Daily Crunch: Snap lays off one-fifth of its workforce after missing revenue and growth targets

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.

Midweek? More like mid-weak! Okay, terrible pun, but we’re a little low energy in this heat wave today, so it kinda made sense.

Oh! And good news, btw, we’re offering 15% off Disrupt tickets (excluding online or expo tickets) for you, our trusty Daily Crunch readers. Use promo code “DC” to claim your discount!

See you tomorrow!  — Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Slumdog $5-illonnaire: Landa is the latest startup to attract venture capital, in this case $33 million, to democratize real estate ownership, Mary Ann writes. Its approach enables people to invest in the real estate sector, which is known for providing generational wealth, but in a less expensive, more fractional way, and in some cases, for as little as $5 initially.
• Snap, crackle and . . . fizzle: Despite the myriad of news and new revenue streams we’ve reported about Snap right here in this newsletter, Evan Spiegel said the words no tech employee wants to hear right now: “restructuring our business.” Amanda reports that this unfortunately means cutting 20% of staff.
• Obstacles abroad: Amazon faces some tough competition in India, and Manish reports that has presented some challenges in the e-commerce giant’s ability to gain a more prominent foothold in the country.

Startups and VC

This week, Haje went deep with a founder who’s building digital license plates. He mused that building an easy-to-copy hardware product in an incredibly tightly regulated industry where winner-takes-all would be an utter nightmare, but when it works, it works, and it’s fascinating to see Reviver build a company, one license plate at the time.

Populus, the San Francisco–based transportation data startup, got its start as shared scooter mania took hold and cities tried to make sense of how infrastructure was being used by fleets of tiny vehicles. Now, Populus co-founder and CEO Regina Clewlow is repositioning the company to take advantage of another hot opportunity: curbs and congestion, Rebecca writes. It’s a really good read from the TechCrunch transportation desk with an undertone of “the power of great pivots.”

Raisin’ money, raisin’ hell:

• Looking beyond the matrix: Ron reports on CodeSee’s latest product, which helps organizations visualize their code base.
• Turning coaching into a team sport: Natasha M reports that the founder of Human Q disagrees with some of the biggest and most valuable competitors out there. Instead of one-to-one coaching, Human Q wants to make group coaching an impactful alternative. This founder wants to take on the biggest coaching startups with a group-focused approach.
• Stretching the chains: Supply chain firm NFI inks a $10 million deal to deploy Boston Dynamics’ Stretch robots, reports Brian.
• Fintech, that’s like fly-fishing, right?: Christine reports that Solid raised a $63 million Series B round of funding to continue providing its fintech-as-a-service offering for companies wanting to launch and scale their own fintech products. 
• Like twitch3: Rita reports that Stacked raised $13 million to be the Twitch for web3 gamers.

 Crafting a XaaS customer success strategy that drives growth

Image Credits: THEPALMER (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Giving users better service than they expected could literally save a software startup. In one study, companies that spent 10% of yearly revenue on customer success attained peak net recurring revenue.

“Companies mostly deploy two or more customer success archetypes,” according to TC+ contributors Rachel Parrinello and John Stamos. “They usually vary by customer segment, business versus technical focus and sales motion focus: adopt, renew, upsell and cross-sell.”

If you’re interested in optimizing revenue through CS, read the rest for a full overview of job design methodology, because “companies should not design their customer success roles in a vacuum.”

Crafting a XaaS customer success strategy that drives growth

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

Social media and privacy don’t often go hand in hand, especially when children can see a lot on the internet already. Twitter got caught up in this when it reportedly tried to monetize adult content in an effort to compete with OnlyFans. It later scrapped the program when it was found that its system couldn’t “detect child sexual abuse material and non-consensual nudity at scale,” Amanda writes. Meanwhile, California lawmakers wasted no time moving ahead to put in place statewide online privacy protections for children where there are none at the federal level, Taylor reports.

• Stepping on the gas, er, EV pedal: Toyota is accelerating its investment in U.S. electric vehicles, and will park some $3.8 billion into that initiative, up from an initial $1.3 billion, Jaclyn writes.
• Cashing in on NFTs: Event organizers working with Ticketmaster can now issue NFTs tied to tickets on Flow, Ivan reports.
• It’s almost fall and that means another Apple event: Brian has the skinny on all the things you should know about Apple’s iPhone 14 event on September 7.
• New satellite on the block: Royal Caribbean is going “all-in on satellite service,” and will outfit its fleet of ships with Starlink internet, Devin writes.

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California pushes ahead with its own children’s online privacy protections

California lawmakers have passed a bill that seeks to make apps and other online spaces safer for kids in the absence of robust federal standards. The bill, if signed into law, would impose a set of new protections for people under the age of 18 in California, potentially punishing tech companies with thousands in fines for every child affected by any violation.

The bill, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, still needs to be signed by California Governor Gavin Newsom before becoming law. If signed, its provisions would go into effect on July 1, 2024, giving platforms an interval of time to come into compliance.

The new privacy rules would apply to social apps like Instagram, TikTok and YouTube — frequent targets of criticism for their mishandling of young users’ safety and mental health — but also to other businesses that offer “an online service, product, or feature likely to be accessed by children.” That broader definition would also extend the bill’s requirements to gaming and education platforms that kids might use, along with any other websites or services that don’t explicitly limit their use to adults.

The bill defines a child as anyone under the age of 18, pushing apps and other online products that might attract minors to enact more privacy protections for all under 18 users, not just the youngest ones. The federal law that carves out some privacy protections for children online, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), only extends its protections to children under age 13.

