Google is giving its translation service an upgrade with a new machine learning-powered addition that will allow users to more easily translate text that appears in the real world, like on storefronts, menus, documents, business cards and other items. Instead of covering up the original text with the translation — the new feature will instead smartly overly the translated text on top of the image, while also rebuilding the pixels underneath with an A.I.-generated background to make the process of reading the translation feel more natural.

“Often it’s that combination of the word plus the context — like the background image — that really brings meaning to what you’re seeing,” explained Cathy Edwards, VP and GM of Google Search, in a briefing ahead of today’s announcement. “You don’t want to translate a text to cover up that important context that can come through in the images,” she said.

Image Credits: Google

To make this process work, Google is using a machine learning technology known as generative adversarial networks, otherwise known as GAN models — the same technology that powers the Magic Eraser feature to remove objects from photos taken on the Google Pixel smartphones. This advancement will allow Google to now blend the translated text into even very complex images, making the translation feel natural and seamless, the company says. It should seem as if you’re looking at the item or object itself with translated text, not an overlay obscuring the image.

The feature is another development that seems to point to Google’s plans to further invest in the creation of new AR glasses, as an ability to translate text in the real world could be a key selling point for such a device. The company noted that every month, people use Google to translate text and images over a billion times in more than 100 languages. It also this year began testing AR prototypes in public settings with a handful of employees and trusted testers, it said.

While there’s obvious demand for better translation, it’s not clear if users will prefer to use their smartphone for translations rather than special eyewear. After all, Google’s first entry into the smartglasses space, Google Glass, ultimately failed as a consumer product.

Google didn’t speak to its long-term plans for the translation feature today, noting only that it would arrive sometime later this year.

Google turns to machine learning to advance translation of text out in the real world by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Google today announced it’s revamping the traditional Google Search experience to allow users to more naturally explore information. To accomplish this, the company is introducing a number of new features, including tools to drill down into topics and other changes that will make using search a more visual experience, highlighting maps snippets, imagery and even video in new ways.

The update follows Google’s disclosure earlier this year of internal research which indicated younger people had begun turning to other services, like TikTok and Instagram, instead of Google to kick off their web searches. The changes it’s introducing now show it’s taken some inspiration from how younger people use the web — preferring easily accessible and visual content, as well as more guidance as they begin to make queries.

To start, one new feature will introduce shortcuts to some of Google’s helpful tools directly on the home screen of the Google app, under the search box. Here, users will be presented with buttons that let users take quick actions to do things like translate text using their camera, solve a math homework problem, identify music, or shop from your screenshots, for example.

Some of these are clearly aimed at younger audiences, like those who grew up Shazam’ing music or online shopping then saving images of favorite products, as well as those who are comfortable trying out newer technology, like Google Lens.

These buttons don’t necessarily link to new features, but to Google’s services that may not be as well-known as they could be because they’ve not necessarily been well-highlighted in the past.

Image Credits: Google

Another change will improve Google’s search refinement tools for text-based queries by expanding upon its existing list of auto-complete suggestions to provide buttons below the search box that can help you drill down into various sub-topics as you search.

For instance, if you were researching a place or vacation destination, the buttons might suggest topics like culture, history, weather or other things you may need to know.

Image Credits: Google

More Visual Search

However, the biggest change coming to Google Search is how it will present information to users for some of its search results. While it’s not abandoning the list of blue links, it is giving its informational boxes known as “Knowledge Panels” a visual makeover.

Here, Google will pull in a variety of information from various sources and in a range of formats.

Image Credits: Google

If researching a place, for example, you may find photos, a small map showing its location, directions, weather, and even short videos. These aren’t presented as a list of links or in a text-heavy format, but rather in colorful, card-style blocks interspersed with media and imagery.

“This builds on our launches over the last year of introducing this really browsable visual-first results as well as continuous scroll on mobile,” noted VP and GM of Search Cathy Edwards, in a briefing ahead of today’s event.

In some cases, these visual search results will highlight YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok content, Google says.

The tech giant has been thinking about how to best showcase creator content in Google Search results for some time. In 2020, it began piloting a feature that aggregated short-form videos from TikTok and Instagram into their own carousel in the Google app. The following year, The Information reported it was seeking search deals with Instagram and TikTok that would allow it to get the data it needs to index and rank videos.

The company today is downplaying any specific agreements it may have, though, noting that TikTok’s content is all indexable on the public web — which means, for now at least, Google can access it and present it however it sees fit. YouTube Shorts content will also be indexed in the same way, she added.

“We index content and we return it when we think it’s relevant to the user’s results. And we’ll continue to do that,” Edwards said.

Image Credits: Google

Google has other plans to better integrate TikTok into its search results, as well, but didn’t go into detail on that front, beyond acknowledging the user demand for more easily searchable TikToks.

“We definitely know that there is a class of user who really does like the results that they see on TikTok,” Edwards acknowledged. “I think part of that is just because TikTok has reduced the barrier to entry for content creation, so there’s some really good content there. And we are looking at more ways to bring that into our search results,” she said.

