Technology

Verizon is pulling the plug on go90, its mobile video service (disclosure: Verizon owns Oath, which owns TechCrunch). It represented a big investment for the telecom company. After a big splashy launch in October 2015, the service never really found its audience.

&Following the creation of Oath, go90 will be discontinued,& Verizon told Reuters in a statement. &Verizon will focus on building its digital-first brands at scale in sports, finance, news and entertainment for todaymobile consumers and tomorrow5G applications.&

According to Digiday, Verizon could have spent as much as $1.2 billion on content acquisition for the service. The company acquired Vessel, bought a stake in AwesomenessTV and bought distribution rights for Vice Media shows.

You might remember Kobe Bryant receiving an Oscar for a short film earlier this year. &Dear Basketball& is distributed online through go90. Other than that, I can&t really name anything memorable on go90.

While go90 was a Verizon project at first, it was later moved to Oath, Verizonsubsidiary that is the result of the merger of AOL and Yahoo. It sounds like Oath is going to be in charge of all content projects from now on.

When Nigerian logistics startupKobo360interviewed for Y-Combinator2018 cohort a question stood out to founder Obi Ozor. &‘Whatholding you back from becoming a Unicorn& they asked. My answer was simple: ‘working capital,&& said Ozor.

Kobo360 was accepted into YC2018 class and gained some working capital in the form of $1.2M in pre-seed funding round led byWestern Technology Investmentannounced this week. Lagos basedVerod Capital Managementalso joined to support Kobo360.

The startup — with an Uber -like app that connects Nigerian truckers to companies with freight needs — will use the funds to pay drivers online immediately after successful hauls.

Kobo360 is also launching the Kobo Wealth Investment Network, or KoboWIN—a crowd-invest, vehicle financing program. Through it Kobo drivers can finance new trucks through citizen investors and pay them back directly (with interest) over a 60 month period.

Ozor said Kobo360 created the platform because of limited vehicle finance options for truckers in Nigeria.&We hope KoboWIN…will inject 20,000…[additional] trucks on the Kobo platform,& he told TechCrunch.

On Kobo360utility, &We give drivers the demand and technology to power their businesses,& said Ozor. &An average trucker will make $3,500 a month with our app. Thatmiddle class territory in Nigeria.&

Kobo360 has served 324 businesses, aggregated a fleet of 5480 drivers, and moved 37.6M kilograms of cargo since 2017, per company stats. Top clients include Honeywell,Olam, Unilever, and DHL.

Ozor previously headed Uber Nigeria, before teaming up with Ife Oyodeli to co-found Kobo360. They initially targeted3PLfor Nigeriae-commerce boom — namely Jumia (nowAfricafirst unicorn) and Konga (recently purchased in adistressed acquisition).

&We started doing last mile delivery…but the volume just wasn&t there for us, so we decided to pivot…to an asset free model around long-haul trucking,& said Ozor.

Kobo360 was accepted into YCSummer &18 batch—receiving $120K for 7 percent equity—and will present at an August Demo Day in front of YC Investors. &We were impressed by bothObiand Ife as founders. They were growing quickly and had a strong vision for the company,& YC partner Tim Brady told TechCrunch.

Kobo360app currently coordinates 5000 trips a month, according to Ozor. He thinks the startupasset free, digital platform and business model can outpace traditional long-haul 3PL providers in Nigeria by handling more volume at cheaper prices.

&Owning trucks is just too difficult to manage. The best scalable model is to aggregate trucks,& he said. &We now have more trucks than providers likeTSLand they&ve been here….years. By the end of this year we plan to have 20,000 trucks on our app—probably more than anyone on this continent.&

On price, Ozor named the ability of the Kobo360 app to more accurately and consistently coordinate return freight trips once truckers have dropped off first loads.

&Logistics in Nigeria have been priced based on the assumption drivers are going to run empty on the way back…When we now match freight with return trips, prices crash.&

Kobo360 is profitable, according to Ozor. Though he wouldn&t provide exact figures, he said reviewing the companyfinancial performance was part of YCvetting process.

