Fleetsmith, a startup that wants to make it easier for companies to manage their Apple devices, announced a $7.7 million Series A round today led by Upfront Ventures.
Seed investors Index Ventures and Harrison Meta also participated in the round. The company has raised a total of $11 million. They also announced that Luke Kanies, founder and former CEO of Puppet has joined their Board of Directors.
Fleetsmith wants to help SMBs provision and manage Apple devices whether that’s computers, phones, iPads or Apple TVs. Trying to provision these devices manually is a time-consuming process, one that larger organizations no longer have to deal with because of other commercial options or in-house solutions, but Fleetsmith puts that same kind of efficient device management within reach of smaller organizations by offering it as a cloud service.
The two co-founders, Zack Blum and Jesse Endahl, who came from Dropbox and Phantom were both in positions where they needed to buy and deploy Apple devices and couldn’t find a good way for a small company to do that on the market.
“How do you manage a fleet of Macs and secure them through the internet? We looked around when we were in a build/buy position and saw a lot to be done. We are democratizing what companies like Google and Facebook have with their own [home-grown] internal Mac management tools,” CEO Blum told Techcrunch.
Fleetsmith device admin console. Photo: Fleetsmith
The company takes advantage of the Device Enrollment Program, a business device management service offered by Apple to simplify provisioning of Apple products. As long as the IT administrator is enrolled in DEP, you can use Fleetsmith, Blum explained. An employee can then order a laptop (or any device), and when they connect to to WiFi, it connects to Fleetsmith, which configures the device automatically.
“The really cool thing about how DEP integrates into our feature set is that as soon as the employee connects to WiFi, it take care of deployment. The account is created, software gets installed, the drive gets encrypted. It makes installing and enrolling new people really simple,” he said. Once you’re setup with everything you need installed, the admin can force critical updates, but the system will give you several warnings before installing the update.
“Fleetsmith is automation applied perfectly, handing all of the menial work to the computer so the people do less firefighting and more strategic work. This is especially important in the mid-market because the teams are leaner and every computer counts,” new board member Kanies said in a statement.
The service costs is just $99 per year per device to access the cloud service. They offer a freemium version to manage up to 10 devices at no cost. The company launched in 2016 and currently has 20 employees. Customers include HackerOne, Robinhood and Nuna.
Source: TechCrunch
Tensions around Facebook’s privacy and ad practices have escalated dramatically since the last time the company sat before Congress.
Source: Wired
A report by US reseller ThredUP estimates that second-hand fashion will soon overtake “fast fashion”, with an expected market worth of $41 billion USD by 2022. According to the site, in 2017 resale equated to six percent of the fashion market, with fast fashion at nine percent. By 2027 however, it’s projected to sit at 11 percent for resale and 10 percent for fast fashion. Why? Because there is a huge glut of clothes in the market, that’s why. You people are just not buying all the clothes that are being made. The trend is starting to affect big retailers. H&M has $4.3 billion worth of unsold clothing.
This is not only an environmental disaster, it’s also a huge turn-off for millenials who are cutting against the waste in the fashion industry and also looking for unique looks that go against the manufactured ‘trends’ in fast fashion.
The biggest sites in this resale space include Vestiaire and Vinted, among others. But mostly they concentrate on person-to-person sales. A new startup hopes to bring small second-hand shops into the space and has now raised a seed round to power its vision.
TPH.co connects local vintage shops with vintage fashion lovers. Vintage shops subscribe to the platform to load op their garments. TPH stands for The Pasta Haters, the idea being that people want to find original pieces, instead of bland ‘pasta fashion’.
It’s now raised $250,000 from London-based Seedcamp, Wave Ventures, STING and The Nordic Web Ventures. TPH says it has been gaining traction not just among fashion-loving customers but among stores as well.
The site is the brainchild of Lisa Gautier, who was previously with Outfittery (Curated shopping for men) and FYNDIQ (Bargain superstore) and was recently joined by cofounder Maki Kobayashi. Gautier says: “At TPH.co we’re reshaping the way you consume fashion, keeping your closet unique and environmentally friendly. The fact that we attracted investors from four different countries perfectly reflects and supports the international ambition and opportunity for TPH.”
Seedcamp’s Carlos Eduardo Espinal, comments, “We were hugely impressed from the moment we met Lisa by the global market potential for TPH, the promising early traction the business has experienced to date, and the social impact of the business.”
Anton Backman from Wave Ventures says: “Cool, trendy and ecological, not to mention global from day one. TPH and Lisa are tapping a huge underserved niche of vintage lovers that is growing year by year.”
