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When Alec Hartman first decided he wanted a house after his first child was born several years ago, he was surprised by the lack of options.

“I didn’t like anything I saw, and I wanted a new house and I couldn’t get one,” he recalls. “And like every crazy tech person, you have to ask questions like, ‘Why can’t I go online and get a house? Why is this so difficult?’ ”

The questions, he said, were “just rabbit holes.” Hartman ended up building his own house, and essentially serving as the general contractor.

That experience, and the questions leading up to it, got Hartman to start thinking about how to solve the problem for others like him. So In May 2020, he teamed up with fellow Digital Ocean co-founders Mitch Wainer and Ben Uretsky to startup Welcome Homes, a New York City-based company that offers people a way to design and build new homes online. (DigitalOcean’s other two co-founders Jesse Mauro and Marc Hartman are advisors to the company).

The trio had left Digital Ocean, a cloud infrastructure services provider, before the company went public in 2021 and concluded that homebuilding was not that dissimilar from their previous venture.

“Our main thing was educating and being that big value of simplicity for our customers, and while this is a completely different product and industry, we think the way in terms of owning the market position of simplicity,” Hartman told TechCrunch in an interview.

Interestingly, when Welcome Homes started out, it was focused on giving people the ability to build custom homes. But the team, according to Hartman, soon realized that many potential customers actually wanted the opposite – fewer choices.

“Thankfully, we were able to notice that quickly and revamped the product” to offer a variety of models, or move-in ready homes, going live in March of 2021, he said.

The startup “6xed” home sales in 2022, he added. Today, Welcome Homes is available in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. The company says it appeals to home buyers by offering “guaranteed pricing,” and a pledge to streamline the process of building a home – from land selection to financing and construction. Excluding land, the cost of building a home through Welcome ranges from $596,000 to $1.75 million.

To build on its momentum, Welcome is announcing today that raised more than $29 million in a Series A funding round led by Era Ventures that closed in September of 2022. The company plans to use its new capital to boost its current headcount of 40, develop its “proprietary land technology,” design new home models and expand into new markets throughout the U.S.

Parker89, Montage Ventures, Foundamental, Global Founders Capital, Activant Capital, Gaingels, Elefund and Arkin Holdings also participated in the financing, which brings Welcome’s total venture capital raised since inception to nearly $35 million.

Welcome is just one of many startups attempting to address the housing shortage that have raised venture capital in recent years. In November, Atmos, a startup which has built an online marketplace that teams up homebuyers with builders and land developers to design and build custom homes, emerged from stealth in November with $12.5 million raised in Series A funding round led by Khosla Ventures. And in February 2022, tech-enabled homebuilder Homebound raised $75 million in a Khosla-led Series C.

In conjunction with the funding, Clelia Warburg Peters, managing partner at Era Ventures, will join Welcome Homes’ board of directors. Peters previously was a venture partner at Bain Capital Ventures and president of Warburg Realty. Era is a new firm focused on investing in “ideas that leverage technology and innovation to reimagine the built environment.”

Via email, Peters described Welcome’s capital-light business model as that of a “neo-builder,” which she described as a three-sided, managed marketplace that links demand (buyers), supply (builders) and the required financing (banks).

She believes the startup can help alleviate the United States’ chronic undersupply of single-family housing.

“Today, the total US single-family homebuilding market value stands between $250 billion and $400 billion annually, and we believe that this number could grow with Welcome Homes’ unique ‘lot-by-lot’ approach focusing on urban infill – this sits between production homebuilding, which generally focuses on master build communities and custom homebuilding, which is inaccessible to most consumers because of price and timeline),” Peters wrote.

The investor went on to liken Welcome Homes to Tesla and Apple in that it has the potential to build “tap into an appetite for productized, branded homes that have not been sold ‘en masse’ since the Sears Catalog over half a century ago.”

“We believe these homes will resonate with a generation of millennial homebuyers who have grown accustomed to similar buying experiences from high-end brands such as Apple and Tesla.” Peters added.

Meanwhile, she told TechCrunch, Welcome can leverage technology to automate and alleviate most back-office functions that builders might find burdensome while giving banks a way to offer construction financing directly to the homebuyer in a less risky manner since they will “be working with a scaled partner across multiple projects.”

Finally, unlike traditional homebuilders, Welcome Homes doesn’t have land or unsold homes on its balance sheet, which Peters believes will allow it to scale more quickly.

