Customer feedback is a development opportunity

Kyle Lomeli Contributor

Kyle Lomeli is the CTO and a founding engineer at CarGurus.com.

Online commerce accounted for nearly $518 billion in revenue in the United States alone last year. The growing number of online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay will command 40% of the global retail market in 2020. As the number of digital offerings — not only marketplaces but also online storefronts and company websites — available to consumers continues to grow, the primary challenge for any online platform lies in setting itself apart.

The central question for how to accomplish this: Where does differentiation matter most?

A customer’s ability to easily (and accurately) find a specific product or service with minimal barriers helps ensure they feel satisfied and confident with their choice of purchase. This ultimately becomes the differentiator that sets an online platform apart. It’s about coupling a stellar product with an exceptional experience. Often, that takes the form of simple, searchable access to a wide variety of products and services. Sometimes, it’s about surfacing a brand that meets an individual consumer’s needs or price point. In both cases, platforms are in a position to help customers avoid having to chase down a product or service through multiple clicks while offering a better way of comparing apples to apples.

To be successful, a company should adopt a consumer-first philosophy that informs its product ideation and development process. A successful consumer-first development resides in a company’s ability to expediently deliver fresh features that customers actually respond to, rather than prioritize the update that seems most profitable. The best way to inform both elements is to consistently collect and learn from customer feedback in a timely way — and sometimes, this will mean making decisions for the benefit of consumers versus what is in the best interest of companies.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/31/customer-feedback-is-a-development-opportunity/

After earnings, Amazon joins the $1T club as Alphabet dips out

American tech companies almost did something neat today before messing it up.

After reporting earnings yesterday, Amazon’s shares shot higher this morning, pushing the company’s value north of $1 trillion. Its growth and profits proved toothsome to the investing classes, bolstering the Seattle area’s tech pedigree by adding a second trillion-dollar business to its rolls.

Microsoft and Apple, also flush after reporting their own well-received earnings, are also worth north of $1 trillion apiece. Amazon’s ascension would have brought the group of trillion-dollar American tech shops to four, if Alphabet hadn’t gone and spoiled the fun.

Here’s the chart, on which you can spot Alphabet’s dip back under the $1,000 billion mark:

So close, right?

Perhaps Google and its cadre of money-losing subsidiaries will manage to skate back over $1 trillion today, leaving only little Facebook out of the Cool Kid Clubhouse.

Get it together, Zuck! A billion dollars isn’t cool. You know what is? Being yet another trillion-dollar tech company. Gosh.

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/31/after-earnings-amazon-joins-the-1t-club-as-alphabet-dips-out/

Even as Microsoft Azure revenue grows, AWS’s market share lead stays strong

When analyzing the cloud market, there are many ways to look at the numbers; revenue, year-over-year or quarter-over-quarter growth — or lack of it — or market share. Each of these numbers tells a story, but in the cloud market, where aggregate growth remains high and Azure’s healthy expansions continues, it’s still struggling to gain meaningful ground on AWS’s lead.

This has to be frustrating to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who has managed to take his company from cloud wannabe to a strong second place in the IaaS/PaaS market, yet still finds his company miles behind the cloud leader. He’s done everything right to get his company to this point, but sometimes the math just isn’t in your favor.

Numbers don’t lie

John Dinsdale, chief analyst at Synergy Research, says Microsoft’s growth rate is higher overall than Amazon’s, but AWS still has a big lead in market share. “In absolute dollar terms, it usually has larger increments in revenue numbers and that makes Amazon hard to catch,” he says, adding “what I can say is that this is a very tough gap to close and mathematically it could not happen any time soon, whatever the quarterly performance of Microsoft and AWS.”

The thing to remember with the cloud market is that it’s not even close to being a fixed pie. In fact, it’s growing rapidly and there’s still plenty of market share left to win. As of today, before Amazon has reported, it has a substantial lead, no matter how you choose to measure it.

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/31/even-as-microsoft-azure-revenue-grows-awss-marketshare-lead-stays-strong/

After earnings, Amazon joins the $1T club as Alphabet dips out

American tech companies almost did something neat today before messing it up.

After reporting earnings yesterday, Amazon’s shares shot higher this morning, pushing the company’s value north of $1 trillion. Its growth and profits proved toothsome to the investing classes, bolstering the Seattle area’s tech pedigree by adding a second trillion-dollar business to its rolls.

Microsoft and Apple, also flush after reporting their own well-received earnings, are also worth north of $1 trillion apiece. Amazon’s ascension would have brought the group of trillion-dollar American tech shops to four, if Alphabet hadn’t gone and spoiled the fun.

Here’s the chart, on which you can spot Alphabet’s dip back under the $1,000 billion mark:

So close, right?

Perhaps Google and its cadre of money-losing subsidiaries will manage to skate back over $1 trillion today, leaving only little Facebook out of the Cool Kid Clubhouse.

Get it together, Zuck! A billion dollars isn’t cool. You know what is? Being yet another trillion-dollar tech company. Gosh.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/31/after-earnings-amazon-joins-the-1t-club-as-alphabet-dips-out/

Even as Microsoft Azure revenue grows, AWS’s market share lead stays strong

When analyzing the cloud market, there are many ways to look at the numbers; revenue, year-over-year or quarter-over-quarter growth — or lack of it — or market share. Each of these numbers tells a story, but in the cloud market, where aggregate growth remains high and Azure’s healthy expansions continues, it’s still struggling to gain meaningful ground on AWS’s lead.

This has to be frustrating to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who has managed to take his company from cloud wannabe to a strong second place in the IaaS/PaaS market, yet still finds his company miles behind the cloud leader. He’s done everything right to get his company to this point, but sometimes the math just isn’t in your favor.

