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There are now more Americans aged 65 and older than at any other point in history and that number is expected to rise, according to the National Institute on Aging (NIA). With longer lifespans come challenges like Alzheimer’s, which about one in nine of Americans aged 65 or older have.

The a2 Pilot Awards were created to encourage the development of tech for the elderly. Funded by the NIA with $40 million over the next five years, the awards announced today the first cohort of 33 projects selected for funding. The majority use artificial intelligence or machine learning tech, and 40% are led by women.

Stephen Liu, the managing director of a2 Collective, which oversees the awards, told TechCrunch he hopes it encourages more tech entrepreneurs to get into agetech.

“It’s a largely uncontested, growing, future-proof market that will have unprecedented opportunities driven by AI,” he said, adding “We have two big mega-trends, AI and the demographics of aging and it’s irrefutable that there is a large, growing, massive, future-proof market that they should focus on.”

The a2 Collective includes three Artificial Intelligence and Technology Collaboratories (AITC) that the projects will work with. The AITCs are housed at John Hopkins University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Pennsylvania.

Most of the 33 pilot projects address cognitive decline, but some are also tackling frailty, comorbidity, delirium, palliative care, social isolation and visual impairment. They will receive a total of $5 million and projects selected for funding will get up to $200,000 in zero equity grants to cover direct costs over a one year period.

About half of applications for the first awards came from private companies, while others are academic research projects. Many are also collaborations between the private sector and academia. A2 Collective reached out to startups, academic institutions, accelerator programs and venture capital firms focused on healthcare to find applicants.

“In this particular program, we definitely have an eye towards commercial use, or some kind of commercialization of the project,” said Liu. “Ideally you want to see an impact where it’s going to be used by someone, whether that’s a clinician, older American, caregiver or nurse, in the next several years.”

Some examples of projects selected include Autotune Me, which uses music to address symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease and related conditions. Bestie Bot uses RGB-D depth cameras and thermal computer vision to perform monitoring and telehealth checkups of patients. And WellSaid.ai is using conversational AI to perform health assessments and detect signs of cognitive impairment and dementia for people in their homes.

In addition to the AITCs, a2 Collective’s partnerships also include health care systems, clinicians and researchers, venture capitalists and public health institutions that are focused on agetech and elder care.

Each AITC decides which projects get funding, and also gives them access to gerontologists, geriatricians, Alzheimer’s specialists and other experts. The idea is to give each project the same kind of mentoring and guidance as pre-seed startups in accelerator programs, Liu said.

The second a2 Pilot Awards are already in the works, with the next batch of finalists currently selected. They will be announced in spring. The a2 Collective will also accept applications for its third competition from May 1 to July 31.

Liu told TechCrunch he expects to see a dramatic increase in agetech.

“As the cost of computing goes down and our AI model capabilities go up, I think we can expect a Cambrian explosion of new technologies that will dramatically help older Americans, including those with Alzheimer’s, live longer and better lives and perhaps help out our beleaguered health care system,” he said. We’re in the early innings of it.”

Backed by the National Institute on Aging, the a2 Pilot Awards fosters agetech entrepreneurship by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Updating CRMs after each call is an important task for sales representatives, but it means a lot of administrative work that takes time away from actually selling. Attention wants to fix that with its sales assistant, which uses AI tech and natural language processing to automatically fill in CRMs after calls and draft follow-up emails.

The New York-based startup announced today it has raised $3.1 million led by Eniac Ventures, with participation from institutional investors Frst, Liquid2 Ventures, Maschmeyer Group Ventures and Ride Ventures. The round also included the founders of Ramp, Pawp, Truework and CBInsights.

Attention was founded in September 2021 by CEO Anis Bennaceur and CTO Matthias Wickenburg. The two met while running Swipecast and Mixer, competing job platforms for creative professionals. After five years of being rivals, the two got coffee and realized they face many of the same challenges with sales, like needing to constantly update Salesforce and onboarding new sales reps as quickly as possible.