“We’re really more of a tech company than a tech-enabled homebuilder,” said Hartman, who also previously started and sold another startup, TechDay. “Welcome is figuring out things like how we can use imaging to detect walk patterns, or how to create a rules-based system around municipal variances so we know exactly what type of home would fit on a given property.”

From cloud computing to proptech: Digital Ocean co-founders raise $29M for Welcome Homes by Mary Ann Azevedo originally published on TechCrunch

Scalable production of alternative proteins continues to be a big challenge for companies in this sector, and No Meat Factory wants to help with that.

The Canada-based company, which produces alternative proteins for third-party customers, took in $42 million in new Series B capital to build a bigger manufacturing facility in the U.S. No Meat Factory has now raised $60 million to date.

New investor Tengelmann Growth Partners led the round and was joined by existing investor Emil Capital Partners, who initially invested in No Meat Factory when Dieter Thiem and Leon Bell initially co-founded the company in 2019.

Both Bell and Thiem have plant-based food production backgrounds, and Thiem was even a master butcher in Germany.

Their goal is to expand their production footprint in North America. No Meat Factory’s current 30,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in British Columbia produces meat alternative products, like nuggets, hamburgers and whole-muscle cuts, Bell told TechCrunch. The new capital would enable a second facility to be built in the Pacific Northwest that, at 200,000 square feet, would make similar products as well as add capability to make sausages, hot dogs and deli-sliced meat alternatives. The new facility is expected to go online toward the end of 2023, he added.

No Meat Factory began working with clients in September of 2020 and is bringing in revenue; however, Thiem and Bell declined to provide specifics on year-over-year traction other than to say there has been “consistent growth.”

The world remains in a food crisis, but the jury is still out if meat alternatives will fill that gap and gain mainstream popularity. Many companies are working on it, with Project Eaden being one of the more recent to attract venture capital for its plant-based steak alternative. And, with more consumers making healthier and more sustainable food choices, additional industrial-scale manufacturing capabilities are likely to help increase the output as demand for plant-based products grows. Other companies are also working to add capacity to the industry. For example, both Planetary and Prolific Machines raised capital in 2022 to build production facilities.

No Meat Factory’s investors agree that additional capacity is needed for this industry.

“As more brands understand the need to provide customers with delicious plant-based alternatives, companies like No Meat Factory are poised to experience rapid growth and increasing demand for its manufacturing capabilities,” added Daniel Bentrup, investment partner at Tengelmann Growth Partners, in a statement.

More manufacturing capabilities should also assist in narrowing the gap between the cost of producing plant-based meat and animal-based meat. Though traditional meat prices rose significantly during the global pandemic, a Good Food Institute report looked at average retail prices from 2019 and found that the cost for plant-based meat was double that of beef, with it being two or three times the cost of chicken and pork.

Meanwhile, with increased demand for meat alternatives on the horizon, Bell said the company will work on expanding its customer base and adding to its 40-person workforce.

“Working with brand owners on the additional capacity coming unlocks some opportunity for us that we can pursue,” he added. “We will also focus more on a private label strategy as well, for example, offer our products and our ideas to some of these private label manufacturers. With our phase one site, we were limited given the size of some of the private label opportunities in the market.”

No Meat Factory eats up new capital to build bigger protein production plant in U.S. by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

In a recent episode of “Customer Wars” a woman put a chainsaw down her pants in an effort to steal it. And you might have caught the video of the thieves stealing from Ulta.

Videos like this are all over the internet, and the retail industry is reporting that theft continues to rise. Target attributed hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit losses in 2022 to organized retail theft, while Walmart recently said increased thefts may result in higher prices and store closures.

“Shrinkage” is the term retailers use to convey losses due to product theft, damage or misplacement. The National Retail Federation reported that in the past five years, shrinkage has increasingly become a $100 billion problem for retailers. Digging into shrinkage, the NRF says an estimated 65% of it is due to theft alone.

Enter Nvidia. Known for developing and manufacturing graphics processing units, the company announced three new Retail AI Workflows as part of its NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite. These workflows are meant to help developers more quickly build and deploy applications designed to prevent theft.

The workflows are built on Nvidia’s Metropolis Microservices, a low- or no-code way of building artificial intelligence applications and then integrating them with a company’s legacy systems, like point-of-sale, said Azita Martin, Nvidia’s vice president for AI for retail, CPG and QSR, in a pre-brief with media this week.