Numbers don’t lie

John Dinsdale, chief analyst at Synergy Research, says Microsoft’s growth rate is higher overall than Amazon’s, but AWS still has a big lead in market share. “In absolute dollar terms, it usually has larger increments in revenue numbers and that makes Amazon hard to catch,” he says, adding “what I can say is that this is a very tough gap to close and mathematically it could not happen any time soon, whatever the quarterly performance of Microsoft and AWS.”

The thing to remember with the cloud market is that it’s not even close to being a fixed pie. In fact, it’s growing rapidly and there’s still plenty of market share left to win. As of today, before Amazon has reported, it has a substantial lead, no matter how you choose to measure it.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/31/even-as-microsoft-azure-revenue-grows-awss-marketshare-lead-stays-strong/

Zooming in–The magic of looking more closely

Too often, we take what we are offered at face value. The zoom setting is determined by someone else, and in our rush to get onto the next thing, we fail to discover what is going on within.

The act of zooming (actually or metaphorically) is a modern thrill, the opportunity to see what was there as we move closer to what is there. Suddenly, new levels reveal themselves to us, and we begin to see the mechanisms that are hidden from us at first glance.

My hunch is that once a medical student has understood what makes us tick, people don’t look quite the same anymore. And once you understand how the banking system works, a credit card offer feels a bit different as well.

If you want a cool example of how this works, click on this photo of 84 million stars, a composite of photos shot by a telescope in Chile. The ESO telescope is capable of putting together a 9 billion pixel image.

But once you click once, you can zoom, again and again and again. Those repeated clicks reminded me of just how vast the galaxy is, more than I ever could have learned from a single picture. It turns out that this vastness is repeated in every system in our lives. If we only care enough to zoom.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/617382312/0/sethsblog~Zooming-inThe-magic-of-looking-more-closely/

Microsoft will now pay up to $20k for Xbox Live security exploits

Think you’ve found a glaring security hole in Xbox Live? Microsoft is interested.

The company announced a new bug bounty program today, focused specifically on its Xbox Live network and services. Depending on how serious the exploit is and how complete your report is, they’re paying up to $20,000.

Like most bug bounty programs, Microsoft is looking for pretty specific/serious security flaws here. Found a way to execute unauthorized code on Microsoft’s servers? They’ll pay for that. Keep getting disconnected from Live when you play as a certain legend in Apex? Not quite the kind of bug they’re looking for.

Microsoft also specifically rules out a few types of vulnerabilities as out-of-scope, including DDoS attacks, anything that involves phishing Microsoft employees or Xbox customers, or getting servers to cough up basic info like server name or internal IP. You can find the full breakdown here.

This is by no means Microsoft’s first foray into bounty programs; they’ve got similar programs for the Microsoft Edge browser, their “Windows Insider” preview builds, Office 365, and plenty of other categories. The biggest bounties they offer are on their cloud computing service, Azure, where the bounty for a super specific bug (gaining admin access to an Azure Security Lab account, which are closely controlled) can net up to $300,000.

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/30/microsoft-will-now-pay-up-to-20k-for-xbox-live-security-exploits/

Amazon quietly publishes its latest transparency report

Just as Amazon was basking in the news of a massive earnings win, the tech giant quietly published — as it always does — its latest transparency report, revealing a slight dip in the number of government demands for user data.

It’s a rarely seen decline in the number of demands received by a tech company during a year where almost every other tech giant — including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter — all saw an increase in the number of demands they receive. Only Apple reported a decline in the number of demands it received.

Amazon said it received 1,841 subpoenas, 440 search warrants and 114 other court orders for user data — such as its Echo and Fire devices — during the six-month period ending 2019.

That’s about a 4% decline on the first six months of the year.

The company’s cloud unit, Amazon Web Services, also saw a decline in the number of demands for data stored by customers, down by about 10%.

Amazon also said it received between 0 and 249 national security requests for both its consumer and cloud services (rules set out by the Justice Department only allow tech and telecom companies to report in ranges).

At the time of writing, Amazon has not yet updated its law enforcement requests page to list the latest report.

Amazon’s biannual transparency report is one of the lightest reads of any company’s figures across the tech industry. We previously reported on how Amazon’s transparency reports have purposefully become more vague over the years rather than clearer — bucking the industry trend. At just three pages, the company spends most of it explaining how it responds to each kind of legal demand rather than expanding on the numbers themselves.

The company’s Ring smart camera division, which has faced heavy criticism for its poor security practices and its cozy relationship with law enforcement, still hasn’t released its own data demand figures.

Many smart home device makers still won’t say if they give your data to the government

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/30/amazon-government-demands-data/

Ring’s new security ‘control center’ isn’t nearly enough

On the same day that a Mississippi family is suing Amazon-owned smart camera maker Ring for not doing enough to prevent hackers from spying on their kids, the company has rolled out its previously announced “control center,” which it hopes will make you forget about its verifiably “awful” security practices.

In a blog post out Thursday, Ring said the new “control center,” “empowers” customers to manage their security and privacy settings.

Ring users can check to see if they’ve enabled two-factor authentication, add and remove users from the account, see which third-party services can access their Ring cameras, and opt-out of allowing police to access their video recordings without the user’s consent.

But dig deeper and Ring’s latest changes still do practically nothing to change some of its most basic, yet highly criticized security practices.

Questions were raised over these practices months ago after hackers were caught breaking into Ring cameras and remotely watching and speaking to small children. The hackers were using previously compromised email addresses and passwords — a technique known as credential stuffing — to break into the accounts. Some of those credentials, many of which were simple and easy to guess, were later published on the dark web.

Yet, Ring still has not done anything to mitigate this most basic security problem.

TechCrunch ran several passwords through Ring’s sign-up page and found we could enter any easy to guess password, like “12345678” and “password” — which have consistently ranked as some of the most common passwords for several years running.