This visual update won’t impact all Google Search results, however. Instead, it will begin to appear on search result pages where the visual format would be more helpful, like travel searches, Google said.

Image Credits: Google

The updated Google Search experience was one of several changes the company announced today at its Search On event, which focused on improvements to various Google products like Search, Maps, Translate, Shopping and more.

There’s a very real sense amid these updates that Google is trying to adapt its business to a world where users are often no longer starting their queries on its own platform, as they did in the earlier days of the web. Google’s own research showed that almost 40% of young people would often just search TikTok or Instagram to find a place to for lunch, instead of Google or Google Maps, said Google Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan, who runs Google’s Knowledge & Information organization, when speaking at a tech conference earlier this summer.

While Google won’t go so far as to admit Gen Z’s web usage is driving the change, it did acknowledge their influence.

“There’s definitely this really strong preference for visual there,” Edwards said, referring to Generation Z, but noted that Google had a responsibility to develop products for a larger user base than just one segment. Still, she added, “we certainly are particularly interested in these user segments and they did give us some ideas.”

Google unveils a more visual search experience for the TikTok generation by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

In addition to a new lineup of Alexa-enabled devices, Amazon at its fall event today also introduced a series of Alexa updates aimed at users of its Echo Show devices with a screen. The features include those focused on entertainment — like bringing Fire TV to Echo Show 15 — as well as others for personalizing the Alexa experience, staying in touch with family, and more.

The company has been working to push Alexa device owners to use the virtual assistant for more than just the basic tasks — like setting alarms or timers, asking for the weather or news, or managing their smart home. Some of today’s updates push into new areas that haven’t gained as much traction, like shopping and communication, while others augment more standard features in new ways.

But one of the biggest updates is the addition of Fire TV on the existing Echo Show 15 in the U.S., allowing users to stream not only Amazon’s own video content, but also from third-party providers like Paramount+ and Showtime for the first time. It will also now be able to access the content you want to see via Alexa, as you can simply ask the assistant to play a show by its title, rather than worrying about which service it’s on. For instance, if you say “Alexa, play ‘The Rings of Power,'” it will launch the program or pick up where you left off.

While thousands of streaming apps can be controlled via Alexa, Amazon says there are over 70 partners who have made an effort to more deeply integrate voice into their streaming apps to allow customers to do things like play, pause, stop, rewind, search and more.

Amazon prioritized bringing Fire TV to Echo Show 15 because it found that the device is already being used in customers’ homes in some sort of central location, like the kitchen or family room, and over 70% of device owners had used it to watch videos in the last month.

The company could not yet say if it would make Fire TV available to other Echo Show devices in a later update.

A new Fire TV widget will be available, too, allowing users to view shortcuts to recently streamed apps, recently watched content, and their personal watchlist.

And to browse Fire TV, you can either use your voice, touch the screen, or even pair the device with the Fire TV Alexa Voice Remote (3rd Gen.), Amazon notes. This remote — the same that ships with Fire TV today — will be offered as an add-on and later, in a bundle.

Outside of streaming Fire TV on the Echo Show 15, the Echo Show lineup more broadly will also gain other enhancements.

One is a new feature aimed at entertaining children, dubbed Creative AI. By following prompts on the screen, kids will be able to either choose or customize an animated character like a pirate, monster or astronaut, and Alexa will then create a story for them to watch with visuals and music. Kids can use included templates and other A.I features to customize the story so it’s personalized to them.

Image Credits: Amazon

Another new feature will allow Echo Show device owners to use the device to share video messages with others in their home. This could serve as an alternative to leaving a Post-it note on a fridge, for instance. To use the feature, you can say something like “Alexa, make a video note” or “Alexa, record a sticky note.” The message will be displayed on the Echo Show screen or viewed in the Alexa mobile app.

The company will try to encourage Echo Show users to shop through the device with a “Shop the Look” feature that will allow them to describe the fashion item they want to see, like “Alexa, show me green yoga pants,” or “Alexa, show me similar pants with pockets.”

Two other features aim to better personalize the device and its content to end users — and are not limited to Echo Show, in fact.

One will allow multi-person households will be able to kick off Alexa Routines — a way to combine tasks into a single voice command — using the same start phrase as someone else in their household. For example, partners may both have a routine that begins by saying “Alexa, good morning.” This feature will leverage Alexa Profiles to return personalized results within Routines for things like calendar updates, music, and traffic reports.

Alexa will also now include weather insights into users’ calendar views and can send notifications about rain or snow up to 10 days out.

The company additionally ported the Echo Show’s call captioning feature to the Alexa app in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Brazil, supported in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese, it said.

