MIT Media Lab names Dava Newman as new director

MIT’s famous Media Lab, the multidisciplinary idea factory that produces many a fascinating invention and influential thinker, has found a new director in its backyard after scouring the globe for candidates. Dava Newman, MIT professor of aeronautics and astronautics and former deputy administrator of NASA under Obama, will helm the intellectual hub.

The Media Lab is famed for its freewheeling techno-intellectual prowess, but for more than a year has been leaderless following the resignation of former head Joi Ito. Ito resigned when it was discovered that billionaire and alleged child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein had given funding and reportedly received special treatment and access to the Media Lab under his leadership.

The ensuing leadership search no doubt looked for, if not exactly new blood (Newman has been involved with MIT for decades) then certainly a break from the past. Out of 60 candidates, they interviewed 13 and ended up picking Newman for a variety of reasons.

“In a field of outstanding candidates, Professor Newman stood out for her pioneering research, wide range of multidisciplinary engagements, and exemplary leadership. She is a designer, a thinker, a maker, an engineer, an educator, a mentor, a convener, a communicator, a futurist, a humanist and, importantly, an optimist,” wrote Dean Hashim Sarkis in a letter announcing the appointment.

Coincidentally (or is it?), Newman just last week was a speaker at TC Sessions: Space, where she seemed to give a preview of her new responsibilities talking about the importance of inclusion in major efforts like NASA’s Artemis.

“It’s going to bring the scientists and engineers together, but we need the artists, we need the designers, they’re the visionaries,” she said. (If you missed the event, you can watch this and all our other panels on Extra Crunch.)

Newman seems to be starting off the job by emphasizing one of the best qualities a leader should have: listening to the people she’ll be leading.

“I plan to start by doing a lot of listening and learning,” she said in the MIT announcement. “I like to meet people where they are, and to encourage them to put all their great ideas on the table. I think that’s the best way to go forward, working with the whole community — faculty, students and staff — to tap into everyone’s creativity. I can’t wait to get started.”

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Increasing diversity in tech hiring requires a common-ground approach

Michelle Ferguson Contributor

Michelle Ferguson is National Community Relations Director at Dream Corps.

Kasheef Wyzard Contributor

Kasheef Wyzard is National Programming Initiatives Director for Dream Corps TECH.

The pandemic is surging in America once more. If this past year is any indication, it will hurt all of us — but communities of color will continue to suffer disproportionately.

Black and brown folks will make up more of the sick and the dying, and Black and brown businesses and employees will make up more of the people struggling financially.

Here is the good news: Interest in finding common ground and concrete solutions is also surging. That means there are some paths out of the mess we are in.

America’s biggest, best-funded, most-profitable companies are struggling to hire and retain diverse talent.

Let’s take stock: The longer the pandemic lasts, the more it could accelerate ongoing trends. Automation and advanced computing was changing how we work and undermining livelihoods before COVID-19, but by 2030, technology and automation will negatively affect hundreds of thousands of jobs that exist today.

The situation is worse for communities of color. Because people of color are overrepresented in fields that are likely to be automated, a McKinsey report estimated that 23.1% of African Americans and 25.1% of Hispanic Americans will see their jobs disappear or transform in the next decade. Even before COVID-19, the situation was bleak.

Perhaps this shift will create new, high-tech jobs, or those same people can retrain, retool and find employment in the economy of the future?

In practice, it is not nearly so easy. In 2019, the average cost for online coding bootcamps was $14,623 per person. Even with loans, installment plans or income-sharing agreements, that is far beyond the reach of many of the people whose current jobs are going away.

The pandemic is making this worse. Nearly 80% of low-income households do not have enough savings to last three months, and a third of Americans will have trouble paying their bills this month.

Waiting for the good news? America’s biggest, best-funded, most-profitable companies are struggling to hire and retain diverse talent. The good news is that they know it. They know they cannot compete without the genius in underrepresented communities, and they know they are not doing well enough right now.

Many companies will spend an average of $20,000 just on recruiting fees for a single IT hire, but hiring an IT candidate from a diverse community can cost three times as much, and once hired, there is a massive retention problem. Since 2016, the retention rate of Black and Latinx employees in Big Tech has fallen from 7% to 5%. There is a revolving door of diverse talent entering and leaving organizations.

In other words, you have a whole bunch of talented, creative people crying out for high-tech jobs — and a whole bunch of powerhouse, innovative companies desperate to hire and hold onto talent and creativity.

