Ahead of FTC ruling, YouTube Kids is getting a website

Ahead of the official announcement of an FTC settlement which could force YouTube to direct under-13-year-old users to a separate experience for YouTube’s kid-friendly content, the company has quietly announced plans to launch its YouTube Kids service on the web. Previously, parents would have to download the YouTube Kids app to a mobile device in order to access the filtered version of YouTube.

By bringing YouTube Kids to the web, the company is prepared for the likely outcome of an FTC settlement which would require the company to implement an age-gate on its site, then redirect under-13-year-olds to a separate kid-friendly experience.

In addition, YouTube Kids is gaining a new filter which will allow parents to set the content to being preschooler-appropriate.

The announcement, published to the YouTube Help forums, was first spotted by Android Police.

It’s unclear if YouTube was intentionally trying to keep these changes from being picked up on by a larger audience (or the press) by publishing the news to a forum instead of its official YouTube blog. (The company tells us it publishes a lot of news the forum site. Sure, okay. But with an FTC settlement looming, it seems an odd destination for such a key announcement.)

It’s also worth noting that, around the same time as the news was published, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki posted her quarterly update for YouTube creators.

The update is intended to keep creators abreast of what’s in store for YouTube and its community. But this quarter, her missive spoke solely about the value in being an open platform, and didn’t touch on anything related to kids content or the U.S. regulator’s investigation.

However, it’s precisely YouTube’s position on “openness” that concerns parents when it comes to their kids watching YouTube videos. The platform’s (almost) “anything goes” nature means kids can easily stumble upon content that’s too adult, controversial, hateful, fringe, or offensive.

The YouTube Kids app is meant to offer a safer destination, but YouTube isn’t manually reviewing each video that finds its way there. That has led to inappropriate and disturbing content slipping through the cracks on numerous occasions, and eroding parents’ trust.

Because many parents don’t believe YouTube Kids’ algorithms can filter content appropriately, the company last fall introduced the ability for parents to whitelist specific videos or channels in the Kids app. It also rolled out a feature that customized the app’s content for YouTube’s older users, ages 8 through 12. This added gaming content and music videos.

Now, YouTube is further breaking up its “Younger” content level filter, which was previously 8 and under, into two parts. Starting now, “Younger” applies to ages 5 through 7, while the new “Preschool” filter is for the age 4 and under group. The latter will focus on videos that promote “creativity, playfulness, learning, and exploration,” says YouTube.

Above: the content filter before

YouTube confirmed to TechCrunch that its forum announcement is accurate, but the company would not say when the YouTube Kids web version would go live, beyond “this week.”

The YouTube Kids changes are notable because they signal that YouTube is getting things in place before an FTC settlement announcement that will impact how the company handles kids content and its continued use by young children.

It’s possible that YouTube will be fined by the FTC for its violations of COPPA, as Musical.ly (TikTok) was earlier this year. One report, citing unnamed sources, says the FTC’s YouTube settlement has, in fact, already been finalized and includes a multimillion-dollar fine.

YouTube will also likely be required to implement an age-gate on its site and in its apps that will direct under-13-year-olds to the YouTube Kids platform instead of YouTube proper. The settlement may additionally require YouTube to stop targeting ads on videos aimed at children, as has been reported by Bloomberg. 

We probably won’t see the FTC issuing a statement about its ruling ahead of this Labor Day weekend, but it may do so in advance of its October workshop focused on refining the COPPA regulation — an event that has the regulator looking for feedback on how to properly handle sites like YouTube.

 

 

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SAP covers hot topics at TechCrunch’s Sept. 5 Enterprise show in SF

You can’t talk enterprise software without talking SAP, one of the giants in a $500 billion industry. And not only will SAP’s CEO Bill McDermott share insights at TC Sessions: Enterprise 2019 on September 5, but the company will also sponsor two breakout sessions.

The editors will sit down with McDermott and talk about SAP’s quick growth due, in part, to several $1B+ acquisitions. We’re also curious to hear about his approach to acquisitions and his strategy for growing the company in a quickly changing market. No doubt he’ll weigh in on the state of enterprise software in general, too.