To combat the problem, Ring said at the time users should enable two-factor authentication, a security feature that adds an additional check to prevent account breaches like password spraying, where hackers use a list of common passwords in an effort to brute force their way into accounts.

But Ring still uses a weak form of two-factor, sending you a code by text message. Text messages are not secure and can be compromised through interception and SIM swapping attacks. Even NIST, the government’s technology standards body, has deprecated support for text message-based two-factor. Experts say although text-based two-factor is better than not using it at all, it’s far less secure than app-based two-factor, where codes are delivered over an encrypted connection to an app on your phone.

Ring said it’ll make its two-factor authentication feature mandatory later this year, but has yet to say if it will ever support app-based two-factor authentication in the future.

The smart camera maker has also faced criticism for its cozy relationship with law enforcement, which has lawmakers concerned and demanding answers.

Ring allows police access to users’ videos without a subpoena or a warrant. (Unlike its parent company Amazon, Ring still does not published the number of times police demand access to customer videos, with or without a legal request.)

Ring now says its control center will allow users to decide if police can access their videos or not.

But don’t be fooled by Ring’s promise that police “cannot see your video recordings unless you explicitly choose to share them by responding to a specific video request.” Police can still get a search warrant or a court order to obtain your videos, which isn’t particularly difficult if police can show there’s reasonable grounds that it may contain evidence — such as video footage — of a crime.

There’s nothing stopping Ring, or any other smart home maker, from offering a zero-knowledge approach to customer data, where only the user has the encryption keys to access their data. Ring cutting itself (and everyone else) out of the loop would be the only meaningful thing it could do if it truly cares about its users’ security and privacy. The company would have to decide if the trade-off is worth it — true privacy for its users versus losing out on access to user data, which would effectively kill its ongoing cooperation with police departments.

Ring says that security and privacy has “always been our top priority.” But if it’s not willing to work on the basics, its words are little more than empty promises.

Over 1,500 Ring passwords have been found on the dark web

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/30/ring-security-control-center/

AWS partners with sports leagues to change how we watch games

Since the inception of professional sports, fans have sought statistics about how their favorite teams and players are performing. Until recently, these stats were generated from basic counting, like batting averages, home runs or touchdowns.

Today, sports leagues are looking to learn more about players and find a competitive edge through more advanced stats. Beyond that, they want to engage fans more with tools like AWS NFL’s Next Gen Stats and MLB’s Statcast, software that uses compelling visuals to illustrate statistics like the probability of receiving a catch in the end zone or a runner’s speed between home and first base.

AWS counts Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the German Bundesliga soccer league, NASCAR, Formula 1 racing and Six Countries Rugby among its customers. How, exactly, are advanced cloud technology and machine learning helping change how we watch live sports?

Building on Moneyball

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/30/aws-partners-with-sports-leagues-to-change-how-we-watch-games/

Techstars Detroit accelerator is shutting down

Techstars Detroit, the accelerator that has funded 54 startups in the past five years, is shutting down, TechCrunch has learned.

In an email to supporters, Techstars Detroit managing director Ted Serbinski said the accelerator was not able to secure enough funding for 2020.

“It’s clear the entire automotive mobility industry is tightening as sales slump and we hit the trough of disillusionment with autonomy,” Serbinski wrote in the email. The sales and business development piece of the accelerator is working to build a new program in Detroit if “great corporates can be found,” he added.

Techstars isn’t disappearing from Detroit altogether. The company has a presence through events like Startup Week and Startup Weekends. Serbinski will continue to support the 54 startups that have come out of the program. A number of these startups are working on Series A rounds.

Serbinski will continue to work at Techstars, this time running an accelerator program focused on “quality of life” startups.

An excerpt from Serbinksi’s email:

An experiment for Techstars, Detroit showed you could build a world-class program in an emerging market, in a hyper-competitive industry, that was going through a transformational change.

More importantly, the program proved that wonderful and talented mentors from around the region and globe would graciously support the founders. Truly, an incredible community formed around this program and region. It’s wonderful to see all the new activity as Detroit continues to grow in startup and VC activity.

Techstars Detroit began in 2015 as Techstars Mobility, a mentorship-driven accelerator program that was supported by numerous corporate and auto-focused backers including Ford, Honda, Lear and Nationwide as well as global partners such as Amazon’s AWS, Silicon Valley Bank and Microsoft for Startups. The intent was to bring attention and business into Detroit, a strategy that Serbinksi told TechCrunch was successful.

“The Detroit program was an experiment from the start,” Serbinski said in an interview Wednesday. “The experiment was could TechStars run an accelerator with multiple corporate partners in an emerging market that had a lot of potential, but a significant amount of unknowns? Over the last five years, it became clear that you can work with multiple corporates, you can be in a hyper competitive auto industry, Detroit has momentum and Silicon Valley isn’t waiting anymore. A lot of that proved out.”

Serbinksi’s portfolio is diverse and global. For instance, the startups in the portfolio are from 11 different countries and 40% have female founders. Of the 54 startups Techstars Detroit invested in, just one is from Detroit and two are from Michigan. Serbinksi added that he was not tied to a single thesis that “autonomy is going to take over today” and instead focused on what would work “today and tomorrow.” In other words, he didn’t heavily weight the portfolio with startups focused autonomous vehicle technology, which could take 10 to 15 years to turn into a product.

The portfolio has had success with less than 10% of startups shutting down. Some of the successful accelerator graduates include Cargo, Acerta and Wise.

In 2019, Serbinski announced the name was changing to Techstars Detroit to diversify even more. The new broader aim was to look for startups “transforming the intersection of the physical and digital worlds that can leverage the strengths of Detroit to succeed.” It could be more than just mobility.

