Sony Xperia XZ3 with curved display launched

Marshall just added Alexa to one of the best Wi-Fi speakers you can buy

Marshall Headphones, the licensed-out brand that makes headphones and speakers that look like the iconic Marshall guitar amps, already sells one of the neatest Wi-Fi speakers on the market, called the Stanmore. In our review, we loved the sound and connectivity options, and named it one of the best choices for a single-room connected speaker.

But times change, and one of the table stakes for smart speakers now is some kind of voice assistant. So, Marshall is releasing a new range of speakers with Alexa built-in, and is promising to ship a Google Assistant version in the near future.

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Marshall just added Alexa to one of the best Wi-Fi speakers you can buy originally appeared on BGR.com on Thu, 30 Aug 2018 at 23:46:26 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Legendary investor Warren Buffett warns Apple that buying Tesla would be a bad idea

Amid the Apple-heavy crush of news today, what with the leaks and headlines about what the newest iPhones and Apple Watch models will look like, among other things, the Fox Business Network caught up with legendary investor Warren Buffett who had a warning for the iPhone maker.

Buffett, a well-known Apple bull whose fans in the financial press refer to him as the Oracle of Omaha, specifically brought up the speculation that won't go away about the possibility of Apple scooping up Tesla. Seemingly, the thinking has always gone, such a deal would be a simple way to supercharge Apple's own ambitions in the auto space. Except, well, no it wouldn't, Buffett warns.

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Legendary investor Warren Buffett warns Apple that buying Tesla would be a bad idea originally appeared on BGR.com on Thu, 30 Aug 2018 at 23:01:16 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Freezing temperatures likely contributed to the extinction of Neanderthals

The amount of information we have about the human family tree is steadily growing, but there are still plenty of unanswered questions. One of the biggest mysteries is why our particular branch of human history was able to endure, while others like the Neanderthals were snuffed out. A new study by a group of researchers from multiple institutions in the US and Europe suggests that plunging temperatures may have been too much for Neanderthals to handle.

The work, which was published in Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences, used observations of stalagmites that are tens of thousands of years old. The rocky formations can act as a sort of timeline of change, offering information on how climate patterns shifted over thousands and thousands of years.

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Freezing temperatures likely contributed to the extinction of Neanderthals originally appeared on BGR.com on Thu, 30 Aug 2018 at 22:02:19 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple visits MicroLED suppliers in Taiwan as it looks to make iPhone displays thinner and brighter

According to a report from the Economic Daily News, Apple this week sent representatives to a premier display conference in Taiwan where they met with a pair of companies -- including AU Optronics -- to discuss MiniLED and MicroLED display technologies. Hardly a surprise, Apple for years has been exploring ways to make iPhone displays thinner, lighter, and more energy-efficient.

The report claims that Apple is primarily interested in MicroLED displays given that MiniLED is typically viewed as a transitional technology. Notably, this isn't the first time we've seen reports regarding Apple exploring the feasibility of replacing OLED displays with Micro LED technology.

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Apple visits MicroLED suppliers in Taiwan as it looks to make iPhone displays thinner and brighter originally appeared on BGR.com on Thu, 30 Aug 2018 at 21:31:22 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Video: Model 3 owner claims Tesla’s Autopilot feature saved his life

Tesla's Autopilot feature tends to come up in the news anytime there's a serious accident involving a Tesla vehicle. And with good reason, there have been a number of incidents where the Autopilot feature seemingly didn't work as advertised. In what is perhaps the most well-known example, a Tesla driver in 2016 was tragically killed when his Model S -- with the Autopilot feature engaged at the time -- slammed into the side of a semi-truck.

Since then, Tesla's Autopilot feature has improved considerably. And while the feature is by no means close to perfect, the reality is that we don't often hear stories about Autopilot actually saving lives. After all, when there's no accident, there's no story. Unless, of course, it happens to be caught on video.

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Video: Model 3 owner claims Tesla’s Autopilot feature saved his life originally appeared on BGR.com on Thu, 30 Aug 2018 at 21:01:36 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We’re definitely still getting a new Star Wars trilogy from the director of The Last Jedi

However you might have felt after watching The Last Jedi, its director has given fans of the galaxy far, far away a juicy update, via, of all things, a one-word tweet. With a "Yup" and a fist-bump emoji, Rian Johnson confirmed that he's still working on a new Star Wars film trilogy that will be disconnected from the chronicles of Skywalker & Co.

