Startups Weekly: Peloton’s 29 secret weapons

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about a new e-commerce startup, Pietra. Before that, I wrote about the flurry of IPO filings.

Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets. If you don’t subscribe to Startups Weekly yet, you can do that here.

What’s new?

Peloton revealed its S-1 this week, taking a big step toward an IPO expected later this year. The filing was packed with interesting tidbits, including that the company, which manufacturers internet-connected stationary bikes and sells an affiliated subscription to its growing library of on-demand fitness content, is raking in more than $900 million in annual revenue. Sure, it’s not profitable, and it’s losing an increasing amount of money to sales and marketing efforts, but for a company that many people wrote off from the very beginning, it’s an impressive feat.

Despite being a hardware, media, interactive software, product design, social connection, apparel and logistics company, according to its S-1, the future of Peloton relies on its talent. Not the employees developing the bikes and software but the 29 instructors teaching its digital fitness courses. Ally Love, Alex Toussaint and the 27 other teachers have developed cult followings, fans who will happily pay Peloton’s steep $39 per month content subscription to get their daily dose of Ben or Christine.

“To create Peloton, we needed to build what we believed to be the best indoor bike on the market, recruit the best instructors in the world, and engineer a state-of-the-art software platform to tie it all together,” founder and CEO John Foley writes in the IPO prospectus. “Against prevailing conventional wisdom, and despite countless investor conference rooms full of very smart skeptics, we were determined for Peloton to build a vertically integrated platform to deliver a seamless end-to-end experience as physically rewarding and addictive as attending a live, in-studio class.”

Peloton succeeded in poaching the best of the best. The question is, can they keep them? Will competition in the fast-growing fitness technology sector swoop in and scoop Peloton’s stars?

In other news

Last week I published a long feature on the state of seed investing in the Bay Area. The TL;DR? Mega-funds are increasingly battling seed-stage investors for access to the hottest companies. As a result, seed investors are getting a little more creative about how they source deals. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and everyone wants a stake in The Next Big Thing. Read the story here.

Rounds of the week

• ThoughtSpot hauled in a $248M round at a $1.95B valuation
• Bedding startup Boll & Branch raised $100M
• Credit Sesame, a platform for managing loans, picked up $43M
• Mews grabbed a $33M Series B to modernize hotel administration
• Koru Kids closed a £10M Series A for its childcare platform
• Urbvan raised $9M for its private shuttle service in Mexico
• The popular shoe brand (among VCs) Atoms nabbed $8.1M
• Consider, an email service for startups, raised $5M from Kleiner Perkins

Time to Disrupt

Don’t miss out on our flagship Disrupt, which takes place October 2-4. It’s the quintessential tech conference for anyone focused on early-stage startups. Join more than 10,000 attendees — including over 1,200 exhibiting startups — for three jam-packed days of programming. We’re talking four different stages with interactive workshops, Q&A sessions and interviews with some of the industry’s top tech titans, founders, investors, movers and shakers. Check out our list of speakers and the Disrupt agenda. I will be there interviewing a bunch of tech leaders, including Bastian Lehmann and Charles Hudson. Buy tickets here.

Listen

This week on Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, we had Floodgate’s Iris Choi on to discuss Peloton’s upcoming IPO. You can listen to it here. Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast and Spotify.

Learn

We published a number of new deep dives on Extra Crunch, our paid subscription product, this week. Here’s a quick look at the top stories:

• How Pivotal got bailed out by fellow Dell family member, VMware by Ron Miller
• How to use Amazon and advertising to build a D2C startup by Matt Altman and Tyler Elliston
• Customer success isn’t an add-on — Start early to win later. By Dale Chang and Jay Nathan.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/31/startups-weekly-peloton-ipo/

Everyone else, also

Everyone else also thinks it’s about them.

Everyone else is in a hurry.

Everyone else is afraid.

Everyone else wonders if they’re being left behind.

Everyone else is tired.

Everyone else isn’t sure, either.

The good news is that everyone else also has unused potential and the ability to make an impact.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/606289346/0/sethsblog~Everyone-else-also/

Xbox Live is down for many

If you were trying to sneak in a quick game on Xbox Live during your Friday afternoon lunch break and found that you can’t get online: don’t worry, you’re not alone.

While Microsoft’s Xbox Live Status page still says all things are good to go (Update: Microsoft’s status page has now caught up with the outage, and says that it’s impacting sign-ins, account creations, and searches), reports are pouring in of an outage keeping many users from logging in.

Microsoft acknowledged the problem on Twitter, saying that they’re “looking into it now”

We're aware that some users are unable to sign in currently & our teams are looking into it now. We'll update when we have more info to share. Thanks for all the reports!

