From the Philippines to Puerto Rico, admirers remember the late athlete.
Source: CNET
From the toilet to the treadmill, you can visit every nook and cranny of the International Space Station.
Source: CNET
It’s an emotional site, but an important reminder.
Source: CNET
CBS’ streaming service, CBS All Access, credits a trio of high-profile events — including the premiere of its new Star Trek series, “Star Trek: Picard,” as well as the 62nd annual Grammy Awards, not to mention a busy month of football — with helping it to achieve a new record for subscriber sign-ups in a given month. The company says January 2020 surpassed the service’s previous record in February 2019 for subscriber sign-ups. In addition, last week was the second-best sign-up week ever, closely behind the week of the 2019 Super Bowl.
Much of the record-setting had to do with the launch of the highly anticipated show, “Star Trek: Picard,” which brings back fan-favorite Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard, now a retired Starfleet Admiral whose quiet life on his family’s vineyard is about to be disrupted. The show, set 18 years after the events of the final “Star Trek: The Next Generation” movie, “Star Trek: Nemesis,” not only capitalizes on Stewart’s draw, it also brings back previous “Star Trek” actors including Brent Spiner (Data), Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine), Marina Sirtis (Troi), and Jonathan Frakes (Riker).
But unlike other reboots, which hope nostalgia alone will bring the viewers, “Picard’s” creators have actually given thought to the story the show is trying to tell, resulting in a 95% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes.
CBS says the premiere of “Picard” also marked a new record for total streams and drove the highest volume of subscribers to stream a CBS All Access original series to date.
“Picard” was up by more than 115% in terms of total streams, when compared to CBS All Access’s first record, which was by its other “Star Trek” show, the less well-received “Star Trek: Discovery.” It was also up by 180+% over “Discovery’s” prior record for subscribers streaming a CBS All Access original.
Meanwhile, CBS said last night’s Grammys were the most-streamed to date and a new record for sign-ups on a Grammys Sunday, surpassing 2019 by more than 80% in new sign-ups and more than 30% in unique viewers on the service.
However, what CBS won’t talk about is the total number of subscribers for CBS All Access alone, nor does it break out how many have upgraded to the ad-free tier.
Instead, the company only shares that CBS All Access and Showtime’s over-the-top service, combined, have more than 10 million total subscribers.
In any event, that figure puts it far behind streaming rivals like Netflix and Hulu, with 61 million U.S. subscribers and 29 million subscribers, respectively. Even newcomers like Disney+ and Apple TV+ have boomed. Disney+ is estimated to have somewhere between 23.2 million and 25 million subscribers. One estimate believes Apple TV+ could be even bigger, but the analyst firm’s methodology is questionable. (After all, Apple TV+ may be available to users with a new Apple device for free for a year, but that doesn’t mean users are watching the service, nor will pay for it later on.)
In short, what these figures mean is CBS needs more than football, seasonal events and a new “Star Trek” series in order to grow. Even if “Star Trek: Picard” becomes a hit, fans who come for “Star Trek” alone are likely to sign up only when the show is airing, then unsubscribe in the off-season. Some may even wait to watch the series until they can binge it all — possibly even during a free trial period.
But as the newly combined ViacomCBS, the company now has options. ViacomCBS’ top execs have indicated they could bring Nickelodeon, BET, MTV and Comedy Central shows to CBS All Access as a result of the Viacom-CBS merger. The company believes it can hit 25 million CBS All Access subscribers by 2022.
“We’ve seen tremendous continued growth in the service, and the new records we’ve experienced due to ‘Star Trek: Picard,’ the Grammy’s and a fantastic season of football are a phenomenal way to kick off what will be a fantastic year for CBS All Access,â€� said Marc DeBevoise, chief digital officer, ViacomCBS, and president and CEO, CBS Interactive. “CBS All Access continues to build upon its great mix of programming — from original series, to sports and special events — and we’ve strategically programmed 2020 to bring subscribers an ‘always on’ calendar of must-watch series and events,” he added.
Source: TechCrunch
Moons, a Mexico City-based startup that’s angling to be the Invisalign for the Latin American market, has joined the ranks of Y Combinator as part of the accelerator’s latest cohort.
The company already has $5 million in financing in the bank from an international group of investors, including Jaguar Ventures, Foundation Capital and Tuesday Capital, along with a whole host of strategic individual investors from Latin America’s dental community.
