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Technology
Snowflake, the cloud data warehouse, announced a partnership with Microsoft today to expand their offering to the Azure cloud. The new product is still in Preview for now.
Given that Snowflake CEO Bob Muglia worked at Microsoft for more than 20 years, itcertainly not surprising that Microsoft is the companysecond partner after working with only Amazon since its inception. But Muglia says it was really about seeing customer demand in the marketplace more than any nostalgia or connections at Microsoft. In fact, he says the company is on boarding one to two new Azure customers a day right now.
The plan is to open up a private preview today, then become generally available some time in the fall when they work out all of the kinks involved with porting their service to another provider.
The partnership didn&t happen overnight. Itbeen developing for over a year and thatbecause Muglia says Azure isn&t quite as mature as Amazon in some ways and it required some engineering cooperation to make it all work.
&We had to work with Microsoft on some of the things that we needed to make [our product] work [on their platform], particularly around the way we work with with Azure Blob Storage that we really had to do a little differently on Azure. So there are changes we needed to make internally in our product to make it work,& he explained.
Overall though the two companyengineers have worked together to solve those issues and Muglia says that when the Azure version becomes generally available in the Fall, it should basically be the same product they offer on Amazon, although there are still some features they are trying to make work on in the Preview. &Our goal is to have literally the same product on Azure as on Amazon, and we are very confident we&ll get there with Microsoft,& he said.
For Snowflake of course, it represents a substantial market expansion because now they can sell to companies working on Azure and Amazon and that has opened up a whole new pipeline of customers. Azure is the number two cloud provider behind Amazon.
The interesting aspect of all this is that Amazon and Microsoft compete in the cloud of course, but Snowflake is also competing with each cloud provider too with their own product. Yet this kind of partnership has become standard in the cloud. You have to work across platforms, then compete where it makes sense.
&Almost all of the relationships that we have in the industry, we have some element of competition with them, and so this is a normal mode of operation,& he said.
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Read more: Snowflake expands beyond Amazon to Azure cloud
Write comment (97 Comments)Tiger Global has poured more than $1 billion into SoftBank Group, according to the Financial Times. The newspaper reports that the firm told investors SoftBankshares are &meaningfully undervalued.&
In response to a request for comment, SoftBank sent the same statement to TechCrunch as other media outlets: &We continue to believe the market significantly undervalues our stock and we welcome the support from a sophisticated institutional investor like Tiger Global.&
Tiger Global and SoftBank share several investments in common, including Alibaba, Flipkart and Uber. According to a quarterly investor letter obtained by the Financial Times, Tiger Global wrote that &the combination of a world-class set of assets trading at a record discount to net asset value strikes us as an odd anomaly that is unlikely to exist forever.&
It also said that &in our view, the opportunity to buy the shares cheaply exists today because SoftBankstock has not appreciated in nearly five years, even though the value of its Alibaba stake has increased by over $90 billion, more than SoftBankentire market capitalization.&
The Financial Times reports that Tiger Global believes SoftBank can create an additional $73 billion of value before tax if its $100 billion Vision Fund returns 2.5 times its original investment over the next seven years. Other growth prospects it cited include the upcoming initial public offering of SoftBank Mobile, its Japanese telecoms unit, and the potential merger of Sprint, which SoftBank holds a majority stake in, and T-Mobile, pending regulatory approval.
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The United States government has made a deal with Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE that, once completed, will lift the ban preventing the company from working with American suppliers. The agreement eases tensions in the U.S.-China trade war because the seven-year denial order, which the Trump administration imposed in April after ZTE violated sanctions against North Korea and Iran, was a major point of contention between the two countries.
Our statement on #ZTE and the escrow agreement: pic.twitter.com/w0Bbej1mAU
— U.S. Commerce Dept. (@CommerceGov) July 11, 2018
According to a statement from the Commerce Department, once ZTE completes a $400 million escrow payment, the departmentBureau of Industry and Security (BIS) will lift the ban. The Commerce Department says &the ZTE settlement represents the toughest penalty and strictest compliance regime the Department has ever imposed in such a case. It will deter future bad actors and ensure the Department is able to protect the United States from those that would do us harm.&
Many U.S. lawmakers are still concerned about the security repercussions of the deal, however, and a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation last week that could potentially restore some of the penalties imposed on ZTE.
The denial order was imposed because the Commerce Department claimed that ZTE violated U.S. laws against selling equipment containing American technology to Iran and North Korea, and not only failed to follow the terms of a 2017 agreement with the Department of Justice, but also lied to the U.S. The ban cut off access to several of ZTEkey suppliers, including Qualcomm, and was severe enough that it was described as a &death penalty& for the company, which reportedly expected to lose $3 billion as a result.
