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An Afghan Entrepreneur Aims for IT Success in Germany’s Growing Market

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Three years ago Aemal Sayer was an accomplished IT entrepreneur in Kabul, looking for his next move. He had already founded several startups, each with varying degrees of success. But he wanted more.

Germany came calling via a scholarship. Since then Sayer has worked on a computer science degree and founded another company, HelpMe, which is already looking to crack the country’s tech heartland: Berlin.

HelpMe is a crowdsourcing platform for remote IT support. It connects elderly users with IT students via screen sharing and voice and video chat using an open source platform called WebRTC, which is already used by Facebook and Google.

Sayer’s route towards his startup dream has not been easy. His IT career began in 2001 in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, where thousands of Afghans fled to during their country’s brutal civil war. Web development and Visual Basic diplomas were followed up by work first at an accounting database firm, then a software developer.

Sayer then completed a bachelor’s degree in computer science at Kabul’s Kardan University and, in 2008, founded Bitsoft, a software developer he bootstrapped with just $150. In 2015 Sayer got a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarship to complete his master’s degree in computer science, at the central city of Koblenz.

It was there that Sayer met Tim Budweg, a coder with whom he founded HelpMe in May 2016. Sayer had been helping his own parents, who are now based in the US, with computer-related problems over Skype and Teamviewer. “Often they used to wait for a few days to ask a very simple question.” HelpMe’s goal was quickly devised.

Koblenz, where Sayer studied, is a small city of just 110,000 people. But, he says, “it is very startup friendly.” Several annual events including IT City and TZK support local startups. Koblenz University runs a host of tech programs.

That said, Berlin is still Sayer’s goal for HelpMe. He is currently seeking pre-seed investment and business angels have expressed interest. “If (subsequent) pilot test results are promising, there will be plenty of opportunities in getting a seed investment in Berlin,” he says.

Germany has fostered a vibrant tech scene in recent years. Capital city Berlin has emerged as one of Europe’s top hubs with between 1,800 and 3,000 active startups. But the country is facing a talent shortfall: according to a 2015 report there are around 43,000 unfilled IT roles.

This year several people have tried to match those roles with people from the country’s growing migrant and refugee population, many of whom are from Afghanistan and Syria.

Germany, Europe’s most populous nation with 80m people, has been at the forefront of the current refugee crisis, providing a home to 1.1m in 2015 (the US, by comparison, has welcomed 85,000 so far this year. Its population is 316m).

Hussein Shaker, from the embattled city of Aleppo, created MigrantHire to help Ausländer (foreigners) like him navigate Germany’s notoriously difficult employment market. Another app, Bureaucrazy, was developed by a local nonprofit for migrants to cope with the country’s dense bureaucratic maze.

“It is very hard for non German speaking founders in the government processes, but my cofounder is a German and recently we got a stakeholder who is helping us in understanding the German bureaucratic systems for startups, finances, tax declaration, etc,” Sayer says. 

Then, Sayer will have landed as a tech entrepreneur in Germany. Through the business he is hoping to achieve a higher goal. In 2013 his tight-knit family was broken up. Today he has parents in the US, a sister in Britain, one brother in Sweden and another who remained in Afghanistan. He and his wife enjoy life in Germany but, he says, his dream “is for a family reunification if my business was successful.”

Sayer is hoping that HelpMe’s radical approach to IT support will see that dream become reality.

The post An Afghan Entrepreneur Aims for IT Success in Germany’s Growing Market appeared first on Red Herring.


Malaysian Government Fund Invests $22m in Austin’s Phunware

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Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the strategic investment fund of the government of Malaysia, has announced that it invested $22 million of Series F growth financing in Phunware, an Austin, Texas-based multiscreen platform provider.

The round, which includes additional money from current Phunware investors Fraser MccCombs; Maxima Ventures; WWE; Central Texas Angels Network and Baylor Angels Network, will help the firm pursue “its aggressive growth trajectory, fueled by the recent launch of Phunware Data, which helps brands better capitalize on today’s digital and mobile data trails.”

Phunware has secured $90m funding since its 2009 inception. Its multiscreen-as-a-service (MaaS) platform helps brands to engage, manage and monetize their anytime, anywhere mobile application users worldwide.

Mobile continues to be the principle driver of online data, representing more than 65% of digital media time. Almost 90% of that time is spent in mobile applications. Forrester Research predicts that the mobile engagement market will be worth $32bn by 2018.

Phunware Data helps customers capitalize on modern data trails, giving them access to over 650m monthly active users touching the Phunware MaaS platform through thousands of branded mobile applications. In addition to Austin the company has offices in Newport Beach, San Diego, Miami and London.

“Since our inception in 2009, Phunware has been uniquely leading the way in mobile innovation,” said Alan S. Knitowski, Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Phunware. “We are the only mobile, native and fully-integrated-first multiscreen cloud platform in the world and our MaaS platform products and solutions currently power more than 40 billion mobile user events every month and more than 1 trillion transactions annually.

“This funding will help turn every one of our global application touch points into an opportunity to reach, engage with and convert users on a 1:1 basis, and will further our vision of having every device in the Internet of Things touch the Phunware platform by 2020,” Knitowski added.

Malaysia has emerged as one of Asia’s leading technology hubs over the past few years, leveraging its almost-30m population and highly-open, fast-growing economy to capitalize on firms wishing to branch into the southest- and east-Asian markets.

Khazanah Nasional Berhad’s assets grew by nearly 3.2% in 2015 to $35.8bn. Its major tech investments include Skyscanner; Alibaba; WeLab and General Fusion.

The post Malaysian Government Fund Invests $22m in Austin’s Phunware appeared first on Red Herring.

YOYO’s PopSlide to Pounce on Mobile’s Next Billion

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Smartphone purchases in the developing world are rocketing. In southeast Asia, where YOYO Holdings, an innovative mobile advertising firm has set up shop, the market is growing 65% year on year.

In 2014 the firm, with backing from co-founder and CEO Yosuke Fukada’s native Japan, began working on its solution, PopSlide. Launched this March it aims to connect the next billion smartphone users with mobile airtime via advertising rented out to their handsets’ lockscreens.

“The Next Billion” has become one of this year’s tech buzzphrases. Not only have a number of events sprung up in search of tech-driven answers to developing world problems, but Google has recently introduced a raft of new products aimed at those without the buying power of users in established mobile markets.

In fact it’s far more than a billion. The southeast Asian nations targeted by the young firm total some 1.8bn people in total, including India, which is where Fukada is eyeing his biggest future success.

His decision to start in the Philippines might seem a little strange at first. Not so, given the country’s demographics. “In the Philippines the market size is actually not good compared to other markets,” he tells Red Herring. “But it is easy to start here since every user can understand English.

“And I also can talk to users directly and get their feedback,” Fukada adds. “After improving the quality of the product we expanded to other markets–Indonesia, Vietnam and India–so this is a trial market.”

PopSlide works on a simple premise, encouraging users to read or swipe or click on ads posted to the lockscreen by major retailers and brands. Ads might be magazine articles, job offers, videos or a company’s landing page.

