Is probably not a useful metric to measure yourself by.
If it’s important and you can spend money to fix it, by all means, go do that.
But the helpful metrics are the ones where cash isn’t the solution.
If it’s the wrong stone, walk away.
Infinity is a trap.
The frenzied search for more is a distraction and a place to hide, all in one.
Pick the right stones and cherish them as you turn them over.
That’s enough.
TC Sessions: Mobility on July 10 in San Jose is fast approaching. Get ready for a superb lineup of speakers like Dmitri Dolgov (Waymo), Eric Allison (Uber) and Summer Craze Fowler (Argo AI). See the full agenda here.
In addition to the outstanding main stage content, TechCrunch is proud to partner with today’s leading mobility players for a full day of breakout sessions. These breakout sessions will give attendees deeper insights into overcoming some of mobility’s biggest challenges and answering questions directly from today’s industry leaders.
Breakout Session Lineup
How much data is needed to make Autonomous Driving a Reality?
Presented by: Scale AI
We are in the early days of autonomous vehicles, and what’s necessary to go into production is still very much undecided. Simply to prove that these vehicles are safer than driving with humans will require more than 1 billion miles driven. Data is a key ingredient for any AI problem, and autonomy is the mother of all AI problems. How much data is really needed to make autonomy safe, reliable, and widespread, and how will our understanding of data change as that becomes a closer reality? Sponsored by Scale AI.
Think Big by Starting Small: Micromobility Implications to the Future of Mobility
Presented by: Deloitte
A host of new micromobility services have emerged to address a broader range of transportation needs – bikesharing, electric scooters and beyond. The urban emergence of micromobility offers powerful lessons on finding the right balance between fostering innovations that will ultimately benefit consumers and broader transportation systems, while safeguarding public interests. Sponsored by Deloitte.
If You Build It, Will They Buy? – The Role of the FleetTech Partner in the Future Mobility Ecosystem with Brendan P. Keegan
Presented by: Merchants Fleet
The future will bring a convergence of new technologies, services, and connectivity to the mobility space – but who will manage and connect it all? Explore how FleetTech is creating the mobility ecosystem to help organizations embrace technologies – adopting your innovations through trials and pilots and bringing them to market. Sponsored by Merchants Fleet.
The Economics of Going Electric: Constructing NextGen EV Business Models
Presented by: ABB
How do we make the rapidly growing EV industry operational and scalable? Join ABB, HPE and Microsoft for a discussion on how government, industry, providers and suppliers are addressing market shifts and identifying solutions to build successful business models that support the future of mobility. Moderated and sponsored by ABB.
Bringing Efficiency to Closed-Course AV Testing with Atul Acharya
Presented by: AAA Northern California, Nevada & Utah
Looking to jump-start or accelerate your automated vehicle test operations? AAA has built its expertise by operating GoMentum Stations and performing safety assessments on multiple AVs and proving grounds. Join AAA as it shares its collective technical and operational learnings and testing results that will bring efficiency to your testing efforts. Sponsored by AAA Northern California, Nevada & Utah.
Friction-Free Urban Mobility
Presented by: Arrive
What does the future of seamless, urban mobility look like? How do mobility-as-a-service providers and connected vehicles work together to power transportation in a smart city? And which platform will aggregate all of the providers? In what promises to be a thought-provoking discussion, Arrive’s COO Dan Roarty will lay the foundation for what a city’s connected future will look like and outline key steps needed to achieve it. Sponsored by Arrive.
Michigan’s Mobility Ecosystem
Presented by: PlanetM
Revolutionary things can happen when some of the brightest minds in technology come together in one room. This Breakout Session will offer key insights into Michigan’s mobility ecosystem: the people, places and resources dedicated to the evolution of transportation mobility. Following a brief discussion, attendees will have the opportunity to connect with the people and companies moving the world forward through technology innovation and collaboration. Sponsored by PlanetM.
We hope to see you at TC Sessions: Mobility on July 10. Tickets are still on sale but selling fast. Book your $395 general admission ticket here. Students, grab a $45 here.
