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Thursday, 14 March 2019

Automation Hero picks up $14.5 million led by Atomico

Automation Hero, formerly SalesHero, has secured $14.5 million in new funding led by Atomico, with participation by Baidu Ventures and Cherry Ventures. As part of the deal, Atomico principal Ben Blume will join the company’s board of directors.

The automation startup launched in 2017 as SalesHero, giving sales orgs a simple way to automate back-office processes like filing an expense report or updating the CRM. It does this through an AI assistant called Robin — “Batman and Robin, it worked with the superhero theme, and it’s gender neutral,” co-founder and CEO Stefan Groschupf explained — that can be configured to go through the regular workflow and take care of repetitive tasks.

“We brought computers into the workplace because we believed they could make us more productive,” said Groschupf. “But in many companies, people spend a lot of time entering data and doing painful manual processes to make these machines happy.”

The idea was to give salespeople more time to actually do their job, which is selling to clients. If all the administrative and repetitive “paperwork” is done by a computer, human employees can become more productive and efficient at skilled tasks.

By weaving together click robots, Automation Hero users can build out their own workflows through a no-code interface, tying together a wide variety of both structured and unstructured data sources. Those workflows are then presented in the inbox each morning by Robin, the AI assistant, and are executed as soon as the user gives the go-ahead.

After launch, the team realized that other types of organizations, beyond sales departments, were building out automations. Insurance firms, in particular, were using the software to automate some of the repetitive tasks involved with filing and assessing claims.

This led to today’s rebrand to Automation Hero.

Groschupf said that by automating the process of filling out a single closing form, it saved one insurance firm’s 430 sales reps 18.46 years per year.

Automation Hero has now raised a total of $19 million.

“We’re really excited with Atomico to bring on a great VC and good people,” said Groschupf. “I’ve raised capital before and I’ve worked with some of the more questionable VCs, as it turns out. We’re super-excited we’ve found an investor that really bakes important things, like a diversity policy and a family leave policy, right into the company’s investment agreement.”

Though he didn’t confirm, it’s likely that Groschupf is referring to KPCB, which has run into its fair share of controversy over the past few years and was an investor in Groschupf’s previous startup, Datameer.



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Email app Spark adds delegation feature for teams

Email app Spark added collaboration features back in May 2018. And Readdle, the company behind the app, is going one step further with a new feature specifically designed to delegate an email to one of your colleagues.

While you can already collaborate with your team by sharing emails in Spark, the app is still not as powerful as a dedicated shared email client, such as Front. But delegation brings Spark one step closer to its competitor.

You can now treat emails as tasks with a deadline. If you’re a manager, you’re working with a personal assistant or you’re in charge of everyone’s workload, you can now assign a conversation to a person in particular and send a message to add some context.

On the other end, your colleague receives the conversation in their Spark account, in the “Assigned to Me” tab. They can then start working on that email together with other team members.

As a reminder, Spark lets you discuss email threads with your colleagues in a comment area, @-mention your colleague and add attachments and links. When you know what to say, you can create a draft, ask for feedback and collaborate like in Google Docs.

Delegation is a bit more powerful than simply sharing an email with a colleague. For instance, you can set a due date and mute the conversation. This way, you can hand-off some work and focus on something else.

Spark for Teams uses a software-as-a-service approach. It’s free for small teams and you have to pay $6.39 to $7.99 per user per month to unlock advanced features, such as unlimited email templates and unlimited delegations. Free teams are limited to 10 active delegations at any time.



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Competition policy must change to help startups fight ‘winner takes all’ platforms, says UK report

A independent report commissioned by the UK government to examine how competition policy needs to adapt itself for the digital age has concluded that tech giants don’t face adequate competition and the law needs updating to address what it dubs the “novel” challenges of ‘winner takes all’ platforms.

The panel also recommends more policy interventions to actively support startups, including a code of conduct for “the most significant digital platforms”; and measures to foster data portability, open standards and interoperability to help generate competitive momentum for rival innovations.

UK chancellor Philip Hammond announced the competition market review last summer, saying the government was committed to asking “the big questions about how we ensure these new digital markets work for everyone”.

The culmination of the review — a 150-page report, published today, entitled Unlocking digital competition — is the work of the government’s digital competition expert panel which is chaired by former U.S. president Barack Obama’s chief economic advisor, professor Jason Furman.

“The digital sector has created substantial benefits but these have come at the cost of increasing dominance of a few companies which is limiting competition and consumer choice and innovation. Some say this is inevitable or even desirable. I think the UK can do better,” Furman said today in a statement.

In the report the panel writes that it believes competition policy should be “given the tools to tackle new challenges, not radically shifted away from its established basis”.

“In particular, policy should remain based on careful weighing of economic evidence and models,” they suggest, arguing also that “consumer welfare” remains the “appropriate perspective to motivate competition policy” — and rejecting the idea that a completely new approach is needed.

But, crucially, their view of consumer welfare is a broad church, not a narrow price trench — with the report asserting that a consumer welfare basis to competition law is able to also take account of other things, including (but also not limited to) “choice, quality and innovation”. 

Furman said the panel, which was established in September 2018, has outlined “a balanced proposal to give people more control over their data, give small businesses more of a chance to enter and thrive, and create more predictability for the large digital companies”.

“These recommendations will deliver an economic boost driven by UK tech start-ups and innovation that will give consumers greater choice and protection,” he argues.

Commenting on the report’s publication, Hammond said: “Competition is fundamental to ensuring the market works in the interest of consumers, but we know some tech giants are still accumulating too much power, preventing smaller businesses from entering the market,” adding that: “The work of Jason Furman and the expert panel is invaluable in ensuring we’re at the forefront of delivering a competitive digital marketplace.”

The chancellor said that the government will “carefully examine” the proposals and respond later this year — with a plan for implementing changes he said are necessary “to ensure our digital markets are competitive and consumers get the level of choice they deserve”.

Pro-startup regulation required

The panel rejects the view — mostly loudly propounded by tech giants and their lobbying vehicles — that competition is thriving online, ergo no competition policy changes are needed.

It also rejects the argument that digital platforms are “natural monopolies” and competition is impossible — dismissing the idea of imposing utility-like regulation, such as in the energy sector.

Instead, the panel writes that it sees “greater competition among digital platforms as not only necessary but also possible — provided the right policies are in place”. The biggest “missing set of policies” are ones that would “actively help foster competition”, it argues in the report’s introduction.

“Instead of just relying on traditional competition tools, the UK should take a forward-looking approach that creates and enforces a clear set of rules to limit anti-competitive actions by the most significant digital platforms while also reducing structural barriers that currently hinder effective competition,” the panel goes on to say, calling for new rules to tackle ‘winner take all’ tech platforms that are based on “generally agreed principles and developed into more specific codes of conduct with the participation of a wide range of stakeholders”. 

Coupled with active policy efforts to support startups and scale-ups — by making it easier for consumers to move their data across digital services; pushing for systems to be built around open standards; and for data held by tech giants to be made available for competitors — the suggested reforms would support a system that’s “more flexible, predictable and timely” than the current regime, they assert.

Among the panel’s specific recommendations are a call to set up a new competition unit with expertise in technology, economics and behavioural science, plus the legal powers to back it up.

The panel envisages this unit focusing on giving users more control over their data — to foster platform switching — as well as developing a code of competitive conduct that would apply to the largest platforms. “This would be applied only to particularly powerful companies, those deemed to have ‘strategic market status’, in order to avoid creating new burdens or barriers for smaller firms,” they write.

