Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 03/22 – Unusual Trouble At Red-Hot Startup Dispo

Episode Date: March 22, 2021

Red hot app Dispo is losing some big name investors and the founder is leaving the startup’s board. As anticipated, Zoom goes platform. Microsoft is beginning a soft HQ reopening. The secret sensor found in the HomePod mini. And the smart startup that has cloned Amazon’s biggest competitive moats, to make them available to everybody. Sponsors: Kiwico.com, promocode "ride" for 30 percent off! BuyRaycon.com/tech for 15% off Links: David Dobrik, Losing Sponsors and Fans, Steps Down From App He Co-founded (NYTimes) Spark Capital decides to “sever all ties” with David Dobrik’s Dispo app weeks after leading deal (TechCrunch) Zoom introduces new SDK to help developers tap into video services (TechCrunch) Microsoft to start reopening headquarters on March 29th, with hybrid workplace focus (The Verge) Apple’s HomePod Mini Has a Secret Sensor Waiting to Be Switched On (BLoomberg) Inside the Democrats' strategy to bombard Big Tech (Axios) On-demand logistics and fulfillment startup Flowspace raises $31M (VentureBeat) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech Meme Right Home for Monday, March 22nd, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. Red Hot App Dispo is losing some big name investors and the founder is leaving the startup's board. As anticipated, Zoom goes platform. Microsoft is beginning a soft HQ reopening, the secret sensor found inside the HomePod Mini, and the smart startup that has cloned Amazon's biggest competitive moats to make them available to everybody.

Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Remember Dispo, that hot new photo social app that we were keeping our eye on as a potential next big thing? Dispo basically made you wait until the morning before your photos developed, in quotes. It was co-founded by famous YouTuber David Dobrick. Well, one of Dispo's major VC backers, Spark Capital has suddenly announced it is, quote, severing all ties with Dispo after claims of sexual assault. against a member of Dobrick's vlog squad arose last week. I suppose I need to back up and explain a bit. David Dobrick has been called the Jimmy Fallon of Gen Z for his popular YouTube videos,

which apparently focus on comedy and pranks and stunts and the like, tens of millions of subscribers. Dobrick is one of those YouTubers that has one of those multi-million dollar mansions that is ostensibly the scene of a lot of his videos. He also has this sort of entourage of people, known as the Vlog Squad, who also star in his videos. It is a member of the Vlog Squad that is accused of the sexual assault, though there have been some other questionable incidents lately that Dobrick himself has recently apologized for in video. Anyway, without getting two in the weeds over all of that, last week Mr. Dobrick was losing sponsors left and right. Hello Fresh, Dollar Shave Club, EA Sports, Seatkeek, all severed ties.

The very first link in the show notes can give you a rundown of all of that. Now, normally, I do tend to steer clear of these sorts of YouTube star and influencer controversies, but there is real sort of industry news here because I can't really recall seeing this happen before, quoting TechCrunch. In light of the recent news about the vlog squad and David Dobrick, the co-founder of Dispo, we have made the decision to sever all ties with the company. Spark Capital tweeted, we have stepped down from our position on the the board, and we are in the process of making arrangements to ensure we do not profit from our recent investment in Dispo, end quote. Spark Capital's decision to step back from the Dispo

investment feels like a first of its kind, and if not, rare, it could trigger other investors with stakes in the company to do the same. Spark Capital led a Series A in Dispo, a $20 million financing event that valued the company at $200 million, less than a month ago. The current statement by Spark does not indicate that the investment has been pulled. pooled from the company yet. Spark Capital did not immediately respond to request for comment in regards to what this process would look like and if the shares will be sold back to the company or to another buyer. While the mechanics of the decision are unclear, the fact that the firm led a deal so recently in the company may have given it some leeway to walk away. Unshackled Ventures,

a firm that backs immigrant founders, was an early investor in Dispo and declined to comment on the record. 776, an early-stage venture capital firm founded by Reddit's Alexis O'Hanian led the seed round and was unable to be reached for comment, end quote. I too am saying this is exceedingly rare, and this was very much a startup that Silicon Valley had its eye on. That invite-only beta that Dispo was running was getting a lot of buzz, and seemingly everyone was waiting to see what would happen when they opened the app up more widely. I'm not saying that Dispo was on the level of TikTok or Clubhouse yet in terms of levels of Silicon Valley or venture capital buzz and attention, but it very much has been high on people's

