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Netflix price hike, Google acquires Fossil IP video – CNET
This week's major tech stories include Netflix's price hike, a potential Motorola Razr comeback and Google's acquisition of Fossil smartwatch tech.
Startups Weekly: Squad's screen-shares and Slack's swastika
We're three weeks into January. We've recovered from our CES hangover and, hopefully, from the CES flu. We've started writing the correct year, 2019, not 2018.
Venture capitalists have gone full steam ahead with fundraising efforts, several startups have closed multi-hundred million dollar rounds, a virtual influencer raised equity funding and yet, all anyone wants to talk about is Slack's new logo… As part of its public listing prep, Slack announced some changes to its branding this week, including a vaguely different looking logo. Considering the flack the $7 billion startup received instantaneously and accusations that the negative space in the logo resembled a swastika — Slack would've been better off leaving its original logo alone; alas…
On to more important matters.
Rubrik more than doubled its valuation
The data management startup raised a $261 million Series E funding at a $3.3 billion valuation, an increase from the $1.3 billion valuation it garnered with a previous round. In true unicorn form, Rubrik's CEO told TechCrunch's Ingrid Lunden it's intentionally unprofitable: "Our goal is to build a long-term, iconic company, and so we want to become profitable but not at the cost of growth," he said. "We are leading this market transformation while it continues to grow."
Deal of the week: Knock gets $400M to take on Opendoor
Will 2019 be a banner year for real estate tech investment? As $4.65 billion was funneled into the space in 2018 across more than 350 deals and with high-flying startups attracting investors (Compass, Opendoor, Knock), the excitement is poised to continue. This week, Knock brought in $400 million at an undisclosed valuation to accelerate its national expansion. "We are trying to make it as easy to trade in your house as it is to trade in your car," Knock CEO Sean Black told me.
Cybersecurity stays hot
While we're on the subject of VCs' favorite industries, TechCrunch cybersecurity reporter Zack Whittaker highlights some new data on venture investment in the industry. Strategic Cyber Ventures says more than $5.3 billion was funneled into companies focused on protecting networks, systems and data across the world, despite fewer deals done during the year. We can thank Tanium, CrowdStrike and Anchorfree's massive deals for a good chunk of that activity.
Send me tips, suggestions and more to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or @KateClarkTweets.
Fundraising efforts continue
I would be remiss not to highlight a slew of venture firms that made public their intent to raise new funds this week. Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures filed to raise $350 million across two new funds and Redpoint Ventures set a $400 million target for two new China-focused funds. Meanwhile, Resolute Ventures closed on $75 million for its fourth early-stage fund, BlueRun Ventures nabbed $130 million for its sixth effort, Maverick Ventures announced a $382 million evergreen fund, First Round Capital introduced a new pre-seed fund that will target recent graduates, Techstars decided to double down on its corporate connections with the launch of a new venture studio and, last but not least, Lance Armstrong wrote his very first check as a VC out of his new fund, Next Ventures.
More money goes toward scooters
In case you were concerned there wasn't enough VC investment in electric scooter startups, worry no more! Flash, a Berlin-based micro-mobility company, emerged from stealth this week with a whopping €55 million in Series A funding. Flash is already operating in Switzerland and Portugal, with plans to launch into France, Italy and Spain in 2019. Bird and Lime are in the process of raising $700 million between them, too, indicating the scooter funding extravaganza of 2018 will extend into 2019 — oh boy!
Startups secure cash
Niantic finally closed its Series C with $245 million in capital commitments and a lofty $4 billion valuation.
Outdoorsy, which connects customers with underused RVs, raised $50 million in Series C funding led by Greenspring Associates, with participation from Aviva Ventures, Altos Ventures, AutoTech Ventures and Tandem Capital.
Ciitizen, a developer of tools to help cancer patients organize and share their medical records, has raised $17 million in new funding in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Footwear startup Birdies — no, I don't mean Allbirds or Rothy's — brought in an $8 million Series A led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from Slow Ventures and earlier investor Forerunner Ventures.
And Brud, the company behind the virtual celebrity Lil Miquela, is now worth $125 million with new funding.
TechCrunch's Josh Constine introduced readers to Squad this week, a screensharing app for social phone addicts.