Another recommendation is to beef up regulators’ existing powers for tackling illegal anti-competitive practices — to make it quicker and simpler to prosecute breaches, with the report highlighting bullying tactics by market leaders as a current problem.

“There is nothing inherently wrong about being a large company or a monopoly and, in fact, in many cases this may reflect efficiencies and benefits for consumers or businesses. But dominant companies have a particular responsibility not to abuse their position by unfairly protecting, extending or exploiting it,” they write. “Existing antitrust enforcement, however, can often be slow, cumbersome, and unpredictable. This can be especially problematic in the fast-moving digital sector.

“That is why we are recommending changes that would enable more use of interim measures to prevent damage to competition while a case is ongoing, and adjusting appeal standards to balance protecting parties’ interests with the need for the competition authority to have usable tools and an appropriate margin of judgement. The goal is to place less reliance on large fines and drawn-out procedures, instead enabling faster action that more directly targets and remedies the problematic behavior.”

The expert panel also says changes to merger rules are required to enable the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to intervene to stop digital mergers that are likely to damage future competition, innovation and consumer choice — saying current decisions are too focused on short-term impacts.

“Over the last 10 years the 5 largest firms have made over 400 acquisitions globally. None has been blocked and very few have had conditions attached to approval, in the UK or elsewhere, or even been scrutinised by competition authorities,” they note.

More priority should be given to reviewing the potential implications of digital mergers, in their view.

Decisions on whether to approve mergers, by the CMA and other authorities, have often focused on short-term impacts. In dynamic digital markets, long-run effects are key to whether a merger will harm competition and consumers. Could the company that is being bought grow into a competitor to the platform? Is the source of its value an innovation that, under alternative ownership, could make the market less concentrated? Is it being bought for access to consumer data that will make the platform harder to challenge? In principle, all of these questions can inform merger decisions within the current, mainstream framework for competition, centred on consumer welfare. There is no need to shift away from this, or implement a blanket presumption against digital mergers, many of which may benefit consumers. Instead, these issues need to be considered more consistently and effectively in practice.

In part the CMA can achieve this through giving a higher priority to merger decisions in digital markets. These cases can be complex, but they affect markets that are critically important to consumers, providing services that shape the digital economy.

In another recommendation which targets the Google-Facebook adtech duopoly, the report also calls for the CMA to launch a formal market study into the digital advertising market — which it notes suffers from a lack of transparency.

The panel also notes similar concerns raised by other recent reviews.

Digital advertising is increasingly driven by the use of consumers’ personal data for targeting. This in turn drives the competitive advantage for platforms able to learn more about more users’ identity, location and preferences. The market operates through a complex chain of advertising technology layers, where subsidiaries of the major platforms compete on opaque terms with third party businesses. This report joins the Cairncross Review and Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee in calling for the CMA to use its investigatory capabilities and powers to examine whether actors in these markets are operating appropriately to deliver effective competition and consumer benefit.

The report also calls for new powers to force the largest tech companies to open up to smaller firms by providing access to key data sets, albeit without infringing on individual privacy — citing Open Banking as a “notable” data mobility model that’s up and running.

“Open Banking provides an instructive example of how policy intervention can overcome technical and co-ordination challenges and misaligned incentives by creating an adequately funded body with the teeth to drive development and implementation by the nine largest financial institutions,” it suggests.

The panel urges the UK to engage internationally on the issue of digital regulation, writing that: “Many countries are considering policy changes in this area. The United Kingdom has the opportunity to lead by example, by helping to stimulate a global discussion that is based on the shared premise that competition is beneficial, competition is possible, but that we need to update our policies to protect and expand this competition for the sake of consumers and vibrant, dynamic economies.”

And in just one current example of the considerable chatter now going on around tech + competition, a House of Lords committee this week also recommended public interest tests for proposed tech mergers, and suggested an overarching digital regulator is needed to help plug legislative gaps and work through regulatory overlap.

Discussing the pros and cons of concentration in digital markets, the expert competition panel notes the efficiency and convenience that this dynamic can offer consumers and businesses, as well as potential gains via product innovation.

However the panel also points to what it says can be “substantial downsides” from digital market concentration, including erosion of consumer privacy; barriers to entry and scale for startups; and blocks to wider innovation, which it asserts can “outweigh any static benefits” — writing:

It can raise effective prices for consumers, reduce choice, or impact quality. Even when consumers do not have to pay anything for the service, it might have been that with more competition consumers would have given up less in terms of privacy or might even have been paid for their data. It can be harder for new companies to enter or scale up. Most concerning, it could impede innovation as larger companies have less to fear from new entrants and new entrants have a harder time bringing their products to market — creating a trade-off where the potential dynamic costs of concentration outweigh any static benefits.

The panel takes a clear view that “competition for the market cannot be counted on, by itself, to solve the problems associated with market tipping and ‘winner-takes-most’” — arguing that past regulatory interventions have helped shift market conditions, i.e. by facilitating the technology changes that created new markets and companies which led to dominant tech giants of old being unseated.

So, in other words, the panel believes government action can unlock market disruption — hence the report’s title — and that it’s too simplistic a narrative to claim technological change alone will reset markets.

For example, IBM’s dominance of hardware in the 1960s and early 1970s was rendered less important by the emergence of the PC and software. Microsoft’s dominance of operating systems and browsers gave way to a shift to the internet and an expansion of choice. But these changes were facilitated, in part, by government policy — in particular antitrust cases against these companies, without which the changes may never have happened.

The panel also argues there’s an acceleration of market dominance in the modern digital economy that makes it even more necessary for governments to respond, writing that “network effects and returns to scale of data appear to be even more entrenched and the market seems to have stabilised quickly compared to the much larger degree of churn in the early days of the World Wide Web”.

They also point to the risk of AI and machine learning technology leading to further market concentration, warning that “the companies most able to take advantage of [the next technological revolution] may well be the existing large companies because of the importance of data for the successful use of these tools”.

And while they suggest AI startups might offer a route to a competitive reset, via a substantial technology shift, there’s still currently no relief to be had from entrepreneurial efforts because of “the degree that entrants are acquired by the largest companies – with little or no scrutiny”.

Discussing other difficulties related to regulating big tech, the panel warns of the risk of regulators being “captured by the companies they are regulating”; as well as point out they are generally at a disadvantage vs the high tech innovators they are seeking to rule.

In a concluding chapter considering the possible impacts of their policy recommendations, the panel argues that successful execution of their approach could help foster startup innovation across a range of sectors and services.

“Across digital markets, implementing the recommendations will enable more new companies to turn innovative ideas into great new services and profitable businesses,” they suggest. “Some will continue to be acquired by large platforms, where that is the best route to bring new technology to a large group of users. Others will grow and operate alongside the large platforms. Digital services will be more diverse, more dynamic, with more specialisation and choice available for consumers wanting it. This could drive a flourishing of investment in these UK businesses.”

Citing some “potential examples” of services that could evolve in this more supportively competitive environment they suggest social content aggregators might arise that “bring together the best material from people’s friends across different platforms and sites”; “privacy services could give consumers a single simple place to manage the information they share across different platforms”; and also envisage independent ad tech businesses and changed market dynamics that can “rebalance the share of advertising revenue back towards publishers”.

The main envisaged benefits for consumers boil down to greater service and feature choice; enhanced privacy and transparency; and genuine control over the services they use and how they want to use them.