“We provide dental services throughout Mexico, Colombia and soon throughout Latin America,” says Moon co-founder and chief executive officer, Tommaso Tomba.
Like Invisalign, Moons conducts free initial conversations with potential patients and does a free scan of their teeth. “We have a team of orthodontists that take a look at the patient and determines whether the patient is a good candidate,” says Tomba.
If there’s a good fit, then the company creates a treatment plan and consultation schedule with a patient and fits them out with a pair of 3D-printed aligners — all for around $1,200.
That’s far lower than the treatment costs using established vendors, says Tomba. Already the company has 18 locations in Mexico and another two in Colombia — where Tomba expects operations to expand at a rapid clip. “We’re turning more cases than Invisalign in Mexico because we’ve brought the price right down,” says Tomba.
A graduate of Cambridge and Oxford Universities, Tomba and his founding team chose Latin America to launch their dental business after months of market analysis. Latin America is host to three of the most active destinations for cosmetic surgeries in the world.
Tomba market-tested by creating a website advertising the launch of his new business and taking pre-orders for the service in Europe, Latin America and the U.S. He settled on Mexico in part because of the demand he saw and in part because he’d had experience in the market previously as an early employee of Linio — a Rocket Internet-backed competitor to Amazon on the continent.
During his time at Linio, Tomba met his co-founder Leonardo Miron, a serial entrepreneur whose previous business was a mobile phone repair service called Rescata. Alex Clapp, a university friend of Tomba’s with experience in investment banking and healthcare-focused private equity in London and New York, rounded out the founding team.
The team chose to apply to Y Combinator because of the firm’s access to capital and ability to open doors in the U.S., Tomba said. “In LatAm, access to capital to build long-lasting companies is still relatively limited compared to the U.S., so we think it makes sense to YC so that they help us with investors and attracting talent going forward,” he said.
And Moons has bigger dreams than just the dental market. “We plan to go into other healthcare verticals,” says Tomba. “Always with the core tenet of providing high-quality healthcare and making it accessible.”
Source: TechCrunch
PrimaHealth Credit, which offers loans to borrowers to pay for medical treatment, is expanding its pitch to cover addiction treatment centers.
Currently, PrimaHealth offers loans for elective healthcare procedures like plastic surgery, LASIK, dental surgery and orthodontics. The move into addiction treatment is both a sign of how broken the American healthcare system is when it comes to substance abuse and addiction — and mental health therapies more broadly — and an indicator of the potential size of the market.
According to the company, PrimaHealth won’t charge any interest for most of its loans — depending on the creditworthiness of the borrower. Instead, the company will make money by charging a fee to the treatment center. If the borrower has poor credit, the APR on loans is 19.99%, according to a spokesperson for the company.
“Addiction treatment centers are under-served in relation to viable financing options to offer their patients,â€� says Brendon Kensel, founder and chief executive of PrimaHealth Credit, in a statement. “The burden of out-of-pocket costs falls on their patients, who often are unable to start the treatments they urgently need.â€�
Spending on substance abuse treatment in the U.S. is expected to reach $42.1 billion this year, with patients paying about $3.7 billion out-of-pocket for treatment and services, according to data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration cited by the company.
“Out-of-pocket expenses are often a key barrier to patients proceeding with care,� says Fritz Quindt, marketing director at A Better Today Recovery Services, a leading addiction treatment provider based in Scottsdale, Ariz., in a statement. “PrimaHealth Credit offers a new approach to helping patients fund the treatment they need. Their easy-to-use platform, customer support, and results speak for themselves.�
The company wouldn’t comment on the number of loans it has issued for elective surgeries.
PrimaHealth uses an algorithm to determine the credit-worthiness of potential borrowers and provides a payment management solution for treatment centers. Using underwriting models that use 200 determining factors, the company can issue instant credit decisions and offer different payment plans for borrowers, according to a statement.
For providers, the company offers reduced administrative costs and manages payment services, accounts receivable and credit reporting. PrimaHealth also said it would help addiction providers meet regulatory requirements to collect co-pays and deductibles.
The company’s services are currently available in Arizona, California, Florida and Texas.