These overlapping needs mean we can find common ground. One model for this was the Dream Corps TECH Town Hall this month, where activists and educators from underrepresented communities shared panels with industry leaders. Instead of lobbing bombs at each other, both groups came to talk about the problems they face and how they can work together.

#ICYMI Our TECH Town Hall is LIVE NOW with @VanJones68 @rubenharris@itsTanyaSam @TLM @dreamhustlecode @jammbermusic @Career_Karma @jammberceo

Tune in: https://t.co/I4KzWlj8a3 #YesWeCode #TECHTownHall @DreamCorpsTech pic.twitter.com/AhBmd5F7Z6

— Dream Corps (@thedreamcorps) December 8, 2020

For instance, industry and educational leaders can devote resources to scholarships and training programs that come with job guarantees. Activists and CEOs can both push for universal broadband access, especially in the midst of a pandemic that is damaging learning opportunities for children, so that the next generation of coders has a shot at success.

Untapped talent in underrepresented communities can help companies avoid algorithmic bias and compete in a diverse, global world, and companies can help people thrive as the economy changes.

This common-ground approach is built on the recognition that both sides need each other in order to succeed. It can be a model for other thorny problems and produce necessary solutions. The pandemic is surging once more — but so is the demand for common ground. We can choose how we respond.

VCs who want better outcomes should use data to reduce founder team risk

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Walmart to pilot test live-streamed video shopping on TikTok

Walmart and TikTok announced this morning they will be partnering on the first pilot test of a new shoppable product experience on TikTok’s social video app. Walmart, as you may recall, had planned to invest in TikTok when the app was being threatened with a ban from the U.S. market unless it sold its U.S. operations to an American company, per a Trump administration executive order —  a ban that’s now on pause after multiple legal challenges. Walmart’s interest in TikTok, however, has not waned. The retailer, though seemingly an odd fit for a social network, had seen the potential to attract a younger online consumer through video and, in particular, live streamed video.

This is what the new test on TikTok will involve, as well.

During a Walmart live stream, TikTok users will be able to shop from Walmart’s fashion items without having to leave the TikTok app, in a pilot of TikTok’s new “shoppable product.” The fashion items themselves will be featured in content from ten TikTok creators, led by host Michael Le, whose TikTok dances have earned him 43+ million fans. Other creators will be more up-and-coming stars, like Devan Anderson, Taylor Hage, and Zahra Hashimee.

All will be participating in a special event hosted on TikTok called the “Holiday Shop-Along Spectacular,” which will take place on Friday, Dec. 18 at 8 PM ET on Walmart’s TikTok profile.

Image Credits: Walmart

During this special, the creators will show off their favorite Walmart fashion finds in their own unique ways. For some, that will mean giving fans a peek inside their closet. Others may do a living room runway or even a fashionable “dance off,” Walmart says.

There are two ways TikTok users can shop for the fashion items featured.

As products are shown on screen, pins will pop-up which users can tap to add the item to their cart. They’re then directed to a mobile checkout experience. Alternately, customers can choose to tap on a shopping cart pin at the end of the event to look through all the items featured and select what they’d like to purchase.

And for anyone who misses the event, they’ll still be able to shop the items from Walmart’s TikTok profile when the Shop-Along event is over.

“We’re constantly looking for ways to innovate the shopping experience for our customers,” said Walmart’s U.S. Chief Marketing Officer, William White, in an announcement. “We’re moving faster than ever to find new and improved ways to better serve our customers and meet them where they are. We created this event for, about, and by our community, reflecting the lives, passions and styles of a diverse set of creators so everyone watching will feel represented, no matter who they are or how they outfit their closet,” he added.

Walmart said the idea to partner on mobile shopping didn’t emerge as a result of the recent deal talks, as it’s been an active brand on the platform for over a year. (In fact, it’s even tasked its employees with making TikTok videos, a recent report from ModernRetail detailed.)

The retailer also told TechCrunch there’s not a revenue share with TikTok on the sales it makes through the app, nor any fees, as this is considered a joint test.

Image Credits: Walmart’s profile on TikTok

This is not TikTok’s first foray into shoppable video.