“The word mobility was becoming too limiting,” Serbinksi wrote in a blog post at the time. “We knew we needed to reach a broader audience of entrepreneurs who may not label themselves as mobility but are great candidates for the program.”

Even as the accelerator diversified, Serbinski said, it was becoming more difficult to attract investments from the automotive industry.

“We were talking to a healthy amount of new partners for this year and all of those conversations went to zero,” he said. “I’m seeing a tightening of innovation budgets around automotive and mobility  because we’re entering that trough of disillusionment for autonomy. And so, with less accessible money, it made it a lot harder for us to fill in that gap.”

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/30/techstars-detroit-accelerator-is-shutting-down/

Techstars Detroit accelerator is shutting down

Techstars Detroit, the accelerator that has funded 54 startups in the past five years, is shutting down, TechCrunch has learned.

In an email to supporters, Techstars Detroit managing director Ted Serbinski said the accelerator was not able to secure enough funding for 2020.

“It’s clear the entire automotive mobility industry is tightening as sales slump and we hit the trough of disillusionment with autonomy,” Serbinski wrote in the email. The sales and business development piece of the accelerator is working to build a new program in Detroit if “great corporates can be found,” he added.

Techstars isn’t disappearing from Detroit altogether. The company has a presence through events like Startup Week and Startup Weekends. Serbinski will continue to support the 54 startups that have come out of the program. A number of these startups are working on Series A rounds.

Serbinski will continue to work at Techstars, this time running an accelerator program focused on “quality of life” startups.

An excerpt from Serbinksi’s email:

An experiment for Techstars, Detroit showed you could build a world-class program in an emerging market, in a hyper-competitive industry, that was going through a transformational change.

More importantly, the program proved that wonderful and talented mentors from around the region and globe would graciously support the founders. Truly, an incredible community formed around this program and region. It’s wonderful to see all the new activity as Detroit continues to grow in startup and VC activity.

Techstars Detroit began in 2015 as Techstars Mobility, a mentorship-driven accelerator program that was supported by numerous corporate and auto-focused backers including Ford, Honda, Lear and Nationwide as well as global partners such as Amazon’s AWS, Silicon Valley Bank and Microsoft for Startups. The intent was to bring attention and business into Detroit, a strategy that Serbinksi told TechCrunch was successful.

“The Detroit program was an experiment from the start,” Serbinski said in an interview Wednesday. “The experiment was could TechStars run an accelerator with multiple corporate partners in an emerging market that had a lot of potential, but a significant amount of unknowns? Over the last five years, it became clear that you can work with multiple corporates, you can be in a hyper competitive auto industry, Detroit has momentum and Silicon Valley isn’t waiting anymore. A lot of that proved out.”

Serbinksi’s portfolio is diverse and global. For instance, the startups in the portfolio are from 11 different countries and 40% have female founders. Of the 54 startups Techstars Detroit invested in, just one is from Detroit and two are from Michigan. Serbinksi added that he was not tied to a single thesis that “autonomy is going to take over today” and instead focused on what would work “today and tomorrow.” In other words, he didn’t heavily weight the portfolio with startups focused autonomous vehicle technology, which could take 10 to 15 years to turn into a product.

The portfolio has had success with less than 10% of startups shutting down. Some of the successful accelerator graduates include Cargo, Acerta and Wise.

In 2019, Serbinski announced the name was changing to Techstars Detroit to diversify even more. The new broader aim was to look for startups “transforming the intersection of the physical and digital worlds that can leverage the strengths of Detroit to succeed.” It could be more than just mobility.

“The word mobility was becoming too limiting,” Serbinksi wrote in a blog post at the time. “We knew we needed to reach a broader audience of entrepreneurs who may not label themselves as mobility but are great candidates for the program.”

Even as the accelerator diversified, Serbinski said, it was becoming more difficult to attract investments from the automotive industry.

“We were talking to a healthy amount of new partners for this year and all of those conversations went to zero,” he said. “I’m seeing a tightening of innovation budgets around automotive and mobility  because we’re entering that trough of disillusionment for autonomy. And so, with less accessible money, it made it a lot harder for us to fill in that gap.”

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/30/techstars-detroit-accelerator-is-shutting-down/

OpsRamp raises $37.5M for its hybrid IT operations platform

OpsRamp, a service that helps IT teams discover, monitor, manage and — maybe most importantly — automate their hybrid environments, today announced that it has closed a $37.5 million funding round led by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, with participation from existing investor Sapphire Ventures and new investor Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

OpsRamp last raised funding in 2017, when Sapphire led its $20 million Series A round.

At the core of OpsRamp’s services is its AIOps platform. Using machine learning and other techniques, this service aims to help IT teams manage increasingly complex infrastructure deployments, provide intelligent alerting, and eventually automate more of their tasks. The company’s overall product portfolio also includes tools for cloud monitoring and incident management.

The company says its annual recurrent revenue increased by 300 percent in 2019 (though we obviously don’t know what number it started 2019 with). In total, OpsRamp says it now has 1,400 customers on its platform and alliances with AWS, ServiceNow, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure.

OpsRamp co-founder and CEO Varma Kunaparaju

According to OpsRamp co-founder and CEO Varma Kunaparaju, most of the company’s customers are mid to large enterprises. “These IT teams have large, complex, hybrid IT environments and need help to simplify and consolidate an incredibly fragmented, distributed and overwhelming technology and infrastructure stack,” he said. “The company is also seeing success in the ability of our partners to help us reach global enterprises and Fortune 5000 customers.”

Kunaparaju told me that the company plans to use the new funding to expand its go-to-market efforts and product offerings. “The company will be using the money in a few different areas, including expanding our go-to-market motion and new pursuits in EMEA and APAC, in addition to expanding our North American presence,” he said. “We’ll also be doubling-down on product development on a variety of fronts.”