Amazon is preparing for its longest Prime Day ever. The company announced today it will host a 48-hour Prime Day sales event this year, starting at midnight on Monday, July 15 and extending for two full days. The Amazon sales holiday — its own version of a Black Friday-type sale — will feature over a million deals worldwide, including what it claims will be the biggest Prime Day discounts on Alexa devices to date.
On prior Prime Day sales events, Amazon has heavily slashed prices on its own hardware — essentially giving away devices at cost or even less in a reach for market share. These deals help draw in the crowds, making Prime Day a constant record-breaker in terms of sales. Last year, for example, Prime Day became Amazon’s biggest-ever sales day even despite a number of serious glitches at its start. And its top sellers were the Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote.
Amazon also last year put its own devices on sale 12 hours early. It has now apparently learned from that success with this new decision to make Prime Day 2019 a 48-hour sale. And to kick things off, Amazon is today putting a Fire TV Edition Smart TV on sale by offering $120 off on the Toshiba HD 43-inch Fire TV Edition Smart TV ($179.99), through June 30 or while supplies last.
In addition to sales on its own devices, Amazon promises other limited-time offers, plus new entertainment and exclusive launches, both online and in-store. It’s touting new Lightning Deals from big-name brands, too, and “big surprises” from top talent across Prime benefits Amazon Music, Prime Video, and Twitch Prime.
There will also be collaborations with actors, musicians, athletes and top brands including new Prime Day Launches and exclusive deals. Starting today, Jordan Peele’s “Us” is on sale for $2.99.
Prime members will also have access to 24 new JoJo Siwa products including a scooter, roller skates, bow bundle, and fashion line. Meanwhile, Levi’s teamed up with Pro Football Player Sterling Shepard, and model Chanel Iman Shepard to customize Levi’s Iconic 501 for him and Levi’s 721 High Rise for her.
There will also be a special-edition electric bike from Schwinn, a limited-edition natural canvas tote from FEED, and a new organic line of clothing for baby, Moon and Back by Hanna Andersson.
Other Alexa devices available today include the Jabra Elite85h wireless headphones and the iOttie Easy One Touch Connect smartphone car mount.
“Get ready, as we pull back the curtain to reveal exclusive products, special performances and two full days of phenomenal deals this Prime Day,” said Jeff Wilke, Amazon CEO Worldwide Consumer, in a statement. “Our vision is that Prime Day should be the absolute best time to be a member – when you can enjoy shopping, savings, entertainment and some of the best deals Prime members have ever seen. Stay tuned as we reveal exclusive savings at Whole Foods Market, thousands of new product launches, as well as world-class entertainment and more, leading up to Prime Day on July 15 and 16.”
Prime Day 2019 will run for the first time in the United Arab Emirates, which joins other participating markets including the U.S., U.K., Spain, Singapore, Netherlands, Mexico, Luxembourg, Japan, Italy, India, Germany, France, China, Canada, Belgium, Austria, and Australia.
Miles away from the fancy parts of Gurgaon, where a cohort of Uber and Ola cars race all day to dot the surrounding, hundreds of people are working on a different solution to contribute to India’s push for improved mobility.
When Uber entered India six years ago, and its local rival Ola began to expand in the nation, many thought the two cab services will be able to meet the needs of most Indians. To be sure, the heavily discounted cab rides in the early days meant that the two companies were able to quickly scale their businesses to dozens of cities and were clocking about three million rides a day.
But in the years since, it has become clear that Ola and Uber alone can’t serve the masses — a significant portion of which lacks the means to book a cab ride — or magically circumvent through India’s alarmingly congested roads. This has resulted in the emergence of a growing number of electric bike makers such as Yulu — which partnered with Uber last month, Vogo — which is backed by Ola, Bounce, and Ather Energy that are both showing promising growth and attracting big bucks from investors.
For four years, another startup has been quietly working on expanding its platform. But unlike the bike startups and cab aggressors, it is betting on buses. Shuttl operates over 1,300 buses in more than 300 routes in five cities of India. The platform serves more than 65,000 customers each day.