Amazon’s Echo Show 15 gains support for Fire TV along with other Alexa updates by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Amazon today announced a number of new smart features designed to allow Alexa device owners to better control their smart home — some of which don’t even require the Alexa device owner to interact with the virtual assistant by voice. These features expand on tools Amazon has rolled out to make Alexa more proactive and predictive, including things like its automated Alexa Routines, smart home suggestions known as Alexa Hunches, and its home security features from Alexa Guard.

As a result, the company says that now, more than 30% of customers’ smart home interactions are triggered by Alexa without users having to say anything. At its Alexa event today, Amazon introduced a handful of new additions that will also allow Alexa to do more in the background, among other additions.

One of these is a feature that will let you turn on or off smart home devices at some specific point in the future. For example, you can ask Alexa to turn off the lights at 9 pm or in 10 minutes, allowing you to schedule these sorts of smart home interactions.

Alexa will also now gain support for remote switches instead of only wired smart switches. This allows users to push a button to trigger certain Alexa actions — like reading the news or turning off the lights — without having to use their voice. This can particularly help those with speech disabilities better interact with Alexa. And the support for remote switches offers more freedom as to where these are placed in the home.

This particular addition follows an update that brought the Tap to Alexa feature to Fire tablets, which had supported Bluetooth switches, as well.

The Echo and Echo Show devices (fourth generation) will also now be able to function as a hub for older devices on the network through new functionality called “Alexa Edge Extensions.” This would allow, for instance, an older Echo Dot user to connect to a newer Echo Show 15 to adjust the volume, control the lights or get the date and time — even if the older device isn’t connected to the internet. The hub devices will handle the local voice processing for the supported connected devices, Amazon notes.

A new “Smart Home Suggestions” future, coming soon, will allow Echo owners to have Alexa proactively notify them via an Echo Auto device if they’ve left the house and Alexa “has a hunch” that nobody is home and the front door is unlocked. When users hear this notification, they can ask Alexa to lock the door for them.

Meanwhile, the Alexa Together service which allows caregivers to use Alexa to keep watch over elderly family members, will now be able to receive notifications related to smart home devices, like when doors are locked or if lights go on at odd hours, and more.

A final smart home update isn’t necessarily about Alexa’s assistant working in the background but is rather focused on convenience.

Amazon says Echo Show device owners will be able to view multiple smart home cameras simultaneously on their screen via a new multi-view camera feature. On Echo Show 5, they can view two cameras, while on all other Echo Show devices including Echo Show 15, they can view up to four compatible smart home cameras at the same time.

Amazon Alexa gains new smart home features like a multi-camera view, new commands, and more by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Amazon today introduced two new Fire TV devices designed to cater to customers seeking a more premium experience. At its fall hardware event this afternoon, the company showed off the latest version of its high-end media player, the Fire TV Cube, as well as new higher-end TVs with the Fire TV Omni QLED series models. It’s also updating its best remote, the Alexa Voice Remote Pro.

The company additionally offered a progress update on its media player and TV business as a whole, noting that it’s now sold also over 150 million devices and TVs across 80 countries, while its TV portfolio alone includes over 160 models worldwide. TVs are the fastest-growing segment of the Fire TV family, Amazon said, thanks in part to more recent additions like Hisense, Xiaomi, and Yamada in Japan.

Fire TV Cube

For those who want a separate media player, however, Amazon is updating its Fire TV Cube ($139.99).

In addition to sporting a new fabric-wrapped, curve-edged design, giving it the look of a more upscale smart speaker, the new device also features an upgraded processor and other enhancements. Its “octa-core” 2.0 GHz processor (up from a “hexa-core” before) makes the new device 20% more powerful than the prior generation, Amazon claims. The Fire TV Cube supports 4K Ultra HD, Dolby Vision, HDR, and Dolby Atmos audio. It can also upscale HD content to 4K to make viewing older photos and videos an improved experience on more modern 4K TVs with its Super Resolution Upscaling feature.

Image Credits: Amazon

But a bigger selling point for consumers may be that it will become the first streaming media player to include Wi-Fi 6E support. This opens up new spectrum to stream in with less interference — which is useful for homes with a number of connected devices.

The Fire TV Cube will also offer the ability to control your TV and other living room devices by voice, thanks to its built-in four-microphone array and 360-degree IR blaster. On the back, the device offers a variety of ports, including Ethernet, USB (useful for adding storage or connecting webcams for video calls), IR extender, and, for the first time, both HDMI In and HDMI Out ports.

The HDMI ports enable the Fire TV Cube to cater to non-cord cutters who want to hook up their cable box through the device, Amazon explains. By doing so, they’ll then be able to navigate their cable TV channels through Alexa voice control.

The device will also continue to support audio streaming for compatible hearing aids, which was first launched earlier this year with Starkey’s hearing aids.

Fire TV Omni QLED Series

The other big new addition to the Fire TV lineup is the new Fire TV Omni QLED Series, which comes in two sizes — 65-inch ($799.99) and 75-inch ($1099.99) options.