California Age-Appropriate … by TechCrunch

Among its requirements, the California children’s privacy legislation would prohibit companies from collecting any minor’s user data beyond what it absolutely necessary or leveraging children’s personal information in any way “materially detrimental to the physical health, mental health, or well-being of a child.” It would also require affected companies to default users under 18 to the strongest privacy settings, “including by disabling features that profile children using their previous behavior, browsing history, or assumptions of their similarity to other children, to offer detrimental material.”

The bill would also create a new working group dedicated to implementing its requirements comprised of members appointed by the governor and state agencies. The California Attorney General would be empowered to fine companies who violate its rules $2,500 per child affected for any violations deemed to be “negligent” and $7,500 for intentional violations.

“We are very encouraged by today’s bi-partisan passage of AB 2273, a monumental step toward protecting California kids online,” the children’s advocacy organization Common Sense said in a statement Tuesday. “Today’s action, authored by Assembly members Wicks, Cunningham and Petrie-Norris, sends an important signal about the need to make children’s online health and safety a greater priority for lawmakers and for our tech companies, particularly when it comes to websites that are accessed by young users.”

While there’s plenty of detail to be worked out still, the California bill could force the hand of tech companies that have historically prioritized explosive user growth and monetization above all — and dragging their feet when it comes to the less lucrative work of verifying the age of their users and protecting young people from online threats to safety and mental health. Inspired by the UK children’s privacy legislation known as the “Age Appropriate Design Code,” the current legislation could similarly force tech companies to improve their privacy standards for minors across the board rather than creating customized experiences for regionally-specific user segments that fall under new legal protections.

UK now expects compliance with children’s privacy design code

source https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/30/californoa-childrens-online-privacy-protection-act/

Magic Eden looks to challenge OpenSea’s NFT dominance

Few startups in the crypto world boast the market dominance that OpenSea currently enjoys, but numerous venture-backed startups are looking to chip away at their lead.

Welcome back to Chain Reaction, where we unpack and explain the latest in crypto news, drama and trends, breaking things down block by block for the crypto curious.

For our Tuesday episode this week, we talked to Jack Lu, the co-founder and CEO of fast-rising NFT marketplace Magic Eden. The venture-backed startup was founded last year and has already reached unicorn status — raising at a $1.6 billion valuation.

The startup has become the default way for NFT traders in the Solana ecosystem to transact, but as the marketplace has grown, its team has refocused its ambitions to take on OpenSea on its home turf — the Ethereum network, which they’ve recently begun rolling out early support for.

The startup is looking to differentiate itself inside the broader NFT marketplace space, shying away from being a hub for online art, and leaning more into verticals like gaming.

“We’re not really a generalized marketplace that plays in every category, we don’t play in one-of-one fine art, we don’t do usernames or domain names,” Lu tells us, noting that Magic Eden largely focuses on “collectibles” which include things like avatars and profile photos, as well as NFTs related to gaming.

It was the gaming part of Magic Eden’s focus that took up the bulk of the conversation as Anita and Lucas looked to get a finger on the pulse of crypto gaming in late summer 2022.

Magic Eden raises $130M, hitting unicorn status at $1.6B valuation

“There is no such thing as ‘web3 gamers,’ people who like playing games do not go looking to play a web3 game, they just want to play a game,” Lu says” “I think we’re going to see a shift where it’s pure game content developers who are masterful at developing game content and game loops themselves that are going to come into this space and are more into using web3 as an instrument.. to realize some player goal or product goal within the game itself.”

You can listen to the full episode to hear Lu’s more expansive thoughts on the NFT gaming market as well as his thoughts on a potential race-to-the-bottom in NFT transaction fees.

Chain Reaction comes out every Tuesday and Thursday at 12:00 p.m. PT, so be sure to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to keep up with the action.

source https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/30/magic-eden-looks-to-challenge-openseas-nft-dominance/

Daily Crunch: Embedded finance fintech Pezesha raises $11M pre-Series A equity-debt round

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.

Hey, hey, hey! Good to have you back with us again. Today, we’re mostly amazed at how quiet Twitter gets during Burning Man, and excited that we’re doing a Labor Day sale for TechCrunch Plus, if you’ve been wanting to read our subscription site but you’ve been holding off for whatever reason. — Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Embed that finance: Pezesha, a Kenyan-based fintech startup, is flush with $11 million in new capital as it seeks to bridge the gap between access to financial products and what is a “$330 billion financing deficit for the small enterprises that make up 90% of Africa’s businesses,” Annie reports.
• We’re all connected: If you haven’t yet seen yourself in one of your Twitter connection’s Circles, you may soon. The social media giant is launching the “Close Friends” features globally, Ivan reports. Add a bunch of people to your Circle and get tweeting.
• No delivery for you: Delivery platform Gopuff has only been in Europe since November 2021, but Natasha L writes it made the decision to discontinue its service in Spain. She cites that perhaps this is to focus more on the United Kingdom market where revenue there is increasing 30% month over month.

Startups and VC

Initialized Capital was VC Garry Tan’s answer to a need first highlighted by Y Combinator. As a partner at the accelerator from 2010 to 2015, Tan spent time working with companies to better understand what they needed from investors after they graduated. This week, he announced he’s back at the helm at YC, and Natasha M interviewed him about what’s next for Y Combinator.

The company behind last summer’s hot social app, Poparazzi, appears to be readying a round two following its $15 million Series A announced in June. A new listing in the App Store under the developer’s account, TTYL, is teasing a pre-release app called Made with Friends, Sarah reports.