The director's confirmation, among other things, knocked down a rumor that had begun to spread online that Disney would be cutting him loose from getting behind the camera for more Star Wars movies after the intensely split fan reaction to The Last Jedi, which has ardent supporters and passionate critics.

https://twitter.com/rianjohnson/status/1034768347991293952

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We’re definitely still getting a new Star Wars trilogy from the director of The Last Jedi originally appeared on BGR.com on Thu, 30 Aug 2018 at 20:28:13 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This 61-year-old man survived a great white shark attack by beating it up

An idyllic dip in the ocean off the coast of Massachusetts turned into an actual nightmare for 61-year-old William Lytton earlier this month. Without warning, a massive shark thought to be a great white snatched Lytton in its powerful jaws, and his quick thinking is probably the only reason he's alive today.

There's plenty of advice out there about what to do if you ever find yourself on the wrong end of an aggressive shark, but it's hard to know what might actually save your life. In the past, some wildlife buffs have advised shark attack victims to punch the shark in the tip of the nose to stun or startle it, but that's not what worked for Lytton. Instead, Boston Magazine reports that he send a flurry of fists at the creature's gills.

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This 61-year-old man survived a great white shark attack by beating it up originally appeared on BGR.com on Thu, 30 Aug 2018 at 20:00:33 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Protect your $1,000 iPhone with an ultra-thin case made of real body armor

Apple’s iPhones are so incredibly expensive these days. They’re totally worth it, but it’s kind of crazy that there’s an iPhone out there that costs almost $1,200. In fact, you’re paying over $1,000 for even the entry-level iPhone X if you include taxes. The bottom line is that these phones are a big investment, and you’re crazy if you don’t protect that investment with a high-quality case. If you want a great case that doesn’t add much bulk to Apple’s sleek design, check out the PITAKA Magcase for iPhone X, which is made out of the same strong material used to make body armor. There’s also a new "Pro" version of the MagCase that offers even better drop protection for the same price.

iPhone X Case,PITAKA Magcase Aramid Fiber[Real Body Armor Material]Phone Case,Slim Fit Ultra Th…: $49.99

Here's some info from the product page:

• Enjoy your "almost naked" iPhone with the case which is thinner than a dime. (Thickness 0.03in. Min. Weight 0.49oz.). Too light to feel the weight added to your phone. Still well protect phones from most of the daily drops.
• Exclusive Material. Made of 100% Aramid Fiber which is slim fit and sensuous with "Body Armor Grade" material. Now, let your phone protected with the same material used in body armor, spacecraft, jet engines, and Formula 1 Race cars. Yet, it retains the thinness of your iPhone the day you purchased it -- before it was covered up with an thick bulky case.
• Wireless charging friendly. Show you the best carrying experience and wireless charging experience by using with PITAKA magnetic car mount(Magmount Series), the unique transit free design with metal plates inside lets you use PITAKA car mount freely without sticking adhasive metal plate on your device. Yet, no interference to WIFI, GPS, Apple Pay, Wireless charging or your signals..
• A Soft 3D-Grip touch. Texture you need to feel to believe. It almost clings to your hand without feeling sticky. A protective three-layer coating and manual polishing is applied to each phone case.
• Fits your phone perfectly. Easily and naturally access all buttons and ports. Each opening is not only accurately aligned, but also at natural "surface level". A turnkey solution for protection with premium AGC tempered glass screen protector from Japan---Package includes: 1 x Aramid case for iPhone X; 1 x AGC Tempered glass screen protector.

There are also models available for the iPhone 7/8 and iPhone 7/8 Plus:

Minimalist iPhone8/iPhone7 Case,PITAKA Magcase Aramid Fiber[Real Body Armor Material] Phone Cas…: $47.99

pitaka Minimalist iPhone 8 Plus/iPhone 7 Plus Case, Magcase Aramid Fiber[Real Body Armor Materi…: $49.99

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Protect your $1,000 iPhone with an ultra-thin case made of real body armor originally appeared on BGR.com on Thu, 30 Aug 2018 at 19:22:58 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple’s next iPhones might unleash a huge upgrade cycle

Ahead of Apple's now-confirmed fall event on Sept. 12 at which the iPhone maker will show off new models of its flagship product, there's apparently a big wave of upgrades coming from users eager to switch out their current device for one of Apple's newest handsets.

That's according to a note from analyst Gene Munster of Loup Ventures, which said his firm polled what (to be fair) is a relatively small set of U.S. consumers (530) but found that almost half acknowledged an intent to upgrade to a newer iPhone within the next year. The exact figure was 48 percent, compared to 25 percent who responded that they intended to upgrade in June of last year.