The company has been exploring this space for some time, including with last year’s launch of the Hashtag Challenge Plus which added a shoppable component to a hashtag, directing video viewers to shop a site from within TikTok. This year, brands like Levi’s leveraged TikTok’s “Shop Now” buttons that allowed consumers to make purchases through links posted on TikTok. And in a significant deal just this fall, TikTok formally partnered with Shopify on social commerce by allowing Shopify merchants to create, run and optimize their TikTok marketing campaigns directly from the Shopify dashboard.

Live-streamed shopping is also a fast-growing and lucrative market, as younger users are turning to influencers and online video to both be entertained and to shop.

All the major tech companies have invested in this space as well, to varying degrees, including not only Facebook (in an aggressive push across Facebook and Instagram), but also Google through its R&D arm, Amazon through its QVC-like Amazon Live, Alibaba through AliExpress, JD.com, Pinduoduo, WeChat, and even TikTok’s Chinese sister app, Douyin.

The trend is also fueling startups, like Bambuser and Popshop Live, which have raised new rounds in 2020 for their own live-streamed shopping products.

For TikTok, however, is more of a natural evolution of its product where influencers are already showing off their favorite items, their fashion and style.

“At TikTok, we’re constantly exploring new ways to inspire creativity, bring joy and add value for our community,” said Blake Chandlee, Vice President, Global Business Solutions at TikTok. “Creators and brands have found a creative outlet to connect with audiences through TikTok Live, and we’re excited to further innovate on this interactive experience to enable our community to discover and engage with the brands they love,” he continued.

“Brands have had an incredible impact on the community throughout this year, and we’re thrilled to see Walmart embrace the creativity of TikTok and this first-of-a-kind experience to meaningfully engage with their community,” Chandlee said.

 

 

 

 

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PhotoRoom launches background-removal app on Android

French startup PhotoRoom is launching its app on Android today. The company has been working on a utility photography app that lets you remove the background from a photo, swaps it for another background and tweaks your photo.

And it’s been working well on iOS already as the company attended Y Combinator, doubled its annual recurring revenue to $2 million and raised a $1.2 million seed round.

In particular, influencers and people reselling clothes and fashion items have been relying on PhotoRoom. They use their phone as their main creativity platform. Like other professional photography apps, the startup relies on subscriptions to generate revenue ($9.49 per month or $46.99 per year).

PhotoRoom relies on machine learning to identify objects and separate them from the rest of the photo. This way, you can manipulate a specific part of your photo.

Image Credits: PhotoRoom

When the startup raised its seed round after Y Combinator, it chose to raise from Nicolas Wittenborn’s Adjacent fund, Liquid2 Ventures as well as two groups:

• A group of business angels focused on machine learning, such as Yann LeCun (Chief AI Scientist at Facebook), Zehan Wang (Head of Twitter Machine Learning Cortex, co-founder of Magic Poney), Nicolas Pinto (Perceptio founder), etc.
• And another group of business angels focused on mobile subscriptions, such as Holger Seim (Blinkist), Jacob Eiting (RevenueCat), John Bonten (advisor for Calm and Spotify) and Eric Setton (Tango).

With this funding round, the company plans to grow the team from 3 to 8 persons and work on its deep learning algorithm. If you want to learn more about PhotoRoom, feel free to read my take on the product:

PhotoRoom automagically removes background from your photo

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Facebook launches revamped Instagram Lite app in India

Facebook is working to bring back the Instagram Lite app, months after it shut down the light version offering worldwide.

The social conglomerate said on Wednesday that it is testing the revamped Instagram Lite app in India, where it hopes to “gain valuable insights” about the new offering before “a global rollout” of the app later.

The revamped Instagram Lite app weighs less than 2MB and delivers a “fast, reliable, and responsive” experience of the social service. The Android app supports Bangla, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu, but currently lacks a several core features of Instagram including Reels, Shopping and IGTV.

Facebook quietly discontinued the previous iteration of Instagram Lite earlier this year. In July, Vishal Shah, VP of Product at Instagram, told TechCrunch that the company had identified some issues in the app and was working to resolve those. In September, a new Lite app was spotted in the wild, though Facebook did not acknowledge it.

Lite apps are especially popular in emerging markets where most users don’t have access to high-end smartphones or fast and cheap mobile internet data. Facebook Lite app, for instance, had about 40 million monthly active users in India last month, while Messenger Lite app had about 13 million, according to mobile insight firm App Annie, data of which an industry executive shared with TechCrunch. (Instagram app had about 164 million users.)