Image Credits: Amazon

This device will now represent the top of the line in terms of picture quality across Amazon’s own Fire TV models, thanks to its 4K QLED display. It supports local dimming — which gives you the deep blacks and bright whites — with up to 96 dimming zones. It’s also the first Fire TV to ship with Dolby Vision IQ, a feature that enables crisp colors and contrast and brightness. And with HDR 10+ Adaptive and Adaptive Brightness, the TV will adjust the picture brightness and contrast based on the room’s brightness.

Image Credits: Amazon

Beyond these picture quality-related features, the new Fire TV additionally sports a custom sensor package embedded on the front of the TV. A presence sensor allows the TV to turn its ambient experience on or off based on whether someone has entered or left the room while an ambient light sensor helps the TV to understand the context of the movement. For instance, if you just walked past the TV to get a midnight snack in the dark, the TV may remain off, but if you walked into the room in the morning, it may instead load an ambient experience to help you start your day.

Image Credits: Amazon

Amazon notes customers can switch off these features in the settings, if they prefer, and they can physically disconnect the microphones via a hardware switch at the bottom bezel below the sensor package. From the settings, users can also configure a “Do Not Disturb”-like setting that will turn off artwork and glanceable information during specific hours.

This ambient experience includes a free package of artwork and photography and various Alexa widgets which can be displayed in either minimized or expanded views, depending on how much screen real estate you want them to take up.

Image Credits: Amazon

The art experience offers over 1,500 landscapes, motion visuals, impressionist pieces and photography from artists and museums, which can also offer more detail about the pieces being displayed in a pop-up. However, users can set the TV to display their own photos if they prefer.

Alexa Widgets, meanwhile, let you keep up with news and headlines, your calendar, reminders, access smart home devices, view sticky notes, or get music or streaming recommendations, among other things. Among the TV-focused widgets is one that offers a selection of top trending titles and another “On Now” widget that showcases live content, like Amazon’s own Thursday Night Football, exclusive to Prime Video.

Image Credits: Amazon

And, as a Fire TV, the device has Alexa built-in, meaning you can ask the virtual assistant anything you would normally, as well as request music or TV or movies to begin playing, or even kick off Alexa Routines.

Alexa Voice Remote Pro

Amazon will also ship an updated Alexa Voice Remote Pro ($34.99), its top-of-the-line remote. The new version includes a lost remote finder function which can play a sound to help you find the remote and two programmable buttons that can be configured to launch a favorite streaming app or even an Alexa command or Alexa Routine if you prefer. For instance, if you wanted to program a button for a “movie night” routine, it could dim the lights and pull the shades in your smart home, and make an announcement across the home’s Alexa devices that movie night was starting.

Image Credits: Amazon

The device also has the usual standard remote features, plus pre-programmed buttons for streaming services like Prime Video and Netflix, private listening through Bluetooth headphones, and more.

The updated Fire TV Cube is available for pre-order today and begins shipping in October for $139.99. The Fire TV Omni QLED Series devices also ship in the U.S. and Canada in October, starting at $799.99, and are available for pre-order from Amazon and Best Buy now. The Alexa Voice Remote Pro is also available for pre-order from Amazon today and begins shipping in November for $34.99.

Amazon updates its Fire TV lineup with a new Fire TV Cube, QLED TVs and Alexa Voice Remote Pro by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Alongside news of new Alexa devices, Amazon today unveiled a refresh of its Ring lineup including new cameras, alarms and more. The flagship addition for consumers is a new “pro-tier” security camera joining Ring’s radar-powered lineup, the Spotlight Cam Pro. However, the more interesting (or creepy?) news is Amazon’s plan to integrate its Ring Virtual Security Guard subscription service for third-party monitoring with its Amazon Astro robot.

Originally designed as a home helper, Amazon hadn’t been quite sure which direction it wanted to take its new robot. Now, it seems the company is testing out whether or not Astro could be used for security monitoring purposes.

The company says the new solution could make sense for those businesses that can’t afford an on-site security patrol but still want to keep an eye on their business after hours. Longer term, Amazon envisions a world where robots could complement or even take the place of security guards.

The integration as it stands today, however, will tie into Ring Alarm or Alarm Pro devices. When an alarm is triggered, the Astro robot could go investigate and observe the scene using its onboard camera. It can also be set to autonomously patrol a property when the Ring Alarm is set to “Away” mode. As a part of the Ring Virtual Security Guard service, the agents would also be able to remotely operate the robot when an alarm is triggered, allowing them to get a closer look at the scene, as well as use the Two-Way Talk feature to alert an intruder that the authorities have been called.

This seems like a far-fetched use case, to be sure — anyone daring to break into a property will not likely be scared off by the adorable Astro, though it could certainly catch them off guard momentarily. Amazon says it will begin testing this integration with a select group of small business customers in the coming months and will gather feedback.