While for startups and scale-ups the panel sees open standards and access to data — and indeed effective enforcement, by the new digital markets unit — creating “a wide range of opportunities to develop and serve new markets adjacent to or interconnected with existing digital platforms”.

The combined impact should be to strengthen and deepen the competitive digital ecosystem, they believe.

Another envisaged benefit for startups is “trust in the framework and recognition that promising, innovative digital businesses will be protected from foreclosure or exclusion” — which they argue “should catalyse investment in UK digital businesses, driving the sector’s growth”.

“The changes to competition law… mean that where a business can grow into a successful competitor, that route to further growth is protected and companies will not in the future see being subsumed into a dominant platform as the only realistic business model,” they add.



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Acko, a digital insurance provider in India, raises another $65M at a $300M valuation

Acko — a startup out of India that has taken on the country’s antiquated insurance industry with a digital-first product for drivers and others in transportation-related scenarios (for example, cancelled ticket insurance) — has raised more funding as it passes 20 million customers on its books. The company has closed a Series C of $65 million from a list of investors that includes not just the co-founder and former CEO of Flipkart, but also its arch-rival, Amazon — speaking to the opportunity in the market as a number of players zero in on services.

Binny Bansal, who until November had been the CEO of the e-commerce giant Flipkart, and Amazon are joined in the round by another strategic investor, Intact Ventures Inc., the corporate venture arm of Canada’s largest property and casualty insurer, along with RPS Ventures (the VC led by Kabir Misra, ex-managing partner at SoftBank), Accel, SAIF and TechPro Ventures. Amazon also led the company’s previous round of funding, a $12 million investment, last year.

Acko now has raised $107 million, and while it is not discussing valuation, a reliable source close to the company said it is in the region of $300 million.

Varun Dua, the CEO and founder, spent 10 years in the insurance industry before founding Acko, most recently building a site (called Coverfox) aggregating different insurers’ quotes. But when it comes to the companies building the products themselves, he believes there has been very little innovation in the past 30 years.

Acko has built its business on two fronts up to now. A direct to consumer offering sells automotive insurance for people insuring for themselves, a business that has now insured some 200,000 cars. It also works with third parties to provide what was described to me as “microinsurance” products around other companies’ services. For example, ticket cancellation insurance, rider protection and driver protection for about 15 companies at the moment, including Ola, redBus, Zomato, UrbanClap and Amazon.

Amazon may appear a little out of left field in the list, but Dua said that it’s because of trends specific to the Indian market that the two work together. First, it offers vehicle insurance alongside cars that are sold on the Amazon platform. But beyond that there is the opportunity to build services for what he calls “ecosystem” players in the market, those who provide a wide array of different services, and links to services, to consumers, leveraging their data on consumers to help shape those offers.

“We continue to be impressed by Acko’s focus on data-led innovations in the insurance sector that are solving for important customer needs in this sector. We are always excited to work with companies like Acko that are led by missionary founders and management teams and we remain committed to investing in technology-backed innovations that address real customer problems,” said Amit Agarwal, SVP and Country Head, Amazon India, in a statement on the investment.

While Bansal is recently no longer in an executive role at Flipkart, it’s notable that he is getting involved with Acko at a time when Dua says he would like to be working more with the company, which is also developing an array of services beyond the basic selling of goods to service India’s rapidly growing base on online consumers.

“Technology-led insurance is expected to play a significant role in growth of the underpenetrated insurance sector in India,” said Bansal. “Acko is the pioneer of digital-native insurance and I am delighted to partner in its exciting growth journey.”

Just as Acko partners with companies to provide its insurance, it’s also working with an increasing array of insurers who are looking for better ways to tap consumers in the market.

“We are thrilled to support Acko in its mission to become the leading digital insurer in India. In addition to their innovative direct-to-consumer strategy, Varun and his team have taken a creative approach by developing impactful distribution partnerships that allow millions of customers to protect assets that are meaningful to them,” said Karim Hirji, senior vice president of Intact Ventures. “We are excited to offer our expertise and partner with a company that shares our vision of creating simple and transparent new-age customer centric insurance products.”

Earlier today, I posted a story about Drivezy and how it was raising a lot of money to double down on building its car-sharing network out of India. One of the gaps in the market for it is that only 7 percent of Indians actually own vehicles. Interestingly, that’s a number that Dua thinks is a great start.

“Seven percent is still very large in India given the size of the population,” he said. “It’s the fourth largest auto market in the world, and the auto insurance space is likely to be worth $10 billion usd in the next several years. That’s big size for a company like us.”



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Drivezy, India’s vehicle-sharing startup, is raising $100M+ at a $400M valuation, eyes US expansion

Drivezy — the startup out of India that wants to turn private car usage on its head through a car-sharing network where people lend their cars and two-wheeled vehicles but also have options to use vehicles from a fleet managed by Drivezy — said it is raising more money as it gears up for the next stage of its expansion, including a launch in the U.S. in coming weeks.

The company is in the process of raising $100 million in equity funding, plus another $400 million in asset financing, with the latter to help continue building out the inventory that sits alongside the vehicles provided by its users. This would technically be a Series C and is being raised at a $400 million valuation, the company confirmed to me.

“Currently” is the key word: Ankur Sengupta, who heads up business development for Drivezy, said in an interview that the startup will leave the round open for about a year and continue raising it on a rolling basis, with the valuation varying accordingly. “The valuation we are working at now is $400 million, but we will keep accepting investments, at different valuations,” he said.

(Note: This is not an entirely new way of raising rounds, but in the last few years, it has become a lot more common to see it rather than clear “Series” blocks. Fast-growing companies like Snap and more recently Grab in Southeast Asia have chosen this route to tap into readily available funding faster and closer to when it’s actually needed.)

The company is not disclosing any names right now, except to note that it is likely to include a new, large investor from Japan, and that it also has commitments from investors in the U.S., Singapore and China. Previous backers have included the Yamaha Motor Company, Axan Partners and IT-Farm, as well as Y Combinator — where Drivezy was a part of a 2016 cohort as JustRide, led by its five founders Amit Sahu, Ashwarya Pratap Singh, Vasant Verma, Abhishek Mahajan and Hemant Sah. It has also been through Google’s Launchpad accelerator, although it doesn’t look like Google is investing (yet).

Drivezy last raised money as recently as three months ago, a $20 million Series B led by Das Capital, when it also raised $100 million in asset financing. Alongside users’ own cars and the fleet it manages, Drivezy also works in partnership with dealerships and others to provide vehicles for its inventory.

Between then and now, the company has seen a lot of growth.

The company gets more than 53,000 bookings for cars each month, versus 37,000/month just three months ago. Two-wheeled vehicles — primarily motorcycles — add nearly 30,000 more. While cars are typically booked for two to three days, two-wheeler bookings are weekly or monthly bookings.

The inventory has also gone up. Currently, there are 7,500 two-wheelers on the platform, with another 7,500 coming by the end this month; and 3,500 cars. (This is up from 5,000 motorbikes and scooters and 3,000 cars three months ago.) Currently there are 30 dealerships and more than 25 banks and other financial companies in Drivezy’s network.

Drivezy’s growth is coming at what seems to be a key inflection point for the transportation industry.

Some believe the days of vehicle ownership in mature markets like the U.S. are numbered, with several developments helping that trend along: the rise of over-expensive self-driving cars that many will not be able to afford; the proliferation of affordable Uber-style services; and the emergence of startups like Getaround (which will be a direct competitor to Drivezy when it comes to the U..S) and Fair to make it easy and cheap to procure a car ride without buying a car or using old-school car-rental services.

