Tingle Tech

Yeah, what is Google Home?

Basically, Google Home is an app that acts as a hub for all of your Google devices. If you have connected home products like a Google Nest thermostat, lights, cameras, or speakers, you can manage them from the Google Home app as well. The Google Home app is available both for both iOS and Android devices.

Google Home screenshots Credit: google play store

Previously, Google Home was a brand of the company's smart speaker, so the term can be a bit confusing. Now the brand Google Home includes everything on its smart home platform, with the Google Home app being the main hub.

The company now offers a line of smart devices under the Google Nest name, such as the Google Nest Cam or Google Nest Audio smart speaker.

The Google Home app allows you to control many different areas of your house while keeping all of your connected devices and services in one, neat and tidy place. It also lets you "Create Routines that allow you to turn on compatible lights, check the weather, play the news, and more with one simple command," the Google Play Store description says.

For instance: If you're away on vacation and want to check in on things at your place, you can use the app to do so. See your camera feed, turn lights on and off, and adjust the temperature in case you forgot to before you left. It also lets you view a "recap of recent events," and it will notify you if something deemed as "important" happens while you're gone.

Google Home screenshots Credit: google play store

Amongst its other uses, Google Home can run WiFi speed tests to help you diagnose internet problems, and if you want to prioritize traffic to certain areas (like video games or video call connection), you can do that, as well.

SEE ALSO: The lighting is always flattering with the best smart bulbs — these are our faves

Having all of your home services and devices available and manageable in one place sounds convenient, sure, but it also raises valid concerns about access and privacy. Google claims to utilize "one of the world’s most advanced security infrastructures, which we build directly into Google products so that they’re secure by default. The built-in security in your Google Account automatically detects and blocks threats before they reach you, so that your personal information is secure."

Still, some have valid concerns about one company being so involved in your life.

So, what is Google Home? It's, well, your home! More specifically, it's a mechanism that acts as a control center for every home device or service connected to it.

Digital mortgage lender Better.com, which announced in March that it was going public via a SPAC, is getting a cash infusion from its backers sooner than expected. Blank-check company Aurora Acquisition Corp. and SoftBank have decided to amend the terms of their financing agreement to provide Better with half of the $1.5 billion they committed immediately instead of waiting till the deal closes.

Sources familiar with the deal who preferred to remain anonymous told TechCrunch that with the new arrangement, capital hits the company’s balance sheet now (faster than originally planned) and puts more money on the balance sheet overall to fuel further growth. Specifically, according to an email from Better CFO Kevin Ryan to the company and obtained by TechCrunch, Better.com will have $1 billion on its balance sheet by week’s end. 

In the email, Ryan told employees:

“We pulled forward the funding of our spac deal…With this new structure the company will fortify our balance sheet and position us as extremely well capitalized in a tough mortgage market. Surviving is winning and capital ensures survival….By the end of this week we expect to have 1bn of cash on the company’s balance sheet. Quantum’s more than we have ever had. [sic] We will continue working through the process of public listing but the most important step has been taken (getting the money).”

The new arrangement will replace the prior agreement wherein $950 million of the $1.78 billion in committed financing from Aurora and SoftBank would have been used to purchase existing shares from Better’s stockholders rather than the company receiving it directly to its balance sheet.

The amended terms will not change Better’s implied valuation of $6.9 billion, the company says.

As for what Better plans to do with the capital, a spokesperson told TechCrunch that the money will help the company double down on existing businesses, continue to build out “a custom-first home purchase experience” and launch new products and services “that make the post-close homeownership experience as Amazon as customers deserve it to be.”

Better, which recently added a number of new insurance products, plans to expand its offerings into other product categories, including personal loans, student loans, and life insurance. 

The company chose to go public via a SPAC rather than taking the traditional IPO route because it preferred the guarantee of execution that SoftBank offered it with the blank-check deal, CEO Vishal Garg said in September. 

Today, Rover announced its annual list of most popular pet names drawn from users of its online service. Most of the list, which includes cats and dogs, are classic run-of-the-mill pet names—"Daisy" and "Max" for dogs and "Luna" and "Leo" for cats. But some of the more unconventional names are no doubt a reflection of the times. This year, for the first time, "Dr. Fauci," "Britney Spears," and "Elon Musk" made the cut. And it seems like a lot of dog owners watch The Mandalorian, because "Grogu" was the number one trending name this year.

Other trending names sound like a star-studded red carpet event. "Doja Cat," "Dua Lipa," "Aretha Franklin" for cats and BTS-inspired dog names all increased in popularity this year. Unfortunately, people also thought it was a good idea to name their pets after cryptocurrencies like "Doge" and yes, "Bitcoin."

