Here’s a heartfelt gift for all you procrastinating early-stage startup founders who haven’t gotten your act together to apply to compete in Startup Battlefield at Disrupt San Francisco 2018 on September 5-7. You’re strapped for time, we get it. So, we’re extending the application deadline by one week.
You now have until June 13 — that’s seven days to collect your team and take your shot at winning $100,000. Yup, we doubled the prize money this year because we’re supersizing Disrupt SF. We’ve moved to Moscone Center West, which offers three times the floor space. That’ll make it much more comfortable for the more than 10,000 attendees, 1,200 exhibitors and more than 400 media outlets we expect to take in all that Disrupt has to offer.
Like, for example, Startup Battlefield — humanity’s best launching pad for early-stage startups. Seriously, winning this gig can have life-altering implications. Consider New York-based chore wizard Hello Alfred, which won Startup Battlefield at Disrupt SF back in 2014. The company — founded by Jessica Beck and Marcela Sapone — is ready to scale having just scored $40 million in a Series B round of funding. That’s what we call a good ROI.
In case you’re wondering how well other Battlefield competitors have fared, listen up. The Startup Battlefield alumni community consists of more than 800 companies and has collectively raised more than $8 billion in funding and produced more than 100 exits. You may recognize a few of them: Mint, Dropbox, Yammer, Fitbit, Getaround and Cloudflare. The networking opportunities alone make applying worth your time.
And let’s not forget all the press and investor interest. The competition takes place on the Disrupt Main Stage in front of a live audience that numbers in the thousands. The funding you seek is no doubt sitting in that audience. If you make the cut, experienced TechCrunch editors will coach you on the finer points of startup-pitching, so you’ll make the best impression possible.
We live-stream the entire event around the world on TechCrunch.com, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. And it’ll be available later, on demand. Remember, applying and competing in Startup Battlefield is 100 percent free. Where else will you find media and investor exposure at that price?
Battlefield competitors also get to exhibit their company in Startup Alley for all three days of the show — for free. Remember all those attendees and media outlets? They spend a lot of time combing the Alley for the next big thing. Competing in the Battlefield is the gift that keeps on giving.
Disrupt San Francisco 2018 takes place on September 5-7 at Moscone Center West. You have one extra week to get your application to us. Don’t delay any longer. Apply to Startup Battlefield right now.
Source: TechCrunch
Plus: Comma.ai says its semi-autonomous tech will be better than GM’s Super Cruise, and Hot Wheels unveils a GoPro mount.
Source: CNET
The Oculus Connect developer conference is back for its fifth year of chasing the VR dream.
Facebook VP or VR Hugo Barra announced that the company’s virtual reality-centric conference would be returning to San Jose on September 26 and 27. In past years, Oculus has used the conference to reveal its latest prototype hardware and to announce new software upgrades. This year, VR took center stage at Facebook’s F8 developer conference with the company using the event to launch the $199 Oculus Go standalone headset while also showcasing its latest prototype “Half Dome”.
It will be interesting to see what VR announcements are saved for Oculus at its own developer centric event and whether they use the opportunity to talk more about prototypes like its positionally-tracked “Santa Cruz” standalone which they have discussed the development of for the past two years.
Registration details for OC5 aren’t available yet but the application has typically gone live in mid-summer.
Source: TechCrunch
Apple, like much of Silicon Valley, wants to cure the disease it caused. But it could go further.
Source: Wired
What would you like Spotify to build?
Source: CNET
The company has unveiled a suite of time-management tools to help balance your digital and real lives—*without* consulting researchers.
Source: Wired
Asus introduced a concept design called Project Precog during the Computex technology show. It borrows Lenovo’s Yoga Book design to create an artificial intelligence-powered dual-screen 2-in-1 PC on a larger scale.
The post The Project Precog concept from Asus looks like the future of laptops appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
Phantom Auto, a platform that can remotely control autonomous vehicles if something goes wrong, has partnered with Einride, Transdev and NEVS, formerly known as Saab Automobile.
Phantom Auto’s tech enables a remote driver to take control of an autonomous vehicle, in the event the car encounters something it can’t handle on its own. The plan for NEVS is to use Phantom Auto’s technology to better ensure the safe deployment of electric, autonomous vehicles.
“Our AVs must be able to drive from any point A to any point B, which means driving through all edge cases they experience on the road, such as inclement weather, road work, and any other road obstructions,” NEVS CEO Stefan Tilk said in a statement. “Phantom Auto’s teleoperation safety technology ensures that passengers in our vehicles can safely and efficiently drive through any edge case, and that’s why I am excited and proud to call them NEVS’ partner.”
Phantom Auto, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., was founded just last year.
Source: TechCrunch
Itching to create an augmented reality object? Adobe will soon have software to help. Adobe recently teased Project Aero, an upcoming software that helps design AR objects, including support for Apple’s ARKit.
The post Adobe’s next big software secret? An augmented reality tool called Project Aero appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
If content creators want to sell pricier monthly content subscriptions, offering stickers, pins, signed photos, or t-shirts can convince fans to pay a higher fee and keep them loyal with a physical connection. That’s why patronage platform Patreon just acquired Kit, a startup building a merchandise logistics backend so creators don’t have to fiddle with spreadsheets and stuff envelopes themselves.
“Over 60 percent of today of Patreon creators either want to or are already delivering some kind of physical merchandise” says Patreon’s VP of Product, Wyatt Jenkins. Together, they could help Patreon creators develop merch items that fans subscribe to get ahold of, potentially shelling out for $10 or $20 per month tiers rather than basic $1 or $5 online content-only tiers.
The deal could also help Patreon stay ahead of YouTube and Facebook, which are encroaching on its subscription patronage model. Patreon now has 2 million patrons backing 100,000 creators. It paid out $350 million over its first 5 years through 2017, and expects to send creators another $300 million in 2018, while taking a 5 percent cut.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. 90 percent of Kit team, mostly product and engineering talent, will join San Francisco-based Patreon though they’ll stay put in NYC as a satellite office the rest of the year. Kit had raised $2.5 million from Social Capital, Expa, #Angels, Precursor, and Stanford’s StartX, as well as angels like Ellen Pao and Slack’s April Underwood.
“When we think about merch, it’s never been fully about the thing — the sticker or the t-shirt — there’s this relationship. This human-to-human connection” says Kit co-founder and CEO Camille Hearst.
Kit was in the process of pivoting towards merchandise logistics and raising a Series A when it began talks with Patreon, leading to the acquisition. The startup was originally built as a way for social media stars and online celebrities to earn affilliate marketing fees by recommending products to fans through Kit, which took a cut of the referral dollars.
“We were at a stage where everything was going in the right direction. We had seen strong growth in monthly active users and how much creators were making” Hearst says, noting Kit had reached $15 million in gross merchandise value. “It just seemed like we would be able to accelerate what we were doing by joining with Patreon. Merch is very transaction focused compared with a subscription.” Hearst explains, touting the high lifetime value of recurring payments over one-off purchases. “You can help creators earn a lot more money if you use merch to sell subscriptions.”
The plan at Patreon is to build out a new open merchandise provider platform. Creators will be able to choose between a variety of merch partners ranging from those that turn their existing logo into physical goods to those that will design items based on merely vague ideas from the star. But in the meantime, Kit won’t be shutting down or ditching its affilliate program because “we don’t want to turn off any revenue streams” that creators depend on, Hearst promises.
Source: TechCrunch