KTM City Posts

via https://ift.tt/2xPybv8 Embedded insurance — selling coverage at the same time as another product or service — is on the rise. According to data platform Dealroom , it accounts for a growing share of all policies sold, and startups in this space raised nearly $800 million in 2021 alone. Having recently polled investors on all things insurtech, we were curious to know if the market remained as bullish on embedded insurance as last year — and whether it was warranted. “Personally, I remain bullish on embedded insurance,” Brewer Lane Ventures general partner Martha Notaras told TechCrunch. “Many insurance purchases are difficult, so rolling insurance into another transaction makes a lot of sense.” While seeing clear value in the ability to bundle insurance with another purchase, Notaras and other investors we talked to also had reservations. “We believe in the concept of embedded insurance, but a more measured approach would suit investors well when analyzing these businesses,” ...

https://ift.tt/8saRozq Award-winning Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga has been found guilty of staging a protest with the intent of inciting public violence, a court in the capital Harare ruled Thursday.

via https://ift.tt/Dqnsime Everyone knows membership has its privileges. And that adage holds true at TechCrunch Disrupt , which takes place on October 18–20 in San Francisco. How so? Disrupt attendees who hold one- or two-year subscriptions to TC+ receive exclusive access to the TC+ Lounge at the show. Let’s back up a moment. If you’re not familiar with TC+, it’s our members-only community that receives access to articles offering extensive market analysis, expert advice from experienced entrepreneurs, deep-dive interviews with investors and founders, plus live weekly coaching, Q&A sessions and more. Now, what will you find in the TC+ Lounge? First, it’s a place to step away from the crowds and recharge with snacks and refreshing beverages. It’s also where you’ll enjoy exclusive Q&As with event speakers on all three days of the show. Here are just three examples, but you can hit up the Disrupt agenda and filter on TC+ Lounge to see who’s presenting — and when — on each d...

via https://ift.tt/hlA83NS Tesla AI Day is here — the company’s second-annual event designed to show off its progress in AI and robotics. Viewers should expect demos and updates on the Optimus robot, the Dojo supercomputer as well as its “Autopilot” advanced driver assistance system, along with the $15,000 upgrade known as FSD, or “Full Self Driving.” (Tesla vehicles are not self-driving.) CEO Elon Musk has billed Tesla AI Day as a recruitment event. And what better way to reach the 80-hour workweek ride-or-die for Tesla crowd than scheduling this for a Friday evening? Note, this event is meant for recruiting AI & robotics engineers, so will be highly technical https://t.co/BcxAEv6qJd — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 29, 2022 Tesla AI Day is scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. PT September 30 (that’s today). If past is prologue then Tesla AI Day will not start promptly at 5 p.m. — Elon tends to run late. Like the company’s other events, Tesla AI Day 2022 should be livestream...

via https://ift.tt/FtBjnw9 Is Tumblr porn making a comeback? No, it’s not — and Amanda Silberling joins me on this week’s TechCrunch podcast to explain why, and why people thought it might be. Devin Coldewey also joins us to talk about NASA’s DART mission, which saw the US space agency throw a little spacecraft at a big asteroid moon. Yes it’s all real and it all makes sense, I promise. And of course, we run down the biggest stories in tech this past week that you need to know about. By the way, if you recently were laid off, TechCrunch is offering a free expo pass to Disrupt (Oct. 18-20) in San Francisco. No strings attached. These tickets get you access to the expo floor, breakout sessions, and plenty of networking opportunities like partner roundtables and parties. For more info, check out this page . Articles from the episode: No, Tumblr is not bringing back porn Watch the asteroid-smashing DART spacecraft make its 6-million-mile shot today NASA’s DART anti-asteroid satellit...

via https://ift.tt/IaGOMNR India’s market regulator has tightened disclosure norms for firms looking to file for an initial public offering after lackluster performance of more than half a dozen tech startups in the past year and a half. Firms looking to raise funds from public offers will now be required by law to disclose their key performance indicators and issuing pricing based on past transactions and private funding rounds in their offer documents, the Securities and Exchange Board of India said in a statement. The regulator said the new step is aimed at bringing parity between retail and private equity investors. It said retail investors haven’t had adequate access to key indicators of a firm whose shares they are buying whereas private equity backers have been able to monitor and act on those data internally for years. India gets its S-1 Startups are also getting an option to pre-file their offer documents and get a review from the regulator, similar to the S-1 filings the...