The three tools include:

Retail Loss Prevention AI Workflow: This is what you might call the main tool and kind of a fun one. Martin said this workflow was pretrained with hundreds of images of the most-stolen products — we’re talking detergent, alcohol, over-the-counter medications and even steak — so that the AI could recognize the variety of shapes and sizes that the bottles and packaging come in. New products scanned during checkout become part of the training as well.

“We primarily focused on the brands that are manufactured by consumer packaged goods companies, but it can be customized for a specific retailer,” Martin added. “They can use synthetic data generation and some additional data to further train it for all of the different types of products that that particular retailer is selling in their stores.”

Multi-Camera Tracking AI Workflow: The multitarget, multicamera capabilities allow application developers to create systems that track objects across multiple cameras throughout the store. The objects are tracked through visual embeddings or appearance, instead of personal biometric information so shoppers can maintain privacy.

“As customers are moving throughout the store, if products are being moved, it tracks those products or even tracks shopping baskets or carts from camera to camera,” Martin explained. “It also gives retailers an overview of the customer journey throughout the store. So this is another area where we see tremendous amounts of interest from retailers.”

Retail Store Analytics Workflow: This tool uses computer vision to provide insights for store analytics, including store traffic trends, counts of customers with shopping baskets and aisle occupancy via custom dashboards.

“Using a heat map, you know where your customers are mostly going and what are the most popular paths for customers,” Martin said. “That allows you to optimize the assortment and merchandising in the store to increase revenue.”

Additional details on these new tools will be unveiled at the National Retail Federation Conference in New York beginning January 15.

Nvidia unveils new AI workflows to help the retail industry with loss prevention by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

Without customers, there can be no business. So how can you drive new customers to your startup or keep existing ones engaged? The answer is simple: Growth marketing.

As a growth marketer who has honed this craft for the past decade, I’ve been exposed to countless courses, and I can confidently attest that working is the best way to learn.

I am not saying you need to immediately join a Series A startup or land a growth marketing role at a large corporation. Instead, I have broken down how you can teach yourself growth marketing in five easy steps:

Setting up a landing page.
Launching a paid acquisition channel.
Booting up an email marketing campaign.
A/B test growth experimentation.
Deciding which metrics matter most for your startup.

In this second part of my five-part series, I will teach you how to set up a paid acquisition channel to drive online traffic and, ultimately, conversions (purchases) to a landing page. For the entirety of this series, we will assume we are working on a direct-to-consumer (DTC) athletic supplement brand.

Picking a paid acquisition channel

Even with the most premium product on the market, most consumers aren’t going to magically discover its existence on your website. This is where paid acquisition is most effective — educating and driving consumer interest in your products.

When deciding which paid acquisition channel to launch, there is one key aspect you must consider: your target demographic. Where are your target consumers spending their time online? Are they scrolling through TikTok or reading an article on LinkedIn? Once you can answer this question, it will make selecting the first channel to launch quite easy.

In the event that your target demographic is already on numerous acquisition channels, you can choose Facebook or Google as your first channel. These two platforms are considered the duopoly in paid acquisition and will be the best primer for learning how to manage paid social media and paid search channels.

Teach yourself growth marketing: How to launch a paid acquisition channel by Annie Saunders originally published on TechCrunch

Elon Musk should take note of a recent major privacy fine for Metabefore forging ahead with any plan to force behavioral ads on Twitter users in the European Union.

To wit: In remarks today, following the publication of two final decisions against Meta by EU privacy regulators applying the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to Facebook and Instagram — decisions which include a total of around $410M in fines (still with a third decision against WhatsApp due shortly), along with orders to correct its unlawful data processing within three months — the European Data Protection Board (EPBD) has issued a clear warning to other businesses that seek to ignore EU data protection rules by not providing users with a choice over being subject to tracking for behavioural advertising.

“The EDPB binding decisions clarify that Meta unlawfully processed personal data for behavioural advertising. Such advertising is not necessary for the performance of an alleged contract with Facebook and Instagram users. These decisions may also have an important impact on other platforms that have behavioural ads at the centre of their business model,” said EDPB chair, Andrea Jelinek, in a statement.

The Board also dubbed the relationship between Meta and its users “imbalanced”, citing “grave breaches” of transparency obligations it said had “impacted the reasonable expectations of the users”, as well as criticizing the tech giant for presenting its services to users “in a misleading manner” — which led to the EDPB also finding a breach of the GDPR’s fairness principle as well as transparency failings.

