Month: January 2023

Back in 2017, Wyze made a name for itself with the launch of its original $20 security camera. Over the years, it released its fair share of iterations of the Wyze Cam, with version 3 launching in 2020. Today, it’s launching both a new iteration of the original Wyze Cam, dubbed the Wyze Cam OG, with a launch price of $20 (later $24) as well as a new member of the family, Wyze’s first telephoto camera, the aptly named Wyze Cam OG Telephoto.

The Wyze Cam OG Telephoto will retail for $30 at launch, with the price going up to $34 later. While the regular camera provides a 120-degree field of view, the Telephoto version has a 3x zoom and a 27-degree field of view. Otherwise, they are pretty much identical. These are 1080p HD cameras that feature Wyze’s color night vision, two-way audio support and motion detection, including support for its Cam Plus subscription with features like a web view and AI-powered package, vehicle and pet detection. In their daytime mode, these cameras record up to 20 frames per second, while at night, that drops down to 10 frames.

Both cameras are IP65 rated, so they should be quite usable in most outdoor settings (though Wyze recommends you use its $14 outdoor power adapter for this). Both also still use a micro-USB plug. You’re not going to move these cameras around a lot, so that’s not likely an issue. Still, it would be nice to see USB-C here, given that most devices are moving this way.

The only major difference here is that the Wyze Cam OG features an integrated 40 lumen spotlight, which can automatically turn on when the camera detects motion in very low light.

Thanks to updated chips, both cameras can now detect motion and send out notifications three times faster than the company’s other cameras and an upgraded mic and speaker should make two-way audio clearer. Live video in the Wyze app from these cameras also now loads significantly faster.

While you can use the OG Telephoto camera as a standalone device, a lot of people will likely use it to augment an existing Wyze camera, maybe to specifically zoom in on a door. For those users, Wyze is launching a new kit with a mount and dual-power cable that allows you to stack both OG cameras on top of each other (in any combination). To enable this, the new cameras now feature a simple hot shoe-like indentation on their tops. On the software side, this is enhanced with Wyze’s new Picture-in-Picture view. Sadly, this PiP view isn’t available for older Wyze cameras.

As for the overall design, Wyze switched things up here a bit, going from the original folding base to a more basic pole the camera now screws into. It makes the camera look a bit more pedestrian but I think it’s a worthwhile tradeoff since it will allow for more accessories and makes the stand easily replaceable.

I’ve tested both cameras for the last week or so and there haven’t been any real surprises. Setup is about as easy as it can be. Indeed, it’s easier than before, since you don’t have to hold any QR code in front of the cameras anymore to connect them to your WiFi network. Instead, the app now finds the new camera for you, you select the network in the app, enter your WiFi password and the camera connects. All of that takes maybe 30 seconds, whereas with earlier Wyze cameras, it could be a few minutes. That’s not exactly a gamechanger, but a nice feature nonetheless.

Overall, video from both cameras is more than sharp enough and the 3x zoom makes for a nice addition, though at least for my use case (watching over my backyard and front porch), it’s not a massive upgrade — more of a nice-to-have. And that’s about all there is. Both cameras worked exactly as expected and while its mobile app isn’t flashy, it never gets in my way. I do wish I could use the PiP view for any random camera combination, though.

It’s worth noting that the original version 1 Wyze Cam had some security issues that — because of hardware limitations — Wyze wasn’t able to patch. Security issues are almost inevitable, but the main issue here was that Wyze was very slow to acknowledge this. That’s something worth keeping in mind — and I think it’s a good idea to keep your IoT devices on a different network from the rest of your home anyway.

Wyze goes back to its roots with the Wyze Cam OG and OG Telephoto by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

Match-owned dating app Hinge confirmed it’s testing a higher-priced premium subscription of $50 to $60 per month — a significant increase over the current $35 per month pricing. The company had earlier teased the new offering during Match’s Q3 2022 earnings in November, calling it Hinge’s equivalent of Tinder’s top-tier “Platinum” subscription, as a comparison, and touting its potential to drive the revenue per payer “meaningfully higher.”

Bloomberg first reported the news of the premium offering, which a spokesperson for Match Group confirmed.

Hinge will aim its pricey subscription at “highly motivated daters,” it said, who are willing to pay for more features to boost their exposure in the app as well as those that would allow them to receive better recommendations. For example, subscribers’ “likes” will be seen faster than others, among other things, the report noted.