Now about those breakout sessions. They run in parallel to our Main Stage set and we have a total of two do-not-miss presentations for you to enjoy. On September 5, you’ll enjoy 3 breakout sessions – 2 from SAP and one from Pricefx. You can check out the agenda for TC Sessions: Enterprise, but we want to shine the light on the sponsored sessions to give you a sense of the quality content you can expect.

• Innovating for a Super-Human Future 
  Martin Wezowski (SAP) We talk about change, but what are the mechanics and the dynamics behind it? And how fast is it? The noted futurist will discuss what it means to be an innovator is transforming faster than before, and this transformation is deeply rooted in the challenges and promises between cutting edge tech and humanism. The symbiosis between human creativity & empathy and machine intelligence opens new worlds for our imagination in a time when “now” has never been so temporary, and helps us answer the question: “What is human, and what is work in a superhuman future?” (Sponsored by SAP)
• Pricing From Day One
  Madhavan Ramanujam (Simon Kucher and Partners, Gabriel Smith) and Darius Jakubik (Pricefx) A key ingredient distinguishing top performing companies is clear focus on price. To maximize revenue and profits, pricing should be a C level / boardroom consideration. To optimize pricing, you should think about price when determining which products and features to bring to market; put the people, process and technology in place to optimize it; and maintain flexibility to adjust strategy and tactics to respond to changing markets. By doing so, companies unlock the single greatest profit lever that exists. (Sponsored by Pricefx)

• Cracking the Code: From Startup to Scaleup in Enterprise Software 
  Ram Jambunathan (SAP.iO), Lonnie Rae Kurlander (Medal), Caitlin MacGregor (Plum) and Dimitri Sirota (BigID) The startup journey is hard. Data shows that 70% of upstart tech companies fail, while only 1% of these startups will go on to gain unicorn status. Success in enterprise software often requires deep industry experience, strong networks, brutally efficient execution, and a bit of luck. This panel brings together three successful SAP.iO Fund-backed enterprise startups for an open discussion on lessons learned, challenges of scaling, and why the right strategic investors or partners can be beneficial even at early-stages. (Sponsored by SAP)

TC Sessions: Enterprise 2019 takes place in San Francisco on September 5. It’s a jam-packed day (agenda here) filled with interviews, panel discussions and breakouts — from some of the top minds in enterprise software. Buy your ticket today and remember: you receive a free Expo-only pass to TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2019 for every ticket you buy.

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Startups Weekly: Diamond-encrusted disruption

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about the flurry of IPO filings. Before that, I noted the differences between raising cash from angels vs. traditional venture capitalists.

Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets. If you don’t subscribe to Startups Weekly yet, you can do that here.

What’s new

Venture capitalists look for companies poised to disrupt markets untouched by innovative technology. Believe it or not, a very small percentage of jewelry shopping is done online, which means there’s a big opportunity — for the right team — to bring jewelry buyers and sellers to the 21st century.

Enter Pietra, a new startup that’s just raised $4 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s Andrew Chen (Substack & Hipcamp investor). Robert Downey Jr.’s VC fund Downey Ventures and Will Smith’s fund Dreamers Fund also participated, as did Hollywood manager Scooter Braun, Michael Ovitz and supermodel Joan Smalls.

I spoke to the founding team, which includes Uber alum Ronak Trivedi and Ashley Bryan, who hails from fashion e-commerce site Moda Operandi. The pair bring a healthy mix of technology and fashion expertise to the mix. Trivedi tells TechCrunch he’s drawn on his Uber experience to recruit engineers from top tech companies and to advocate for fast growth. Meanwhile, Bryan has leveraged her fashion industry connections to establish relationships with luxury designers.

 “Fashion is typically really under-resourced in terms of tech,” Bryan tells TechCrunch. “[The fashion industry] is great at the creativity part but it’s tough, especially with jewelry because you really have to put up a lot of capital.”

Pietra’s plan is to create a high-end marketplace for consumers to connect with jewelry designers. To do this, the team has adopted the standard marketplace approach, taking a 30% marketplace fee from sellers, as well as a 7% fee from buyers commissioning jewelry on the platform.

“Whether you do custom jewelry or engagement jewelry or you do jewelry for celebrities like Drake, you can come on Pietra and connect with a global marketplace,” says Trivedi.