Image Credits: Amazon

Among the more typical updates, the company also announced a new camera, with the Spotlight Cam Pro. The camera employs radar to measure the distance and angle of an object moving in front of the camera. Its ability to detect motion three-dimensionally leads to more refined and accurate alerts, Amazon claims. Radar also helps to power a “Bird’s Eye View” feature that provides an aerial map of movement across a property, to give the full picture of a motion event. A similar “Bird’s Evey Zones” feature was also recently added to Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 and Floodlight Cam Wired Pro, the company noted.

Image Credits: Amazon

Users can set their own 3D Motion Detection thresholds on the Spotlight Cam Pro, as well as customizable Motion Zones to trigger recordings and Privacy Zones to exclude areas.

It will be available for pre-order today in battery and plug-in configurations for $229.99. The solar-powered version is $249.99. The wired version isn’t yet available.

Amazon is also updating its Spotlight Cam Plus ($199.99) which now has a new look at is available with multiple power options including wired, plug-in, solar and battery.

Image Credits: Amazon

And it’s releasing the second generation of its Ring Alarm Panic Button ($29.99), designed to be either wall-mounted or placed on a flat surface, enabling customers to call for help, including medical or fire assistance.

Image Credits: Amazon

Amazon’s other home security division, Blink, also announced new devices today, including the new Blink Mini Pan Tilt, an accessory for the Blink Mini security camera. This offers additional functionality with a 360-degree view of the room for $29.99. It’s also launching a smart floodlight, the Blink Wired Floodlight Camera, offering Privacy and Activity Zones, for $99.99. It will be available later this year.

Amazon’s Ring announces plan to use a robot for security patrols alongside new home security devices by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Amazon today announced a new feature for U.S. drivers who may need assistance while on the road — like if they get a flat tire or run out of gas, for instance. At its annual hardware event, the company introduced a service called Amazon Roadside Assistance, accessible from the Alexa app, or via Echo Auto or other Echo devices.

In the event that a driver encounters a problem while on the road, they can simply ask Alexa for help instead of trying to figure out who to call in their local area. Alexa will contact a roadside assistance provider who can then assess the situation and send help, the company explains.

The service is not designed to compete with existing roadside assistance plans, like AAA or those provided by a car insurance provider, but is rather meant to be used by those without some sort of assistance plan. Amazon says the user only pays for the services they need at the time.

Image Credits: Amazon

These costs will vary depending on location and what sort of service is required, but customers will be notified of the pricing from the roadside assistance provider and will agree to the service before anyone is dispatched to help. The providers are independent contractors in the local area — Amazon did not name any national brands as partners.

To use the feature, the customer will say “Alexa, call roadside assistance” to their device or app, then be connected with an agent for an estimate. When the service is confirmed, they’ll receive an invoice with the payment due. The customer will be able to complete the payment via the phone or via Stripe, and the agent will then dispatch the service.

The feature is said to be coming in the months ahead, but Amazon didn’t offer an exact timeframe. That means we don’t yet know how well this feature works or how competitive the pricing being offered will be.

The feature was one of two additions designed with the needs of drivers in mind announced at today’s event, however.

Another allows Amazon to notify Echo Auto users (or even Echo devices at home), when a Whole Foods curbside pickup order is ready. On Echo Auto and through the Alexa app, users will receive the notification about the order, and can then say “Alexa, check into Whole Foods” to let the store know you’re on the way. Alexa will also offer a welcome message when you arrive with parking instructions and alert the store staff of your arrival.

Amazon Alexa and Echo Auto can now call for roadside assistance by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

For many non-technical sales teams at product-led growth companies, it’s difficult to sift through reams of data to find out the best way to engage with potential paying customers. That’s a problem that HeadsUp, a conversion engine for product-led sales, wants to solve. The San Francisco-based startup announced today it has raised $8.5 million in seed funding, led by 645 Ventures (also an investor in SaaS companies like Iterable, FiscalNote and Panther), with participation from Wing Venture Capital, Firstminute Capital and Character. Other investors include the founders of Drift, Algolia and Crossbeam, plus senior go-to-market leads at companies like Asana, Amplitude and Miro.

Founded by Earl Lee and Momo Ong in 2020, HeadsUp’s customers include unicorn SaaS companies. Lee and Ong were early employees of Fiscalnote, a data-tracking SaaS company that recently went public.

During their time at Fiscalnote, the two built an internal tool to give sales teams visibility into how customers were using the software. But even with the new tool at their disposal, salespeople had to spend hours going through accounts to figure out the best times to engage with potential customers.

Lee said HeadsUp is starting with PLG companies because they often get a lot of usage signals before the buying process, but all SaaS sales teams need help understanding when users are ready to convert to paid plans or upgrade their current subscriptions.

“Imagine you’re a seller at a developer tooling company. Engineers hate being sold to when they’re still tinkering with the product and testing it,” said Lee. “So sellers worry about annoying developers by pitching them before they are ready to buy. At the same time, you don’t want to ignore them during the small time window when they’re ready to engage with you to buy the tool for their company.”

HeadsUp identifies that window by analyzing the wide array of data collected by SaaS companies and helping non-technical salespeople figure out the best users to engage, and when to engage them. For go-to-market teams, this includes finding users who are stuck in activation and identifying upsell opportunities or churn risks.