The supervisory body oversees application of the EU’s GDPR with the aim of ensuring consistency in how the law is applied by regulators in Member States. And it was ultimately responsible for striking down Meta’s bogus claim of contractual necessity for behavioral ads — issuing a binding decision that forced the company’s lead data protection regulator for the GDPR, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), to reverse a conclusion it had arrived at in its 2021 draft decision and find that Meta’s practice of forcing consent to tracking ads through a claim of contractual necessity is unlawful.

Behavioral advertising refers to a form of targeted advertising whereby the choice of ad served is determined as a result of tracking and profiling individual users via their online activity (and sometimes also by combining offline data-sets to further enrich these per-user profiles) — so, in EU data protection law terms, by processing personal data — an activity that requires a valid legal basis. Other types of targeted advertising which do not require processing personal data (such as contextually targeted advertising) are available. Hence Meta’s claim that intrusive tracking and profiling of individuals is a necessary core component of its services also failed to pass muster with the Board.

The EDPB’s remarks today — of the “important impact” the Meta ads decision could have on other platforms — also look relevant for TikTok which last year sought to remove users’ ability to refuse its tracking-ads — saying it planned to change the legal base for “personalized” advertising from consent to legitimate interest — before quickly freezing the move in the face of warnings from privacy regulators.

Any move by TikTok now to revive such a switch — with these two major GDPR decisions against Meta’s ‘forced consent’ standing — would only invite swift regulatory scrutiny so such a shift to its claimed legal basis is surely highly unlikely (not least as the video sharing platform is busy trying to burnish its image in front of EU lawmakers — as the Commission starts applying new oversight powers on digital platforms under the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA)).

So just because Facebook has — for years — processed and profited off of Europeans’ data by running unlawful ads does not mean other ad-funded platforms are going to get the same free ride from the bloc’s regulators. Enforcement is here at last.

(For the record, Meta has said it will appeal the two GDPR decisions. It alsodenies they mean it has no option but to ask European users for their consent to its behavioral ads — pointing out that the regulation allows for “a range” of legal bases but without specifying which of these limited (and bounded) alternatives to consent might fly… So, er, public interest behavioral Facebook ads anyone?!)

Twitter, meanwhile, has also just announced its iOS app will default to a ‘For you’ algorithmic content feed — requiring users to actively swipe to view their usual chronological feed — which could raise questions over the legal basis the company is relying upon to push content personalization in front of users who may not want it. So there’s no shortage of interesting considerations flowing from Meta’s GDPR spanking.

This new GDPR enforcement dynamic (if we dare call it that) presents regional opportunities for other approaches (and innovation) in the area of lawful targeted advertising — whether that’s tracking based ads with valid user consent. Or forms of ad targeting that don’t involve any processing of personal data. (Or, well, which seek to claim they don’t.)

And we’re already seeing some high level moves to capitalize on the slow decline/demise of lawless behavioral ads, such as Google’s plan to switch away from individual-level ad targeting to alternative ‘privacy-sandboxing’ interest-targeting ads — or a new proposal by European telcos to band together on a joint venture to offer opt-in ad targeting of mobile users (which the carriers say would limit targeting to first party data and gather explicit user consent to the ads per advertiser/brand).

How Meta gets its ad-targeting operation in legal order, meanwhile, remains to be seen. But, well, fixing infrastructure that’s never cared to comply seems like it could be very expensive…

The EDPB’s press release today also addresses the reason why it instructed the DPC to investigate Meta’s processing of sensitive data — something that has led the Irish regulator to accuse the Board of jurisdictional overreach and announce that it’s taking legal action to try to annul that component of its instruction.

On this, the Board said it examined whether the complaints against the legality of Meta’s ads had been addressed with due diligence by the DPC.

“The complainant had raised the fact that sensitive data is processed by Meta IE [Ireland]. However, the IE DPA [aka the DPC] did not assess processing of sensitive data and therefore, the EDPB did not have sufficient factual evidence to enable it to make findings on any possible infringement of the controller’s obligations under Art. 9 GDPR [which deals with the processing of special category data],” it writes. “As a result, the EDPB disagreed with the IE DPA’s proposed conclusion that Meta IE is not legally obliged to rely on consent to carry out the processing activities involved in the delivery of its Facebook and Instagram services, as this could not be categorically concluded without further investigations. Therefore, the EDPB decided that the IE DPA must carry out a new investigation.”