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Apple’s next iPhones might unleash a huge upgrade cycle originally appeared on BGR.com on Thu, 30 Aug 2018 at 18:44:04 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Scientists think black holes could bring dead stars back to life as ‘zombies’

What happens when a star dies? When most stars exhaust their bountiful supply of energy they enter a state where they become white dwarfs. These dead stars are no longer able to produce fusion reactions. They are incredibly dense, but they put out only a very small amount of light due to the energy left over within.

The ultra-dense burnt out husks of stars were long thought to be doomed to a stale existence, waiting patiently to be torn apart by some other celestial body. Now, researchers have found that a white dwarf may yet have a chance at life, but only if it has a chance meeting with a black hole.

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Scientists think black holes could bring dead stars back to life as ‘zombies’ originally appeared on BGR.com on Thu, 30 Aug 2018 at 18:02:22 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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To boost Amazon Pay in India, Amazon reportedly acquired Tapzo, an ‘all-in-one’ aggregator app, for $40M

On the heels of Google rebranding Tez to Google Pay in India, and Walmart acquiring a majority stake in e-commerce marketplace Flipkart, Amazon is also making a run in India to hone in on the country’s growing economy.

According to multiple reports, Amazon has paid around $40 million to acquire Tapzo, a startup that aggregates a number of app-based services — such as Uber, Ola, food delivery services Swiggy and Zomato, Book My Show, bill payment service BillDesk and more — into a single app. Amazon is reportedly paying between $30 million and $40 million, and its intention is to leverage Tapzo’s one-stop services app to help grow Amazon Pay usage in the country.

Amazon Pay has reportedly been seeing a wider global push to spur adoption of the service. But in India, the drive to get people to use Apple Pay may be particularly strong. Rival wallet services like Paytm, PhonePe, Google Pay, Mobikwik and others have swooped in a market where payment card usage is not that widespread, and consumers are conducting a growing number of transactions on their mobile devices. If you can get traction for your mobile wallet, that puts you into a strong position for dominating in all kinds of commerce and transactions in Asia’s second-largest economy.

We’d heard talks between Tapzo and Amazon have been in the works for a while, but now that a deal has been done, the two seem to be downplaying the details.

Messages sent to Tapzo founder and CEO, Ankur Singla, did not get responses. Another Tapzo executive we reached on the phone said he could not comment but also didn’t deny the report. And in a statement provided to TechCrunch, Amazon also did not explicitly confirm the deal, nor did Amazon deny it.

“Our commitment to the vision of a less-cash India remains the same,” a spokesperson said. “Our goal is to make it easier than ever before for customers to make digital payments by improving the customer experience, affordability and daily routines.”

An email to one of Tapzo’s investors, Sequoia, also did not get a response. Tapzo had in all raised about $23 million, with other investors including Ru-Net, American Express and RB Investments.

The deal pairs together a startup that has had held a lot of promise but has also has been through several rebrands and pivots in search of a viable business model; with an e-commerce leviathan that has already invested billions of dollars money into India but is looking for a way of expanding its reach in beyond its own marketplace.

Tapzo has attempted to address a particular niche in the Indian market: Smartphone usage has taken off in India, with many using mobile handsets as their primary “computer” for getting online. That creates an opportunity for companies looking to connect with customers, but also a challenge: there is a lot of app churn, and an added pressure on publishers to provide lasting value to consumers whose devices might be space-constrained and wallets cash-constrained to use and pay for anything but the most top-priority data services.

“One of the worst-kept secrets of the mobile app industry is that almost all apps (except for the top 5-8 apps) see 60-80 percent uninstall rate within 90 days of users installing the app,” Singla wrote in a blog post when explaining the challenge in the market. “India probably has the highest uninstall rate in the world, so when an app says it has 20 million installs, you can do your math.”

Enter Tapzo: the idea is that by loading the Tapzo app with multiple services, it makes the whole app much more valuable to users, and having all the services existing within one app also means that a users of Tapzo do not need to dedicate as much space to multiple apps that could be more likely to get uninstalled on their own.

That formula appears to have hit the right note in the market: Tapzo claims to have over 5 million users across some 100 cities in India turning to Tapzo to connect with more than 40 different services. It says that to date it’s enabled over 25 million transactions.

But Tapzo’s success has not come quickly nor smoothly. The company has been through a number of pivots and rebrands since 2010, starting first as Akosha, a platform for businesses to communicate with customers; then becoming Helpchat, a personal assistant and chatbot; and lastly its most recent pivot to Tapzo. (And the company owning all three of these has yet a different name, Coraza Technologies.) VC Circle earlier this year reported that Coraza’s last round in January this year was a down round, from a peak valuation of about $85 million in 2016.

