The factory reset wasn’t fixing the security issue, and Google needed to step in, according to a report.
Source: CNET
The writing has been on the slate for some time now. Roughly this time last year, we reported that Google had wiped all tablet sales off its site. Turns out that was just a bug, but it seemed like an ominous portent of things to come.
Google still went ahead and launched the Pixel Slate late last year, hoping the device would give users a much-welcome form factor alternative to its high-end Pixel Book. Ultimately, however, the device felt redundant, and now it seems it will be the last of its kind. The company this week admitted that its hardware team is giving up the tablet ghost.
“For Google’s first-party hardware efforts, we’ll be focusing on Chrome OS laptops and will continue to support Pixel Slate,â€� the company said in statement sent to the press today, in response to earlier reports.
Google SVP Rick Osterloh took to Twitter to further clarify “unclear� articles:
Hey, it’s true…Google’s HARDWARE team will be solely focused on building laptops moving forward,â€� he wrote, “but make no mistake, Android & Chrome OS teams are 100% committed for the long-run on working with our partners on tablets for all segments of the market (consumer, enterprise, edu)
Tablets have, of course, proven a tough nut to crack for practically every company that isn’t Apple. Google has taken numerous swings at the space, but never quite found its place in amongst the premium iPad or far cheaper Android/Chromebook alternatives. And while the company once seemed content to treat Nexus/Pixel devices as much as references for its software, it has clearly taken a much more serious approach to its own devices in recent years.
So, goodbye to the Google tablet. For now, at least.
Source: TechCrunch
NASA’s very own free-floating Companion Cube equivalent took its own first tentative “steps” in space today, demonstrating its ability to rotate on its own in zero gravity inside the International Space Station. The robot, called “Bumble” and one of a series of Astrobee robots that NASA developed to work along with astronauts on the ISS, is the first ever to fly on its own in space.
Bumble’s first flight wouldn’t necessarily wow at an airshow — the robot essentially flew a foot forward and rotated a bit. But they’re important basic maneuvers in terms of making sure the robot’s propulsion system is working and tuned correctly. Eventually, the plan is for these to operate autonomously and do some basic maintenance work, as well as support experiments, so it needs to be operating exactly as intended before it starts freely sharing space with tender human astronauts.
The Astrobee line currently counts three individual robots among its members, including Bumble, Honey (also already on the ISS) and Queen, which is coming up in July on the next resupply mission, if all goes to plan. Each is equipped with cameras to document experiments performed by humans, and they can network to actually move equipment around. The robots can also dock at a companion station to charge, and each has a little perching arm that lets it grab on to stuff to anchor itself or hold things.
Bumble blinks!
The 1-foot cubed bots were developed at NASA’s Ames research facility, and once fully operational, should free up astronauts to focus on things that only humans can handle — and there’s plenty of that work to go around on the ISS in terms of experimentation and research.
Source: TechCrunch
It was a historic day for Slack (NYSE: WORK). The workplace communication software juggernaut debuted on the New York Stock Exchange up 48% at $38.50 per share after reports emerged Wednesday night that the business had agreed to a reference price of $26 per share.
Slack, founded in 2009 as Tiny Speck, closed up 48.5% Thursday at $38.62 per share. The stock had climbed as high as $42 in intraday trading. Slack’s market cap now sits well above $20 billion, or nearly 3 times its most recent private valuation of $7 billion.
Slack on Thursday became the second large venture capital-backed business to complete a direct listing, an alternative path to the public markets that allows businesses to go public without selling new shares of its stock. Instead, companies are able to bypass the exorbitant fees associated with initial public offerings, like completing a roadshow and hiring investment bankers, and begin trading by selling existing shares held by investors, insiders and employees.
Slack co-founder and chief executive officer Stewart Butterfield is now a billionaire, having held on to an 8.6% stake worth $1.6 billion at the opening price. Accel, its largest shareholder, boast a stake worth a whopping $4.6 billion. Other key shareholders include Social Capital, which owns a stake worth $2 billion, Andreessen Horowitz ($2.6 billion), SoftBank ($1.4 billion) and Slack co-founder Cal Henderson ($646 million).
Slack’s successful opening isn’t surprising. Of the tech businesses to go public in 2019, the enterprise SaaS IPOs (Zoom, PagerDuty, etc.) have performed best. According to SharesPost, enterprise SaaS IPOs are trading, on average, at more than 100% above their IPO price.
Direct listings are a rather risky path to the public markets because of its unproven nature. In Slack’s case, it’s benefited from both its globally renowned brand and Wall Street’s insatiable desire to invest in SaaS.
Spotify, another notable business that opted for a direct listing, has performed relatively well since exiting in 2018. Initially, the music streaming business opened trading up 25% from its reference price of $132 before closing down 10% after its first day of trading.
Slack has previously raised a total of $1.2 billion in funding from investors, including Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Social Capital, SoftBank, Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins. In late 2018, the company closed on more than $400 million in new funding at a valuation of $7.1 billion.
Now that it’s public, all eyes will be on its financials. Weeks ahead of its direct listing, Slack posted an amended S-1 with an updated look at its path to profitability.
Slack posted revenues for the fiscal first quarter ending April 30 of $134.8 million on losses of $31.8 million. Slack’s most recent revenues represent a 67% increase from the same period last year when the company lost $24.8 million on $80.9 million in revenue.
