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Saturday 25 May 2019

Playdate: la videoconsola a manubrio

Playdate: la videoconsola que funciona a manubrio

Esta curiosa videoconsola se llama Playdate; es un invento de la gente de Panic, más conocidos por ser unos veteranos en el desarrollo de excelente software para Mac y más recientemente algunos juegos para Nintendo Switch como Firewatch y Goose Game. Este nuevo proyecto hardware es un pequeño dispositivo para juegos que se venderá en 2020 y cuya más llamativa característica es que uno de los mandos es un manubrio. Literalmente.

De momento lo único que hay son unos renderings estupendos, un amarillo plátano muy llamativo y característico y algo sobre la fórmula: una videoconsola en la que entran a través del wifi 12 nuevos juegos, uno por semana, organizados por «temporadas»: varios tres meses de diversión al año.

Playdate: la videoconsola que funciona a manubrio

Los títulos todavía son «alto secreto»: nuevos, clásicos, experimentales, divertidos… Yo pensaba que el manubrio sería para recargar las baterías –y tal vez lo sea– pero según parece también es uno de los controles, por ejemplo para uno de los títulos: Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure («Aventura de Viajes en el Tiempo a Manubrio»). Suena entretenido.

La pantalla, como toda la videoconsola, es muy retro: en blanco y negro (400 × 240 y 2,7 pulgadas) y con aspecto de las antiguas Game & Watch. Desde luego original es, y para los coleccionistas de videojuegos será de compra obligada, aunque no parece que vaya dirigida al mercado masivo ni a competir con Sony o Nintendo. También se conoce el precio: 149 dólares.

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Digital Forensics Expert Weighs In On Doctored Video Of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

NPR's Audie Cornish speaks with digital forensics expert Hany Farid about a doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which is being spread by conservative allies of President Trump.



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Trump Orders An Additional 1,500 Troops To The Middle East

President Trump tells reporters in Washington on Friday that the United States intends to send about 1,500 additional troops to the Middle East.

The Pentagon would not say where the troops would be sent, other than that they would not be heading to Iraq and Syria. Some of the forces have already arrived in the region.

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)



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Aladdin review: Guy Ritchie's live action Disney remake dazzles, surprises - CNET

This update isn't quite a whole new world, but it's still one worth visiting despite its forgettable villain and unsettling Genie CGI.

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Europe's GDPR has accomplished a lot in its infancy - CNET

The groundbreaking privacy law is 1 year old.

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Best phone for gaming in 2019: Razer 2 vs. Asus ROG, Xiaomi Black Shark, Nubia Red Magic Mars - CNET

We tested four phones specifically designed for gaming to see which one is truly the best.

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Disney's Jafar would spend 164 years behind bars today - CNET

Treason, attempted murder and theft would've earned the Aladdin villain 164.5 years in prison if he'd committed his crimes in the US now.

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A big asteroid with its own moon is passing by. Here's how to spot it - CNET

The largest asteroid to come near our cosmic neighborhood this year comes closest Saturday, and it has a traveling companion.

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Tesla is limiting Supercharging to 80% of battery capacity in some locales, report says - Roadshow

If you make a habit of camping out at busy Superchargers until you hit 100% charge, you're a jerk and you're in for a change.

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OnePlus 7 Pro camera upgrades reportedly coming - CNET

HDR and lowlight photography on the OnePlus 7 Pro will get a boost, a report says.

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IndyCar to mandate Aeroscreen cockpit protection for 2020 season - Roadshow

IndyCar has finally approved a new cockpit protection system that it feels won't negatively impact the look of the racecars.

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Millions of financial records exposed on First American website, report says - CNET

The title insurance company didn't require a password to view the pages, according to security expert Brian Krebs.

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Yet another reason why the 2020 iPhone may be worth the wait - CNET

Apple’s most recent patent filing reveals plans to beef up Touch ID and bring it back to the iPhone in 2020, plus the most important updated to Apple’s new MacBooks.

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The Huawei P30 Pro is banned, so here are four great alternative phones - CNET

The US ban on Huawei casts a dark shadow over one of the best phones this year. But here are some worthy alternatives for photos and video.

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Thoughtful Father’s Day gifts in 2019 - CNET

Perfect presents to give Dad this Father’s Day.

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Comcast will launch Hitz, an on-demand movie service - CNET

The commercial-free service will replace Cinemax in some packages when it rolls out in July.

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Chinese chip giant SMIC to delist from NYSE following Huawei ban - CNET

China's biggest chipmaker cites low trade volumes as its reason for taking itself off the US exchange.