“After many back-and-forths, we decided to work together,” said Bennaceur. “I had hundreds of conversations with sales leaders and junior sales reps, asking about their pain points, digging into potential desired solutions, and continuously iterating, while Matthias would build those solutions in parallel. After numerous iterations, we knew that we were onto something.”

One of the things Attention helps with is CRM hygiene, which means making sure CRM software is updated with clean and accurate data. Bennaceur explains this is important because chief revenue officers and vice presidents of sales rely on their organization’s CRM to track interactions with customers, manage leads and analyze sales data. This lets them make decisions on how to increase revenue.

But there are several barriers to maintaining CRM hygiene. For one thing, it’s a lot of administrative work for sales reps and takes time away from actually selling. It’s also easy to miss data when sales reps leave their jobs or pass accounts onto other reps. This results in lost leads and customer attrition. Finally, without any way to track what is said during sales calls, revenue leaders have a harder time deciding how to advance potential deals.

Attention fixes this by automatically exporting data from calls into CRMs. For example, if a sales team uses the MEDDIC sales methodology, a framework of questions that includes six steps, Attention knows if each step has been covered in a conversation, and exports that information into the relevant Salesforce or Hubspot fields. This reduces the amount of busywork sales reps need to do, while giving revenue leaders more insight into sales leads and revenue opportunities.

By using natural language processing, Attention is also able to identify content for sales coaching in calls. During a call, it displays battlecards in real-time to help sales reps figure out what to say. “Let’s say a prospect asks you a question on how compare to your competitor on a specific capability. A battlecard would contain the elements to answer that question appropriately, and appears on your screen during your conversation,” says Bennaceur.

To increase deal velocity, or the speed at which a sales organization is able to negotiate and sign contracts, sales teams need to send a lot of emails, quickly. But the followup email templates they often rely on are impersonal, while catered emails sometimes leave out important data, says Bennaceur. Attention is able to draft emails after calls based on what was said during the conversation. For example, a sales rep can ask Attention to “write an email recapping our conversation. Mention our prospect’s challenges and how our product can help them. And talk about next steps.”

Attention’s competitors include Gong and Chorus, both of which analyze customer conversations. Bennaceur says that Attention’s advantage is its ability to flexibly understand conversations, display real-time prompts during calls and provide A/B testing for its coaching. “We haven’t seen any of these players flexibly export conversations into CRMs, and this is a strong edge that we currently have,” he said.

In a statement about the funding, Eniac Ventures’ Hadley Harris said, “We’re thrilled to partner with Anis and Matthias as they leverage the latest developments in AI generation and natural language understanding to superpower sales organizations. We love working with repeat founders and couldn’t be happier with the strong pull they’re already getting from the market.”

Attention uses natural language processing to help sales reps sell faster by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

According to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is going to spend most of 2023 focusing on a brand new device — a mixed-reality headset that has been a work in progress for several years.

The new device could look like a pair of ski goggles, based on an earlier report from The Information. It will feature several cameras so that the device can track your movements in real time and see what’s happening in the real world.

Over the past few years, Apple CEO has stated several times that augmented reality is a promising technology. “I think the [AR] promise is even greater in the future. So it’s a critically important part of Apple’s future,” Cook told Kara Swisher back in 2021.

But it sounds like Apple’s upcoming product is going to offer a mixed-reality experience. Users will be able to experience both augmented and virtual reality. Details are still thin about the potential use cases and apps for the headset as it’s easier to control software leaks compared to product leaks.

According to Bloomberg, Apple is currently planning to announce the new device during the inaugural keynote of the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June — Apple could name it Reality Pro. Some developers have already started working on apps for the new Apple platform. The new operating system for the Apple headset could be called xrOS.

WWDC seems like the right stage for this kind of product announcement as a lot of developers working on third-party apps for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Watch are paying attention to this event. Having popular apps and games for this new Apple platform will be key when it comes to ensuring the long-term success of the Apple headset.

Apple’s 2023 could involve a 15-inch MacBook Air and a new Mac Pro

Mark Gurman also spent some time discussing Apple’s roadmap for 2023. And it seems like you shouldn’t expect a lot of surprises beyond the company’s mixed-reality headset.