Source: TechCrunch
What if it was easier to eat salad than junk food? Most diet routines take a ton of time, whether you’re cooking from scratch, making a meal kit or seeking a nutritious restaurant. But on-demand prepared food delivery companies like Sprig that tried to eliminate that work have gone bankrupt from poor unit economics.
Thistle is a different type of food startup. It delivers thrice-weekly cooler bags customized with meat-optional, plant-based breakfasts, lunches, dinners, snacks, sides and juices. By batching deliveries in the less-congested early morning hours and optimizing routes to its subscribers, or by mailing weekly boxes beyond its own geographies, Thistle makes sure you already have your food the moment you’re hungry. Whether you heat them up or eat them straight out of the fridge, you’re actually dining faster than you could even place an Uber Eats order.
The food on Thistle’s constantly rotating menu is downright tasty. You might get a sunrise chia parfait for breakfast, a chicken tropical mango salad for lunch, a microwaveable bulgogi noodle bowl for dinner, with beet hummus and kale-cucumber juice for snacks. Thistle’s not cheap, with meals averaging about $14 each. But compared to competitors’ on-demand delivery markups and service fees, wasting ingredients from the grocer and the hours of cooking for yourself, it can be a good deal for busy people.
“We see Thistle as part of a movement to make health convenient rather than a high willpower chore,” CEO Ashwin Cheriyan tells me. What Peloton did to shave time off getting a great workout, Thistle does for eating a nourishing meal. It makes the right choice the easiest choice.
Thistle COO Shiri Avnery and CEO Ashwin Cheriyan with their daughter
The idea of a button you can push to make you healthier has attracted a new $5.65 million Series A round for Thistle led by its first institutional investor, PowerPlant Ventures . Bringing the startup to $15 million in funding, the cash will expand Thistle’s delivery domain. Dan Gluck of PowerPlant, which has also funded food break-outs like Beyond Meat, Thrive Market and Rebbl, will join the board.
Currently Thistle delivers in-person to the Bay Area, LA metro, San Diego and Sacramento while shipping to most of Washington, Oregon, Utah, Idaho, Nevada and Arizona. Thistle actually held off on raising more since launching in 2013 to make sure it hammered out unit economics to prevent an implosion. It’s also planning broader meal options, additional product lines and fresh distribution strategies like getting stocked in office smart kitchens or subsidized by wellness plans.
“The reasons that so many food delivery companies have failed likely fall into two buckets: one, a lack of focus on margins and unit economics, and two, premature geographic expansion before proving out the business model,” says Cheriyan. “Thistle makes money similar to how a well-run restaurant would make money — by having strong gross margins, efficient customer acquisition costs and solid customer retention / lifetime metrics. We currently deliver tens of thousands of meals on a weekly basis to customers on the West Coast and our annual average growth rate since launch has been 100%+.”
It’s nice that Thistle hasn’t gone out of business, because I’ve been eating its salads 6X a week for three years. It’s been the most efficient way for me to get healthier and lose weight after a half-decade of ordering takeout sandwiches and then feeling sluggish all day. I legitimately look forward to each one since they often have 20+ ingredients and only repeat every few months, so they’re never boring.
It has helped me keep my work-from-home lunches to about 20 minutes so I have more time for writing. Thistle is one of the few startups I consistently recommend to people. When asked how I lost 25lbs before my wedding, I point to Peloton cycling, Future remote personal training and Thistle salads — none of which require me to leave the house.
Cheriyan tells me, “We wanted the better-for-you and better-for-planet choice to be the default choice.”
Thistle has already pivoted past the business model burning tons of cash across the startup world. The company started as an on-demand cold-pressed juice delivery service, sending hipster glass bottles of watermelon and charcoal extract to doors around San Francisco. It was 2013, yoga was booming and people were paying crazily high prices for liquified lemongrass. Health made simple seemed like a sure bet to the founding team of Alap Shah, Naman Shah, Sheel Mohnot and Johnny Hwin, some of whom run Studio Management, a family office and startup incubator. [Disclosure: Hwin and Shah are friends of mine, but didn’t pitch or discuss this article with me.]
Thistle eventually straightened things out with a shift to subscriptions and batched delivery under the leadership of the hired executives, Cheriyan and his wife and COO Shiri Avnery. “I came from a family of physicians — both my parents, brother, and enough aunts, uncles, and cousins are doctors that they could start a small hospital,” Cheriyan, a former corporate attorney in M&A tells me. “A common point of frustration was about patients suffering from diet-related illnesses who were unable to make a lifestyle change because it was too hard.”