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Best Father's Day gifts under $250 - CNET

From a new Blu-ray player to audio sunglasses these are the best tech gifts from the $100 to $250 range for Father's Day 2019.

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Uber's first employee, Ryan Graves, steps down from board of directors - CNET

Just two weeks after the ride-hailing company went public, its board is getting a shakeup.

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The 10 best vacuums to use for kitchen cleanup - CNET

Crumbs and spills, begone!

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Amazon files patent to record before you say 'Alexa' - CNET

Amazon is looking to capture and process "portions of a spoken utterance command that may occur before a wake word."

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Snapchat might follow Instagram by letting you add music - CNET

The company is reportedly working with major record labels for rights to their catalogs.

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10 great Father's Day gifts under $100 - CNET

Dad will love all of these gifts -- and none of them cost more than $99.

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Apple's 2020 iPhones could have full-screen Touch ID - CNET

Apple's smartphones could also come with OLED screens from LG by next year, a report says.

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Facebook's FTC settlement delayed by political infighting, report says - CNET

And you thought Congress was bad. Apparently Democrats and Republicans on the FTC can't agree on a potentially $5 billion deal over Facebook's privacy breaches.

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T-Mobile and Sprint merger could reportedly still get the DOJ's blessing - CNET

After indications that the DOJ would oppose the deal, a new report suggests that T-Mobile's proposed merger with Sprint may still go through.

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Fortnite season 9, week 3 challenges and where to find Downtown Drop letters - CNET

It's a week of extreme challenges.

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Twitter ousts anti-Trump Krassenstein brothers for 'fake accounts' - CNET

The brothers don't think the social media site is justified in banning them.

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Taika Waititi’s live-action Akira movie gets May 2021 release date

Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi’s next big-budget project, a live-action version of the beloved manga series Akira, finally has a release date, The Wrap reports: May 21st, 2021.

Waititi’s project, which is being distributed by Warner Bros., was first announced in 2017. The announcement came just before Waititi’s first major blockbuster film, Thor: Ragnarok, was released. Although Waititi built up a cult-like fan base around himself thanks to movies like What We Do in the Shadows and Eagle vs Shark, the Akira announcement made longtime fans of the manga series — and the critically acclaimed 1988 anime adaptation — nervous. Waititi told Dazed magazine in April 2018 that he was more than aware of the concern.

“What I wanted to do was...

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CrossFit storms off Facebook and Instagram, citing long list of grievances

CrossFit, the branded workout regimen, deleted its Facebook and Instagram pages earlier this week and explained the reasoning through an impassioned press release. The announcement lists various reasons for the indefinite suspension of its accounts, including accusations that Facebook’s News Feeds are “censored and crafted to reflect the political leanings of Facebook’s utopian socialists.”

The issue stemmed from the deletion of a South Africa-based Facebook group, Banting 7 Day Meal Plans, which the company says happened without warning or explanation. The group, which is unrelated to CrossFit but has 1.6 million members espousing the benefits of a low-carb, high-fat diet like CrossFit’s recommended nutritional regimen, has since been...

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Hulu has ordered a horror anthology series based on North American Lake Monsters

Hulu has ordered a new horror anthology series based on Nathan Ballingrud’s short-story collection North American Lake Monsters, according to Deadline. It’ll be produced by Babak Anvari and Lucan Toh, the creative team behind the horror film Wounds, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January. They’re already familiar with Ballingrud’s work: Wounds is based on another Ballingrud story, The Visible Filth. Anvari wrote and directed the movie, and Toh was one of the producers. The film stars Dakota Johnson, Armie Hammer, and Zazie Beetz.

The North American Lake Monsters series is planned as an eight-episode season, produced by Mary Laws, who produced AMC’s Preacher and co-wrote Nicolas Winding Refn’s film The Neon Demon. Hulu...

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Elon Musk’s Boring Company staged a race between a Tesla in a tunnel and one on the road

The Boring Company, Elon Musk’s tunneling venture, staged a race recently between two Tesla vehicles: one on the road in normal traffic, and the other in the 1.14-mile tunnel that runs underneath SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif. Suffice to say, it wasn’t much of a contest.

The tunnel Tesla was the clear victor, emerging out onto the road a full 3 minutes and 8 seconds before the one took surface streets. In fact, the car in the tunnel reached the finish line before the car in traffic even got passed the first red light.

Most notably, the Tesla in the tunnel hit a maximum speed of 127 mph. That’s significantly faster than what the...