Shah made the announcement about the revamped Instagram Lite app at Facebook Fuel for India event on Wednesday, where scores of Facebook executives including Mark Zuckerberg and Ajit Mohan outlined a number of other programs they were working on for the world’s second largest internet market.

Instagram also announced the second version of ‘Born on Instagram,’ a one-year-old program it has built for content creators to better understand and leverage ways to collaborate with one another and explore monetization opportunities.

“With the test of Instagram Lite, and the next edition of Born on Instagram, we’re aiming to democratize expression and creativity for a greater number of people in India,” said Shah.

At the event, WhatsApp India head Abhijit Bose said that the company was working to launch sachet-sized health insurance offering to users in India this month. In July, WhatsApp had unveiled that it was working to pilot credit, insurance, and pension services in India, the instant messaging app’s biggest market by users, over the next year and a half.

“WhatsApp has proactively been working on several pilots to help ensure that every adult has access to the most basic critical financial and livelihood services through their mobile device. By the end of this year, we expect that people will be able to buy affordable sachet sized health insurance through WhatsApp,” Bose said today. For insurance protection, WhatsApp has partnered with SBI General, and for pension, with HDFC Pension.

Facebook, which identifies India as its biggest market by users, is also working with telecom giant Jio Platforms to help tens of millions of small businesses establish online presence and sell digitally. The American giant, which invested $5.7 billion in Jio Platforms this year, are collaborating to make Jio Platforms’ JioMart e-commerce service available through WhatsApp. Some new features are coming to JioMart’s WhatsApp channel in the “coming days,” Facebook and Reliance executives teased today.

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Reface grabs $5.5M seed led by A16z to stoke its viral face-swap video app

Buzzy face-swap video app Reface, which lends users celebrity ‘superpowers’ by turning their selfies into “eerily realistic” famous video clips at the tap of a button, has caught the attention of Andreessen Horowitz. The Silicon Valley venture firm leads a $5.5 million seed round in the deep tech entertainment startup, announced today.

Reface tells us its apps (iOS and Android) have been downloaded some 70 million times since it launched in January 2020 — up from 20M when we spoke to one of its (seven) co-founders back in August. It’s also attained ‘top five’ leading app status in around 100 countries, the US included — as well as bagging a ‘top app’ award in the annual Google Play best of. Quite the year, then.

That kind of viral growth clip has been turning heads all over the place. As well as nabbing a16z for its seed lead, Reface has pulled in funding from a number of prominent angel investors across the gaming, music, film/content creation and tech industries. 

This includes — from the gaming industry — Ilkka Paananen, CEO of Supercell; and David Helgason, founder of Unity Technologies. From the world of music: Scooter Braun (known for managing top pop stars like Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande); and Adam Leber, a manager to Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus, and an Uber investor. 

On the film/content creation side its angels include Matt Stone, Trey Parker, and Peter Serafinowicz (via Deep Voodoo); Bryan Baum and Matt Kives, founder of K5 Global (whose clients have included the likes of Bruce Willis, Jesse Eisenberg and Eric Stonestreet); and Natalia Vodianova, a model, philanthropist, and actress.

Tech industry investors joining the round as angels are: Josh Elman (ex-investment partner at Greylock and on the boards of Medium, Operator, Musical.ly and Jelly); and Sriram Krishnan (investor and former product lead at Microsoft, Facebook, Snap and Twitter).

It’s the kind of broad-based excitement that can be generated when hot trend streams like ‘no code’ and viral social video get crossed. (At least if, like a rubbery face mask, we stretch the definition of ‘no code’ to cover — in Reface’s case — a push-button, AI tool for pro-style content creation; the ‘no code’ label typically refers to b2b tools that simplify app building but the common theme is supercharged accessibility.)

With such a sparkling portfolio of early stage backers Reface’s Ukrainian founders are surely proving the value of sticking with it where deep tech is concerned. As we reported back in the summer, three of the founders began working together almost a decade ago — honing their machine learning chops straight out of university. Their tenacity is now paying off in viral spades.

Deepfake video app Reface is just getting started on shapeshifting selfie culture

“The Reface team has taken their highly sophisticated, machine learning technology and transformed it into a consumer experience that is seamless to use and fun to share with your friends,” said Connie Chan, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz in a supporting statement on the funding.