The DPC has frequently been accused of ‘fiddling round the edges’ of GDPR complaints — such as by opening narrower enquiries than complainants had called for (or not opening a probe at all). It is also being sued for inaction (and has even faced allegations of criminal corruption) in a couple of cases. So it’s certainly notable (and awkward for Ireland) that the EDPB’s binding decision concludes the Irish regulator failed to investigate elements of Meta’s data processing it says were required for it to reach its proposed conclusion that Meta was not legally obliged to rely on consent.

As black marks against the DPC’s approach to GDPR enforcement go, this schooling from the Board is a major addition to Dublin’s tally.

Still, the EDPB’s instruction that the DPC open a whole new investigation of Meta’s data processing has invited some quizzical attention — given EU law provides for the independence of data protection authorities.

On this, noyb’s honorary chairman, Max Schrems — a long time critic of (especially) the DPC’s approach to GDPR enforcement but also, more generally, how poorly resources EU DPAs are and how difficult it is for Europeans to exercise their rights — suggests it still shows the system does not work.

Few would say GDPR enforcement is smooth sailing — but heading towards the fifth birthday of the regulation coming into application (this May) there is now a regular flow of decisions, including some major ones with implications for rights hostile business models. So the needle appears to be moving — even though the story rarely ends at a final decision (since years of legal appeals can follow).

A lot of attention to regulatory-working in the EU this year will also swivel onto the European Commission — to see how it enforces two newer regulations on larger digital platforms (the aforementioned DSA and DMA); a new centralized enforcement structure devised by the bloc’s lawmakers that was undoubtedly informed by years of criticism of slow and weak GDPR enforcement.

So the legacy of Meta’s lawless ads, and Ireland’s dilly-dallying to enforce against its consentless tracking-and-profiling, is already a lasting one.

Meta’s ads being found unlawful in the EU is a warning to other ad-funded platforms by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch

Teams dedicated to boosting customer acquisition, retention and sales don’t necessarily have the time or tools to use data insights effectively. In a 2019 survey, NewVantage partners found that the percentage of firms identifying themselves as being data-driven declined in each of the past three years, with over half admitting that they’re not competing on data and analytics.

That’s why Ariel Maislos, who sold semiconductor startup Anobit to Apple for $400 million in 2012, partnered with Itamar Falcon and Michael Ehrlich to launch Coho AI, a product-led revenue optimization platform designed to help businesses — specifically software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses — access insights for upselling and growth.

Coho AI today announced that it raised $8.5 million in a seed funding round led by Eight Roads, TechAviv and angel investors. CEO Falcon says that the capital will be put toward product R&D and expanding the size of Coho AI’s team, which currently stands at 17 people.

“Coho AI has developed a unique data consolidation platform that models the business value of a software-as-a-service company and maps it to the behavior of the customers in real time using machine learning and advanced analytics,” Falcon told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Coho AI’s behavioral modeling allows the crafting of personalized customer journeys that improve conversion metrics and help revenue teams, from sales and customer success, together with product teams, achieve higher growth and sales efficiencies.”

Coho AI’s target audience is sales, customer success and product teams within business-to-business (B2B) SaaS companies. The platform provides AI models to discover what makes a product “sticky” and what drives users to upgrade to a paid B2B SaaS subscription plan, as well as real-time usage models to spotlight upsell opportunities and churn risks and segmentation models to identify different users based on their behavior.

Falcon says that all the models are trained using anonymized data from Coho Ai’s customer base. “By doing so, we are creating a network effect that each of our customers gets the benefits of a larger data set, which results in a more accurate model,” he added.

Beyond the AI-driven features, Coho AI delivers a single source of truth that sales, product and customer success teams can pull data from on both users and accounts. An observability dashboard enables growth teams to identify where users are in the customer journey and tailor a specific experience to reduce drop-offs, while real-time triggers highlight growth opportunities including “free-to-play? and upsells.

“There is skepticism among SaaS leaders about whether an external tool can model their unique product value and turn it into actionable insights for go-to-market teams,” Falcon said. “[But] Coho AI truly helps companies improve metrics such as net revenue retention rate and sales efficiency, which have become more crucial in the current economic climate.”

Coho AI competes with startups including Correlated and Endgame, but Falcon says that the company already has “dozens” of customers and partners. He declined to provide revenue figures, however.