Each interaction wins the user mobile airtime–as do friend referrals. PopSlide is ranked number one Google download in the Philippines and Indonesia, and has over 1.6m users.

“95% of people are using pre-paid phones,” says the co-founder, who previously worked at Tokyo gaming developer DeNA. “So they need top-ups to use smartphones. And these points will combat top-up.”

Fukada claims that PopSlide’s biggest boon to clients is that it can provide them with good quality users, from demographics that haven’t previously been tapped. The corporates are listening: customers include Unilever, McDonalds and Nestle.

Little wonder Fukada’s youthful charm breaks into raffishness when he describes the company, which with offices in Singapore, Manila and, lately, Bangalore, now employs 30 staff to reach advertising’s next big wave of users.

It is the latter location to which Fukada and co are most keen to capitalize. South Asia’s Internet ads market is set to grow to more than $5bn by 2018, the majority of which will be smartphone-driven.

That is why the Philippines, not India, became the proving ground for a platform already showing healthy traction in a booming marketplace. The Next Billion is one of tech’s biggest understatements. PopSlide looks set to take advantage of that.

The post YOYO’s PopSlide to Pounce on Mobile’s Next Billion appeared first on Red Herring.

HERE and Mobileye Pair Up for Self-Driving Tech Push

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Three months after Mobileye’s very public split with Tesla, the driving sensor firm has another partnership: HERE. The latter will provide mapping software alongside Mobileye’s sensors to offer a more holistic autonomous driving product to prospective automotive clients.

In September Jerusalem-headquartered Mobileye fell out with Tesla, accusing it of “pushing the envelope” with regards to safety. Elon Musk’s firm snapped back, claiming Mobileye stymied attempts to build its own vision chips for Autopilot, a software which yesterday made headlines for predicting a wreck before its driver.

HERE, which was recently sold by Nokia to a German carmaker consortium of VW Group, BMW and Daimler, will integrate its HD live mapping software with Mobileye’s Roadbook. Its Open Location Platform will also be shared, as will the companies’ respective banks of data.

“We are building a state-of-the-art global HD map that is becoming the standard for autonomous driving and other IoT applications that need precise location-based information and services,” Edzard Overbeek, CEO of HERE, says.

“We are rapidly expanding this capability and I am very pleased that we can accelerate that work with Mobileye, a strategic partner which shares our view of where the automotive and other industries are going.”

Driverless cars are set to be among 2017’s biggest tech stories. An August report by Research and Markets predicted the industry’s value to reach around $41.7 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of around 15.5%. Little wonder, therefore, that firms like Mobileye and HERE are keen to pair up, in order to capture as much of the market as possible.

In May Mobileye announced that a raft of big-name automakers, including General Motors, had agreed to use its platforms for autonomous cars in 2019. It faces competition from the likes of Google parent Alphabet–and, of course, Tesla–which are rapidly developing rival products.

Mobileye’s $1bn IPO in July 2014 was the biggest–ever for an Israeli company in the United States. It is one of a number of transport technology firms to have emerged from the small country’s vibrant tech scene, alongside mapper Waze, public transport firm Moovit and Red Herring Asia 2016 winner Optibus.

The post HERE and Mobileye Pair Up for Self-Driving Tech Push appeared first on Red Herring.

Can a Disputed Patch of Land Reinvigorate Hong Kong’s Tech Scene?

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The Lok Ma Chau Loop is a sprawling, swampy stretch of land on Hong Kong’s northernmost border with China. It was once the focus of a land dispute between the two entities. But when China straightened the Shenzhen River in 1997, which runs alongside its eponymous megacity, it deemed the Loop part of Hong Kong.

Twenty years later the Loop looks set to become one of Asia’s most exciting tech hubs–and a source of cooperation between the autonomous republic and Beijing, a relationship that has strained in recent years amid political and human rights incidents.

The Hong Kong/Shenzhen Innovation Park, which will comprise the majority of the 87-hectare site, will aim for greater collaboration across the border, and increased innovation in one of Asia’s four traditional ‘tiger’ economies.

The territory’s economy, dominated by finance, was slow to embrace the startup crowd. But funding today is soaring. And initiatives like Alibaba’s $130 million Hong Kong Investment Program are enticing more young professionals into the entrepreneurial landscape. Tax regimes have been simplified and the territory was recently ranked among the world’s best tech ecosystems by e-commerce firm Compass.

The park was originally mooted back in 2007. And while some are thrilled at the prospect of more business with Shenzhen, home to tech giants like Tencent; Huawei; BYD; Konka and Coolpad, others are worried that Lok Ma Chau has fallen out of the tech loop in the intervening decade.

“I hope as the government and the secretary set up the committee, it must fully consult the industry, to see how the project can help them,” IT lawmaker Charles Mok told the Hong Kong Free Press. Some have questioned why the existing Hong Kong Science Park, in more central Pak Shek Kok, was chosen to develop the new site.

“If you ask employees to work at Science Park or (fellow site) Cyberport, they may complain it is too far away. It is hard to imagine this place…will be convenient to work at,” Mok added.

Others have warned of an ecological disaster, as the Loop is home to several species of migratory birds, rare fish species and butterflies.

But industry leaders are cooing at the prospect of a 1.2m sq m facility, over 90% of which will be dedicated to high innovation including biotech; robotics; fintech and smart city solutions. Planners estimate that the park will add 40,000 jobs to the local economy.

Don’t expect rows over politics and freedom of movement to die any time soon: Hong Kong and Beijing are still at loggerheads over several aspects of the latter’s ‘One Country, Two Systems’ philosophy. Just this week thousands marched in protest at China’s attempts to disbar pro-democracy lawmakers.

Lok Ma Chau’s potential to draw more talent from the mainland, and away from Hong Kongers, has already caused some ripples in local media. But above all tech chiefs hope the long-disputed spit can help bridge business and social divides–and enliven a tech ecosystem already competing on the global stage.

 

The post Can a Disputed Patch of Land Reinvigorate Hong Kong’s Tech Scene? appeared first on Red Herring.

Israel Innovation Authority in Fresh Tech Labs Push

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The Israel Innovation Authority (IIA) has announced a new program it hopes will encourage corporates to support local startups in their respective fields.

“Technological Labs Innovation”, which comes under the Ministry of Economy and Industry’s aegis, will help push innovation on both sides of the tech divide, said Avi Hasson, the ministry’s chief scientist.

“Open innovation is crucial for the development of companies in our advanced economy,” Hasson told the Times of Israel. “This program will help Israeli corporations operating these labs grow and strengthen their position in Israel.

“It will also help multinational corporations gain exposure to the unique atmosphere of innovation in Israel and bolster their presence here,” Hasson added.

The program will foster greater cooperation between corporations, which are increasingly flocking to Israel’s advanced technology market, and one of the world’s most striking and innovative startup scenes.

The IIA signaled its intentions to become a world-beating agency in December, when it hired Apple’s highly-regarded head of local operations, Aharon Aharon, as its leader. Technological Labs Innovation will nurture entrepreneurs and startups as they bring products to market.

Corporations choosing to work with startups will receive financial incentives from the IIA. It will also fund between 33% and 50% of the cost of establishing lab infrastructure across Israel, and provide funding to maintain them.