Rover, which is an online marketplace for buying and selling pet-related services like walkers and sitters, compiled this list from its millions of user-submitted pet names. The full report of top dog and cats names of 2021 respectively can be found here and here.

South Korea-based peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform PeopleFund announced today it has closed a $63.4 million (75.9 billion won) Series C round led by Bain Capital with participation from Goldman Sachs. Returning investors in the round include CLSA Lending Ark Asia and 500 Global.

The latest funding brings the total raised by PeopleFund to about $83.6 million (100 billion won) since it was founded in 2015.

The Series C will support hiring AI engineers and secure alternative data to advance its credit-scoring algorithm further. PeopleFund also will beef up its machine learning-powered credit scoring system, which is one of its key differentiators, that provides a quantitative scoring model (for credit valuation), a qualitative scoring model and a demand forecasting model (for near-primer borrowers).

PeopleFund wants to address the structural problem involving the risk of high interest-rate loans in the near-prime loan sector and offer more personalized financial products to sub-prime and near-prime borrowers with its data-driven technology platform, said CEO and founder Joey Kim told TechCrunch.

“For the past six years, we have been focusing on proving the performance of our data-driven risk management technology, which is the essence of consumer lending,” Kim said. “Our mission is to grow into the #1 player in the Korean non-bank lending market to provide better loan options for average Koreans that the banks underserve.”

The financing event comes five months after PeopleFund received its regulatory approval from South Korea’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) to register with the government.

In early June, only three Korean P2P lenders out of 41 applicants were granted licenses from the FSC to operate the business legally: PeopleFund, Lendit and 8 Percent. The FSC said it will continue to review other applicants.

South Korea has passed the first law in the world dedicated to digital lending, ‘The Marketplace Lending Act’, in August 2020 to regulate marketplace lenders, protecting P2P consumers. The new law enables the licensed P2P lending startup to operate as an authorized financial institution to lend, raise capital from international and domestic institutions, and provide loan referral services to its customers.

The number of marketplace lenders in Korea has fallen from 237 to 102, between August 2020 and May 2021, as per its annual report in 2020.

PeopleFund

PeopleFund, which connects borrowers with lenders to enable lending, provides loans at an average interest rate of 11.25 percent per annum, about 3 percent to 4 percent lower than other non-bank lenders. Near-prime borrowers are not qualified for bank loans thus have no choice but to resort to non-bank lenders like credit card loans (or saving banks), Kim said.

What sets PeopleFund apart from other competitors is the lowest delinquency rate in the industry, being managed by its own alternative credit scoring system, and having strong risk management capabilities, Kim said. PeopleFund claims it has managed over $1 billion in loans as of October 2021, with a delinquency rate of 2.06%.

Another differentiator is its credit scoring system optimized for mid-interest loans based on about 480,000 loan customers registered on its platform. PeopleFund built a credit scoring system (CSS) 4.0 for near-prime borrowers to provide more affordable mid-rate loans to borrowers, who use the funds to refinance existing loans taken from other second-tier lenders. The refinancing loans account for 66 percent of its total loans, he added.

Kim said that its clients include near-prime borrowers and individuals and institutional investors who expect 7%-9% the ROI per annum (before tax). Its lenders are mostly retail customers the company has through its partnership with Kakao Pay.

“For individual and institutional lenders, we offer diversified lending opportunities at an average annual return rate of 6 percent to 9 percent. For the borrowers and the lenders, [our] AI-based data-driven underwriting process has been the core of its competitive advantage, which has been outperforming other non-bank players by a 3 percent to 5 percent gap in loss rate,” Kim said.

PeopleFund targets the traditional personal credit loans market in South Korea, which is estimated at around $67 billion, according to the company.

The company, which accounted for about 57% of market share in the personal loan of the P2P lending market as of October, expects to generate profit in 2022, Kim said.

“While leading online lenders in the U.S. have grown to worth billions out of lending platforms such as Upstart and SoFi, Korea’s online lending is only just beginning, said Tim Chae, managing partner of 500 Global that participated in all fundraising since the seed round. “We strongly believe that PeopleFund will grow to become a clear winner with its proven track record, accelerating tech-driven innovations in the non-bank lending sector in Korea.”

Investment in fintech is surging back following a brief but notable drop during the COVID pandemic. As a result, countries worldwide are seeing a large influx of capital for fintech ventures, and both investment totals and deal counts in the fintech space are increasing rapidly.

Although a large part of fintech funding focuses on countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, smaller countries, particularly in Asia, are making their presence known. This is hardly surprising given that Asia leads the world in fintech adoption rates.