— Xbox Support (@XboxSupport) August 30, 2019

Story developing…

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/30/xbox-live-is-down-for-many/

Skype upgrades its messaging feature with drafts, bookmarks and more

Skype is best known for being a video calling app and, to some extent, that’s because its messaging feature set has been a bit underdeveloped. Today, the company is working to change that image with a series of improvements to Skype’s chatting features aimed at further differentiating it from rival apps.

One of the most useful of the new features is support for Message Drafts.

Similar to email, any message you type up in Skype but don’t yet send is saved within the conversation with a “draft” tag attached. That way you can return to the message to finish it and send it later on.

It’s a feature it would be great to see other messaging clients adopt, as well, given how much of modern business and personal communication takes place outside of email.

People have wanted the ability to draft and schedule iMessage texts for years — so much so that clever developers invented app-based workarounds to meet consumers’ needs. Some people even type up their texts in Notepad, while waiting for the right time to send them.

In another email-inspired addition, Skype is also introducing the ability to bookmark important messages. To access this option, you just have to long-press a message (on mobile) or right-click (on desktop), then tap or click “Add Bookmark.” This will add the message to your Bookmarks screen for easy retrieval.

You’ll also now be able to preview photos, videos, and files before you send them through messages — a worthwhile improvement, but one that’s more about playing catch-up to other communication apps than being particularly innovative.

And if you’re sharing a bunch of photos or videos all at once, Skype will now organize them neatly. Instead of overwhelming recipients with a large set of photos, the photos are grouped in a way that’s more common to what you’d see on social media. That is, only a few are display while the rest hide behind a “+” button you have to click in order to see more.

Unrelated to the messaging improvements, Skype also rolled out split window support for all versions of Windows, Mac, and Linux. (Windows 10 support was already available).

As one of the older messaging apps still in use, Skype is no longer the largest or most popular, claiming only 300 million monthly active users compared to WhatsApp’s 1.5 billion, for example.

However, it’s good to see its team getting back to solving real consumer pain points rather than trying to clone Snapchat as it mistakenly tried to do not too long ago. (Thankfully, those changes were rolled back.) What Skype remaining users appreciate is the app’s ease-of-use and its productivity focus, and these changes are focused on that direction.

Outside of the expanded access to split view, noted above, all the other new features are rolling out across all Skype platforms, the company says.

 

 

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/30/skype-upgrades-its-messaging-feature-with-drafts-bookmarks-and-more/

Online marketing vs. marketing online

Online marketing has become a messy mix of direct marketing, seo, tricks, tips, code and guesswork. It’s an always-moving target and it’s mostly focused on tactics, not strategy, because tactics are easy to measure.

Marketing online, on the other hand, is what happens when the work to serve our audience arrives in an electronic form. Marketing online is simply marketing–the act of making things better by making things–aided by a mouse and a keyboard.

Careful not to get stuck focusing on the wrong one. You need both, but one drives the other.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/606249040/0/sethsblog~Online-marketing-vs-marketing-online/

Politics vs. governance

“It’s just politics.”

No one ever says, “it’s just governance.”

Politics is organized sparring about power, without much regard for efficacy or right or wrong.

Governance is the serious business of taking responsibility for leadership.

Over the last twenty years, the mass media has shifted, from “here’s the news,” to, “hey, it’s just media.” As a result, a system has been built in which situations, emergencies and bad news have been packaged and promoted twenty-four hours a day.

In the face of that maelstrom of noise, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that the world is more dangerous and unstable than it has ever been.

When we have a chance to speak up for governance, we can strike a blow against politics.

Because even though it doesn’t make compelling TV, the long-term challenges ahead of us aren’t going to respond to politics.

Dedication, resilience and concerted effort have saved us before and they can save us again. Except once again, it’s on us to speak up and do something about it.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/606204448/0/sethsblog~Politics-vs-governance/

Microsoft wants to bring exFAT to the Linux kernel

ExFAT, the Extended File Allocation Table, is Microsoft’s file system for flash drives and SD cards, which launched in 2006. Because it was proprietary, mounting these drives and cards on Linux machines generally involved installing additional software. Today, however, Microsoft announced that it is supporting the addition of exFAT to the Linux kernel and publishing the technical specifications for exFAT.

“It’s important to us that the Linux community can make use of exFAT included in the Linux kernel with confidence. To this end, we will be making Microsoft’s technical specification for exFAT publicly available
to facilitate development of conformant, interoperable implementations.”

In addition to wanting it to become part of the Linux kernel, Microsoft also says that it hopes that the exFAT specs will become part of the Open Invention Network’s  Linux definition. Once accepted, the code would benefit “from the defensive patent commitments of OIN’s 3040+ members and licensees,” the company notes.

Microsoft and Linux used to be mortal enemies — and some in the Linux community definitely still think of Microsoft as anti-open source. These days, though, Microsoft has clearly embraced open source and Linux, which is now the most popular operating system on Azure and, optionally, part of Windows 10, thanks to its Windows Subsystem for Linux. It’ll still be interesting to see how the community will react to this proposal. The aftertaste of Microsoft’s strategy of  “embrace, extend and extinguish” still lingers in the community, after all, and not too long ago, this move would’ve been interpreted as yet another example of this.