The jewelry market is expected to be worth more than $250 billion by 2020, according to McKinsey research. And where there’s a billion-dollar market, there are VCs. 

“Even though gemstones and jewelry have been at the center of art, commerce, and culture since the dawn of human civilization — going from stone jewelry created 40,000 years ago in Africa to the trade routes between East and West to Fifth Avenue in New York to the Instagram feed on your phone — the technology for discovering, designing, and purchasing jewelry online hasn’t evolved much at all,” writes a16z’s Chen, who overlapped with Trivedi during his Uber tenure.

Pietra completed its official launch this week. It has 100 designers on the platform and counting, along with what the founders say is a lengthy waitlist.

In other news

This week I published a long feature on the state of seed investing in the Bay Area. The TL;DR? Mega-funds are increasingly battling seed-stage investors for access to the hottest companies. As a result, seed investors are getting a little more creative about how they source deals. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there and everyone wants a stake in The Next Big Thing. Read the story here.

Demo Day

Y Combinator graduated another batch of 200 companies this week. We were there both days, taking notes on each and every company. To make things easy on you, I’ve put together the ultimate YC reading list:

• All 84 startups from Y Combinator’s Demo Day 1
• All 82 startups from Y Combinator’s Demo Day 2
• The 11 best startups from YC’s Demo Day 1 (Extra Crunch membership required.)
• Our 12 favorite startups from Y Combinator’s S19 Demo Day 2 (Extra Crunch membership required.)
• YC’s Michael Seibel on building startups and early-stage deal-making
• YC is doubling down on these investment theses in its latest batch

Here’s a look at some of the profiles we’ve written on the S19 companies:

• Fresh out of YC, Tandem lands millions from a16z
• Stoic is a journaling app with a focus on understanding your feelings
• Narrator wants to become the operating system for data science
• This startup is building a weed breathalyzer for cops 
• Lokal wants to bring local news to 900M Indians in their regional languages
• Holy Grail is using machine learning to build better batteries
• YC’s latest bet is building a cyberpunk anime MMO
• Rent the Backyard wants to build a studio apartment in your yard
• Shiru is developing a protein replacement for food additives
• Lumineye helps first responders identify people through walls
• GradJoy is a fintech startup to help you knock out your student loans
• Traces AI is creating a less invasive alternative to facial recognition tracking

Listen

We recorded two great episodes of Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital podcast, this week. The first was with YC CEO Michael Seibel, in which he speaks to trends at the seed stage of investing, changes at the accelerator program, including its move to San Francisco and more. You can listen to that one here. Plus, we had on Unusual Ventures co-founder and partner John Vrionis, who talked to us about direct listings versus IPOs and the future of DoorDash and Airbnb. You can listen to that one here.

Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast and Spotify.

Tips for B2B startups

Contributors Tyler Elliston and Kevin Barry share advice for B2B companies: “Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of B2B companies apply ineffective demand generation strategies to their startup. If you’re a B2B founder trying to grow your business, this guide is for you. Rule #1: B2B is not B2C. We are often dealing with considered purchases, multiple stakeholders, long decision cycles, and massive LTVs. These unique attributes matter when developing a growth strategy. We’ll share B2B best practices we’ve employed while working with awesome B2B companies like Zenefits, Crunchbase, Segment, OnDeck, Yelp, Kabbage, Farmers Business Network, and many more.” Read the full story here. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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HPE Growth backs WeTransfer in €35M secondary funding round

WeTransfer, the Amsterdam-headquartered company that is best know for its file-sharing service, is disclosing a €35 million secondary funding round.

The investment is led by European growth equity firm, HPE Growth, with “significant” participation from existing investor Highland Europe. Being secondary funding — meaning that a number of shareholders have sold all or a portion of their holding — no new money has entered WeTransfer’s balance sheet.

We are also told that Jonne de Leeuw, of HPE, will replace WeTransfer co-founder Nalden on the company’s Supervisory Board. He joins Bas Beerens (founder of WeTransfer), Irena Goldenberg (Highland Europe) and Tony Zappalà (Highland Europe).