Singapore is one country building a solid reputation as a hub of fintech activity, and this reputation is generating substantial investment.

Singapore’s fintech investment surges forward

According to KPMG, total fintech funding worldwide in the first half of 2021 reached $98 billion from 2,456 deals, rebounding strongly from the COVID-inspired investing dip of 2020.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. accounted for most of the total investment at $42 billion. However, fintech funding also recovered well in Asia and the EMEA region.

For the first half of 2021, Asian fintech funding activity amounted to $7.5 billion despite the lack of any notably large deals. CBInsights estimates that Asian fintech funding in Q3 is strong at nearly $6 billion, trailing only the U.S.

Despite its small size (less than 5 million total population), Singapore is quickly reaching investment levels of countries many times its size. Although the KPMG data shows only $614 million during the first half, the Singapore Monetary Authority’s chief fintech officer, Sopnendu Mohanty, suggests a strong surge in the second half, pushing Singapore’s total to $3 billion. Given the record number of deals in the first half of 2021, Mohanty’s optimism seems justified.

Compare Singapore’s total to countries like Canada and the major European countries. In the first half, Canada’s total investment was $4.8 billion, while France and Germany were each in the $2 billion-$2.5 billion range. But these countries are six to 10 times the size of Singapore and have similarly larger GDPs.

Singapore’s investment level is also notable among countries in the Asia Pacific. The two most populated countries, China and India, generated only $1.3 billion and $2 billion, respectively. Australia had less than a billion. Singapore is swinging well above its weight when it comes to fintech investment.

Fintech adoption drives investment

Fintech adoption continues to grow rapidly, and the pandemic only provided additional fuel for the fire. Adoption rates in Europe, for example, accelerated by 72% in 2020 alone.

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Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Tuesday, November 30, 2021! This is the last newsletter of the month, which means that tomorrow is December. Get ready for the last few weeks of news before the Christmas/holiday news freeze sets into place. There are still a few IPOs to go, so don’t log off yet! —Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3 4

• Nubank cuts IPO price range target: Bellwether Brazilian tech company Nubank has reduced its price range ahead of its public offering. In short, the neobank will sell its shares for less than it expected, lowering the size of its impending capital raise and also cutting its public-market valuation. TechCrunch dug into whether the news matters for Latin American startups more broadly. (More on the company’s economics here.)
• Facebook told to sell Giphy: Remember when Facebook bought Giphy, the GIF search engine? Well, the Competition and Markets Authority, the U.K.’s competition watchdog, is telling the U.S. social networking giant to reverse that purchase. A rare moment in which a major tech company is told no.
• Also, Facebook’s crypto exec is leaving: Another Facebook exec is taking off, crypto leader David Marcus. The news comes after “Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer announced he was stepping down from his role after 13 years at the company” this September, TechCrunch notes.
• Digital sales disappoint during shoppy fauxliday: After disappointing online sales on Black Friday led TechCrunch to look into e-commerce sales growth more generally, “consumer awareness of supply chain shortages and even earlier deals may have contributed to a slight decline in U.S. e-commerce sales during Cyber Week,” Sarah Perez reports.

Startups/VC

Before we get into our daily digest of startup happenings, HashiCorp’s IPO is shaping up to be a right corker. The U.S. cloud infra management concern is targeting a pretty high price point for its shares, at least in revenue-multiples terms. Good news for open source startups more generally? We think so. (More on its economics here.)

• BeerOrCoffee raises $10M: Notably BeerOrCoffee is not an artisan, DTC, free-range consumer beverage outfit. Instead, the São Paulo-based startup offers flexible office space. TechCrunch dug into its operations and recent Series A raise.
• Money, attention or compute? Massive, a startup, wants to offer the world’s consumers a different way to pay for apps. Not with their currency (subscriptions) or attention (ads), but with their spare compute time. We had questions, but the model sounds pretty neat.
• Fundbox shows that SMBs can build unicorns: Forget the old VC rule that selling to SMBs is bad business. There are just too many successful startups out here looking to sell to small businesses for the old saw to be anything but toothless. Fundbox’s new $1.1 billion valuation is evidence of the fact, with the SMB-focused fintech adding nine figures to its accounts in a single gulp.
• The other way to make tech money from trucking: Sure, we read a lot about self-driving semis and how computers will soon drive our big trucks. But, in the meantime, CloudTrucks is raising a treasury to grow its software business aimed at trucking firms that still employ human drivers. The company just closed a massive $115 million Series B.