radar. And now, the news that Mr. Dobrick has also apparently stepped down from his position on the Board of Dispo. We'll see what happens from here. Speaking of hot startups that people were waiting on to see what the next act might look like, Zoom has today announced an SDK to help developers build Zoom video services into other apps, quoting TechCrunch. One clear sign of a maturing platform is when the company exposes the services it uses for its own tools to other developers. Zoom has been doing that for some time, introducing Zoom apps last year and the marketplace to distribute and sell those apps. Today, the company introduced a new SDK software development kit to help developers embed Zoom video services inside other applications. If you want to include video in your app, you could try and code it yourself, or you could

simply take advantage of Zoom's expertise in this area and use the SDK to add video to the application and save a lot of time and effort. The company envisions applications developers embedding video in social, gaming, or retail applications where including video could enhance the user experience. For example, a shop owner could show different outfits to an online shopper in a live video feed and discuss their tastes in real time. Zoom's CTO, Brendan Idelson, said the SDK is actually part of a broader set of services designed to help developers take advantage of all the developer tooling that the company has been developing in recent years. As part of that push, the company is also announcing a central developer portal.

In addition, the company said that it wanted to give developers more data about how people are using these Zoom features in their applications, so they will be providing a new analytics dashboard with usage statistics, end quote. So as I've been saying recently, devs revs your engines. From the Return to Normacy Department, this is the first headline of its kind, I believe. Microsoft says it will begin a limited reopening of its Seattle headquarters on March 29th, just a week from today. Though it does plan to focus on hybrid workplaces going forward, quoting the verge. The software giant originally started encouraging employees to work from home more than a year ago,

just as the coronavirus pandemic began, and the company's main U.S. offices have remained close for months as a result. This is the beginning of a reopening of Microsoft's offices as part of six stages the company outlined last year. This is stage four, or what's called a soft opening, to allow more employees back. Stage five moves offices into open with restrictions before stage six is fully open without restrictions. Alongside this reopening, Microsoft is also focusing on a hybrid workplace as it anticipates a continued demand for remote working and flexibility among its own employees and elsewhere. Microsoft is releasing a 2021 version of its Work Trend Index, a report that includes data and research on how employees and businesses are responding to the pandemic. Microsoft has found that 73% of workers surveyed want to continue with flexible remote work. Microsoft itself now considers working from home part-time.

as standard for employees, and the company is looking into new ways of using technology to bridge the gap between remote work and traditional offices, end quote. A tear-down of Apple's HomePod Mini has revealed a sensor that measures temperature and humidity inside it. That sensor is currently disabled, but yeah, looks like we might have some new home kit features incoming. Quoting Mark German in Bloomberg. The Coopertino-California-based technology giant never disclosed this component, and the device currently lacks consumer-facing features that use it. The company has internally discussed using the sensor to determine a room's temperature and humidity so internet-connected thermostats can adjust different parts of a home

based on current conditions, according to people familiar with the situation. The hardware could also let the HomePod Mini automatically trigger other actions, say turning a fan on or off, depending on the temperature. The new capabilities would be a particular Boone to an Apple software system called HomeKit that controls thermostats, lights, locks, plugs, and other devices in the home. HomeKit works with fewer gadgets than similar software from Amazon and Google, and Apple doesn't make its own smart home hardware beyond the HomePod and Apple TV streaming box. However, there are about 40 thermostats featured on Apple's website that are compatible with HomeKit. The sensor measuring 1.5 by 1.5 millimeters is buried in the bottom

edge of the HomePod Mini's plastic fabric-wrapped case near its power cable. The component's location was confirmed by I Fix It, which took apart one of the speakers after an inquiry from Bloomberg News. The sensor is made by Texas Instruments and is called the HDC 2010 humidity and temperature digital sensor, according to Tech Insights, a firm that analyzes components inside of electronics. The part is situated relatively far from the device's main internal components, meaning it is designed to measure the external environment rather than the temperature of the speaker's other electronics. Many mobile devices include sensors that can trigger the device to slow performance or disable features to stop components overheating. While rare, this isn't the first time Apple has slipped a dormant piece of technology into its devices.