But in developing markets like India, vehicle ownership is already a relative rarity, even if the desire to use a car is not: currently only 7 percent of Indians own a car and 16 percent own two-wheelers.

“That’s meant that the auto industry has been slow to grow here,” Sengupta said. (That, plus patchy public transport in many urban areas, has also meant a lot of growth, incidentally, for the likes of Ola.)

Drivezy’s response has been to create a completely new supply chain for private car and two-wheeled vehicle usage. Customers include people who are not able to purchase a car, those who do have cars but would appreciate some income to help pay off the loans they took to get them, plus car companies and dealerships looking for new avenues and business models to shift more vehicles.

Currently, the P2P side of the business is most popular on the car side of the business, where 70 percent of the inventory has been listed by private owners, while only 35 percent of the two-wheelers come from private owners (all the P2P vehicles get a “fitness check.” Most of the rest are listed by asset financing companies through SPVs on a revenue sharing basis, with less than 2 percent on Drivezy’s own books. These, Sengupta said, have been purchased to meet licensing obligations in India.

While Drivezy has definitely benefited from useful market conditions — low vehicle ownership and a rapidly growing tech-savvy middle class with disposable income and more reasons for travelling — now the plan will be to take its model to other markets, including both those that have similar conditions to India’s, as well as those that are more developed (and hence, more competitive).

That will include the U.S., where the company is planning to set up its first pilots in April to test demand in different markets and market segments, Sengupta said. While it’s a very different market — and certainly more competitive when you consider the likes of Getaround, Turo, Fair and others — Drivezy (its founders having spent time there going through Y Combinator and Google’s accelerator) thinks there is a gap in the area of microlending and the fact that even with a lot of options already, there can be more.

“People have aspirational needs, they want better cars, BMWs and Audis for example, and there are no companies tackling the issue of bringing the cost of renting these models down,” Sengupta said. Considering that there is also a burgeoning market for scooters in the country, that could also be an area where Drivezy will get involved.

The pilot/expansion in the U.S. will come alongside building and hiring for an innovations lab in the country, a pattern that Drivezy will also be following when it expands in Asia, as well. Other countries where it plans to go this year, he said, include Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.

It’s not often that you hear about startups out of India expanding to the U.S., so that in itself (in my opinion) is a great story about how the gravitational pull of the tech world has indeed shifted away from Silicon Valley. Ultimately, the international expansion to North America and other markets will serve a dual purpose for Drivezy. Not only will it help the company grow business, but it’s putting the company on the map, and that too will help attract more funding attention.



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CXA, a health-focused digital insurance startup, raises $25M

CXA Group, a Singapore-based startup that helps make insurance more accessible and affordable, has raised $25 million for expansion in Asia and later into Europe and North America.

The startup takes a unique route to insurance. Rather than going to consumers directly, it taps corporations to offer their employees health-flexible options. That’s to say that instead of rigid plans that force employees to use a certain gym or particular healthcare, a collection of more than 1,000 programs and options can be tailored to let employees pick what’s relevant or appealing to them. The ultimate goal is to bring value to employees to keep them healthier and lower the overall premiums for their employers.

“Our purpose is to empower personalized choices for better living for employees,” CXA founder and CEO Rosaline Koo told TechCrunch in an interview. “We use data and tech to recommend better choices.”

The company is primarily focused on China, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, where it claims to work with 600 enterprises, including Fortune 500 firms. The company has more than 200 staff, and it has acquired two traditional insurance brokerages in China to help grow its footprint, gain requisite licenses and increase its logistics in areas such as health checkups.

We last wrote about CXA in 2017 when it raised a $25 million Series B, and this new round is a bridge to a Series C that takes the company to $58 million from investors to date. Existing backers include B Capital, the BCG-backed fund from Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin; EDBI, the investment arm of the Singapore Economic Development Board; and early Go-Jek backer Openspace Ventures. They are joined by a glut of big-name backers in this round.

Those new investors include a lot of corporates. There’s HSBC, Singtel Innov8 (of Singaporean telco Singtel), Telkom Indonesia MDI Ventures (of Indonesia telco Telkom), Sumitomo Corporation Equity Asia (Japanese trading firm), Muang Thai Fuchsia Ventures (Thailand-based insurance firm), Humanica (Thailand-based HR firm) and PE firm Heritas Venture Fund.

“There are additional insurance companies and strategic partners that we aren’t listing,” said Koo.

Rosaline Koo is founder and CEO of CXA Group

That’s a very deliberate selection of large corporates that are part of a new strategy to widen CXA’s audience.

The company had initially gone after massive firms — it claims to reach a collective 400,000 employees — but now the goal is to reach SMEs and non-Fortune 500 enterprises. To do that, it is using the reach and connections of larger service companies to reach their customers.

“We believe that banks and telcos can cross-sell insurance and banking services,” said Koo, who grew up in LA and counts benefits broker Mercer on her resume. “With demographic and work/life event data, plus health data, we’re able to target the right banking and insurance services.

“We can help move them away from spamming,” she added. “Because we will have the right data to really target the right offering to the right person at the right time. No firm wants an agent sitting in their canteen bothering their staff, now it’s all digital and we’re moving insurance and banking into a new paradigm.”

The ultimate goal is to combat a health problem that Koo believes is only getting worse in the Asia Pacific region.

“Chronic disease comes here 10 years before anywhere else,” she said, citing an Emory research paper that concluded that chronic diseases in Asia are “rising at a rate that exceeds global increases.”

“There’s such a crying need for solutions, but companies can’t force the brokers to lower costs as employees are getting sick… double-digit increases are normal, but we think this approach can help drop them. We want to start changing the cost of healthcare in Asia, where it is an epidemic, using data and personalization at scale in a way to help the community,” Koo added.

Talking to Koo makes it very clear that she is focused on growing CXA’s reach in Asia this year, but further down the line, there are ambitions to expand to other parts of the world. Europe and North America, she said, may come in 2020.

Update 03/13 18:36: The original version of this article has been updated to not that the round is a bridge ahead of a Series C, not a Series C.



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Startup Law A to Z: Employment Law

Your startup will not succeed unless you, the founder, build an exceptional team. Great teams are built on top of great culture. Yet any venture-backed startup founder will tell you, myself included, that developing a positive corporate culture is more art than science, requiring constant and creative recalibration as your company grows. What then does this have to do with employment law?

First, building an exceptional team means hiring great people; whether that involves W-9s for consultants, I-9s for employees, lengthy H-1B visa applications, or a new employee handbook, you need to hire the right people in the right way. Second, one bad employment-related legal dispute can have ripple effects throughout an organization, undermining employee morale and executive credibility in one fell swoop, with palpable culture fallout.

Fortunately, when working to promote healthy company culture, founders can look to employment law for some preventive medicine. In fact, transparency through written policies, clearly communicated in advance and followed in practice, can help create the trust and accountability which are foundational to positive company culture. Moreover, in the event employment disputes do arise, well-drafted employment policies actually provide valuable guidance through difficult to navigate situations, while limiting downside risks to the company, as well.

This article, the fourth in Extra Crunch’s exclusive five-part “Startup Law A to Z” series, follows previous articles on customer contracts,  intellectual property (IP) and corporate matters. This series is calculated to provide founders the information needed to assess legal risks in the areas common to most startups.