And for startups out there looking to raise, a little venture fund news for your diversion:

• Sapphire Ventures raises $2B: For its sixth main fund and third “opportunity “ fund, Sapphire Ventures has banked 10 figures worth of capital. That’s a Smaug-level haul, and indicative, I believe, that I will annoy the firm’s Jai Das at least four times per quarter in 2021 for notes on what he’s seeing in the market.
• Partech raises $750 million for second growth fund: Normally a venture capital concern raising hundreds of millions of dollars doesn’t get my pulse up even a single BPM. However, as Partech is based in Paris, I have to admit that I found the news more than a little notable. Recall when Europe’s startup scene was considered an also-ran? That was a while ago now.

3 views on Jack Dorsey’s decision to step down as Twitter’s CEO

Image Credits: Joe+Raedle (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Jack Dorsey was Twitter’s first CEO — and also its fourth.

He led the platform from its launch in 2006 until he passed the torch to co-founder Ev Williams two years later. In 2015, Dorsey returned to the role, even though he was simultaneously serving as CEO of fintech platform Square.

“There’s a lot of talk about the importance of a company being ‘founder-led,’” he wrote in a letter to employees.

“Ultimately I believe that’s severely limiting and a single point of failure. I’ve worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders.”

The Equity podcast team discussed his departure in a TechCrunch+ post yesterday afternoon:

• Alex Wilhelm: A call to return to the old normal from the new normal
• Natasha Mascarenhas: A reset would rewrite how VCs and entrepreneurs do business
• Amanda Silberling: Founders aren’t rock stars

Big Tech Inc.

Today’s Big Tech news comes in two chunks. There’s the day’s news from huge tech concerns, and then there’s a whole mess of AWS-related news from our enterprise team.

• European AI regulation may lack teeth: Per our own Natasha Lomas, a collection of civil society organizations has come to the view that “draft legislation” in Europe “falls far short of protecting fundamental rights from AI-fueled harms like scaled discrimination and blackbox bias.”
• Mercedes invests in Factorial Energy: Sure, we could have put this entry in the startup section, but how frequently do we see the parent company of reigning F1 winning champions, the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, in our pages? Infrequently. Regardless, Factorial is working on solid state batteries for cars, so you can see why the Silver Arrows corporate family was interested.
• Twitter cracks down on abusive image/video posting: In baby’s CEO’s first PR crisis, Twitter announced today that it is moving to “ban sharing images or videos of private individuals without their consent.” At issue is the fact that some video, well, will never get consent of say, the cops, despite being in the public interest. Twitter noted a public interest nuance, but some folks were still mad.

And then, the Amazon/AWS news deluge:

• Karpenter is a “new open source autoscaling tool for Kubernetes clusters.”
• SageMaker Canvas is a “no-code ML service.”
• AWS to highlight partners that “develop specialized solutions aimed at the energy industry.”
• AWS analytics are now serverless.
• There’s a new ML chip from Amazon, the Trn1.
• But that’s not all! Amazon’s cloud team also has a new ARM chip called the “Graviton 3.”
• And we have even more from AWS’ big shindig here, if that is your jam!

TechCrunch Experts

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TechCrunch wants you to recommend growth marketers who have expertise in SEO, social, content writing and more! If you’re a growth marketer, pass this survey along to your clients; we’d like to hear about why they loved working with you.

If you’re curious about how these surveys are shaping our coverage, check out this article on TechCrunch+ from Kerry Cunningham, “Product-led growth and signal substitution syndrome: Bringing it all together.”

Jack Dorsey was Twitter’s first CEO — and also its fourth.

He led the platform from its launch in 2006 until he passed the torch to co-founder Ev Williams two years later. In 2015, Dorsey returned to the role after Dick Costolo’s stint, even though he was simultaneously serving as CEO of fintech platform Square.

Like many, I wondered how one person could adequately handle that level of responsibility. And apparently, so did Dorsey.

“There’s a lot of talk about the importance of a company being ‘founder-led,’” he wrote in a letter to employees.

“Ultimately I believe that’s severely limiting and a single point of failure. I’ve worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders.”

Full TechCrunch+ articles are only available to members.
Use discount code TCPLUSROUNDUP to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription.

The Equity podcast team discussed his departure in a TechCrunch+ post yesterday afternoon:

• Alex Wilhelm: A call to return to the old normal from the new normal
• Natasha Mascarenhas: A reset would rewrite how VCs and entrepreneurs do business
• Amanda Silberling: Founders aren’t rock stars

It’s too early to say whether the move will alter the founder-led ethic that permeates Silicon Valley.

