New Technology News

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Sequoia Capital-backed mobile gaming company Pocket Gems is releasing revenue numbers for the first time, saying that it saw $82 million in revenue last year.

That’s a best for the company, which was founded in 2009, and reflects 32 percent year-over-year growth. Pocket Gems also says that it remains profitable and now has 175 employees.

The revenue comes primarily from in-app purchases — CEO Ben Liu said one of the keys to the company’s success has been its early focus on the free-to-play gaming model, with “very little advertising.” (According to an eMarketer report last year, full download fees remain the biggest source of revenue in the US mobile games industry, but they’ll be overtaken by in-app purchases in 2014.)

Liu added that even though mobile gaming is one area of tech where Silicon Valley (and the rest of the United States) hasn’t been leading the way, “We think that’s about to change. We’re about to enter a period of major technological changes and disruptions where it’s going to be really hard to engineer the best products.”

In Pocket Gems’ case, he said the company will be launching a new 3D engine for multiplayer mobile games later this year.

More broadly, he said Pocket Gems is planning “a couple of big releases” that are meant to showcase its approach to two big questions: “How does it mean to experience a story on mobile?” and “What does it mean to play with your friends on mobile?” On the first question, Liu suggested that attempts at storytelling in mobile games have been “rudimentary.” On the second, he noted that the social mechanics in most mobile games are asynchronous or focused on promoting the game virally. (Pocket Gems’ is already placing a big emphasis on live multiplayer gameplay.)

The company announced last year that its titles, which include Tap Paradise Cove & Animal Voyage: Island Adventure (pictured above), had seen more than 100 million downloads.

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Mobile Gaming Company Pocket Gems Says Its Reached $82M In Revenue Last Year

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Sequoia Capital-backed mobile gaming company Pocket Gems is releasing revenue numbers for the first time, saying that it saw $82 million i...

Starwood Hotels & Resorts is rolling out a program in two of its hotels -- one in New York City's Harlem and one in Cupertino, Calif. -- that will allow customers to try a new lock system. Guests can download a mobile app that will allow them to virtually check in once they've arrived at the hotel. Then they'll be able to open their room door with the tap or wave of their smartphone instead of a plastic key card. The app runs on Bluetooth, not NFC technology, which makes it compatible with a wide range of popular smartphones.

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Smartphone Could Hold the Key to Your Room

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Starwood Hotels & Resorts is rolling out a program in two of its hotels -- one in New York City's Harlem and one in Cupertino, Cal...

Incredible Labs, the startup behind mobile personal assistant app Donna, has been acqui-hired. The team, minus co-founder Scott San Filippo, will join Yahoo, and Donna will be shut down.

We’ve written a fair amount about Donna since it was launched last spring. The app sought to make life easier for users by proactively anticipating things that they would need and providing it to them. For the most part, that meant notifying users that they’d have to leave for a meeting, providing directions, and even emailing contacts automatically to tell them you’re running late.

The Incredible Labs team joining Yahoo includes Kevin Cheng, who held product roles at Yahoo and Twitter; Arshad Tayyeb and Spence Murray, who had worked for DoubleTwist and Netscape; and Bloom founder Jesper Andersen. In a separate blog post, San Filippo said he is not joining Yahoo and looking to start something new.

Incredible Labs had raised $2.5 million from investors that include Khosla Ventures, Betaworks, Maynard Webb, CrunchFund, Ashton Kutcher, and other angels.

Donna will be shut down, spelling the end for one of many apps built to improve personal productivity through software. Other apps in that category include Sunrise, Tempo, Any.do Cal, and Fantastical, among others.

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Incredible Labs Acquired By Yahoo, Mobile Assistant App Donna To Be Shut Down

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Incredible Labs , the startup behind mobile personal assistant app Donna , has been acqui-hired. The team, minus co-founder Scott San Filipp...

Zopa, at nine years the world’s oldest and largest peer-to-peer lending company, has closed a £15m ($25m) funding round from Arrowgrass Capital Partners, an alternative asset manager (more commonly known as a Hedge Fund). This is its third major funding since 2009. The company had previously raised $56.6 million in VC to date. Zopa will use the funds to scale up in its home UK market via a number of means, one of which may be a major marketing campaign, though that has yet to be determined.

Arrowgrass is HQ’d in London, with assets under management of approximately $4.6bn. Henry Kenner, CEO of Arrowgrass, has joined the Zopa board as a non-executive director.

Giles Andrews, CEO and Co-founder of Zopa, said growth accelerated markedly last year as Zopa’s longevity in the market meant that people could trust it, combined with the fact that the UK government lent money on the platform, plus other competitors appeared, adding validity to the market. Lending Works appeared in in January this year, for instance.

Zopa – the first lender in the world of its type – allows savers to beat the bank lending rates by lending money to people looking for low cost loans. Borrowers can cut their borrowing rates, and savers see their money grow at market-leading rates, hence the attraction.

The company says it lent £180 million in 2013 alone, and is projecting to reach £500 million lent in total, ahead of new regulations due in April 2014. Since 2005 its customers have lent over £455 million through the platform. Some estimates put the UK’s peer-to-peer lending industry at a £1 billion per annum by 2015.

This round follows a December 2012 investment, led by Augmentum Capital, which is backed by RIT Capital Partners PLC, the FTSE-listed £2bn investment trust in which Jacob Rothschild and family are substantial investors. Other major investors include Bessemer Venture Partners.

