Relationships between landlords and their tenants don’t need to be fraught ones. With Y Combinator -backed Latchel, landlords and property managers can access a 24/7 maintenance service that takes requests from tenants and deploys the right professional to fix the things that need fixing.
“At first we thought of doing a high-tech property management system,” Latchel founder Ethan Lieber told TechCrunch. “As we looked more into it and talked to other property management companies, maintenance kept coming up as a problem. So we decided to focus on maintenance.”
Latchel has a bunch of handypeople — all vetted and with at least two years of experience — in its network that it relies on for work inside buildings. In some cases, however, larger property management groups already have people they like to work with. At that point, Latchel simply takes over the relationship and coordinates between the handypeople and residents. In the event Latchel’s on-demand team of vetted handypeople cannot troubleshoot the issue, Latchel deploys one of the 3,000+ contractors on its platform.
“It’s such a hard industry to get positive reviews from tenants in,” Lieber said. “You’re basically talking about someone in an emergency situation — not getting heat, the toilet is overflowing, etcetera. If you’re not handling it well, it exacerbates. If you can communicate the right things to the right people at the right time, it absolves that exacerbation.”
Still, the real estate space is unique and hard to acquire customers, Lieber said. Right now, while Latchel does support larger property managers, it’s focused on the DIY landlords — the ones who may be managing buildings in their “spare” time or as a second job. In order to support the growth of DIY landlord customers, Latchel is looking to build its contractor network. Part of its sell to contractors is the constant stream of work that results from Latchel’s relationships with property managers and landlords.
In March 2018, Latchel was running its service on 2,000 units. Today, Latchel supports 27,500 units across 50 cities in the U.S. and has been adding about 4,000 to 5,000 new units a month. That averages out to about 250 units per customer, Lieber said. Looking into next month, Latchel wants to add an additional 6,000 units. The month after, it wants to add an additional 9,000.
The cost of Latchel depends on the service level and the number of units. If a landlord or property manager just wants basic services (tenant calls, coordination of emergency work) for after-hours coverage, Latchel charges a $25 account fee and then 80 cents per unit per month.
Currently, Latchel is conducting a beta test with properties that have fewer than 10 units to guarantee a maximum price of services per unit, Lieber said. If Latchel is unable to negotiate a good enough price for the contractor, Latchel will reimburse customers for any costs over the guaranteed max price.
Since launching its full-service solution last March, Latchel says its average tenant review is 4.7 out of 5 stars. In all, Latchel says it has reduced the amount of time spent on maintenance to 15 minutes per day for property management companies with 100 units or fewer.
Source: TechCrunch
The duo’s new Showtime program is like watching the best of Twitter in real time.
Source: Wired
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been teasing — and his fan base has been making pleas — to host a meme review. And after tweeted hints, meme review has arrived via YouTube star PewDiePie.
Musk tweeted last month a photo and a question “Host meme review?”
On Friday, Musk and Justin Roiland, one of the creators of Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty, appeared on YouTuber PewDiePie’s show for a meme review.
During the segment, Musk and Roiland rate various memes, like the one pictured below. The pair provide commentary and funny quips.
It looks like Musk and Roiland’s appearance has helped push PewDiePie above T-Series, an Indian music company on YouTube that has had the most subscribers. PewDiePie now has about a 20,000 subscriber lead.
The final meme, which pictures what appears to be a dead deer at the bottom of a pool, is what pushes Musk over the edge when he asks, “Jeez is that true? What, that actually happened? Oh my god,” as he bursts into fits of uncomfortable laughter.
You can watch the whole episode that PewDiePie uploaded on February 22 or skip to about minute 13 for Musk and Roiland.
Source: TechCrunch
Plus: WIRED’s other pie-in-the-sky Oscar wishes.
Source: Wired
Apple has confirmed its plans to close retail stores in the Eastern District of Texas — a move that will allow the company to better protect itself from patent infringement lawsuits, according to Apple news sites 9to5Mac and MacRumors, which broke the news of the stores’ closures. Apple says that the impacted retail employees will be offered new jobs with the company as a result of these changes.
The company will shut down its Apple Willow Bend store in Plano, Texas as well as its Apple Stonebriar store in Frisco, Texas, MacRumors reported, and Apple confirmed. These stores will permanently close up shop on Friday, April 12. Customers in the region will instead be served by a new Apple store located at the Galleria Dallas Shopping Mall, which is expected to open April 13.
Apple did not comment on the stores’ dates of closure or the new store’s opening.
However, it’s common for Apple to leave little downtown during retail stores transitions — though most closures are related to renovations or other reasons that aren’t about trying to escape patent lawsuits.
The Eastern District of Texas had become a popular place for patent trolls to file their lawsuits, though a more recent Supreme Court ruling has attempted to crack down on the practice. The court ruled that patent holders could no longer choose where to file.
Apple has had to make big payouts to patent trolls in recent years: $625.6 million to patent holding firm VirnetX in 2016 over protocol patents; VirnetX won $368 million from Apple in 2013; and more recently $502.6 million over four communication patents.
VirnetX tends to be referred to as a “patent troll” because it makes most of its revenue by suing tech companies. In addition to Apple, it sued Microsoft over patents in Skype and has been in litigation with Cisco. Its cases and subsequent wins are often held up as another example of how patent law in the U.S. is in need of reform.
The Apple store closures could have had a notable impact on area jobs, had Apple not offered new positions to its retail staff.
Apple today employs 1,000 people in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which has been an increase of 33 percent in the past five years.
The company also recently invested almost $30 million in its Dallas area stores.