“The program will help build ecosystems in Israel in various fields around these labs by enabling support for a range of activities entrepreneurs need to develop proof of concept for an innovative idea,” Anya Elden, general manager of the IIA’s startup division, told the Times.

“Silicon Wadi”, as many experts have coined Israel’s tech ecosystem, has become a global center for innovation in recent years. Israel raises around six times more VC funding than Germany, for example–and companies such as Waze and Fiverr have become household names.

2017 looks set to be a pivotal year for the local market, as a wave of startup VC funds spin out of larger, parent firms. The proliferation of high-tech firms working in fields such as drones and 3D printing also promises to become an exciting fixture of Israeli tech.

 

The post Israel Innovation Authority in Fresh Tech Labs Push appeared first on Red Herring.

In Israel, a New Generation of Boutique Venture Capitalists Thrives

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Shimon Peres, the legendary Israeli politician who died last year, realized early in his career that Israel, lacking natural resources and friendly neighbors, should rely on its people for success. “Through creativity and innovation we transformed barren deserts into flourishing fields and pioneered new frontiers in science and technology,” he said.

Those flourishing fields have, in the past two decades, sewn one of the world’s most fertile tech markets. Israelis have pushed their way to the front of the tech queue, and brands like Waze, Mobileye and Trusteer have become household names worldwide.

They have been joined by major multinationals such as Intel, Microsoft, Cisco Systems and other tech firms, which have taken advantage of Israel’s large number of science graduates to open big offices in the ‘Silicon Wadi’. That has created a feedback loop of experienced tech professionals keen to move into entrepreneurship.

Last year Israeli tech exits totaled $10bn. The figure may have been significantly boosted by Playtika’s $4.4bn sale to Chinese firm Giant Interactive. But it is still a field in full bloom. (consider that, for example, the entirety of European exits the previous year totaled $145bn). And now, more than ever, Israel’s VC market is changing to cater for it.

Venture capital in Israel began in the early 90s through a government scheme called Yozma–‘initiative’ in Hebrew–which offered capital, tax breaks and other incentives to entrepreneurs. Even then, tech constituted a tiny fraction of the country’s economy. Today Israel’s services comprise 70% of its wealth.

Little wonder, therefore, that domestic venture capital has itself grown, and diversified. Many of Israel’s most active funds, including Singulariteam, Carmel Ventures, Innovation Endeavors and Magma, have spawned smaller, more boutique spin-offs formed of former executives and tech experts seeking the Next Big Thing.

Barak Rabinowitz is one of them. The Harvard Business School grad was a serial entrepreneur before joining early-stage VC Genesis Partners in 2015. Now he is managing partner of F2 Capital, which was spun-out of Genesis in November with $50m to spend on an early-stage portfolio coming from renowned accelerator The Junction.

Rabinowitz describes this proliferation of smaller funds as a “changing of the guard” for Israel’s venture capitalists. “Many of them have had great runs, and they’ve raised four funds,” he adds. “But they haven’t raised fifth funds. And now the younger talent has spun off to create something a bit more agile, or sector-focused.”

In a country full of corporates and multinational research centers, it is this “frontier” sector, as Rabinowitz calls it, which provides the biggest playground for smaller funds. High-tech fields like drones, AI, fintech and marketing tech are seeing big growth. F2 hopes to capitalize on that–cutting investment periods from months to weeks.

Avichay Nissenbaum is another Israeli tech vet who has joined the boutique VC crowd. His firm, lool ventures (‘lool’ is Hebrew for ‘hatchery’ or ‘coop’), is a “generalist” fund, he says–but it is grounded very much in the software field in which he made his name.

Zooz; MediSafe; DBMaestro and Tonara are some of the portfolio firms that prove this. And despite a boom in ‘innovation tourism’ where foreign VCs arrive in droves for two-or-three-day trips, local funds are best-placed to capitalize.

“The Israeli market is stronger that it has ever been,” says Nissenbaum. “Typically if you look at early-stage, it is dominated by Israelis. Foreign-based investors will not put money into early-stage. There are a lot of cultural issues, for example, including body language and due diligence. For a UK or US VC who flies in for a week, they cannot do that.”

Micro-funds, handling up to $70m, have, Nissenbaum adds, thrived on this nexus of entrepreneurialism and culture. That may have resulted in something of a ‘series A crunch’, where newly-established companies struggle to find series A cash (the average investment for which is $6m) to scale globally. But it is also allowing Israeli VCs to take its own entrepreneurs to the US, Europe and Asia.

“This is a great time for technology, and innovation,” says Vertex Ventures general partner Emanuel Timor. “We’re at an inflection point where we are leveraging technology. We have big data, and the cloud, and the ability to found startups at almost no cost because of open source. I think entrepreneurs are now in some kind of a golden era of opportunities.”

That innovation may be slowing. Israel ranked just 22nd of 141 countries for innovation in a 2015 report by the World Intellectual Property Organization (Switzerland came first). Fewer graduates are studying sciences than in previous years, and the Orthodox and Israeli Arab communities, who comprise 25% of Israel’s 8.06m population, are being left behind. The government, which has warned of this, is moving to counter it with state-backed tech plans.

But Israel is still producing plenty of key tech players. Nissenbaum credits much of this success to military service. All Israelis aged 18 who are Jewish, Druze or Circassian are required to complete up to three years in the armed forces.

It has been well-reported how graduates of the country’s NSA-facsimile 8200 Unit have gone on to found high-end cybersecurity and other startups. More generally, says Nissenbaum, military service teaches young Israelis, “a lot about leadership, about taking risk, working in a team. All those things are startup DNA.

“It matures them faster, because they take responsibility and leadership,” he adds. “For a startup to be successful, there are trillions of technologies out there but it’s all about team execution. I’m emphasizing the human factor here. The human factor in taking it to market, and packaging tech right. That is the skill set that is needed in this space.”

This army-taught human capital will not subside. And while the Israeli tech market will surely slow in accordance with global economic trends, it remains one of the world’s best places to found a tech company. And so long as it thrives, Israeli venture capitalists will continue to adapt, grow and take advantage.

The post In Israel, a New Generation of Boutique Venture Capitalists Thrives appeared first on Red Herring.

OurCrowd Global Investor Summit to Open in Jerusalem

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Israeli crowdfund platform OurCrowd will host the 2017 OurCrowd Global Investor Summit tomorrow, in Jerusalem. Over 5,000 people are expected to attend, from 80 countries–as Israel’s startup scene continues to gather pace.

200 multinational fims will join over 300 startups at the show, whose packed schedule will address how technology, and crowdfunding, is transforming a host of industries including health, virtual reality and even sport.

The summit will boost the profile of OurCrowd, whose equity funding platform has made 96 investments in 73 companies since its 2013 foundation. Attending portfolio companies will include Consumer Physics; MedAware; VocalZoom, NSLComm and Zebra Medical.

“Participants at the Summit will have the opportunity to interact hands-on with many of the latest technologies changing the world,” said OurCrowd CEO Jon Medved.

