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Technology
HowNow, the workforce learning platform, has raised $3 million (£2.4 million) in a &pre-series A& funding round. The round is led by Mark PearsonFuel Ventures and brings the total raised by the startup to $4.5 million.
Other investors include Andy Murray OBE; Michael Whitfield and Chris Bruce (founders of Thomsons Online Benefits); Bernie Sinniah (former managing director at Citi Bank); and Alwin Magimay (a former partner at McKinsey).
Designed for organisations that want to support teams with self-directed learning and the development of &business-critical& skills, HowNow is described as an integrated learning platform that autonomously curates learning resources, &business intelligence& and market insights that live in various internal and external sources.
The idea is to bring together these different learning resources — ranging from &nuggets& of knowledge shared by existing employees to internal data to external content libraries, blogs and podcasts — and match these to different job descriptions and employee skill-sets.
This is powered by a browser extension and integrations with Slack, Salesforce, HubSpot and more than 300 other apps. Machine-learning is also employed to push the right content to the right employee.
&Employers can also use HowNow to identify skills gaps within the company based on job market data, via HowNowreal-time analytics and built-in certification,& adds the company. To achieve this, the platform claims to monitor more than 20,000 job specifications to understand the in-demand skills and requirements companies are searching for.
&Based on self-review, peer-review and real-time job market data we build the userskill profile as they onboard the platform,& explains HowNow co-founder and CEO Nelson Sivalingam. &Once in HowNow, they see learning recommendations based on assigned learning pathways, their role, skill requirements and internal benchmarks. This content is brought together from a variety of their internal sources (G Drive, Sharepoint, CRM, etc.), external sources (content libraries, blogs, podcasts, etc.) and the autonomously organised knowledge shared by their peers directly on HowNow.&
Employees can then access these learning resources directly within the applications they already work with and receive contextually relevant suggestions powered by HowNow&AI.& &For example, they can be in Slack and search all of their learning resources directly from their using the HowNow Slack app,& says Sivalingam. &They can also convert a message from a colleague into a nugget that will get stored and autonomously organised in HowNow.&
Similarly, Sivalingam says that, via HowNow, client-facing teams are able to access up-to-date product knowledge, business intelligence and market insights directly within their inbox, CRM and help desk, which enables them to reduce customer response times.
&Fast-growing companies like GymShark are able to capture the knowledge in the heads of their internal subject matter experts by giving them a quick and easy way to share knowledge, build a glue between scattered content, avoid repeat questions and get everyone on the same page,& he adds.
To that end, I&m told that more than 500,000 users currently use HowNow within over 125 businesses. These range from SMEs to larger organisations, across 14 different countries. A classic SaaS play, the startup generates revenue through a licence fee per user.
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Read more: Workplace learning platform HowNow scores $3M funding
Write comment (100 Comments)StepLadder, another London-based startup aiming to help so-called &generation rent& get onto the housing ladder, has raised £1.5 million in seed funding.
Backing the round is Spanish banking giant BBVA and fintech VC Anthemis via the London-based venture studio on which the pair have partnered. Early investor Seedcamp also followed on, in addition to unnamed angel investors.
StepLadder says it will use the new capital and support provided by BBVA/Anthemis to further develop its &collaborative finance platform.& The startup is also eyeing international expansion.
Founded in 2015 by Matthew Addison and joined by Lucy Mullins and Mihir Bhushan, StepLaddercollaborative deposit saving platform is designed to motivate renters to save for a deposit so they can purchase their first home.
Using a financial model known as a &Rotating Credit and Savings Association& (ROSCA), StepLadder puts its members into &Circles,& whereby each individual member contributes an identical amount on a monthly basis — ranging from £25 to £1,000. A random draw then takes place each month and the winner is provided with that monthfull pot to use toward their deposit.
&For most first-time buyers, itreally difficult to get on the property ladder,& says Addison. &Home ownership rates amongst 25 to 34-years-olds have collapsed… [with around] 250,000 fewer first-time buyers every year, for over a decade, in the U.K. alone. Raising the deposit is the biggest hurdle. At StepLadder we&re using something called a ROSCA, a form of collaborative finance where people work together in groups to help our members raise their property deposits, on average, 45% faster.&
As an example, StepLadder might match you to a £500 a month Circle for 20 months to raise £10,000. This would see it find 19 other members to be in the same Circle. &Each month the £10,000 is randomly allocated and you could be drawn at any point in that 20 months,& explains StepLadderLucy Mullins. &You have to keep making your £500 a month payment for the full 20 months, so at the end everybody has paid in £10,000 and everybody has received £10,000.&
To help protect the platform from being abused, Mullins says that while a member is still part of a Circle, the startup will only release the pot to their solicitor for use as a property deposit. &So, if somebody stops paying after they have been drawn then we wouldn&t release their payout until they had made catch-up payments.&
StepLadder also supports members along the house-buying journey. The app lets members engage with a community of like-minded people and access group-buying discounts on services such as mortgages, solicitor fess and surveyors. The latter forms part of the companyrevenue stream.