When the news hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, that’s a-more-news:

• Notification bubbles: Devin reports that, at long last, there’s an underwater messaging app.
• Money for laundering: Flush with fresh funds, U.K. “eco laundry” startup Oxwash raised $12 million to spin up its growth plans, Natasha L reports.
• Faster when further afield: The U.K.’s £5 billion Project Gigabit gives out its first contract to connect rural areas to high-speed broadband, Paul reports.
• PriceOye gets the Thiel seal of approval: Islamabad-based startup PriceOye offers a range of electronics products, including smartphones, TVs and home appliances. It just closed a round of funding from investors, including Peter Thiel, reports Jagmeet.
• Dodging the SPAC bullet: Alex and Anna wrote a really interesting piece on TC+ (use “DC” for a 15% discount if you’re not a subscriber yet) about SPACs, how they are falling apart, and how Europe may have dodged a bullet on that front.

How to communicate to your crypto community when things aren’t going well

Image Credits: Peter Dazeley (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Because it’s a nascent industry that’s largely unregulated, crypto companies are not generally skilled at crisis communications. (We’re being generous here.)

When a bank or financial services company experiences a massive security failure or a volatility shock, federal laws dictate how it must communicate with its customers. Crypto startups, however, must rely on their own best judgment.

“There’s little benefit in declaring that the sky is falling and begging your community for investment, but an overly rosy outlook won’t fool anyone either,” says Tahem Verma, co-founder and CEO of Mesha.

How to communicate with your crypto community when things aren’t going well

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

Last chance to get your game on in the Facebook Gaming app. The social media giant said it is shutting down its stand-alone app at the end of October, Aisha reports. Don’t worry, you can still find your games in Gaming on actual Facebook. When launching the separate app two years ago, it seemed to be more difficult than Facebook bargained for, so it decided to join ’em instead of beating ’em.

• Data duh!: Millions of faces and vehicle license plates were leaked online in China, Zack writes.
• Ghosts can drive?: A Tesla Model 3 owner filed a class action lawsuit against the electric vehicle maker alleging the car keeps “phantom braking,” Jaclyn reports. 
• New security regime: Broadband and mobile carriers in the United Kingdom could face fines of up to $117,000 per day or 10% of their sales if they don’t abide by some new cybersecurity rules, Ingrid writes.
• More Elon: Taylor has the 411 on Elon Musk’s new strategy for getting out of the Twitter deal — hint, it involves the company’s whistleblower. Meanwhile, Paul goes over the new subpoena related to the ongoing battle.

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Max Q: Scrubbed

Hello and welcome back to Max Q. I’m writing to you from Florida, where NASA scrubbed Monday’s launch attempt of the Artemis I mission. In this issue:

• NASA’s Artemis I launch is scrubbed
• T-Mobile and SpaceX’s new partnership
• News from Astrobotic, Violet Labs and more

By the way… TechCrunch Disrupt finally returns — live and in person — to San Francisco on October 18-20. We’re excited to share the complete agenda, you’ll hear from game-changing leaders like: Serena Williams (Serena Ventures), Mark Lore (Wonder Group), Ami Gan (Onlyfans), Johanna Faries (Call of Duty), Chris Dixon (a16z), and many more! In addition to hearing from these leaders, you can get your how-to on over at the TechCrunch+ stage, and check out roundtable discussions and breakout sessions. Whatever you do, start planning your schedule now so you don’t miss a lick of all this startup goodness. Register before September 16 and save $1,100. 

NASA scrubs Artemis I launch due to technical issue

After much fanfare, including a crop of celebrity appearances and the arrival of Vice President Kamala Harris, NASA said it was scrubbing the first-ever launch attempt of the mega moon rocket due to technical issues.

The mission was scrubbed at T-40 minutes after engineers were unable to resolve an engine bleed issue. “The engine bleed couldn’t be remedied,” NASA communications officer Derrol Nail said. NASA has another launch opportunity on September 2, but Nail suggested that “we must wait to see what shakes out” from the data as to whether a launch can be attempted on that date.

The two-hour launch window was meant to open at 8:33 AM ET, but at 8:35 AM NASA officially called off the mission. The first issue that emerged was what looked like a crack in the rocket’s core stage thermal protection material, though this was later identified as a crack in the foam, not the actual tank. Engineers also identified a bleed in a liquid hydrogen line meant to cool the four engines on the bottom of the rocket’s core stage.

Image Credits: Gregg Newton / Getty Images

T-Mobile phones will connect to Starlink for free starting next year

T-Mobile and SpaceX have announced that Starlink satellites launched next year will be able to connect directly to the carrier’s phones over existing cellular bands. The companies hope to enable global roaming wherever satellite coverage exists, and the service may potentially be added for free to existing T-Mobile plans.

SpaceX’s Elon Musk and T-Mobile’s Mike Sievert announced the “technology alliance” at the space company’s Starbase in Texas.

“It’s a lot like putting a cellular tower in the sky, just a lot harder,” said Sievert. “Your phone doesn’t really know it’s connecting for space. It’ll think it’s connected to a cell tower, because that phone is using industry standard technology communication protocols and it has the spectrum already built in, as the vast majority of phones in circulation today do.”

Image Credits: T-Mobile

Meet the ex-Amazon satellite engineers wanting to disrupt hardware workflow

Imagine building some of the most sophisticated hardware-driven technologies in the world — spacecraft, drones or autonomous vehicles. Then imagine being unable to easily share your data to different teams, having to use clunky user interfaces and relying on a single person manually inputting data in an Excel spreadsheet to bottom-line your project.

