Technology

The world is still years away from wide-scale 5G networks — which proponents say will bring a new generation of services connecting people and objects in the Internet of Things — but those hoping to have a role in that economy are getting themselves in place now to capitalise on them for when they do arrive. Today comes the latest development on that front: Nokia and internet giant Tencent announced that they will work together on 5G R-D and applications, including leveraging Tencentbillions of users — among other things, it owns messaging networks WeChat and QQ, which alone account for over 1 billion users — to test and roll out its services.

The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed but we have contacted Nokia to see if it can provide more detail. The two note in their announcementthat the deal will include a lab in Shenzhen, and that apps will be created targeting sectors includingtransportation, finance, energy, intelligent manufacturing and entertainment. Technologies that will tested include Edge Computing, &Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything& and delivering cloud-based gaming and entertainment — areas that touch on what many think will define the next generation of hardware (connected cars) and architecture (cloud-based services becoming even more ubiquitous and therefore straining networks further).

China has so far proven to be a very lucrative market for building new tech services. Not only does its massive population (and subsequently large number of people using tech services) mean that you have a lot of scale, which is important for, say, training AI services or battle-testing new technologies; but also, the country is known for more relaxed policies when it comes to how user data is collected and stored, which can also be a significant attribute when working on new technologies. (Note: that last part might be changing down the line.) Tencent — as the owner of two of the worldbiggest messaging services — is an especially key partner in this regard.

This is a significant deal for both companies. For Nokia, the company today is not a direct, major player in mobile phones and subsequent consumer services: it lost market share years ago for its own handset business and ultimately ended up selling it off (it now licenses the name to HMD, and has many other licensing deals for hardware and software patents with other handset makers); it then it sold off its Here maps business; and it most recently pulled out of its efforts in health-related hardware and services.

5G presents an opportunity to revisit Nokiarole once again, both as a network services provider as well as a developer of services to run on those networks.

&This collaboration with Tencent is an important step in showing webscale companies around the globe how they can leverage the end-to-end capabilities of Nokia5G Future X portfolio,& saidMarc Rouanne, president of Mobile Networks at Nokia. &Working with them we can deliver a network that will allow them to extend their service offer to deliver myriad applications and services with the high-reliability and availability to support ever-growing and changing customer demands.&

For Tencent, the company already has a huge number of users, and last year it was part of a consortium (with Alibaba, Didi and Baidu) that took at $12 billion stake in mobile operator China Unicom. That partnership will give the company — which has made its fortune in software — messaging apps, games and other services — a stronger place in building services that are more tightly integrated with networks. And this deal with Nokia will extend that kind of work specifically in the area of 5G.

&We are pleased to collaborate with Nokia to leverage the technologies, products and expertise of both our companies to fufill the growing demands of a digital economy driven by 5G,& saidZeng Yu, Vice President at Tencent, in a statement. &Tencent and Nokia are fully committed to delivering richer, more diverse, multi-level services and applications for enterprises, and individual customers. Furthermore, we will support each other in creating more financial and social benefits in our respective fields, to pursue success in the new era of digital economy.&

Recall that Tencent has had an extended connection to Nokia.

The company was among those we heard were interested in acquiring NokiaHere mapping assets, before they were ultimately sold to a car consortium in Europe. Later, Tencent yet again tried to acquire a stake in the Here business, although regulators thwarted those plans as well.

But Tencentinterests in location-based services has remained: among other things, it has astake in Sensewhere, an indoor mapping company. Forging a partnership with Nokia now on 5G — which has a strong mapping and location-aware component to it can help bring strategic investments like these into sharper focus.

We will update this post as we learn more.

London-based Fever, an urban events discovery app-cum-entertainment events business with an online media arm that it uses as marketing megaphone and data-gathering lens on its community of users, has closed a $20 million Series C investment to expand into new markets across Europe and North America — and win more hipsters over to its own brand &immersive themed experiences&.

The round was co-led by European media group Atresmediaand real estate companyLabtech— because of course parties need venues — and with participation from existing investorsAccel Partnersand14W Ventures.

The 2014-founded startup had raised $19.3M prior this round, according to Crunchbase, including a$3M seed for its original Fever event discovery appback in 2014.

Feverurban events discovery app uses a recommendation algorithm to offer personalized listings coverings activity such as music festivals, theatre, fashion, restaurants and pop-ups. But it also feeds and supplements that business via an online media network, calledSecret Media Network, plus a series of branded social media channels (Secret London, Secret NYC etc) — using this cross-platform media operation to gather intel on what its community of urban users would like to do next for paid hipster fun.

In its main markets (London, New York, Paris, Madrid) it says the reach of this network is more than 12M unique users per week — allowing it to market upcoming events to millions of engaged eyeballs as well as power its own-brand ‘Fever Originals& events, based off of the insights itmining from its community.