Listen to me talk
If you enjoy this newsletter, be sure to check out TechCrunch's venture-focused podcast, Equity. In this week's episode, available here, Crunchbase editor-in-chief Alex Wilhelm and I marveled at the dollars going into scooter startups, discussed Slack's upcoming direct listing and debated how the government shutdown might impact the IPO market.
More scooter dollars, Slack's revenue projections and the IPO traffic jam
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Whirlpool, GE and the dozens of cooking apps crowding the smart kitchen – CNET
Commentary: The connected kitchen is getting complicated. And this is just the beginning.
A Really, Really Bright Mystery in Space
Scientists don't know why a spot in space exploded. They still haven't figured out black holes, either.
The Best of Breastfeeding Tech in 2019: Medela, Willow, Lilu
From new breast shields to hands-free pumps, breast pumping technology just keeps getting better and better.
16 of the Best Winter Sales for 2019: Outdoors, Tech, Games
There are some exciting sales this cold weekend from REI, Apple, Samsung, and more.
Welcome to the abnormalization of transportation
Bill Goodwin
Bill Goodwin is the head of legal policy at Airmap.
Tyler Finn
Tyler Finn is the policy manager at Factual.
Something odd is in motion in Los Angeles. On a recent day at the office, colleagues debated the merits of the Boring Company's proposal to alleviate Dodger traffic via levitating tunnel pods. I stepped out for coffee in the afternoon and was almost run over by an elderly man on a dozen scooters, balanced precariously as he rebalanced dockless inventory. And that night, I sat in traffic on the 10 Freeway listening to commentators discuss Uber's ostensibly imminent eVTOL aircraft, while a venture capitalist friend rested his head in the sleeping compartment of a Cabin bus, carrying him back to Silicon Valley from Santa Monica.
Welcome to the abnormalization of transportation.
Even without hover-sleds and flying cars, the Los Angeles megalopolis is in the midst of a transformation in mobility. Neighborhoods from downtown to Silicon Beach have been carpeted in scooters and bikes. The Uber and Lyft revolution faces competition from the various dockless two wheelers and Via's ridesharing as a service, launching in Los Angeles soon. Flixbus, looking to expand out of European dominance, targeted LA as its hub for inter-city private bus service. And Cabin's luxury sleeper bus has been offering a premium alternative to Megabus to and from the Bay Area for months.
Cabin's cabin
Los Angeles is far from the exception. Autonomous cars are driving people to and from school in Arizona, senior citizens around retirement homes in Florida, and a small army of journalists in an endless loop around Northern California. Starship's delivery bots have rolled through more than 100 communities, and Kroger shoppers can let Nuro bring them the milk in Scottsdale today. And drone companies from around the world are vying for permission to replace vans and bikes with quadcopters for just-in-time deliveries, while nearly three dozen cities have signed onto the Urban Air Mobility Initiative to make flying cars a reality.
If even a fraction of the promise of this technology comes to pass, the movement of things and people in cities will be both bizarre and beautiful process in the near future.
Yet we fear that this future may not be realized if start-ups are given the red light by well-meaning regulators. As the cities of the world experience a shakeup they haven't seen since the subway, we have three ideas to help policymakers bring about more equitable, efficient, and environmentally friendly transportation systems, and answer a fundamental question: how on earth do you plan for a future this wild?
Rule 1: Play in the sand before you carve in stone.
It's far from clear how these transformative, and multi-modal, technologies will fit together. Equally uncertain is the right framework to govern this puzzle. Proscriptive solutions risk killing innovation in its infancy. The solution is to encourage regulatory sandboxing. Regulatory sandboxes are mechanisms to allow emerging technologies to operate outside the constraints of normal regulations and to inform the development of future rules. These protected spaces, increasingly common in areas like fintech or crypto, allow the evolution of what Adam Thierer calls "soft law" before policymakers make hard decisions.
Perhaps the best example of regulatory sandboxes is a place, coincidentally, with a lot of sand. Arizona has aggressively moved to relieve regulatory burdens that would make testing in the real world effectively impossible. Cities across the state, including Tempe and Chandler, have competed for autonomous vehicle companies to launch their services. These deployments have surfaced a host of practical challenges like how frustrating autonomous cars can be for everyone else, how manned vehicles respond to unmanned grocery bots, and the safety challenges cities should consider when vehicles are operating at partial autonomy.
