Comments

RJ Scaringe, CEO and founder of electric vehicle maker Rivian, said Wednesday the company has fixed a “significant majority” of the more than 12,000 vehicles that were recalled earlier this month. On the ZebethMedia Disrupt stage, Scaringe gave the audience a postmortem on how Rivian solved the issue that caused the company to voluntarily recall the thousands of vehicles that had been delivered with a loose fastener. The fastener connects the front upper control arm and steering knuckle. Rivian issued the recall because of concerns it was not sufficiently torqued on certain vehicles. This could cause loose and vibrating tires, wheel tilt and loss of steering control. “There’s thousands of parts in the vehicle, and so there are certain types of joints which we call safety critical joints or critical joints, and every one of those has a torque measurement,” said Scaringe. “So when you put the fastener on, we actually record the torque, it goes into a database and we have traceability. And what had happened on this was the traceability element of this was lost in some of the way that the back end was working, so we had to check that.” Scaringe said Rivian has traceability on hundreds of fasteners in the vehicle, and the issue shouldn’t happen again. “Every manufacturer deals with some version of this and so for us, this was something where we identified a potential issue we said we want to get out as early as possible,” said Scaringe. “So the moment we saw a potential issue, we made a decision. It was on a Friday afternoon to make this move. And by Friday evening, repairs are underway. And we worked through a significant majority of the vehicles over the next 10 days.” Scaringe said Rivian’s direct-to-consumer model allowed the company to move quickly, rather than having to go through third parties or dealers. “We literally mobilized our whole service network to say let’s go move through these vehicles really quickly,” said Scaringe. “In this case, it was like a minute fix. It’s just checking the torque on a fastener.” Despite obvious frustration from customers at having to go through a vehicle recall, Scaringe said reaction has been positive. “We were authentic about it, we didn’t we didn’t sugarcoat it,” he said. “We said we’re gonna go fix this. And so there actually has been really quite positive.”

Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat Ventures takes its first outside investment from J.P. Morgan • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 19, 2022Posted in Disrupt, hartbeat ventures, Kevin Hart, Media & Entertainment, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, VentureNo Comments

Hartbeat Ventures is taking in its first institutional investment from J.P. Morgan, comedian and entrepreneur Kevin Hart announced today at ZebethMedia Disrupt. He made the announcement alongside J.P. Morgan’s head of digital investment banking and digital private markets Michael Elanjian and Hartbeat Ventures’ president and co-founder Robert Roman. Hartbeat Ventures, an early-stage VC firm with a focus on lifestyle, media and technology, is focused on inclusion — financial inclusion, specifically. A portion of the new fund will be allocated toward supporting minority and underrepresented founders. Hart said he had a bit of trouble entering the world of investing and noted that there is a learning curve. “I had to learn why investing was okay,” Hart said. “From my understanding, the world of investing — well, it was attached to the space of a con. You’re trying to con me out of my money. I don’t trust you. I’m not giving nobody my money so they can run off and do what they want — that was my challenge. The biggest learning curve for me was understanding that the investment has a timeline attached to it and because I invested today, does that mean I get anything tomorrow?” Robert Roman at Hartbeat Ventures and Kevin Hart talk with Natasha Mascarenhas, Sr Reporter at ZebethMedia, to discuss “The Art of Inclusivity” at ZebethMedia Disrupt in San Francisco on October 19, 2022. Image Credit: Haje Kamps / ZebethMedia Hart touched on how he learned that it’s important to be confident when investing and understanding the world of growth. He noted that his biggest challenge was understanding that investments have a timeline and that it’s important to learn how the economy works and how to make your money work for you. He also said that he trusts his team to do what is best for the firm and that he has aligned himself with people who have invested successfully. “This is not a Kevin Hart machine that Kevin Hart stands in front of and I said it has to happen and there’s no other way,” Hart said. “This is a table. This is a table where we sit and we talk, we ideate and we come up with the best possible ideas. That’s something that I’ve done very well over the years. I’ve aligned myself with people who have done it right and that’s how I’ve learned.” As for the investment from J.P. Morgan, Elanjian said that the investment marks the max allocation that the company has provided through Project Spark, which is the company’s initiative that invests proprietary capital into diverse and women-led ventures. “We created an initiative a couple years ago called Project Spark, which is how can we give diverse funds capital and first-time fund managers to change that equation,” Elanjian said on stage. “Over the last few years, we’ve put $90 million into 23 funds have gone on to raise over $900 million of capital. And so through this project and through meeting with Kevin’s team, we’re super excited that as of yesterday, we just closed and JP Morgan is now the first investor in Hartbeat ventures, new fund and we’re very excited for the things that we can do together.” Roman also announced that he has invested personal capital into Hartbeat Ventures but wouldn’t disclose how much. Hartbeat Ventures has already invested in a number of companies, including electrolyte beverage brand BrightFox, avatar platform Ready Player Me, sustainable bottled water brand Path, massage therapy device Therabody, sustainable packaging brand Cleancut, car leasing platform Rodo and social food ordering platform Snackpass.