Tapzo in its latest incarnation potentially plays directly into Amazon’s strategy to build out its presence in India by way of Amazon Pay, Amazon’s payment processing service that competes against the likes of Google Pay, PayPal and the rest.

Tapzo and Amazon Pay had already been working together on promotional efforts: to encourage more people to integrate and use Amazon Pay for transactions on Tapzo, the two have run multiple promotions where users could get money back and discounts on a wide range of services you can access through Tapzo.

A closer relationship by way of acquisition could not only see Amazon Pay becoming a (the only?) default payment option, but it could give Amazon the chance to use the app to promote its own network of services and merchants, whether it’s for restaurant delivery or for a deal on a new mixing bowl to cook it yourself — a twist on the company’s classic marketplace model.

Amazon could also use it as a loyalty and points service: book your next Ola car through Tapzo, pay for it with Amazon Pay, and get money towards your next purchase on Amazon.in. That could be one way of fulfilling Amazon’s goal “to make digital payments by improving the customer experience, affordability and daily routines,” with Amazon getting a cut on those payments.

We’ll update this post as we learn more.

California lawmakers are one step closer to bringing back Obama-era net neutrality protections

California’s state Assembly voted 58-17 on Thursday to advance a bill, called S.B. 822, that would implement the strongest net neutrality provisions in the U.S.

The bill now heads back to the Senate for final approval. If a vote is not held by end of day tomorrow — the deadline for lawmakers to pass any legislation until 2019 — it won’t get the official green, or red, light until next year.

The bill, written by Democratic Senator Scott Wiener, would not only bring back Obama-era net neutrality rules ousted by the FCC in December, but go a step further, adding new protections for internet users. The bill prohibits internet service providers from blocking or throttling lawful content, apps, services or non-harmful devices. Plus, it bans paid prioritization, the practice of directly or indirectly favoring some traffic over other traffic in exchange for money, typically.

Here’s where it goes above and beyond the policy developed under the Obama administration: The bill also bans zero rating, which allows service providers to charge customers for data use on some websites but not on others. If you want to dive deeper into the nitty-gritty, take a look at the bill here.

The decision is a blow to Comcast and AT&T, for obvious reasons. They’ve been advocates for ending net neutrality and had lobbied aggressively against the bill. Net neutrality lobbying groups, on the other hand, are pleased with the results.

“No one wants their cable or phone company to control what they see and do on the internet,” said Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit advocacy group for digital rights, in a statement. “California just took a huge step toward restoring protections that prevent companies like AT&T and Comcast from screwing us all over more than they already do.”

“This historic Assembly vote is a testament to the power of the internet. Big ISPs spent millions on campaign contributions, lobbyists and dark ads on social networks, but in the end, it was no match for the passion and dedication of net neutrality supporters using the internet to sound the alarm and mobilize.”

In December, the FCC voted to kill Obama-era net neutrality regulations developed in 2015 to keep the internet open and fair. The organization is led by Ajit Pai, a Republican appointed to the role by President Donald Trump.

The decision from California’s Assembly comes a day after Northern California congressional members asked that the FTC investigate Verizon’s throttling of the Santa Clara County Fire Department, which had reportedly exceeded their monthly allotment of 25 gigabytes when they were making calls and handling personnel issues amid fighting a massive wildfire.

Enveritas’ technology lets small growers tap into the market for sustainable coffee

Demand for sustainable coffee is growing, a boon for socially conscious coffee lovers — but many small growers are missing out because they lack the ability to verify that their coffee beans are grown using sustainable labor and eco-friendly practices. In fact, verification is often accessible only to large coffee estates or cooperatives. Enveritas wants to change that. The nonprofit, which recently completed Y Combinator’s accelerator program, uses geospatial analysis to make the process more efficient, enabling it to offer free verification to smallholder farms.

Enveritas’ goal is to end poverty in the coffee sector by 2030. Before founding Enveritas in 2016, CEO David Browning and head of operations Carl Cervone worked at TechnoServe, a nonprofit that serves businesses in developing economies. Browning led TechnoServe’s global coffee practice, while Cervone advised coffee growers in Africa, Asia and Latin America about sustainability trends.

Browning tells TechCrunch that TechnoServe’s coffee team spent a lot of time working with smallharder farmers, many of whom don’t have access to sustainability verification because their farms are too remote or small. The typical coffee grower served by Enveritas has less than two hectares of land, lives on less than $2 a day and relies on cash crops for their family’s income.