Given that hybrid clouds only increase the workload for IT organizations and introduce additional tools, it’s maybe no surprise that investors are now interested in companies that offer services that rein in this complexity. If anything, we’ll likely see more deals like this one in the coming months.

“As more of our customers transition to hybrid infrastructure, we find the OpsRamp platform to be a differentiated IT operations management offering that aligns well with the core strategies of HPE,” said Paul Glaser, Vice President and Head of Hewlett Packard Pathfinder. “With OpsRamp’s product vision and customer traction, we felt it was the right time to invest in the growth and scale of their business.”

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/30/opsramp-raises-37-5m-for-its-hybrid-it-operations-platform/

Codility raises $22M for its tech recruiting platform

Codility, a platform that helps tech recruiters and hiring managers asses candidates through online coding tests, today announced that it has raised a $22 million Series A round led by Oxx and Kennet Partners.

This marks the first time Codility has raised any funding, after ten years as a bootstrapped company. Clearly, though, despite having achieved double-digit annual recurring revenue in those ten years, the team nowbelieves that it has an opportunity to grow its market share in what is becoming a more competitive market for tech hiring platforms — and to do so, it needs outside funding.

So far, the company has brought on an impressive list of customers, including Microsoft, Tesla, Slack, Okta, Rakuten, American Express, and UnitedHealth Group. In total, the company says it had 1,500 customers in 2019 and helped them evaluate over 450,000 candidates, a number the company says has grown over 50 percent year-over-year.

What sets Codility apart from similar platforms is that it aims to provide coding tests that are closer to what engineers typically face in their day-to-day jobs instead of highly abstract whiteboarding sessions that evaluate their theory of algorithms knowledge.

“The biggest bottleneck to achieving this lies in sourcing, screening, and interviewing,” said Codility CEO Natalia Panowicz. “This is where Codility comes in. We allow businesses to deliver great experiences to candidates and deep insights to the hiring team — improving decision-making and ultimately increasing their overall engineering capacity.”

The company says its system allows it to provide recruiters with a “360-degree evaluation of technical ability” that helps managers ensure that a candidate is a good fit for a given position. Ideally, this also reduces the effect of unconscious bias in the recruiting and placement process.

As part of its platform, Codility offers its technical skills and evaluation services for recruiters, including a shared editor for live technical interviews. In addition, the company also helps companies run their own coding competitions, which they can then use to identify potential candidates, including those who aren’t actively looking for a new job.

“Codility is a great solution for hiring teams based on the needs of quality high-volume hiring; such as consistency, standardization, and scalability,” said Vicky Xiong, Senior Director of Engineering at Okta. “Codility also enables Okta to create a great candidate experience, which is core to our values as a company.”

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/30/codility-raises-22m-for-its-tech-recruiting-platform/

“This will change your mind”

How often is that true?

Not very.

Changing a mind is difficult work. It won’t happen with a standard intervention, and it probably requires enrollment on the part of the person you’re engaging with as well.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/617346846/0/sethsblog~This-will-change-your-mind/

Microsoft shares rise after it beats revenue, profit expectations, Azure posts 62% growth

Today Microsoft reported its fiscal 2020 second quarter (calendar Q4 2019) results, including revenue of $36.9 billion (up 14%), net income of $11.6 billion (up 38%), and diluted earnings per share of $1.51.

Investors had expected the company to report profit of $1.32 per share, off revenue of $35.67 billion. The street had anticipated net income of $10.12 billion in net income, as well. The company’s stock is up around 2% in after-hours trading, following the company’s earnings release.

All that’s just fine. But, what about cloud — how did Microsoft do with Azure, Office 365, and the rest of the products that are expected to carry Redmond into the future? Here you go:

• Office 365 Commercial revenue grew 27%, compared to its year-ago result
• Azure grew 62%, compared to its year-ago result
• “Office Consumer products and cloud services” grew by 19%, compared to their year-ago result
• Dynamics 365 grew 42%, compared to its year-ago result

All the above figures are GAAP results, and are therefore not adjusted for currency fluctuations. On a so-called “constant currency” basis, Azure grew by a slightly faster 64%.

In addition to those results, LinkedIn, a somewhat recent Microsoft property, grew 24% compared to its year-ago results, while Surface grew in single-digit percentage terms, and Xbox’s digital products slipped by 11% on a year-over-year basis. (Microsoft had stressed early on that LinkedIn’s growth rate was a key priority.)

Gisting all of that quickly as we continue to understand the company’s new results, it appears that Microsoft’s cloud transition continued apace, with investors bidding up its equity modest after-hours in light of the results. Bear in mind that Microsoft’s shares have been on a tear lately, with the company’s valuation cresting the $1.28 trillion mark as we finish this post.

Apple, another of the technology giants, also saw its shares advance modestly after reporting earnings yesterday. This is a crowded week for tech results, which, at the top end so far, have gone well.

What about Windows?

Microsoft’s earnings are a stable affair, given its girth that stretches from consumer hardware, software, gaming, and operating systems, to enterprise tech to sales tooling to venture capital and more. But one product that has always deserves a minute is Windows, Microsoft’s well-known operating system.

Notably in the quarter, the Windows business was good, with Windows OEM revenue rising 18%. Even better, “Windows Commercial products and cloud services” rose 25%. It is true that Microsoft’s OEM business (selling the OS to hardware shops that make PCs) likely had a Windows 7 end-of-life tailwind, but all the same the numbers were good.

Or at least better than I’d hazard anyone would have guessed a few years back, living in the post-iPad era as we now are.

All told, a solid quarter from Redmond. That it’s shares are only up a few points is more indicative of how much the results were already priced into its shares, than market enthusiasm for the company’s business. More if the stock price shifts again.