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/28/microsoft-wants-to-bring-exfat-to-the-linux-kernel/

Building brands on Amazon, investing in customer success, quantum computing, and virtual reality

Extra Crunch student discount

It’s back-to-school season, and we’ve lined up a special Extra Crunch promotion for students. We are offering students a special subscription rate of $50 per year (regular price: $150) with similar discounts for international members. All you have to do is send an email using your school address to extracrunch@techcrunch.com and our founder success team will get you all squared away. We also offer volume discounts for student groups.

How to use Amazon and advertising to build a D2C startup

It seems like every week there is a well-funded team launching another new direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand. From mattresses to pet treats, digital-native vertical brands are seeing peak attention and funding from both founders and VCs. Part of the reason for all that attention is that it has never been easier to use the tools of the internet to build these brands from the ground up, opening up formerly closed markets.

Ecommerce consultancy VMG Ignite’s Matt Altman and Tyler Elliston discuss their framework to using Amazon as a commerce platform with Facebook ads to build a new D2C brand. It’s a deep and lengthy piece filled with actionable insights that can really help jumpstart your new product or category, or at the very least, giving you insight into how many of these modern brands come into being.

3. Product display ads (Limited to Amazon advertising console users only)

PDAs live on each product page below the buy box and a few other spaces on the product page. These ads can be used in a variety of ways since they allow up to a 50 character headline and a logo.

Three great ways to use them are for defense, frequently bought together, and competitor targeting.

– Defense – You can buy placements on your own product pages to keep competitors off your listings. These are great to keep customers focused on buying your product since there are several ads featured on each product page.

– Frequently bought together (FBT)– This is a great opportunity most sellers don’t take advantage of. On every product page, there is an unpaid placement of items that are FBT. With the click of a button, all of these items will be added to your cart and it takes very few actual sales to claim these positions. FBT can be used to target your own products to increase basket size or complementary products to drive incremental sales from future placements on product pages.

– Competitor targeting– You can also target competitor ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Number) to be the last ad a person sees before adding a competitor’s product to their cart. Make sure to use your 50 character headline to call out why your product is the better choice. Bonus Tip: Add coupons to the products you feature in these ads to grab attention and increase click-through.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/28/building-brands-on-amazon-investing-in-customer-success-quantum-computing-and-virtual-reality/

Apple is turning Siri audio clip review off by default and bringing it in house

The top line news is that Apple is making changes to the way that Siri audio review, or ‘grading’ works across all of its devices. First, it is making audio review an explicitly opt-in process in an upcoming software update. This will be applicable for every current and future user of Siri.

Second, only Apple employees, not contractors, will review any of this opt-in audio in an effort to bring any process that uses private data closer to the company’s core processes.

Apple has released a blog post outlining some Siri privacy details that may not have been common knowledge as they were previously described in security white papers.

Apple apologizes for the issue.

“As a result of our review, we realize we haven’t been fully living up to our high ideals, and for that we apologize. As we previously announced, we halted the Siri grading program. We plan to resume later this fall when software updates are released to our users — but only after making the following changes…”

It then outlines three changes being made to the way Siri grading works.

• First, by default, we will no longer retain audio recordings of Siri interactions. We will continue to use computer-generated transcripts to help Siri improve.
• Second, users will be able to opt in to help Siri improve by learning from the audio samples of their requests. We hope that many people will choose to help Siri get better, knowing that Apple respects their data and has strong privacy controls in place. Those who choose to participate will be able to opt out at any time.
• Third, when customers opt in, only Apple employees will be allowed to listen to audio samples of the Siri interactions. Our team will work to delete any recording which is determined to be an inadvertent trigger of Siri.

Apple is not implementing any of these changes, nor is it lifting the suspension on the Siri grading process that it halted until the software update becomes available for its operating systems that will allow users to opt in. Once people update to the new versions of its OS, they will have the chance to say yes to the grading process that uses audio recordings to help verify requests that users make of Siri. This effectively means that every user of Siri will be opted out of this process once the update goes live and is installed.

Apple says that it will continue using anonymized computer generated written transcripts of your request to feed its machine learning engines with data, in a fashion similar to other voice assistants. These transcripts may be subject to Apple employee review.

Amazon and Google had previous revelations that their assistants were being helped along by human review of audio, and they have begun putting opt-ins in place as well.

Apple is making changes to the grading process itself as well, noting that, for example, “the names of the devices and rooms you setup in the Home app will only be accessible by the reviewer if the request being graded involves controlling devices in the home.”

