Eyeing an entry into China, Roblox enters strategic partnership with Tencent

Kids gaming platform Roblox has its sights set on China with today’s news that it has entered into a strategic relationship with Chinese tech giant, Tencent. The companies announced a strategic partnership that will initially focus on education — specifically, coding fundamentals, game design, digital citizenship, and entrepreneurial skills.

The joint venture — still unnamed — will be based in Shenzhen, Roblox says. And its eventual goal is to bring Roblox to China. This is something Roblox has been steadily working towards ahead of today, most recently by adding support for Chinese languages and making its coding curriculum available for free in Chinese.

The first initiative from the new JV will be a scholarship fund that sponsors 15 young developers, who will fly to the U.S. to attend a week-long creator camp at Stanford University. The camp, taught by iD Tech, will teach the students game design, including how to create 3D worlds, along with programming fundaments using Roblox’s developer tools and Lua code.

Roblox and Tencent, together with the China Association for Educational Technology (CAET), are calling for applications from creators ages 10 through 15. Teachers will be encouraged to nominate their students, who can apply online on Roblox’s website. The submissions close on June 14, and scholarship recipients will be notified on June 28.

The first camp will run the week of July 23, and a second session will run the week of August 18. During camp, students will work, eat and stay at Stanford.

“I’m extremely excited to partner with Roblox,” said Steven Ma, Senior Vice President of Tencent, in a statement. “We believe technological advancement will help Chinese students learn by fueling their creativity and imagination. Our partnership with Roblox provides an engaging way to reach children of all ages across China to develop skills like coding, design, and entrepreneurship.”

“Tencent is the perfect partner for Roblox in China,” added Roblox Founder and CEO Dave Baszucki. “They have a deep understanding of the Chinese market and share our belief of the power of digital creation and our vision to bring the world together through play.”

The multi-year JV will continue to invest in educational initiatives, including local coding camps, training programs for instructors to build custom courses, and more.

Unlike other gaming companies, Roblox has to do more than just finding a way into China with the help of a local partner — it also has to create an active community of game creators in the region. That’s because Roblox is a gaming platform, not a game maker itself. Instead, third-party creators build their own games on Roblox for others to play.

Roblox gets a share of the revenue the games make through sales of virtual goods.

In 2017, Roblox said paid out $30 million to its creator community, and noted that number would more than double in 2018. In April, Roblox noted that game players and creators now spend more than a billion hours per month on its platform. Now valued at over $2.5 billion, Roblox claims more 90 million monthly active users — a number that could dramatically increase if Roblox launched in China.

from TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/30TGuK3
via IFTTT

MacKenzie Bezos pledges to give away more than half her $37B fortune to charity and philanthropy

MacKenzie Bezos, the world’s third-richest woman following her divorce from Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, has signed the Giving Pledge — a commitment that will see her giving away more than half her wealth to philanthropy or charitable causes, either during her lifetime or in her will.

Bezos recently made headlines when she gave ex-husband Jeff 75 percent of their joint Amazon stock and voting control in their divorce, along with their interests in The Washington Post and Blue Origin. However, that still left her with an at least $35.6 billion stake in Amazon. Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index now estimates her net worth at $36.6 billion.

“We each come by the gifts we have to offer by an infinite series of influences and lucky breaks we can never fully understand,” wrote MacKenzie Bezos, in a letter published by the Giving Pledge today, announcing her intention to give away her wealth.

“In addition to whatever assets life has nurtured in me, I have a disproportionate amount of money to share. My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take time and effort and care. But I won’t wait. And I will keep at it until the safe is empty,” she said.

Ex-husband Jeff Bezos tweeted praise for MacKenzie’s pledge this morning:

MacKenzie is going to be amazing and thoughtful and effective at philanthropy, and I’m proud of her. Her letter is so beautiful. Go get ‘em MacKenzie. https://t.co/S2gLLBQyRQ

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) May 28, 2019

Jeff Bezos, now the world’s richest person ahead of both Gates and Buffett, has not signed the Giving Pledge himself.

Founded in 2010 by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett, the Giving Pledge encourages the world’s richest people to give away over half their wealth. Other notable names who have previously signed the pledge include Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Larry Ellison, Michael R. Bloomberg, Pierre Omidyar and many more.