But ZTE quickly became a pawn in the U.S-China trade wars and the Trump administration said in May that the company could continue buying from U.S. suppliers if it paid a fine of at least $1.3 billion and replaced its senior management and board. ZTEnew management team was put into place last week, with new CEO Xu Ziyang promising stronger compliance procedures.
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Read more: The U.S. and ZTE reach a deal that will lift export ban
Write comment (96 Comments)What do you do when you&ve raised nearly $100 million and you want to grow as quickly as possible In Doctolibcase, the startup is acquiring its main competitor MonDocteur. Together, the two companies work with tens of thousands of doctors and get tens of millions of unique visitors every month.
Doctolib has developed an online scheduling platform for all sorts of doctors, from your physician next door to the hospital in the big city.
Instead of creating integrations with existing calendars and software solutions, Doctolib is replacing your doctorscheduling system altogether. After signing up, you can create your profile and manage your calendar from Doctolib directly.
This way, patients can look at their doctorcalendar on Doctolibwebsite and find a time slot that works for everyone. But doctors even use Doctolib for patients who call them directly as it replaces the entire calendar system.
MonDocteur started five years ago with the exact same idea in mind. Over time, the two companies have significantly grown and convinced more and more doctors. You can&t use both solutions, so each doctor had to decide between Doctolib and MonDocteur.
Here are some numbers:
- MonDocteur has 150 employees, while Doctolib has 450 employees.
- MonDocteur works with 10,000 health professionals and Doctolib has signed up 45,000 health professionals.
- MonDocteur costs €106.80 per month, Doctolib costs €109 per month in France.
- MonDocteur gets 4 million visitors per month on its website. Doctolib now attracts 16 million visitors.
So itclear that MonDocteur was smaller than Doctolib, but not really an order of magnitude smaller. These two startups will form a big company after the acquisition with 600 employees. It will also lead to a huge jump in monthly recurring revenue.
Itclear that Doctolib now has nothing to worry about in France. The startup also recently launched its service in Germany. Now, itall about convincing new doctors in France and Germany to join the platform. The company could also expand to new services to create new revenue streams.
For now, both MonDocteur and Doctolib will stick around. If you&ve been using one of those two sites, nothing will change. Doctors will also remain segmented between the two sites. Eventually, there will be just one service.
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Read more: Medical care scheduling startup Doctolib acquires MonDocteur
Write comment (94 Comments)A couple of weeks ago, Airbnb announced some major changes to the ways it compensates employees before it goes public.
At least two former Airbnb employees and a longtime VC will be ready to fund those who leave when it does. They&ve been waiting on this moment since last summer, in fact. Thatwhen former Airbnb data scientist Riley Newman left the firm to start work on a venture firm,quickly enlisting the help of his colleague of several years, Sara Adler (Airbnbformer head of corporate development) and former Madrona Venture Group principalDavid Rosenthal. What they set out to do with that fund, Wave Capital, is invest in marketplace startups, including — especially, even — those founded by other former employees of the home-rental giant.
Itan idea that has resonated with investors. Wave just closed its debut fund with $55 million in capital commitments, slightly more than the three were targeting. They&ve already begun putting it to work, too. To find out more about those bets, and where the three expect to shop next, we asked them for a few more details in a chat that has been edited for length.
TC: How exactly did this firm come to pass
DR: Riley is really the hub for all of us; his wife and mine grew up together in Marin and have remained best friends since early childhood. As Rileycareer at Airbnb progressed and my career in VC progressed, we talked about doing something together at some point in time.
RN: Meanwhile, Sara and I sat beside each other and together reported to the person who was effectively AirbnbCTO and we were part of a number of working groups together. David and I started talking about doing something together and we quickly drew Sara into our plans.
TC: &Marketplaces& is both a huge mission for a venture fund and a narrow one. Why pursue it
DR: For me, when I was at Madrona, we incubated the [dog services company]Rover.comand I saw the power of marketplaces and the importance of helping them get off the ground. And Riley and I talked a lot over the years about how he watched Greg McAdoo [formerly of Sequoia Capital and now of the venture firm Bolt] work with Airbnb in the early days, and the importance of a true lead board member. And we thought that between our three collective experiences, we could play that role.
SA: As a member of the corp dev team at Airbnb and at Dropbox and Facebook before that, I could also see the impact of investors even on the final stages of companies& journeys.
TC: You&ve now fully closed the fund from institutional investors, including the fund-of-funds Cendana Capital. How many companies do you expect to support with it
DR: We think roughly 18 to 20 companies. We intend to lead every round and to take board seats. We want to play the same role as Greg did at Airbnb.
SA: We expect for each partner to do one to two deals per year.