A story in The Guardian in early August outlined how Siri audio samples were sent to contractors Apple had hired to evaluate the quality of responses and transcription that Siri produced for its machine learning engines to work on. The practice is not unprecedented, but it certainly was not made as clear as it should have been in Apple’s privacy policies that humans were involved in the process. There was also the matter that contractors, rather than employees, were being used to evaluate these samples. One contractor described as containing sensitive and private information that, in some cases, may have been able to be tied to a user, even with Apple’s anonymizing processes in place.

In response, Apple halted the grading process worldwide while it reviewed the process. This post and updates to its process are the result of that review.

Apple says that around 0.2% of all Siri requests got this audio treatment in the first place, but given that there are 15B requests per month, the quick maths tell us that though it is statistically insignificant, the raw numbers could be quite high.

The move away from contractors was signaled by Apple releasing employees in Europe, as noted by Alex Hearn earlier on Wednesday.

Apple is also publishing an FAQ on how Siri’s privacy controls fit in with its grading process, you can read that in full here.

The blog post from Apple and the FAQ provide some details to consumers about how Apple handles the grading process, how it is minimizing the data given to data reviewers in the grading process and how Siri privacy is preserved.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/28/apple-is-turning-siri-audio-clip-review-off-by-default-and-bringing-it-in-house/

Lego is piloting audio and braille building instructions

Here’s a nice thing from some companies this morning — and it’s got a compelling back story, to boot. Lego this morning announced a new accessibility initiate that will make building instructions for select kits available as braille or text for voice readers, in order to reach builders with blindness and vision impairment.

The service is currently available for free through the Lego Audio Instructions site. It’s still in pilot mode, which mostly means it’s currently limited to four kits, with one each from Classic Lego, Lego City, Lego Friends and Lego Movie 2. The company is currently collecting feedback from the experiences with plans to build out its offerings at some point in the first half of next year.

The idea comes from Matthew Shifrin, a 22-year-old blind Lego enthusiast. He approached the company with the idea after he and a friend worked together to create instructions for kits that he could read.

“I had a friend, Lilya, who would write down all the building steps for me so that I could upload them into a system that allowed me to read the building steps on a Braille reader through my fingers,” he says in a release. “She learned Braille to engage with me and support my LEGO passion, and then spent countless hours translating LEGO instructions into Braille.”

[gallery ids="1874890,1874889,1874888,1874887,1874886,1874885"]

MIT’s Media Lab helped create a software that uses AI to translate visual LXFML data (LEGO Exchange Format Mel Script) instructions into text. The result of those instructions are currently being hosted on the Lego site.

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/28/lego-is-piloting-audio-and-braille-building-instructions/

Microsoft Azure’s cloud regions in Switzerland are now open for business

Microsoft today announced the availability of its cloud regions in Switzerland. The company first announced its plans for two Swiss regions near Zurich and Geneva, called Switzerland North and West, in 2018. Earlier this year, Microsoft noted that it was seeing quite a bit of interest in these regions, especially from companies in highly regulated industries that need to address data residency regulations.

The new regions will feature support for the core Azure cloud computing services, as well as Office 365, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. With this launch, Microsoft now offers its cloud services in 56 regions worldwide, which is very much part of the company’s overall strategy for Azure.

“Microsoft cloud services delivered from a given geography, such as our new regions in Switzerland, offer scalable, highly available, and resilient cloud services while helping enterprises and organizations meet their data residency, security and compliance needs,” Tom Keane, Microsoft’s corporate VP for Azure Global, writes in today’s announcement. “We have deep expertise protecting data and empowering customers around the globe to meet extensive security and privacy requirements by offering the broadest set of compliance certifications and attestations in the industry.”

Current customers include enterprises like UBS Group, Swiss Re Group, and Swisscom, as well as BKW, the City of Zug, die Mobiliar, Exploris Health and Skyguide.

While AWS does not currently operate a region in Switzerland, Google Cloud runs a region with three availability zones near Zurich.

 

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/28/microsoft-azures-cloud-regions-in-switzerland-are-now-open-for-business/

Lottery logic

Someone has to win the lottery, it might as well be you.

Buying a lottery ticket is economically irrational and emotionally rewarding for some. Because while someone has to win, it’s probably not going to be you.

There are examples of lottery logic in our daily work as well. It’s clear that someone is going to be the next Taylor Swift, the next George Clooney or the next Will Smith. But it’s probably not going to be you. Someone is going to raise a $40 million seed round, or get picked to be the next big thing. But it’s probably not going to be you.

It’s tempting to decide to follow the path that leads to mass-market stardom, the top of the charts, the fame and fortune that comes to the person who wins a media lottery. It’s tempting to build a mass-market podcast or a general-audience news site. It’s tempting to be the sort of vanilla-but-attractive actor who can play just about any role…

But it’s far more productive to focus on stepwise progress for the smallest viable audience instead. It might not make headlines, but it’s far more likely to work and more rewarding in the long run.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/606156872/0/sethsblog~Lottery-logic/

Ready, Set, Raise — the Y Combinator for female founders — announces second cohort

About one-fourth of the startups in Y Combinator’s summer batch had a female founder. Not the most disappointing statistic if you consider this: Companies with at least one female founder have raised only about 11% of venture capital funding in the U.S. in 2019, according to PitchBook. Companies with female founders exclusively have raised just 3%.