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/29/microsoft-shares-rise-after-it-beats-revenue-profit-expectations-azure-posts-62-growth/

Greylock’s Reid Hoffman and Sarah Guo to talk fundraising at Early Stage SF 2020

Early Stage SF is around the corner on April 28 in San Francisco, and we are more than excited for this brand new event. The intimate gathering of founders, VCs, operators and tech industry experts is all about giving founders the tools they need to find success, no matter the challenge ahead of them.

Struggling to understand the legal aspects of running a company, like negotiating cap tables or hiring international talent? We’ve got breakout sessions for that. Wondering how to go about fundraising, from getting your first yes to identifying the right investors to planning the timeline for your fundraise sprint? We’ve got breakout sessions for that. Growth marketing? PR/Media? Building a tech stack? Recruiting?

We. Got. You.

Hoffman + Guo

Today, we’re very proud to announce one of our few Main Stage sessions that will be open to all attendees. Reid Hoffman and Sarah Guo will join us for a conversation around “How To Raise Your Series A.”

Reid Hoffman is a legendary entrepreneur and investor in Silicon Valley. He was an Executive VP and founding board member at PayPal, before going on to co-found LinkedIn in 2003. He led the company to profitability as CEO before joining Greylock in 2009. He serves on the boards of Airbnb, Apollo Fusion, Aurora, Coda, Convoy, Entrepreneur First, Microsoft, Nauto, and Xapo, among others. He’s also an accomplished author, with books like Blitzscaling, The Startup of You, and The Alliance.

Sarah Guo has a wealth of experience in the tech world. She started her career in high school at a tech firm founded by her parents, called Casa Systems. She then joined Goldman Sachs, where she invested in growth-stage tech startups such as Zynga and Dropbox, and advised both pre-IPO companies (Workday) and publicly traded firms (Zynga, Netflix, and Nvidia). She joined Greylock Partners in 2013 and led the firm’s investment in Cleo, Demisto, Sqreen and Utmost. She has a particular focus on B2B applications as well as infrastructure, cybersecurity, collaboration tools, AI, and healthcare.

The format for Hoffman and Guo’s main stage chat will be familiar to folks who have followed the investors. It will be an updated, in-person combination of Hoffman’s famously annotated LinkedIn Series B pitchdeck that led to Greylock’s investment, and Sarah Guo’s in-depth breakdown of what she looks for in a pitch.

They’ll lay out a number of universally applicable lessons that folks seeking Series A funding can learn from, tackling each from their own unique perspectives. Hoffman has years of experience in consumer-focused companies, with a special expertise in network effects. Guo is one of the top minds when it comes to investment in enterprise software.

We’re absolutely thrilled about this conversation, and to be honest, the entire Early Stage agenda.

How it works

Here’s how it all works:

There will be about 50+ breakout sessions at the event, and attendees will have an opportunity to attend at least seven. The sessions will cover all the core topics confronting early-stage founders — up through Series A — as they build a company, from raising capital to building a team to growth. Each breakout session will be led by notables in the startup world.

Don’t worry about missing a breakout session, because transcripts from each will be available to show attendees. And most of the folks leading the breakout sessions have agreed to hang at the show for at least half the day and participate in CrunchMatch, TechCrunch’s app to connect founders and investors based on shared interests.

Here’s the fine print. Each of the 50+ breakout sessions is limited to around 100 attendees. We expect a lot more attendees, of course, so signups for each session are on a first-come, first-serve basis. Buy your ticket today and you can sign up for the breakouts that we’ve announced. Pass holders will also receive 24-hour advance notice before we announce the next batch. (And yes, you can “drop” a breakout session in favor of a new one, in the event there is a schedule conflict.)

Grab yourself a ticket and start registering for sessions right here. Interested sponsors can hit up the team here.

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/29/greylocks-reid-hoffman-and-sarah-guo-to-talk-fundraising-at-early-stage-sf-2020/

Microsoft takes wraps off $40M ‘AI for Health’ initiative

When the topics of Microsoft and global health overlap, one tends to think about the Gates Foundation, but the company itself is doing good work along these lines as well. The latest such effort is AI for Health, an $40M, five year outgrowth of Microsoft’s AI for Good program that aims to help apply the benefits of AI with an eye to bettering the health of the less fortunate worldwide.

The new initiative will focus on direct research in the medical AI field (think algorithms for automatically detecting a disease), global health studies (that is, better understanding of how such things could be of use), and improving access (actually putting the algorithms to work).

“AI for Health is a philanthropic initiative that complements our broader work in Microsoft Healthcare,” wrote Microsoft’s John Kahan in a blog post announcing the new program. “We will support specific nonprofits and academic collaboration with Microsoft’s leading data scientists, access to best-in-class AI tools and cloud computing, and select cash grants.”

Kahan points out that modern healthcare is incredibly unevenly distributed, coming near eliminating some diseases and forms of death in some countries, while others are ravaged by the same. That’s not exactly a problem that AI can solve, but there are things that it can do.

Microsoft uses AI to diagnose cervical cancer faster in India

For instance, he points out, there are highly effective AI-based screening systems for diabetic retinopathy, a condition millions are at risk of that can lead to blindness. Getting a village access to a mobile phone and eye-inspection attachment is a lot easier and cheaper than dispatching an ophthalmologist.

It’s the goal of AI for Health to help engineer, identify, and deploy technologies like that. Part of that is simply a question of cost — many AI experts are in the more general tech sector because that’s where the jobs are. Getting them to cross over to the social good side means those projects will need to be competitive and successful, which a bit of Microsoft cash might help with.

The company noted a few partnerships that will benefit from the new program, with medical research outfits looking into SIDS, leprosy, diabetic retinopathy as mentioned above, tuberculosis, maternal mortality, and of course that eternal adversary, cancer.