Specifically it says itusing anonymised behavioral data-mining to algorithmically predict untapped demand for events that don&t yet exist — and then serving them up as an own brand event.

This community data driven events programming extends to testing the intent users have for different themed &immersive experiences& in different settings and scenarios — a process it likens to Netflixapproach of using analytics to understand audiences to develop and market new content.

So what kind of events has this A/B testing-esque programming process resulted in

Fever gives an example ofan Alice in Wonderland themed experience it ran in a double decker bus in Brooklyn — saying this was a &clear winner& during its user analysis, when it tried out alternative theme options (such asAladdin and the Lion King), as well as alternative city locations (in other parts of New York), and venues (rooftop, double decker bus, indoors). But its NYC community clearly wanted Alice in a bus in Brooklyn.

The resulting Madhatter themed G-T immersive experience amassed more than 12,000 people on the waitlist before the event went live. &At $60 per person, it sold out for the month of June in just a couple of days since it was released in early May, with only a sketch of what the venue would look like, and a brief story describing the experience,& Fever tells TechCrunch.

Another forthcoming own-brand event — to be announced later this month — is billed as the biggest escape room in Europe. TechCrunchRoman Dillet is bound to be interested in that — or at least if the event is bound for Paris.

Fever says it will also put on a music and art festival in Madrid in September which itcalled &Jardin de las Delicias& which it says is inspired by BoschGarden of Earthly Delights— a late 15th or early 16th century painting that hangs in MadridMuseo de Prado.

When open, the triptych masterpiece in oils depicts a heaven to hell progression starting with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, and ending in a highly detailed and nightmarish illustration of hell involving animals torturing and feasting on human flesh.

The large central panel illustrates a vision of life between those two moral bookends: Teeming with nude male and female flesh, animals, plants and some fantastical creatures. Presumably thatwhere Feverthemed event intends to focus. At least, we hope so…

By Galería online, Museo del Prado., Public Domain, Link

Fever says its data-driven, wait-list model allows it to mitigate financial risk for the events it programs and the partners it works with (such as drinks brands).

It does not use a booking fee model for Fever Originals — its platform is free for users, with no additional fees when they buy a ticket — rather itoperating what it calls a &marketing fee monetization strategy&, which is describes as significantly more lucrative than a traditional booking fee.

&The organisers pay a commission fee based upon Feverability to drive additional ticket sales and attendance to their event or experience,& it explains. &Fever is using its prescription power to get its users excited about experiences they were not originally considering, and as a result is offering a powerful marketing tool for organisers, in comparison with other traditional tools (billboards, TV ads, etc.).

&This is in contrast to a ‘ticketing fee&, which refers solely to a fee charged for the processing of a ticket sale transaction. Given that Fever/Secret Media creates significant financial and advertorial value for event organisers, the ‘marketing fee& is around 3-5 times that of a ‘ticketing fee&.&

It adds that its current cities have been growing self-sufficiently over the last 12 months, at a rate of 100% year on year, since reaching break-even — which also happened a year ago.

At the same time, it continues to offer third party events discovery within its apps, saying the business model it started with hasn&t changed but that its growing audience (and the data itable to extract from them) has allowed it to supplement that by programming its own events.

With A/B-tested events like these, the worldhipsters have probably never had it so good.

Commenting on the Series C in a statement,Javier Nuche, MD of diversification at Atresmedia, said:&With this investment we are consolidating our presence in the fast-growing experience economy and digital marketing space. Feverability to mobilize a digital audience together with its optimization technology has proven extremely valuable for advertisers and will create very significant commercial synergies with Atresmedia, in our goal to offer the best communication solutions to our clients.&

When long time Uber employee and head of Uberfood delivery business in Europe, Middle East and Africa, Jambu Palaniappan, quit the on-demand juggernaut, it was let slip that he planned to join a European venture capital firm, but it wasn&t clear who.

Until now.

TechCrunch has learned from several sources in the European early-stage investment community and from a number of portfolio companies that the former UberEats executive has joined Atomico, the London-based VC firm co-founded by Skype founder Niklas Zennström.

Specifically, Palaniappan will be joining Atomico as part of its Executive-In-Residence (XiR) programme. This sees the VC firm offer former founders and senior operators 12 month contracts to help mentor the next generation of Atomico portfolio company founders while those individuals figure out what they want to do next.

Sources have also told me that a senior executive from Deepmind may have also joined the European VC but the exact name is still to be confirmed. Atomico did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publishing.

Meanwhile, according to Atomicowebsite, another of its Executive-In-Residence is former Spotify employee number 8 Sophia Bendz, who was previously Global Director of Marketing and Communications at the music streaming giant. In addition, eRepublik Labs founder and CEO Alexis Bonte, and Rdio founder Carter Adamson, were both XiRbut have since chosen to stay on at Atomico as Venture Partners.