&We introduce our members (at their request) to high-quality service providers, such as mortgage brokers, lending banks, surveyors and insurance providers,& says Addison. &In return, these partners pay us fees or commissions. We offer discounts on these transaction services via the combined buying power of our members in their Circles.&
In addition, there is a small monthly fee (between 2-5%) to be part of a Circle, which Mullins says covers the cost of delivering the service.
This includes holding money securely in a client money account, a payment waiver if a member were to become sick or unemployed after buying a property with their StepLadder deposit, credit bureau costs and the cost of a Circle host to support members on the journey.
&We do not aim to profit from the monthly administration fees we charge members and would usually be able to save our members much more in discounts than they pay in fees,& says Mullins.
Meanwhile, StepLadder has plans to expand the use cases for Circles and evolve the platform to also cover general savings goals and targeted &big ticket items.&
Explains Addison: &In Brazil, ROSCAs are used by nine million consumers for everything from dishwashers to cars to homes. We have already begun to demonstrate this potential with both our First Step offering (smaller circles from £25 a month) and proposed partnered launches.&
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Read more: StepLadder, the collaborative deposit saving platform for first-time buyers, raises £1.5M
Write comment (94 Comments)Few, if any, saw coming the Chromebookutter dominance of the K-8 category. In hindsight, iteasy to see why the systems have been such a success story, of course: low prices, coupled with ease of wide-scale deployment and lockdown make them a perfect fit for the classroom. Fifteen million Chromebooks were sold in 2018 alone, with schools serving as the major catalyst.
But manufacturers are looking beyond the classroom for the future of the category. Googlefacing increased competition from super-cheap PCs supported by Microsoft, and those schools that have purchased systems aren&t due for refreshes. Itno surprise, then, that average Chromebook prices are expected to rise across the board as more companies target mainstream use.
Selling Chromebooks outside of the classroom, on the other hand, has been a bit of a tougher life. After all, finding a powerful, reasonably priced PC isn&t hard in 2019. Thatpart of what made the original Pixelbook such an oddity. The $999 price point qualified the device as a premium laptop. And while ChromeOS has certainly made some major leaps in the last several years, it has never been entirely clear who the product is for.
The same goes for the Pixel Slate. Both were nice enough pieces of hardware designed to communicate that there is a place for ChromeOS in the premium category. I don&t know that Google ever anticipated selling a lot of the things, so much as drawing a line in the sand — a kind of reference design mentality that gave birth to the Pixel line.
Googlerecent hardware event was, perhaps, something of a referendum on the play. The original Pixelbook, while not discontinued, has yet to get a refresh two years after launch. Heck, even the troubled Pixel Buds got a reprieve as the company previewed their successor. The Pixelbook, on the other hand, got the Go.
The new device isn&t a Pixelbook replacement — at the very least, Googlelooking to sell through its back stock, with some deep discounts earlier this year. Rather, the device seems to be more a tacit admission that the company was shooting a bit too high the first two times around.
With a $649 starting price, the Go is certainly more in line with what people are expecting from the category. Of course, I&ll admit that I got some pushback when I used the word &budget& to refer to the contrast between the Go and its predecessor. Certainly the standards for what qualifies as budget differ a great deal between the Chromebook category and the rest of the industry. As much as Google wants to push back against the notion, price has always been a key factor in adoption.
With devices routinely priced less than $200, the Pixelbook Go is actually toward the high end of the spectrum. Click through the listing and you&ll discover that prices go up quite a bit from there. In fact, you can currently spec the device up to $1,399 on Googlesite, which crosses over well into the premium category for most users. Ithonestly a pretty far cry from the companymobile strategy, where pricing continues to be a key distinguisher from competing flagship manufacturers like Samsung and Apple.
All told, the Pixelbook Go is a more compelling proposition than the original Pixelbook, based on price alone. But therenothing about the device that signals a company that is confident of what it wants to do in the category. At most, the Go is Googleway of demonstrating confidence that there exists a future for such mid-tier devices, as companies like Acer attempt to look toward a life beyond the classroom.