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Texting while crossing road may be banned, and other news

BBC Click's Paul Carter looks at some the week's best technology stories.

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Huawei’s European Customers Are Put on Hold by U.S. Ban

They’re unsure how Android phones will keep working as Google and other companies assess a Trump administration order.

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Hackers are scanning for MySQL servers to deploy GandCrab ransomware

Serendipitous discovery unearths new threat for MySQL server owners.

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iOS 12.3.1 for iPhone and iPad is out

The first raft of bug fixes lands for iOS 12.3.

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Australian tech unicorn Canva suffers security breach

Hacker claims to have stolen the data of 139 million Canva users.

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The security snapshot: We’re in the endgame now

Forrester addresses several ways CISOs can keep their organizations secure.

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Want one of the best paid entry-level jobs? Learn this 20-year-old programming language

New figures show 'Java developer' as the eighth highest-paid, entry-level role in America.

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Cyber security 101: Protect your privacy from hackers, spies, and the government

Simple steps can make the difference between losing your online accounts or maintaining what is now a precious commodity: Your privacy.

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Moveworks bets IT overload is a natural language processing problem

Help-desk tickets are regularly stranded for 72 hours while admins try to figure out what people are actually asking. Startup Moveworks is adapting natural language understanding to decipher and automate those mysterious requests.

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Telecom Italia's TIM kicks off 5G tests in Brazil

The company has started the first trials of the technology in Florianópolis in partnership with Huawei.

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Apple already the No. 3 smartglasses player without a product, says survey

Digi-Capital and Augmented World Expo dish out a bevy of takeaways in a research report on augmented reality and smartglasses, but they didn't quite expect Apple to be cited as a player even though it doesn't have a product.

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11 things my Android phone does way better than your iPhone

For the past year, I've been carrying a succession of Android devices and iPhones, learning the ins and outs of each one. But a collection of small, usability-enhancing features keeps me coming back to Android as my everyday choice. Here's my list.

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Reviewing Forrester’s 2019 new tech predictions: How’d we do so far?

We laid out some predictions for this year and now let us see how we matched up to some emerging technologies.

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Survey: Security is top worry as IT container use accelerates

The rush to containers and cloud IT is creating new security risks for companies, as they chase business agility through rapid app development

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Quitting the five tech giants: Could you really flee Facebook?

Facebook. These days, all you ever see is bad news. But even though Facebook is almost as much societal disease as social network, could you let go? Today, we find out.

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Quitting the five tech giants: Could you abandon Amazon?

Imagine your life without Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, or Microsoft. David Gewirtz begins his five-day look at quitting the Big Five tech giants with Amazon. Sure, he can quit. He can quit anytime he wants...

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10 best cheap phones: For summer travel, leave your $1,000 iPhone or Galaxy at home

As you head out for summer fun, an affordable second phone lets you play without worry. Some of these handsets have rugged features, others are more pocketable for summer clothes, and most are easy to switch to for a short period of time. Many are priced less than $200!

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Lenovo CEO: "I don't think we have a reason to be targeted"

Lenovo delivered a positive set of financial results for the latest quarter and fiscal year, but a geopolitical cloud hangs over the company.

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The best Memorial Day Weekend sales and tech deals of 2019

Updated daily with the latest sales and tech deals happening throughout Memorial Day Weekend 2019.

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Snapchat internal tools abused to spy on users and pillage data

Staff members have allegedly abused their positions to spy on Snapchat users.

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Trump: Huawei block could be solved in China trade deal

The ban on US sales to Huawei could be resolved if China does a trade deal with the US.

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Windows 10 to warn about insecure WiFi networks using WEP or TKIP

Support for WEP and TKIP to be removed in future Windows 10 releases.

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How to manage your child's screen time (and why you should)


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Snap could let users add songs to their disappearing messages


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Best Buy cancels all Galaxy Fold pre-orders


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What we played in May: 'Sekiro' and 'Diablo 3'


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Science has brought back the scent of a long-dead flower


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NASA orders the first piece of its lunar outpost


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How to see another company’s growth tactics and try them yourself

CoinBits launches as a passive investment app for bitcoin

Erik Finman is a twenty-something bitcoin maximalist as famous for his precocity as he is for his $12 bet on the currency a few years ago.

Now, Finman, who built his first company while still in high school, is launching a new startup called CoinBits, which allows users to passively invest in bitcoin.