Outside the Dallas metro area, Apple is also investing in Texas with its $1 billion for the new campus in Austin, which will accommodate an additional 5,000 employees on top of the 6,200 already in the area.
A rep for Apple confirmed the stores’ closures in a statement, but wouldn’t comment on the company’s reasoning:
We’re making a major investment in our stores in Texas, including significant upgrades to NorthPark Center, Southlake and Knox Street. With a new Dallas store coming to the Dallas Galleria this April, we’ve made the decision to consolidate stores and close Apple Stonebriar and Apple Willow Bend. All employees from those stores will be offered positions at the new Dallas store or other Apple locations.
Source: TechCrunch
In *The Threat*, the former FBI deputy director paints a familiar portrait of Trump, but deepens our understanding of a dark time for agency.
Source: Wired
Epic Games, maker of the ultra popular Battle Royale game Fortnite, is putting up another $100 million in prize cash for competitive tournaments in 2019.
The company made waves in the esports world last year, announcing $100 million prize pool for the 2018 competitive year, dwarfing every other competitive title in one fell swoop.
This year, a significant portion of the $100 million will be awarded to participants of the first-ever Fortnite World Cup. Each of the 200 players who qualify and compete will walk away with at least $50,000, with the winner taking home $3 million.
The Fortnite World Cup will take place July 26 – 28 in New York City, offering $30 million total in prizes. One-hundred of the top solo players will be invited, along with the top 50 duos teams.
So how do you get in on this?
Fortnite is holding weekly open online qualifiers, each worth $1 million, from April 13th to June 16th. Eligible players who consistently place well will have a shot at being one of those top 200 players.
This announcement comes at an interesting time for Fortnite. While the game still reigns supreme in terms of popularity, other Battle Royale games are picking up traction. Apex Legends (an EA and Respawn title), in particular, is growing in popularity. Several of the top Twitch streamers, including Ninja, Shroud, Timthetatman, High Distortion and Annemunition have started playing more Apex and participated in the first Apex Legends Twitch Rivals tournament.
Keeping the attention of these streamers is surely a priority for Fortnite, and for a game that pulls in some $300 million a month in in-game purchases, spending $100 million a year is a small price to pay.
Source: TechCrunch
Instagram is threatening to attack Pinterest just as it files to go public the same way the Facebook-owned app did to Snapchat. Code buried in Instagram for Android shows the company has prototyped an option to create public “Collections” to which multiple users can contribute. Instagram launched private Collections two years ago to let you Save and organize your favorite feed posts. But by allowing users to make Collections public, Instagram would become a direct competitor to Pinterest.
Instagram public Collections could spark a new medium of content curation. People could use the feature to bundle together their favorite memes, travel destinations, fashion items, or art. That could cut down on unconsented content stealing that’s caused backlash against meme “curators” like F*ckJerry by giving an alternative to screenshotting and reposting other people’s stuff. Instead of just representing yourself with your own content, you could express your identity through the things you love — even if you didn’t photograph them yourself. And if that sounds familiar, you’ll understand why this could be problematic for Pinterest’s upcoming $12 billion IPO.
The “Make Collection Public” option was discovered by frequent TechCrunch tipster and reverse engineering specialist Jane Machun Wong. It’s not available to the public, but from the Instagram for Android code, she was able to generate a screenshot of the prototype. It shows the ability to toggle on public visibility for a Collection, and tag contributors who can also add to the Collection. Previously, Collections was always a private, solo feature for organizing your bookmarks gathered through the Instagaram Save feature Instagram launched in late 2016.
Instagram told TechCrunch “we’re not testing this” which is its standard response to press inquiries about products that aren’t available to any public users, but that are in internal development. It could be a while until Instagram does start experimenting publicly with the feature and longer before a launch, and the company could always scrap the option. But it’s a sensible way to give users more to do and share on Instagram, and the prototype gives insight into the app’s strategy. Facebook launched its own Pinterest -style shareable Sets in 2017 and launched sharable Collections in December.
Currently there’s nothing in the Instagram code about users being able to follow each other’s Collections, but that would seem like a logical and powerful next step. Instagrammers can already follow hashtags to see new posts with them routed to their feed. Offering a similar way to follow Collections could turn people into star curators rather than star creators without the need to rip off anyone’s content. Speaking of infuencers, Wong also spotted Instagram prototyping IGTV picture-in-picture so you could keep watching a long-form video after closing the app and navigating the rest of your phone.
Instagram lets users Save posts which can then be organized into Collections
Public Collections could fuel Instagram’s commerce strategy that Mark Zuckerberg recently said would be a big part of the roadmap. Instagram already has a personalized Shopping feed in Explore, and The Verge’s Casey Newton reported last year that Instagram was working on a dedicated shopping app. It’s easy to imagine fashionistas, magazines, and brands sharing Collections of their favorite buyable items.
It’s worth remembering that Instagram launched its copycat of Snapchat Stories just six months before Snap went public. As we predicted, that reduced Snapchat’s growth rate by 88 percent. Two years later, Snapchat isn’t growing at all, and its share price is at just a third of its peak. With over 1 billion monthly and 500 million daily users, Instagram is four times the size of Pinterest. Instagram loyalists might find it’s easier to use the ‘good enough’ public Collections feature where they already have a social graph than try to build a following from scratch on Pinterest.
Source: TechCrunch
Facebook gets sensitive data about your heart rate and even a user’s menstrual cycle, according to tests conducted by The Wall Street Journal.
Source: CNET
Just because we’ve never gotten a GRMN model in the US doesn’t mean we’re not keeping fingers (and toes) crossed this time.
Source: CNET