Shuttl, too, hasn’t had much difficulty in attracting capital. It has raised about $48.5 million to date. TechCrunch recently learned that the startup was in talks with investors to raise an additional $50 million. Amit Singh, cofounder and CEO of Shuttl, declined to comment on the upcoming funding round. But he sat with us to explain his business and the challenges it comes with.
Amazon-owned game streaming site Twitch will be participating in Amazon Prime Day this year, with giveaways of free content from Apex Legends and EA Sports games, live-streamed events, and apparently, even a live-streamed shopping show. The latter was reported this morning by AdWeek, which detailed the streaming site’s plans for a 2-day live shopping show on its Twitch Presents channel.
Update: Twitch says the article was taken down and news will be shared at 10 AM PT. We’ll update then.
In any event, it appears that the broad strokes of Twitch’s plan is to loop in some of the gaming site’s favorite streamers to Amazon’s big shopping holiday.
It’s worth noting Amazon has tried to make QVC-style video shopping work several times in the past.
Years ago, it briefly ran a fashion-and-beauty focused show called “Style Code Live,” that was canceled in spring 2017. It also ran live video during past Prime Day events right on Amazon.com to show off some of its brand advertisers’ best deals.
And most recently, Amazon launched a dedicated section on its site, Amazon Live, which features a live-streamed video shows brands build using a new app, Amazon Live Creator.
Given its push for more live video, it only makes sense that Twitch would get involved with Prime Day in this way, too.
Beyond Twitch’s plans for live video, the streaming site is also offering a number of giveaways and hosting live events.
Twitch Prime, which comes with an Amazon Prime subscription, will offer members an exclusive character and weapon skins for Apex Legends, along with free content in multiple EA Sports titles. Members will have to link their Twitch Prime account to their EA Account to gain access to the in-game offers, Twitch says.
In addition, Twitch will host two events ahead of Prime Day. On July 13, Las Vegas and London will host Twitch Prime Crown Cup tournaments, featuring Apex Legends and EA Sports games. In London, Olympic gold medalist runner Sir Mo Farah, footballer Thierry Henry, and five-time X Games gold medalist street skateboarder Leticia Bufoni compete against each other in an unnamed EA Sports game.
Meanwhile, the Vegas event will feature music producer Murda Beatz, global platinum-selling DJ Dillon Francis, and others, the company says.
The 8-hour event will be live-streamed on Twitch Prime’s channel starting at 10 AM PDT.
Twitch Prime is a gaming perk with Amazon’s $119/year Prime membership. This year, it’s given away more than $2,000 in free games and content, the company says, including two dozen free games.
Unrelated to Prime Day, Twitch also announced this week the launch of subscriber-only streams for its top creators, Twitch Partners and Twitch Affiliates.
In its most recent report, Synergy Research, a company that monitors cloud marketshare, found that enterprise SaaS revenue passed the $100 billion run rate this quarter. The market was led by Microsoft and Salesforce.
It shouldn’t be a surprise at this point that these two enterprise powerhouses come in at the top. Microsoft reported $10.1 billion in Productivity and Business Processes revenue, which includes Office 365, the Dynamics line and LinkedIn, the company it bought in 2016 for $26.2 billion. That $10.1 billion accounted for top spot with 17 percent
Salesforce was next with around 12 percent. It announced $3.74 billion in revenue in its most recent earnings statement with Service Cloud alone accounting for $1.02 billion in revenue, crossing that billion dollar mark for the first time.
Adobe came in third, good for around 10 percent market share, with $2.74 billion in revenue for its most recent report. Digital Media, which includes Creative Cloud and Document Cloud, accounted for the vast majority of the revenue with $1.8 billion. SAP and Oracle complete the top companies
While that number may seem low, given we are 20 years into the development of the SaaS market, it is still a significant milestone, not to be dismissed lightly. As Synergy pointed out, while the market feels mature, if finds that SaaS revenue still accounts for just 20 percent of the overall enterprise software market. There’s still a long way to go, showing as with the infrastructure side of the market, things change much more slowly than we imagine, and the market is growing rapidly, as the impressive growth rates show.