The exact financial terms of the secondary funding, including valuation, aren’t being disclosed. However, noteworthy is that WeTransfer says it has been profitable for 6 years.

“The valuation of the company is not public, but what I can tell you is that it’s definitely up significantly since the Series A in 2015,” WeTransfer CEO Gordon Willoughby tells me. “WeTransfer has become a trusted brand in its space with significant scale. Our transfer service has 50 million users a month across 195 countries, sharing over 1.5 billion files each month”.

In addition to the wildly popular WeTransfer file-sharing service, the company operates a number of other apps and services, some it built in-house and others it has acquired. They include content sharing app Collect (claiming 4 million monthly users), sketching tool Paper (which has had 25 million downloads) and collaborative presentation tool Paste (which claims 40,000 active teams).

“We want to help people work more effectively and deliver more impactful results, with tools that collectively remove friction from every stage of the creative process — from sparking ideas, capturing content, developing and aligning, to delivery,” says Willoughby.

“Over the past two years, we’ve been investing heavily in our product development and have grown tremendously following the acquisition of the apps Paper and Paste. This strengthened our product set. Our overarching mission is to become the go-to source for beautiful, intuitive tools that facilitate creativity, rather than distract from it. Of course, our transfer service is still a big piece of that — it’s a brilliantly simple tool that more than 50 million people a month love to use”.

Meanwhile, Willoughby describes WeTransfer’s dual revenue model as “pretty unique”. The company offers a premium subscription service called WeTransfer Plus, and sells advertising in the form of “beautiful” full-screen ads called wallpapers on Wetransfer.com.

“Each piece of creative is fully produced in-house by our creative studio with an uncompromising focus on design and user experience,” explains the WeTransfer CEO. “With full-screen advertising, we find that our users don’t feel they’re simply being sold to. This approach to advertising has been incredibly effective, and our ad performance has far outpaced IAB standards. Our advertising inventory is sought out by brands like Apple, Nike, Balenciaga, Adobe, Squarespace, and Saint Laurent”.

Alongside this, WeTransfer says it allocates up to 30% of its advertising inventory and “billions of impressions” to support and spotlight up-and-coming creatives, and causes, such as spearheading campaigns for social issues.

The company has 185 employees in total, with about 150 in Amsterdam and the rest across its U.S. offices in L.A. and New York.

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Meet the TC Top Picks for Disrupt SF 2019

Honestly, the creativity and quality of early-stage startups and their founders never ceases to amaze us. When we issued the call for applications to our TC Top Picks program for Disrupt San Francisco 2019, the response was overwhelming — and the competition was off the hook. Our editors dug in and managed to narrow the field to the startups they felt best represent their specific category. It wasn’t easy, but we’re thrilled with the results and we think you will be, too.

The TC Top Picks program showcases outstanding early-stage startups across these categories: AI/Machine Learning, Biotech/Healthtech, Blockchain, Fintech, Mobility, Privacy/Security, Retail/E-commerce, Robotics/IoT/Hardware, SaaS and Social Impact & Education.

Top Picks founders receive a free Startup Alley exhibitor package, a featured location on the exhibition floor, three free Founder passes and VIP treatment — including invitations to the investor reception. They also receive an interview on the Showcase Stage with a TechCrunch editor — and we’ll promote that video across our social media platforms.

It’s time to announce the early-stage startups we chose as TC Top Picks for Disrupt SF ’19. Can we get a drum roll, please?

AI/Machine Learning

• Greyparrot: Provides cutting-edge computer vision products and services to enterprises looking for AI partners.
• Halos: A fully digital consumer insurance platform designed to make insurance useful for every single consumer.
• Moodbit: People Analytics Technology that analyzes employee emotions and delivers predictive and prescriptive analytics to improve performance.
• OneClick.ai: Automated Deep Learning AI technology to enable businesses with advanced predictive analysis and decision making.
• Voxel51: AI for Video: video analytics platform in the cloud and on-premises enabling fast, rich insights from image and video data sets.

Biotech/Healthtech

• achu health: A predictive health platform that tracks vital patterns to warn you of impending future illnesses.
• FindAir: An award-winning, smart tool for asthma monitoring. Start using FindAir ONE and take control of your asthma today.
• MyMilk labs: An m-health device and app for improving breastfeeding via direct breast-milk sensing.
• Sparkle Innovations: Transforming banana stem agro-waste into all-natural sanitary pads, organic fertilizer and other value added products.
• Theator: An AI-powered surgical decision support company.