Today, the program announced 19 more philanthropists have signed their names to the pledge, bringing the total number of signatories to 204.

In addition to Bezos, other tech industry additions announced today include: Tegan and Brian Acton — the latter who co-founded WhatsApp, the messaging app bought by Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion; Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong; co-founder of bitcoin trading platform BitMEX Ben Delo; Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson and Erica Lawson; Lowercase Capital partners Chris and Crystal Sacca; and Pinterest co-founder Paul Sciarra and Jennifer Sciarra.

Globally, there are now signatories from 23 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Cyprus, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia, Monaco, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, South Africa, Switzerland, Tanzania, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. In the U.S., the largest contingents are from New York and California.

Bezos’ full letter detailing her plans is below:

May 25, 2019

Thinking about the Giving Pledge, my mind kept searching its folds for a passage I once read about writing, something about not saving our best ideas for later chapters, about using them now.

I found it this morning on a shelf of my books from college, toward the end of Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life. It was underlined and starred like all of the words that have inspired me most over the years, words that felt true in context, and also true in life:

“Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book… The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better… Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”

I have no doubt that tremendous value comes when people act quickly on the impulse to give. No drive has more positive ripple effects than the desire to be of service. There are lots of resources each of us can pull from our safes to share with others — time, attention, knowledge, patience, creativity, talent, effort, humor, compassion. And sure enough, something greater rises up every time we give: the easy breathing of a friend we sit with when we had other plans, the relief on our child’s face when we share the story of our own mistake, laughter at the well-timed joke we tell to someone who is crying, the excitement of the kids in the school we send books to, the safety of the families who sleep in the shelters we fund. These immediate results are only the beginning. Their value keeps multiplying and spreading in ways we may never know.

We each come by the gifts we have to offer by an infinite series of influences and lucky breaks we can never fully understand. In addition to whatever assets life has nurtured in me, I have a disproportionate amount of money to share. My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take time and effort and care. But I won’t wait. And I will keep at it until the safe is empty.

MacKenzie Bezos

 

from TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2I1REEe
via IFTTT

Instagram’s vertical IGTV surrenders to landscape status quo

A year ago Instagram made a bold bet with the launch of IGTV: That it could invent and popularize a new medium of long-form vertical videos. Landscape uploads weren’t allowed. Co-founder Kevin Systrom told me in August that “What I’m most proud of is that Instagram took a stand and tried a brand new thing that is frankly hard to pull off. Full-screen vertical video that’s mobile only. That doesn’t exist anywhere else.”

Now a dedicated hub for multi-minute portrait mode video won’t exist anywhere at all. Following lackluster buy-in from creators loathe to shoot in a proprietary format that tough to reuse, IGTV is retreating from its vertical-only policy. Starting today, users can upload traditional horizontal landscape videos too and they’ll be shown full-screen when users turn their phones sideways while watching IGTV’s standalone app or its hub within the main Instagram app. That should hopefully put an end to crude ports of landscape videos shown tiny with giant letterboxes slapped on to fill out the vertical screen.

Instagram spins it saying “Ultimately, our vision is to make IGTV a destination for great content no matter how it’s shot so creators can express themselves how they want . . . .  In many ways, opening IGTV to more than just vertical videos is similar to when we opened Instagram to more than just square photos in 2015. It enabled creativity to flourish and engagement to rise – and we believe the same will happen again with IGTV.”

The potential flood of repurposed YouTube videos could drive more attention to IGTV after a launch that felt like a flop. There’s been no break-out stars, must-see shows, or cultural zeitgeist moments on IGTV. Instagram refused to provide a list of the most viewed long-form clips. Sensor Tower estimates just 4.2 million installs to date for IGTV’s standalone app, amounting to less than half a percent of Instagram’s billion-plus users downloading the app. In the last month, and it saw 3.8 times more downloads per day in its first three months on the market than than last month.

from TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2VNyOoY
via IFTTT

Getting a seat at the VC table

Last call: Sign up for the TC Hackathon at VivaTech 2019

This one’s dedicated to all the genius hackers, coders and creators who also happen to be inveterate procrastinators. Right here, right now — this is your final opportunity to participate in the TechCrunch Hackathon at VivaTech 2019 in Paris on 17-18 May. The application is free and the process couldn’t be easier, so drop whatever you’re doing and sign up today.