While Match’s flagship app Tinder leads the company in terms of revenue, Match called out Hinge as a “bright spot” in the past quarter. The dating app aimed more heavily towards those interested in relationships has become the third most popular app by downloads in the U.S. In more recent months, the app has been localized outside the U.S., having launched in Germany and other European markets where it’s finding traction. It’s also one of the key apps Match has been counting on to help offset the declines it’s been seeing at some of its established brands, as well as those at its 2021 acquisition of Hyperconnect, which did not pay off as expected.

The company said it would invest further in marketing Hinge in the U.S. and abroad in the fourth quarter, to help further grow the brand. On the success of this expansion and the new premium tier, Match is forecasting Hinge to deliver at least $100 million in incremental revenues this year, the company told investors during November’s earnings call.

Match shared few details about the subscription itself during the call, only noting that it would begin rolling out globally after the new year.

“We like subscription monetization opportunities with Hinge — with the Hinge user base. As with any big changes to tiers, we’ll continue to optimize the offering throughout 2023,” Match CEO Bernard Kim said during the call.

However, the company acknowledged hinge was about $15 million behind its 2022 goal, mainly due to foreign exchange headwinds, and particularly the impact those were having on the pound. It said it would update investors on Hinge’s revenue for this year during its February Q4 earnings call.

Bloomberg’s report also noted Tinder was testing a $500 monthly plan, which Match also confirmed but declined to provide details.

Dating app Hinge tests a pricier $60 per month subscription, similar to Tinder Platinum by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Match-owned dating app Hinge confirmed it’s testing a higher-priced premium subscription of $50 to $60 per month — a significant increase over the current $35 per month pricing. The company had earlier teased the new offering during Match’s Q3 2022 earnings in November, calling it Hinge’s equivalent of Tinder’s top-tier “Platinum” subscription, as a comparison, and touting its potential to drive the revenue per payer “meaningfully higher.”

Bloomberg first reported the news of the premium offering, which a spokesperson for Match Group confirmed.

Hinge will aim its pricey subscription at “highly motivated daters,” it said, who are willing to pay for more features to boost their exposure in the app as well as those that would allow them to receive better recommendations. For example, subscribers’ “likes” will be seen faster than others, among other things, the report noted.

While Match’s flagship app Tinder leads the company in terms of revenue, Match called out Hinge as a “bright spot” in the past quarter. The dating app aimed more heavily towards those interested in relationships has become the third most popular app by downloads in the U.S. In more recent months, the app has been localized outside the U.S., having launched in Germany and other European markets where it’s finding traction. It’s also one of the key apps Match has been counting on to help offset the declines it’s been seeing at some of its established brands, as well as those at its 2021 acquisition of Hyperconnect, which did not pay off as expected.

The company said it would invest further in marketing Hinge in the U.S. and abroad in the fourth quarter, to help further grow the brand. On the success of this expansion and the new premium tier, Match is forecasting Hinge to deliver at least $100 million in incremental revenues this year, the company told investors during November’s earnings call.

Match shared few details about the subscription itself during the call, only noting that it would begin rolling out globally after the new year.

“We like subscription monetization opportunities with Hinge — with the Hinge user base. As with any big changes to tiers, we’ll continue to optimize the offering throughout 2023,” Match CEO Bernard Kim said during the call.

However, the company acknowledged hinge was about $15 million behind its 2022 goal, mainly due to foreign exchange headwinds, and particularly the impact those were having on the pound. It said it would update investors on Hinge’s revenue for this year during its February Q4 earnings call.

Bloomberg’s report also noted Tinder was testing a $500 monthly plan, which Match also confirmed but declined to provide details.

Dating app Hinge tests a pricier $60 per month subscription, similar to Tinder Platinum by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

A lot of entrepreneurs are incredible idea generators and hackers; they have a knack for seeing something that’s broken or something that could be better and creating a solution around that. The problem is this: It’s rare that even very good features make good companies.

It’s rarer still that companies built on a feature make for VC-investable companies with the potential for VC-scale returns. A lot of no-code products fall into this category.

So do you have a company or merely a feature? Let’s explore the red flags investors will look for to determine which bucket your startup falls into.

A nontrivial percentage of the companies that come to me for advice about how to make their pitch decks better have a problem far bigger than a subpar deck. Fundamentally, the idea doesn’t work as a VC-scale startup; and if that is true, it doesn’t really matter how good your idea is. You will never raise money because ultimately, the risk your would-be investors are taking is higher than the reward that is available for them to reap.

