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Technology
This little IT seeking advice from outfit gets a contract with a very, huge company-- which is a huge deal, states a pilot fish at the consultancy. On an everyday basis, a big text data file requires to get packed into a very fast database, which details is used to deal or not deal with certain clients, fish explains. And this all needs to take place in real time. The big customer is extremely security conscious, and it won't let the consultancy download the data from the client's website. Rather, a third-party site is utilized, and gain access to is through a safe connection with an absolutely inscrutable password.And on the very first day, whatever works fine. The big customer puts the data on the site and fish's company downloads the data, then keeps checking back periodically to see if anything has actually been included or altered.
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Write comment (100 Comments)Sometimes I think of spreadsheets as the dirty secret of the IT world today. We&ve seen a huge explosion in the number of productivity tools on the market tailored to help workers with different aspects of doing their job and organising their information, in part to keep them from simply dumping lots of information into Excel or whatever program they happen to use. And yet, spreadsheets are still one of the very, very most common pieces of software in use today to organise and share information: Excel alone now has around 1 billion users, and for those who are devotees, spreadsheets are not going to go away soon.
So itinteresting that there are now startups — and larger companies like Microsoft — emerging that are tapping into that, creating new services that still appear like spreadsheets in the front end, while doing something completely different in the back.
One of the latest is a startup called dashdash, a startup out of Berlin and Porto that is building a platform for people, who might to be programmers but know their way around a spreadsheet, to use those skills to build, modify and update web apps.
The dashdash platform looks and acts like a spreadsheet up front, but behind the scenes, each ‘macro& links to a web app computing feature, or a design element, to build something that ultimately will look nothing like a spreadsheet, bypassing all the lines of code that traditionally go into building web apps.
The startup is still in stealth mode, with plans to launch formally later this year. Today, itannouncing that it has received $8 million in Series A funding to get there, with the roundbeing led by Accel, with participation fromCherry Ventures, Atlantic Labs, and angel investors including Felix Jahn, founder of Home24. (Itraised $9 million to date including a $1 seed.)
Co-founded by serial entrepreneurs Humberto Ayres Pereira and Torben Schulz — who had also been co-founders of food delivery startup EatFirst — Ayres Pereira said that the idea came out of their own observations in work life and the bottleneck of getting things fixed or modified in a companyapps (both internal and customer-facing).
&People have a lot of frustration with the IT department, and their generally access to it,& he said in an interview. &If you are part of an internet business, itvery hard to get features prioritised in an app, no matter how small they are. Tech is like a big train on iron tracks, and it can be hard to steer it in a different direction.&
On the other hand, even among the less technical staff, there will be proficiency with certain software, including spreadsheets. &Programming and spreadsheets already store and transform data,& Ayers Pereira said. &There are already a lot of people trying to do more with incumbent spreadsheets, and [combining that with] non-IT people frustrated at having no solution for working on apps, we saw an opportunity to use this to build an elegant platform the empower people. We can&t teach people to program but we can provide them with the tools to do the exact same job.&
While in stealth mode, he said that early users have ranged from smaller businesses such as pharmacies, to &a multi-billion-dollar internet company.& (No names, of course, but itinteresting to me that this problem even exists at large tech businesses.)
Dashdash is not the only company that is tapping this opportunity. The other week, and IoT startup called Hanhaa launched a service that would let those using Hanhaa IoT sensors in their networks to monitor and interact with them by way of an Excel spreadsheet — another tip of the hat to the realisation that those who might need to keep tabs on devices in the network might not be the people who are the engineers and technicians who have set them up.
That, in turn, is part of a bigger effort from Microsoft to catapult Excel from its reputation as a piece of clunky legacy software into something much more dynamic, playing on the companypush into cloud services and Office 365.
In September of 2017, Microsoft gave a developer preview of new &streaming functions& for Excel on Office 365, which lets developers, IT professionals and end users the ability to bring streams of data from a variety of sources such as websites, stock tickers and hardware directly into a cell or cells in an Excel spreadsheet, by way of a custom function. &Because Excel is so widely used and familiar to so many people, the ability to do all kinds of amazing things with that data and without complex integration is now possible,& saidBen Summers, a senior product manager for the Office 365 ecosystem team, in a statement to TechCrunch.