For instance, the MacBook Pro, the Apple Watch, the AirPods, the iPad mini, the iPad Air and the base iPad model will only receive better components that should improve overall specifications. Don’t expect major design updates or new features. The Apple TV and iPad Pro aren’t going to be updated at all.

The most significant changes in Apple’s various lineups could be a 15-inch MacBook Air, the return of the big HomePod and a brand new Mac Pro. Apple has yet to update the Mac Pro with its own ARM-based chip — it still sports an Intel CPU. According to Bloomberg, the new Mac Pro would look a lot like the existing Mac Pro.

It will feature the M2 Ultra that you can find in the Mac Studio. Unfortunately, users won’t be able to upgrade RAM due to the company’s unified memory approach. On paper, it’s going to be hard to convince people to buy a Mac Pro instead of a Mac Studio. But that doesn’t matter too much as the Mac Pro has never been a significant revenue-making product.

Of course, there’s one product that is more important than everything else for Apple — that’s the iPhone. According to 9to5mac, iPhone 15 production is going as planned. The Dynamic Island could make its way to all four models — the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.

There’s one thing for sure. This year, Apple will comply with EU’s mandate and change the iPhone’s charging port from the Lightning connector to USB-C. And many iPhone users have been waiting for a simple change like this to upgrade their phone.

Apple’s mixed-reality headset could arrive this year by Romain Dillet originally published on TechCrunch

Seattle-based XetHub, a startup that makes it easy for businesses to use Git for data management, today announced that it has raised a $7.5 million seed financing round led by Madrona. The basic idea here is to allow developers to work with data the same way they work with code, including all of the collaboration features a tool like Git enables. The team describes XetHub as a “collaborative storage platform for data management.”

The company was co-founded by Yucheng Low (CEO), Ajit Banerjee and Rajat Arya, a team with years of experience working with large data platforms. Indeed, Low previously co-founded ML startup Turi, where Arya was the first employee. Apple acquired the company in 2016, allowing Low and Arya to work on various parts of Apple’s ML platform stack, with Arya leading Apple’s data platform team, for example. It was also at Apple that the two met Banerjee, who previously worked at Inktomi, Amazon and Facebook. He also previously founded two startups.

During their time working on the data platform at Apple, the team realized that there was still a lot of room for improvement in the data management realm.

“It really shouldn’t come as a surprise, but data is far more important than everything else. More important than the model — than anything else,” Low told me. “Managing where you store this data, how you collaborate on this data is really fundamental. However, what we see is that the way we manage data today really feels like how source code was done 30 years ago — which means version control or collaboration is done by copy-and-paste — sometimes there’s a more elaborate version of it, but it’s still ultimately copy-and-paste if I want to make sure no one else is touching what I’m doing.”

Just like developers have moved to tools like Git for collaborating on their source code, XetHub wants to allow them to use these same familiar primitives for working with data.

“The way we think about it is that for the first time, we truly enable developers to work on data in exactly the same way as code,” Low said. He noted that the team aimed to create a tool that doesn’t just mimic a Git-like experience but one that preserves the core Git user experience — including all of the integrations that developers are familiar with.

Currently, the service can handle repositories with up to 1TB of data, with plans to expand this to 100TB soon. Few developers will want to clone a large repository like this, so one nifty feature here is that developers can also mount these repositories and make them behave like a local file system, no matter whether that’s on their laptop or a large GPU cluster. It’s also worth noting that the tool is agnostic to file formats.

From a marketing perspective, the team is focusing its efforts on AI/ML teams, but users can obviously use XetHub for managing any kind of data.

Xethub is now publicly available with a free community edition that you can use to manage up to 20 GB of deduplicated storage. Low tells me the company is already talking to some enterprise customers, but the team isn’t quite ready to name names yet.

“Yucheng and the exceptional XetHub team have been innovating with machine learning for well over a decade, and then applying their skills at the most iconic consumer technology company – Apple. XetHub enables developers to work with large datasets, in collaboration with others, to build intelligent and generative applications,” said Matt McIlwain, Managing Director, Madrona. “Developing and deploying these applications is constrained by legacy infrastructure and complex data workflows, and XetHub addresses these pain points from the developer point of view.”