If you snooze, you lose — lose the chance to flex your mighty coding skills and build something creative and amazing from scratch in 24 hours. Don’t be that person. A rich, exciting — and potentially lucrative — experience awaits. Here’s what goes down at the TC Hackathon at VivaTech.

Teams of 4-6 people will select one of the five sponsored hack challenges. Don’t worry if you arrive solo, we’ll help you find a team once you’re onsite. Our sponsors include EDHEC, Eramet, Sanofi–Cegedim–IBM, Galeries Lafayette / Publicis Sapient and Corvid by Wix. Specifics on the challenges are below:

EDHEC Challenge

Making an impact can have different meanings, and we believe that one of them is about improving how we support students’ careers. Have you ever asked yourself “have I chosen the right studies and the right career for me?” According to the French Ministry of Higher Education, 150,000 french students decide to change their degree course. Participating in VivaTech is a great way to solve this issue through innovation. So let’s help them find the path that suits them best for their future career! The winner of this challenge will receive a €5,000 prize.

Eramet Challenge

In the 21st century, metal alloys are everywhere, e.g. computers, electric cars, satellites. You can find up to 20 different alloys in a single computer. The quality requirements of customers are extremely tight nowadays. Eramet, a global mining and metallurgical group, challenges you to find a solution that can provide our customers with 100% transparency on our supply chains, from the extraction of ore from the mine to the final product, with a heavy focus on the quality, environmental, social and ethical aspects. The winner of this challenge will receive a €5,000 prize.

Sanofi-Cegedim-IBM Challenge

Collective intelligence can help to find smart solutions to make healthcare professionals’ (HCPs) practice easier and bring better care to people living with cardio-metabolic challenges like diabetes. Sanofi, Cegedim and IBM will provide anonymized electronic health records for you to design data-driven solutions for HCPs and their patients. How to optimize time and effort? How to better predict and personalize care? How can we avoid health complications and allow better decision making? The best product that addresses this challenge will receive €5,000 in prize money.

Galeries Lafayette Publicis Sapient Predictive Mode Challenge

Discovering emerging brands and proposing an offer aligned with consumer expectations is a permanent challenge. Data can help us identify major upcoming trends and measure the potential of a brand or collection by uncovering fashion trends of tomorrow through text mining algorithms and pattern recognition in images and videos. If you wish to put your creativity and data analysis skills to link fashion and deep learning algorithms, this challenge is made for you! The best product that addresses this challenge will receive a prize worth €5,000.

Corvid by Wix Challenge

There are plenty of community, collaboration and project management tools available for developers to use. But how do we make these essential assets better? In this challenge, the team with the best hack that uses Corvid—an open development platform that lets you build, manage, deploy and scale advanced web applications—will receive a €5,000 prize.

Teams will then spend roughly 24 intense, focused and caffeine-fueled hours designing, building and creating the best working solution possible. Don’t worry, we’ll have food and drink to keep you going (at no charge!) Once the proverbial whistle blows, teams will have a mere 60 seconds to pitch their project in front of the sponsors and TechCrunch judges.

Not only will the sponsors choose a winner and award prizes for their specific challenges, but the TechCrunch judges will also award each team a score ranging from 1-5. The team that scores the highest combined score wins €5,000 in cash as the overall winner of the TC Hackathon. Plus, all teams that receive a TechCrunch score of three or higher will win two free tickets to both TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin 2019 and VivaTech 2020.

If you’re a stickler for details, you’ll find all you need in the TC Hackathon at VivaTech FAQ.

Dear procrastinators, this is it. Your last chance to pit your skills — for free — against the very best of the best at the TechCrunch Hackathon at VivaTech 2019 on 17-18 May. Don’t snooze. Don’t lose. Sign up right here, and we’ll see you in Paris!

from TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/30olLhc
via IFTTT

D2C underwear brand TomboyX raises $18 million from Craftory

TomboyX, a direct to consumer, gender-neutral underwear brand, has today announced the close of an $18 million Series B funding round led by Craftory. With this deal, Craftory becomes TomboyX’s majority shareholder.

TomboyX develops gender-neutral, size inclusive underwear at a relatively affordable price point.

