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Technology
IT pilot fish at a maritime support company gets a call from a field employee whose laptop has been running slowly for some reason.
"After an attempt by the help desk to clean it off and speed it up, the employee called again," fish says. "He was asking to have a newer laptop that he had found at the project site reassigned to him.
"The machine had been left by a project engineer who had moved on to another project. Supposedly it had water damage, but seemed to be working. Oddly, it had never been returned to us, and just left at the project.
"It took a little research, but we found that the project engineer had been sent a replacement laptop, and hadn't been asked to return the brand new 'water damaged' one.
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A blockchain standards group made up of hundreds of businesses and tech development members has unveiled its first specification for enabling the development of peer-to-peer, decentralized networks explicitly for automating corporate transactions.
The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) last week released the Enterprise Ethereum Client Specification 1.0, an open-source framework to speed business transactions, boost privacy for contracts and create a faster, more efficient business transaction workflow.
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While the cryptocurrency world continues to swirl around in a daze of troughs and highs, startups are continuing to make use of the fundamental underlying strengths of blockchain technology.
A new entrant in this race is Tradeshift, a leading players in supply-chain payments and marketplaces, which is today launching its new service which enables supports blockchain-based finance, or writing all transactions to a public ledger in order to create transparency and securing a record.
While this doesn&t involve the use of currencies like actual Bitcoin or Ethereum, &having the transactions on a public ledger ensures full transparency and the ability for companies to prove that they have legit transactions,& says CEO and cofounder Christian Lanng.
SO what this all means is that Tradeshiftcloud platform will bring supply chain payments, supply chain finance, and blockchain-based early payments together into one unified end-to-end solution, called &Tradeshift Pay&.
They are aiming at a $9 trillion problem, which is the capital trapped in &accounts receivable& as a result of old-fashioned payment practices and the disconnection between large business buyers and their suppliers.
In other words, this could be a boon for small suppliers who find it hard to get paid when their invoices aren&t mapped to a ledger as strong as a blockchain.
With this single unified wallet, buyers can use several payment options, including virtual card payments of invoices and purchase orders, dynamic discounting, supply chain finance through bank partners, or blockchain-based payments.
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Read more: Tradeshift fires-up blockchain to address late payment problem
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Whisk, the U.K. startup that has built a B2B data platform to power various food apps, including making online recipes ‘shoppable&, has acquired Avocando, a competitor based in Germany.
The exact financial terms of the deal remain undisclosed, although TechCrunch understands it was all-cash and that Whisk is acquiring the tech, customer base, integrations, and team. Related to this, Avocandofounders are joining Whisk.
&The team is joining Whisk to help scale a joint global vision to help leading businesses create integrated and meaningful digital food experiences using cutting-edge technology,& says Whisk in a statement.
To that end, Whisk&smart food platform& enables app developers, publishers and online supermarkets/grocery stories to do a number of interesting things.
The first relates to making recipes shoppable i.e. making it incredibly easy to order the ingredients needed to cook a recipe listed online or in an app. Specifically, Whiskplatform parses ingredients in a recipe, and matches it to products at local grocery stores based on user preferences (e.g. &50g of butter, cubed& matched to &250g Tesco Salted Butter&). It then interfaces with the store to fill the users basket with the needed items.
The second is recipe personalisation. Based on user preferences (e.g. disliked ingredients, diet, previous behaviour, deals at a favourite store, and trending recipes based on location), Whisk is able to create personalised recipe feeds, search results, and meal plans.
The third aspect is an Internet-of-Things play. This is seeing Whiskdata power experiences that connect IoT devices with different parts of a userjourney. Think: smart fridges connected to recipes.
&As the e-commerce grocery market quickly accelerates across Europe, players are increasingly looking for ways to connect recipe content to grocery retailers and provide consumers with personalized nutrition, planning and purchase options right from the comfort of their kitchen,& says the startup.
Whisk says its platform powers experiences for over 100,000,000 monthly users through the applications of its clients. They include retailers like Walmart, Amazon, Instacart, and Tesco who use Whisk to enable online grocery shopping via recipes. On the IoT front, Samsung is using Whisk to build smart food applications that take user preferences, whatin their fridge, what offers are in the supermarket, and recommends recipes. Other customers include publishers, such as the BBC, and food brands like McCormick, Nestle, Unilever, and General Mills.
Meanwhile, Whisk says it is currently focused on the U.S., U.K. and Australia, and with todayacquisition will expand services across Europe. &Together, Germany, France and Spain represent a larger e-commerce grocery market than both the U.S. and U.K. individually, with the largest online recipe usage per capita figures in the world,& adds the company.