“The existing solutions work well for large estates and it can also be effective for farmers organized into cooperatives, but many of the world’s coffee farmers are smallholder farmers and not organized into cooperatives,” Browning explains. “For those farmers, the existing solutions can be more difficult to access.”

Part of the reason is because many verification solutions rely on field workers who visit farms and track sustainability standards using pen and paper, a time-consuming and costly process.

To develop a more efficient and scalable system, Enveritas uses geospatial and machine learning to identify coffee farms through satellite imagery and monitor for issues like deforestation. Though it still relies on local partners to visit farms and confirm that sustainability standards are being followed, its technology enables Enveritas to provide verification services for free.

Enveritas checks for 30 standards, which it divides into three categories: social, environmental and economic. “Social” includes no child labor and workers’ rights; “environmental” checks for problems like deforestation, pollution or banned pesticides; and “economic” covers minimum wages, ethical business practices and transparent pricing, among other standards.

The organization currently operates in 10 countries, including Uganda, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, with plans to expand into more markets.

Sustainable coffee isn’t just in demand by caffeine lovers with a penchant for social justice. Many of the world’s biggest coffee companies, including Illy and Starbucks, have launched sustainability initiatives as part of their corporate responsibility measures. Offering coffee grown using sustainable labor or environmentally friendly practices also helps differentiate their products in a crowded marketplace. Research by the National Coffee Association, an American trade group, recently found that many millennials prefer sustainable coffee, with up to two-thirds of 19 to 24-year-olds surveyed said they pick their coffee based on whether it was grown using sustainable labor and environmentally friendly farming practices.

While coffee is currently its main focus, Browning says Enveritas’ system can be applied to other agricultural products that need more visibility in their supply chains. For example, it also can be used to verify the sustainability of cocoa, cotton and palm oil.

As a nonprofit, Enveritas faces different funding challenges from other tech startups. Browning says it is currently at the equivalent of being ready for a Series A. Much of its backing comes from coffee companies (Enveritas can’t disclose which ones) that hope to benefit from Enveritas’ solutions.

“One of the advantages of this system is that it reduces the cost for coffee companies relative to the traditional pen and paper system, but it’s also simultaneously free for farmers,” Browning says. “That’s one of the most compelling innovations, so it’s a win-win for both.”

Weebly brings more e-commerce features to mobile

Weebly is part of Square now, but it continues to update as a standalone product. This week, for example, the company announced a number of new e-commerce features for the Weebly mobile app.

Those features include the ability to ship and print labels, to respond to customer questions (via Facebook Messenger, which can be embedded on Weebly sites), to approve customer reviews, to create branded coupon codes and to edit every aspect of your store, including product listing and pricing — all from the app.

Much of this functionality already existed on desktop, so the announcement is about moving these capabilities onto smartphones. In a blog post, the company outlined a vision for the mobile phone to become “the new back office.”

Weebly CEO David Rusenko told me that as his team has been adding more features for merchants, he wants people to think of Weebly “increasingly as an e-commerce platform,” not just a simple website builder. And support for mobile was an important part of that.

“This is what our customers were requesting,” Rusenko said. “Basically, people are taking their entrepreneurial lifestyle and having the freedom to work on things wherever you are.”

And apparently mobile usage is already up significantly, with a 75 percent increase over the past year in customers using the Weebly mobile app to manage orders, as well as a 120 percent increase in mobile usage to manage product listings.

John McAfee’s ‘unhackable’ Bitfi wallet got hacked — again

If the security community could tell you just one thing, it’s that “nothing is unhackable.” Except John McAfee’s cryptocurrency wallet, which was only unhackable until it wasn’t — twice.

Security researchers have now developed a second attack, which they say can obtain all the stored funds from an unmodified Bitfi wallet. The Android-powered $120 wallet relies on a user-generated secret phrase and a “salt” value — like a phone number — to cryptographically scramble the secret phrase. The idea is that the two unique values ensure that your funds remain secure.

But the researchers say that the secret phrase and salt can be extracted, allowing private keys to be generated and the funds stolen.

Using this “cold boot attack,” it’s possible to steal funds even when a Bitfi wallet is switched off. There’s a video below.

The researchers, Saleem Rashid and Ryan Castellucci, uncovered and built the exploits as part of a team of several security researchers calling themselves “THCMKACGASSCO” (after their initials). The two researchers shared them with TechCrunch prior to its release. In the video, Rashid is shown setting a secret phrase and salt, and running a local exploit to extract the keys from the device.