The company started when cofounder Fran Dunaway struggled to find herself a Robert Graham-style button down shirt. Tomboy X originally started selling fun, dress shirts that fit all body types, and eventually transitioned to underwear and swimwear.

The D2C startup offers sizes from XS to 4XL and the classic TomboyX briefs start at $20/pair.

The company raised $4.3 million in Series A financing last year, which brings total funding to more than $25 million.

Here’s what cofounders Fran Dunaway and Naomi Gonzalez had to say in a prepared statement:

We are very excited to collaborate with the team at The Craftory as we continue in our mission to design inclusive and gender-neutral underwear for our diverse global audience. We are confident that their expertise in branding and consumer goods will complement our own creativity and disruption of traditional products.

As part of the deal, Craftory directors will join the board of directors alongside Pauline Brown, lead investor for TomboyX’s Series A round.

from TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2HoES26
via IFTTT

Delta is testing free Wi-Fi on flights this month

Delta says it plans to eventually offer free Wi-Fi on flights. The first step to achieving that goal, however, involves testing it on a handful of planes, beginning later this month. Starting May 13, the carrier will begin offering free service on 55 domestic flights per day.

The idea here is to test the strain on the system. Currently, the number of passengers who actually use the in-flight service is fairly low. Delta’s current provider Gogo says it’s around 12% of passengers across its various airline partners. Obviously that figure is going to jump pretty significantly if service is offered up for free.

“Testing will be key to getting this highly complex program right—this takes a lot more creativity, investment and planning to bring to life than a simple flip of a switch,” Delta’s director of Onboard Product told The Wall Street Journal.

But while installing and maintaining that service on planes certainly isn’t cheap, exorbitant prices stand out in a world where many businesses offer up access for free. Like luggage-check prices, Wi-Fi has become another indication of airlines looking to squeeze every last penny out of travelers.

In fact, JetBlue is currently the only major U.S. airline that offers free internet access to all passengers, but it relies on corporate sponsorships to offer the service. Delta hasn’t given a firm date on when its own passengers might gain free access on a larger scale.

from TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2Jvi4k7
via IFTTT

Verified Expert Brand Designer: Base

Base coined the term “blanding,” but the international branding agency is anything but boring. With clients ranging from AI startup Rival Theory to e-commerce company Kidbox, Base leverages its broad portfolio of clients and designers from all around the world to help startups develop their individual personas. As they celebrate their 20th anniversary this year, we talked to Base Partner Geoff Cook about how the agency continues to evolve.

On Base’s culture:

“Base strives to have a profound cultural impact. Yes, we do strategy, and yes, we do identity, and all sorts of brand executions, but the end goal is to have a significant cultural impact for our clients. The end goal isn’t the product, it’s the result.”

“As one of our longest-standing mentors at Techstars in New York, Base partner Geoff Cook (with Base as back up) has helped to brand several of our portfolio companies and provided counsel to hundreds more.” Jenny Fielding, NYC, Managing Director, Techstars

On common founder mistakes:

“This may sound provocative, but I think the most common mistake is that there is a belief in the tech world that branding should be approached iteratively like their approach to product development. Having now been through that process of iteration with both startups and the largest tech companies, we’ve found that the results are often compromised. Oftentimes if you iterate or have different groups weighing in throughout the process, it can be detrimental to the end result. It’s a conversation we’re now having with founders to say, “We’ve tried both ways, we’ve seen these results, and we would ask that you go along for the ride and put your trust in us, and we’ll ensure that you will arrive someplace really compelling.”

Below, you’ll find the rest of the founder reviews, the full interview, and more details like pricing and fee structures. This profile is part of our ongoing series covering startup brand designers and agencies with whom founders love to work, based on this survey and our own research. The survey is open indefinitely, so please fill it out if you haven’t already.

---

Interview with Base Partner Geoff Cook

Yvonne Leow: To kick things off, could you tell me about your backstory? How did you get into branding?

