Funding will get you a long way, but people, at the end of the day, are the key to a successful business.
The Predictive Index, which develops behavioral and cognitive employee assessments, has raised a $50 million round of growth-stage capital from venture capital firm General Catalyst to help companies choose the right talent.
Kirk Arnold, an executive-in-residence at General Catalyst and new Predictive Index board member, led the deal for the VC firm, which says the round is the largest first check they’ve ever written a company. Predictive Index declined to disclose the valuation.
The workplace analytics service was founded in 1955, making it just a bit older than your typical growth-stage business. Current chief executive officer Mike Zani (pictured, right) acquired the company in 2014 with Predictive Index president and chairman Daniel Muzquiz (pictured, left). Prior to the acquisition, the pair were clients of the business.
With the infusion of VC funding, Zani said he’ll double employee headcount, create a playbook on how to “successfully design, hire and inspire winning teams” and create a talent optimization industry conference, amongst other big plans.
“Most companies are losing the talent war, and not because of the lack of fight, but rather because strategic talent strategies are non-existent or broken,” Zani told TechCrunch. “The irony is that talent is one of the only lasting differentiators in business today. Most tools in the marketplace help with process or tactical aspects of people and ignore the strategic. At [Predictive Index] we offer the strategic talent discipline, or talent optimization, to the hands of those who want to use talent as a business performance lever.”
Headquartered in Boston, Predictive Index says it counts some 7,000 customers in 142 countries, including Nissan, DocuSign and Blue Cross Blue Shield.
“This year, low unemployment and high turnover will further magnify the importance of talent,” Arnold said in a statement. “Having a talent strategy which aligns and supports business strategy is a requirement for any business to be successful.”
Source: TechCrunch
The gaming world is excited to play Anthem, BioWare’s answer to Destiny and other big-budget online shooters — but an exclusive preview weekend for the mech-flying game has struggled to get off the ground. Of course, it wouldn’t be a game launch these days without a few hiccups to spice things up, but it is a little embarrassing.
The 40-gigabyte demo was made available today to those who had pre-ordered the game, as well as press and other “VIPs.” The game, announced last year at E3, is a loot-focused shooter where you pilot mechs through a huge open world, engage in cooperative combat and exploration and all that.
At least, so they say. Reports immediately came flooding in on forums and social media that not only was Origin, the service on which the demo is offered, failing to function properly, but that the game itself wasn’t connecting to servers, or if it did, wouldn’t load beyond the intro sequence.
I encountered this myself; after eventually getting loaded and logged in, I managed to get into the starting town area where you will, in the full game, upgrade your gear, accept quests and so on. But when I attempted to launch the first mission or otherwise enter the actual game world, the loading bar would stop about 95 percent of the way done and stay there forever (I waited about five minutes and reloaded a couple times to make sure it wasn’t just my aging rig). Those who made it all the way in complained of lag and glitches.
No one really ever expects a major title, especially one with a major online components, to launch even in a limited way without a few speed bumps, but something like this can really put the brakes on a hype train. Publisher EA admitted to the laundry list of issues from a support Twitter account:
Funnily enough EA Help’s own servers were having trouble as well, so not only could people not play Anthem, they couldn’t report that they couldn’t play Anthem.
Patience is a necessary virtue in today’s AAA game launches, but the people hoping to play this weekend aren’t randos but paying customers; this preview demo weekend was supposed to be a pre-order bonus, but the first day is a bust so far. Considering BioWare and EA knew exactly how many players could be trying to connect today — and those numbers are likely far less than those who will try the open beta or connect on launch day — it’s rather odd that they were seemingly caught so off-guard.
Anthem is certainly promising and the developers have gone out of their way to assure players that many of the hated practices of online games these days would not find a home on their platform. But launch problems always jar the confidence of undecided buyers, and there’s almost no question that the game will be better a month or two after its actual debut. Launch numbers could be affected by players not believing the game is ready to play, and therefore not being willing to pay.
I fully anticipate these issues getting resolved at some point soon, however, and will collect my impressions of the game in a separate post when that happens.
Source: TechCrunch
‘Anthem’ is clearly built with the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in mind, but what about the PC version? It’s beautiful, but the demo version isn’t perfect. Here’s why you shouldn’t cough up your cash just yet.
The post Want to buy ‘Anthem’ for your PC? Read this first, freelancer appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
Facebook’s effort to combine its major chat platforms could create minefields for users who rely on end-to-end encryption.
Source: Wired
Google has taken the wraps off of the dates and location for Google I/O 2019. The event is set to take place from May 7 to 9 at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California. The event will likely be where Google unveils Android Q.
The post Google I/O 2019 will take place at a familiar time and at a predictable locale appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
Tinder recently agreed to settle a $23 million class-action age discrimination lawsuit. The lawsuit, filed last April in California, alleged Tinder charged people over 30 years old twice the amount for its subscription services.
The class consists of every person 29 years of age or older at the time who subscribed to Tinder Plus or Tinder Gold between March 2, 2015 and the date of preliminary approval, according to the proposed order granting motion for preliminary approval of the class-action settlement.
“Under the Settlement, Defendants agree to a multifaceted Settlement structure, which includes a universal participation component (automatic benefits to all Class Members);” the settlement states. “An additional cash or cash-equivalent payout to Class Members who submit timely valid claims; and an agreement to substantially halt Defendants’ allegedly discriminatory practices going forward.”