“The Summit provides a unique opportunity to evaluate and touch the remarkable pace of technology change together with thousands of friends and colleagues from around the world,” he added.

The summit comes amid a purple patch for Israel’s already thriving technology scene, which has led the Middle Eastern state to be dubbed “startup nation”.

Red Herring recently chronicled how a new generation of investors are opening its tech crowd up to innovation and scale. Summit activities including a hackathon, a due diligence drama and ‘speed dating sessions’ between startups and multinationals, are sure to add to the country’s vibrant scene.

The post OurCrowd Global Investor Summit to Open in Jerusalem appeared first on Red Herring.


Bitcoin’s Fortunes Surge, then Plunge, in More Madness for the Cryptocurrency

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Last Friday bitcoin’s value rose above gold for the first time, enthralling headline writers across the tech press. Its price of $1,290, compared to gold’s $1,228, led some to laud the arrival of a new era in which the cryptocurrency, once a vilified and mistrusted innovation, would ‘go mainstream’.

Many experts urged reflection. Gold was having a rough time, and besides, bitcoin, while having enjoyed a huge surge from a $407.98 low last March, has a market value of $20 billion compared to gold’s $7tr.

More importantly, Sandeep Goenka of bitcoin exchange Zebpay tells Red Herring, was that the currency “is maturing and becoming more global.

“I do think that increasing demand and halving of supply last year means prices naturally will continue to be on a bullish trend, like they have been in all of bitcoin history,” adds Goenka.

Adam Davies, of Altus Consulting, even told CNBC this week that he expected the price of bitcoin to reach $3,000 by the end of 2017, thanks to demonetization in India, volatility in the global economy and, possibly most importantly, increased Chinese regulation.

Bitcoin’s recent success has been attributed largely to China, whose weak renminbi currency has resulted in a scramble for bitcoin. 42% of all bitcoin occurred across Chinese exchanges in 2016, according to a New York Times report.

But yesterday, as bitcoin enthusiasts were reaching for the champagne, its value suddenly dropped by more than $100 in minutes. Today it continued to slide, as the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) suggested that recent bitcoin regulation would not be temporary.

The country’s three largest exchanges, Huobi, OkCoin and BTCC, all announced they would continue to block bitcoin withdrawals until a March 11th deadline for the PBoC’s regulation. As that date falls on a Saturday, the decision will likely be delayed until the 13th.

That leaves bitcoin traders and experts in limbo. Just as China gives, Beijing takes away–a mantra surely encountered by many working in the country’s tech industry. Expect more fluctuations in bitcoin’s fortunes soon.

The post Bitcoin’s Fortunes Surge, then Plunge, in More Madness for the Cryptocurrency appeared first on Red Herring.

Indian MedTech Firm Medinfi Closes Angel Round

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Indian medical tech startup Medinfi has raised its seventh round of funding, worth $50,000. The firm, based in the country’s tech capital of Bangalore, will use the injection to grow its user base well into the millions–as local outlets tout it as one of India’s most promising tech brands.

Medinfi helps people in 30 Indian cities locate doctors and healthcare professionals. It also publishes blogs on a number of health-related issues including women’s health and nutrition.

Medinfi has been funded to the tune of around $700,000 to date. Angels in India, the US, Germany and Singapore have led investments, which CEO Ravi Shankar Mishra tells Red Herring will help it achieve a far greater spread of users.

“We intend to grow to five million users since we have extremely low cost of user acquisition,” Shankar Mishra says. “We are looking for long-term investors who are from healthcare, technology or the venture capital space.”

This round will allow Medinfi to reach an additional 20 cities–and to develop the company’s iOS platform. While iOS only represents around 10% of India’s smartphone market, in a landscape where around 340m people have smartphone, it is a significant step.

Medinfi is already garnering the attention of investors and media inside and outside of India. TechInAsia recently rated it one of its country’s six most promising startups. Shankar Mishra says that public and private partnerships will push its ‘TripAdvisor for Health’ model even further.

“Yes, indeed,” he says. We have already have worked with the Insurance Information Bureau of India, and from there ROHINI Project of giving Unique Identification to every Indian hospital.”

The post Indian MedTech Firm Medinfi Closes Angel Round appeared first on Red Herring.

Israel’s Space Program Innovates to Beat Geopolitical Struggles

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Israel has long had to combat politics with innovation. The nation, which in recent years has become known as ‘Silicon Wadi’, has spun out some of the world’s best high-tech firms in fields like cybersecurity and agriculture, that have grown directly as a result of its many geopolitical binds.

Few industries have faced as stark a showdown as Israel’s space program. Conventional rocket launches, for example, are directed with the rotation of the earth to save fuel. Such launches would put Israel’s craft in the airspace of Iran, a longtime enemy, which has vowed to blow any Israeli objects out of the sky.

With regards to the satellites those rockets almost always carry, Israel has also become a world leader. Israel has made its satellites smaller, and smarter, than the majority of the competition. Nanosatellites have become so commonplace that this month a team of Israeli high-school kids built a 4lb device launched as part of the EU’s QB50 thermosphere research program.

That should be unsurprising given Israel’s commitment to public research spending. The country puts 4.3% of its tax funds into R&D, minus the military.

Avi Hasson, Israel’s chief scientist, is adamant that “Taxpayers’ money should go to the riskiest areas of the (tech) industry.” Israel’s space budget is the tenth-largest, as a share of its GDP, on earth.

“We’re the only country that launches the other way,” Jon Medved, CEO of Jerusalem-based crowdfund OurCrowd, tells Red Herring. “And if you do that you’ve got to make sure your payload is really small. So that’s what drove Israel to be such a leader in nano-satellites. It’s part of an overall theme of Israel taking a limitation and turning it into a relative advantage.”

One firm that OurCrowd has invested in is NSLComm, based near Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport. The company has raised $3 million since its 2009 foundation, which it has used to perfect large expandable antennas that allow over ten times the bandwidth of traditional models.

That means antennas can be stowed compactly during launches, which alongside high-tech intelligence cooperation between Israel and the US, helps shield the country’s payloads from foreign intervention. “We have to come with cleaver and creative ideas while focusing on building a real and profitable business,” says NSLComm co-founder and CTO Danny Spirtus.

Winning more attention, perhaps, has been Israel’s SpaceIL, one of the five finalist teams in Google’s Lunar X-Prize, which challenges privately-funded teams to land a robotic spacecraft on the moon, travel 500 meters and transmit images and high-definition video.

Israel was the first country to make the final five, and by a huge distance the smallest. It has dropped behind India and the US in recent months, and is unlikely to win the competition. But the fact it is in the mix has delighted SpaceIL CEO Eran Privman, who tells Red Herring his success “is also prevalent in the defense area.

“We can’t collaborate with our neighbors, which has helped,” adds Privman. “Generally that’s a wider issue than space.”

The country suffered a major setback in September last year, when an Israeli communications satellite, the Amos-6, exploded while harnessed to an unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It was a huge blow–not least to Amos operator Spacecom, which lost a deal with Chinese investor Xinwei worth a reported $255m.

That has led some local commentators to herald a slowdown in Israel’s space ambitions. Its probable loss in the X-Prize may, at least for a short while, do just that.