“You’d be shocked at how archaic the tools are,” Lucy Hoag, co-founder of Violet Labs, said. To solve this problem, Violet Labs is developing a cloud-based platform that can act as a single source of truth, collecting the data from all the tools and making them easily accessible across teams. The idea has found resonance with investors: The startup just closed a $4 million seed round to accelerate product development as Hoag and Caitlin race to market later this year.

Image Credits: Violet Labs (opens in a new window)

More news from TC and beyond

• Astrobotic will be sending its CubeRover platform to the moon under a new award from NASA. The company will use CubeRover to test technologies for surviving the lunar night and communicating across greater distances on the moon’s surface.
• Atlas Space Operations, a company that provides ML-driven software to help satellite operators connect to ground stations, raised a $26 million Series B to grow its platform.
• Blue Origin’s next mission is set to launch on August 31 from the company’s site in West Texas. There are 36 payloads on the manifest.
• Boeing’s first crewed Starliner mission could take place as early as February 2023, NASA said. It will be an eight-day mission to the International Space Station.
• HawkEye 360 signed a two-year Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the U.S. Army to develop radio-frequency sensing data that could provide tactical support to the military.
• NASA awarded $19.4 million to Astrobotic, Honeybee Robotics and Lockheed Martin to build solar array prototypes and perform environmental testing for the moon.
• NASA pushed forward the launch of the Lunar Trailblazer mission by two years, to mid-2023. The spacecraft will fly as a secondary payload on Intuitive Machines’ second lunar lander mission.
• Orbex, a launch company based in the United Kingdom, will be hiring 50 staff in the next six months. The blitz will “support the company’s final push” to its first orbital launch attempt, Orbex said in a statement.
• Sierra Space said the private space station Orbital Reef, which the company is designing in partnership with Blue Origin, is advancing to the design phase with NASA after completing a key review.
• SpaceX will use both Falcon 9 and Starship rockets to complete its Starlink constellation, the company told the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
• The SpaceX Starship that will land on the moon for an uncrewed demo mission may only be a “skeleton” of the rocket that will carry humans for the Artemis III launch in 2025.

Max Q is brought to you by me, Aria Alamalhodaei. If you enjoy reading Max Q, consider forwarding it to a friend. 

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Daily Crunch: Embedded finance fintech Pezesha raises $11M pre-Series A equity-debt round

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.

Hey, hey, hey! Good to have you back with us again. Today, we’re mostly amazed at how quiet Twitter gets during Burning Man, and excited that we’re doing a Labor Day sale for TechCrunch Plus, if you’ve been wanting to read our subscription site but you’ve been holding off for whatever reason. — Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Embed that finance: Pezesha, a Kenyan-based fintech startup, is flush with $11 million in new capital as it seeks to bridge the gap between access to financial products and what is a “$330 billion financing deficit for the small enterprises that make up 90% of Africa’s businesses,” Annie reports.
• We’re all connected: If you haven’t yet seen yourself in one of your Twitter connection’s Circles, you may soon. The social media giant is launching the “Close Friends” features globally, Ivan reports. Add a bunch of people to your Circle and get tweeting.
• No delivery for you: Delivery platform Gopuff has only been in Europe since November 2021, but Natasha L writes it made the decision to discontinue its service in Spain. She cites that perhaps this is to focus more on the United Kingdom market where revenue there is increasing 30% month over month.

Startups and VC

Initialized Capital was VC Garry Tan’s answer to a need first highlighted by Y Combinator. As a partner at the accelerator from 2010 to 2015, Tan spent time working with companies to better understand what they needed from investors after they graduated. This week, he announced he’s back at the helm at YC, and Natasha M interviewed him about what’s next for Y Combinator.

The company behind last summer’s hot social app, Poparazzi, appears to be readying a round two following its $15 million Series A announced in June. A new listing in the App Store under the developer’s account, TTYL, is teasing a pre-release app called Made with Friends, Sarah reports.

When the news hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, that’s a-more-news:

• Notification bubbles: Devin reports that, at long last, there’s an underwater messaging app.
• Money for laundering: Flush with fresh funds, U.K. “eco laundry” startup Oxwash raised $12 million to spin up its growth plans, Natasha L reports.
• Faster when further afield: The U.K.’s £5 billion Project Gigabit gives out its first contract to connect rural areas to high-speed broadband, Paul reports.
• PriceOye gets the Thiel seal of approval: Islamabad-based startup PriceOye offers a range of electronics products, including smartphones, TVs and home appliances. It just closed a round of funding from investors, including Peter Thiel, reports Jagmeet.
• Dodging the SPAC bullet: Alex and Anna wrote a really interesting piece on TC+ (use “DC” for a 15% discount if you’re not a subscriber yet) about SPACs, how they are falling apart, and how Europe may have dodged a bullet on that front.

How to communicate to your crypto community when things aren’t going well

Image Credits: Peter Dazeley (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Because it’s a nascent industry that’s largely unregulated, crypto companies are not generally skilled at crisis communications. (We’re being generous here.)

When a bank or financial services company experiences a massive security failure or a volatility shock, federal laws dictate how it must communicate with its customers. Crypto startups, however, must rely on their own best judgment.

“There’s little benefit in declaring that the sky is falling and begging your community for investment, but an overly rosy outlook won’t fool anyone either,” says Tahem Verma, co-founder and CEO of Mesha.

How to communicate with your crypto community when things aren’t going well

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

Last chance to get your game on in the Facebook Gaming app. The social media giant said it is shutting down its stand-alone app at the end of October, Aisha reports. Don’t worry, you can still find your games in Gaming on actual Facebook. When launching the separate app two years ago, it seemed to be more difficult than Facebook bargained for, so it decided to join ’em instead of beating ’em.