Unfortunately, unlike some of Microsoft’s other grant programs, this $40M isn’t up for grabs via public applications: It will be working directly with nonprofits and research organizations. But if you’re at one of those organizations, it might be a good time to get in touch with your collaborators in Redmond.

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/29/microsoft-takes-wraps-off-40m-ai-for-health-initiative/

Tracking corporate venture capital’s rise over the past decade

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

It’s been a busy decade in the venture capital world. Ten years ago there were fewer than 20 known unicorns in the United States. That figure has risen to more than 200 in the intervening period. Back in 2010, global venture capital was estimated by some at around $50 billion. Venture reporter and genial chap Jason D. Rowley put that figure at $295 billion, give or take, at the end of 2019.

Hidden in those metrics is not just investment from the venture capital firms most famous in our common mind — Sequoia from the old guard, Andreessen Horowitz from the new. Also included are the efforts of corporate venture capital players. Not as stodgy as they were once considered, corporate venture capital shops (CVCs) have grown in popularity as investment vehicles for cash-rich corporations hoping to avoid being killed off by more vibrant upstarts. The results of that popularity have helped boost rising venture totals.

I’ve spent the last day or so picking through a report¹ from industry group Global Corporate Venturing that charts how quickly the CVC world grew in the past decade through the end of 2019. Ahead: how fast CVC has grown, how much capital they are putting to work and what their targets are for investing returns. Understanding how the corporate VC landscape has changed will help us understand how venture itself has changed and how startups should plan their next raise.

CVC growth

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/29/tracking-corporate-venture-capitals-rise-over-the-past-decade/

Choosing to be a citizen

Citizens aren’t profit-seeking agents who are simply constrained by rules. Citizens behave even if there isn’t a rule about it.

Citizens aren’t craven partisans, voting for party over fact. Citizens do the right thing because they can, even if the short-term cost is high.

Citizens live by the rule of community: If everyone did what I’m about to do, would it lead to a useful outcome?

Sometimes we call citizens heroes, which is a shame, because their actions should be commonplace, not rare. The myth of success based on short-term self-interest has been disproven again and again. It seems obvious that leaving things better than you found them is a powerful step forward, because you’ll probably be back this way again one day soon.

Every successful community, every organization, every family has citizens. It’s the citizens who define the future, because their commitment to the long-term matters.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/617304730/0/sethsblog~Choosing-to-be-a-citizen/

Five reasons you (really) don’t want to miss TechCrunch’s AI and Robotics show on March 3

TechCrunch’s fourth Robotics and AI show is coming up on March 3 at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. If past experience is any guide, the show is sure to draw a big crowd (cheap student rates here!) but there’s still time to grab a pass. If you’re wondering why you want to take a day out to catch a full day of interviews and audience Q&A with the world’s top robotics and AI experts, read on.  

It’s the software / AI,  stupid. So said (in so many words) the legendary surgical robotics founder Dr. Frederic Moll at Disrupt SF last year. And this year’s agenda captures that reality from many angles. UC Berkeley’s Stuart Russell will discuss his provocative book on AI – Human Compatible, and the deeply important topic of AI ‘explainability’ will be front and center with SRI’s Karen Myers, Fiddler Labs’ Krishna Gade and UC Berkeley’s Trevor Darrell. Then there is the business of developing and sustaining robots, whether at startups, which is where Freedom Robotics’ Joshua Wilson comes in, or at large enterprises, with Vicarious’ D. Scott Phoenix. 

Robotics founders have more fun. That’s why we have a panel of the three top founders in agricultural robotics as well as another three on construction robotics and two on human assistive robotics, plus a pitch competition featuring five additional founders, each carefully chosen from a large pool of applicants. We’ll also bring a few of those founders back for a separate audience Q&A. Meet tomorrow’s big names in robotics today!

Big companies do robots too. No one knows that better Amazon’s top roboticist, Tye Brady, who already presides over 100,000 warehouse robots. The editors are eager to hear what’s next in Amazon’s ambitious automation plans. Toyota’s robotics’ focus is mobility,  and Toyota Research Institute’s TRI-AD CEO James Kuffner and TRI VP of Robotics Max Bajracharya will discuss projects they plan to roll out at the Tokyo Olympics.  And if that’s not enough, Maxar Technologies’ Lucy Condakchian will show off Maxar’s robotic arm that will travel to Mars aboard the fifth Mars Rover mission later this year. 

Robotics VCs are chill (once you get to know them). We will have three check writers on stage for the big talk about where they see the best investments emerging –  Eric Migicovsky (Y Combinator), Kelly Chen (DCVC) and Dror Berman (Innovation Endeavors) plus two separate audience Q&A sessions, one with notable robotics / AI VCs, Rob Coneybeer (Shasta) and  Aaron Jacobson (NEA) and a second with corporate VCs Quinn Li (Qualcomm) and
Kass Dawson (Softbank).

Network, recruit, repeat. Last year there were 1500 attendees at this show, and they were the cream of the robotics world – founders, investors, technologists, executives and engineering students. Expect nothing less this year. TechCrunch’s CrunchMatch mobile app makes meeting folks super easy, plus the event is in UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall – a sunny happy place that naturally spins up great conversations. Don’t miss out.

Our Early Bird Ticket sale ends this Friday – book your tickets today and save $150 before prices increase. Students can book a super-discounted ticket for just $50 right here.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/28/five-reasons-you-really-dont-want-to-miss-techcrunchs-ai-and-robotics-show-on-march-3/

Modified HoloLens helps teach kids with vision impairment to navigate the social world

Growing up with blindness or low vision can be difficult for kids, not just because they can’t read the same books or play the same games as their sighted peers; Vision is also a big part of social interaction and conversation. This Microsoft research project uses augmented reality to help kids with vision impairment “see” the people they’re talking with.