Filed on behalf of about 230,000 class members, each person will be able to receive either $25 in cash, 25 additional Super Likes or a one-month subscription to either Tinder Plus or Tinder Gold. As part of the settlement, Tinder must distribute $11.5 million to all class members, as well as $5.75 million in potential cash or cash-equivalents (e.g. Super Likes) to every class member who submits a claim.
Tinder has also agreed to stop charging people — just those located in California — different prices based on their age. That carries a value of at least $5.75 million, according to the settlement. In total, this amounts to a $23 million settlement.
I’ve reached out to Tinder and will update this story if I hear back. In the meantime, feel free to check out the settlement below.
Source: TechCrunch
On Friday, President Trump announced his intentions to back off of his demand for border wall funding, allowing the federal government to reopen for three weeks through February 15. The president touted the decision to reopen the government as a deal in spite of his failure to obtain a multi-billion-dollar agreement toward a physical perimeter for the southern border.
At 35 days, the federal shutdown has been the lengthiest to ever grind the U.S. government to a halt. Under the current terms of the proposal, the federal government would re-open, bringing hundreds of thousands of federal employees back to work, as negotiations around a border wall compromise take place. It would also provision back pay for the roughly 800,000 federal workers who have missed paychecks as part of the ordeal.
The Senate is expected to bring the proposal to reopen the government to a vote soon, with the House likely to quickly follow suit. While Trump’s decision on Friday shows the president backing down, he again raised the spectre of declaring a national emergency if his demands are not met.
Often framed as a political standoff between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the president, the shutdown resulted in far-reaching potential consequences for American safety, from unpaid TSA agents to understaffed intelligence agencies unable to monitor and respond to ongoing cybersecurity threats.
Though less consequential, companies have also seen their IPO plans put on ice, waiting out the shutdown to see how to proceed. Even with the government poised to reopen, the SEC remains clogged up with a pile of IPO filings that must be processed before companies can move forward with their plans, making for an unpredictable landscape for companies like Uber, Lyft, Cloudflare and other big-name anticipated 2019 IPOs. Even with the government reopening, a three-week window might not offer enough stability for companies eager to set the paperwork into motion.
Between lapsed cybersecurity and derailed IPO timelines, it may be some time before we know the true damage that the nearly month-long shutdown caused, but the implications will likely stretch well beyond the considerable emotional and financial toll on workers and their families.
Source: TechCrunch
Microsoft’s To-Do app is officially picking up support for Cortana, allowing people to leverage the Microsoft virtual assistant to manage their reminders, tasks, and more to help them remain on schedule.
The post Cortana integrates with Microsoft To-Do to ensure maximum productivity appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
A line in a new court filing by the Department of Defense suggests that it might reopen investigation into a possible conflict of interest interest in the JEDI contract RFP process involving a former AWS employee. The story has attracted a great deal of attention in major news publications including the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, but a Pentagon spokesperson has told TechCrunch that nothing has changed.
In the document, filed with the court on Wednesday, the government’s legal representatives sought to outline its legal arguments in the case. The line that attracted so much attention stated, “Now that Amazon has submitted a proposal, the contracting officer is considering whether Amazon’s re-hiring Mr. Ubhi creates an OCI that cannot be avoided, mitigated, or neutralized.” OCI stands for Organizational Conflict of Interest in DoD lingo.
When asked about this specific passage, Pentagon spokesperson Heather Babb made clear the conflict had been investigated earlier and that Ubhi had recused himself from the process. “During his employment with DDS, Mr. Deap Ubhi recused himself from work related to the JEDI contract. DOD has investigated this issue, and we have determined that Mr. Ubhi complied with all necessary laws and regulations,” Babb told TechCrunch.
She repeated that statement when asked specifically about the language in the DoD’s filing. Ubhi did work at Amazon prior to joining the DoD and returned to work for them after he left.
The Department of Defense’s decade-long, $10 billion JEDI cloud contract process has attracted a lot of attention, and not just for the size of the deal. The Pentagon has said this will be a winner-take-all affair. Oracle and IBM have filed formal complaints and Oracle filed a lawsuit in December alleging among other things that there was a conflict of interest by Ubhi, and that they believed the single-vendor approach was designed to favor AWS. The Pentagon has denied these allegations.
The DoD completed the RFP process at the end of October and is expected to choose the winning vendor in April.
Source: TechCrunch
Apple has registered new iPad models in the Eurasian Economic Commission reference database. The Moscow-based commission keeps a product database pretty much like the FCC in the U.S. And it sounds like Apple is about to launch a new iPad mini 5 and an updated entry-level iPad.
That database has shown information on new Apple products in the past — MySmartPrice first discovered today’s new filings. There are two different filings that both mention new tablets that run iOS 12.
The first filing mentions five different models while the second one mention two different models. Usually, each configuration gets a different model number depending on storage and LTE capabilities.
It lines up with previous rumors that mentioned a new iPad mini and a new cheap iPad for early 2019. Ming-Chi Kuo expects an updated iPad mini with a 7.9-inch display. The device hasn’t been updated for years and many believed that Apple would stop updating it. But if you still like that form factor, Apple may have something new for you.
When it comes to the normal size iPad, Apple last updated the 9.7-inch iPad in March 2018. While all eyes are on the iPad Pro, many people are still looking for the cheapest iPad they can get. And the $329 9.7-inch iPad is a good deal. Apple usually update that model every year.
Today’s filings don’t say what those devices will look like unfortunately. It’s unclear if Apple is going to reduce the bezels of those devices, add a Face ID sensor and switch to USB-C.
Source: TechCrunch