The idea, according to Finman, is to democratize access to the currency by letting everyday folks invest nominal sums through well-known mechanisms like roundups on transactions made with a credit or debit card or through regular transactions from a customer’s savings or checking account to bitcoin through CoinBits.

Every transaction also helps Finman’s own bitcoin holdings grow, and makes the young entrepreneur a little wealthier himself through his bitcoin holdings.

Users can make one-time investments of $10, $25, $50 or $100 through the web-based platform and can establish a level of risk for their holdings.

Finman’s app collects no commissions on transactions, and 98% of the bitcoin is stored offline — for safety.

“Overall, investing in bitcoin is complicated and can feel almost impossible,” said Finman. “Coinbits allows you to put that spare change in bitcoin. For example, if you spend $1.75 on French fries, that remaining 25 cents is invested automatically.”

Withdrawals are handled by CoinBits, which will give users same-day processing for a 50 cent-fee, and offers an easily downloadable record for accountants to deal with any gains or losses associated with bitcoin.

Given the fractional nature of these investments, and the volatility of bitcoin, it’s hard to know what real value investors can reap from these small transactions, but it’s a less risky way to experiment with building bitcoin holdings than take a huge flyer on the market.



via Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2X0019s

Livekick raises $3M to use live video for one-on-one training

Livekick, a startup that gives customers access to one-on-one personal training and yoga from their home (or hotel room, or elsewhere), is announcing that it has raised $3 million in seed funding.

The company was founded by entrepreneur Yarden Tadmor and fitness expert Shayna Schmidt. Tadmor said that with all his travel for work, his fitness routine “really eroded,” so he contacted Schmidt and asked her to train him remotely — they’d connect via FaceTime, he’d mount his phone at the gym and she’d supervise his workout.

“We trained this way for a while, and then we realized: Hey, this is something that other people can really benefit from,” Tadmor said.

So with Livekick, users can sign up for one, two or three live, 30-minute sessions with a remote trainer, who they’ll connect with via the Livekick iOS app or website. (After a two-week trial, pricing starts at $32 per week.) The workouts will be tailored to the space and equipment that you have access to, and the trainers will also assign other workouts for the rest of the week.

Tadmor and Schmidt contrasted this approach with companies like Peloton and Mirror, which are bringing new exercise equipment and classes into the home, but which don’t offer one-on-one interaction with a trainer. Tadmor said this individualized approach is not just better-tailored to each user’s needs, but also more effective at keeping them motivated. And Schmidt said the live interaction also ensures that people are doing their workouts correctly and safely.

Livekick screenshot

As for the trainers, Schmidt said this gives them a new way to find clients, particularly during their off-hours.

“For trainers, the hours that users are never booked are usually noon to 4pm — they never get a client because people are at work, obviously,” she said. “So we can give trainers in London those hours because for a user in New York, that’s morning. We can really fill their schedules [and] help them make some more income.”

Beyond consumer subscriptions, Livekick also offers a corporate program called Livekick for Work. And just to be clear, the service isn’t just for frequent travelers, as Tadmor noted: “If you live in New York, you have access to a lot of fitness options, but most people don’t. You’ve got to do a lot of commuting to get to a studio with great trainers, and so part of what we’re trying to bring is really let you do that from the comfort of your home.”

And while we recently covered the launch of a similar service called Future, Livekick actually launched in September, and Tadmor said the average retention rate has been over six months.

The round was led by Firstime VC, with participation from Rhodium and Draper Frontier.

“With its leading technology and ethos to make exercise accessible and affordable, we believe Livekick has the capacity to improve the lives and health of millions,” said Firstime’s Nir Tarlovsky in a statement.



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CFIUS Cometh: What this obscure agency does and why it matters to your fund or startup

On January 12, 2016, Grindr announced it had sold a 60% controlling stake in the company to Beijing Kunlun Tech, a Chinese gaming firm, valuing the company at $155 million. Champagne bottles were surely popped at the small-ish firm.

Though not at a unicorn-level valuation, the 9-figure exit was still respectable and signaled a bright future for the gay hookup app. Indeed, two years later, Kunlun bought the rest of the firm at more than double the valuation and was planning a public offering for Grindr.

On March 27, 2019, it all fell apart. Kunlun was putting Grindr up for sale instead.

What went wrong? It wasn’t that Grindr’s business ground to a halt. By all accounts, its business seems to actually be growing. The problem was that Kunlun owning Grindr was viewed as a threat to national security. Consequently, CFIUS, or the Committee for Foreign Investment in the United States, stepped in to block the transaction.