“We’re just beginning to see the potential applications for their core technology across consumer, entertainment, and marketing experiences and the Reface team has the creativity and expertise to help shape that future,” she added.

“I believe that Reface has the potential to be the next-generation personalization platform that enables the gamification of movies, sports, music videos, and many other fields that people are passionate about,” added Supercell’s Paananen in another statement. “I’m excited to see the team grow Reface into a community that allows people to create active personal connections with artists and each other through content they love.” 

Reface’s co-founders, Denys Dmytrenko, Oles Petriv, Ivan Altsybieiev, Roman Mogylnyi, Yaroslav Boiko, Dima Shvets and Kyrylo Syhyda (Image credit: Reface)

Reface says the seed funding will allow it to step on the growth gas. Including stepping up work on a tool that’s capable of detecting its own fakes, which it wants to build to shrink the risk of the tech being misused.

Earlier this year the startup told us the detection tech would be ready by fall so it’s evidently taking a bit longer than expected. But garnering viral growth for its celeb-video face-swaps may well have reconfigured its priorities a tad.

A previously slated fall launch of UGC video for face-swapping has also not yet fully materialized.

A community that’s currently fuelled by creating and sharing high production value celebrity video clips seems a very different kind of ‘eerie’ vs letting users loose on face-swapping themselves onto the body of their kid brother, say, or grandparent (not to mention the wider risks of not quality controlling the base material for face swaps). So taking time to get robust controls in place makes good business sense. As does focusing on stoking the viral boom with fresh celeb content by keeping content partners happy.

Asked about the delay, Reface told us UGC video has been “partly” launched at this point, since users can download their GIFs. “It’s still in beta as we’re testing and improving — detection system, moderation, communication with users — to make sure that content will not be misused,” it said, adding: “Regarding video, we have a bunch of creators who provide us with content directly. This way we can test all the UGC mechanics. We plan to launch the UGC option to the public by the end of Q1.” 

On the still-in-development detection tool, Reface said the plan is to launch it alongside UGC.

“We are training our models to maximize the detection quality,” it told us on that, adding that it hopes to have the tool finalized in April 2021.

Reface’s its overarching ambition is to build “the biggest platform of personalized content” — monetizing that by partnering with content holders and celebrities to offer head-turning “creative digital marketing solutions”.

Having a near captive audience for buzzy social content during the pandemic has clearly helped the mission, even as it’s boosted social rivals like Snap.

With so many bored kids stuck at home with their phones this year, there’s been an opportunity for growth across the board of social media. (And a16z is a backer of several other social plays, including audio-based social network Clubhouse, and — for kids — the Roblox social gaming platform, to name just two.)

Snap shares explode after blowing past earnings expectations

In August 2020, Reface says it became viral and ranked number one in the U.S. AppStore — (briefly) surpassing TikTok and Instagram. Celebrities including Justin Bieber, Snoop Dogg, Britney Spears, Joe Rogan, Chris Brown, Miley Cyrus and Dua Lipa have all shared their refaced videos on social media this year, it also notes.

This year it’s inked partnerships with entertainment industry luminaries to promote new video launches, including Bieber, Cyrus and John Legend, as well as working with Amazon Prime to advertise the Borat movie premiere — racking up “millions” more shares and refaces.  

“Funding from Andreessen Horowitz will allow us to accelerate this growth, empower our team with new talents and improve technology, as we will continue work on a fake videos detection tool to guarantee responsible use of our AI technology,” co-founder Denis Dmitrenko added in a statement. 

A16z is now managing $16.5 billion, after announcing two new funds

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VSCO acquires mobile app Trash to expand into AI-powered video editing

VSCO, the popular photo and video editing app, today announced it has acquired AI-powered video editing app Trash, as the company pushes further into the video market. The deal will see Trash’s technology integrated into the VSCO app in the months ahead, with the goal of making it easier for users to creatively edit their videos.

Trash, which was co-founded by Hannah Donovan and Genevieve Patterson, cleverly uses artificial intelligence technology to analyze multiple video clips and identify the most interesting shots. It then stitches your clips together automatically to create a final product. In May, Trash added a feature called Styles that let users pick the type of video they wanted to make — like a recap, a narrative, a music video or something more artsy.

The Trash app’s new features can create AI-edited music videos and more

After Trash creates its AI-powered edit, users can opt to further tweak the footage using buttons on the screen that let them change the order of the clips, change filters, adjust the speed or swap the background music.