That ability to remove the bottleneck from web app building, combined with the track record of the founders, are two of the reasons that Accel decided to invest before the product even launched.
&We believe in dashdashmission to democratise app creation and are excited to back Humberto and Torben at such an early stage in their journey,& said Andrei Brasoveanu, the Accel principal who led the deal. &The team has the experience and vision to build a high-impact company that brings computing to the fingertips of a broad audience.Over the past decade we&ve seen a proliferation of web services and APIs, but regular business users still need to rely on central IT and colleagues with development skills to leverage these in their day-to-day processes. With dashdash anyone will be able to access these powerful web services directly with minimal effort, empowering them to automate their day to day tasks and work more effectively.&
With every tool that emerges that frees up accessibility to more people — be they employees or consumers — there are inevitably questions about how that power will be used. In the case of dashdash, my first thought is about those who I know who work in IT: they generally don&t want anyone able to modify or &fix& their code, lest it just creates more problems. And thatbefore you start wondering about how all these democratised web apps will look, and if they might inadvertently will add to more overall UI and UX confusion.
Ayres Pereira said dash dash is mindful of the design question, and will introduce ways of helping to direct this, for example for companies to implement their own house styles. And similarly, a business can put in place other controls to help channel how webapps created through dashdashspreadsheet interface ultimately get applied.
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The HR departments of large companies face a common challenge: how to scale the hiring process when they receive hundreds if not thousands of applicants, and how to remove unconscious bias so the best or most suitable candidates are shortlisted. Thatthe specific problem MeVitae, an Oxford-based startup founded by neuroscientist Riham Satti and computer scientist Vivek Doriaiswamy, has set out to solve.
Dubbed &Augmented Intelligence,& more broadly the burgeoning company is developing AI technology that uses what Satti describes as &cognitive techniques& designed to compensate for the limitations of humans.
The premise — in part backed up by her neuroscience research at Oxford University — is that our brains have limitations that restrict our cognitive ability, including the relatively slow speed when processing information, unconscious biases, and limited memory. Limitations, she says, that machines do not possess. Applying to this to various aspects of recruitment is the startupinitial bet.
Intended to be deployed after a new job opening has been advertised, the MeVitae software plugs into a companycurrent Application Tracking System. It then sifts through all of the applications/CVs that have been received and analyses each CV (relative to the job spec) giving it a score.
&This is done by analysing every component of a CV (e.g. education, experience etc.) and using the web to reason and validate each score,& explains Satti.
The hiring company then receives the ranked and shortlisted applicants within their ATS system, and — crucially — is also able to see a &road map& explaining MeVitaereasoning behind each score. In addition, through the use of NLP, MeVitae takes each CV and find parts of it that could result in discrimination (e.g. gender, ethnicity) and redacts this information for an employer i.e. CV blinding.
The result is that employers now have ranked and redacted applicant CVs and can quickly shortlist top and diverse talent. &The ranked and anonymised candidates are provided to the recruiter/employer of the company to review,& says the MeVitae co-founder. &The employer will decide who they want to interview from the shortlist… [and] over time the system learns from each employerchoices for more intelligent decision-making&. In other words, the longer MeVitae is employed by an individual company the more responsive it becomes to that companyhiring priorities and isn&t a one size fits all solution.
Meanwhile, MeVitae is disclosing that it has raised £500,000 in funding, in a round led by angel investor club Startup Funding Club. Others participating include Force Over Mass, Twenty Ten Capital, BBH ZAG (brand arm of Bartle Bogle Hegartyand), and the tax-payer funded London Co-Investment Fund (launched by the Deputy Mayor of London). Dhiraj Mukherjee, (co-founder of Shazam), Simon Samuel (search and recruitment executive), and Geoff Hughes (Microsoft director and Honorary Research Associate at UCL) have also invested and join the MeVitae board.
Prior to this, the startup has been funded by a number of grants, totalling around £250,000. These came from Innovate UK, European Space Agency BIC, and Regional Growth Fund, amongst others. The funding was used to finance over 3 years of R-D as MeVitae built the technology and got its current product offering to market.