The places where Google cut corners are almost immediately apparent. The device lacks the premium feel of the original product. Say what you will about the original Pixelbook, but it was a nice-looking device. At first glance, at least, the Go doesn&t distinguish itself much from other Chromebooks. The lovely glass and aluminum is gone, and in its place is a matte magnesium alloy that lends it a more plasticky finish.
The laptop comes in two Googley-named colors: Just Black and Not Pink. Google sent me the former, which is, well, just black. Honestly, it could have benefited from a touch of color beyond the small, white &G& on the tip of the lid. The salmony Not Pink pops a bit more. Honestly, Google should have gone full old-school iBook and offered up a bunch of different colors.
The device is portable, certainly. Ita bit lighter than the original at 2.3 pounds to its 2.4 pounds. Ita hair or two thicker, however, at 13.4mm to its 10.3. Carrying it around in my backpack for a few days certainly didn&t make my back miss my 15-inch MacBook Pro. The ridged bottom is a nice touch, too. Itreally easy to carry it with one hand.
Beyond aesthetics, the lower price means cutting some other corners. The biggest difference is the lack of a 360 hinge. Turns out those are pretty expensive — and one of the primary things that drove up the price in the original Pixelbook. For my own uses, ithonestly not a huge loss. Testing the original Pixelbook, I didn&t find too many instances that required something other than a standard laptop setup.
Those looking to purchase the device for creative applications may miss it, however, along with the loss of pen input. A smaller loss is the lack of the edge to edge track pad — turns out those are relatively expensive to manufacturer, as well. The keyboard has grown on me. Itcertainly quiet, as advertised. The keys are on the soft side, especially coming from over on the MacBook side of things, but they offer a nice bit of travel for a laptop.
The screen is actually larger than on the original Pixelbook, jumping a full inch up to 13.3. That said, total resolution is down by default, at 1920×1080 (166 ppi) versus 2400×1600 (235 ppi). You can still upgrade to a 4K screen, for a price — $1,399, specifically. Again, one wonders precisely who that specific price point is for.
The Go retains the two USB-C port setup. That was one of the bigger critiques with the original system, but Googlenot standing down on this one. Perhaps I&m not the target demographic here, but four ports seems like a pretty good compromise, especially for those who like to dock their systems at work for external monitors and the like.
The processor has been upgraded from a 7th-gen to 8th-gen Intel (as you&d hope after two years), though the base level system starts at an m3, rather than i5. There are, however i5 and i7 options. As in everything, an upgrade. RAM is the same, at either 8 or 16GB, while storage has been shrunk down at the base level, starting at a paltry 64GB instead of 128. Given how much you rely on cloud storage, that may be moot.
ChromeOS is still limited. I&m looking forward to a day when I don&t have to stipulate that with every review, but this ain&t it, chief. It makes sense in an educational setting, but the transition from Windows or MacOS will continue to be rocky for many. The addition of Google Play opens up the app considerably, but a fraction of apps are built with a non-mobile form factor in mind.
Some apps, meanwhile, just aren&t here. I&ve been considering bringing the device with me on an upcoming trip to China. The security and stated 12-hour battery life are big wins for that trip, but I&m not sure how to replace Audacity for the podcast editing I usually do on the plane. I am, however, open to any suggestions you might have.
Like the original Pixelbook, the Go seems to be a device in search of meaning. The $300 price drop is a step in the right direction, but Googlecompeting with far cheaper offerings from third parties. I&m still struggling with reasons to recommend a Chromebook outside of the classroom, when there are so many affordable Windows options out there. Perhaps as a secondary, travel device. But even so, how many people need that specific use case?
The Go is clearly Googleattempt to lead the way for manufacturers looking to explore Chromebook life outside the classroom. It has some nice hardware perks, but itnot the revolution or revelation ChromeOS needs.
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Read more: Pixelbook Go review: A Chromebook in search of meaning
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The discussion around choosing a mobile operating system has gotten a bit stale lately- you either get an iPhone or one of the many Android based phones. But that wasn’t the case a few years back when you a lot more choice with operating systems on a phone such as Symbian, BlackBerryOS, WebOS and Windows Mobile, all competing against each other. I
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Walmart isn’t waiting for Black Friday or Cyber Monday to offer up some big savings. The retailer is already rolling out some of the best deals we’ve seen on the Xbox One S.
What makes these deals better than the run-of-mill markdowns we usually see in the advertisement section of the paper is that they’re on both a new version of the console - the
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Another year, another Call of Duty game, right? Well, if you're playing on PC, that's not necessarily true this time around. This reboot of the beloved Call of Duty: Modern Warfare franchise is the first to pack Nvidia's ray tracing technology.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare uses Nvidia's RTX technology to render ray traced shadows, which results in
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Read more: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare performance: how well does the ray tracing run
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