via https://ift.tt/KnJAEWz It’s been a little over a year since accelerator 500 Startups rebranded to 500 Global in an attempt to reposition itself as a venture firm. It also launched a $140 million fund to invest in later-stage companies for a total of $2.8 billion in assets under management, according to its website . The new 500 fund has a strategy similar to Y Combinator’s continuity fund, which exists for growth-stage investments and contrasts with Techstars, which recently closed an $8 million pre-seed fund for startups too early for even its own accelerator. This repositioning of 500 Global’s brand and priorities sets a fresh, broader tone for its new accelerator participants. This week, over a dozen startups in the firm’s accelerator program presented on a virtually held live demo day, which featured several moonshots , debuting weeks after Y Combinator’s demo day. The demo day seemed a perfect time to check in with Clayton Bryan, partner and head of 500 Global’s accelerato...

via https://ift.tt/CPy3x9z Twitter is launching a redesigned user interface for DMs on Android, the company announced on Friday. Starting today, Twitter users on Android will see a more modern interface for direct messages that is consistent with the rest of the app. With this roll out, Twitter is bringing the Android experience on par with its iOS interface. The refresh also brings an improved composer, as well as better Tweet forwarding, context for message requests and clearer read receipts. The social network is also introducing improvements to the interface’s scrolling performance and responsiveness. Image Credits: Twitter Now, when Android users open up their DMs, they will no longer see the boxy design that they’re used to. You will now also see if you have received message requests from people you may know. The three-dot menu in the top right corner of the UI has also been replaced with a Settings symbol. Twitter says it saw a need to improve how people use DMs on Twitt...

via https://ift.tt/FJtKoIO Between recent drama around gambling and its controversial decision to take a bigger slice of the subscription revenue pie , it’s been a dramatic couple of weeks for Twitch. Now, the company says it’s testing one new way for streamers to bring in cash from their most committed followers in the form of “elevated chats,” which let viewers pay to highlight a chat message and keep it visible for a set amount of time. Twitch’s elevated chats look a lot like YouTube’s “super chats.” Like that feature, paying more will get your message featured for a longer interval, starting at $5 for 30 seconds and going up to $100 for 2.5 minutes in the spotlight. Those time intervals aren’t customizable for the time being. We're experimenting with a new way for viewers to pay to support their favorite streamers! Elevated Chat will be available on select channels today. Keep your messages visible in chat a for a longer period of time! Learn more https://t.co/t5...

via https://ift.tt/vylh9ta To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here . Today we are mostly listening to acoustic covers of songs we love (a surprise Iron and Wine cover , perhaps?), and mentally preparing ourselves for TechCrunch Disrupt. Which reminds us — did you know you can get 15% off passes with the DC discount code for being a Daily Crunch reader ? Don’t say we never did anything for you, dear reader!  — Christine and Haje The TechCrunch Top 3 Simple crypto : Cryptocurrencies are still complex, or that’s the viewpoint of Solvo, a new app that is making crypto investment simpler, Romain reports. What’s different is that instead of being offered dozens of currencies to choose from, Solvo has curated a list of 10 so you don’t get lost in all the names. Well that didn’t last long : On Monday we brought you news that “the OG app is out to bring Instagram back to its glory days .” To...

via https://ift.tt/WYMtqbC It’s demo day season. This morning marked the kickoff of VC firm 500 Global’s Fall 2022 Demo Day, which saw over a dozen startups give their best pitches to prospective investors — and customers. Participants ran the gamut from fintech and sustainability to edtech and developer tools, and several stood out from the rest of the pack. The event comes just weeks after Y Combinator had its bi-annual Demo Day , its first since moving operations back to in-person. 500 Global, formerly branded under 500 Startups , has an accelerator that competes with YC. Both outfits look to back early-stage founders with money and advice in exchange for equity. YC has backed over 3,500 founders, while 500 Global has backed more than 2,800 founders, according to each institution’s websites. Unlike YC, 500 Global has geographic-specific accelerator programs, similar to Techstars, with focus on areas like Aichi, Japan, Cambodia, and Alberta, Canada. That said, today’s debut from 5...