After reading this article, or other “Startup Law A to Z” articles, should you identify legal risks facing your startup, Extra Crunch resources can help. For example, the Verified Experts of Extra Crunch include some of the most experienced and skilled startup lawyers in practice today. So use these resources to identify attorneys focused on serving companies at your stage and then reach out for further guidance in the particular issues at hand.

The Employment Law checklist:

Employee vs. independent contractor classification

  • Payroll Taxes and Payroll Providers
  • Federal Classification: 21-Part Test
  • State Classification: Various tests, e.g., Dynamex in California
  • Intentional vs. Unintentional Misclassification and Penalties

Minimum wage and hour laws

  • Application to founders
  • Federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
  • State Laws

Meal and rest breaks, vacation pay

  • Federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
  • State Laws

Deferred compensation

  • Rule 409A
  • Founders
  • Employees

Sexual harassment, discrimination, and related claims

  • Federal:
    • Civil Rights Act of 1964
    • Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA)
    • Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA)
    • Equal Pay Act of 1963
    • Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008
  • State Laws
  • Employee Handbook
  • Documentation and Investigation

Work authorization / immigration

  • Form I-9 (Employees) and W-9 (Independent Contractors)
  • For Temporary Workers:
    • Visa Waiver Program
    • B-1
  • Employee Visas:
    • H1-B
    • L-1
    • O-1
  • Students:
    • F-1 with OPT STEM Extension
  • Other Visas:
    • EB-5
    • E Visas (E-1, E-2, E3)

 

Employee vs. independent contractor classification

One of the biggest employment law issues that startups get wrong, often willingly, is “employee” versus “independent contractor” classification. For employees, a startup must withhold and pay federal, state, and local income taxes, state disability, and payments under the Federal Unemployment Tax Act and Federal Insurance Contribution Act (i.e. Social Security and Medicare), not to mention contributions for federal and state unemployment and workers compensation insurance. Given this complexity, startups should absolutely hire a payroll provider to help manage the process, such as ADP, Gusto, Paychex or Quickbooks.

Of course, all of this gets expensive. Instead, far too many early-stage startups simply hire “independent contractors” to avoid everything mentioned above, often misclassifying these workers in the process, whether under federal law, state law, or both.



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African e-commerce startup Jumia files for IPO on NYSE

Pan-African e-commerce company Jumia filed for an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange today, per SEC documents and confirmation from CEO Sacha Poignonnec to TechCrunch.

The valuation, share price and timeline for public stock sales will be determined over the coming weeks for the Nigeria-headquartered company.

With a smooth filing process, Jumia will become the first African tech startup to list on a major global exchange.

Poignonnec would not pinpoint a date for the actual IPO, but noted the minimum SEC timeline for beginning sales activities (such as road shows) is 15 days after submitting first documents. Lead adviser on the listing is Morgan Stanley.

There have been numerous press reports on an anticipated Jumia IPO, but none of them confirmed by Jumia execs or an actual SEC, S-1 filing until today.

Jumia’s move to go public comes as several notable consumer digital sales startups have faltered in Nigeria — Africa’s most populous nation, largest economy and unofficial bellwether for e-commerce startup development on the continent. Konga.com, an early Jumia competitor in the race to wire African online retail, was sold in a distressed acquisition in 2018.

With the imminent IPO capital, Jumia will double down on its current strategy and regional focus.

“You’ll see in the prospectus that last year Jumia had 4 million consumers in countries that cover the vast majority of Africa. We’re really focused on growing our existing business, leadership position, number of sellers and consumer adoption in those markets,” Poignonnec said.

The pending IPO creates another milestone for Jumia. The venture became the first African startup unicorn in 2016, achieving a $1 billion valuation after a $326 funding round that included Goldman Sachs, AXA and MTN.

Founded in Lagos in 2012 with Rocket Internet backing, Jumia now operates multiple online verticals in 14 African countries, spanning Ghana, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Morocco and Egypt. Goods and services lines include Jumia Food (an online takeout service), Jumia Flights (for travel bookings) and Jumia Deals (for classifieds). Jumia processed more than 13 million packages in 2018, according to company data.

Starting in Nigeria, the company created many of the components for its digital sales operations. This includes its JumiaPay payment platform and a delivery service of trucks and motorbikes that have become ubiquitous with the Lagos landscape.

Jumia has also opened itself up to traders and SMEs by allowing local merchants to harness Jumia to sell online. “There are over 81,000 active sellers on our platform. There’s a dedicated sellers page where they can sign-up and have access to our payment and delivery network, data, and analytic services,” Jumia Nigeria CEO Juliet Anammah told TechCrunch.

The most popular goods on Jumia’s shopping mall site include smartphones (priced in the $80 to $100 range), washing machines, fashion items, women’s hair care products and 32-inch TVs, according to Anammah.

E-commerce ventures, particularly in Nigeria, have captured the attention of VC investors looking to tap into Africa’s growing consumer markets. McKinsey & Company projects consumer spending on the continent to reach $2.1 trillion by 2025, with African e-commerce accounting for up to 10 percent of retail sales.

Jumia has not yet turned a profit, but a snapshot of the company’s performance from shareholder Rocket Internet’s latest annual report shows an improving revenue profile. The company generated €93.8 million in revenues in 2017, up 11 percent from 2016, though its losses widened (with a negative EBITDA of €120 million). Rocket Internet is set to release full 2018 results (with updated Jumia figures) April 4, 2019.

Jumia’s move to list on the NYSE comes during an up and down period for B2C digital commerce in Nigeria. The distressed acquisition of Konga.com, backed by roughly $100 million in VC, created losses for investors, such as South African media, internet and investment company Naspers.

In late 2018, Nigerian online sales platform DealDey shut down. And TechCrunch reported this week that consumer-focused venture Gloo.ng has dropped B2C e-commerce altogether to pivot to e-procurement. The CEO cited better unit economics from B2B sales.

As demonstrated in other global startup markets, consumer-focused online retail can be a game of capital attrition to outpace competitors and reach critical mass before turning a profit. With its unicorn status and pending windfall from an NYSE listing, Jumia could be better positioned than any venture to win on e-commerce at scale in Africa.



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Goalsetter gives parents a way to teach their kids how to save money

When the bubble burst in the year 2000, Tanya Van Court lost over $1 million in stock and options over the course of a few minutes. Then and there she vowed to never let something like that happen to her children.

Five years later, her daughter Gabrielle was born. At the time, she was a VP of Digital Product Dev at ESPN. She then went on to work as SVP of Digital Products, Parenting & Preschool for Nickelodeon and, in 2013, moved to SVP of Marketing at Discovery Education, leading the charge to roll out digital textbooks nationwide.

Today, she runs Goalsetter, an app that allows parents and their kids to replace gift-giving with goal-giving.

It started when her daughter Gabrielle was eight years old. Van Court told her daughter that if she could save $100, Van Court would match that $100 and start her an investment account. After learning how exactly an investment account works, Gabrielle decided all she wanted for her ninth birthday was a bike and an investment account.

“I thought that these are amazing things for a nine-year-old to want, but she was going to get all kinds of stuff she didn’t want or need instead,” said Van Court. “I realized how early consumerism starts. We all have more and more and more and value things less and less and less.”

After conversations with fellow moms, Van Court got to work on Goalsetter. The app has two main branches: a savings account for kids and a financial literacy learning center with fun quizzes.