For the fiscal year ending January 31, 2019, the company reported losses of $138.9 million on revenue of $400.6 million. That’s compared to a loss of $140.1 million on revenue of $220.5 million the year prior.
Source: TechCrunch
According to CB Insights, the number of seed-stage funding deals in the U.S. declined for the fourth straight year in 2018, continuing a trend that has seen the number of deals steadily drop, while the average size of deals increased. It’s safe to say this is the new normal. Yet, there continues to be a huge surplus of available capital and there are more funds out there than ever before.
For new entrepreneurs, as well as repeat founders of early-stage startups, these changing conditions are having a dramatic impact on how, where and from whom they raise early capital. In years past, raising a seed round often boiled down to finding a local VC or angels that would invest a few hundred thousand dollars on just an idea for a company. It was more about who you knew and where you were located, rather than actual traction or feedback from the target market.
But as competition for the best deals has ramped up, legacy investors in Silicon Valley are now beginning to seek investments in startups all over the world, due in large part to the proliferation of elite tech talent. While that may seem like a potential goldmine to entrepreneurs operating outside Silicon Valley, founders need to understand how investors think about investing in startups, particularly outside their home markets.
Here are three things entrepreneurs must remember when investors come calling from abroad.
The prevailing school of thought historically was that in order for startups to have a legitimate shot at making it, they all have to be located in Silicon Valley or in another top U.S. tech hub. After all, the U.S. is where all the investors and best talent are located. However, that isn’t necessarily the case anymore. Yes, it is still crucial to have a foothold in the U.S., mostly on the business side of the company, as this is where so many potential customers are — but having a distributed team is no longer viewed as a red flag to many investors.
Other markets, like Israel, have proven track records of churning out elite tech talent. We have seen a number of successful startups that set up the company headquarters and at least one founder (usually the CEO) in the U.S. to be near customers and investors, while the rest of the engineering team remains in Israel.
Prudent investors will still require the CEOs of their companies to be in the U.S. market, but that doesn’t mean the R&D team can’t stay in the home market. This means that the other founder/CTO staying back with the R&D team must have the leadership skills necessary to keep everything on track, while the CEO establishes the business headquarters in the U.S.
Much has been made over the past few years about the soaring valuations of Silicon Valley startups. Every day it seems like a new company announces a $50 million-plus round of fresh funding, along with a new sky-high valuation. The frenzy created around all that activity has a profound impact not just on those companies themselves, but on all the smaller startups in the broader ecosystem, as well. The overwhelming competition for capital in Silicon Valley is forcing many seed investors to mitigate the inflated valuations in their portfolios by looking for more undervalued and underappreciated opportunities in other markets.
The best investors are not necessarily the biggest.
Valuations for startups outside of the U.S. are typically lower, and represent prime opportunities for investors that are being squeezed from the biggest VC funds that are writing checks earlier in the pipeline and driving up those massive valuations. Typically, late-stage investors would be the ones taking a “gamble� on outside opportunities like those in Israel or Europe, but competition is forcing seed investors to look for early-stage opportunities outside of their immediate geography.
As a result, seed funds are now becoming more open to co-investing with foreign funds. As mentioned above, investors are sourcing deals outside their home markets, but funds are still not comprising much of their portfolio beyond the U.S. These select deals are happening on the edges. In order to find the best deals in a foreign market, U.S. funds often seek local VCs to collaborate with, someone they have maybe done a deal with before that knows the local startup scene inside and out. They are still looking for a process of familiarity, even if it is overseas.
As a founder, who you take money from matters a lot. Is it a benefit or to your detriment to take money from investors who are not local to you? How involved will they be?
Startup founders need to think long and hard about the non-monetary value that investors provide. If they are removed from the day to day operations of the company and unaware of challenges the company faces, then what is the point in having them there?
Lately, there has been a rush of large funds to invest at the seed level, offering piles of cash but without any guarantee of long-term value and support. With this new “spray and pray� approach, billion-dollar funds just don’t have the bandwidth and attention to support their small investments the same way they do the larger, more capital-heavy investments.
The best investors are not necessarily the biggest. Instead, the best are the ones constantly adding value to actually help the business grow, whose core focus is to invest at the pre-seed and seed stages of a company. Are they making introductions to potential customers and partners, opening doors to new markets, etc.? Who are the investors that are going to actually help you work through problems? Who will be a partner to you?
Seed investing, like all venture capital, is changing in a meaningful way. What used to be a local, almost neighborhood-oriented process, is now a global business — at least in terms of deal sourcing. Yet, most investors still require physical proximity to the founder/CEO and the company HQ to ensure they can truly help the company execute on its vision.
Source: TechCrunch
The Mac isn’t known for being a game-friendly platform, but Apple hopes to change that in the coming months and years. The thing is, its plan may not be quite what you were hoping for if you’re a Mac gamer.
Source: Digital trends
Today’s Amazon Daily Deal features Logitech PC gaming and productivity devices. This selection of deals is so rich we limited our selection to the products with 50% or higher discounts and average ratings of 4 stars or above.
Source: Digital trends
Mandel Ngan’s photo from Trump’s rally on Tuesday says a lot about the president’s grip on his own message.
Source: Wired
The Global Hawk can fly at an altitude of 55,000 feet and stay aloft for 30 hours straight.
Source: Wired
Apple issued a safety recall for a specific older model of MacBook Pros that may contain a battery that could overheat. Here’s how to claim your free replacement battery if your MacBook Pro is affected.
Source: Digital trends