Geoff Cook: I actually came from DKNY, back in its heyday, and met Base’s Belgian partners through the world of fashion. I always joke that I wanted out of fashion and they wanted out of Brussels. So I invested in Base and brought it to New York City in 1999. My background is in marketing and strategy. When I was leading the International Menswear division at DKNY, I started realizing that I always had the most fun working with our internal branding group. So, when I left, I knew I wanted to pivot and go more in that direction. I think what appealed to me was the combination of creativity and the massive impact branding could have on the world. The intersection of those two things really drew me in.

from TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2JdLZh5
via IFTTT

Check out all the challenges at the TC Hackathon at VivaTech

Money, prizes, glory — it could all be yours, but only if you’re good enough. Do you have the stamina, focus and coding chops it takes to create something awesome out of nothing in less than 24 hours? Then sign up to compete in the TechCrunch Hackathon at VivaTech 2019 in Paris on 17-18 May.

The hackathon is open to everyone — across Europe and beyond, so join hundreds of other hackers, UX/UI designers, coders and like-minded techies for a full-on coding free-for-all. And we do mean free — it won’t cost you a thing to participate.

Here’s how the hackathon works. Teams, which can range from 4-6 people, choose one of several sponsored hack contests when they register. If you don’t have a team, that’s OK — you can find one when you arrive onsite. You and your team have just 24 hours to design, code and create a working solution to your chosen challenge. Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of food and drink to fuel your focus — including plenty of coffee. Once you’re finished, you’ll have just 60 seconds for a rapid-fire project pitch and presentation onstage in front of the sponsors and TechCrunch judges.

Each sponsor will be awarding prizes to the projects that address their challenges the best, including up to €5,000 in cash. On top of all that, TechCrunch judges will be scoring each pitch presentation on a scale of 1 to 5 and will declare one team the overall hackathon winner — with a €5,000 grand prize. Huzzah! Plus, if your team earns a combined TechCrunch score of three or higher, you also score two free tickets each to both TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin 2019 and VivaTech 2020.

Here’s the lowdown on all the sponsored challenges:

EDHEC Challenge

Making an impact can have different meanings, and we believe that one of them is about improving how we support student’s careers. Have you ever asked yourself “have I chosen the right studies and the right career for me?” According to the French Ministry of Higher Education, 150,000 french students decide to change their degree course. Participating in VivaTech is a great way to solve this issue through innovation. So let’s help them find the path that suits them best for their future career! The winner of this challenge will receive a €5,000 prize.

Eramet Challenge

In the 21st century, metal alloys are everywhere, e.g. computers, electric cars, satellites. You can find up to 20 different alloys in a single computer. The quality requirements of customers are extremely tight nowadays. Eramet, a global mining and metallurgical group, challenges you to find a solution that can provide our customers with 100% transparency on our supply chains, from the extraction of ore from the mine to the final product, with a heavy focus on the quality, environmental, social and ethical aspects. The winner of this challenge will receive a €5,000 prize.

Sanofi-Cegedim-IBM Challenge

Collective intelligence can help to find smart solutions to make healthcare professionals’ (HCPs) practice easier and bring better care to people living with cardio-metabolic challenges like diabetes. Sanofi, Cegedim and IBM will provide anonymized electronic health records for you to design data-driven solutions for HCPs and their patients. How to optimize time and effort? How to better predict and personalize care? How can we avoid health complications and allow better decision making? The best product that addresses this challenge will receive €5,000 in prize money.

Galeries Lafayette Publicis Sapient Predictive Mode Challenge

Discovering emerging brands and proposing an offer aligned with consumer expectations is a permanent challenge. Data can help us identify major upcoming trends and measure the potential of a brand or collection by uncovering fashion trends of tomorrow through text mining algorithms and pattern recognition in images and videos. If you wish to put your creativity and data analysis skills to link fashion and deep learning algorithms, this challenge is made for you! The best product that addresses this challenge will receive a prize worth €5,000.

Corvid by Wix Challenge

There are plenty of community, collaboration and project management tools available for developers to use. But how do we make these essential assets better? In this challenge, the team with the best hack that uses Corvid by Wix, an open development platform that lets you build, manage, deploy and scale advanced web applications, will receive a €5,000 prize.

Be sure to check out more info on all the sponsored hackathon challenges and prizes. Here’s the official agenda and, if you have any other questions, take a look at the TC Hackathon FAQ.

The TechCrunch Hackathon at VivaTech 2019 takes place on May 17-18. Money, prizes, glory — plus camaraderie and a whole lot of fun — can be yours. Sign up for your free ticket today and show us your stuff in Paris.

from TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2Ve3mA2
via IFTTT