But while public and private money continues to pour into space-race firms, and while space exploration remains a hallmark of national tech pride, Israel will stay a key player in space technology. Its politics are focused firmly on earth. But Israel’s tech companies are looking far beyond this planet.

The post Israel’s Space Program Innovates to Beat Geopolitical Struggles appeared first on Red Herring.

Startup Valley Gives Female Afghan Entrepreneurs a Boost

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Startup Valley, Afghanistan’s first private business incubator, has launched today in Kabul. The incubator, a project of AGHAEZ Professional Services, will focus on fostering entrepreneurial talent in the Afghan capital–with a particular emphasis on female business leadership.

Startup Valley will begin by soliciting female students across Afghanistan for business proposals. The 15 deemed most likely to succeed will then be inducted as the incubator’s first undergraduates. In the future Startup Valley will give preference to companies that are female-owned, or which have women as at least 10% of staff.

“We believe that by nurturing a startup ecosystem in Afghanistan, we will contribute to the economic growth of the country by helping to reduce unemployment as more startup companies translates to jobs creation,” says Ahmad Fahim Didar, Executive Director of AGHAEZ Professional Services.

“One of the biggest challenges the Afghan economy is facing is due to lack of access to proper technology both at private and public sectors, and in all areas from internet technologies to meeting standards, to use of facilities and in marketing,” says Rumi Trading LLC chief Sona Mahmody, who has worked with Startup Valley prior to its launch.

“Since I have attended Startup Valley, the way I thought about how business could run and how tech can take a role has immensely changed,” adds Mahmody. “Startup Valley might not be the first company providing these services but for me it’s definitely the first that changes the way I think about doing business and how technology can make thinks easier.”

Red Herring has previously reported from Afghanistan, a country sliding further towards corruption, conflict and sectarianism in recent years. Most of its fledgling tech industry is based currently on foreign aid and contracts. But as that money leaves the country some businesses–including many headed up by women–are maturing to give young Afghans much-needed work in a country whose unemployment is a staggering 40%.

The post Startup Valley Gives Female Afghan Entrepreneurs a Boost appeared first on Red Herring.

The Worst Five Tech IPOs of All Time

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IPOs are risky business–just ask Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, whose first financial report post-IPO left much to be desired. But while the Los Angeles-based social media firm will have had few traders rushing to buy stock, the tech industry has seen far, far worse. Here are five tech IPO flops that have no doubt caused tears and plenty of sleepless nights. If you’re squeamish look away now.

1. theGlobe.com

In 1994, a full decade before Facebook emerged, there was theGlobe.com, the first social media that allowed users to share content with each other. By the time founders Stephan Paternot and Todd Krizelman decided to go public, in November 1998, the first dot com bubble was in full swing and billions were being thrown at anything that looked as if it might dominate the Internet space.

On November 13th theGlobe posted the biggest first-day gain of any IPO in history, jumping 606% from $9 to $65. The company’s 3.1m floated shares raised $27.9m, setting theGlobe’s market capitalization at $841.8.

At one point the firm’s price hit $97. Paternot was infamously recorded by CNN at a glitzy Manhattan bar with his model girlfriend Jennifer Medley. Dressed in shiny black pants, Paternot told the reporter, “Got the girl. Got the money. Now I’m ready to live a disgusting, frivolous life.”

Journalists could barely hide their schadenfreude when Paternot, known by then as “The CEO in the plastic pants”, was forced out of theGlobe in 2000 alongside Krizelman, with its share price just 10c. “Life is not about a stock price – people have to understand that,” wrote Paternot in his 2001 memoir A Very Public Offering. His own tale is pretty good evidence to the contrary. theGlobe ceased operations in 2007.

2. Pets.com

Do you remember when an Internet company’s mascot appeared on Good Morning America? No? What about the time it was interviewed by People magazine, or when its commercial aired during the 2000 Super Bowl (the one when Mike Jones became famous for The Tackle)?

Pets.com might be the only example of when a company has been unable to emerge from the shadows of a sock puppet. Launched in 1998–again during the height of the dot com bubble–the e-commerce site raised $82m, or $14 per share upon a 2000 IPO. Amazon was one of Pets.com’s venture backers. Chief exec Julie Wainwright announced that it was a “CEO dream team.”

She wishes. Just 268 days after its successful IPO Pets.com was filing for bankruptcy. The company hadn’t correctly estimated shipping costs, it was found, and shares were valued as low as 19c by the time Wainwright and co called it a day on November 6 2000, just days before that year’s presidential vote.

3. Shanda Games

When Shanda Games was spun out of household name Shanda Interactive Gaming Ltd via a 2009 IPO, it was the largest public offering of a Chinese firm in the US. Legend of Mir and Aion were just two of the company’s massively popular titles.

With its share price set at the high end of valuation at $12.50, the company raked in a fortune. By the end of the offering Shanda was responsible for the year’s largest IPO, raising a total of $1.04bn. But Shanda’s high pricing soon came back to bite it: the number of investors willing to pay top dollar had been exhausted in the early stages of the deal, and with nobody remaining to foot the rest of Shanda’s valuation, the company’s value was wiped to the tune of 14% almost as quickly as the champagne corks had flown in its Singapore headquarters.

4. Vonage

When something is prefaced as ‘The Vonage IPO Disaster’, you know it must be bad. And truly, Vonage’s IPO debacle in 2006 was a lesson in how not to botch your company’s biggest financial moment. Back then the New Jersey-founded telco commanded around half of America’s Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) market. But it was shipping money at a frightening rate: since its 2001 inception the firm had made losses of more than $300m.

Vonage offered shares at $17, and investors queued up to snag them. But the company added a tech-based twist to proceedings; namely to offer 13.5% of its shares to existing Vonage customers, who could buy via a website created by the deal’s underwriters.

Those customers were frustrated when, due to a technical hiccup, they were told they could not actually purchase Vonage shares through the site. They breathed a sigh of relief when, after just a week, the company’s share price had already lost 30% of its value. Then, something strange happened: Vonage declared that the customers had, in fact, bought their shares–at the original 17% price.

Cue anger, resentment and a class action suit filed against the IPO’s underwriters that would eventually cost them $800,000 in fines. To throw in a punch while down, a federal judge then told Vonage it could not use technology licensed by communications giant Verizon. By the end of 2006 Vonage shares were worth just $3, a whopping 82% nosedive since the public offering.

Vonage has managed to canter along relatively well following the mess, posting revenues of $248m last year. Its shares are now worth a shade under $7 each. But the company is still best known on Wall Street as a tech firm hoist by its own digital petard.

5. Webvan

Though it lasted a full nine months more than Pets.com, you could hardly call Webvan.com, a US-based logistics firm, a success. Another dysfunctional son of the dot com bubble, the Foster City, California-based company promised to deliver groceries to users’ doors in 30 minutes or less.

Considering Amazon can still come nowhere close to that delivery time, Webvan should have set alarm bells ringing in American financial circles. But not to worry–this was the Internet Age and Everything Was Possible–so in 1999, just two years after launching, the company went public and raised a healthy $375m, to add with a heady $1bn in venture capital.