Coho AI, which uses AI to help B2B SaaS companies boost revenue, raises $8.5M by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

When your Rolex is due for servicing, you’ll probably take the time to take it to a specialty service center. Likewise, you’re not going to trust the repair of the crimson soles of your Louboutins to the corner shoe-shiner. So why, then, should you be forced to use any plebeian charging network for your premium EV?

Mercedes-Benz is hoping that its well-heeled clientele will want to give their luxury EVs the same sort of premium treatment. At CES 2023 in Las Vegas last week, Mercedes announced the creation of a bespoke charging network for its growing line of EVs — all-electric offerings that will make up the company’s entire portfolio by 2030.

The $1 billion initial investment, split with Mn8 Energy, will create an initial 400-plus charging sites across North America, with an eventual 2,000 sites globally offering 10,000 total chargers.

By way of context, that’s one quarter the size of Tesla’s current Supercharger network, a charging offering that has taken a decade to build.

TechCrunch spoke with Magnus Östberg, chief software officer, and Markus Schäfer, chief technology officer, for more details on why Mercedes is jumping into EV charging and it how it will execute its plan.

Schäfer said the final cost to build the network will total a “couple billion dollars” based on the scope of the initial investment (“you can do the math,” he said).

“We think it’s absolutely worthwhile,” he said during an interview at CES 2023. “If you’re an EV driver, you know what kind of experience you have, especially in the holidays and traveling with an EV. And that’s not Mercedes-like.”

Though the initial investment is steep, Schäfer said it’s just another big spend the company is prepared to make to own the EV space.

“We talk about tens of billions in cost of transforming the company,” he said. “It was not our first priority to deal with the raw material supply chain or with cell-making, or with charging in the first place.”

But, these are things Mercedes has had to do, partnering with Rock Tech Lithium and others for supply of raw materials, and committing to build eight battery manufacturing plants globally.

Mercedes is now turning its attention to a charging network because nobody else has created a network they’re happy with.

“We thought really some other entities would take care [of it] and you know, energy companies running gas stations today would take care [of it]. It didn’t happen. It didn’t happen,” Schäfer lamented.

Of course, plunking down the billions in capital needed to build an EV charging network is just one piece — albeit an important one — to successfully complete such an ambitious project. Where these chargers are located and how they are maintained are the other critical components to the EV charging network pie.

Both Chief Software Officer Östberg and CTO Schäfer said that dealers will have input here, but that customer density and usage patterns will be the most significant factors in selecting locations.

“We know their preferences in traveling,” Schäfer said, “and that’s exactly going to be the basis for selecting the perfect site.”

Reading between the lines, that means this will not be a network designed to fill gaps in existing charging networks. It’ll instead be a premium choice offered in population-dense areas, places surely already well-serviced by Electrify America, Tesla’s Supercharger network and others.

Östberg said each spot will be selected to create a “luxury Mercedes experience,” ensuring none are installed at a “scary location.”

Proximity to good food will be a priority, while each location will have plenty of light and surveillance systems. Mercedes said it will invest to ensure each location is up to snuff, buying or leasing land as needed.

Chargers will be high-speed, 350 kW to start but upgradeable even beyond that, and Mercedes-Benz is taking steps to ensure up-time, the bane of many an EV road trip.

ChargePoint will provide the physical chargers and the back-end to monitor them. Schäfer said Mercedes and partner Mn8 will ensure spare parts are readily available nearby, along with on-call technicians to install them, but that it’ll be up to ChargePoint to keep the software side operational. That’s a reason for concern. When chargers break, it’s usually the software at fault. A 2022 survey of 657 Bay Area chargers found that 22.7% were non-functional due to various system failures like non-responsive touchscreens. Only 0.9% of the chargers had an obvious hardware fault like a broken connector.

The final luxury aspect here will be availability. While these chargers will be open for use by any EV, Mercedes-Benz owners will have the extra privilege of a charger reservation system. Today’s MBUX navigation already suggests charging stops along the way and preconditions the battery when approaching one. When selecting a Mercedes-owned charger, the car will take the additional step of saving them a spot.

“If you’re in a traffic jam and, you know, you can’t make it to this time, the system will know that you’re arriving later, and it’s going to update your reservation,” Schäfer said. This, of course, will only happen if you’re using the integrated Mercedes navigation experience, not Apple or Google Maps. “The idea is also the key to keep them in our ecosystem,” Schäfer said.