“While SaaS growth rate isn’t as high as IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service), the SaaS market is substantially bigger and it will remain so until 2023. Synergy forecasts strong growth across all SaaS segments and all geographic regions,” the company wrote in its report.
Salesforce is the only one of the top five that was actually born in the cloud. Adobe, an early desktop software company, switched to cloud in 2013. Microsoft, of course, has been a desktop stalwart for many years before embracing the cloud over the last decade. SAP and Oracle are traditional enterprise software companies, born long before the cloud was even a concept, that began transitioning when the market began shifting.
Yet in spite of being late to the game, these numbers show that the market is still dominated by the old guard enterprise software companies and how difficult it is to achieve market dominance for companies born in the cloud. Salesforce emerged 20 years ago as an early cloud adherent, but of all of the enterprise SaaS companies that were started this century only ServiceNow and WorkDay show up in the Synergy list lumped in “the next 10.”
That’s not to say there aren’t SaaS companies making some serious money, just not quite as much as the top players to this point. Jason Lemkin, CEO and founder at SaaStr, a company that invests in and supports enterprise SaaS companies, says a lot of companies are close to that $1 billion goal than you might think, and he’s optimistic that we are going to see more.
“We will have at least 100 companies top $1 billion in ARR, probably many more. It is just math. Almost everyone IPO’ing [SaaS company] has 120-140% revenue retention. That will compound $100 million or $200 million to $1 billion. The only question is when,” he told TechCrunch.
Chart courtesy of SaasStr
He adds, that annualized numbers are very close behind ARR numbers and it won’t take long to catch up. Yet as we have seen with some of the companies on this list, it’s still not easy to get there.
It’s hard to develop a billion dollar SaaS company, and it takes time and patience, and perhaps some strategic acquisitions to get there, but the market trajectory continues to move upward. It will likely only grow stronger as more companies move to software in the cloud, and that bodes well for many of the players in this market, even those that didn’t show up on Synergy’s chart.
You can only break it open once.
Organizations (and political candidates) that forget this and treat their biggest supporters like bottomless ATMs learn the piggybank rule at great cost.
Every interaction you have with a customer either strengthens your relationship (because it’s mutually beneficial) or weakens it. Weaken it enough time and you break it.
The fact that you ended up with a few bucks in the meantime is immaterial compared to the long term damage of breaking the relationship because you’re in a hurry.
In the early 2000s, journalists popularized the term “PayPal mafia” to describe the PayPal founders and employees who left to start their own wildly successful tech companies, including Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, and Elon Musk. Drawing from that idea, this article seeks to cover the formation and flow of talent within the crypto landscape today.
I'm fascinated by the concept of tech mafias, popularized by Paypal in the early 00s.
Early signs of crypto mafias:
Coinbase
@0xProject @dydxprotocol
Ethereum/ConsenSys
MIT
IC3Others?
— Ash Egan (@AshAEgan) April 3, 2019
The crypto world is in a constant state of flux, with new startups entrants joining the industry every single day. These new startups have the potential either to be superstars within a portfolio company or to start the next Coinbase. Additionally, there are already impressive spin-outs from some of the more established crypto companies.
For ease of framing, I’ve separated these early-forming mafias into four categories: Crypto, Tech, Wall Street, and Academia. Since 2009, there have been 186 spinout companies originating from those four categories (33% from Academia, 28% from Crypto, 24% from Tech, and 15% from Wall Street).
Obvious but important disclaimer: this article does not intend to promote organized crime within crypto.
In the early 2000s, journalists popularized the term “PayPal mafia” to describe the PayPal founders and employees who left to start their own wildly successful tech companies, including Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, and Elon Musk. Drawing from that idea, this article seeks to cover the formation and flow of talent within the crypto landscape today.
I'm fascinated by the concept of tech mafias, popularized by Paypal in the early 00s.
Early signs of crypto mafias:
Coinbase
Ethereum/ConsenSys
MIT
IC3Others?