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Read more: Oxford-based MeVitae wants to scale the hiring process and remove unconscious bias
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Teatime Games, a new Icelandic &social games& startup from the same team behind the hugely popular QuizUp (acquired in by Glu Mobile), is disclosing $9 million in funding, made up of seed and Series A rounds.
Index Ventures led both, but have been joined by Atomico, the European VC fund founded by SkypeNiklas Zennström, for the $7.5 million Series A round. I understand this is the first time the two VC firms have done a Series A deal together in over a decade.
Both VCs have a decent track record in gaming. Index counts King, Roblox and Supercell as previous gaming investments, whilst Atomico also backed Supercell, along with Rovio, and most recently Bossa Studios.
As part of the round, Guzman Diaz of Index Ventures, Mattias Ljungman of Atomico, and David Helgason, founder of Unity, have joined the Teatime Games board of directors.
Meanwhile, Teatime Games is keeping shtum publicly on exactly what the stealthy startup is working on, except that it plays broadly in the social and mobile gaming space. In a call with co-founder and CEO Thor Fridriksson yesterday, he said a little more off the record and on condition that I don&t write about it yet.
What he was willing to describe publicly, however, is the general problem the company has set out to solve, which is how to make mobile games more social and personalised. Specifically, in a way that any social features — including communicating with friends and other players in real-time — enhances the gameplay rather than gets in its way or is simply bolted on as an adjunct to the game itself.
The companymacro thesis is that games have always been inherently social throughout different eras (e.g. card games, board games, arcades, and consoles), and that most games truly come to life &through the interaction between people, opponents, and the audience&. However, in many respects this has been lost in the age of mobile gaming, which can feel like quite a solitary experience. Thateither because they are single player games or turn-based and played against invisible opponents.
Teatime plans to use the newly-disclosed investment to double the size of its team in Iceland, with a particular focus on software engineers, and to further develop its social gaming offering for third party developers. Yes, thatright, this is clearly a developer platform play, as much as anything else.
On that note, Atomico Partner Mattias Ljungman says the next &breakout opportunity& in games will see a move beyond individual studios and titles to what he describes as fundamental enabling technologies. Linked to this he argues that the next generation of games companies being developed will &become ever more mass market and socially connected&. You can read much more on Ljungman and Atomicogaming thesis in a blog post recently published by the VC firm.
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Read more: Index and Atomico back Teatime Games, a stealthy new startup from QuizUp founders
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If you want to keep pace with the rapid advancements taking place in mobility, then pack your bag and head to TC Tel Aviv 2018. Israelon the leading edge of this rapidly changing frontier, and we&re going deep for a day-long intensive on June 7. The time for procrastinating is over because you have only 24 hours left to get your tickets at the early bird price of 265 ILS. Get ‘em right here.
We&ve curated an impressive roster of industry leaders to hold forth on mobile technology and all that it entails. Topics like autonomous vehicles, sensors, drones, security and so much more. The speakers who step up on the TechCrunch stage will provide their expert perspective on where mobility tech stands now and where itgoing. You don&t want to miss this one.
Here are just a few of the speakers you&ll hear, but you can find the full conference agenda here.
- Uri Levine, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Waze
- Ariella Grinberg, innovation manager for General MotorAdvanced Technical Center in Israel
- Ofer Ben Noon, co-founder and CEO of Argus Cyber Security
Don&t miss out on the chance to explore — or exhibit in —Startup Alley.Our exhibition floor will feature more than 200 early-stage startups from just about every vertical. Discover products, platforms and services in cybersecurity, AR/VR, mobility, robotics, fintech, biotech, artificial intelligence, blockchain and more.
A Startup Alley Exhibitor Package costs 1,700 ILS and includes two tickets to TC Tel Aviv, Wi-Fi, signage and a demo table. Ita great way to get your company in front of tech influencers, investors, potential customers and the media.
TechCrunch Tel Aviv takes place on June 7, 2018 at the Tel Aviv Convention Center, Pavilion 10. You have a mere 24 hours left to secure the best price on this exciting exploration of the mobile tech coming out of Israel. Buy your tickets today.