Unsurprisingly, the company’s model–supposedly available in seven major cities–was a fiction. Its warehouses, stocked with the latest technology, cost too much and each order was costing the firm $10: not much use should a shopper buy less than $10’s worth in groceries. By 2000 the company was leaking around 250% more money than it was making, and shut down in June 2001.

The post The Worst Five Tech IPOs of All Time appeared first on Red Herring.

ELLIQ: Intuition Robotics Bridges Uncanny Valley To Cure Loneliness Epidemic

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Ever found the increasing number of humanoid robots a little, well, creepy? You’re not alone. In fact, in 1970 professor Masahiro Mori coined a phrase for the unease we feel when a realistic robot elicits a negative reaction: the Uncanny Valley.

It’s a chasm into which hundreds of robots have fallen ever since. When Toshiba’s ChihiraAico was unveiled at 2015’s CES the media reaction said it all. The machine, designed to mimic a 32-year-old woman, was “the creepiest robot ever”, “scarily realistic” and “spooky”.

And that was the opinions of experience tech writers. The elderly are another matter altogether. A host of robots have recently emerged to address disability and illness. But ELLIQ, a new product from Israeli startup Intuition Robotics, concerns a far more common and rising problem: loneliness.

Social isolation “is a growing epidemic,” a New York Times editorial declared in December. Around a third of Americans aged over 65 live alone, and the number of Americans who say they’re lonely has leapt from 20% to 40% since the 1980s.

The medical effects of loneliness are severe: socially isolated people are less likely to sleep well; more likely to develop dementia, depression, stress, have strokes or even suffer heart disease. A 2015 psychology report deemed that these people had a 30% higher chance of dying within seven years.

As recently as two generations ago most families were born, lived and died among their relatives. Today in the US, adult children and their parents grow further apart on average 12 miles per year: addressing loneliness is a conundrum. The makers of ELLIQ think they’ve found the answer.

ELLIQ comprises a tablet screen and a small, bobble-headed assistant, which looks like two bell jars glommed together, that interacts with elderly users, the device and humans on the other end of communication. It has neither eyes nor a mouth–nor arms that waves or legs that pad about the home. It is, maker Dor Skuler stresses, a machine–though when he spoke to Red Herring the tech veteran slipped between pronouns, calling ELLIQ both ‘it’ and ‘her’.

“Robots are not people,” says Skuler. “We do not want to project that they’re people; we don’t want to create a false sense of something we don’t have the abilities to project.” Intuition Robotics enlisted renowned Swiss designer Yves Behar to create ELLIQ, whose mannerisms and movements ape those of a human, Skuler says, without falling into the Uncanny Valley.

“People first see a screen, which they’re used to because they have the connected screen where you can see pictures,” he says. “Then next to it is ELLIQ which comes alive, and through motion is extremely emotive, extremely expressive, and can help them meet their goals towards an active aging lifestyle–and actually share some experiences with them.”

ELLIQ might ask a user if he or she wants to listen to music, for example. Or it may liaise between family members sharing photos online. It can also prompt users to take medicine, go for a walk or play games. It is claimed that 90% of all communication is non-verbal. Skuler and co hope that will help ELLIQ bridge a digital divide between tech and the elderly.

“Older adults can adopt anything just like the rest of us,” he says. “They just need to put a lot more effort into it, and it requires a lot more effort to do so…When ELLIQ’s happy you sense she’s happy; when she makes a mistake she’ll be apologetic.”

Skuler thinks the term ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) is too frequently used in the tech world. Intuition Robotics, which is based in Tel Aviv and received a $6 million Series A funding round from OurCrowd-GCai and iRobot in February, is instead involved in ‘cognitive computing’, the founder argues, whereby ELLIQ analyzes the scene around it and makes decisions based on the goals its owner has input.

“Most startups that claim to do AI, what they really do is machine learning, which is the ability to do pano recognition,” he says. “If you teach a machine 10,000 pictures of what a car looks like, it will then recognize, if you give it a new picture, is it a car or not.” The “new frontier” of cognitive computing–to affect people’s behavior–is ideally suited to a goal such as ELLIQ’s, Skuler says.

It is also a key difference between robots in the western hemisphere and Japan, he argues, whose humanoid robots, like Pepper, Palro and ChihiraAico, have thrilled people while simultaneously freaking them out.

This target to build ersatz human beings comes not just from a Japanese focus on precision engineering, says Skuler, but a deeper cultural divide between east and west. “Whereas in the western hemisphere when we think of robots, we’re not sure what we think about it, and we’re conditioned by movies like Terminator and others to be afraid of robots to a certain extent, we’ve found that in Japanese culture they’re very open to that, they expect robots to be a part of our lives,” he says.

Getting the design right, and combining it with effective cognitive computing, has the potential to reap huge rewards. The global robotics market will hit a $135bn valuation by 2019. ELLIQ is scheduled for release in 2018 following testing in San Francisco and a move from prototypes to full-scale manufacturing.

But its goal goes beyond the financials. Loneliness is a real and growing problem. Addressing it could save us from a healthcare disaster. What we are trying to achieve is help people come together through enabling technology…” says Skuler, “and help older adults fulfill their own goals in aging, which is all about self-discovery, it’s about being engaged with what’s happening in the world, learning new things, being connected to the news, and helping them achieve their daily activities of taking medication, and going for walks, and doing things to achieve.

“But they need some help doing that.” It might seem counterintuitive to get that help from a bucket-headed machine. But it could be more effective than a humanoid assistant.

The post ELLIQ: Intuition Robotics Bridges Uncanny Valley To Cure Loneliness Epidemic appeared first on Red Herring.

WannaCry: North Korea’s Real-Life Frailty is its Hacking Strength

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Cybercrime experts at some of the world’s largest security companies have today announced that coding in the devastating WannaCry ransomware attack, bears similarities to the work of North Korean cybergang the Lazarus Group.

Let’s assume that this assertion is true: that a virus infecting over 200,000 computers in 150 companies, is the work of a team from one of the world’s poorest and most isolated nations.

Technologically North Korea is in the dark ages: almost none of its 25 million people own computers, and units in public spaces, like universities and government offices, are equipped with Red Star 3, a domestic-made Mac OSX facsimile, that is cut off from the rest of the online world.

How is this a nation that has heisted banks, hacked Hollywood and now, potentially ransacked globally sensitive institutes? The keys are to be found in North Korea’s weaknesses in real life.

Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s butterball leader, has thousands of hackers at his disposal–many of whom learn their trade at home or in China to be posted abroad to wreak havoc. No-one knows how many comprise the Lazarus Group, whose actions were first noted during the 2007 ‘Operation Flame’ attack on the South Korean government.

Unlike state-sanctioned cyber outfits in the US, South Korea or Europe, the budget these hackers are afforded are subject to no oversight nor democratic process. They often come from the sharp end of Songbun, North Korea’s rigid social hierarchy.

Second, thanks to efforts like Red Star 3–but mainly the North’s extreme poverty–the country’s own defences are naturally high. Developed nations have billions of entry points to sensitive and lucrative data, not to mention the digital weapons the NSA has allegedly been stockpiling, much to tech industry chagrin.