Deep Render believes AI holds the key to more efficient video compression • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 19, 2022Posted in Battlefield 200, Deep Render, Disrupt, machine learning, Media & Entertainment, Robotics & AI, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

Chri Besenbruch, CEO of Deep Render, sees many problems with the way video compression standards are developed today. He thinks they aren’t advancing quickly enough, bemoans the fact that they’re plagued with legal uncertainty and decries their reliance on specialized hardware for acceleration. “The codec development process is broken,” Besenbruch said in an interview with ZebethMedia ahead of Disrupt, where Deep Render is participating in the Disrupt Battlefield 200. “In the compression industry, there is a significant challenge of finding a new way forward and searching for new innovations.” Seeking a better way, Besenbruch co-founded Deep Render with Arsalan Zafar, whom he met at Imperial College London. At the time, Besenbruch was studying computer science and machine learning. He and Zafar collaborated on a research project involving distributing terabytes of video across a network, during which they say they experienced the shortcomings of compression technology firsthand. The last time ZebethMedia covered Deep Render, the startup had just closed a £1.6 million seed round ($1.81 million) led by Pentech Ventures with participation from Speedinvest. In the roughly two years since then, Deep Render has raised an additional several million dollars from existing investors, bringing its total raised to $5.7 million. “We thought to ourselves, if the internet pipes are difficult to extend, the only thing we can do is make the data that flows through the pipes smaller,” Besenbruch said. “Hence, we decided to fuse machine learning and AI and compression technology to develop a fundamentally new way of compression data getting significantly better image and video compression ratios.” Deep Render isn’t the first to apply AI to video compression. Alphabet’s DeepMind adapted a machine learning algorithm originally developed to play board games to the problem of compressing YouTube videos, leading to a 4% reduction in the amount of data the video-sharing service needs to stream to users. Elsewhere, there’s startup WaveOne, which claims its machine learning-based video codec outperforms all existing standards across popular quality metrics. But Deep Render’s solution is platform-agnostic. To create it, Besenbruch says that the company compiled a dataset of over 10 million video sequences on which they trained algorithms to learn to compress video data efficiently. Deep Render used a combination of on-premise and cloud hardware for the training, with the former comprising over a hundred GPUs. Deep Render claims the resulting compression standard is 5x better than HEVC, a widely used codec and can run in real time on mobile devices with a dedicated AI accelerator chip (e.g., the Apple Neural Engine in modern iPhones). Besenbruch says the company is in talks with three large tech firms — all with market caps over $300 billion — about paid pilots, though he declined to share names. Eddie Anderson, a founding partner at Pentech and board member at Deep Render, shared via email: “Deep Render’s machine learning approach to codecs completely disrupts an established market. Not only is it a software route to market, but their [compression] performance is significantly better than the current state of the art. As bandwidth demands continue to increase, their solution has the potential to drive vastly improved commercial performance for current media owners and distributors.” Deep Render currently employs 20 people. By the end of 2023, Besenbruch expects that number will more than triple to 62.

Meet E-liza Dolls, the startup that’s building dolls to help young girls learn to code • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 19, 2022Posted in Battlefield 200, Disrupt, e-liza dolls, Robotics & AI, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

E-liza Dolls, a Berkeley-based startup, is aiming to challenge the gender gap in STEM by helping young girls learn to code using dolls. The company, which exhibited as part of the Battlefield 200 at ZebethMedia Disrupt, builds dolls that include programmable computers that girls can code through an app. The startup was founded in 2021 by Eliza Kosoy, a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, who is focused on the intersection of child development and artificial intelligence. Kosoy originally came up with the idea for the dolls in 2017 while she was working at MIT in an AI lab that was mostly made up of men. Kosoy says she realized that if only a certain group of people were designing the future of AI and technology, it would only benefit that group, which is when she had the idea to come up with a way for young girls to learn to code. Kosoy wanted to find a way for girls to learn about coding without having to give up their interests, which is why she decided to combine dolls and technology. Regardless of what people may think about gendered toys, the purpose of E-liza dolls is to help girls feel confident when it comes to exploring STEM by giving them a product that is designed specifically for them. The market is filled with toys that are designed and marketed for and by males. Of course girls can play with these toys too, but some of them may prefer to play with something that is designed for them. “We want to expose young girls to technological concepts and encourage creative thinking through hardware and software, preventing girls from being influenced by generational stereotypes,” Kosoy told ZebethMedia. “Parents have so few options; they feel they need to force their daughters to play with STEM products designed for boys in order to get their daughters on a STEM path. We believe little girls don’t have to sacrifice their interests in order to play with educational STEM toys.” E-liza Dolls is currently in talks with manufacturers and plans to launch on Kickstarter in early 2023. Kosoy says the team is one prototype away from the Kickstarter launch, as the startup plans to add a few iterations to the dolls and enhance their design features. After the initial launch on Kickstarter, the company plans to release the product officially in mid-2023. The 18″ dolls operate via a piece of hardware embedded in each doll. The device has a screen and is Bluetooth-enabled to receive code via the doll’s companion app. Girls can plug in different sensors or use the built-in sensors to code the doll to do different things, such as building a security alarm for your room using a distance sensor or creating a truth detector using a heartbeat pulse sensor. Since launching, E-liza Dolls has received $100,000 in funding from AIX Ventures. The company is currently in the midst of raising a pre-seed round that consists of funding from several angel investors, including poet Rupi Kaur.