The types of data that HeadsUp analyzes to increase conversion rates include usage data, billing and CRM data and third-party data like job titles and how much users’ companies have raised in funding.

All this goes into HeadsUp’s machine learning model, which is trained on data from SaaS companies. The ML model lets its clients pick an objective, like conversion or churn prevention, and then delivers a score based on their accounts’ historical data.

Instead of showing salespeople all usage data and customer data, which can be confusing, HeadsUp picks four to five data points that most strongly predict conversion, expansion and churn. For example, that might include the amount of time users spend in an app, or growth in seats over the last month. It also delivers contextual information, including potential champions and seniors executives, and recent in-product interactions, to help sales representatives figure out how to approach prospects.

HeadsUp is especially suited to SaaS companies with small sales teams and marketing budgets that need to quickly find ways to monetize their user base. Ong notes that SaaS companies can have hundreds of thousands, or even million of users, but still convert only 1% to 2% into paid users. An even smaller subset pay for upsells or cross-sells, and the process of monetization can take months, if not years.

Ong gave an example of the user-to-enterprise sales pipeline at a company. If an engineer is stuck on a certain feature, the sales team can send a marketing email referring them to docs about how to use it. If they are still stuck a week or two after the email, then the sales team can call them and walk them through the process of using the feature. Then after they have used it for months with good results and have invited their manager to use it, their organization might be ready to buy.

HeadsUp’s conversion page. Image Credits: HeadsUp

But getting to that point requires understanding of how the customer is using the product and coordination across multiple GTM teams. This means they need to be able to access data and discuss when to handoff the customer to another team (i.e. from marketing, to sales assist and product support, to enterprise sales).

“PLG companies can have up to tens of millions of users. Imagine having to understand when to engage for tens of millions of users, and then coordinating the engagement between scaled and unscaled means,” Ong said. “This coordination and handoff become impossible without tooling and analytics.”

HeadsUp helps by giving insights on exactly when and how to engage with users, while also coordinating customer touchpoints across sales, product, marketing and customer success teams.

The startup will use its new funding to build its team. “Specifically, we are looking for strong scala back end engineers to work on our data process infrastructure, as well as data scientists and machine learning engineers for our analysis and insights,” said Ong.

HeadsUp helps PLG sales teams understand how and when to sell by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Just about every company is going to face a catastrophic incident at some point where a key part of the system goes down, and you need to know not only how to respond in the moment, but how you figure out what happened when it’s over.

Jeli.io is an incident response startup from former Netflix and Slack engineer Nora Jones. She launched the startup as a way to help companies take advantage of what she learned from her life in the incident response trenches and provide a single place to gather information for an incident post-mortem.

Today the company announced a $15 million Series A and a new free Slack incident response bot that helps users respond to an incident quickly in Slack.

“Our thinking with the incident response bot is that it should not be something that you pay for. You understand your organization more than anyone else. That tool is not going to understand your organization completely for you. And so we’re automating the incident coordination parts in Slack, and we’re going to give that to you for free, and it’s always going to be free,” she said.

Jeli.io Slack bot Image Credits: Jeli.io

But while Slack is a good place to start, she sees incident review as something that should happen in a separate, purpose-built tool like Jeli, which gives teams the tools to figure out what happened and ultimately prevent a similar incident from happening again.

In Jones’ view, it’s not about finding someone to blame, or at least shouldn’t be, so much as finding out how to fix systems that allow mistakes to happen. “And so instead of asking, who did this, our platform asks you how was it possible to do this? Because if one person did it, someone is bound to do it again,” Jones said.

She said reacting to a situation by firing someone or by taking permissions away or by gating things, are actually band-aid solutions. The goal is to understand the underlying systemic problems that allowed the incident to happen in the first place.

Jones says they use subtle language differences in the tool like calling incidents opportunities because they give you an opportunity to learn what happened and prevent that from happening again.

The company has grown its customer base and revenue 10x, since we last spoke at the time of the company’s seed round in 2020. She says that in today’s economic climate, she tries to frame the tool around saving money. Incidents cost money in terms of downtime, personnel fixing them, and undertaking post-mortems, and the more efficiently you can handle each part of this process, the cheaper it’s going to be, she argues.

The company has over 20 employees, up from 6 at the time of the seed round. She understands the importance of diversity and inclusion, especially as a female founder, who has experienced being one of a few women engineers in the room.

“In order to build a diverse team, you need to show you’re creating a learning environment. You need to show that you’re creating an environment that cares about challenging people, but also making them feel free to make mistakes, which involves psychological safety,” she said.

She adds that a big part of what the company’s product does is looking at the system rather than looking at individual people. “And over time, what that ends up attracting is a more diverse workforce too. So yes, it’s important to me and we have a really diverse team, and a lot of that has happened just by how we are carrying out our business.”