There is so much room for improvement.

To close the funding gap, programs tailored to female entrepreneurs are working tirelessly to mentor and incubate upstarts in hopes of impressing venture capitalists. Ready, Set, Raise, an accelerator program built for women, by women, is amongst the new efforts to help female and non-binary founders raise more dollars, or, at the very least, build relationships with investors.

The accelerator program, created by the Seattle-based network of startup founders and investors called the Female Founders Alliance, is today announcing its second batch of companies, a group that includes a sextech business, an AI-powered tool for podcasters and a line of workwear created for women who work on farms, construction sites and factory floors.

Ready, Set, Raise has partnered with Microsoft for Startups to provide entrepreneurs $120,000 in Azure credits, as well as technical and business mentoring from executives of the Redmond-based software giant. Other new partners include Brex and Carta, two well-funded companies that plan to lend the support of their executives to teach entrepreneurs about startup finance, valuation and fundraising terms. 

“Both FFA and Microsoft recognize a major lapse in opportunities given to women and non-binary founders,” writes Ian Bergman, a managing director of Microsoft for Startups, in a statement. “We look forward to our continued work together to promote this necessary shift in the VC landscape.”

FFA’s founder and chief executive officer Leslie Feinzaig, who launched the organization in 2017, has been an outspoken advocate of diversity in entrepreneurship and venture capital, and well as providing awareness and resources for founders who are also parents.

“My experience fundraising was undeniably shaped by the fact that I am a woman, and at the time was a new mom,” Feinzaig, who previously founded an edtech startup, told Seattle Business Magazine earlier this year. “A year later, I was about to give up. Instead, I started a Facebook group, including all of the founders and tech startup leaders I knew. It was the group that I needed, made up of people who knew exactly what I was going through. That’s how the Female Founders Alliance was born.”

FFA’s Ready, Set, Raise provides its companies childcare throughout the six-week program, in which companies work one-on-one with experienced coaches ahead of a demo day that will take place on October 16th. 

Here’s a look at Ready, Set, Raise’s sophomore class of startups:

• Echo Echo: AI-powered tools for podcasters.
• Give InKind: Coordinates support through major life events.
• Honistly: A provider of extended auto warranties to help with short-term cash needs.
• Juicebox It: Modernizes erotica with a chatbot that is arousing and educational. 
• Panty Drop: A personalized intimates shopping experience for women sizes XS-6XL.  
• The Labz: A platform that protects and memorializes creative content development in real time.
• Tougher: Functional, well-fitted workwear for women in the skilled trades. 

Here are the 82 startups from day 2 of Y Combinator’s S19 Demo Days

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/27/ready-set-raise-the-y-combinator-for-female-founders-announces-second-cohort/

Microsoft’s next Surface event is October 2

Microsoft just sent out invites for its next big event. Set for October 2 in New York, the unveiling comes exactly a year after the company’s last major Surface hardware launch. The timing is certainly right for one last major product push ahead of the holidays, as well.

Last year’s big event featured the launch of the Surface Pro 6 hybrid, Surface Studio 2, some software announcements and the launch of the Surface Headphone line. There are plenty of entries in Microsoft’s line that are due for a refresh, including Surface laptop and miniature Surface Go tablet.

Microsoft’s Surface line now includes headphones

The company also likes to launch at least one new product line at these things. As the Verge notes, the company’s long-rumored dual-screen tablet certainly seems overripe at this point, which at least two years of product research under its belt.

The above save the day invite, which was sent out to reporters today, subtly alludes to the inclusion of several convertible form factors, while paying homage to the Windows 10 logo.

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/27/microsofts-next-surface-event-is-october-2/

Microsoft’s lead EU data watchdog is looking into fresh Windows 10 privacy concerns

The Dutch data protection agency has asked Microsoft’s lead privacy regulator in Europe to investigate ongoing concerns it has attached to how Windows 10 gathers user data.

Back in 2017 the privacy watchdog found Microsoft’s platform to be in breach of local privacy laws on account of how it collects telemetry metadata.

After some back and forth with the regulator, Microsoft made changes to how the software operates in April last year — and it was in the course of testing those changes that the Dutch agency found fresh reasons for concern, discovering what it calls in a press release “new, potentially unlawful, instances of personal data processing”. 

Since the agency’s investigation of Windows 10 started a new privacy framework is being enforced in Europe — the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — which means Microsoft’s lead EU privacy regulator is the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), where its regional HQ is based. This is why the Dutch agency has referred its latest concerns to Ireland.