The 2008 iPod Touch had a Bluetooth chip, but support for Bluetooth connectivity was enabled the following year via software. Apple typically releases major HomePod software updates annually in the fall. all, it's unclear if or when Apple will switch on the temperature sensor, but its presence in HomePod mini units that have already been sold suggests that this is just a matter of time. And Apple's spokeswoman declined to comment, end quote. By the way, it did slip through the cracks because of weekend timing and cadence and whatnot. But I will take this opportunity to note that Apple has officially discontinued the original HomePod to focus instead going forward only on the HomePod Mini. Apple will provide HomePod owners software updates and support via AppleCare, but yeah,

big swing and a miss here for Apple in the smart speaker market. They were late. They came in at the high end and expensive, and now they better hope that the Mini can carve out a niche for itself, maybe with new features like this. From the keeping an eye on the regulatory environment file, the powerful Democrat overseeing antitrust legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives, Representative David Cicillin says he's crafting around 10 smaller antitrust bills to be ready as soon as may, instead of just making one huge bill that might be easier for big tech to combat. Quoting Axios. In an interview with Axios on Sunday, Representative David Cicillin, Democrat of Rhode Island, said

he didn't want to give the major technology companies and their armies of lobbyists the easy target of a massive antitrust bill. The way Cicillian sees it, this small target strategy achieves two goals. He has a better chance of finding common ground between Democrats and Republicans on more narrowly targeted issues, and he makes it harder for Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Google to mobilize quickly against reforms they don't like. If you look at the way these technology companies have staffed up with their lobbying and the money they're investing in Washington, it's designed to prevent any changes to the current ecosystem that benefits them enormously, Cicillin told Axios. They have literally billions and billions and billions of reasons to try to protect the current system because it produces profits not

not seen on planet Earth. Recognizing this reality, Cicillene said, his intention is to use this range of bills to advance all the recommendations in his panel's 450-page investigation into competition in the digital marketplace. Outside of his antitrust work, Cicillian also is writing a proposal taking aim at online company's key protection against liability from users' posts, section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Cicilline said, his proposal, which is in the early stages, would focus on the decisions companies like Facebook make to amplify content that's posted by users, end quote. Finally today, how about an interesting raise? Flowspace is an on-demand logistics and fulfillment startup that offers integrations for

Shopify, Amazon, Walmart, and others to power two-day shipping. So imagine a startup that just makes Amazon-like warehouse and fulfillment centers available to anyone, as well as Amazon Prime-like efficiency and speed when it comes to delivery. What a smart startup idea. Essentially, you clone all of Amazon's biggest moats in e-commerce, and to do so, FlowSpace has raised a $31 million series B, quoting Venture Beat. The demand for warehousing fulfillment is on the rise. Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, about 35% of industrial leasing activity was related to e-commerce, according to a report from J.J.L. But as early as July, as much as 50% of that leasing activity was tied to the online retail industry. J.J.L anticipates that as a result, the need for industrial real estate could reach an additional

1 billion square feet by 2025. Founded in 2017, Flowspace offers fulfillment and distribution services, warehouses, and a team of workers that help pick, pack, and ship products. customers can track inbound and outbound shipments to and from warehouses and access a network of intelligence tools for real-time insights and logistics recommendations. Companies get an overview of all the items in their Flowspace warehouses, and they can see inventory, orders, and things that require action. According to co-founder and CEO Ben Echis, Flowspace taps AI and machine learning to deliver predictive insights that allow retailers and e-commerce companies to anticipate market demands and stock inventory in those locations. From the time an order is placed on a website to the

time it arrives at someone's door, it's tracked in our software. Our software is already running in hundreds of warehouse facilities that are using Flowspace to enable e-commerce fulfillment, he said. This means that with a single integration point, brands can store and ship their products from multiple locations so they can offer faster and cheaper delivery to their customers. This process historically takes weeks or months. With Flowspace, they can do this in days. This process historically takes weeks or months with flow space they can do this in days, end quote. It's widely reported that the pandemic has accelerated the growth of e-commerce. For every $100 spent online, companies are spending $20 of that to store and ship these products to customers' homes.

We support brands selling online and helping them get products to their customers more efficiently. Each has continued. We are building the most scalable and capital-efficient fulfillment platform in the industry. This won't happen overnight, but in a few years when you order something online, those products will have moved through the flow space platform, end quote. With the series B, 80-person flow space has raised a total of $46 million to date. Tonight, 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific, we're going to be live on Clubhouse once again. We will be recording this one, I hope, if the system I worked out over the weekend actually works.

So if you do miss it, we'll probably share it with you this weekend, but don't miss it. Come join us. Raise your hand. If you've got a burning question ahead of time, DM it to me on Twitter. Talk to you tomorrow.