— Ash Egan (@AshAEgan) April 3, 2019
The crypto world is in a constant state of flux, with new startups entrants joining the industry every single day. These new startups have the potential either to be superstars within a portfolio company or to start the next Coinbase. Additionally, there are already impressive spin-outs from some of the more established crypto companies.
For ease of framing, I’ve separated these early-forming mafias into four categories: Crypto, Tech, Wall Street, and Academia. Since 2009, there have been 186 spinout companies originating from those four categories (33% from Academia, 28% from Crypto, 24% from Tech, and 15% from Wall Street).
Obvious but important disclaimer: this article does not intend to promote organized crime within crypto.
Amazon along with Boulder company Nite Ize, a maker of specialty lights and phone mounts under the STEELIE brand, filed suit on Wednesday in a Seattle federal court against a group of counterfeiters who have been ripping off Nite Ize products. The issue was brought to Amazon’s attention in October 2018, following a tip from the United States Customers and Border Protection agency, which had seized a shipment of 300 counterfeit STEELIE brand car mounts, Amazon lawsuit explains.
The agency alerted Nite Ize, which then, in turn, alerted Amazon.
“Defendants have deceived Amazon’s customers and Amazon, infringed and misused the IP rights of Nite Ize, and harmed the integrity of Amazon’s store, and tarnished Amazon’s and Nite Ize’s brands,” the lawsuit states.
The suit goes on to identify eleven individuals and businesses who operated third-party seller accounts on Amazon’s online store where they would advertise and sell counterfeit versions of Nite Ize products.
Nite Ize may not be a household name, but you may be familiar with some of its products.
The company began back in 1989 with the invention of a headband mini flashlight holder. It introduced its STEELIE line in 2014, which is a family of products designed to make phone mounting easier. Its patented magnetic mounting system is a two-part ball and socket system that’s particularly popular as a hands-free viewing platform in cars, home, and elsewhere.
Above: STEELIE Original Dash Kit; credit: Nite Ize
That popularity, of course, attracted the knock-offs.
The defendants, Amazon and Nite Ize allege, marketed and sold items they claimed to be genuine STEELIE products in violation of Amazon’s Business Solutions Agreement. The suit names individuals living in Minnesota, Maryland, and Ontario as defendants, along with businesses based in China.
Nite Ize had been aware of the counterfeiting problems for some time.
It ordered test purchases from the defendants over the course of 2018, then reviewed the products they received and found them to be counterfeited, the suit explains.
Nite Ize and Amazon are now looking to recover actual and statutory damages as a result of the counterfeiters’ illegal business operations, along with other relief, including the ability to recover the defendants’ profits.
The lawsuit is the latest in a series of efforts by Amazon to crack down on the rampant counterfeit trade taking place online. While some brands have accused Amazon of turning a blind eye to issues with its third-party sellers, their illegal activity is ultimately damaging to Amazon’s brand, as well.
“Each day, millions of consumers use Amazon’s store to purchase a wide range of products across dozens of product categories from Amazon and third-party sellers,” the company said, in the filing. “Amazon recognizes that consumer trust is hard to win and easy to lose, so Amazon invests significant resources and effort into building and preserving its customers’ trust.”
The retailer also claimed that only a “small number of bad actors” seek to abuse that trust by selling counterfeit goods.
In more recent months, Amazon has become more active in its fight against counterfeiters.
Last year, for example, it filed three other lawsuits in partnership with fashion designer Vera Bradley and mobile accessories maker Otterbox over counterfeit goods.
And in February, Amazon launched a suite of new tools for brands and manufacturers that help them to proactively go after counterfeiters. As part of a program called “Project Zero,” brands can provide Amazon with logos, trademarks, and other key data. Amazon then scans its 5 billion product listings per day, looking for any suspicious items.
Another set of tools allows brands to work with Amazon to introduce product serialization capabilities. This puts a unique code on the manufactured units which Amazon scans at purchase to verify authentic sales.
But as this new lawsuit demonstrates, the counterfeiting business can be complex. With just this one company’s brand, there were people based across three countries involved with the illegal activity.