XetHub raises $7.5M for its Git-based data collaboration platform by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

TikTok stars Charli and Dixie D’Amelio have been working to translate their social media success into a business empire with help from their parents, Marc and Heidi. In addition to brand deals and sponsorships, the famous family has been investing in startups through a new VC fund 444 Capital, and this past fall announced plans to launch their own fashion, beauty and lifestyle businesses, as well. Among the first of these new ventures is a women’s footwear line which is now on track for a May 2023 launch, Marc D’Amelio confirmed in an interview on a panel at theConsumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week.

The panel, which took place at the Variety Entertainment Summit on Friday, revealed how heavily Marc was involved in the management of the D’Amelio family empire, as he handled answering most of the interviewer’s questions about the upcoming branded products and other D’Amelio family ventures. At one point, Dixie even complimented her father’s business-savvy, explaining that “Charli and I always went to my dad for advice on deals and even long-term friendships,” and how “trusting him has been the best thing for both of our careers.”

The D’Amelio Brands initiative was launched with $6 million in seed funding and includes Autograph co-chairman and Whip Media co-founder and CEO Richard Rosenblatt as an investor and co-founder. Other investors include Apple SVP Eddy Cue, Lions Gate CEO Jon Feltheimer, Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin, and Clothia CEO Elena Silenok. United Talent Agency, which reps the D’Amelios, is also a backer.

The company will have its first board meeting at the end of January, Marc noted.

At CES, Marc explained how merchandise was “low-hanging fruit,” and, when the new products launch, all the family’s intellectual property will be owned by them.

“We didn’t try to reinvent the wheel,” he said. “We saw other creators and other people come out and own their brands 100%. So we started this company called D’Amelio Brands where the main focus is finding ideas, concepts, and products that we’re passionate about and basically incubating them — and start to create things that we own with our investors 100%.”

“We started a footwear company the under the D’Amelio last name, which will be launching in May 2023,” he added. (Earlier reports had said the debut D’Amelio brands had been set to launch by the end of 2022.) Dixie added that the family was already “pretty far along” in the design process with regard to the new brand initiative, adding that the family attends “almost every meeting” together.

The interview only briefly touched on what to expect from the business itself. Marc noted the new footwear brand will include a head designer who was previously a top designer at Jessica Simpson footwear (Lauren DiCicco), who was also from the family’s hometown back in Connecticut. Plus, Marc referenced his own history in the fashion industry, having been an independent rep in years past, he said. He also had a showroom in New York as well as his own clothing brand before his daughters’ fame took things in another direction.

Despite the plan to try to spin up a D’Amelio brand empire, Marc confirmed the family would continue to do brand sponsorship deals for third parties working with their agents at UTA. To date, the D’Amelio sisters have worked with brands like Dunkin’ and Sabra hummus, and have a clothing line with Hollister.

However, Marc explained that the idea with D’Amelio Brands was to set the family up for a future where they could find financial success outside of the content creation business.

“…Doing content creation for brands and endorsement deals, you start to get into a hamster wheel,” he said. “They’re not movie stars. They’re not doing a movie and then taking time off. It’s ‘what’s the next deal, what’s the deal, what’s the next deal?’ I think what we’re trying to do is — I’m trying to create businesses that will work; that the girls can start incubating, plant the seed. And then I would love to have it where it can survive without any of us.”

For the time being, however, the D’Amelio family is staying busy, and the D’Amelio Brands initiative is only one of several projects the family is involved with. Dixie, for example, is working on her music and just landed a song in the current season of “Gossip Girl.” The family is also starting on Season 3 of their reality show on Hulu, in a deal also brokered by UTA.

Dixie admitted they’ve had a “lot of back and forth feelings” about doing the series but ultimately believes that its ability to raise awareness about mental health issues, as related to social media fame, was worth the effort.