TC: You haven&t invested together in the past, and establishing an investing history together is usually really important to institutions that invest in venture funds. How did you persuade them that this wasn&t an issue
RN: It was definitely a process. [Laughs.] We were told no multiple times. We had not invested together and it did come up quite a bit and was a disqualifying thing for people who care a lot about that. We underwent a monster due diligence process with [the investment consulting company] Cambridge Associates that thankfully put us on [institutional investors&] buy list. But we dealt with every flavor of [no] before that. I think what won everybody over were the skill sets that each of us have, and how well-rounded they are in combination with one other.
SA: I think our approach [appealed to investors], too. Itkind of like what venture used to be 20 years ago, both in terms of the size of the investments we plan to make and the time and energy we intend to spend with the companies we fund.
TC: How many investments have you made so far, and how dependent on Airbnb are you for your deal flow I know Nate Blecharczyk, Airbnbco-founder and chief strategy officer, is an advisor to Wave.
RN: Alma was our first investment. We spent months with [co-founder] Dan Hill [who was formerly a director of product and performance marketing at Airbnb and whose startupconnects prospective donors with local philanthropies]. We helped them firm up their marketplace design and design a long-term strategy and our [check] was built around a financial model that we built for them to get them from seed to a Series A round. We&ll have to go out and execute on that, but that process determined what they needed.
We have another investment at the finish line.
SA: Airbnb will be a big part of our network, especially with our first fund, because we know exactly who the great people are at the company, which you only know by working with them. But across my time at Airbnb and Dropbox and Facebook, I&ve been a part of acquiring 30 companies and I&ve interacted with thousands more during the evaluation process, so therea deep network of founders for us to draw from.
TC: Thereso much late-stage capital sloshing around. Do you think about how it will impact what you&re doing at the earliest stages of these companies& lives
DR: The tail is really wagging the dog in a lot of cases right now. I don&t necessarily see so much capital as good or bad; whatimportant to us is that founders use their capital as a tool to accomplish their aims. When you let capital start driving your decisions, there are very real unforeseen consequences.
TC: Are there any sectors about which you&re particularly excited
DR: We&re sector agnostic. We believe in the business model, whether itconsumer or b2b or healthcare. Crypto, we&re a little scared by, but I suppose those are marketplaces, too.
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If you&re sick of hearing about esports, you need to get over it. The space continues to grow, inching its way into the traditional media landscape. Today, in fact, Activision Blizzard announced that the Overwatch League playoffs will be aired on ESPN and Disney XD.
The Overwatch League in itself is a huge step for esports, as itthe first true city-based league for a competitive video game. While most esports leaguesconsist of privately owned teams with little or nothing to do with geography, Overwatch League is a pro league made up of city-based teams such as the Dallas Fuel or the San Francisco Shock. Many of these teams are owned by big names in the traditional sports world, such as Robert Kraft (CEO and owner of New England Patriots, who owns the Boston Uprising) and Jeff Wilpon (COO of the New York Mets, who owns the New York Excelsior).
The agreement, which also includes a recap/highlights package from 2018 Grand Finals coverage on ABC on July 29, marks the first time that live competitive gaming has aired on ESPN in prime time, and will be the first broadcast of an esports championship on ABC. Activision Blizzard said in the announcement that this is just the start of a multi-year agreement.
That said, EAMadden NFL 18 did broadcast an esports tournament on ESPN2 and Disney XD earlier this year.
Overwatch League playoffs begin tonight at 8pm ET, and will culminate in the Grand Finals, taking place in the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, on July 27 and July 28.
Herewhat Justin Connolly, EVP of Affiliate Sales and Marketing at Disney and ESPN, had to say in a prepared statement:
The Overwatch League Grand Finals is by far our most comprehensive television distribution for an esports event over a single weekend: 10 total hours over four networks and three days. This overall collaboration with Disney/ABC, ESPN and Blizzard represents our continued commitment to esports, and we look forward to providing marquee Overwatch League coverage across our television platforms for fans.
The rise of Twitch stars, like Ninja, and the growth of the competitive gaming scene have paved the way not only for a new type of sports media, but for a growing new economy. While challenges remain around monetizing the content, the pieces of the puzzle are slowing coming together to create an audience large enough to incentivize advertisers to spend big money.
In fact, sponsorship revenue and ad spending revenue are expected to hit $655 million and $224 million, respectively, by 2020, according to Newzoo. That doesn&t sound like much when you think about the NFL, which raked in $1.3 billion in revenue in 2017 alone. But, like this deal proves, the esports space is growing and working its way into the mainstream, hoping to get the attention of young men between 18 and 34 who have become increasingly difficult to reach via traditional advertising.
Alongside the live TV broadcast of the Overwatch League playoffs on ESPN and Disney XD, the playoffs will also be live-streamed via Twitch, MLG.com and on the ESPN app and DisneyNOW.
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Read more: Overwatch League strikes a milestone deal with Disney and ESPN
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