Jam lets you safely share streaming app passwords

Can’t afford Netflix and HBO and Spotify and Disney+…? Now there’s an app specially built for giving pals your passwords while claiming to keep your credentials safe. It’s called Jam, and the questionably legal service launched in private beta this morning. Founder John Backus tells TechCrunch in his first interview about Jam that it will let users save login details with local encryption, add friends you can then authorize to access your password for a chosen service, and broadcast to friends which of your subscriptions have room for people to piggyback on.

Jam is just starting to add users off its rapidly growing waitlist that you can join here, but when users get access, it’s designed to stay free to use. In the future, Jam could build a business by helping friends split the costs of subscriptions. There’s clearly demand. Over 80% of 13-24 year olds have given out or used someone else’s online TV password, according a study by Hub of over 2000 US consumers.

“The need for Jam was obvious. I don’t want to find out my ex-girlfriend’s roommate has been using my account again. Everyone shares passwords, but for consumers there isn’t a secure way to do that. Why?” Backus asks. “In the enterprise world, team password managers reflect the reality that multiple people need to access the same account, regularly. Consumers don’t have the same kind of system, and that’s bad for security and coordination.”

Thankfully, Backus isn’t some amateur when it comes to security. The Stanford computer science dropout and Thiel Fellow founded identity verification startup Cognito and decentralized credit scoring app Bloom. “Working in crypto at Bloom and with sensitive data at Cognito, I have a lot of experience building secure products with cryptography at the core.

He also tells me since everything saved in Jam is locally encrypted, even he can’t see it and nothing would be exposed if the company was hacked. It uses similar protocols to 1Password, “Plaintext login information is never sent to our server, nor is your master password” and “we use pretty straightforward public key cryptography.” Remember, your friend could always try to hijack and lock you out, though. And while those protocols may be hardened, TechCrunch can’t verify they’re perfectly implemented and fully secure within Jam.

Whether facilitating password sharing is legal, and whether Netflix and its peers will send an army of lawyers to destroy Jam, remain open questions. We’ve reached out to several streaming companies for comment. When asked on Twitter about Jam helping users run afoul of their terms of service, Backus claims that “plenty of websites give you permission to share your account with others (with vary degrees of constraints) but users often don’t know these rules.” 

However, sharing is typically supposed to be amongst a customer’s own devices or within their household, or they’re supposed to pay for a family plan. We asked Netflix, Hulu, CBS, Disney, and Spotify for comment, and did not receive any on the record comments. However, Spotify’s terms of service specifically prohibit providing your password to any other person or using any other person’s username and password”. Netflix’s terms insist that “the Account Owner should maintain control over the Netflix ready devices that are used to access the service and not reveal the password or details of the Payment Method associated to the account to anyone.”

Some might see Jam as ripping off the original content creators, though Backus claims that “Jam isn’t trying to take money out of anyone’s pocket. Spotify offers [family plan sharing for people under the same roof]. Many other companies offer similar bundled plans. I think people just underutilize things like this and it’s totally fair game.”

Netflix’s Chief Product Officer said in October that the company is monitoring password sharing and it’s looking at “consumer-friendly ways to push on the edges of that.” Meanwhile, The Alliance For Creativity and Entertainment that includes Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Comcast, and major film studios announced that its members will collaborate to address “piracy” including “what facilitates unauthorized access, including improper password sharing and inadequate encryption.”

That could lead to expensive legal trouble for Jam. “My past startups have done well, so I’ve had the pleasure of self-funding Jam so far” Backus says. But if lawsuits emerge or the app gets popular, he might need to find outside investors. “I only launched about 5 hours ago, but I’ll just say that I’m already in the process of upgrading my database tier due to signup growth.”

Eventually, the goal is not to monetize not through a monthly subscription like Backus expects competitors including password-sharing browser extensions might charge. Instead “Jam will make money by helping users save money. We want to make it easy fo users to track what they’re sharing and with whom so that they can settle up the difference at the end of each month” Backus explains. It could charge “either a small fee in exchange for automatically settling debts between users and/or charging a percentage of the money we save users by recommending more efficient sharing setups.” Later, he sees a chance to provide recommendations for optimizing account management across networks of people while building native mobile apps.

“I think Jam is timed perfectly to line up with multiple different booming trends in how people are using the internet”, particularly younger people says Backus. Hub says 42% of all US consumers have used someone else’s online TV service password, while amongst 13 to 24 year olds, 69% have watched Netflix on someone else’s password. “When popularity and exclusivity are combined with often ambiguous, even sometimes nonexistent, rules about legitimate use, it’s almost an invitation to subscribers to share the enjoyment with friends and family” says Peter Fondulas, the principal at Hub and co-author of the study. “Wall Street has already made its displeasure clear, but in spite of that, password sharing is still very much alive and well.”