Blockchain

• Button Wallet: Multi crypto currency wallet with exchange in Telegram.
• Crypto APIs: SaaS, Blockchain, Crypto.
• Ember Fund: Mobile app to invest like a cryptocurrency hedge fund.
• Planet Nine: Building a new digital economy for microtransactions.

Fintech

• Beam Financial: A best-paying mobile bank account.
• FineprintF Technologies: Make your purchasing experience transparent with FeeBelly. Instantly catch hidden fees, costly terms and critical details hidden in any document.
• Mellow: The first-ever personal finance solution made for children and parents.
• Trio Financial Technologies: World’s simplest way to invest, by letting you earn investment returns on your checking balance.

Mobility

• AirBie: Smart bike lock for bike-sharing systems.
• #Fly: An exciting AI startup disrupting the travel market using patent-pending technology.
• Flugauto: Providing air transportation for industrial applications, and enabling instant access to cargo for everyone, everywhere.
• SparkCharge: Manufactures and develops charging station for electric vehicles.

Privacy/Security

• Alcide: Provides a cloud-native security platform from code to production to continuously secure workloads running in Kubernetes.
• Hacware: Protects employees from getting email hacked.
• MedStack: Deliver healthcare apps to market 60% faster via cloud hosting with security, HIPAA compliance, pre-written policies + your choice of stack.
• Moabi: Cybersecurity, firmware, binary analysis, SaaS, IoT, IIoT.
• Unum ID: Mobile app empowering users to take control over their personal information.

Retail/E-commerce

• Cloosiv: Order ahead from your favorite local coffee shops, skip the line and earn rewards that save you money at hundreds of locations across the country.
• Frills: A fun way to add and extend personal content with your friends!
• Oculogx: Develops AR software on heads-up displays.
• PadPiper: Find furnished apartments and compatible housemates.

Robotics/IoT/Hardware

• 4DAGE: Dedicated to the studies and application of artificial intelligence in the field of 3D reconstruction and digitization algorithm.
• AVA Technologies: Automatically grow year-round herbs, tomatoes and more.
• ilmatic: Spend your cryptocurrency with a secure hardware wallet.
• SeeHow: SeeHow is a sports technology company that transforms sports equipment into sensors.
• Thinker-Tinker: Consumer product, family technology, subscription, edu-tainment.

SaaS

• Cinchy: The data collaboration platform.
• Onna Technologies: Dedicated to providing the best enterprise search and archiving experience across all company data sources.
• Socionado: Matches vetted freelance social media managers to brands.
• Veamly: Your apps centralized with unified search.
• Vertoe: An on-demand, short-term luggage storage service.

Social Impact & Education

• Bidder Construction App: Connects construction workers with construction jobs around them!
• BlueSmart Technology: Specializing in IoT baby products, their first product, BlueSmart mia, is an award-winning smart baby feeding monitor that fits on any baby bottle.
• Oya: An evidence-based, interactive platform for parents that allows them to monitor and improve their child’s development.
• SNAPSHYFT: Mobile platform connecting understaffed food and beverage and hospitality operations with qualified workers, on-demand.

It’s not too late to exhibit your startup at Disrupt. Simply buy a Startup Alley Exhibitor Package and showcase your startup alongside 1,200+ companies and sponsors in Startup Alley. All exhibiting startups have a shot at winning a Wild Card to compete for $100,000 in our famous pitch competition, Startup Battlefield — TechCrunch editors will choose two startups for that thrill ride.

Disrupt San Francisco 2019 takes place on October 2-4 at Moscone Center North. Get your early-bird tickets here. Come join us and discover new opportunities. We can’t wait to see you there!

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This startup wants to democratize custom sneaker ownership

There’s nothing like having a pair of fresh, unique sneakers. Limited release culture facilitates some of that, but The Custom Movement hopes to make originality and self-expression via sneakers more accessible to the masses.