Kids and parents together sign up for the app, where kids input some of their goals, from college tuition to a new bike or gaming console. Kids can then earn their allowance through the app, and can also receive ‘GoalCards’ (replacing a gift card) from parents and relatives to save towards their goals.

Moreover, parents can round-up their debit card swipes to go towards their kids bigger goals, such as college tuition or a first car. Parents can also set up auto-save to set aside a few dollars each month.

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“Moms in particular all feel the pain of their kids having too much stuff,” said Van Court. “When they step on yet another lego in the house or go into the kids room to find 80 toys, only five of which they play with, these become daily pain points for moms. The idea of teaching kids how to save instead of teaching them how to acquire more stuff really resonates with moms.”

Goalsetter also offers a financial literacy quiz game called “It’s LIT” that is mapped to financial literacy standards for K – 12. The game uses pop culture memes, song lyrics, etc. to engage kids while teaching them the fundamentals of personal finance. Parents can choose to reward their kids with money toward their goals for each question they get right.

What’s more, Goalsetter has plans to launch “It’s LIT” as a curriculum to school districts, complete with lesson plan materials, quizzes and more.

Alongside the curriculum, Goalsetter makes money by charging a dollar for every GoalCard sent through the platform. Goalsetter donates 5 percent of its transaction fee to children’s related charities. The company also has a donation function that allows users to pay the company whatever amount they find appropriate for the features offered.

Gaolsetter skews a bit younger than some of its competitors, including Current, Greenlight, and Step.

Goalsetter currently has more than 20,000 users and was recently featured on Shark Tank — Van Court turned down Mr. Wonderful’s investment offer.

The company graduated from the Entrepreneurs’ Roundtable Accelerator in 2017 and has raised a total of $2.1 million, including investment from Morgan Stanley, CFSI sponsored by JP Morgan Chase, Pipeline Angels and Backstage Capital.

“When the bubble burst, I had to learn the hard way that what goes up can actually come down,” said Van Court. “Our mission is to teach children that money has real value that can go towards the things you want to accomplish in life, and to people who are in need of it.”



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Truepill, the ‘AWS for pharmacies,’ gets $10M from Initialized Capital

Venture capitalists’ latest on-demand delivery bet is in the pharmaceutical space.

Truepill, an online pharmacy powering delivery for the likes of Hims, Nurx, LemonAID and other direct-to-consumer healthcare brands, has nabbed a $10 million Series A from early-stage VC fund Initialized Capital. The investment brings the Y Combinator graduate’s total raised to $13.4 million. Y Combinator, Sound Ventures, Tuesday Capital and others participated in the round.

Founded in 2016, the San Mateo-based startup employs 150 workers and plans to expand its team and fulfillment facilities into the U.K. with the fresh funding. Truepill is currently active in all 50 states and has delivered 1 million subscriptions for birth control, erectile dysfunction medication, hair loss treatment and more.

It is, as co-founders Sid Viswanathan and Umar Afridi explained, Amazon Web Services for pharmacies.

“We are really only scratching the surface of where this telemedicine landscape is going to go,” Viswanathan, who became a product manager at LinkedIn after the social network acquired his transcription service CardMunch, told TechCrunch. “We are catering to this first wave of those companies and we want to be that pharmacy fulfillment service powering that entire shift … We want to build the next generation of pharmacy infrastructure.”

Afridi, for his part, previously spent more than a decade as a pharmacist at retail chains like CVS and Fred Meyer.

In addition to operating a prescription delivery service, Truepill provides a set of APIs that give its customers programmatic access to its pharmacy and allows brands to fully customize packaging.

Foundation Capital, Index Ventures, Social Capital, Box Group and Joe Montana are also Truepill stakeholders.



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Investing app Stash raises $65M, launches banking and ‘stock-back’ rewards with Green Dot

Stash, the fintech startup and app that aims to introduce new people to the world of investing, is unveiling some interesting new services while also announcing that it has raised more funding to expand its business. The company is introducing mobile-based banking accounts from Green Dot Bank, and, alongside it, a new rewards program called “Stock-Back.” When users spend money using their Stash accounts, they get “points” — which are either stocks in the companies where they are buying goods, or shares in ETFs approved by Stash. On top of that, Stash also said it raised a Series E of $65 million that it will be using to grow its business on the back of these two launches.

A spokesperson for the company said that Stash is not disclosing the full round of investors in this round. For context, Stash was valued at $350 million post-money in its Series D, according to figures from PitchBook, and a source says the valuation is now “much higher” than that of a straight upround.

But from the looks of it, the $65 million appears to include participation from Breyer Capital, a previous investor whose founder Jim Breyer has heartily endorsed the new Stock-Back service and accompanying loyalty program that’s tied in with it, which was tested early with companies like Netflix, T-Mobile and Chipotle all offering stock when people used their Stash accounts to pay for goods and services at the companies.

“I have invested in and served on the Board of many leading companies, and it’s clear how a program like Stock-Back can power immense brand loyalty,” he said in a statement today. “The early data shows unequivocally that share ownership drives increased sales and customer appreciation. This innovative new technology from STASH will have CEOs and CMOs knocking on their door.”

From what we understand, the round was led by a private institutional investor and includes 40 percent existing and 60 percent new investors. Previous backers in addition to Breyer include Union Square Ventures, Coatue Management, Entree, Goodwater and Valar. “We’re really excited and proud to be working with this incredible group of VCs,” the spokesperson noted.

The Green Dot-powered banking service comes with the core features that will sound familiar to those who have used or looked at next-generation banking services before. It will include a debit card-based account, no overdraft or monthly maintenance fees, access to a network of ATMs that can be used for free and direct deposit services, as well as “personal guidance” for their financial planning activities, from saving to investing.

Stash is part of a wave of fintech startups — others include the likes of Robinhood, Acorns, YieldStreet, Revolut and many others — that have tapped into the popularity of apps and the advent of new financial services technology to democratise how individuals can save, spend, invest, borrow and lend money, moving many of those operations and transactions out of the hands of the big incumbent players who used to control them.

The average age of a Stash user is 29 and average income is less than $50,000 per year, and tying in transactions made using Stash’s banking service — by way of reward points that are being picked up incidentally — will make it even more seamless for these users to take some of their money and invest with it, while at the same time demystifying some of the process and making it more likely that those users will choose to invest even more down the line.

The idea of tying investments to what you are actually purchasing is a clever one. For a startup whose user base includes no-nonsense professionals from fields like teaching, nursing and retail, this is the embodiment of putting your money where your mouth is — literally speaking, as the investments can include things like shares in Chipotle each time you buy food there, and T-Mobile every time you pay your phone bill for all the talking you do.

Stash is positioning Stock-Back as a rewards program, with the percentages varying by business or brand and going as high as five percent in Stock-Back in some cases — as is the case, at launch, when people use their Stash debit cards to pay their Spotify and Netflix dues.

Ultimately, the aim of this is to present a way for ordinary, modestly-salaried people not only to potentially make money, but to be better engaged in how financial systems work, and how their daily actions impact that — the idea being that this knowledge can only help them in the long run.

“80% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck. Stock-Back is our way of utilizing STASH’s smart, patent-pending technology to help people build better financial habits and invest in their future,” said co-founder and president, Ed Robinson, in a statement. “Our ability to give customers the opportunity to save and build portfolios that mirror their spending behavior and preferences is incredibly powerful.”



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Pluto is travel insurance aimed at millennials

Pitched as “travel insurance for people who don’t like insurance,” U.K.-based Pluto Insurance is officially launching today with an online travel insurance product targeting millennials.