“We do enjoy doing it because we film the videos, and then we put our phones down. My family and I all talk a lot about mental health and how important that was. To be able to share that journey on the show has been amazing,” said Dixie. “And that’s probably something I love the most — being able to talk to people about — not just, ‘oh, doing TikTok hurts my mental health’ but…being able to realize other people relate to that has made me feel good,” she said.

D’Amelio family’s new footwear line to launch May 2023 by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Private equity giant Vista Equity Partners has announced plans to take Duck Creek Technologies private in a $2.6 billion deal.

Boston-based Duck Creek, a SaaS-based software provider for the property and casualty (P&C) insurance sector, went public back in 2020, initially hitting a market cap of around $5 billion. After peaking at around $7 billion in early 2021, Duck Creek’s fortunes have fallen somewhat, with its valuation plummeting to below $2 billion over the past year, with a closing price of around $13 per share as of Friday.

Vista’s $19 per-share offer represents a 46% premium on Duck Creek’s most recent market closing price, and a 64% premium on its volume-weighted average price (VWAP) over the previous 30 days, equating to $2.6 billion which Vista said it will pay in an all-cash transaction.

Enterprising

It’s worth noting that Vista has been at the center of some of the biggest enterprise deals over the past year, including Citrix which Vista partnered with Evergreen/Elliott on to acquire for $16.5 billion. Vista also snapped up automated tax compliance company Avalara for $8.4 billion, while it sold disaster recovery company Datto for $6.2 billion.

Specific to today’s announcement, Vista also has some history in the insurance software space, having acquired the likes of Applied Systems, Eagleview, and Vertafore over the past couple of decades.

“Vista has an established track record of partnering with leading enterprise software businesses within the insurance industry and related verticals,” Vista managing director Jeff Wilson said in a press release. “We are excited to work with the Duck Creek team as we look to build on their best-in-class platform and solutions, which serve many of the world’s leading P&C insurance carriers.”

Vista said that it expects to conclude the transaction in Q2 2023.

Vista Equity Partners to acquire insurance software company Duck Creek for $2.6B by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

TechCrunch Live hosted a special, in-person event at CES featuring a long conversation with Ecobee CEO and founder Stuart Lombard. This was our first in-person TechCrunch Live, and I can’t wait to do more. We talked about a lot — how a startup can maximize CES, build delightful products, and how hardware startups can raising money.

Nest loomed large over a part of this interview. While Lombard and Ecobee claim to have produced the first web-connected thermostat, Nest, launched four years after Ecobee, defined the standard. After Nest burst from stealth in 2011, it forced Ecobee to retool its smart thermostat. As Lombard admits, Nest changed the trajectory of Ecobee. “[The Nest thermostat] taught us the difference between wanting to be good and actually being good,” he said, adding later, “It really forced us to retool and think about what it means to be great.”

And the early Ecobee products were not great. “We made a lot of compromises along the way,” Lombard said, showing off Ecobee’s first product to the TechCrunch Live cameras. The differences between the first Ecobee and the first Nest are striking: Where the Nest is constructed out of sleek metal and shiny glass, the Ecobee is all plastic. Sure, it worked well but it lacked the same appeal as the first Nest. He says, in short, as a startup, customers need to love your company and products.

I hear this sentiment a lot on TechCrunch Live. Great products delight in surprising ways. Where the Ecobee offered similar functionality, Lombard admits it wasn’t until the Nest hit the market that Ecobee developed a world-class user experience and design.

I hope you can take the time and watch the show. It’s embedded below, and it’s a must-hear for hardware startups. Trust me, this is one of the best TechCrunch Live events.

Watch the entire show right here.

Show Outline

On CES:

What’s it like for a hardware startup to be at CES?
What should a hardware startup aim to accomplish CES?

Founding Ecobee: Developing a market segment and competing against Nest:

How can a household goal turn into a company?
How does Stuart feel Nest changed Ecobee, and how can founders best utilize competition, especially in marketing?
What does it feel like when your company finally finds product market fit?

How Ecobee is still winning:

Why is it hard for hardware companies to raise capital?
Why Ecobee took a significant investment from Amazon, and what advice does Stuart have for founders talking to Amazon?
How does Ecobee keep up with changing consumer expectations?