The $15 million Series A was led by Addition with participation from existing investors Boldstart Ventures, Heavybit, and Harrison Metal.

Jeli.io keeps rolling with free Slack incident response bot and new investment by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

Higher education, at its best, aims to be less elitist and more accessible to people from all walks of life. Today, a startup called Ocelot is announcing a big round of funding to build more tools to help in that effort. The company, which provides an AI-based platform to facilitate easier communications between universities and their students around applications for financial aid and other services, has raised $117 million, money that it will be investing in expanding its products, which today are already being used by some 8 million students and close to 500 colleges and universities, which in the last year alone have seen some 12 million questions get asked and answered through their Ocelot-based services.

K1 Investment Management, a big name in later-stage SaaS investments, is the sole investor in this round, which is Ocelot’s first-ever outside funding. Prior to this, the Boulder, Colorado-based startup was completely bootstrapped, and as such has been profitable from the start. It’s not disclosing its valuation, nor any other financial terms of the deal.

Ocelot’s rise in academia comes in tandem with a wider growth of customer engagement in the wider world of enterprise.

Engagement has become one of the most important metrics in our digital world because it’s become all too easy for people to lean back, or be totally turned off, in situations where an online/digital experience is either too busy, too complicated, or they simply get too distracted by something else. Measuring and improving engagement have become two of the key ways that businesses understand out how well something is working.

Similar, as more and more services get digitized, an opportunity has opened up for tools to make those services easier to use.

The digital divide in academia is a particularly acute problem, which only grows as universities and colleges get less affordable, and as institutions aim to be more inclusive of people from demographics that might have traditionally be excluded from the halls of higher learning.

Ocelot cites research that notes that among first-generation students, for example, no less than 33% drop out within three years, versus 14% among those coming from non-first-generation families. Of course, why that happens is down to a complex set of reasons, but Ocelot’s bet is that one of the biggest is money. So, better facilities to communicate options to those first-generation students could help close that gap.

Ocelot was founded by Damon Vangelis back in 2003, years before AI, chatbots, and frankly even the concept of “customer engagement” were of any concern to businesses, and but it was nevertheless setting out to fill an engagement and discovery gap that already existed in higher education: getting a college degree costs a lot of money in the U.S., and while students and their families can always find a  route to paying for it, sometimes those roads are not that easy to discover. Ocelot’s first iterations were focused on collating materials for getting aid from schools and other organizations, and making it easier for it to be discoverable.

Talin Andonians, who took over as CEO of Ocelot from Vangelis in 2021, said that this database formed the basis of what turned out to be a useful resource, which grew over time to cover other kinds of services around student applications and registrations. AI and chatbots were a natural progression for bringing in better discovery and easier, first-level customer service-style interactions between students and their institutions.

Today, Ocelot provides a range of services that universities use to manage engagement with their “customers”. They include texting, chatbots, live chat interfaces, video libraries, and counseling interfaces for financial aid offices to better assess student progress against aid awards (known in the industry as SAP, or satisfactory academic progress).

The funding will help not only to expand those tools for financial aid-related interactions, but to potentially bring in more services around that that form the wider universe of how an institution interacts with its student body.

“Ocelot’s platform is critical to improving student retention and enabling successful outcomes for students and universities alike,” said Brian Beard, VP at K1, in a statement. “Helping both parties stay closely connected provides clarity and consistency to an otherwise complex and confusing student experience. We are excited to partner with Ocelot to support its continued growth as the company revolutionizes student engagement and communications.”

Ocelot, an engagement platform aimed at college students, raises $117M in its first outside funding by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch

More signs that the economy is slowing down in Europe, and that costs are going up, are driving merchants and consumers to look for less expensive ways to carry out their everyday business. Today, a startup out of Italy called Satispay — which operates an independent payment network that bypasses big banks and credit companies and promises lower transactions fees plus other benefits like better budget control to its users — is picking up a massive round of funding on the back of strong demand for its services.

The Milan-based startup — which currently has 3,000,000 consumers and 200,000 merchants (both SMBs and larger retailers) among its users — has raised €320 million ($305 million as of today, based on the current uber-strong dollar). CEO and co-founder Alberto Dalmasso confirmed to us that this Series D catapults the company’s valuation to over €1 billion (at present, around $955 million).

The all-equity round has some very interesting investors in it, including some eye-catching strategics. It’s led by Addition, the firm founded by Lee Fixel; with participation also from Greyhound Capital, Coatue, Lightrock, Block Inc. (the U.S. fintech formerly known as Square), China’s Tencent (which owns WePay and much more) and Mediolanum Gestione Fondi SGR. Tencent and Block are among a group that quietly started to back Satispay back in 2021, while Greyhound has been investing in it since 2018.

This latest Series D is a major step up and a mark of Satispay’s ambitions: prior to this it had raised just €130 over three rounds. This latest round ranks as one of the highest-ever rounds for an Italian tech startup.