Citing research that says 40 percent of millennials don’t actually buy travel insurance, mistakenly believing that it isn’t required, the mobile-first offering not only attempts to demystify travel insurance, but is also unbundling it in a way that ensures you only pay for the cover you need or desire.

“We’ve spoken to hundreds of millennials and three things keep coming up,” says Pluto co-founder and CEO Alex Rainey. “Travel insurance is too complicated and it’s hard to know what you’re actually buying. Secondly, a lot of younger people don’t think they need it. But most importantly, there is a distinct lack of trust towards insurers, and it’s easy to see why. With exclusions buried in the fine print and insurers expecting people to print out a claim form and post it in.”

To remedy this, Rainey says Pluto wants to make travel insurance more tailored, letting you build your own policy online. “We work hard to make sure everything is easy to understand, ensuring we always explain our cover in plain English,” he says. The startup also lets you submit a claim via the mobile web app “in under 10 minutes.”

Insurance options includes gadget cover, baggage cover, cancellation cover, level of excess, cover for certain activities and travel disruption. As you add more cover, the price of your insurance changes in real time with each decision. Once you’ve built your policy, a short summary of your cover is displayed before you go ahead and purchase.

Meanwhile, the insurance itself — which, at launch, doesn’t cover pre-existing conditions, although that will be offered in the future — is in partnership with Zurich, which Rainey says was chosen because they had a 99 percent claims payout rate in 2017. “This is so so important for us to solve the trust issues in insurance,” he adds.

To that end, Pluto integrates with Facebook Messenger, including letting you use the messaging app to start a claim. You can also search your policy, check a summary of your cover or chat to a Pluto team member.

“Our customers want to do everything from their phone, when and where they want. We’ve made sure that’s possible,” says Rainey.



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Instacart’s alcohol delivery is now available in 14 states

Instacart has expanded its alcohol delivery to now be available in 14 states and Washington, DC from nearly 100 different retailers.

With the roll-out, Instacart alcohol delivery is currently available to 40 million homes in the U.S., and the number of alcohol deliveries on the platform has more than doubled since the same time last year.

Partners who participate in alcohol delivery on Instacart include Albertsons, Kroger, Publix, Schnucks and Stater Bros., alongside wine and liquor stores such as BevMo!, Binny’s Beverage Depot and Total Wine & More.

The list of states where Instacart offers alcohol delivery include California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Washington, DC.

Instacart started rolling out alcohol delivery a year ago, and has quickly become a competitive player in the space. Postmates introduced alcohol delivery in 2017, whereas strictly alcohol delivery services like Drizly, Minibar and Saucey have been around for a while.

Here is what Instacart’s chief business officer, Nilam Ganenthiran, had to say:

Part of grocery shopping for many people goes beyond getting fresh produce, meats and pantry staples, and includes picking up the perfect bottle of wine for a dinner party or their favorite beer to sip while watching the big game. By working alongside our retail partners to add alcohol to the marketplace, we’re offering customers more choice and making it easier for Instacart to be their ‘one-stop-shop’ to get the groceries they need – including beer, wine and spirits – from the retailers they love.

When Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017, some speculated that Instacart might be hit hard. But the deal also represented the digitization of a massive, traditional industry. Considering Instacart’s retail partner growth over the past year, it seems that the Whole Foods acquisition might have made Instacart an attractive platform for some retailers.

The company now serves more than 80 percent of U.S. households, which was Instacart’s stated goal for the end of 2018. Across its 300 retail partners, Instacart now delivers from 20,000 grocery stores across 5,500 cities in North America.



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‘We Know Them. We Trust Them.’ Uber and Airbnb Alumni Fuel Tech’s Next Wave.

As some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent start-ups prepare to go public, networks of their former employees are expected to plow big sums of money into a new generation of firms.

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Spotify Accuses Apple of Anticompetitive Practices in Europe

The music streaming service said Apple used its App Store to undercut companies that compete with its own services, like Apple Music.

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Tech Tip: How to Take Music Lessons Whenever (and Wherever) Works for You

Playing an instrument can be a rewarding hobby, but if finding the time and a teacher is a challenge, many apps can help get you started.

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Tech We’re Using: Spending Is as Easy as Pushing a Button. The Hard Part? Keeping Track.

Tara Siegel Bernard, a personal finance reporter, recommends apps for budgeting, investments and helping little ones as young as 6 understand the value of money.

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Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp Go Down. At the Same Time.

All three services experienced interruptions throughout the day on Wednesday. Grief and chaos ensued.

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SoftBank and Other Investors May Buy $1 Billion Stake in Uber’s Self-Driving Cars

The talks precede Uber’s initial public offering and may ease worries about how costly it is to develop autonomous vehicles.

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Facebook’s Data Deals Are Under Criminal Investigation

A federal grand jury is looking at partnerships that gave major tech companies broad access to Facebook users’ information.

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The Shift: A Better Way to Break Up Big Tech

Senator Elizabeth Warren has an interesting plan for reform. But it has shortcomings worth considering.

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A NASA Journey to the Moon May Need to Find Another Rocket or Two

Mounting delays to the Space Launch System, primarily built by Boeing, are leading the agency to consider alternative forms of transport.

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Amazon Pulls 2 Books That Promote Unscientific Autism ‘Cures’

The online retailer’s move follows recent efforts by Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest to limit the availability of anti-vaccination and other pseudoscientific material.

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F.D.A. Moves to Restrict Flavored E-Cigarette Sales to Teenagers

The agency spells out its proposal to require retailers to wall off sections of stores to limit access, a move opposed by many convenience stores.

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Vietnam’s Communist Party Ousts Historian Who Criticized Its China Policy

Tran Duc Anh Son has argued that Vietnam should take a tougher line against China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, a sensitive matter for the government.

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Keep your favorite tunes nearby with SanDisk 32GB flash drive for $8

Convenient and fast.

The SanDisk Ultra 32GB USB 3.0 flash drive is down to $7.90 on Amazon. The drive sells for around $9 or more usually. While this might not be a huge discount, it is a match for the lowest we've seen in a couple years. You can stock up on a few of these and keep the drives for different playlists or an emergency movie stash.

With USB 3.0, the drive has read speeds up to 100 MB/s. Plus, it's compatible with older USB ports. You can also use SanDisk's SecureAccess software to encrypt and password protect all your data. Keep important documents secured or just use the drive to transfer music from one place to another. It has 4.1 stars based on more than 4,100 reviews.

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Best DVD drives for Mac mini

With the rise of streaming services, both music and video, it seems CDs and DVDs are quickly becoming a thing of the past. While many devices used to come with optical drives, that's not the case anymore. This doesn't mean you have to say "bye-bye" to your extensive disc collection just yet. If you've recently gotten your hands on the Mac mini and you're looking for an external drive to access your content, here are some of the best.

Budget option

LG GP65NG60

Staff Favorite

The LG GP65NG60 is an ultra-slim and portable external CD/DVD drive with write speeds of 24x CD and 8x DVD+R. In other words, it's fast. The drive is lightweight, budget-friendly, and comes in four gorgeous colors, including gold and silver. It also comes with Silent Play technology, which promises to reduced noise while the drive is in use.