• Data duh!: Millions of faces and vehicle license plates were leaked online in China, Zack writes.
• Ghosts can drive?: A Tesla Model 3 owner filed a class action lawsuit against the electric vehicle maker alleging the car keeps “phantom braking,” Jaclyn reports. 
• New security regime: Broadband and mobile carriers in the United Kingdom could face fines of up to $117,000 per day or 10% of their sales if they don’t abide by some new cybersecurity rules, Ingrid writes.
• More Elon: Taylor has the 411 on Elon Musk’s new strategy for getting out of the Twitter deal — hint, it involves the company’s whistleblower. Meanwhile, Paul goes over the new subpoena related to the ongoing battle.

source https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/30/daily-crunch-embedded-finance-fintech-pezesha-raises-11m-pre-series-a-equity-debt-round/

Max Q: Scrubbed

Hello and welcome back to Max Q. I’m writing to you from Florida, where NASA scrubbed Monday’s launch attempt of the Artemis I mission. In this issue:

• NASA’s Artemis I launch is scrubbed
• T-Mobile and SpaceX’s new partnership
• News from Astrobotic, Violet Labs and more

By the way… TechCrunch Disrupt finally returns — live and in person — to San Francisco on October 18-20. We’re excited to share the complete agenda, you’ll hear from game-changing leaders like: Serena Williams (Serena Ventures), Mark Lore (Wonder Group), Ami Gan (Onlyfans), Johanna Faries (Call of Duty), Chris Dixon (a16z), and many more! In addition to hearing from these leaders, you can get your how-to on over at the TechCrunch+ stage, and check out roundtable discussions and breakout sessions. Whatever you do, start planning your schedule now so you don’t miss a lick of all this startup goodness. Register before September 16 and save $1,100. 

NASA scrubs Artemis I launch due to technical issue

After much fanfare, including a crop of celebrity appearances and the arrival of Vice President Kamala Harris, NASA said it was scrubbing the first-ever launch attempt of the mega moon rocket due to technical issues.

The mission was scrubbed at T-40 minutes after engineers were unable to resolve an engine bleed issue. “The engine bleed couldn’t be remedied,” NASA communications officer Derrol Nail said. NASA has another launch opportunity on September 2, but Nail suggested that “we must wait to see what shakes out” from the data as to whether a launch can be attempted on that date.

The two-hour launch window was meant to open at 8:33 AM ET, but at 8:35 AM NASA officially called off the mission. The first issue that emerged was what looked like a crack in the rocket’s core stage thermal protection material, though this was later identified as a crack in the foam, not the actual tank. Engineers also identified a bleed in a liquid hydrogen line meant to cool the four engines on the bottom of the rocket’s core stage.

Image Credits: Gregg Newton / Getty Images

T-Mobile phones will connect to Starlink for free starting next year

T-Mobile and SpaceX have announced that Starlink satellites launched next year will be able to connect directly to the carrier’s phones over existing cellular bands. The companies hope to enable global roaming wherever satellite coverage exists, and the service may potentially be added for free to existing T-Mobile plans.

SpaceX’s Elon Musk and T-Mobile’s Mike Sievert announced the “technology alliance” at the space company’s Starbase in Texas.

“It’s a lot like putting a cellular tower in the sky, just a lot harder,” said Sievert. “Your phone doesn’t really know it’s connecting for space. It’ll think it’s connected to a cell tower, because that phone is using industry standard technology communication protocols and it has the spectrum already built in, as the vast majority of phones in circulation today do.”

Image Credits: T-Mobile

Meet the ex-Amazon satellite engineers wanting to disrupt hardware workflow

Imagine building some of the most sophisticated hardware-driven technologies in the world — spacecraft, drones or autonomous vehicles. Then imagine being unable to easily share your data to different teams, having to use clunky user interfaces and relying on a single person manually inputting data in an Excel spreadsheet to bottom-line your project.

“You’d be shocked at how archaic the tools are,” Lucy Hoag, co-founder of Violet Labs, said. To solve this problem, Violet Labs is developing a cloud-based platform that can act as a single source of truth, collecting the data from all the tools and making them easily accessible across teams. The idea has found resonance with investors: The startup just closed a $4 million seed round to accelerate product development as Hoag and Caitlin race to market later this year.

Image Credits: Violet Labs (opens in a new window)

More news from TC and beyond

• Astrobotic will be sending its CubeRover platform to the moon under a new award from NASA. The company will use CubeRover to test technologies for surviving the lunar night and communicating across greater distances on the moon’s surface.
• Atlas Space Operations, a company that provides ML-driven software to help satellite operators connect to ground stations, raised a $26 million Series B to grow its platform.
• Blue Origin’s next mission is set to launch on August 31 from the company’s site in West Texas. There are 36 payloads on the manifest.
• Boeing’s first crewed Starliner mission could take place as early as February 2023, NASA said. It will be an eight-day mission to the International Space Station.
• HawkEye 360 signed a two-year Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the U.S. Army to develop radio-frequency sensing data that could provide tactical support to the military.
• NASA awarded $19.4 million to Astrobotic, Honeybee Robotics and Lockheed Martin to build solar array prototypes and perform environmental testing for the moon.
• NASA pushed forward the launch of the Lunar Trailblazer mission by two years, to mid-2023. The spacecraft will fly as a secondary payload on Intuitive Machines’ second lunar lander mission.
• Orbex, a launch company based in the United Kingdom, will be hiring 50 staff in the next six months. The blitz will “support the company’s final push” to its first orbital launch attempt, Orbex said in a statement.
• Sierra Space said the private space station Orbital Reef, which the company is designing in partnership with Blue Origin, is advancing to the design phase with NASA after completing a key review.
• SpaceX will use both Falcon 9 and Starship rockets to complete its Starlink constellation, the company told the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
• The SpaceX Starship that will land on the moon for an uncrewed demo mission may only be a “skeleton” of the rocket that will carry humans for the Artemis III launch in 2025.