Avnery, a PhD in air pollution and climate change’s impact on agriculture, had become exasperated with the slow pace of policy change and the inaction of governments and corporations. The two quit their jobs, moved to San Francisco, and searched for a point of leverage for positively influencing people’s diets and interaction with the environment. They teamed up with the founders and launched Thistle v1.
A lack of experience in logistics led to the initial detour into on-demand. But rather than trying to fix the problem with VC money, Thistle stayed lean and discovered the opportunity nestled between Uber Eats and Blue Apron: sending people food they don’t have to eat now, but that takes low or no time to prepare when they’re peckish. Through its app, users can customize their meal plans, ban their allergens, pause deliveries and see what they’ll eat next.
A sample of Thistle 8 meal plans
“The unit economics problem most heavily plagued the early on-demand food companies. Food / labor waste and inefficient deliveries were likely the biggest reasons why the economics were unsustainable without venture life support. We know this personally as Thistle started our delivery service as an on-demand company before quickly realizing that the unit economics couldn’t sustain a healthy business,” Cheriyan explains, regarding companies like Sprig, DoorDash and Grubhub. Beyond unsold food, “the margins very likely did not support ordering a $12-$15 single meal for immediate delivery when average hourly driver wages reached $18-20.”
Meal kits were supposed to make dining healthier and cheaper, but they proved too much of a chore and led customers to boxes of ingredients piling up unused. Munchery and Nomiku went out of business while giants like Blue Apron have incinerated hundreds of millions of dollars and seen their share prices sink.
“The meal kit companies fared a little better from a gross margin perspective (due to pre-orders and more efficient deliveries), but suffer most from an easy-to-copy business model. This led to a rise in copycats, and, as a result, heavily rising customer acquisition costs, low switching costs and poor retention,” Cheriyan tells me. “Fundamentally the meal kit companies face another challenge, which is that people have less and less time to cook and are increasingly looking for ready-to-eat options.”
A slower, steadier approach with less overhead, more convenience and fewer direct competitors has helped Thistle grow to 400 employees, from culinary to engineering to logistics.
Still, it’s vulnerable. It may still be too expensive for some markets and demographics. Logistics experts like Amazon and Whole Foods could try to barge into the market. Cloud kitchens without dining rooms are making restaurant food more affordable for delivery. And another startup could always take the gamble on raising a ton of cash and subsidizing prices to steal market share, especially where Thistle doesn’t operate yet.
Thistle could counter these threats by further eliminating delivery costs by selling through partners like office smart fridges where employees pay on the spot, or equipping gym lobbies with more than just Muscle Milk.
“One opportunity we’re excited to test is attended and unattended retail — it would be great to be able to pick up Thistle products at your local grocery store, gym or coffee shop,” Cheriyan says. As for offices, “Today’s corporate lunchtime solutions often require a trade-off between health and convenience: either wait in line for 30+ minutes at your favorite salad spot for a healthy option, or opt into catered restaurant meals that leave you feeling sluggish and unproductive.” Thistle could help employers prevent the 3pm energy lull.
The startup’s focus on plant-forward meals also centers it in the path of another megatrend: the shift to environmentally conscious diets. Almost 60% of Americans are trying to eat less meat and 50% are eating meat-alternatives like Impossible Burgers. That stems both from interest in the humane treatment of animals and how 15% of green house emissions come from livestock. But 45% of Americans say they hate to cook. That’s why Thistle makes pre-made meals where meat and egg are optional, but the food is healthy and delicious without them.
In the age of Uber, we’ve acclimated to an effortless life. The new wave of “push-button health” startups like Thistle could finally take the hassle out of aligning your actions in the gym or kitchen with you intentions.
Source: TechCrunch
Avast’s free anti-virus software may be collecting and selling your private browsing data to marketers, but you can regain your privacy and stop the company. We’ll show you how to limit the data sharing in a few simple steps.
Source: Digital trends
Intel’s made two attempts to fix the microprocessor vulnerability it was warned about 18 months ago. Third time’s the charm?
Source: Wired
Concrete and steel come with massive emissions. So let’s ditch them and build towers out of wood. Yes, wood.
Source: Wired