Imagine chasing a criminal who records information with pencil and paper, before destroying both. There aren’t too many weaknesses to exploit.North Korea isn’t even connected to what we consider to be the Internet. Its defenses are thus as good as any on earth. Hacking, therefore is the perfect way for North Korea to even a battlefield that is heavily weighted against it.

WannaCry’s perpetrators have only reaped $55,000 from their work to date. That is a tiny amount of money given the havoc it has wrought, and a fraction of the amount illicit labor deals have made North Korea worldwide.

But should it be confirmed that this is indeed the work of the world’s strangest state, it will only strengthen claims in the White House that something should be done about the ‘Supreme Leader’–and soon. Then, war online could easily become war ‘IRL’.

 

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SoftBank Tech Fund Becomes World’s Largest with $93bn War Chest

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SoftBank has announced that it has raised $93 billion for a new tech investment fund, which will become the largest in history.

The Japanese telecoms giant, currently valued at $78.6bn, raised capital for the SoftBank Vision Fund from some of the world’s most cash-rich organizations including Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala Investment from Abu Dhabi, Apple and Foxconn.

In a statement SoftBank said the fund would target high-tech solutions at the sharpest end of the technology industry, including fintech, AI, robotics, biotech and others. First announced in October 2016, the fund is based on SoftBank’s belief that “the next stage of the Information Revolution is underway, and building the businesses that will make this possible will require unprecedented large scale long-term investment.”

Rajeev Misra, who has been with SoftBank since 2014, will head up the Vision Fund, which will be consolidated by Tokyo-headquartered SoftBank for accounting purposes. It will be advised by “another wholly-owned subsidiary” in the UK.

“The Fund will target meaningful, long-term investments in companies and foundational platform businesses that seek to enable the next age of innovation,” continues the statement. “The Fund will seek to acquire minority and majority interests in both private and public companies, from emerging technology businesses to established, multi-billion dollar companies requiring substantial growth funding.”

The Vision Fund’s timing coincided with the visit of US President Donald Trump to the Middle East, where he is currently meeting with members of Israel’s leadership. SoftBank chairman Masayoshi Son met with Trump in December, after which he pledged $50bn and 50,000 jobs to the American economy.

Saudi Arabia’s huge investment in the Vision Fund reflects an interest for the Kingdom to diversify its economy. The value of oil, which has underpinned the country’s existence for decades, is on the wane. Access to technology would allow it to maintain peace and power, domestically and on the international stage.

The post SoftBank Tech Fund Becomes World’s Largest with $93bn War Chest appeared first on Red Herring.

Rouhani’s Re-Election: A Victory for Moderate Iran, and its Entrepreneurs

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It’s the economy, stupid. At least, that was the word on the streets of Tehran this Friday, as around 70% of Iran’s 80 million people elected their next President.

The Middle Eastern state has been beset by issues of nuclear arms, human rights and regional conflict in recent years. But it was money that dominated pre-election chatter–specifically whether ordinary Iranians had seen more as a result of Hassan Rouhani’s historic brokering of a deal with the West to curb its atomic arms program in 2015.

That news brought with it the end of international sanctions crippling the economy. Many cheered, not least a small but tenacious clique of tech entrepreneurs who have managed to carve out careers in one of the world’s most isolated states.

Even then local business leaders told Red Herring that Iran’s tech success counted far more on domestic issues, such as prohibitive military service and greater societal freedom, that sanctions. Fast forward to Friday and it seems little has been done to alleviate those ills.

Economic growth has been estimated at 6.6% by the International Monetary Fund. But most of that has come from oil exports boosted by the sanctions drop. GDP per capita, at $5,936, still sits well below a 2010 high of $6,455. Unemployment has shot up to 12.7% and Iran’s housing sector has shrunk 13%.

Despite this Rouhani, a moderate, beat hardline opposition to win 57% of the vote on Friday, avoiding a run-off. That has handed him a mandate to continue pushing Iran towards the rest of the world, and better tame its aging theocracy: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has yet to congratulate Rouhani on his victory.

That is good news. Iran’s problems stem from its economic isolation, the answer to which is not religious fanaticism. The country has some great entrepreneurs, and straddles continents. Should Rouhani further reject the hardliners’ “backward” policies, as he calls them, those men and women will get a chance to show their mettle on the world stage.

Accelerators and domestic VCs are becoming more than a pipe dream. And four more years of Rouhani’s tentative turn westwards will surely keep the sanctions away, and money coming in.

ISPs can revamp Iran’s frail web infrastructure. Education will modernize. Eventually Iran will follow the path of formerly isolated states in central and eastern Europe, that today excel in tech. Only, with an 80m population it can become an even bigger player than any of them.

Change will not come immediately. Iran is still a regional pariah. And this week’s speech in Saudi Arabia by US President Donald Trump, which singled out Rouhani’s government for fueling “the fires of sectarian conflict and terror” has done little to ease business with Silicon Valley or anywhere else.

But Rouhani’s success is a huge step in the right direction–and proof, if any were needed, of ordinary Iranains’ desire to connect with the world and to succeed on their own terms. Among them there are thousands of tech entrepreneurs waiting to be discovered. These are exciting times for a sleeping giant.

The post Rouhani’s Re-Election: A Victory for Moderate Iran, and its Entrepreneurs appeared first on Red Herring.

Mindblower Marketplace’s Carmit Turgeman: Inventors Need a Marketplace Too

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This month Israel-based crowdfund MindBlower announced MindBlower Marketplace, a pre-sale channel for inventors to take their ideas from concept to market. Its leadership, which includes “original Mad Man” George Lois and publicity veteran Roberta Greene, uses algorithms to predict the success of projects and manages each stage of the product lifecycle. It is in its pre-seed funding round with Palo Alto-based NFX Guild.

MindBlower founder and CEO Carmit Turgeman spoke to Red Herring about her own experiences, including the invention of the successful Travalo perfume atomizer, and why inventors need crowdfunds that know what they need besides money.

Was there a single moment or realization that provided the first inspiration for Mindblower?

It wasn’t a single moment – it was several actually. Once I succeeded in building, marketing and selling my own invention, Travalo, I knew I was confident enough to do this for others. I recognized that any inventor has to go through the same nine steps to bring their product to the market successfully: idea, register patents, pricing, prototype, first client, manufacture, branding, and sales. I developed an expertise and wanted to use this experience to help other inventors.

When I saw Kickstarter and Indiegogo and other crowdfunding platforms join the market, I understood that the consumer market is going to change and I recommended to inventors to utilize the platforms. But the inventors would come back to me and tell me that their crowdfunding campaigns still required too much work, even if they raised enough money.

I saw many people who had good product ideas but didn’t know how to take it past that first rendering or draft phase. I created MindBlower to be the home for these inventors and products. We are taking consumer goods to a new level.

What do you make of the efficacy of Kickstarter, IndieGogo and other crowdfunds for inventors?

Inventors need to have lots of resources to even launch a campaign on these platforms, not to mention a successful one.

The goal of Kickstarter is just to raise money, and no one takes any responsibility for outcome, whereas in MindBlower when a product or campaign reaches its goal, it’s just the beginning-not the end. Our consumers will definitely get the product or their money back.