Fundraising for hardware

Why Stuart advises startups to look at their customer list for investment opportunities.
Why a company should aim for longevity in fundraising
Why the easiest time to pitch a VC is before you have anything to sell.
Why Ecobee tried to go public through a SPAC in 2020.

Ecobee CEO and Founder speaks to TechCrunch Live about CES, Nest, and finding product market fit by Matt Burns originally published on TechCrunch

E-commerce in Southeast Asia is very fragmented, with consumers having their choice of marketplaces, e-commerce sites and social commerce. Many prefer to buy from large marketplaces, says FLIK co-founder Ahmad Gadi, because those platforms offer promotions and cashback deals. But for direct-to-consumer brands, marketplaces aren’t the best way to get consumer data or foster brand loyalty. That’s where FLIK’s unified payment solution comes in. It saves buyers’ checkout information across retail sites in FLIK’s merchant network, making buying easier and leading to higher conversion rates. For brands, it means more control over consumer data and less platform fees.

Based in Jakarta, FLIK announced today that it has raised $1.1 million in pre-seed funding from East Ventures, with participation from Init-6, GMO VenturePartners and Saison Capital.

Before founding FLIK, Gadi’s previous startups included Pawoon, a point-of-sale platform that enables businesses to accept digital payments.

Gadi told TechCrunch that FLIK’s team is experienced in the payments and merchant business, both offline and online. “We thought that checkout is a very strategic area to build products on, because it is actually the point of entry for money into the business,” he said. “As online sellers in this region are becoming more savvy, they would want to be able to optimize their online business more deeply. We see an opportunity to unify checkout experience because this has always been an area that is difficult to solve outside the typical centralized platforms such as marketplaces.”

Because e-commerce and checkout methods are currently so fragmented, it’s hard for brands to consolidate data, Gadi added. By using FLIK, they can gain access to information like potential product upsells that can be offered at checkout based on shoppers’ browsing behaviors, and what types of discounts and promotions they are most interested in.

FLIK works with e-commerce sites built with platforms like WooCommerce and Magento, plus social media channels like Instagram shops and chat applications. It can also be embedded into blog articles to turn them into mini e-commerce sites.

FLIK plans to add more services, including product discovery, price comparison, rewards and post-purchase services like refund and returns processing. Shoppers can download its app to keep track of their purchases and offers.

Gadi says FLIK is currently positioned in a blue ocean space because other players in the D2C enabler space focus on Shopify-like storefront builders. FLIK, on the other hand, focuses on the checkout layer and building a network of shoppers. “Unifying all the fragmented checkout experiences on the web means we could work with all these D2C enablers out there to provide a consistent and optimized checkout layer on top of their existing platforms.”

FLIK’s unified checkout solution gives Southeast Asian sellers more control over data by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

In many ways, 2022 was a year of growth for the cloud technology space. Unpredictable macroeconomic developments saw many organizations thinking about and preparing for greater wins in the years to come instead of right away.

In 2023, much of this preparation could come to fruition as the growth achieved in 2022 contributes to a stronger economy and rapid advancements, particularly in tech.

Global IT spending is projected to climb by 5.1% to $4.6 trillion in 2023, according to Gartner, driven by a 11.3% increase in investments in cloud applications to $879.62 billion. What does this kind of increased spending and investment mean for organizations? C2C Global, a Google Cloud customer community, has identified five cloud trends to watch in 2023.

AI and ML tech adoption will rise

Every organization wants to harness the many and varied capabilities of AI and ML technology. Some want to use their data to enhance analytics and build predictive models, and others want to automate repeatable processes.

Currently, many AI and ML models require extensive testing and training before they can be implemented at scale across large organizations hosting petabytes of data or serving wide customer bases. In fact, C2C’s researchhas found that only 47% of respondents are currently using AI and ML. However, these technologies ranked high among the ones that respondents hope to adopt in the future.

The promise of these technologies is too significant to ignore. As models are refined, and training and testing become more reliable and automatic, organizations will come to rely on these technologies more.

5 cloud trends to track in 2023 by Ram Iyer originally published on TechCrunch