From that perspective, you could liken Jam to sex education. Password sharing abstinence has clearly failed. At least people should learn how to do it safely.

PROTIP: Feeling lonely? Go to your Netflix settings, click "Sign out of all devices," and wait a few hours.

Voilà! If you check your phone now, you'll find you have several new texts from friends you haven't spoken to in years.

— John Backus (@backus) January 15, 2020

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Moteefe, the e-commerce platform for on-demand merchandise, raises $5M Series A

Moteefe, the e-commerce platform for on-demand production of merchandise has raised $5 million in Series A funding.

Leading the round is Gresham House, and Force Over Mass Capital. It brings total funding to date to $12.5 million, and will be used to expand into new geographies including Australia and LATAM. The U.K. company also plans to launch new products for large retailers and invest in scaling its operations.

Launched in early 2016, Moteefe provides an “end-to-end” technology solution for entrepreneurs, influencers, and (micro) retailers wanting to design, create and sell customised products, such as printed t-shirts or engraved jewellery. The platform enables brands to design merchandise and sell it via their own white-labelled Moteefe store, or through their own site or app or other marketing channels.

Put simply, you upload your design to the Moteefe site and the company takes care of printing, the store, payments, customer service and fulfilment globally. Moteefe then takes a small commission on sales. However, unlike some traditional marketplaces, users can launch their own store with their own domain, maintaining the customer relationship and data.

“Launching and scaling a global e-commerce business is extremely complex and requires access to a wide variety of capabilities,” says co-founder and CEO Mathijs Eefting. “We provide a complete end-to-end solution that takes care of everything from e-commerce sites and payments up to (on-demand) production, fulfilment, and support at global scale. Everyone can start and scale their own business globally within a matter of minutes, [with] no upfront costs or inventory risk”.

Eefting says that at the heart of Moteefe’s offering is on-demand production. Typically referred to as Print-on-Demand (POD), the company works also with a range of other production methods via its network. “Since POD is difficult to implement — it requires completely different back-end and front-end processes — we have built an interface that allows anyone to leverage the functionality and start building/growing their own retail brands around the world within minutes for free”.

This has seen Moteefe build its own proprietary production software that instantaneously centralises orders via merchant sites. It then routes those orders on a per order basis directly into the production lines of its partners.

“It takes into consideration end-consumer location, partner inventory levels, capacity, quality and costs,” explains Eefting. “This enables us to deliver 10,000s of products on a daily basis anywhere in the world with a 1-2-day turnaround time”.

On competitors, the Moteefe CEO reiterates that the company isn’t a marketplace like Teespring, Red Bubble, Zazzle, or Café Press, which he says are leveraged mainly by creatives and designers uploading their own artwork onto the marketplace, and earning a small commission when someone purchases a product with their design. “They are not building a business, they’re simply monetising their creativity,” he explains.

Instead, Eefting says Moteefe is empowering brands and companies to take advantage of global on-demand production. “Our users own their brand, client relationship and marketing channels –- we provide the white label store and fulfilment technology”, he adds.

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YouTube to invest $100M in kids’ content that showcases character strengths, like compassion and curiosity

YouTube in September announced a $100 million fund to invest in new children’s video content, following its $170 million settlement with the FTC over children’s privacy law violations. The fund was meant to help soften the blow for children’s content creators on YouTube, who are being financially impacted by the changes the FTC required of their channels. Now we have the first bit of insight into what sort of content YouTube plans to back with the fund’s resources.

According to a report by Bloomberg, YouTube is looking to fund videos that “drive outcomes associated with the following character strengths:” courage, compassion, communication, gratitude, curiosity, humility, teamwork, integrity, perseverance, self-control, empathy, and creativity.

The details were shared in a note to partners, the report said.

“All our programming will seek to support kids in uncovering their unique strengths and passions,” the note read. “Specifically, we want to develop content that inspires children to develop life skills and pursue their passions; establish healthy habits and care for themselves; increase their understanding of culture and diversity; and/or engage with and care for their community.”

YouTube confirmed the report’s accuracy to TechCrunch. It said the company is now in discussions with partners, but further details on the kids content fund wouldn’t be shared until later this year.

The planned $100 million investment, which will be distributed over the next three years, is meant to help set the tone for the sort of children’s video content YouTube wants to see more of on its video-sharing platform.  Today, a number of creators in the kids’ space are gaining views for things like toy unboxings, pranks and family vlogs. For example, Ryan Kaji of Ryan’s World and Ryan ToysReview, was YouTube’s highest-paid star of 2019, pulling in a massive $26 million.