Max Q is brought to you by me, Aria Alamalhodaei. If you enjoy reading Max Q, consider forwarding it to a friend. 

source https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/30/max-q-scrubbed/

Singapore-based Propseller uses data to take the hassle out of real estate transactions

Headquartered in Singapore, proptech startup Propseller is on a mission to make real estate transactions more efficient and data-driven for sellers and buyers alike. Its platform is able to tell users the likelihood of a conversion each step of the way. Today Propseller announced it has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India. 

Other investors participating in the round include returning backers Hustle Fund, Iterative and Rapzo Capital, along with new investors Partech, ICCP SBIT, Vulpes Ventures and Redbadge Pacific. It also includes several prominent proptech founders, like PropertyGuru’s Jani Rautiainen, OpenAgent’s Marta Higuera, Homeday’s Steffen Wicker and Tushar Garg of Flyhomes. 

Founded in 2018, Propseller will use its Series A to scale its business model, expand its offerings (including adding services like moving) and enter overseas markets. It currently has about 50 employees, including 20 salaried real estate agents (or consultants, as the startup calls them), and plans to hire 200 more people for its marketing, operations, product, engineering and sales and real estate teams. 

By using technology to make the real estate buy/sell process more efficient, Propseller is also able to charge only 1% commission rate, as opposed to 2% for traditional real estate agencies, its founder and CEO Adrien Jorge told TechCrunch. 

Jorge became interested in real estate while growing up in Nice, France. He says people from his family either became engineers or real estate agents, and he noticed that the latter group made more money than the engineers. Curious, Jorge joined his mother’s real estate agency at the age of 14 and stayed there until he was 22. But when his grandfather asked if the wanted to take over the business, Jorge decided not to.

One of his reasons was that the traditional real estate agency model was hard to scale and very manual, and often charged commissions that are hard to justify. Instead, Jorge went on to work for tech companies, including six years at Groupon, where he was in positions including general manager of Southeast Asia. 

While looking for investment opportunities, Jorge experienced the hassle of buying real estate in Southeast Asia. For example, he says that property prices are often high, but service from traditional brokerages often leave much to be desired. He attributes this to the fragmentation of Southeast Asia’s real estate market, with 200,000 agents across Southeast Asia, who close on average only two transactions per year. 

As a result, Jorge saw an opportunity to build a platform to help people sell their homes more quickly, with transparency and the least amount of hassle. 

The reason why Propseller calls its licensed real estate agents consultants is because the company’s automation gives them the time to work on client relationships. On average, Propseller’s consultants close about 55 sales transactions per year, which also means they make more revenue. 

“We are very likely the only company in Singapore to tell you what is the expected conversion rate of buyer leads coming from PropertyGuru or 99.co,” said Jorge. This means when a lead is generated, it can be tracked from start to finish, so sellers and consultants know how likely a successful closing is at every step of the process. 

Viewings generally take place offline, but Propseller also makes video and VR viewings for each property. Sellers can stay on top of the process with a dashboard that shows them which channels their property is being distributed on, inquiries generated, scheduled viewings and offers. 

The COVID pandemic has made people more willing to buy large-ticket items online and many who will continue to work from home are seeking a larger property. As the pandemic subsides gradually, Jorge believes these trends will stick around. 

The company’s main competition are the 34,000 independent agents in Singapore, who own about 99% of the real estate market share. Proptech competitors include Own My Home and Blue Nest in Singapore, Red Fin in the U.S. and Flyhomes to a certain extend, Jorge said. 

Propseller is setting itself apart with an end-to-end real estate transaction platform, Jorge said. “We have broken down every step of the process, recording everything that happens and we are able to record data that no one else has and identify how that process can be optimized to get the best results.” 

In a prepared statement, Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India managing partner Carmen Yuen said that Propseller is “revolutionizing the way we transact our homes in a more cost and time-efficient, using technology and data. We’ve followed the Propseller team for more than two years now, and they have demonstrated impressive resilience and growth over the years.” 

Proptech still has fundamental problems for entrepreneurs to solve

source https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/29/singapore-based-propseller-uses-data-to-take-the-hassle-out-of-real-estate-transactions/

Daily Crunch: Meta partnership allows Indian WhatsApp users to browse and buy groceries via JioMart

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.

Good morning, you crunchy ol’ pirates. Good to see you again, and hope you had a swell weekend. On Wednesday, we’re hosting a healthcare-focused TechCrunch Live. It’ll be fun! Tune in here, and if you want to be part of the 2-minute pitch practice, Haje will be on the lookout for your applications.

Now, grab yourself a glass of water, and settle in with some tech-newsy goodness from the TC team! —Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Order up: Meta joined forces with Reliance Retail and Jio Platforms two years ago to test grocery shopping on WhatsApp in India, and Manish and Jagmeet write that customers can now “browse JioMart’s entire grocery catalog on WhatsApp, add items to a cart and make the payments via local payments rail UPI without ever leaving the instant messaging service.”
• Welcome back: Former Amplify co-founder and CEO Segun Adeyemi is back with Anchor, a banking-as-a-service startup that is helping businesses offer financial products in Nigeria and across Africa. It also caught the eye of Y Combinator and other investors, who put in over $1 million, Tage reports.
• Hail to the chief: Speaking of YC, Mary Ann and Natasha M paired up to report on today’s surprise news that Initialized Capital founder Garry Tan is going to be the accelerator giant’s next president and CEO.