The funding will be used both to expand Satispay’s product set, as well as for geographic expansion. Satispay got its start in Italy and the country today accounts for the bulk of the company’s business, but the startup’s plans include expanding also into France and Germany, where it has started to build out its operations in recent years.

Satispay is part of larger wave of businesses that have emerged over the last several years with ambitions to build out payments rails that bypass those of larger, older, slower and more costly incumbents — a trend that has exploded with the rise of mobile phones, a much wider ability (and demand) for people and businesses to use digital networks for financial transactions, and frankly an appetite from investors to back disruptive tech that might prove to become the next “killer app.”

The ever-expanding group also includes companies like Dwolla in the U.S. (which Dalmasso says is probably the most similar to Satispay in terms of how it operates); peer-to-peer payment efforts like PayPal’s Venmo and Square’s Cash App; buy-now, pay-later services; and the plethora of blockchain-based efforts to build out new currencies and means of buying and selling; and much more.

Satispay got its start when Dalmasso and his co-founder Dario Brignone (who is the CTO) came together under a common observation: that the world was moving towards using less cash. But at least in Italy in 2012, there was a big gap in the market: a lot of merchants, especially the smaller ones that make up the majority of retailers and others in Italy, were not keen on using card machines because of the high transaction values.

Dalmasso’s metric was a single cup of espresso: it was the most common thing bought at a cafe and each one had to be paid for in cash.

So they set out to see if they could create their own payments network that essentially reduced the friction to pay for that espresso without customers needing to scramble for coins, and without giving merchants a pain point by making it cost them money to sell it by any means other than cash.

The bet was that once you created this, it would be used to pay for other things, and more expensive items, too.

Although the world has moved on a lot since then and contactless payments in many places have taken away the minimum spend limit (and prices have gone up, sadly), Satispay has built in other features that make it unique and has helped it remain popular with users. One of these is that users essentially deposit money into a Satispay account from their existing bank accounts to spend over a period of time, much like a pre-pay account, which helps them control what they spend monthly.

“The goal was not to create a new bank, since we all have bank accounts,” he said. This also means that Satispay still plays nice with banks and others.

There are plans down the road to improve the connections between bank accounts and Satispay so that users have more options of more continuous funding if they do not want to use the pre-pay option. And while there is no kind of credit in the app now, there are obvious synergies between Satispay and buy now. pay later services, so that is another option to explore down the road. Dalmasso confirmed that Satispay is running tests in this area currently.

For now, there are a lot of interesting use-cases where the current pre-pay app is finding a lot of traction. They include helping city governments provide food stamps to users (which are deposited as a sum on Satispay to be used for food purchases); and a surge of use during Covid when people wanted to pay for items remotely or even in person without even tapping phones or taking out cards, using just Satispay’s app on their devices to complete purchases. On average, people are using the app to make between 10 transactions and 18 transactions per month, Dalmasso said.

“Satispay is revolutionizing the mobile payment space in Europe, allowing users to transfer money efficiently and securely, not only in-store and online but with friends and family as well,” said Fixel in a statement. “We look forward to supporting Satispay as it continues to grow its team, expand its customer and merchant bases and accelerate its business to become Europe’s leading payment network.”

Italy’s Satispay raises €320M at a €1B+ valuation with backing from Block, Tencent and more for its indy payment network by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch

Where is the heart of the technology industry?

The simple answer is “Silicon Valley,” a term that now generally means the San Francisco-San Jose-Oakland area of California. There are other options: The two largest public cloud providers, Microsoft and Amazon, are based in the state of Washington. Europe’s tech scene has been busy in recent years, meaning that it can’t be ignored in any such conversation. And the combined tech industries of China and India form a bloc that carries material heft.

So there are contenders. But Silicon Valley has historical centrality in the tech industry — it’s a hub of startup and major corporate technology activity stretching back decades, one that has been able to create a venture capital flywheel of investment and reinvestment that other markets work to mimic. Now, the question is perhaps better phrased as not “where is the new center of tech,” but has the technology industry become so broad-based that it has no real gravitic nexus?

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To answer that question, we have to understand how Silicon Valley compares to the larger United States venture capital and startup market; if Silicon Valley is truly losing its dominance domestically, it certainly cannot claim an international title. But if Silicon Valley is still the top dog in the U.S., itself the leading recipient of venture capital dollars, then perhaps we leave the Valley in the top slot for a while yet.

The question isn’t idle. Well-known investor and former SPAC booster Chamath Palihapitiya stirred the pot recently with the following:

In time, I do anticipate that a more global tech industry will dilute Silicon Valley’s former hegemony as the spawning point for what’s next, and it will become more figurehead than anything else. But has that happened?

We decided to find out: What’s the current ratio of dollars invested in the Valley compared to the rest of the nation, and how rapidly is that figure changing?

We’ve pulled data, parsed external definitions, and come up with an answer of sorts. Let’s have some fun!

Is Silicon Valley really losing its crown? by Alex Wilhelm originally published on TechCrunch