Rashid told TechCrunch that the keys are stored in the memory longer than Bitfi claims, allowing their combined exploits to run code on the hardware without erasing the memory. From there, an attacker can extract the memory and find the keys. The exploit takes less than two minutes to run, Rashid said.

“This attack is both reliable and practical, requiring no specialist hardware,” said Andrew Tierney, a security researcher with Pen Test Partners, who verified the attack.

Tierney was one of the hackers behind the first Bitfi attack. The McAfee-backed company offered a $250,000 bounty for anyone who could carry out what its makers consider a “successful attack.” But Bitfi declined to pay out, arguing that the hack was outside the scope of the bounty, and instead resorted to posting threats on Twitter.

This new attack, Tierney says, “meets the requirements of the bounty in spirit, even if it does not meet the specific terms that Bitfi have set.”

McAfee earlier this month said, “the wallet is hacked when someone gets the coins.”

Bill Powel, vice president of operations at Bitfi, told TechCrunch in an email that the company defines a hack “as anything that would allow an attacker to access funds held by the wallet.”

“Because the device does not store private keys, that is what prompted the unhackable claim,” he said.

When pressed, Powel did not address the specific claims of the cold boot attack. McAfee, who was copied on the email to Bitfi, did not respond.

Within an hour of the researchers posting the video, Bitfi said in a tweeted statement that it has “hired an experienced security manager, who is confirming vulnerabilities that have been identified by researchers.”

“Effective immediately, we are closing the current bounty programs which have caused understandable anger and frustration among researchers,” it added.

The statement also said it will no longer use the “unhackable” claim on its website.

Rashid said he has no immediate plans to release the exploit code so as to prevent the estimated few thousand Bitfi users from being put at risk.

Just last month, Bitfi won the Pwnie Award for Lamest Vendor Response, a traditional award given out at the Black Hat conference for companies that react the worst in response to security issues.

Margin of safety in venture capital

As a former stock analyst turned VC, I still spend time thinking about public company investment opportunities. To that end, I recently read Seth Klarman’s Margin of Safety, a hard to find, but very insightful book about value investing. The book’s title, Margin of Safety, is a term borrowed from the godfather of value investing: Benjamin Graham. Warren Buffett’s investment philosophy is very much inspired by Graham; 85 percent as much, according to Buffett himself.

A margin of safety is room for error built into the price an investor pays for an asset to lower the risk that the investor might lose money. In other words, assets are usually quite difficult to price, so you try to pay some amount well below what you think an asset is worth to minimize the impact of various issues that might impact the value of that asset. One potential issue might be in the investor’s analysis of worth (i.e. the investor is wrong); another might be an unforeseeable market event, or a temporary problem specific to the company, etc.

While I was familiar with the margin of safety concept, I hadn’t thought about how it might apply to venture investing, and Klarman’s book sparked my imagination.

Can you fundamentally build a margin of safety into an early-stage venture investment? Can you fundamentally be “wrong” about your investment and still turn out alright?

The answer seems to be “sort of,” but it’s quite different than how you do it in the public markets. To figure it out, it’s worth considering price, market and team as the potential mechanisms.

Price

In the public markets, margin of safety is all about the price you pay for an asset. You’re looking for mispricings in the market primarily due to irrational downward assessments of other investors — usually places where emotion takes hold and logic gives way. Irrational upward assessments happen too, but those aren’t buying opportunities, and value investing is about buying, not shorting.

In the private markets, there may be the same amount of irrational upward assessment as reflected by some valuations that get ahead of themselves, but irrational downward assessment is rarer simply because such an assessment would mean the market thinks a company is not fundable and, without capital, it likely goes out of business. Therefore, it’s difficult for a private company mispriced to the downside to even exist. Even in down rounds at solid companies there doesn’t seem to be anything near a margin of safety that Klarman or Buffett would expect — nor do modest valuation negotiations create such a margin of safety for top venture firms that can pull off such negotiations.

We can comfortably say that price as a mechanism for margin of safety in venture doesn’t seem to work.

Market

A bigger market is always better, so if we only invest in huge markets, that’s a margin of safety, right? Unfortunately, no.

Bigger markets are usually better, but markets are extremely hard to predict, and it’s even harder to predict which market many startups even really fit into at the early stage. If you had to predict the market for people renting air beds on other people’s floors you probably would have missed the potential for the same platform to rent rooms and, ultimately, change the travel industry.

You might apply Klarman’s idea of conservatively estimating a company’s cash flows and the applicable discount rate in valuing a company as part of a margin of safety, but taking a conservative view of what the market may be for a venture investment is arguably even worse than overshooting it because it will probably lead you to miss out on some great opportunities, like Airbnb above.