It will now be up to the Irish DPC to investigate Windows 10, adding to its already hefty stack of open files on multiple tech giants’ cross-border data processing activities since the GDPR came into force last May.

The regulation steps up the penalties that can be imposed for violations (to up to 4% of a company’s annual global turnover).

A spokeswoman for the Irish DPC confirmed to TechCrunch that it received the Dutch agency’s concerns last month. “Since then the DPC has been liaising with the Dutch DPA to further this matter,” she added. “The DPC has had preliminary engagement with Microsoft and, with the assistance of the Dutch authority, we will shortly be engaging further with Microsoft to seek substantive responses on the concerns raised.”

A Microsoft spokesperson also told us:

The Dutch data protection authority has in the past brought data protection concerns to our attention, which related to the consumer versions of Windows 10, Windows 10 Home and Pro. We will work with the Irish Data Protection Commission to learn about any further questions or concerns it may have, and to address any further questions and concerns as quickly as possible.

Microsoft is committed to protecting our customers’ privacy and putting them in control of their information. Over recent years, in close coordination with the Dutch data protection authority, we have introduced a number of new privacy features to provide clear privacy choices and easy-to-use tools for our individual and small business users of Windows 10. We welcome the opportunity to improve even more the tools and choices we offer to these end users.

The Dutch DPA advises users of Windows 10 to pay close attention to privacy settings when installing and using the software.

“Microsoft is permitted to process personal data if consent has been given in the correct way,” it writes. “We’ve found that Microsoft collect diagnostic and non-diagnostic data. We’d like to know if it is necessary to collect the non-diagnostic data and if users are well informed about this.

“Does Microsoft collect more data than they need to (think about dataminimalization as a base principle of the GDPR). Those questions can only be answered after further examination.”

During the onboarding process for Windows 10, Microsoft makes multiple requests to process user data for various reasons, including ad purposes.

It also deploys the female voice of Cortana, its digital assistant technology, to provide a running commentary on settings screens — which can include some suggestive prompts to agree to its T&Cs. “If you don’t agree, y’know, no Windows!” the human-sounding robot says at one point. It’s not clear whether the Dutch agency’s concerns extend to Microsoft’s use of Cortana to nudge users during the Windows 10 consent flow.

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/27/microsofts-lead-eu-data-watchdog-is-looking-into-fresh-windows-10-privacy-concerns/

Arithmetic true

Arithmetic is true. It’s true because

1. we accept the terms for what they mean

2. it’s timeless, past and present and future are the same

3. it’s testable

In every fourth-grade classroom, the statement, “9 is bigger than 7” is clearly true. We can count out nine marbles. We have a mutual understanding of what “bigger” means in this context. From this shared understanding of the axioms and vocabulary, we can build useful and complex outcomes.

On the other hand, “Cheryl is a better candidate than Tracy” might be true for some people, but it presents all sorts of trouble if we look at it through the same lens of “truth” as a term we learned in arithmetic. We know who Cheryl is and we know who Tracy is, but it’s not clear what “better” means in this case. Are we describing who will win an election in two weeks? That’s awfully hard to test in advance.

And ‘words as building blocks of truth’ gets even more complicated when the ideas intersect with both science and culture. The statement, “The theory of evolution is our best explanation for how we all got here,” is demonstrably true in the realm of science, but for people with a certain worldview who value cultural alignment more than verifiable and testable evidence, this statement isn’t true at all.

The words matter. It matters whether we’re talking about ‘arithmetic true’ or simply an accurate description of what works for part of our culture.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/606115032/0/sethsblog~Arithmetic-true/

Oracle files new appeal over Pentagon’s $10B JEDI cloud contract RFP process

You really have to give Oracle a lot of points for persistence, especially where the $10 billion JEDI cloud contract procurement process is concerned. For more than a year, the company has been complaining  across every legal and government channel it can think of. In spite of every attempt to find some issue with the process, it has failed every time. That did not stop it today from filing a fresh appeal of last month’s federal court decision that found against the company.

Oracle refuses to go quietly into that good night, not when there are $10 billion federal dollars on the line, and today the company announced it was appealing Federal Claims Court Senior Judge Eric Bruggink’s decision. This time they are going back to that old chestnut that the single-award nature of the JEDI procurement process is illegal.

“The Court of Federal Claims opinion in the JEDI bid protest describes the JEDI procurement as unlawful, notwithstanding dismissal of the protest solely on the legal technicality of Oracle’s purported lack of standing. Federal procurement laws specifically bar single award procurements such as JEDI absent satisfying specific, mandatory requirements, and the Court in its opinion clearly found DoD did not satisfy these requirements. The opinion also acknowledges that the procurement suffers from many significant conflicts of interest. These conflicts violate the law and undermine the public trust. As a threshold matter, we believe that the determination of no standing is wrong as a matter of law, and the very analysis in the opinion compels a determination that the procurement was unlawful on several grounds,” Oracle’s General Counsel Dorian Daley said in a statement.