Image Credits: Trash

With the integration of Trash’s technology, VSCO envisions a way to make video editing even more approachable for newcomers, while still giving advanced users tools to dig in and do more edits, if they choose. As VSCO co-founder and CEO Joel Flory explains, it helps users get from that “point zero of staring at their Camera Roll…to actually putting something together as fast as possible.”

“Trash gets you to the starting point, but then you can dive into it and tweak [your video] to really make it your own,” he says.

The first feature to launch from the acquisition will be support for multi-clip video editing, expected in a few months. Over time, VSCO expects to roll out more of Trash’s technologies to its user base. As users make their video edits, they may also be able to save their collection of tweaks as “recipes,” like VSCO currently supports for photos.

“Trash brings to VSCO a deep level of personalization, machine learning and computer vision capabilities for mobile that we believe can power all aspects of creation on VSCO, both now and for future investments in creativity,” says Flory.

The acquisition is the latest in a series of moves VSCO has made to expand its video capabilities.

At the end of 2019, VSCO picked up video technology startup Rylo. A few months later, it had leveraged the investment to debut Montage, a set of tools that allowed users to tell longer video stories using scenes, where they could also stack and layer videos, photos, colors and shapes to create a collage-like final product. The company also made a change to its app earlier this year to allow users to publish their videos to the main VSCO feed, which had previously only supported photos.

Gen Z fav photo-editing app VSCO further expands into video

More recently, VSCO has added new video effects, like slowing down, speeding up or reversing clips and new video capture modes.

As with its other video features, the new technology integrations from Trash will be subscriber-only features.

Today, VSCO’s subscription plan costs $19.99 per year, and provides users with access to the app’s video editing capabilities. Currently, more than 2 million of VSCO’s 100 million+ registered users are paid subscribers. And, as a result of the cost-cutting measures and layoffs VSCO announced earlier this year, the company has now turned things around to become EBITDA positive in the second half of 2020. The company says it’s on the path to profitability, and additional video features like those from Trash will help.

Image Credits: Trash

VSCO’s newer focus on video isn’t just about supporting VSCO’s business model, however, it’s also about positioning the company for the future. While the app grew popular during the Instagram era, today’s younger users are more often posting videos to TikTok instead. According to Apple, TikTok was the No. 2 most downloaded free app of the year — ahead of Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat.

Apple releases its ‘Best of 2020’ App Store winners and most downloaded apps of the year

Though VSCO doesn’t necessarily envision itself as only a TikTok video prep tool, it does have to consider that growing market. Similar to TikTok, VSCO’s user base consists of a younger, Gen Z demographic; 75% of VSCO’s user base is under 25, for example, and 55% of its subscribers are also under 25. Combined, its user base creates more than 8 million photos and videos per day, VSCO says.

As a result of the acquisition, Trash’s standalone app will shut down on December 18.

Donovan will join VSCO as Director of Product and Patterson as Head of Applied Research. Other Trash team members, including Karina Bernacki, Chihyu Chang and Drew Olbrich, will join as Chief of Staff, Engineering Manager and Sr. Software Engineer for iOS, respectively.

“We both believe in the power of creativity to have a healthy and positive impact on people’s lives,” said Donovan, in Trash’s announcement. “Additionally, we have similar audiences of Gen Z casual creators; and are focused on giving people ways to express themselves and share their version of the world while feeling seen, safe, and supported,” she said.

Trash had raised a total of $3.3 million — a combination of venture capital and $500,000 in grants — from BBG, Betaworks, Precursor and Dream Machine, as well as the National Science Foundation. (Multiple TechCrunch connections here: BBG is backed by our owner Verizon Media, while Dream Machine is the fund created by former TechCrunch editor Alexia Bonatsos.)

“Han and Gen and the Trash team have always paid attention to the needs of creators first and foremost. My hope is that the VSCO and Trash partnership will turn all of us into creators, and turn the gigabytes of latent videos on our phones from trash to treasures,” said Bonatsos, in a statement about the deal.

Flory declined to speak to the deal price, but characterized the acquisition as a “win-win for both the Trash team and for VSCO.”

Former journo Alexia Bonatsos unveils her new venture fund, Dream Machine

Updated 12/3/20, 11:27 AM ET: VSCO alerted us that Patterson’s title is being updated to “Head of Applied Research.” We’ve updated the article accordingly.

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