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P2P Lending Pioneer Zopa Closes $25m From Hedge Fund For UK Expansion

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Zopa , at nine years the world’s oldest and largest peer-to-peer lending company, has closed a £15m ($25m) funding round from Arrowgrass Cap...

Another day, another smart home device. Today we introduce the Parce Idea, a clever, compact wall plug that allows you to monitor your energy usage and control lights and appliances from your smartphone. Each plug costs $69 and they connect to your Wi-Fi network and then Parce’s cloud system to show you energy usage, allow you to plan shutdown times, and manage your total electricity usage in the home.

This is obviously not a new idea – WeMo by Belkin is a surprisingly robust system – but the key here are the analytics. As we discussed at CES 2014 this year, we are entering the era of the quantified home. Devices like CubeSensors and Alima add some amazing capabilities to our traditionally dumb spaces while security devices like Canary and energy controllers like Nest keep us safe and warm.

High design and low cost is making relay-powered systems like the Parce easier and easier to make and, although they’re still way below their goal, it’s interesting to see them trying to crack a space that many utilities companies would love to control.

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The Parce Idea Is A Smart Wall Plug That Can Control Your Appliances From Afar

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Another day, another smart home device. Today we introduce the Parce Idea , a clever, compact wall plug that allows you to monitor your ener...

Practically Green says it has raised $3 million in Series A funding for its online tools that encourage employees to act more sustainably.

The company launched with a product focused on consumer sustainability, but it has since shifted its focus to powering similar programs for customers like NBC Universal, eBay, MGM Resorts, and Unilever. Founder and CEO Susan Hunt Stevens told me that 90 percent of those programs are “employee-facing”, but companies can use the Practically Green’s technology to create their own consumer sustainability programs, too.

When setting up their programs, customers identify the areas of sustainability that are most important to them — environmental sustainability is the obvious one, but the company says it also includes things like family and fitness. Then they can choose the actions that they want to encourage (“from riding your bike to work to eating more healthy”) or create actions of their own, which are then encouraged and tracked through a variety of company channels including mobile apps, intranet, and email.

Other features include recommended products, explanations on “Why This Matters” and “Your Impact” to motivate employees, and information on who at a given organization has already accomplished a given goal.

Stevens said there are sound business reasons for embracing these programs. First, there are the cost savings from activities like using less energy. (She said some customers are seeing savings of as much as $100 per participant.) Second, it helps companies attract employees who want to work for sustainable organizations. And finally, some businesses see sustainability “as key to innovation and competitive advantage.”

The funding comes from CommonAngels (a network of Boston angel investors), Pan-Asia, LaunchPad Venture Group, and Clean Energy Venture Group. Stevens said she was particularly pleased to be bringing top software investors and top cleantech investors into the round, because she believes Practically Green sits at the intersection of both industries.

The company is also announcing that it has hired Mark Bissell, an early employee at SuccessFactors, to be its head of customer success.

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Practically Green Raises $3M To Help Companies Manage Sustainability Programs

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Practically Green says it has raised $3 million in Series A funding for its online tools that encourage employees to act more sustainably. ...

Versa is launching a new network for sponsored op-eds, which it calls Featured Perspectives.

The startup is also announcing that it has raised additional funding led by The Omidyar Network (the firm created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar), bringing its total seed round to $2 million. Other investors include the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, as well as Quotidian Ventures.

We last wrote about Versa when it raised the first part of its seed funding ($1.3 million) and was called ElectNext. At the time, the company was offering publisher widgets that would display contextual political data, but founder and CEO Keya Dannenbaum told me yesterday, “We discovered the core problem [for publishers] — finding a way to monetize previously unmonetized parts of their site while hopefully enhancing the newsreading experience.”

Hence the creation of the Versa Media Network, which connects online publishers with organizations willing to pay to have their opinions and content featured in related articles. You can see some examples from Versa’s initial publishers — in this article in The Philadelphia Inquirer, a news account of Pennsylvania Gov. Corbett’s statements on gay marriage is followed by a comment from Human Rights Watch criticizing Corbett. And this column in RealClearPolitics looking at the problems with the Obamacare website is accompanied by a comment from benefits company Maxwell Health offering its own thoughts on the issue.

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Dannenbaum said Versa has built technology that analyzes news articles as they’re published and flags the ones that may be relevant to organizations that have signed up as a potential contributors. Then, once a contributor gets an alert and decides to write something, she said it becomes “a human process” of writing a comment and submitting it for publication.

Timeliness is definitely an issue, she acknowledged — if someone submits an additional perspective days after an article has gone up, it’s probably not going to be seen by that many readers. However, Dannenbaum said the average response time is under an hour.

She argued that this approach benefits readers, too. Traditionally, news stories and op-eds have been “sectioned off” from each other, but online, it makes more sense to present these things “side by side.” In addition, she suggested that many organizations are trying to accomplish similar ends already, by posting anonymous comments that back up their views. So having a sponsored comment or op-ed unit makes things more transparent.

As for the quality of these Featured Perspectives, Dannenbaum said that whatever content guidelines a publisher has, they’ll also apply to Versa’s content. Plus, publishers will always have the right to remove a Featured Perspective from their site, no questions asked.

With the technology moving out of beta testing and the new funding and, Dannenbaum said the company is ready to expand its publisher network. And while most of the early uses focused on political content, she argued that Versa can be used more broadly: “I don’t think this setup is vertical-specific.”