In December, Oracle sued the government for $10 billion, at the time focusing mostly on a perceived conflict of interest involving a former Amazon employee named Deap Ubhi. He worked for Amazon prior to joining the DOD, where he worked on a committee of people writing the RFP requirements, and then returned to Amazon later. The DOD investigated this issue twice, and found no evidence he violated federal conflict of interest of laws.

The court ultimately agreed with the DOD’s finding last month, ruling that Oracle had failed to provide evidence of a conflict, or that it had impact on the procurement process. Judge Bruggink wrote at the time:

We conclude as well that the contracting officer’s findings that an organizational conflict of interest does not exist and that individual conflicts of interest did not impact the procurement, were not arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law. Plaintiff’s motion for judgment on the administrative record is therefore denied.

The company started complaining and cajoling even before the JEDI RFP process started. The Washington Post reported that Oracle’s Safra Catz met with the president in April, 2018 to complain that the process was unfairly stacked in favor of Amazon, which happens to be the cloud market share leader by a significant margin, with more than double that of its next closest rival, Microsoft.

Later, the company filed an appeal with the Government Accountability Office, which found no issue with the RFP process. The DOD, which has insisted all along there was no conflict in the process, also did in an internal investigation and found no wrong-doing.

The president got involved last month when he ordered the Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper look into the idea that, once again, the process has favored Amazon. That investigation is on-going. The DOD did name two finalists, Amazon and Microsoft in April, but has yet to name the winner as the protests, court cases and investigations continue.

The controversy in part involves the nature of the contract itself. It is potentially a decade-long undertaking to build the cloud infrastructure for the DOD, involves the award of a single vendor (although there are several opt-out clauses throughout the term of the contract) and it involves $10 billion and the potential for much more government work. That every tech company is salivating for that contract is hardly surprising, but Oracle alone continues to protest at every turn.

The winner was supposed to be announced this month, but with the Pentagon investigation in progress, and another court case underway, it could be some time before we hear who the winner is.

Why the Pentagon’s $10 billion JEDI deal has cloud companies going nuts

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/26/oracle-files-new-appeal-over-pentagons-10b-jedi-cloud-contract-rfp-process/

Amazon’s free streaming service IMDb TV comes to mobile devices

IMDb TV, the free ad-supported streaming service launched by Amazon-owned IMDb at the beginning of the year (originally called Freedive), is today arriving on mobile devices. With the updated version of iOS and Android IMDb app rolling out now, users can stream from the app’s growing library of free movies and TV series.

Prior to IMDb TV’s launch, the movie website had experimented with video content in the form of trailers, celebrity interviews and other short-form series. But consumers today are more interested in services where they can stream premium content for free, without a subscription — as they can on IMDb TV competitors like Walmart-owned Vudu’s “Movies on Us,” Tubi or The Roku Channel, for example.

At launch, IMDb TV offered a collection of TV shows like Fringe, Heroes, The Bachelor and Without a Trace, as well as Hollywood movies like Awakenings, Foxcatcher, Memento, Monster, Run Lola Run, The Illusionist, The Last Samurai, True Romance and others.

This summer, it expanded its lineup through new deals with Warner Bros., Sony Pictures Entertainment and MGM Studios.

This brought movies like Captain Fantastic and La La Land to the service, the latter which has since become one of the service’s most-streamed movies this summer. Other popular titles included Jerry Maguire, Practical Magic, A Knight’s Tale, Drive, Max, Step Dogs, Zookeeper, Paddington and The Neverending Story.

More recent deals with Paramount and Lionsgate have also brought new content to IMDb TV, like Silver Linings Playbook, Age of Adaline, In the Heart of the Sea and the TV show, The Middle.

The company hasn’t said how many customers IMDb TV has, but the service has benefited from integrations with Amazon’s Fire TV.

Earlier this year, Marc Whitten, vice president of Fire TV, noted that Fire TV customers’ use of free, ad-supported apps had increased by more than 300% during the last year. IMDb TV is expected to contribute to that, with its placement on the “Your Apps & Channels” row on Fire TV and its availability as a free channel within the Prime Video app.

The updated iOS and Android IMDb app is rolling out starting today, the company says.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/26/amazons-free-streaming-service-imdb-tv-comes-to-mobile-devices/

How to use Amazon and advertising to build a D2C startup

Matt Altman & Tyler Elliston Contributor

Matt Altman runs the Amazon practice area for VMG Ignite, an eCommerce consultancy that helps early to mid stage CPG companies achieve growth. Tyler Elliston is the founder of VMG Ignite. Clients include Sun Bum, Perfect Snacks, Aloha, Pill Club, Solid Gold, and many more.

Entrepreneurship in consumer packaged goods (CPG) is being democratized. Every step of the value channel has been compressed and made more affordable (and thereby accessible).