via https://ift.tt/slzguX0 Insurtech companies have been among the biggest victims of the public market selloff, especially those that went public in 2021. Notably, Metromile saw its valuation decline over 85% and was subsequently acquired by peer Lemonade , and it hasn’t been alone in losing a lot of value and being eyed by peers and incumbents. All this M&A activity and repricing in the public insurtech cohort left us wondering about their private peers: Are the same trends at play, and to what extent? Investors across North America and Europe agreed that while insurtech has suffered as investors sought out more profitable sectors, the sector is still alive and thriving. “I do not believe the insurtech market to be dead, because it is still a multi-billion-dollar market,” Hélène Falchier, partner at Portage Ventures, told TechCrunch. “Short term, it might be more difficult to raise at valuations we have seen before the public market adjustment, but with a strong business mode...

via https://ift.tt/FHw0eCL When insurtech company Metromile went public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in February last year, it was valued at over $1 billion. A year and five months later, Lemonade acquired the company for less than $145 million. As the markets turned early this year, insurtech left most generalist investors’ playbooks almost as fast as Metromile and its peers’ plummeting valuations. Yet, the sector is very much alive, and the “correction” of these companies’ valuations presents an opportunity for those who have cash left on their balance sheets, investors told TechCrunch. “Just like how not every insurtech was a unicorn last year, not all of them are worth zero today,” said Florian Graillot , founding partner at Astorya.vc . The insurtech market has been through a rough time this past year, so we reached out to eight active investors in the space to get a read of what’s been cooking as the markets aggressively recalibrated what an insurtech s...

via https://ift.tt/bX5MU1c Here’s a question for you: How seriously should we take Amazon’s home robotics play ? Perhaps a better way of framing it is: When do we take Amazon’s home robotics play seriously? I realize these sound like pointed questions, and I should specify that they’re not really specific to Amazon. They’re more a result of having been burned in the past. The road to the home robot is littered with fine intentions from companies large (Sony) and small (Anki, etc.). For decades, robots have been a kind of industry shorthand for forward-thinking innovation. Want the world (and, more importantly, shareholders) to know you’re focused on the future? Roll a robot out at your press conference, and who cares if it ever comes out? Amazon’s obviously addressed that last bit of potential criticism. Astro came out. Announced a year ago this week, the company launched the robot as part of its “Day One Edition” program, offering it up with limited availability at a steep price ($...

via https://ift.tt/BYMeK7g As more and more traditional institutions begin to dabble in digital assets, some believe the best way for both old-school finance and decentralized finance (DeFi) to grow together is through a cross-chain world and tokenization. At Chainlink’s SmartCon 2022 conference, the “Bridging Traditional Finance and DeFi” panel discussed how interoperability could drive greater success for crypto in traditional markets. (Blockchain interoperability is when different chains communicate with each other. Tokenization is turning assets into digital tokens so investors could own fractional bits of the underlying asset.) “By default, I’m definitely bullish on tokenization,” Victor O’Laughlen, managing director of head of enterprise tokenization at BNY Mellon, said. “We’re actually looking at tokenizing all different types of assets internally and, really, tokenization for me is an enabler for interoperability.” Historically, financial institutions haven’t connected wel...

via https://ift.tt/YqgKkQo Consumers reduced their mobile app spending in the third quarter of 2022 by roughly 5%, but the social video app TikTok just delivered another record-breaking quarter on this front. For the fourth straight quarter in a row, TikTok continued its streak as the app that has ever generated the most revenue in a quarter. These new findings, in a report published today by Sensor Tower, see TikTok again becoming the highest-grossing app in the world even as the overall market is seeing a slight decline. However, the report does combine TikTok revenue with its Chinese version, known as Douyin — so it’s technically the revenue generated by the two apps offering the same feature set of short-form, vertical videos — not one. TikTok’s global app along with Douyin on iOS together retained the position as the top-grossing non-game app across the App Store and Google Play combined, with approximately $914.4 million in consumer spending in the quarter. Reached for comme...