The $1 billion spent up-front to launch this network will just be the beginning of the investment, but Schäfer is adamant that it will eventually be a profitable endeavor: “It has to be a self-sustaining business. Absolutely.”

Schäfer said the enterprise will eventually be profitable and cites Ionity as an example of what can go right.

“The valuation of this network has grown so much,” he said. “So it was a great investment… We think we can do the same here.”

Why the time is right for a Mercedes-Benz charging network by Tim Stevens originally published on TechCrunch

Google is finally rolling out emoji reactions to people using Google Meet for video calls starting today. The company said that this feature will be first available on iOS and the web with Android support coming soon. The search giant first announced this feature last year, but it is reaching users just now.

Users can click or tap on the smile icon on the bottom pane to post a reaction emoji — with support for different skin tones — on the video call. When users react with an emoji, you will see a small badge on the top-left corner of their tile on the web. If there are many people reacting at one time, you will see a stream of reactions on the left-hand side — just like comments on a live video.

While the reaction feature is turned on by default, the meeting host can choose to turn it off for a particular call. Google said that the feature rollout will begin starting today and will be available to everyone in the next few weeks.

Along with emoji reactions for Meet calls, Google is also rolling out a Workspace update for chats that easily lets people start an individual or a group conversation. The earlier version of Chat prompted people to “Start group conversation” when they started typing names. Now, Google is removing that option completely.

Rather, users can simply type and select multiple names to start a group chat. And by typing in one name, they can start an individual chat.

“With this update, users can create Chat conversations in one consistent and intuitive way, whether with one person or a group,” the company said in a blog post.

The new group chat creation feature is rolling out to end-users starting today spanning across the next few weeks.

Google is finally rolling out emoji reactions for Meet video calls by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

Kano Computing (“Kano”), the venture-backed company best known for its DIY computer kits and software for teaching coding and STEM skills to kids, is spinning out its creative software suite and online community platform as an independent business.

The move comes as the U.K. company has been shifting its focus away from its build-your-own PC roots in pursuit of profitability and longer-term sustainability.

Founded out of London in 2013, Kano has brought various products to market through the years designed to teach the building blocks of computing to children. This includes its flagship Raspberry Pi-based modular PCs, as well as accessories such as the Harry Potter Coding Kit replete with a physical magic wand which works across most platforms.

Kano has raised some $45 million in funding through the years, from notable backers including Microsoftwhich worked with Kano to develop a Windows-based PC back in 2019, representing a notable departure from its Raspberry Pi roots. However, the company has apparently been struggling these past few years, shelving plans to bring Disney-branded products to market and announcing a round of layoffs as part of a “restructuring effort.”

At its most recent financial year end, Kano reported a pre-tax loss of £10.1 million ($12 million) — an improvement on the previous year’s £16.8 million loss, but a loss nonetheless. And although it’s still possible to buy some of its older products of yore through Amazon, it’s clear that Kano has been moving away from the products it became known for, toward a suite of “Stem”-branded consumer devices spanning audio and video.

STEM sells

A little more than a year ago, Kano partnered with Kanye West to launch Stem Player, a music device that lets users isolate and remix individual elements of songs.

But with West demonstrating his antisemitic colors on more than one occasion, Kano revealed back in November that it was cutting ties with the rapper, though it continues to sell the Stem Player sans West’s involvement. And earlier this week, Kano unveiled the Stem video Projector, while teasing plans for all manner of new products spanning everything from food to clothes.

With Kano heading in a new direction, this has left a core part of its business in limbo. Kano World has been an integral part of Kano’s offering pretty much since its inception — through an online account, users can create games, animations, and art, share them with the Kano community, remix other users’ work, participate in challenges, and more.

The platform was designed to bring a little fun and utility to its build-your-own computer kits, though it could be used independently of Kano’s hardware.

Going solo

Moving forward, Kano World will be going solo as a standalone business entity led by CEO Ollie Dotsch, who was formerly head of sales and education at Kano Computing.

Dotsch started his new role back in August, just as Kano World was formally incorporated. According to a U.K. Companies House filing, Kano World has three main shareholders, including Kano cofounder and CEO Alex Klein who holds a plurality of shares, Dotsch himself, and Kano Computing.