The federal Department of Transportation has recognized the value of such ecosystems and the lessons they bring. Last year, the DOT created the drone Integration Pilot Program which allows a number of state, local, and tribal governments to work with companies to test advanced drone operations, including the right balance of rules to govern such operations. Recognizing the early success of the IPP, DOT recently announced they would be creating a similar program for autonomous vehicles. These flexible environments promote critical collaboration between the companies building cutting-edge technologies and the regulator. New regulations are constructed on real-world experience, rather than hypotheses developed behind closed doors.
Rule 2: Don't pick winners and losers.
Regulators tend to be cautious folks, so more often than not, they favor incumbents. And even when they embrace innovation, too often, authorities takes sides and decide which companies, or even which technologies, are allowed to operate.
For example, some cities are writing off the scooter sector entirely, just as they did a few years ago with ridesharing. Beverly Hills has banned dockless scooters and impounded more a thousand, in an effort to send a message to Bird. Bird responded by suing the city, stating that the scooter ban violates several California laws.
Other cities haven't gone so far as to ban scooters outright, but are nonetheless falling into the trap of replacing old cartels with new technocumbents. Santa Monica came very close to banning Lime and Bird, the two most popular scooter companies among locals, in favor of Uber and Lyft, who had never deployed scooters in the city before. Only after outcry from ordinary beach dwellers did the city council allow all four companies to operate. Still, no other scooter companies are allowed to operation within city limits.
We should let the market determine whether these technologies will succeed and which companies should deploy them. Cities should play an orchestration role, instead of adjudicator, facilitating connections between new technologies and the existing transit infrastructure. The alternative is to kill innovation in the crib.
Remember PickupPal? They were around well before Uber or Lyft, but you can't call a PickupPal today. A Canadian pioneer in ridesharing in the early days of smartphones, the company was thwarted by incumbents raising a law banning pickups for profit. Rather than recognize the benefits of ridesharing, authorities crushed it (along with another popular ridesharing company Allo Stop). A technology-enabled last mile solution was regulated out of existence.
By contrast, Uber was able combat efforts to thwart its access to markets. They did so, in many cases, by taking an adversarial approach and changing the law to ensure ridesharing could continue. While this preserved ridesharing as an industry, it delayed the opportunity to connect ridesharing to existing transit networks. Regulators and ridesharing companies remain more at odds than not continuing to delay solutions to the systemic transportation challenges cities face.
Rule 3: Embrace the challenge and the tools that will help you address it.
Transportation is inherently local, and the future of of mobility innovation will be as well. Even aviation, an industry that long soared above concerns of the urban environment, is being forced to rethink its relationship with the metropolis. EVTOL aircraft are revisiting the lessons helicopters learned in the 1970s and drone companies face the hyperlocal concerns that arise when your neighbor decides 3am is the ideal time for his Eaze order to be facilitated by a flying lawnmower.
And therein lies one of the most exciting opportunities for the cities of the future. The negative externalities accompanying changes on, under, and over our roads, can be mediated by the same technologies that have sparked new headaches. Cities may use platforms like RideOS to smooth autonomous traffic, Remix to incorporate scooters into transit planning, Via to offer ridesharing as a public service, or our company, AirMap, to integrate drones drones today and flying cars tomorrow.
Ultimately, solutions, not sanctions, will allow cities to welcome this weird new transportation future and realize it's transformative potential. The abnormalization of transportation presents a tremendous challenge for city officials, planners, and legislators. It's a road worth traveling.
Tesla Investors Suing Musk Can Subpoena Azealia Banks and Grimes
Shareholders are suing Elon Musk over that "taking Tesla private" tweet, and just got the right to subpoena Banks and Grimes.
Super Bowl 2019: How to watch online, start time and much more – CNET
Find out how you can live stream Super Bowl LIII for free.
Netflix or Hulu: Which Fyre Festival documentary you should watch – CNET
Get a healthy dose of internet schadenfreude with competing Hulu and Netflix documentaries on the doomed music festival.