The challenge people with vision impairment encounter is, of course, that they can’t see the other people around them. This can prevent them from detecting and using many of the nonverbal cues sighted people use in conversation, especially if those behaviors aren’t learned at an early age.

Project Tokyo is a new effort from Microsoft in which its researchers are looking into how technologies like AI and AR can be useful to all people, including those with disabilities. That’s not always the case, though it must be said that voice-powered virtual assistants are a boon to many who can’t as easily use a touchscreen or mouse and keyboard.

The team, which started as an informal challenge to improve accessibility a few years ago, began by observing people traveling to the Special Olympics, then followed that up with workshops involving the blind and low vision community. Their primary realization was of the subtle context sight gives in nearly all situations.

Loro’s mounted wheelchair assistant puts high tech to work for people with disabilities

“We, as humans, have this very, very nuanced and elaborate sense of social understanding of how to interact with people — getting a sense of who is in the room, what are they doing, what is their relationship to me, how do I understand if they are relevant for me or not,” said Microsoft researcher Ed Cutrell. “And for blind people a lot of the cues that we take for granted just go away.”

In children this can be especially pronounced, as having perhaps never learned the relevant cues and behaviors, they can themselves exhibit antisocial tendencies like resting their head on a table while conversing, or not facing a person when speaking to them.

To be clear, these behaviors aren’t “problematic” in themselves, as they are just the person doing what works best for them, but they can inhibit everyday relations with sighted people, and it’s a worthwhile goal to consider how those relations can be made easier and more natural for everyone.

The experimental solution Project Tokyo has been pursuing involves a modified HoloLens — minus the lens, of course. The device is also a highly sophisticated imaging device that can identify objects and people if provided with the right code.

The user wears the device like a high-tech headband, and a custom software stack provides them with a set of contextual cues:

• When a person is detected, say four feet away on the right, the headset will emit a click that sounds like it is coming from that location.
• If the face of the person is known, a second “bump” sound is made and the person’s name announced (again, audible only to the user).
• If the face is not known or can’t be seen well, a “stretching” sound is played that modulates as the user directs their head towards the other person, ending in a click when the face is centered on the camera (which also means the user is facing them directly).
• For those nearby, an LED strip shows a white light in the direction of a person who has been detected, and a green light if they have been identified.

Other tools are being evaluated, but this set is a start, and based on a case study with a game 12-year-old named Theo, they could be extremely helpful.

This tactile display lets visually impaired users feel on-screen 3D shapes

Microsoft’s post describing the system and the team’s work with Theo and others is worth reading for the details, but essentially Theo began to learn the ins and outs of the system and in turn began to manage social situations using cues mainly used by sighted people. For instance, he learned that he can deliberately direct his attention at someone by turning his head towards them, and developed his own method of scanning the room to keep tabs on those nearby — neither one possible when one’s head is on the table.

That kind of empowerment is a good start, but this is definitely a work in progress. The bulky, expensive hardware isn’t exactly something you’d want to wear all day, and naturally different users will have different needs. What about expressions and gestures? What about signs and menus? Ultimately the future of Project Tokyo will be determined, as before, by the needs of the communities who are seldom consulted when it comes to building AI systems and other modern conveniences.

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/28/modified-hololens-helps-teach-kids-with-vision-impairment-to-navigate-the-social-world/

In search of reciprocity

If your posture is to give hoping that you’ll earn the moral high ground and thus get something back, you didn’t give first.

You gave second.

You’re saying, “how can I incur a debt, one that I’m going to use to achieve my goals.”

If the words ‘I’ and ‘my’ appear in your reasoning before you get to the work you’re hoping to contribute, then your goal is reciprocity. Calling it generosity merely confuses the issue.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/617262256/0/sethsblog~In-search-of-reciprocity/

InterviewBit secures $20M to grow its advanced online computer science program in India

InterviewBit, a Bangalore-based startup that runs an advanced online computer science program for college graduates and young professional engineers, has raised $20 million in one of the largest Series A financing rounds in the education sector.

The nine-month-old startup’s Series A round was led by Sequoia India, Tiger Global and Global Founders Capital among others, it said. The startup said it is also rebranding its online coding program, earlier called InterviewBit Academy, to Scaler Academy.

InterviewBit operates on an income-sharing model, where students have the option to pay much of the coaching fee after they have landed a job. The concept, also known as human capital contract, has been around for decades but is beginning to see some traction now.

The startup said more than 2,000 students have enrolled in its six-month program to date. It had received over 200,000 applications. And “several hundred” of those who enrolled in the program have landed jobs at tech companies such Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.

Students enrolled in Scaler Academy are mentored and taught by tech leaders and subject matter experts working with organisations including Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Netflix.

The startup, which is part of Sequoia India’s Surge accelerator program, will use the new fund to scale up its enrollment and launch in new markets. It also plans to invest in its curriculum and in live teaching product.

Indian newspaper Times of India first reported about the financing round last year, and said the round would value InterviewBit at over $100 million.

“Within a short period of time, Scaler Academy has made a huge impact on the capabilities of our students, who spend, on average 4-5 hours/day on our online and live learning platform,” said Abhimanyu Saxena, co-founder of InterviewBit.

“We are very excited that our work results in a step function change in the careers of our students — and so we have rebranded it to Scaler Academy, a platform for pursuing excellence in software programming,” he added.

A recent National Employability Report Engineers 2019 report highlighted that the employability of Indian engineers continues to be as low as 20%. “With that in mind, Scaler Academy’s meticulously structured 6-month online program effectively enhances the coding skills of professionals by creating a modern curriculum with exposure to the latest technologies,” the startup said.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/27/interviewbit-secures-20m-to-grow-its-advanced-online-computer-science-program-in-india/