How does MindBlower specifically target the needs of inventors?

There are so many aspects to taking a product successfully to market and most designers and inventors are not equipped to handle them or they don’t want to. They want to focus on being inventors and designers. MindBlower benefits them in this regard by leading them and their invention through the product lifecycle.

We minimize the time commitment and stress inventors usually have to go through on other crowdfunding platforms. We also use a special algorithm to predict future consumer trends, so we only select products that will have a true demand in the market. This also prevents inventions from getting lost among a wide selection of products, like on IndieGogo or Kickstarter.

The largest benefit MindBlower brings to our inventors is ease of funding, as we invest in all of the products on our platform. This allows our inventors to focus on the product and its lifecycle versus fundraising and fulfilling orders. This is also one of the biggest benefits to our consumers.

We provide a money-back guarantee, so if a consumer funds and pre-orders a product and the product doesn’t come to market for some reason, they get their money back. No other crowdfunding platform has been able to provide consumers this safety net so they don’t have to risk losing their money.

An example of our process would be with one of our upcoming products, SeedPod. Aaron Colfer, the inventor, studied at the Queens Laboratory and developed the SeedPod to save and preserve seeds. He designed a great product, but he realized that he couldn’t sell it properly. He pitched to us and we fell in love with the product and its goal to protect seeds from extinction.

Our algorithm showed us that this product is needed and the sustainability market is growing. Aaron will receive royalties, and now he’s relaxing as we continue with the next stages of R&D, product development and marketing.

How did you get Roberta and George on the project, and how will they help?

I got to know them when I working on my own product. I knew George as the original “Mad Man” and I had a dream to work with him for my Travalo product. I approached him and we began to work together on it. I got to know Roberta as I was working on Travalo as well. She is brilliant in PR, so I wanted to have her on my team.

When I was creating MindBlower it was natural for me to approach them and they were on board. They have helped immensely with marketing strategy, naming products and getting Mindblower off the ground.

The post Mindblower Marketplace’s Carmit Turgeman: Inventors Need a Marketplace Too appeared first on Red Herring.

All Hail the Unicorn Maker: Is SoftBank’s Vision Fund Good for Tech?

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Masayoshi Son has always been a bit of a gambler. In 2000, during the first dot com bubble, the 59-year-old SoftBank founder lost a record $70 billion. Undeterred, he continued with his dream of driving the technology industry forward.

Now, Son has an even bigger piles of chips to risk. The SoftBank Vision Fund, inaugurated earlier this month, has endowed the Japanese investor with almost $100bn raised from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Apple, among others, to throw at high-tech ventures worldwide.

Not everybody is happy. Citing SoftBank’s recent acquisition of British VR firm Improbable Worlds for $502m, when its previous value had been around $100m, Pitchbook Data Inc.’s Kyle Stanford told LiveMint of a “fear” that “when valuations get too high it limits exit opportunities.”

Elsewhere there have been murmurs of discontent that Son and co are set to hyper-inflate the market, making unicorns of mules and pushing the tech industry closer towards another burst bubble.

The Vision Fund will not make any investments worth below $100m. Which begs the question: is there a sufficient market for such high-end dealmaking? David Sola Varela, an analyst at Caixa Capital Risc, is doubtful.

“The answer is not easy if we refer to the calculations where, according to Pitchbook, the mean venture round in 2015 was $10.6m. Because of this that I see SoftBank as less of a threat to the current VC market, and more of an opportunity to the not-so-crowded later-stage funding ecosystem–and even as a possible new door to the coveted exit that we all look for through M&A and IPOs.”

If, as Son has suggested, the Vision Fund will look to create new investment rules, it makes sense to put the majority of cash into the US, which has 103 of the world’s 197 unicorns, according to CB Insights.

Europe, whose unicorns number just 20, is unlikely to see much of SoftBank’s billions. But its markets could see significant changes in terms of the industries Son is looking to promote with his war chest.

Robotics has been singled out as a target for investment. Michael Mathiesen, of 7 Star Investments, thinks that shifting global trends towards cutting-edge tech like it will be a major advantage for SoftBank. “If you’re at a government level and want to change an emphasis to robotics, or something similar, you need big funds to change the model.

“I think the giant funds like this one are definitely useful for major projects and pushing trends,” he adds.

Mathieson is concerned that Son’s money will come without the required industry knowledge or savvy. CEOs are already too concerned with today’s share price, he argues: if hundreds of millions come at once, their outlook could shorten even more. “If they are not careful they can be used to hype the valuation,” he says. “Which would be stupid for everyone because you have to deliver.”

Others are happy about the news. Emanuele Levi is general manager at 360 Capital Partners. He believes that the Vision Fund can help plug a gap in the number of buyers available to entrepreneurs working in verticals at the pioneering edge of tech. He says, “To have $93bn they will be buying a lot of companies, and we have a lack of buyers.”

Not only that, but Levi hopes SoftBank’s move will encourage other multinational organizations to club together and build megafunds of their own. The US “probably doesn’t need one,” he jokes. But Europe should definitely take notes.

“If we believe these industries are going to be key in the coming years, Europe should have a similar, sovereign-style fund to protect the European players.”

So, when it comes to the voice of VCs, the jury is still out on SoftBank’s mega-money play. Son has the pedigree to pick winners worldwide (like $90bn Alibaba, into which he sloughed an early $20m). But he’s lost it all too. Will Son’s new fund set another pile of tech chips tumbling?

The post All Hail the Unicorn Maker: Is SoftBank’s Vision Fund Good for Tech? appeared first on Red Herring.

CES Asia Kicks Off in Shanghai

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CES Asia, one of the continent’s premier technology events, has begun in Shanghai, China. The three-day event, running until June 9, showcases the best in Asian consumer technology across 19 verticals including wearables, virtual reality, green tech and robotics.

Up to 450 exhibitors from 22 nations are displaying their technology at the show, which takes place across 40,000sq meters of floorspace at the Shangai New International Expo Centre (SNIEC). A particular emphasis has been placed on companies from China, the US, France, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Poland and South Korea.

Driverless technology will be showcased by leading brands like BMW, Continental and Baidu’s Intelligent Driving Group, while the event’s Startup Park features 75 startups from ten countries worldwide. There will even be a flash pitch competition led by Johnson & Johnson Innovation.

CES Asia includes a packed conference comprising keynote speeches and discussions from some of Asia’s top technology executives. Among the highlights are talks by Microsoft VPs Peter Han and Rodney Clark, who will speak about their company’s vision for “building the possible”; a talk on artificial intelligence and e-commerce from JD.com CTO Zhang Chen; and a sports business discussion led by NBA China CEO David Shoemaker.

Companies in each of the conference’s 19 categories will be recognized at the CES Asia Innovation Awards, which celebrate the best in Asian consumer technology. “Energy and excitement are in the air as CES Asia 2017 opens its doors revealing the future of consumer technology in this dynamic region,” said Gary Shapiro, president and CEO, Consumer Technology Association.

 

The post CES Asia Kicks Off in Shanghai appeared first on Red Herring.

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