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Write comment (92 Comments)TechCrunch is coming to Zug, Switzerland, to discuss all things Blockchain. This is going to be one of the most important events we&ve ever held in Europe and one of the most important ever. You&re not going to want to miss this.
TechCrunch Sessions: Blockchain 2018 features an impressive lineup of fireside chats and panels with icons of the global blockchain and crypto tech scene.
We&re thrilled to bring accomplished founders and chief executives to the stage. Among others, this includes, Ethereumcreator, Vitalik Buterin, ConsenSys founder Joe Lubin, IBM/HyperledgerBrian Behlendorf, as well as Changpeng Zhao of Binance and Galia Benartzi of Bancor.
Tickets are still available for purchase. We&re thrilled to make it to Zug for this show and hope you can make it.
AGENDA
9:00 AM & 9:05 AMOpening Remarks
9:05 AM & 9:10 AMWelcome Remarks: Dolfi Müller (Mayor of Zug)
9:10 AM & 9:30 AMComing soon!
9:30 AM & 9:50 AMFireside Chat with Brian Behlendorf (Hyperledger)The Executive Director gives an inside look at the technology powering The Hyperledger Project.
9:50 AM & 10:15 AMIn Conversation with Nicolas Brand (Lakestar) and Colin Hanna (Balderton)Tokenising VC & the Venture Capitalistperspective on Blockchain.
10:15 AM & 10:40 AMComing soon!
10:40 AM & 11:10 AM BREAK
11:10 AM & 11:50 AMFireside Chat with Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum Foundation)A conversation with Ethereumcreator, Vitalik Buterin.
11:50 AM & 12:15 PMIn Conversation with Galia Benartzi (Bancor) and Jun Hasegawa (OmiseGO)Benartzi and Hasegawa discuss successful ICOs & are they made or born
12:15 PM & 12:35 PMFireside Chat with Jim Fruchterman (Benetech)Release the chains! Can Blockchain be a force for social good
12:35 PM & 1:00 PMIn Conversation with with Patrick Berarducci (The Brooklyn Project), Mona El Isa (Melonport) and Pierre-Edouard Wahl (PwC Switzerland)The Wild West of regulating crypto.
1:00 PM & 1:15 PMINNOVATION BREAK
1:15 PM & 2:15 PMLUNCH
2:15 PM & 2:35 PMFireside Chat with Roham Gharegozlou (Axiom Zen)The CEO of CryptoKitties discusses the story behind its smash success.
2:35 PM & 3:00 PMIn Conversation with Hope Liu (Eximchain) and Gert Sylvest (Tradeshift)The Co-founders of Eximchain and Tradeshift explore the push from blockchain to the supply chain.
3:00 PM & 3:25 PMIn Conversation with Kris Marszalek (Monaco), Joshua Stein (Harbor) and Hanna Zubko (IntellectEU)Banking on Blockchain: Can established banks keep up with the new world order
3:25 PM & 3:45 PMFireside Chat with Balaji Srinivasan (Coinbase)The new CTO of Coinbase and Board Partner of a16z discusses keeping pace with new players.
3:45 PM & 4:25 PMBREAK
4:25 PM & 4:45 PMFireside Chat with Joe Lubin (ConsenSys)The Founder of ConsenSys shares his story and whether his company can become the Alphabet of Blockchain.
4:45 PM & 5:10 PMIn Conversation with Sam Cassat (ConsenSys), Phil Windley (Sovrin Foundation) and Guy Zyskind (Enigma)Cassat, Windley and Zyskind explore the emergence of self-sovereign identities.
5:10 PM & 5:30 PM Fireside Chat with Changpeng Zhao (Binance)Can exchanges…change
5:30 PM & 5:50 PM Fireside Chat with Leanne Kemp (Everledger)On the blockchain once, on the blockchain forever. Kemp discusses the opportunities and challenges in building Everledger.
5:50 PM & 6:00 PMWRAP
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Read more: Announcing the TechCrunch Session on Blockchain Agenda
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