Market doesn’t seem to be the margin of safety in venture either.

Team

That leaves us with team.

Fundamentally, the point of a margin of safety is to recognize that things are probably not going to go as planned. In a public investment, where value is a constant reflection of supply and demand, you can protect yourself from the unforeseen via price. In a private investment, where shares are illiquid and relationships more important, you can only protect yourself from the unforeseen via the team.

A great team is resourceful, dedicated, persistent, curious and flexible. Those elements reduce the risk of a negative outcome when things don’t go as planned, because a great team adjusts and fights through it. Fighting through a difficult time. Pivoting to something else. Pressing on with a commitment to suffering. Sometimes things go too far off the rails for even a great team to recover, but better to invest in a team that can correct setbacks than an average team that crumbles under even minor deviations.

It’s this reason that all VCs say they invest in team first. They are our margin of safety.

Close

To bastardize Warren Buffett’s bridge analogy regarding the margin of safety: We want to invest in founders that can lift the weight of the world, but really only need to lift the weight of one difficult startup business. We will almost certainly be fooled both positively and negatively by prices, products and markets, but we must do our best not to be fooled by teams, because they’re the only margin of safety we have. 

Skip and Scoot are the only companies awarded scooter permits in SF

The great San Francisco scooter decision has been made. And Skip and Scoot have claimed the prize.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) issued one-year permits to Skip and Scoot on Thursday, a decision that ends months of waiting for 12 companies that applied to operate within the city. JUMP, which Uber acquired in April, as well as Lyft, Skip, Spin, Lime, Scoot, ofo, Razor, CycleHop, USSCooter and Ridecell all applied for permits in San Francisco.

The permits will allow a maximum of 625 scooters for each company in the first six months. Scoot and Skip may have the potential to increase their number of scooters in months seven to 12 to a cap of 2,500, at the SFMTA’s sole discretion.

“The SFMTA’s decision is based on the strength of the proposals submitted by the two companies, combined with their experience of owning, operating and maintaining a shared mobility service in the public right-of-way. The agency looked for applications that prioritized the city’s concerns around safety, disabled access, equity and accountability,” the agency said.

The SFMTA noted in its decision that Skip and Scoot had the strongest applications. The agency seemed particularly interested in safety measures these companies planned to take. Scoot, which has been managing a fleet of shared electric mopeds in San Francisco since 2012, proposed mandatory instructional videos for users, helmets included in rentals and free in-person training.

Scoot also proposed using swappable batteries instead of manually taking the scooters off the street for regular recharging.

“This method could help the city reduce the number of vehicle miles traveled on San Francisco streets, which helps reduce traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions,” the SFMTA said in its decision.

Scoot said it will soon introduce an electric kick-style scooter to its line-up of electric motor scooters and electric bicycles in response to the decision.

Unsurprisingly, the companies that lost out have expressed dismay with the decision.

“Jump both submitted a strong application and has a track record of successfully working with the city on our bike pilot,” an Uber spokesperson wrote in an email. “Granting only two scooter permits unnecessarily limits mobility options in San Francisco, and we plan to follow up with the SFMTA to share our concerns,”

Bird, a scooter startup that has $2 billion valuation, said it will continue to work with San Francisco officials, partners, community organizations and advocates in hopes of bringing Bird back to the City by the Bay, a spokeswoman said in an email.

Bird, which has a goal of operating in 50 cities globally before the end of the year, noted that residents have sent nearly 30,000 emails to city officials in support of bringing Bird to San Francisco.

The pilot program is the city’s solution to handling the scooter chaos of 2018. Bird, and soon after, Lime and Spin, released their fleet of scooters into the city in March without permission. They became an instant hit among city residents seeking fast and cheap ways to get around town. They also soon became a pariah as scooters inundated sidewalks and rights of way.

The SFMTA put a temporary ban on all scooters in May and initiated a permit process as part of a 24-month pilot program that would allow up to five scooter companies to operate in the city.

Bird, Lime, Lyft and JUMP didn’t completely lose out Thursday. The city of Santa Monica’s Shared Mobility Device Selection Committee officially awarded Bird, Lime, Lyft and JUMP Bikes permits to operate both electric scooters and/or bikes in the city as part of its 16-month pilot program beginning September 17.

Lyft, which remains hopeful that it will have the chance to offer scooters in San Francisco in the future, is now focused on Santa Monica.