The red flags fall into three categories:

Your company is 100% dependent on another product or company.
Your company could very easily be put out of business if an incumbent adds your product as a feature of theirs.
The market size for this feature is too small.

Let’s take a closer look at all three scenarios, as well as how you can evaluate whether these conditions are true for your company.

Build a company, not a feature by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

A lot of entrepreneurs are incredible idea generators and hackers; they have a knack for seeing something that’s broken or something that could be better and creating a solution around that. The problem is this: It’s rare that even very good features make good companies.

It’s rarer still that companies built on a feature make for VC-investable companies with the potential for VC-scale returns. A lot of no-code products fall into this category.

So do you have a company or merely a feature? Let’s explore the red flags investors will look for to determine which bucket your startup falls into.

A nontrivial percentage of the companies that come to me for advice about how to make their pitch decks better have a problem far bigger than a subpar deck. Fundamentally, the idea doesn’t work as a VC-scale startup; and if that is true, it doesn’t really matter how good your idea is. You will never raise money because ultimately, the risk your would-be investors are taking is higher than the reward that is available for them to reap.

The red flags fall into three categories:

Your company is 100% dependent on another product or company.
Your company could very easily be put out of business if an incumbent adds your product as a feature of theirs.
The market size for this feature is too small.

Let’s take a closer look at all three scenarios, as well as how you can evaluate whether these conditions are true for your company.

Build a company, not a feature by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

HBO Max makes history tonight with its first-ever domestic live sporting event. Starting at 10 p.m. ET, U.S. subscribers can watch the U.S. Women’s Soccer National Team take on the New Zealand team, the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup co-host. The streamer will also air the follow-up match between the U.S. and New Zealand on January 20.

Along with live coverage of the matches, HBO Max will also give subscribers pre-game coverage and post-game as well as replays. The pre-game show begins at 9:30 p.m. ET.

It’s also important to note that both HBO Max subscription tiers aren’t including any ads, a Warner Bros. Discovery spokesperson told TechCrunch.

Last week, the company announced its lineup of sports analysts which includes National Soccer Hall of Famers Julie Foudy, DaMarcus Beasley and Shannon Boxx, along with former U.S. Men’s National Team player Kyle Martino. Soccer commentator Luke Wileman will provide play-by-play alongside Foudy. Melissa Ortiz, a former pro soccer player, will report live from Wellington, New Zealand.

As previously announced, the U.S. Soccer Federation and Turner Sports, a division of WarnerMedia, closed an eight-year multimedia rights agreement, making TNT and HBO Max the exclusive English-language home to over 20 Women’s and Men’s National Team matches every year. The matches will all be simulcast on HBO Max, whereas TNT will broadcast several matches.

The deal doesn’t include the Women’s World Cup matches in 2023, which will be broadcast by Fox and Telemundo. However, it does include World Cup qualifiers, friendlies and competitions.

HBO Max will debut the U.S. Men’s National Team on January 25, when it livestreams the U.S. vs. Serbia game. The team will play against Colombia on January 28, which will be broadcast by TNT.

Winning streaming rights to U.S. soccer is a big deal for the company. The streamer isn’t known for sports, so a domestic live sports offering will help HBO Max better compete with rivals in the sports space, such as Paramount+, Peacock, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+.

HBO Max is also working on a live hockey offering, thanks to a multi-year rights agreement with the National Hockey League (NHL). Last year, Turner Sports closed the deal, giving TBS and TNT the rights to broadcast regular-season games as well as Stanley Cup Playoff and Stanley Cup Final games.

HBO Max subscribers in Brazil and Mexico have access to live UEFA Champions League matches.

HBO Max subscribers can now livestream U.S. national soccer games by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

Google’s clock app for Android has plenty of sound options to set as an alarm. If you don’t like the default tone, you can use a song or a podcast from Spotify or YouTube Music (only if you have a premium subscription), too – and Google now also allows you to record a voice clip and set that as an alarm tone as well.

This feature was first noticed by Esper.io’s Mishaal Rahman. As he noted, this is a server-side push, so as long as you are using Clock app version 7.3, you should see this feature without updating the app.

Rahman also notes that this feature works only on Pixel phones or devices where users have sideloaded the Google Recorder app. But it’s possible that Google could roll out the voice clip as an alarm feature to all devices in the future, as long as they have a recorder app.

It could be a way to prank someone by changing their usual alarm tone with a recorded clip while they are looking away. Or a more productive use case would be to remind you of something right when you get up. But it would be freaky to hear your own voice first thing in the morning.