Redditors have created millions of crypto wallets to buy NFT avatars • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 19, 2022Posted in Apps, Reddit, Social, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

In July, Reddit jumped on the NFT train, launching an NFT-based marketplace that allows users to purchase blockchain-based profile pictures for a fixed rate. Given the general sentiment around NFTs today, you might assume — like me — that the experiment ended poorly. But the opposite’s the case apparently. Today during a panel at ZebethMedia Disrupt, Reddit chief product officer Pali Bhat revealed that over three million Redditors have used Reddit’s Vault blockchain wallet to create over three million crypto wallets to date. Most of those — 2.5 million — were created to purchase NFT avatars that can be used as profile pics on the platform, he said. It’s difficult to put the figures into context, given that not all NFT marketplaces willingly share those sorts of metrics. But Dune Analytics estimated in a recent report that one of the leading platforms, OpenSea, was hosting over one million active wallets as of January. Meanwhile, crypto wallet MetaMask was serving over 30 million users as of March. Reddit partnered with roughly 30 artists to release around 40,000 NFT avatar designs a few months ago, which could be purchased via the Reddit mobile app at prices ranging from $9.99 to $99.99. (They’re all sold out at the moment.) Users who purchased one of the limited-edition pics got licensing rights to use it on and off of Reddit as an avatar, and could mix and match their avatar’s look using a built-in avatar builder tool. Reddit partnered with Polygon, an Ethereum-compatible blockchain, to mint the avatars. (In blockchain jargon, “minting” refers to publishing a unique NFT so that it can be bought or sold.) Vault is used to store and manage NFTs through the Reddit app. Reddit’s latest foray into the NFT space comes after the social network began allowing users to set any NFT as their profile picture, following on the heels of Twitter. At the time, NFT avatars were exclusively available to members of the r/CollectibleAvatars subreddit, which was invite-only. Beyond NFTs, Reddit has branched in a number of different directions in recent months in search of new lines of revenue. The company has toyed with the idea of introducing TikTok-like video editing tools and made several targeted acquisitions, buying content moderation startup Oterlu, natural language processing company MeaningCloud, machine learning platform Spell and contextualization company Spiketrap. Reddit also revamped its developer portal to give third-party apps and bots a boost, and it upgraded its live audio product, Reddit Talk, with new discovery features.

Activision Blizzard’s Johanna Faries highlights the company’s emerging ‘anti-tox’ strategy • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 19, 2022Posted in Activision Blizzard, call of duty, Disrupt, esports, Gaming, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

At ZebethMedia Disrupt today, Activision Blizzard General Manager Johanna Faries elaborated on the company’s plans to clean up some of the worst behavior in the franchise’s community, even as new lawsuits and allegations about its own culture continue to emerge. Last month, Activision Blizzard released a formal code of conduct for the Call of Duty community, which encompasses its broad consumer player base and the competitive scene. While the policy is pretty basic — no harassment, hate or cheating — it’s something the company can point to when it enforces the rules. “I’m happy to say, especially since you know the time that I’ve been in the chair, we’ve really raised the bar in terms of paying attention to ‘what does an anti-tox strategy need to look like? What does creating fair play environments, safe play environments look like?’” Faries said. “We just released for example — and it started in the beta — a first-ever franchise-wide code of conduct, which I know may sound like table stakes, and in many ways it probably is — but it’s here now. Faries noted that Activision Blizzard has teams “focused 24/7” on anti-toxicity, weaving together automated machine learning solutions with human moderation. The goal is to make it easier for players to quickly report bad behavior but also to incentivize the kind of good behavior that should serve as a model for the community. The crackdown on toxic behavior — which often disproportionately impacts marginalized players who still struggle for representation in streaming and gaming — goes hand in hand with weeding out players who cheat, according to Faries. “So there’s more to come on this, but I was really proud to see in addition to Ricochet [anti-cheating tech] and a lot of our anti-cheat anti-hacking initiatives that we’ve rolled out as well… our anti-toxicity focus is one that is a masthead going into this upcoming launch and for years to come,” Faries said. “We’re putting the best systems in place to make sure that players have the tools, but also have again the incentives, to continue to raise the bar of what it means to play fair to play with respect for everyone to play with integrity.” Over the weekend, Activision seemed to put its money where its mouth was, allegedly banning top competitor Doug “Censor” Martin from competing in the Fortune’s Keep tournament, citing his interactions with Call of Duty streamer Nadia Amine. Martin previously filmed a joke marriage proposal to the female player, who has faced a firestorm of sexism and baseless accusations that she’s somehow cheating at the game. In a tweet, Martin said that Activision “blocked him from competing” in the tournament over harassing Amine, though Activision Blizzard hasn’t yet confirmed the claim. If the company did indeed dole out an event ban over directing unwanted attention at a fellow player, it would track with its new emphasis on cleaning up behavior in the notoriously toxic Call of Duty scene.