Parents, on the other hand, don’t often care for their kids’ addiction to this sort of lightweight, consumer-driven content. And thanks to updated screen time controls across iPhone and Android, they can now choose to limit the time their kids spend on YouTube. And with a growing number of streaming services on the market, including the kid-friendly Disney+, kids and families have other options.

The move to fund an elevated set of kids’ content could also help YouTube attract more advertising dollars, as companies are looking to pair their marketing messages with “brand-safe” content, which can be hit-or-miss on YouTube at times.

YouTube has no immediate concerns on the ad revenue front, having pulled in $15 billion in 2019. But the company knows there’s still so much more room to grow, given the TV ad market still massively dwarfs YouTube, with $70 billion in ad spending last year.

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How Dubsmash revived itself as #2 to TikTok

Lip-syncing app Dubsmash was on the brink of death. After a brief moment of virality in 2015 alongside Vine (R.I.P), Dubsmash was bleeding users faster than it could recruit them. The app let you choose an audio track like a rap song or movie quote and shoot a video of you pretending to say the words. But there was nowhere in the app to post the videos. It was a creation tool like Hipstamatic, not a network like Instagram. There’s a reason we’re only using one of those today.

So in 2017 Dubsmash‘s three executives burned down the 30-person company and rebuilt something social from the ashes with the rest of the $15.4 million it’d raised from Lowercase Capital and Index Ventures. They ditched its Berlin headquarters and resettled in Brooklyn, closer to the one demographic still pushing Dubsmashes to the Instagram Explore page: African-American teenagers posting dances and lip-syncs to indie hip-hop songs on the rise.

Dubsmash stretched its funding to rehire a whole new team of 15. They spent a year coding a new version of Dubsmash centered around Following and Trending feeds, desperately trying to match the core features of Musically, which by then had been bought by China’s ByteDance. It’s got chat but still lacks the augmented reality filters, cut transitions, and photo slideshows of TikTok. But Dubsmash has the critical remix option for soundtracking your clip with the audio of any other video that sets it apart from Instagram and Snapchat.

“We realized to build a great product, we needed a depth of expertise that we just didn’t have access to in Berlin” Dubsmash co-founder and CEO Jonas Druppel tells me. “It was a risky move and we felt the weight of it acutely.  But we also knew there was no other way forward, given the scale and pace of the other players in the market.”

Few social apps have ever pulled off a real comeback. Even Snapchat had only lost 5 million of its 191 million users before it started growing again. But in the case of Dubsmash, its biggest competitor was also its savior.

The pre-relaunch version of Dubsmash

In August 2018, ByteDance merged Musically into TikTok to form a micro-entertainment phenomenon. Instead of haphazardly sharing auto-biographical Stories shot with little forethought, people began storyboarding skits and practicing dances. The resulting videos were denser and more compelling than content on Snapchat and Instagram. The new Dubsmash, launched two months later, rode along with the surge of interest in short-form video like a Lilliputian in a giant’s shirt pocket. The momentum helped Dubsmash raise a secret round of funding last year to keep up the chase.

Now Dubsmash has 1 billion video views per month.

Dubsmash rebuilt its app and revived its usage

“The turnaround that we executed hasn’t been done in recent memory by a consumer app in such a competitive marketplace. Most of them fade to oblivion or shut down” Dubsmash co-founder and President Suchit Dash tells me. “By moving the company to the United States, hiring a brand new all-star team & relaunching the product, we gave this company & product a second life. Through that journey, we obsessed only on one metric: retention.”

Now the app has pulled 27% of the US short-form video market share by installs, second only to TikTok’s 59%, according to AppAnnie. Sensor Tower tells TechCrunch that TikTok has about 3X as many US lifetime installs as Dubsmash, and 11X more between when Musically became TikTok in August 2018 and now.

In terms of active users outside of TikTok, Dubsmash has 73% of the US market, compared to just 23% on Triller, 3.6% on Firework, and an embarrassing 0% on Facebook’s Lasso. And while Triller began surpassing Dubsmash in downloads per month in October, Dubsmash has 3X as many active users and saw 38% more first-time downloads in 2018 than 2019. Dubsmash now sees 30% retention after a month, and 30% of its daily users are creating content.

It’s that stellar rate of participation that’s brought Dubsmash back to life. It also attracted a previously unannounced round of $6.75 million in the Spring of 2019, largely from existing investors. While TikTok’s superstars and huge visibility could be scaring some users away from shooting videos while a long-tail of recent downloaders watch passively, Dubsmash has managed to make people feel comfortable on camera.