$30 at Amazon

Apple's choice

Apple SuperDrive

When Apple first started removing optical drives from its machines, the company created its own external drive. With Apple's SuperDrive you'll be able to seamlessly connect to your Mac mini to play or burn CDs and DVDs without having to install additional software on your system. The SuperDrive doesn't come equipped with a USB-C, but that shouldn't be an issue since the mini still has a couple of compatible USB-A ports.

$79 at Apple

Future-proof

Confoly Superdrive

USB-C is taking over the tech world and with the Confoly Superdrive, you'll be ready. The Confoly drive is said to be just as good as Apple's own drive but at a fraction of the cost. Plus, you have the option to connect via USB-C or USB-A with its included adapter.

$59 at Amazon

Stylish design

Archgon Premium Superdrive

The Archgon drive is absolutely beautiful. Its 1mm-thick body weighs just over a pound and is made from durable aluminum. The drive has an interesting textured finish and supports UHD 4K Blu-ray discs and 3D content playback, as well as DVDs.

$119 at Amazon

USB-C budget option

Kingbox Drive

If you like the idea of having multiple ways to connect but you're on a budget, then the Kingbox drive could be a solid option. The drive comes with both USB-C and USB-A connectors, which can be neatly tucked into the bottom of the device when not in use. This compact design also makes storage quick and easy.

$30 at Amazon

There you have it! Whether you're still totally dependent on using CDs and DVDs or you just like having the option if the need ever arises, you're sure to find something that'll work for you. Personally, I think the LG GP65NG60 will be a great option for most people. The drive is sleek, easy-to-use, and super budget-friendly.



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Add AC outlets and USB to your car with Bestek's power inverter for $18

Adds ports without hogging the cigarette lighter!

The Bestek 200W car power inverter with 2 AC outlets and 2 USB ports is down to $17.99 with code MQUOOBYZ on Amazon. Without the code, this inverter sells for $28 and spikes as high as $50 on occasion. The drop to $18 is the lowest we've ever seen.

The Bestek power inverter provides 200 watts of continuous DC to AC power and 400 watts peak power using your car's cigarette lighter socket. Unlike 90% of the stuff we see around here, Bestek actually gives you back the cigarette lighter in addition to two USB ports and two AC outlets. The two foot power cord gives you some maneuverability in where you put it, too. It has a built-in automatic shutdown that keeps everything protected from any potential damage it detects from overvoltage, overload, overheating, and more. It also comes with an 18-month warranty.

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Amex Platinum cardholders to lose Boingo Wi-Fi benefit

Heads up! We share savvy shopping and personal finance tips to put extra cash in your wallet. Mobile Nations may receive a commission from The Points Guy Affiliate Network.

If you're a road warrior or even travel lightly, you've probably seen Boingo Wi-Fi hotspots at airports, hotels, malls, and convention centers. And for those of you with The Platinum Card® from American Express, you have probably enjoyed complimentary unlimited Wi-Fi at over 1 million Boingo hotspots worldwide.

Unfortunately, that perk will be going away. Some Amex Platinum members have received the following notification: Effective May 1, 2019, Boingo Preferred Plan will no longer be a benefit on the Platinum Card®. Cardholders who are enrolled in Boingo Preferred Plan as of 4/30/2019, will continue to have access to this benefit until 12/31/2019.

This could be a bit of a blow as Boingo membership would otherwise cost $14.99 per month, which works out to $179.88 over the course of a year. All that said, the Amex Platinum card still delivers a ton of value including $200 in annual Uber savings, an annual $200 Airline Fee Credit, access to those swanky Centurion lounges and, if you sign up right now, you'll be eligible to earn 60,000 Membership Rewards® points after you charge $5,000 in your first 3 months.

If this is a service you highly value and if you're looking for a new credit card, consider the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant™ American Express® Card which as of now still includes Boingo membership. Even better, the card includes a limited time offer of 100,00 bonus Marriott Bonvoy Points when you spend $5,000 during the first 3 months as an account holder. Those points carry a value of about $900 but you have to hurry as the sign up offer is scheduled to end April 24.



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Alexa! Play Apple Music on my Amazon Fire TV! Wait... what?

You can now play Apple Music through Alexa on your Amazon Fire TV.

Apple Music has been available on your run-of-the-mill Alexa devices, namely Echo and Dot and the like, for a while now. New, as of today, is Apple Music on the also Alexa-enabled Amazon Fire TV.

From CordCutters.com:

Apple Music is now available on Amazon Fire TV. Sort of. It's actually the Apple Music Alexa Skill — the same as what you'd use to listen to Apple Music on an Amazon Echo speaker. And given that a Fire TV is basically an Alexa with a big-ol' display attached to it, this kind of all makes sense.

You have to go into the Alexa app, enable the Apple Music skill, and then log into your Apple Music account to get it to light up. But once it does, it's all Apple Music for you, all the time. Well, as long as you ask Alexa, of course.

The Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K is the recommended buy from CordCutters. It costs $49 at Amazon.

Apple Music has been available on Android since launch and continuing to push it out across Amazon's product line just makes the same kind of sense: Get the service into as many ears as possible, while simultaneously making it more valuable to Family Plan subscribers who live in multi-platform households.

Same reason iTunes is coming to Samsung televisions, and Airplay 2 to LG, Sony, and Vizio sets. (There have been rumors of Apple Music for Google Home as well but nothing official yet.)

It'll be interesting to see if Apple follows the same strategy when Apple News Premium and Apple Video launch some point following their announcement, expected to come at Apple's Show Time event on March 25.

Meanwhile, if you have Apple Music and Amazon Fire TV, let me know how it works — and sounds — for you.

More: How to connect Apple Music to your Amazon Fire TV



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Where's the best place to buy a Polaroid OneStep+ instant camera?

Best answer: Amazon offers the best price for the instant camera itself, its accessories, and optional film bundles. Prime members get free 2-day shipping or same-day pickup depending on your city.

Camera features

Polaroid's OneStep+ i-Type Camera is an instant camera that connects to an iOS app, putting it one step beyond other modern instant cameras. It offers creative tools such as double exposure, light painting, remote trigger, secondary portrait lens, and more.

The one drawback is that it does require proprietary Polaroid film; you can choose between 600 film and i-Type film. Most instant cameras are picky about what film and paper you use, and most of the time it's going to be expensive to keep filling up. They can also sometimes be difficult to find.

One way to save money at the jump is to get a camera and film bundle. Amazon offers the camera bundled with both types of compatible film packs in various combinations. All of the bundles have the film priced either the same or cheaper than Polaroid does.

Best deals

Amazon offers the lowest price we've seen on Polaroid's OneStep+ i-Type Camera. It's about $7 less than buying directly from Polaroid.

Shipping is also free on the Polaroid OneStep+ camera for everyone shopping on Amazon, whether you're an Amazon Prime member or not. Amazon Prime members enjoy free 2-day shipping. Additionally, if it's available in your area, you can also get it via free same-day pickup.

Our pick

Polaroid OneStep+

$133 at Amazon

Cool camera, great price

Whether you purchase just the Polaroid OneStep+ camera or you purchase a bundle with camera and film, you'll get the best price from Amazon. Additionally, Prime members get free two-day shipping or one-day pickup where available.

The film

Polaroid i-Type Film

$16 at Amazon

The best film for the OneStep+

The OneStep+ is nothing without film, and this is the best color film at the best price you can choose for this camera.

The bundle

Polaroid OneStep+ and i-Type Film bundle

$150 at Amazon

All in one

Pick up the Polaroid OneStep+ and the i-Type Film specially made for it with a single purchase. You'll save some money, too!



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