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Read more: Whisk, the smart food platform that makes recipes shoppable, acquires competitor Avocando
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Hey, this message goes out to all you early-stage startup founders with the drive and determination to take your company all the way to the land of the unicorns. Nowthe time to apply to TechCrunchStartup Battlefield competition — the worldbest start-uppitch competition going down atDisrupt San Francisco 2018onSeptember 5-7. If you require incentive, consider this: we bumped the top prize this year to a very cool $100,000. That sure would help your bottom line, now wouldn&t it
If you&re not tuned in to how Startup Battlefield works, we&ll break it down for you. Seasoned TechCrunch editors review all applications in a highly-competitive vetting process. How competitive The acceptance rate ranges from 3 to 6 percent. Factors that influence the decision include the team, the product and the market potential. Anywhere from 15-30 pre-Series A startups will make the final cut. This is a good time to point out that competing inStartup Battlefield doesn&t cost a thing, and that TechCrunch does not charge startups any fees or take any equity.
All competing teams receive free expert pitch training from the Startup Battlefield team who, trust us, have seen it all when it comes to startup pitch competitions. You&ll be primed and ready for round one where you&ll deliver a six-minute pitch and demo to a panel of expert judges — and then answer any questions they may have. The cream of the crop — roughly five teams — will advance to round two for a repeat pitch performance in front of a fresh set of judges.
Every exciting, heart-pounding minute takes place in front of a live audience numbering in the thousands, and we live-stream it to the world on TechCrunch.com, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. And it&ll be available later on-demand.
But the benefits of competing go far beyond winning the $100,000 cash prize. More than 400 media outlets will attend Disrupt SF&18, and an intense media spotlight will shine brightly on all Startup Battlefield contestants. Just making it into the initial Startup Battlefield cohort can draw significant investor interest. Aircall, a cloud-based call center solution, stands as a prime example.
The French startup competed in round one of Startup Battlefield SF 2015. It didn&t make the finals, but the company just received another round of funding to the tune of $29 million. Since its debut at Startup Battlefield three years ago, the company has gone on to raise a total of $40.5 million. Not too shabby for an &also-ran.&
All startups who compete will join the ranks of the Startup Battlefield alumni community. This impressive group of over 800 companies has collectively raised more than $8 billion in funding and produced more than 100 exits. Companies like Mint, Dropbox, Yammer, Fitbit, Getaround and Cloudflare — just to drop a few names. Networking as part of this community has its advantages.
So many reasons to apply, and we haven&t even talked about all the other fabulous happenings at Disrupt SF. More than 10,000 attendees will stream through Startup Alley, home to more than 1,200 of the best early-stage startups around. Twelve different tech tracks, four stages of unique programming, speakers, Q - A Sessions, after parties and world-class networking — made even easier with CrunchMatch, our curated investor-to-startup matching platform.
Disrupt San Francisco 2018takes place onSeptember 5-7 at Moscone Center West. Apply to Startup Battlefield. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
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TechCrunch is headed to Germany yet again to host Disrupt Berlin 2018 on November 29-30. We simply love this citystartup scene, one of the most innovative and fastest-growing in Europe. If you&re a founder, investor, hacker or tech leader, you can&t afford to miss Disrupt Berlin. You also can&t afford to miss our limited-time offer on Innovator passes: two for €695. Sign up for our newsletter, and we&ll notify you when we release them into the wild.
What can you expect at Disrupt Berlin We pack a lot of amazing programming into our two-day conference. For starters, thereStartup Alley, the exhibition floor where, last year, more than 400 early-stage startups displayed an incredible array of tech products, services and talent. With more than 2,600 attendees passing through the Alley, you won&t find a better way to get your company in front of investors, potential partners, customers and the media. Who knows, attendees might even choose your startup as a WildCard company, which means you get to compete in the Startup Battlefield.
You know Startup Battlefield, right Thatwhere you go head-to-head against 15-30 pre-Series A startups and compete for the coveted Disrupt Cup, bragging rights, massive media exposure, investor attention and, oh yeah, a $50,000 equity-free grand prize. Keep checking our site or — even better — sign up for our newsletter so you&ll know the minute we open applications to compete in Startup Battlefield at Disrupt Berlin.
We&re in the process of building out our roster of speakers and, as always, it promises to be an exciting array of European and international tech luminaries, VC experts, movers, makers and shakers determined to push the boundaries of technology. Want to recommend someone as a speaker or a judge Check out our speaker nomination page.
What do you get with a Disrupt Berlin Innovator pass We&re so glad you asked. You&ll have access to three distinct stages of content: The Main Stage, the Next Stage and the Q-A Stage. You&ll have full use of the Disrupt attendee list and be able to contact attendees via the Disrupt Mobile App. Plus, you can attend interactive workshops, explore Startup Alley and cut loose (or get down to fun networking) at our TC After Party. And, after the event, you&ll have access to our library of event video content.
Disrupt Berlin takes place on November 29-30, 2018 at the Arena Berlin. We&re releasing a very limited number of two-for-one Innovator passes for €695, but that special price won&t stick around for long. If you want to get the best deal, sign up for the newsletter and we&ll let you know when these passes become available. Come join usin Berlin!
Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our sponsorship team here.
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