At VMG Ignite, we have worked with dozens of direct-to-consumer startups trying to both find product-market fit and achieve scale through Amazon and online advertising.

This article focuses on customer acquisition, particularly Amazon and online advertising, for the direct-to-consumer (D2C) CPG venture. Selling on Amazon, specifically third-party (3P), has become an increasingly important component of the D2C playbook. About 46% of product searches start on Amazon, which makes it a compelling source of sales even for early-stage ventures.

Table of contents

• How to find product-market fit
• How to get started with Amazon
• Maximizing sales on Amazon 
  • Titles
  • Image stack
  • Bullet points
  • Descriptions
  • Backend details
  • Browse nodes
  • A+ content
  • Ads
• Getting started with Facebook ads
• Growing sales after you have product-market fit
• What tools and technology to use for your D2C business 

How to find product-market fit 

People say that ideas are a dime a dozen. They aren’t valuable. But finding product-market fit? Now, that’s hard. The gap between an unexecuted idea and proven product-market fit can seem vast. Yet it’s a critical first step because, ultimately, marketing amplifies your product and value proposition.

If they aren’t compelling, marketing will fail. If they’re compelling, even mediocre marketing can often be successful. So start with a great product that people love.

How do you create a great product, you ask? A/B test your product configuration like you A/B test your landing page, copy, and design. Your product is a variable, not a constant. Build, ship, get feedback. Build, ship, get feedback. Turn detractors into your customer panel for testing.

Early-stage D2C companies typically get their first customers through three channels:

1. Begging your friends and family to buy and promote your product.
2. List it on Amazon as a 3P seller. Figure out the platform and start selling!
3. Advertise on Facebook. Start with a daily budget of 10x your price point to get started and start tinkering with creative, audiences, and settings to minimize cost per order.

The companies that succeed are often the ones that iterate the fastest. In his book Creative Confidence, IDEO founder David Kelley and his co-author (and brother) Tom relay a story of a pottery class that was split into two groups.

The first group was told they would each be graded on the single best piece of pottery they each produced. The second group was told they would each be graded based on the sheer volume of pottery they produced.

Naturally, the first group labored to craft the perfect piece while the second group churned through pottery with reckless abandon. Perhaps not so intuitive, at the end of the class, all the best pottery came from the second group! Iteration was a more effective driver of quality than intentionality.

Don’t know how to manage Amazon or Facebook? Here are some best practices:

How to get started with Amazon

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/26/how-to-use-amazon-and-advertising-to-build-a-d2c-startup/

Google falls to third place in worldwide smart speaker market

The global smart speaker market grew 55.4% in the second quarter to reach 26.1 million shipments, according to a new report from Canalys. Amazon continued to lead the race, accounting for 6.6 million units shipped in the quarter. Google, however, fell to the third spot as China’s Baidu surged ahead. Baidu in Q2 grew a sizable 3,700% to reach 4.5 million units, overtaking Google’s 4.3 million units shipped.

China’s market overall doubled its quarterly shipments to 12.6 million units, or more than twice the U.S.’s 6.1 million total. The latter represents a slight (2.4%) decline since the prior quarter.

Baidu’s growth in the quarter was attributed to aggressive marketing and go-to-market campaigns. It was particularly successful in terms of smart displays, which accounted for 45% of the products it shipped.

“Local network operator’s interests on the [smart display] device category soared recently. This bodes well for Baidu as it faces little competition in the smart display category, allowing the company to dominate in the operator channel,” noted Canalys Research Analyst Cynthia Chen.

Meanwhile, Google was challenged by the Nest rebranding in Q2, the analyst firm said.

The report also suggested that Google should to introduce a revamped smart speaker portfolio to rekindle consumer interest. The Google Home device hasn’t been updated since launch — still sporting the air freshener-style looks it had back in 2016. And the Google Home mini hasn’t received much more than a color change.

Instead, Google’s attention as of late has been on making it easier for device manufacturers to integrate with Google Assistant technology, in addition to its increased focus on smart displays.

Amazon, by comparison, has updated its Echo line of speakers several times while expanding Alexa to devices with screens like the Echo Spot and Show, and to those without like the Echo Plus, Echo Dot, Echo Auto, and others — even clocks and microwaves, as sort of public experiments in voice computing.

That said, both Amazon and Google turned their attention to non-U.S. markets in Q2, the report found. 50% of Amazon’s smart speaker shipments were outside the U.S. in Q2, up from 32% in Q2 last year. And 55% of Google’s shipments were outside the U.S., up from 42% in Q2 2018.

Beyond the top 3 — Amazon, Baidu and now No. 3 Google — the remaining top 5 included Alibaba and Xiaomi, with 4.1 million and 2.8 million units shipped in Q2, respectively.

The rest of the market, which would also include Apple’s HomePod, totaled 3.7 million units.

 

 

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/26/google-falls-to-third-place-in-worldwide-smart-speaker-market/