Amazon says in the filing it has more than 250 million active consumers and millions of third-party sellers. It’s a lot to police.
Amazon’s Prime Day event, now in its fifth year, is no longer just a big sales day for Amazon — it’s become the official kickoff to back-to-school shopping season and a new sales holiday that extends across the web among rival retailers. And those retailers’ competitive response to Prime Day is bigger than ever this year, according to a new report from RetailMeNot. In 2019, the firm estimates that 250 retailers will take part in Prime Day by offering deals of their own. That’s up from 194 last year, and up from just 7 retailers on Amazon’s first Prime Day in 2015.
The increased participation may be related in part to the size of Amazon’s sale this year. Prime Day has been stretched out over the years. In 2018, for example, Prime Day became a 36-hour sale and, at the time, the biggest shopping event in Amazon’s history.
But more retailers today are aware that offering an alternative sale will bring in the shoppers, similar to how Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales also do.
Walmart, for example, is readying its answer to Prime Day by offering deals over a longer period of time than Amazon’s now 48-hour Prime Day 2019 event. Instead, of two days, the rival retailer is going for four. Walmart says it will offer “thousands” of special deals and Rollbacks starting on July 14 — the day before Prime Day starts. And these will continue until July 17, the day after Prime Day ends.
Walmart hasn’t announced what deals are in the works as of yet, beyond an HP 15.6″ HD Touch Display Laptop for $429 (currently $447), and the Dyson Multifloor Bagless Upright Vacuum for $154.00 (currently $175).
Target, meanwhile, is prepping its own answer to Prime Day with its biggest summer sale, Target Deal Days, which will take place concurrently with Prime Day (July 15-16). The retailer says it also will feature “thousands” of deals both online and in its app, with new deals each day. These deals haven’t yet been announced, either, but will expand across home, apparel, toys, and more, and will include both Target’s own brands and national brands.
While Prime Day brings the traffic and the sales, there’s some hint that the sale itself could be improved.
Based on RetailMeNot’s survey, 64% of shoppers are hoping that Amazon provides better deals on items this year, 58% want a greater selection, and 54% want more time to take advantage of deals. Nearly all also say they hope the overall Prime Day shopping experience this year is improved.
Back-to-school shoppers and parents will be dropping some cash on Prime Day, too, the report additionally found. 64% of parents say they’ll participate in Prime Day 2019 and will shop at 11 retailers, on average. Parents also plan to spend $162 on Prime Day and complete around 35% of their total back-to-school shopping during that time.
Amazon is going big on this year’s Prime Day. In addition to expanding its popular sales event to two days instead of one, the retailer is also planning to host a Prime Day Concert headlined by Taylor Swift, exclusively for Prime members. The concert streams worldwide on July 10, 2019, at 9 PM ET on Prime Video — but you’ll need to be a paying subscriber to watch. Other artists will also participate in the concert, including Dua Lipa, SZA, and Becky G.
The concert serves several purposes beyond just raising awareness around Prime Day or giving Prime members another perk. It’s also a marketing vehicle for Amazon Music, which Amazon is today offering for 99 cents for the first four months. Prime members get access to 2 million songs with Prime Music, but can upgrade to Amazon Music Unlimited to access 50 million songs, ad-free.
In addition, Amazon plans to use the concert airtime to advertise its upcoming Amazon Original series, including Carnival Row, starring Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne; Modern Love, based on the NYT column of the same name; the Emmy-winning The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel; Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan; superhero drama The Boys; new animated series Undone, and more.
The timing of the concert — which arrives ahead of Prime Day’s July 15 kickoff — is notable, too. By hosting the event in advance, Amazon is encouraging potential new Prime members to sign up early for the $119 per year Prime subscription — instead of bombarding Amazon’s website with sign-up requests on Prime Day itself in order to gain access to the exclusive deals.
Though Amazon’s site is used to handling heavy loads, Prime Day has not been without its issues at times. For example, last year, Amazon went down at the beginning of Prime Day — the Prime Day landing page broke, error pages abounded, and checkout wasn’t working.