“Dubsmash is ground zero for culture creation in America—it’s where  the newest,  most popular hip-hop and dance challenges on the Internet originate” Dash declares.  “Members of the community are developing content that will make them the superstars of tomorrow.”

Being #2 might not be so bad, given how mobile video viewing is growing massively thanks to better cameras, bigger screens, faster networks, and cheaper data. Right now, Dubsmash doesn’t make any money. It hopes to one day generate revenue while helping its creators earn a living too, perhaps through ad revenue shares, tipping, subscriptions, merchandise, or offline meetups.

One advantage of not being TikTok is that the app feels less crowded by semi-pro creators and influencers. That gives users the vibe that they’re more likely to hit the Trending or Explore page on Dubsmash. The Trending page is dominated by hot new songs and flashy dances, even if they’re shot with a lower production quality that feels accessible.

Dubsmash tries to stoke that sense of opportunity by making Explore about discovering accounts and all the content they’ve made rather than specific videos. While popular clips might have tens of thousands of views rather than the hundred-thousand or multi-million counts on TikTok’s top content, there’s enough visibility to make shooting Dubsmashes worth it.

TikTok has already taken notice. Shown in a leak of its moderation guidelines from Netzpolitik, the company’s policy is to downrank the visibility of any video referencing or including a watermark from direct competitors including Dubsmash, Triller, Lasso, Snapchat, and WhatsApp. That keeps Dubsmash videos, which you can save to your camera roll, from going viral on TikTok and luring users away.

TikTok’s content moderation guidelines show it downranks content featuring the watermarks of competitors like Dubsmash

TikTok also continues to aggressively buy users via ads on competing apps like Facebook thanks to the billions in funding raked in by its parent ByteDance. In contast, Dash says Dubsmash has never spent a dollar on user acquisition, influencer marketing, or any other source of growth. That makes it achieving even half to a third of as many installs as TikTok in the US an impressive fete.

Why would creators choose Dubsmash over TikTok? Dash clinically explains that its a “decoupled audio and video platform that enables producers and tastemakers to upload fresh, original tracks that are utilized by creators and  influencers alike” but that it’s also about “Its role as a welcoming home for a community that’s underrepresented on social platforms.”

If Dubsmash keeps growing, though, it will encounter the inevitable content moderation problems that come with scale. It’s already doing a solid job of requiring users to sign up with their birthdate to watch or post videos, and it blocks those under 13. Only users who follow each other can chat.

Any piece of content that’s flagged by users is hidden from the network until it passes a review by its human moderation team that works around the clock, and it does proactive takedowns too. However, brigading and malicious takedown reports could be used by trolls to silence their enemies. Dubsmash is working off of a common sense model of what’s allowed rather than firm guidelines, which will be tough to keep consistent at scale.

“Being a social media app in 2020 means you need to take greater responsibility for the well being of the community” says Dash. “We decided upon relaunch to take a strict perspective. Our goal is to be intentional and proactive early, and invest in safety and healthy growth rather than growth at all costs. This may not be the most popular approach amongst the market, but we believe this is the most effective way to build a social platform.”

Dubsmash proves that short-form video is so compelling to teens that the market can sustain multiple apps. That will have to be the case given Instagram is preparing to release its TikTok clone Reels, and Vine’s co-founder Dom Hofmann just launched his successor Byte. The breakdown could look like:

• TikTok: A slightly longer-form combo of comedy, dance, and absurdity
• Dubsmash: Mid-length dance and music videos with a diverse community
• Byte: Super short-form comedy featuring slightly older ex-Vine stars
• Triller: Mid-length life blogging clips from Hollywood celebrities
• Instagram Reels: International influencers making videos for a mainstream audience

Perhaps we’ll eventually see consolidation in the market, with giants like TikTok and Instagram acquiring smaller players to grow their content network effect with more fodder for remixes. But fragmentation could breed creativity. Different tools and audiences beg for different types of videos. Make something special, and there’s an app out there to enter your into pop culture cannon.

For more on the short-form video wars and the future of micro-entertainment, read:

Zuckerberg misunderstands the huge threat of TikTok

Instagram Stories launches TikTok clone Reels in Brazil

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Google’s Area 120 launches Tangi, a short-form video app focused on creativity and DIY

The latest project to emerge from Google’s in-house incubator, Area 120, takes the newfound interest in short-form video and focuses it on the DIY space. The company today is launching a short video platform called Tangi, initially on the web and iOS, that allows creative types to share how-to videos on subjects like crafting, painting, cooking, fashion, beauty and more.