In a Q&A with TechCrunch, Dotsch explained that after leading the sales of Kano’s Windows-based PCs through to their eventual sell-out in early 2022, he floated the idea of spinning out Kano World with CEO Klein and the company’s board, cognizant of the fact that Kano was shifting its focus.

“Kano Computing is now working to grow the Stem business,” Dotsch said. “The Stem focus would have left Kano World with little to no budget, resources or attention to grow it into the product and business we believe it can and will be. Now on our own, we can fundraise, build a team and dedicate ourselves to the success of our vision to empower the creative genius in all young people to create, and not just consume.”

For now, Kano World constitutes a team of just three and is funded entirely by its three main shareholders, with plans afoot to seek new funding “in the coming months.” And besides its equity stake, Kano Computing will also serve as an incubator of sorts in the short term, serving up office space in its East London HQ.

“Extracting Kano World from Kano Computing is complex and will take time, but we’ve already started progressively and, once complete, leaving both companies stronger than before,” Dotsch said.

If nothing else, Kano World is striving to retain at least some of the original “creator and maker” ethos of Kano, albeit with a focus purely on the software side of things. Moreover, it can be perceived as a positive step that Kano has elected to give Kano World a chance to thrive on its own, when it may have been easier to let it slowly die inside Kano, or pull the plug on it in its entirety.

“In this environment, it made more sense for Kano World to grow outside of Kano Computing, than in[side],” Kano Computing’s co-founder and CEO Alex Klein said in a statement. “Kano World has had many exciting iterations over the years, even attracting the attention of Mark Zuckerberg who shared a post using the platform with his kids. This spin-off is the logical next step to deliver new joyful creative experiences for young people around the world.”

As before, Kano World offers two of its three creative tools — Kano Code and Make Art — for free, including access to some of the beginner challenges. Those who sign up to a premium subscription, which costs $10 per month or $100 per year, can accessPixel Motion and a broader array of challenges.

Without giving too much away, Dotsch said that they are actively working on building out the social community side of the platform and its creative software suite, with premium users able to access new products first.

The new Kano World company intends to double its headcount to around six people by the end of February, according to Dotsch, with subsequent hires planned in the software development and creative realm.

As it shifts focus from DIY computer kits, Kano spins out its creative software suite as a standalone business by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

With our mysterious, unsustainable, and psychological attachment to pets, combined with a boom in pet ownership since those lonely pandemic times, means veterinary practices have come under increasing pressure.

Pet ownership has increased (56 to 70% US household penetration in the last 35 years). But, there are not enough vets.

To meet demand, a vet currently needs to see over 32 patients a day and by 2030, the U.S. will need nearly 41,000 additional veterinarians on current trends.

Just like doctors, vets spend a lot of their day on admin, while legacy systems are creaking under the weight of the new work.

This antiquated sector has become a ripe arena for tech companies. Rhapsody was bought by Chewy in H2 2022. Vetspire was bought by Pathaway/Thrive (Vet group). And ezyVet was bought by Idexx in H1 2022. And that’s just to name a few

We covered Digitail, a startup which grew out of Romania, automates the admin for veterinarians, back in 2021 at their seed round.

The startup has now closed a $11 million Series A funding round led by Atomico. They join previous investors byFounders, Gradient, and Partech. Atomico Principal Andreas Helbig joins the Digitail board as part of the investment. Allison Pickens (former COO of Gainsight) is joining as an angel with her new fund new-normal.ventures.

Digitail will use the funding to further scale operations across US and Canada, as well as develop the product.

The SaaS solution combines a Practice management platform, a ‘pet parent’ app for pet owners, and a Data Hub providing medical and business insights to veterinarians.

It claims veterinarians are able to see 2x as many patients using the software.

Digitail was founded in 2018 by Sebastian Gabor (CEO) and Ruxandra Pui (CPO), who had previously founded the development studio and IT consultancy ITGambit together.

Gabor told me the company started 2022 with $150k in ARR and ended Q4 2022 by passing $1M in ARR with over 700 animal hospitals worldwide using Digitail PIMS on a daily basis. He claims there are currently over 1.4M pet profiles in Digitail in more than 10 countries.

He says he was inspired to create Digital after having to completely restart his dog’s vaccination plan following a mis-scheduled appointment.

US pet care is estimated to grow from $118 bn in 2019 to $277 bn by 2030.

Our obsession with pets means startups aimed at Vets are booming, as Digitail shows by Mike Butcher originally published on TechCrunch