Startups and VC

As we all know, the housing market goes through cycles. Low interest rates mean more purchases and refinances. Higher interest rates mean far fewer purchases and refinances — and lots of business for fintechs operating in the real estate industry, Mary Ann writes in this week’s issue of the Interchange, our fintech newsletter.

Kli Capital was your average family office headed up by a former tech entrepreneur looking to opportunistically back a new fleet of founders. Becca reports that the firm changed gears in the firm’s third fund, as it evolved into a multi-LP fund.

• From chillcore to core chill: Ivan reports that music streaming service Deezer is testing a meditation app.
• A stroke of genius: Health tech startup Neurofenix puts a new spin on home stroke rehabilitation with the NeuroBall, Devin reports.
• Soaring highs, cutting lows: Just five months after fintech Argyle raised a $55 million round, the startup cuts a bunch of jobs, Natasha M reports.
• Into the sea, you and me: Mermade Seafoods swims in cell agriculture waters to make cultivated scallops, Christine reports.
• A test of the times: African genomics startup 54gene lays off 95 employees as its COVID testing business struggles, Tage reports.

A Gen Z VC speaks up: Why Gen Z VCs are trash

Image Credits: Anastasiia Yanishevska / EyeEm (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Tech investors born after 1996 “have raised funds, garnered social media followings and profited from the Gen Z mentality,” says Andrew Chan, a senior associate at Builders VC.

However, “Gen Z, no matter how you slice it, are still a bunch of kids. Myself included,” he notes in a TC+ guest post. “Good for them. I don’t want to be any part of it.”

Chan says too many investors in his age cohort rely on “youth, group-think identification and confidence as a substitute for hard work and experience.”

“It might work for now, but if that’s success for my generation of venture capitalists, then I would have rather stayed in my happy little bubble writing geochemistry code at NASA JPL.”

A Gen Z VC speaks up: Why Gen Z VCs are trash

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

If you like earbuds that glow, you will enjoy Haje’s review of Angry Miao’s Cyberblade gaming earbuds. We think “these are some of the best-manufactured in-ear headphones I’ve ever seen” pretty much sums it up.

Remember the vintage Apple iMac Blueberry? That’s what the back of the new Aston Martin Valhalla reminds us of. For true car connoisseurs, Jaclyn writes this high-performance vehicle is being used to “develop a playbook for its future EVs.”

• Can’t buy me love: Four years later, Facebook seems ready to settle the Cambridge Analytica lawsuit, Natasha L reports. For those of you who don’t recall, that was related to user data that was allegedly shared illegally.
• Biting into Apple: Meanwhile, Apple may need to get its lawyers ready. Sarah reports that the U.S. Justice Department is preparing to file an antitrust lawsuit against Apple.
• The ads are here: It looks like Netflix’s ad-supported plan will run you a cool $7 per month, Ivan writes. Get ready for four minutes of commercials in an hour-long show.
• Light ’em up: Honda and LG Energy have plans to build a $4.4 billion lithium-ion plant somewhere in the U.S., Jaclyn reports.
• No copycat here: There’s been a number of apps trying to replicate BeReal’s experience, but Amanda writes that Snapchat’s Dual camera feature doesn’t really fall into that category.

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/ma7uMd3
via IFTTT

Finally, an underwater messaging app

Don’t you hate it when, after going just five or 10 meters underwater, you lose signal completely? Now this vexing limitation of modern technology is being addressed by researchers at the University of Washington, who have made an underwater communication app that uses sonic signals to pass messages to your other submerged friends. It may sound silly, but millions of people could use this tech in both recreational and professional diving situations.

The communication problem underwater is simple: Rradio waves are absorbed by water, and no signal our phones send or receive can travel more than a few inches without being completely lost. That’s one reason submersibles and the like need a tether: to pass data back and forth to the surface.

Sound waves, on the other hand, travel through water quite readily, and are used by countless aquatic species to communicate. Not humans, though — because the way we make sound only works well in air. So for as long as anyone can remember, divers have communicated to one another using hand signals and other gestures.

Professional divers will have a vocabulary of dozens of signals, from “low on air” to “danger to your right” and anything else you can imagine coming up during a dive. But you have to learn those, and see them when they’re used for them to work; you can bet at least some divers wish they could tap out a message like they do above the waves.

That’s the idea behind AquaApp, a software experiment by the Mobile Intelligence Lab at UW, led by PhD student Tuochao Chen and prolific professor Shyam Gollakota.

The system uses a modified form of “chirping,” or using the phone’s speaker to create high-frequency audio signals to communicate data rather than radio. This has been done before, but not (to my knowledge) in such a simple, self-correcting way that any smartphone can use.

“With AquaApp, we demonstrate underwater messaging using the speaker and microphone widely available on smartphones and watches. Other than downloading an app to their phone, the only thing people will need is a waterproof phone case rated for the depth of their dive,” said Chen in a UW news release.

It’s not as simple as just converting a signal to an acoustic one. The conditions for transmitting and receiving are constantly changing when two people’s locations, relative speeds and surroundings are constantly changing.

“For example, fluctuations in signal strength are aggravated due to reflections from the surface, floor and coastline,” said Chen’s co-lead author and fellow grad student, Justin Chan. “Motion caused by nearby humans, waves and objects can interfere with data transmission. We had to adapt in real time to these and other factors to ensure AquaApp would work under real-world conditions.”