Source: TechCrunch
In this day and age of higher expectation in offices, sourcing your furniture from Ikea no longer cuts the proverbial mustard. But the furniture industry is notoriously old fashioned, forcing buyers to leaf through hundreds of paper catalogues, most of which are outdated by the time you get around to ordering. The global design and furniture industry is worth $700 billion, and yet most of its processes for customers are stuck in a previous age. Wouldn’t it be better if someone digitised those manufacturer catalogues, and allowed you to order direct, cutting out the middle-men?
This is what eporta is. This London-based B2B interior marketplace startup, has now raised $8 million in a series A funding round led by US investor Canvas Ventures. It also includes venture capitalists LocalGlobe, Oxford Capital Partners, Talis Capital, Samos Ventures, as well as angel investors Guy Hands, Ed Wray (co-founder, Betfair), Rohan Blacker (founder, sofa.com), Simon Kain (co-founder of Zoopla) and Will Cooper (founder, Achica.com).
Founded in 2015, eporta allows interior designers, architects, property developers, offices and other businesses to find and purchase furniture pieces directly from manufacturers around the world online. The Hilton Hotel Group, Accenture, Ted Baker, and Charlotte Tilbury are included amongst its clients.
Eporta lists over 1,000 sellers in 55 countries and over 10,000 buyers in 85 countries. The idea is that companies that purchase items on eporta can expect to save up to 50% off retail pricing. eporta’s revenue model enables suppliers to pay a low commission to utilise the platform. The service is free for buyers to sign up to, with best pricing guaranteed.
The startup was founded by Manchester-born and Oxford University-educated Aneeqa Khan who previously led strategy at property marketplace Zoopla and oversaw its £919 million IPO in June 2014. Her technical cofounder is Simon Shillaker, a friend from university.
Khan said: “Our manufacturer base is now the largest global database of manufacturers online for trade.” And she says small interior designers can use the service, as well as larger businesses. “If you are someone who has a project — it could be a commercial project or a residential project — if you’re using eporta you’re going to find the best pieces and you’re going to have more selection than you would do anywhere else in the world.”
Recent projects include a large office fit-out for Accenture (where they worked with Studio Jenny Jones interior design practise), the start-up make-up brand Charlotte Tilbury who worked with them to fit out their new space, and Ted Baker’s property development arm on a range of projects.
Source: TechCrunch
Today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will begin two of the most publicly scrutinized days of his career.
This afternoon, members of the Senate will hear from Zuckerberg on data use, protection and privacy in the midst of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and Russian election meddling. While Zuckerberg’s prepared statement has already been released to the public, there are plenty of lingering questions to be answered.
We’ll be watching diligently and bringing you all the breaking news and analysis from the hearing. But if you want to watch along yourself, here’s what you need to know:
The hearing begins at 2:15 pm ET.
It’s a joint hearing held by the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
The hearing will be live streamed right here.
Source: TechCrunch
The foundation released a broad, sweeping report Tuesday about the state of our lives online.
Source: Wired
The Chinese boy was awarded the Guinness World Records for the feat.
Source: CNET
It bites: Jason Statham has to save the world from a prehistoric 75-foot-long shark called the Megalodon, and we are so ready for summer now.
Source: CNET
Google’s two smart speaker products — the Google Home and Google Home Mini — and its Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphones are now available in India following a launch event in the country.
The devices are priced at Rs 9,999 ($154), and Rs 4,499 ($69), respectively, and Google confirmed that they are available for purchase online via Flipkart and offline through over 750 retailer stores, including Reliance Digital, Croma and Bajaj Electronics.
The Google smart speakers don’t cater to India’s multitude of local languages at this point, but the U.S. company said that they do understand “distinctly” India voices and “will respond to you with uniquely Indian contexts,” such as answering questions about local sport, cooking or TV shows.
For a limited time, Google is incentivizing early customers who will get six months of Google Play Music alongside offers for local streaming services Saavn and Gaana when they buy the Home or Home Mini.
Google Home and Home Mini were first announced at Google I/O in 2016. The company said recently that it has sold “tens of millions” of speakers, with more than seven million sales between October 2017 and January 18.
Still, it’s been a long time coming to India, which has allowed others to get into the market first. Amazon, which is pouring considerable resources into its India-based business to battle Flipkart, brought its rival Echo smart devices to India last October.
Source: TechCrunch
Roll ’em if you got ’em: Adult Swim’s favorite grandpa-and-hapless grandson venture into the world of Dungeons & Dragons.
Source: CNET