Personally, I’m hoping it starts a trend where mature tech companies do a better job of recognizing and rewarding employees who innately understand their culture, products and services. Case in point: Former CTO Parag Agrawal was initially hired as a software engineer, but a decade later, he’s leading Twitter’s 5,500 employees.

Perhaps it should be pro forma for corporate boards in search of a new CEO to start by talking to the company’s longtime engineers, product managers and marketing leads.

Thanks very much for reading,

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist

Is Nubank’s lower IPO pricing bad news for Brazilian startups?

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

Brazil-based Nubank initially indicated that it planned to raise a maximum of $3.66 billion in its upcoming IPO, but this morning, the Latin American neobank’s holding company lowered that to $2.86 billion.

This public offering was coming in hot; why throttle back now? In this morning’s edition of The Exchange, Anna Heim and Alex Wilhelm unpack the numbers for the new proposed valuation and ask, “Does the revision matter?”

Product-led growth and signal substitution syndrome: Bringing it all together

Image Credits: Halfdark (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Collecting data to optimize B2B marketing is notoriously difficult.

“Practitioners tend to see each new source of information about their potential buyers — each signal type — as a substitute for the last one that didn’t work,” according to Kerry Cunningham, senior principal at account engagement platform 6sense.

Embracing a product-led growth mindset allows organizations to look at users as signals, “just like form-fill leads, de-anonymized website traffic, visitors to your booth, and the rest,” says Cunningham.

Black Friday data adds to evidence e-commerce growth is slowing

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

News of the omicron coronavirus variant may have suppressed retail activity over the Thanksgiving weekend, but what’s the explanation for flat online spending?

This year, Black Friday e-commerce totaled just $8.9 billion, compared to $9 billion in 2020.

“Perhaps we should not have been surprised,” writes Alex Wilhelm. “There were warning signs.”

Looking back at missed Q3 estimates from companies like Shopify, Amazon and Pinduoduo, “somewhat softer e-commerce numbers simply should not be a surprise,” he concludes.

Due to supply-chain concerns and ongoing pandemic restrictions, retailers say consumers started shopping earlier this year. Still, this is the first time we’ve seen a decrease in Black Friday spending.

“The pandemic gaveth, and now seems less inclined to continue to giveth, even if e-commerce itself is still growing,” writes Alex. “It’s just that it’s growing more slowly than investors expected.”

4 key strategies for succeeding at international expansion

Image Credits: twomeows (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

International expansion counts as one of every startup’s milestones, but the path to realizing your global ambitions “is riddled with obstacles,” writes angel investor Marjorie Radlo-Zandi.

Drawing from over 20 years of experience leading and expanding a food diagnostics company to more than 100 countries, Radlo-Zandi shares four core strategies for companies looking to enter foreign markets:

• Market research
• Prioritizing locations based on ROI
• Customizing deals and marketing
• Performance monitoring and contractual goals

As human capital grows scarce, flexible compensation can help attract and retain talent

Image Credits: MirageC (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

The pandemic-fueled labor shortage has many causes, but inflexible and inadequate compensation is one of the most discussed.

However, employees don’t always leave because of pay. “An opaque model for allocating compensation” is often to blame for employees feeling unheard and unseen, writes Compright CEO Boyd Davis.

Davis explains how startups can tackle this issue by analyzing employee and market data to come up with compensation strategies that are transparent, equitable and fair.

The pandemic taught us to be flexible and “embrace change and be open to adjusting processes, [which] holds true for compensation planning as well,” Davis writes.

Why SoundHound is valued at 5 Shazams

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

Music recognition service SoundHound more or less disappeared about five years ago, so it was a surprise when its SPAC backer announced the company’s IPO at a valuation of $2.1 billion.

That, Anna Heim notes, is five times as much as Apple paid for Shazam, its biggest competitor.

SoundHound turned down the volume as it quietly developed a conversational AI product it now sells to a number of leading brands. “If its SPAC deck is to be believed, it seems it is just doing magic in plain sight,” writes Anna.

Dear Sophie: How long does International Entrepreneur Parole take?

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

Dear Sophie,

My co-founders and I think we might qualify for International Entrepreneur Parole.

How long does it take to get IEP approved? How does that compare to other options that are available to startup founders, and can my spouse work?

— Committed COO

How Pilot convinced Index Ventures to think long-term about margins

Image Credits: twomeows (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Investors often get a bad rap for pushing companies to grow without burning too much cash, but according to Pilot CTO and founder Jessica McKellar, clear communication is key to soothing investor concerns.

In the latest episode of TechCrunch Live, McKellar and Index Ventures partner Mark Goldberg talked about their early tensions, and how communicating a clear road map helped the company deliver great customer experiences while giving a broad understanding of the long-term picture.