Logistics has become an active space in Africatech sector with startup entrepreneurs connecting digital to delivery models. In Nigeria, Jumia founder Tunde Kehinde departed and foundedAfrica Courier Express. StartupMax.ngis wrapping an app around motorcycles as an e-delivery platform. Nairobi basedLori Systemshas moved into digital coordination of trucking in East Africa. And U.S. basedZiplineis working with the government of Rwanda and partner UPS to master commercial drone delivery of medical supplies on the continent.

Kobo360 will expand in Togo, Ghana, Cote D&Ivoire, and Senegal. &We&ll be in Ghana this year and next year the other countries,& said Ozor.

In addition to KoboWIN, it will also add more driver training and safety programs.

&We are driver focused. Drivers are the key to our success. Even our app is driver focused,& said Ozor. Kobo360 will launch a new version of its app in Hausa andPidginthis August, both local languages common to drivers.

&Execution is the key thing in logistics. It has to be reliable, affordable, and it has to be execution focused,& said Ozor. &If drivers are treated well, they are going to deliver things on time.&

The sighs of relief are palpable. Uber can keep operating in London. With 3.6 million customers, 45,000 drivers, and a slew of reforms, changes and concessions already made to Transport for London (TfL), most observers expected Uber to win a reprieve & and they did. Uber passed the first of two tests.

The second test is a little less obvious & and a lot harder. Being able to navigate the political climate in Europe demands that Uber not only demonstrate contrition, but implement real change too. But if Uber loses sight of who the end user is, winning the battle in London doesn&t eliminate the risk of losing the entire war everywhere.

Herethe thing: regulation is neither inherently good nor bad. Taxi regulation wasn&t all fundamentally evil and corrupt when Travis Kalanick ran Uber and itnot all fundamentally necessary and appropriate under Dara Khosrowshahi reign either. Thatbecause there are no laws of nature on how ridesharing & or even transit in any form & should operate. Itall a series of choices, priorities, and trade-offs between competing public and private needs and capabilities. Itjust a question of getting people from point A to point B in the most efficient, cost effective way possible. Thatit.

Uber has seen so much success so quickly because the previous system simply didn&t work. More than 75 million people wouldn&t have downloaded and regularly use Uber if they were happy with their current options. If transit regulation were functioning effectively, traditional taxis would have evolved to meet the needs of its customers and the market wouldn&t have been so fast and so easy for the taking. Like any successful entrepreneur, Travis saw an opening in the market and took it. Just because Uber then committed a series of very public missteps and public relations gaffes doesn&t make any specific regulation more or less necessary, thoughtful or intelligent.

When Uber started collecting signatures from its customers in London to support its right to operate, 850,000 people signed. They&re the ones who ultimately matter. The customer is far too often ignored in highly regulated industries, which, sadly, are frequently dominated by special interest, pay to play politics (balancing the relative power and needs of insiders typically becomes paramount to actually creating logical public policy).

Thatwhy Dara has to be careful. Contrite Yes. Calm. Absolutely. Losing London wasn&t an option. But if the game changes just to appease and placate the critics at every turn in hopes that the people who help shape public opinion stop complaining, ita losing battle. Appeasement is not a strategy in and of itself. Meeting the demands of the market is.

Many of the changes Uber agreed to in London are worthwhile: 24-hour telephone support hotlines, better contact with the police, better reporting of incidents, imposing limits on hours worked before taking a break, hiring independent directors. But if they&re all just coming from a place of trying to get people to stop criticizing you, you&re worrying about the wrong people in the first place.

Ubergreatest asset is its customer base. Ubergreatest reason to exist is customer demand. The peopleneeds were being unmet by taxi and ignored by the regulators. Thatwhy Uber had an opening. Thatwhy customers flocked to the platform. Yes, Uber has a ton of work to do & both as a business itself and as a culture still very much in flux. But that doesn&t mean losing sight of who you are. Just being the anti-Travis isn&t enough. Taxi already was the original anti-Travis. That didn&t work.

In this current political climate, it makes sense for Dara to speak softly. But if he wants more than just pats on the back and positive comments on Twitter, he&d better carry a big stick too.