This new feature definitely joins the league of weird alarm apps. We have seen apps like Wakie, which lets you wake up strangers; Mircosoft’s Micimcker, which forced you to ape expressions to silence the alarm; or the Doomsday Alarm clock, which lets you set up apocalyptic scenarios to wake up.

Google’s Clock app now lets you record your own alarm sound by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

The great American sports car is going partly electric. Chevy pulled the wraps off the 2024 Corvette E-Ray, revealing a dual powertrain affair. A 6.2L Small Block V8 sits behind the driver in a mid-engine configuration. An electric motor is connected to the front wheels, providing AWD, and instant torque for improved off-the-line launches. Together they’re bringing the Corvette into the electric future.

Chevy says this Corvette is the quickest production ever made with a 2.5 second 0-60 time. That time upsets the current title holder, the monstrous 2019 Corvette ZR-1 that can hit 60mph in 2.85 seconds.

But this electrified sports car does not need to be plugged in to recharge. Instead, the battery is exclusively charged by regenerative braking and when the vehicle is coasting.

The dual-powertrain arrangement comes with more benefits. With both axles’s powered, the E-Ray features eAWD giving it better performance on the track and in adverse weather conditions. In addition, drivers can opt to drive only on battery power as long as the vehicle’s speed does not exceed 45 mph.

A single electric motor powers the front wheels. It produces 160 hp and 125 lb. ft of torque. Combined with the 6.2L V8, the E-Ray produces 655 hp.

The Corvette E-Ray isn’t the first sports car to look at two different powertrains for propulsion. The Polestar 1 used a similar affair but in a different configuration. The main difference is that the E-Ray allows drivers to drive on an electric motor.

Chevy says that the 2024 Corvette E-Ray will go on sale sometime in 2023. The MSRP starts at $104,295 for the coupe and $111,295 for the 1LZ convertible model.

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Chevy announces the fastest Corvette yet, the electrified 2024 Corvette E-Ray by Matt Burns originally published on TechCrunch

Uber has expanded an agreement with Hertz to get thousands of ride-hailing drivers behind the wheel of an electric car — this time in Europe.

The two companies announced that Hertz will make up to 25,000 EVs available to Uber drivers in European capital cities by 2025. The announcement comes about 15 months after Uber and Hertz kicked off a partnership in North America to make up to 50,000 Tesla vehicles available for rent to Uber drivers in the United States.

The European deal will offer drivers a bit more choice, according to Uber, making a range of EVs including Tesla and Polestar available to drivers. The Europe program will begin this month at Hertz’s London base and eventually expand to Paris, Amsterdam and other capital cities in the region.

The Uber-Hertz deal has a two-fold aim. It helps Hertz in its goal to build one of the largest fleets of rental EVs globally and it gets Uber closer to becoming a “zero emissions platform” by 2030.

And so far, at least by Uber’s account, the program has proven popular. The company said that to date, nearly 50,000 drivers in the United States have rented a Tesla through this program, completing more than 24 million fully-electric trips and over 260 million electric miles.

Uber’s goal for all of its trips to be “zero emissions” by the end of the decade will require more than just a deal with Hertz. The company’s Uber Green program, which is in more 1,400 cities in North America, incentivizes drivers to use all-electric and hybrid vehicles. Uber integrated the program into its Uber Pass membership service to give members 10% off on “green” trips, the same discount provided for a standard ride.

Uber has also partnered with automakers charging network providers, and other EV rental and fleet companies to provide further incentives, including Ample, Avis and EVgo.

Uber drivers in Europe gain access to Tesla, Polestar and other EVs through Hertz by Kirsten Korosec originally published on TechCrunch

In the coming decades, Africa will be a significant growth market for mobile games driven by the proliferation of technology adoption among the continent’s youthful population. And as gamers in sub-Saharan Africa increase to over 180 million in the next five years, per a report, startups such as South Africa-based Carry1st are strategically positioning themselves for this successive growth phase in the industry.

Since its launch in 2018, Carry1st, a publisher of social games and interactive content across Africa, has raised funding from investors such as Google via its Africa Investment Fund and Avenir Growth Capital.But more impressive is its backing from top-tier funds focused on web3 and gaming: Andressen Horowitz (a16z), Konvoy Ventures – and now Bitkraft Ventures, the lead investor in its newly announced $27 million pre-Series B round. Both a16z and Konvoy participated in this financing round, including TTV Capital, Alumni Ventures, Lateral Capital and Kepple Ventures.

