Category: Tech news

Opinion: The apocalyptic clock remains fixed at two minutes to midnight—as close as we’ve ever been to catastrophe. That’s not close enough.

The streaming service drops (some) prices as Netflix increases its own. Also, there’s a ‘Riverdale’ spinoff and new music on the way.

The U.K. is experiencing a significant and drastic fall in the volume of business-to-business transactions, according to the CEO of one of the world’s largest B2B payments and supply chain logistics platforms.

In an exclusive interview with TechCrunch at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Tradeshift CEO and co-founder Christian Lanng said: “We see the numbers. There has been a huge drop in the purchase orders in the U.K. in December last year. Especially in retail. But it’s cross-sector. It’s manufacturing, retail, logistics.”

Tradeshift is a cloud platform for supply chain payments, marketplaces and apps, and is one of Europe’s tech unicorns and has raised more than $432 million to date.

He said Tradeshift works with a “major manufacturer” in the U.K. which has “one hour of inventory” feeding its production line. He declined to name the firm.

Speaking about the effects of Brexit on supply chains, he said: “If you add 10 minutes of custom checks to every truck feeding that production line you create a traffic jam that cannot be resolved. It would last a week before it would get sorted out. They literally cannot operate the factory,” he said.

“Forget about the politics. This is just a very technical thing that’s going to happen. People don’t understand the facts. You can discuss it in a very abstract level but literally, it’s just like that.”

“People forget about the practices or realities of the supply chains across the channel and nobody is engaging really in any serious way with the people who know how that stuff works, because [Brexit] is like a circus, right?”

Speaking about Tradeshift’s recent acquisition of Bableway, a cloud integration technology platform, Lanng said the combined companies will process “more than a trillion dollars of payments. That’s twice as large as PayPal and three times as large as Amazon in just payment volumes,” he said. “Between us we’ll have a bigger chunk of the world economy in terms of B2B, not B2C.”

Does Laang think there will be a global slowdown, as some are predicting? “Our view is pretty simple. China freaked everybody out about how fast they moved with technology such as on healthcare, renewable energy, electric cars, AI and financial services. And they’re now starting to push ‘Made in China’ by 2025.”

“So [the West] is losing the global leadership. We have been slow to adapt to electric, or renewable energy. It was described as a hippie thing, but now it’s the future of the world. Countries using tariffs [to slow down China] it’s not going to work. We’re very bullish on Asia and any country in the world that’s ‘leaning in’ to technology.”

When BGF Ventures, the London-based early-stage venture fund of BGF, had a change in “strategy” in early 2018, seeing partners Harry Briggs, Rory Stirling and Wendy Tan White step down, it was always going to be interesting to see where the VC trio would land.

Earlier this week, this publication broke news that Tan White — who previously co-founded and exited SaaS website builder Moonfruit, and was also a general partner at Entrepreneur First — has joined Alphabet’s X (formerly Google X) as vice president.

Now TechCrunch can reveal that Rory Stirling has joined London seed-stage firm Connect Ventures as partner. Connect’s existing investment team includes Pietro Bezza, Bill Earner and Sitar Teli.

Before joining BGF Ventures in 2015, where he was a founding partner at the £200 million fund, Stirling was a partner at MMC Ventures, spanning a 10-year career in venture capital. During his time at BGF Ventures, the firm backed a range of tech startups, including Gousto, Streetbees, Triptease, Paddle and Roli. At MMC, Stirling led investments across consumer, marketplace and software sectors.

His software investments include NewVoiceMedia (recently acquired by Vonage for $350 million), Triptease, Marvel, Masabi, Reevoo, Somo, Brightpearl and Base79 (acquired by Rightster). His marketplace investments are Appear Hear and LoveHomeSwap (acquired by Wyndham). Consumer companies Stirling backed for MMC include Gousto, AlexandAlexa (acquired by The Luxury Kids Group), Wool and the Gang (acquired by Crafts Group Holdings), Pact, Tyres on the Drive and PayasUgym.

Confirming his latest career move, Stirling provided TechCrunch with the following statement:

I’m thrilled to be joining the team at Connect. I’m lucky enough to have worked with all three of the Connect partners on previous investments. Since founding in 2012 they’ve established themselves as one of the most focused and ambitious seed funds in Europe. Connect recognised the importance of building a differentiated approach from the beginning and are now well-known for their product-led thesis. As a result they’ve backed some of the most iconic product companies in Europe, including Citymapper and Typeform.

Meanwhile, I understand that BGF Ventures’ third alumni, Harry Briggs, has also found a new gig. According to my sources, he’s quietly joined OMERS Ventures, the venture capital arm of the Canadian pension fund of the same name. I understand he is helping to set up the founding team of OMERS Ventures Europe. The VC fund has previously talked about its ambitions to expand to Europe, and that appears to be happening, even though it is believed to still be in the formative stages.

Briggs couldn’t be reached for comment at the time of publication.

On the Galapagos Island of Seymour Norte, conservationists scramble to destroy every last invasive rodent before the ecosystem descends into chaos.

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Google’s proposal would render some ad blockers and other tools ineffective, forcing developers to make changes.

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Automation may create as many jobs as it destroys, a new study finds, but men, younger folks, and minorities hold positions that are particularly vulnerable.

At the seventh annual iteration of the convention, fans paid homage to favorites from Sailor Moon to ‘Coming to America’’s Prince Akeem.

The streaming firm leaves the Internet Association, a tech industry group, and joins the MPAA, underscoring its growth as a content creator.

The company’s new six-wheeled delivery bot is built to ferry Prime packages.

Three tech giants, including Microsoft, sponsored a libertarian conference that included attacks on the science of climate change.

The company is one of the partners in Uber’s bid to fly the skies.