VNTANA CEO Ashley Crowder will talk holograms at TechCrunch Sessions: AR/VR

VNTANA CEO Ashley Crowder calls the company’s technology, “the world’s first scalable, affordable and interactive hologram.” The startup’s tech has certainly wowed crowds in recent years.

In 2016, it collaborated with Microsoft on HOLLAGRAM, beaming in a live hologram of MS executives during a HOLLAGRAM for a keynote at HackSC. The company’s technology has also been embraced by Intel. The chipmaker deployed VNTANA’s tech during its own keynote at Computex that same year.

Crowder co-founded VNTANA in 2012, along with fellow USC grad (and current COO) Ben Conway. Before VNTANA, she worked at Gulfstream, Northrop Grumman and BP, utilizing her experience in manufacturing to help design the new company’s early offerings.

In 2013, the team sent a video of a hacked Kinect to Microsoft, demonstrating how the company’s popular hands-free controller could be used for gesture tracking and control with VNTANA’s holographic images. It was enough to gain the startup a place in Microsoft’s Early Developer and BizSpark programs.

These days, the company is focused on augmented and mixed reality experiences, topics Crowder will discuss at TC Sessions: AR/VR on October 18 at UCLA. The one-day event combines onstage conversations about augmented and virtual reality with in-person demos and networking.

Purchase your Early Bird tickets here for just $99 and you’ll save $100 before prices go up!

Students get a special rate of just $45 when they book here.

Watchdog says 2020 Census systems are riddled with security flaws

With a census just two years away, the Census Bureau has a cybersecurity problem.

That’s a key takeaway from the congressional watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, which oversees the government’s spending. In a new report published Thursday, the non-partisan agency said that the government’s Census Bureau has only a few months to fix thousands of security vulnerabilities that may put personal citizen data at risk.

The census, conducted by the federal government decennially, provides the government data on the population.

Ahead of the 2020 census, the Bureau began testing all 44 key systems necessary to support the new option of allowing citizens to send their responses over the internet, a scheme that will save the government billions of dollars.

The two-year test, set to complete in April 2019, has found close to 3,100 security issues and weaknesses, the report said.

In total, 43 security issues were classified “high” or “very high” risk, which reflect cases where an unpatched system has a vulnerability for a known exploit, for example.

“Because the 2020 Census involves collecting personal information from over a hundred million households across the country, it will be important that the Bureau addresses system security weaknesses in a timely manner and ensures that risks are at an acceptable level before systems are deployed,” said the report.

According to the report, 33 of the 44 key systems have so far been authorized to operate in the 2020 Census, but eight systems will need to be reauthorized after extensive changes were made. Three systems that are integral for census work are not yet authorized to operate.

These authorizations are granted after officials evaluate a system’s security, and are necessary for government operations. Once an authorization is granted, those systems are monitored to ensure that the risk level remains “acceptable.”

But the Bureau is running out of time to get these issues fixed.

“The Bureau is facing system development and testing challenges that are delaying the completion of milestones and compressing the time available for security testing activities,” the report said. “It will be important that the Bureau provides adequate time to perform these security assessments, completes them in a timely manner, and ensures that risks are at an acceptable level before the systems are deployed.”

The Government Accountability Office said the Census Bureau has implemented 61 of its 93 recommendations, and has made initial progress on 32 recommendations.

A spokesperson for the Census Bureau did not comment beyond the report.

Santa Monica will allow Lime, Bird, Lyft and JUMP to operate e-scooters

The city of Santa Monica has officially awarded Bird, Lime, Lyft and JUMP Bikes, which Uber acquired in April, permits to operate both electric scooters and/or bikes in the city as part of its 16-month pilot program beginning September 17.

The city will allow Bird and Lime to each manage 750 scooters. Lyft and JUMP were granted permission to release 250 scooters each, as well as 500 bikes. In San Francisco, which is similarly launching a scooter pilot program this fall, city leaders chose Skip and Scoot as their official scooter providers.

Earlier this month, the committee had officially recommended to David Martin, the city’s director of planning and community development, that only Lyft and JUMP receive permits. Lime and Bird, however, followed up immediately with a protest, asking their riders to speak out against the recommendations in hopes of reversing course. Looks like that strategy was successful.

“Bird is honored to have called Santa Monica our home since we first launched shared electric scooters less than 12 months ago,” Bird founder and CEO Travis VanderZanden said in a statement. “We have a shared mission of reducing congestion and emissions, and look forward to continuing partnering with the City and to serve our community. Bird is committed to providing Santa Monica residents and visitors the accessible, equitable, and responsible transportation option that they deserve.”