Unlike apps like TikTok or newly-launched Byte, which are more focused on entertainment, Tangi aims to help people learn.

“We only focus on DIY and creativity content,” explains Tangi founder, Coco Mao. “Our platform’s goal is to help people learn to craft, cook, and create with quick one-minute videos. We designed Tangi to make it easier for users to find a lot of high-quality how-to videos,” she says.

Mao was inspired to create Tangi after going home to visit her parents in Shanghai. She found they were watching a lot of how-to videos on painting and photography on their phone, even though she had always believed they were “smartphone challenged.”

“My mom has always had a creative side, and I was surprised to learn that she’s now an amateur oil painter thanks to these niche communities with quick how-to videos,” Mao says. “I, too, joined some of these vibrant creative communities that make videos around cooking and fashion. I noticed something magical in these videos: They could quickly get a point across—something that used to take a long time to learn with just text and images,” she notes.

While Tangi’s vertical videos can be up to one-minute long, most average around 45 seconds. That means it’s not necessarily the place to be walked step-by-step through a complicated recipe as you could be on YouTube, for example. Instead, the videos might show you a quick cooking trick or inspire you to try a new idea in the kitchen.

Another difference between Tangi and other short-form video apps is a feature it includes called “Try It.” This encourages users to upload photos of their re-creation of the video as a way to interact with other community members, says Mao.

For example, one of the most re-created videos is this one of making guacamole in the avocado shell.

The creator might leave an actual recipe in the comments, however, even if they don’t show you each individual step in detail. (And it’s arguably a lot easier to follow a recipe on Tangi than on most of today’s recipe sites which are overrun with ads and SEO-driven “personal stories.”)

Already, Tangi is being used by a number of creators including DIY and lifestyle blogger Holly Grace, portrait artist Rachel Faye Carter, baker and food creator Paola D Yee, beauty vlogger Sew Wigged Out, art and DIYer TheArtGe, cooking and DIYer JonathanBlogs, and others.

Also unlike other social video apps, uploading to Tangi isn’t currently open to all. Instead, creators need to apply to be a part of the video platform. This allows Tangi to ensure their videos remain focused on creativity and DIY activities.

As a viewer, you can search Tangi for whatever it is you want to learn or filter videos by category, like art, cooking, DIY, fashion & beauty, and lifestyle. Or you can simply scroll down the home page until something catches your interest. To save a video or show your support for the creator, you click the heart icon to like the video. This saves it to your “Liked” section under your profile.

Tangi ends up having a sort of Pinterest-y vibe due to its content.

At launch, Tangi is available everywhere except the E.U., initially on the web and on iOS. The app is a free download, is ad-free, and isn’t currently being monetized in other ways.

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Silicon Valley VC 7BC Capital expands in Europe, recruits first venture partner

Silicon Valley VC 7BC Venture Capital has decided to make an incursion into Europe, recruiting its first venture partner in the UK.

Monty Munford was previously a freelance journalist, conference speaker and columnist contributing to Forbes, The Telegraph, The Economist, BBC Newsweek and Wired, among others.

7BC VC focuses primarily on AI, FinTech, blockchain and related startups. It recently invested in Kyndi at a Series B with a valuation of $20M.

Munford says he caught the venture bug by brokering a deal between Qriously — a mobile data company that had predicted correctly the Trump win, Brexit referendum and the French/Dutch — And UK/NYC company Brandwatch. The deal was covered by TechCrunch here.

“It was one of the most gratifying things I’d ever done… I see joining 7BC as a chance to change things from another angle,” he told TechCrunch.

“There really is a correlation there between tech journalism and investing. There is much in common between looking at horrendous press releases and commensurate startups pitches and their decks,” he added.

Brandwatch CEO Giles Palmer commented: “Monty has watched us build for the past decade and has always openly shared connections and possibilities for our growth. When he, almost hysterically, told me that ‘we had to buy the company’, we had to take a second look and he was right. He has the creativity to see connections where they don’t exist and a nose for when people are likely to click. It’s a powerful combo.”

7BC Venture Capital co-founder and CEO Andrew Romans said in a statement: “Part of the success of a startup with or without VC funding is their ability to generate positive PR for the company and be noticed by multiple relevant audiences, but also tell a story, do something novel, and innovate.”

He said a journalist can bring special skills to the investing role: “This results in a unique understanding of specific ecosystems and categories of startups and corporate players, not to mention relationships with all of these individuals and the key news outlets. On the treasure map of PR, media, tech, and creativity we place an X on Monty Munford.”

Romans is based in Silicon Valley and was previously an investor in Player X, where Munford had been an executive.

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