The Custom Movement, a custom sneaker startup backed by Y Combinator, enables independent artists to sell their one-of-a-kind sneaker designs to those who want highly unique Nikes, Vans, Timberlands or any other brand of shoe. Customers can shop by shoe brand, style, artist or price.

You can think of it a bit like an Etsy for custom sneakers. Right now, there are about 40 artists featured on the site that offer more than 5,000 different shoes. The platform is entirely open, meaning any artist can sign up to sell their shoes.

That means the prices can vary, but the cheapest shoe you can buy right now costs $110 and the most expensive one costs upwards of $1,000. The Custom Movement processes the payments but artists handle the shipping.

In exchange for the platform, The Custom Movement takes a 10% commission on the sales price of the shoe. Down the road, the startup wants to help artists more easily manage their inventory and shipping processes. And, in the event something goes wrong with the order, The Custom Movement fully protects buyers.

Growing up in the Philippines, The Custom Movement founder Akshar Bonu’s experience of sneaker culture was different from people who grew up in the United States, he told TechCrunch.

“I went to a high school where we had to wear uniforms, so the only real article of clothing we had control over was our shoes,” Bonu said. “It’s my form of self-expression that I had growing up. What was interesting in the Philippines and high school, there wasn’t this monoculture around what people should wear. I’ve always been interested in unique shoes that help me express myself.”

Design by Nate Rivera, one of the artists of The Custom Movement.

When Bonu came to the U.S. for college, he was introduced to limited release culture and “shoes defined by what everyone else wanted,” he said. “That was a huge contrast to my experience with sneakers back in the Philippines. I found the sneaker culture and limited release culture a bit problematic.”

That’s because, he said, it’s really hard to get the shoes and then if you get them, there’s some incentive to resell them at a price that is hundreds of dollars higher than what you bought them for. There are even sites like StockX and GOAT that are entirely dedicated to reselling sneakers.

“The full experience led me to feel like there has to be a place where we can get super original, creative shoes without breaking the bank,” he said. “I ended up finding them across Instagram with independent artists buying Air Force ones and customizing it. They were drawing on them or changing fabrics. It was amazing. This is where I found this new pool of creativity. Some of the artists resonated with me in a way that a big brand like Nike never could.”

That’s where the idea for The Custom Movement originated. Since joining Y Combinator, the startup has shifted from enabling people to describe what they were looking for to instead having artists put up the designs they were willing to make. All of the shoes are made to order, which enables more artists who don’t have the means to stockpile shoes upfront in order to participate.

“Our youngest artist is 15 years old,” Bonu said. “One thing that keeps us going is we get to enable this generation of sneakerheads who have previously just been spectating in the culture to now participate in it, as opposed to having it all come top-down from Nike. Everything we think about is how do we make it easier for more people to design sneakers and help them grow.”

Prior to Y Combinator, The Custom Movement raised a small amount of funding from Pear Ventures, which has backed startups like DoorDash, Gusto and Branch Metrics. In the near term, The Custom Movement is hoping to help its customers more easily find the designs that resonate with them.

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Roblox hits 100 million monthly active users

Roblox is big. Bigger than Minecraft big. The massively multiple online title has been around since 2006, but the game has been achieving a crazy amount of momentum of late. On Friday, it announced via blog post that it’s grown past 100 million monthly active users, pushing past Minecraft, which is currently in the (still impressive) low-90s.

Digging into the Roblox growth strategy

Here’s a recent piece detailing the service’s dizzying growth since February 2016, who it was hovering around 9 million players. That’s more than 10x growth in a three and a half year span. User-Generated content is a big part of that number, and the company notes that it has around 40 million user created experiences in the game at present.

Sources: TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Roblox

“We started Roblox over a decade ago with a vision to bring people from all over the world together through play,” founder and CEO David Baszucki said of the big new round number. “Roblox began with just 100 players and a handful of creators who inspired one another, unlocking this groundswell of creativity, collaboration, and imagination that continues to grow.”

The company behind the game has also been pumping some big money into development. It paid $30 million in 2017 and $60 million in 2018. Next week, it will be hosting hundreds of attendees at its fifth Roblox Developer Conference.

Per the new numbers, around 40 percent Roblox users are female, with players spread out across 200 countries.

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