The app is constantly recalibrating itself with a sort of handshake signal that the phones can easily hear and then report back the characteristics of. So if the sender’s tone is received but the volume is low and the high end is attenuated, the receiver sends that information and the sender can modify its transmission signal to use a narrower frequency band, more power and so on.

In their on-site experiments in lakes and “a bay with strong waves” (probably Shilshole), they found that they could reliably exchange data over 100 meters — at very low bitrates, to be sure, but more than enough to include a set of preprogrammed signals corresponding to the old hand gestures. While some (including myself) may lament the loss of an elegant and very human solution to a longstanding problem, the simple truth is this might make dangerous diving work that much safer, or let recreational divers communicate more than “help” and directions.

That said, diving is a pastime and profession steeped in history and tradition, and it’s very unlikely that this digital communication method will supplant gestures — an analog, self-powered alternative is exactly the kind of thing you want ready as a backup if things go sideways.

AquaApp’s code is open source and free to use — take a look and try it yourself at this GitHub repo.

source https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/29/finally-an-underwater-messaging-app/

Daily Crunch: Meta partnership allows Indian WhatsApp users to browse and buy groceries via JioMart

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.

Good morning, you crunchy ol’ pirates. Good to see you again, and hope you had a swell weekend. On Wednesday, we’re hosting a healthcare-focused TechCrunch Live. It’ll be fun! Tune in here, and if you want to be part of the 2-minute pitch practice, Haje will be on the lookout for your applications.

Now, grab yourself a glass of water, and settle in with some tech-newsy goodness from the TC team! —Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Order up: Meta joined forces with Reliance Retail and Jio Platforms two years ago to test grocery shopping on WhatsApp in India, and Manish and Jagmeet write that customers can now “browse JioMart’s entire grocery catalog on WhatsApp, add items to a cart and make the payments via local payments rail UPI without ever leaving the instant messaging service.”
• Welcome back: Former Amplify co-founder and CEO Segun Adeyemi is back with Anchor, a banking-as-a-service startup that is helping businesses offer financial products in Nigeria and across Africa. It also caught the eye of Y Combinator and other investors, who put in over $1 million, Tage reports.
• Hail to the chief: Speaking of YC, Mary Ann and Natasha M paired up to report on today’s surprise news that Initialized Capital founder Garry Tan is going to be the accelerator giant’s next president and CEO.

Startups and VC

As we all know, the housing market goes through cycles. Low interest rates mean more purchases and refinances. Higher interest rates mean far fewer purchases and refinances — and lots of business for fintechs operating in the real estate industry, Mary Ann writes in this week’s issue of the Interchange, our fintech newsletter.

Kli Capital was your average family office headed up by a former tech entrepreneur looking to opportunistically back a new fleet of founders. Becca reports that the firm changed gears in the firm’s third fund, as it evolved into a multi-LP fund.

• From chillcore to core chill: Ivan reports that music streaming service Deezer is testing a meditation app.
• A stroke of genius: Health tech startup Neurofenix puts a new spin on home stroke rehabilitation with the NeuroBall, Devin reports.
• Soaring highs, cutting lows: Just five months after fintech Argyle raised a $55 million round, the startup cuts a bunch of jobs, Natasha M reports.
• Into the sea, you and me: Mermade Seafoods swims in cell agriculture waters to make cultivated scallops, Christine reports.
• A test of the times: African genomics startup 54gene lays off 95 employees as its COVID testing business struggles, Tage reports.

A Gen Z VC speaks up: Why Gen Z VCs are trash

Image Credits: Anastasiia Yanishevska / EyeEm (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Tech investors born after 1996 “have raised funds, garnered social media followings and profited from the Gen Z mentality,” says Andrew Chan, a senior associate at Builders VC.

However, “Gen Z, no matter how you slice it, are still a bunch of kids. Myself included,” he notes in a TC+ guest post. “Good for them. I don’t want to be any part of it.”

Chan says too many investors in his age cohort rely on “youth, group-think identification and confidence as a substitute for hard work and experience.”

“It might work for now, but if that’s success for my generation of venture capitalists, then I would have rather stayed in my happy little bubble writing geochemistry code at NASA JPL.”

A Gen Z VC speaks up: Why Gen Z VCs are trash

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

If you like earbuds that glow, you will enjoy Haje’s review of Angry Miao’s Cyberblade gaming earbuds. We think “these are some of the best-manufactured in-ear headphones I’ve ever seen” pretty much sums it up.

Remember the vintage Apple iMac Blueberry? That’s what the back of the new Aston Martin Valhalla reminds us of. For true car connoisseurs, Jaclyn writes this high-performance vehicle is being used to “develop a playbook for its future EVs.”

• Can’t buy me love: Four years later, Facebook seems ready to settle the Cambridge Analytica lawsuit, Natasha L reports. For those of you who don’t recall, that was related to user data that was allegedly shared illegally.
• Biting into Apple: Meanwhile, Apple may need to get its lawyers ready. Sarah reports that the U.S. Justice Department is preparing to file an antitrust lawsuit against Apple.
• The ads are here: It looks like Netflix’s ad-supported plan will run you a cool $7 per month, Ivan writes. Get ready for four minutes of commercials in an hour-long show.
• Light ’em up: Honda and LG Energy have plans to build a $4.4 billion lithium-ion plant somewhere in the U.S., Jaclyn reports.
• No copycat here: There’s been a number of apps trying to replicate BeReal’s experience, but Amanda writes that Snapchat’s Dual camera feature doesn’t really fall into that category.

source https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/29/daily-crunch-meta-partnership-allows-indian-whatsapp-users-to-browse-and-buy-groceries-via-jiomart/