So what changed? CFIUS was expanded by FIRRMA, or the Foreign Risk Review Modernization Act, in late 2018, which gave it massive new power and scale. Unlike before, FIRRMA gave CFIUS a technology focus. So now CFIUS isn’t just an American problem—it’s an American tech problem. And in the coming years, it will transform venture capital, Chinese involvement in US tech, and maybe even startups as we know it.

Here’s a closer look at how it all fits together.

What is CFIUS?

Image via Getty Images / Busà Photography

CFIUS is the most important agency you’ve never heard of, and until recently it wasn’t even more than a committee. In essence, CFIUS has the ability to stop foreign entities, called “covered entities,” from acquiring companies when it could adversely affect national security—a “covered transaction.”

Once a filing is made, CFIUS investigates the transaction and both parties, which can take over a month in its first pass. From there, the company and CFIUS enter a negotiation to see if they can resolve any issues.



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Luckin leaves bitter aftertaste, now trading below IPO price

In the first few days following Luckin Coffee’s initial public offering, the stock chart for LK looked like a roller coaster. Now it’s looking more like a free fall.

The Chinese Coffee chain successfully completed its highly anticipated offering roughly a week ago, raising more than $550 million after pricing at $17 per share, the high end of its $15-$17 per share range.

Luckin was met with a warm reception from the markets, with the stock skyrocketing roughly 20% to a greater than $5 billion market cap in its first day of trading. However, concerns over the company’s lofty valuation, major cash burn and uncertain path to profitability have caused the stock to nosedive since.

Luckin has dropped around 25% since closing its debut trading day at $20.38 per share, and 40% from its intraday peak of $25.96. As of Friday’s open, Luckin stock sat at $15.44, now well below its IPO price.

Leading into the IPO, Luckin had already been the topic of much debate. Luckin had filed for its public offering just a year and a half after its founding. And prior to its filing, Luckin had raised more than $500 million in venture capital through four fundraising rounds that all occurred just within roughly one year’s time, per PitchBook and Crunchbase data.

As Luckin’s valuation continued to level up, many questioned the sustainability of its business model and heavily discounted pricing strategy, with Luckin’s limited operating history already pointing to substantial losses and heavy cash outflows.

The concerns have followed Luckin into the public markets, and it’s unclear whether the stock’s early struggles are just growing pains or a broader indication that public investors have limits to the levels of nascency and unprofitability they are willing to accept and bet capital on.

As one of the few publicly traded early-stage growth companies, and likely the only one in the “coffee” vertical, Luckin lacks similar companies for investors to compare the stock to and also seems to lack a natural investor base — with the story a bit too foreign for typical tech sector investors and a bit too hectic for your typical food and beverage investor.

What is clear is that much is still misunderstood regarding the company’s unique history, its growth strategy, local market dynamics or otherwise. We’ll continue to keep an eye on Luckin stock to see whether the picture gets a bit brighter once investors get more comfortable with the story and as management proves its ability to execute.

For now, check out articles on Extra Crunch written by TechCrunch’s Danny Crichton and Rita Liao for deep dive primers into Luckin and all its moving parts.



via Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2JBMcLq

Why Luckin’s ultimate target may not be Starbucks

Starbucks plans to double its store count in China to 5,000 in 2021 and Luckin, a one-year-old coffee startup, is matching up by aiming to reach 4,500 by the end of this year. Luckin’s upsized $651 million flotation has brought American investors’ attention to this potential Starbucks rival in China, where the Seattle giant controlled over half of the coffee market as late as 2017. But as soon as you make your first purchase with Luckin, you realize its ultimate goal may not be to topple Starbucks.

To get your caffeine intake from Luckin, the ordering process happens entirely on its app. First, you will decide how you want to fetch the drink: have it delivered within 30 minutes, pick it up at a nearby Luckin kiosk, or sit back and sip at one of its full-on cafes, or what it calls ‘relax stores.’

Say you’re tied up at the desk, you can input your location to check if you’re within Luckin’s delivery radius. Luckin has essentially built a vast coffee delivery network through its partnership with one of China’s biggest courier services SF Express, which dispatch staff to ferry the drinks on scoot fleets.luckin You then place the order, choosing from a range of drinks and customizing it — hot or cold, the amount of sugar and portions of creamer, the type of syrup flavor and the likes. When you get to the end, Luckin will ask you to pay via its app. If you’re a first-time user, you get a ‘first order free’ voucher, a common strategy for many Chinese consumer-facing apps to lure new users.



via Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2QjETsm