Amazon says the concert will stream live on Prime Video in more than 200 countries and will be available for next-day, on-demand viewing for a limited time after.
Subscribers can watch the concert via Prime Video on any platform, and can ask Alexa to ” play the Prime Day Concert” or “show me the Prime Day Concert” on their Fire TV or Echo Show devices.
This is not the first time Amazon has hosted a Prime Day concert. Last year, Ariana Grande headlined a similar event.
“We can’t wait to celebrate Prime Day with an extraordinary night of unforgettable performances, for members around the globe,” said Steve Boom, VP of Amazon Music, in a statement. “Prime Day brings members the best of both entertainment and shopping. To celebrate, we’ve curated a lineup across multiple genres with performances from artists our customers love. We’re looking forward to celebrating Prime Day with this can’t-miss, one-of-a-kind event,” he added.
Amazon’s strategy to bring more brick-and-mortar options into its vast e-commerce empire, and its ambition to sell more pharmaceutical products, today may have found themselves a little more knitted together. The company announced a new service in the US called Counter, a free in-store pick-up service where Amazon shoppers can arrange to collect packages. And its first partner in the new effort? None other than one of the bigger names in drug stores: Rite Aid.
The two will kick off Counter with availability in “over 100” Rite Aid locations across the US. The longer-term plan for Amazon is to expand the pick-up option to 1,500 stores (including other retail partners) by the end of 2019 — a very quick ramp-up in the next six months.
In an interesting geographic reversal of how Amazon rolls out services, this one launched first in Europe, by way of a partnership with the clothes retailer Next in the UK, and Giunti Al Punto Librerie, Fermopoint and SisalPay in Italy. Amazon said the service has so far “been positively received, driving strong customer engagement and additional foot traffic for partners” in those markets.
The deal is a development on Amazon’s bigger strategy to take its business — born and raised online — into ever-more traditional retail settings, both to increase options for its online shoppers, as well as bring more customers into the fold who prefer to procure their goods in person rather than by post. Other very big moves on that front have included trying out its own cashier-less retail locations, setting up bookshops on university campuses, and of course buying Whole Foods.
This latest deal is one of its blended approaches, where online shoppers are given the option of getting in person.
“Amazon is always looking for innovative and convenient ways for customers to ship and receive their orders,” explains Patrick Supanc, Worldwide Director of Amazon Hub, which also includes its Locker, Locker+ and Apartment Locker pick-up services, in a statement. “With Counter, we’ve leveraged our growing logistics network and invested in new, easy to use technology to give customers yet another delivery option rooted in flexibility and control. We are excited to partner with national businesses like Rite Aid, and local businesses in the future, to create an outstanding experience for our shared customers.”
The expansion to more pick-up options as an alternative to home delivery is partly out of practicality.
First, people are still spending, overall, way more time and money in physical retail locations than they are in virtual ones, with the latest US census figures putting the figure at just 10 percent of retail sales being made through e-commerce.
Second, having packages delivered at home is not always convenient if you work in an office and do not have suitable back-up neighbors or a porter to sign for your packages, or you have had problems with package theft if parcels are left outside.
Other options Amazon has been adding on the brick-and-mortar retailer front have included Amazon Lockers locations in stores (most recently Stein Mart), as well as partnering with stores to take exchanges (such as its deal with Khol’s). In both cases, the incentive for the stores is to bring people into the stores who will do more than just deal with their Amazon business; they might shop, too.
That will also be a hook that Rite Aid will hope to use.
“Creating a seamless, convenient customer experience is a key element of our strategy and digital transformation,” said Jocelyn Konrad, Executive Vice President, Pharmacy and Retail Operations of Rite Aid, in a statement. “Being the first store partner for Counter in the U.S. is a differentiator for Rite Aid and we believe our partnership with Amazon, that includes Locker, creates a stronger in-store experience for existing customers and new customers that come in to pick up their packages.”
To be clear, Amazon doesn’t make any mention of Rite Aid’s core business as a pharmacy, but given what else we know about Amazon’s ambitions in that area it seems very notable.