“We now have, in our minds, the three best funds that focus on gaming and web3. And so it just adds even more resources, perspective, and assistance to help us achieve our goals,” chief executive officer Cordel Robbin-Coker told TechCrunch in an interview.

Last January, Carry1st announced a $20 million Series A extension round, which followed the $6 million it raised in May 2021 from several investors, including Riot Games, the developer and publisher behind the most-played PC game globally, League of Legends. Sometime last year, Carry1st and Riot Games strengthened that investment by signing a partnership where the South African outfit agreed to pilot local payments for the American video game developer starting in 2023. In other words, Carry1st will act as Riot’s payments partner in Africa.

Robbin-Coker, on the call, said the partnership leverages Pay1st, the gaming startup’s monetization-as-a-service platform used for the company’s games and that of third-party publishers.

In 2018 when Carry1st launched, it was a game studio that conceptualized, developed, and launched mobile games (starting with Carry1st Trivia). While the company still makes its games or recently began acquiring games to improve, relaunch and publish at scale (Mine Rescue and Gebeta), Carry1st also exclusively licenses third-party games. Pay1st is the embedded finance platform that helps the startup make revenue from both categories: owned games and third-party games, of which Riot Games is one of its clients.

“The partnership [with Riot Games] is our big initiative this year because we built all these cool tech around payments and digital commerce, and we leveraged it only for our games,” remarked the CEO, who founded Carry1st with Lucy Hoffman and Tinotenda Mundangepfupfu. “But we figured that we may as well leverage the opportunity to partner with awesome big game companies that maybe aren’t yet ready to license their games to us fully but would like to make more money in the region and understand how profitable Africa can be for them.”

Meanwhile, the CEO mentioned on the call that the four-year-old gaming startup has other partnerships, including a “large game licensing deal that we’re excited about.” In addition to the Riot Games collaboration, Carry1st is also building on the momentum of a successful partnership with Call of Duty®: Mobile in South Africa that happened in the last quarter of 2022, where Carry1st, acting as a local partner, instructed and directed the video games franchise on ways to achieve scale in South Africa during a three-month pilot test.

“It [South Africa] is a promising market for them, and they were eager to have a local partner to help them navigate and help to execute a pilot over three months last year. We hope that will lead to, you know, even deeper engagement and even sort of bigger and better prospects for that franchise, not just in South Africa but potentially across the continent,” he added.

The pre-Series B financing will see Carry1st drive growth in all these areas: develop, license, and publish new games, as well as expand Pay1st. Per the company’s statement, the funding round is coming off the back of a successful year which saw the first game from its CrazyHubs gaming accelerator – the accelerator Carry1st launched in partnership with CrazyLabs, one of its six partner studios – become the number 1 downloaded game in the U.S. for a few days last July, according to data.ai. The game, The President, is loosely based on afictionalized Donald Trump andwas developed by Nairobi-based Mekan Games.

Games like The President have seen Carry 1st’s revenues grow by 10x over the year. Other areas where the gaming startup has also experienced growth include Carry1st Shop, its online marketplace for virtual goods, which according to the company, allows customers across Africa to pay for content and 100+ products across 120 different payment methods, including bank transfers, crypto and mobile money.

“What we found, particularly in countries like Nigeria, South Africa, and Morocco, was that there was a massive appetite for digital content, especially with the ability to pay for it in with local payment methods and, more importantly, in local currency, which is unique or unusual because most of the online purchases are denominated in dollars,” said the CEO. He stated that Carry1st was the gaming startup’s fastest-growing product last year as users and revenues surged fivefold.

In the TechCrunch interview last January, Robbin-Coker mentioned that the South-African based Carry1st was exploring the possibility of developing infrastructure to support play-to-earn gaming in Africa. It’s a plan still in motion – according to the chief executive, Carry1st is developing a beta platform dubbed Play1st, where gamers interested in web3 games can discover games, review them within communities, and display achievements and rewards – however, with less zest given how the appetite for web3 games have cooled off within the past year.

Speaking on the investment, Jens Hilgers, the founding general partner at BITKRAFT Ventures, said: “Africa is home to the largest population of young people in the world, and this upcoming generation will grow up digitally native with videogames as their primary entertainment preference. We have full conviction in Carry1st’s impressive founding team and their vision of building out foundational infrastructure and localized content, ensuring that gaming and interactive entertainment in Africa will thrive.”

African gaming startup Carry1st raises $27M from Bitkraft Ventures and a16z by Tage Kene-Okafor originally published on TechCrunch