Last year, Amazon acquired online pharmacy PillPack for just under $1 billion (a sum that includes earn-outs and the full value of the deal, sources tell us), prompting many people speculating about how it might use it to move into a deeper into the very lucrative world of pharmaceuticals.
That idea was buffered by the fact that it also launched a healthcare JV in partnership with Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan, and it has also been making other gradual moves into the medical sector with the sale of supplies.
While Amazon never got very far with its investment and partnership years ago with Drugstore.com (which was eventually acquired and shut down by Walgreens, which also has tried to acquire Rite Aid, instead picking up a portion of its), it seems that a retail partnership with a drug store chain could be an obvious way of extending not just its pick-up parcel network, but also a way of bringing PillPack the physical delivery world.
Southeast Asia’s highest-capitalized startup is sitting on even more money from investors today after ride-hailing Grab announced it has raised $300 million from Invesco.
The deal takes Singapore-based Grab $7.5 billion raised to date. The money is part of its ongoing — feels-like-everlasting — Series H round which was started last June via a $1 billion capital injection from Toyota.
The round swelled to $4.5 billion thanks to contributions from a range of partners throughout 2018 and early 2019, then Grab said in April that it would add a further $2 billion to reach a $6.5 billion close before this year is out. This investment from Invesco is the first piece of that newest tranche to be announced, but there’s plenty happening under the surface, including a potential investment from PayPal, Ant Financial and others in a spinout of Grab’s financial services.
Grab declined to comment on the status of its Series H, and how much it has raised for the round so far.
Getting back to today’s news and, despite a relatively dry-looking announcement, there is an interesting takeaway to be found here.
Yes, this isn’t a SoftBank Vision Fund sized round — that $1.5 billion deal closed earlier this year — and it lacks the strategic significance of investments from backers like Toyota, Booking.com or Microsoft, but it does represent a doubling down on Grab from Invesco.
The firm merged with emerging market-focused fund Oppenheimer back in May. Oppenheimer — which has close to $40 billion in assets under management for its developing market fund alone — was among the participants in an initial $2 billion raise for that Series H, and now the merged entity is coming back to increase its position.
That first deal (from Oppenheimer) was $403 million, Grab said, so this new addition takes its spend on Grab to over $700 million. It also comes at an interesting time for the firm, which is reported to have reorganized its management team following the completion of the merger.
Based on that clearing of the decks/realignment, the decision to double down on Grab is a positive validation for the ride-hailing company. While it might not be a household name to those outside financial markets, Grab president Ming Maa played up Invesco as “one of the smartest investors in developing markets” in a statement released alongside news of the investment.
Grab acquired Uber’s regional business last year to become Southeast Asia’s undisputed ride-hailing leader, but it perhaps didn’t reckon on its local rival Go-Jek mounting a bid to finally expand its service regionally.
Having built a strong presence in Indonesia — where it pioneered ‘super app’ concepts like services on-demand and payments in the context of ride-hailing — Go-Jek has since expanded into Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore, with the Philippines also in its sights. Those moves were fuelled by investment from the likes of Tencent, Google and Warburg Pincus. As it seeks to go further and deeper in those markets, Go-Jek is currently raising a round for growth that is expected to reach $2 billion, half of which it said it had secured in January.
That accumulation of cash seemed to spark a call to arms for Grab, which turned its Series H into a gargantuan rolling round after increasing the overall round target first to $5 billion and then to $6.5 billion.
Uber may have decided to leave Southeast Asia, but the ride-hailing industry in the region is still as fascinating as ever.
The usual marathons, the popular ones, are done in a group.
They have a start time.
A finish line.
A way to qualify.
A route.
A crowd.
And a date announced a year in advance.
Mostly, they have excitement, energy and peer pressure.
The other kind of marathon is one that anyone can run, any day of the year. Put on your sneakers, run out the door and come back 26 miles later. These are rare.
It’s worth noting that much of what we do in creating a project, launching a business or developing a career is a lot closer to the second kind of marathon.
No wonder it’s so difficult.
