Good morning, everyone. Several news organizations report that business collaboration startup Slack Technologies is raising a new funding round that could value the company at more than $2 billion. New services from payments pioneers Square and Stripe signal it’s time to start thinking differently about digital money. And Localytics has raised more funds to personalize mobile apps marketing.
Plus, Steve Jobs was always willing to change his mind, are you? Here’s more backstory about Becoming Steve Jobs, the unauthorized bio that long-time Apple executives like better than the “official” one. Have a productive Tuesday!
TOP OF MIND
More new ways to move money around. Payments pioneers Square and Stripe are talking up new services that make it simpler for people to spend and for entrepreneurs to collect. Nasdaq, meanwhile, is preparing to support trading of bitcoin and other alternative currencies.
Here is a quick recap of what’s going on.
Stripe’s technology, called Connect, is aimed at the wave of on-demand workers that make marketplace business models possible: part-time drivers or housecleaners or administrative assistants. The service—you can think of it as an automated payroll function—ensures that payments made via the mobile apps for those marketplaces trigger the appropriate deposit for the person who handled the service.
Square’s new service, $Cashtag, builds on its existing Square Cash option. It lets small service businesses (such as home improvements contractors or repair technicians) collect fees through the Square Cash mobile application. All the customer needs is the app and the business owner’s unique “Cashtag.” Square takes a 1.5% cut of the transferred amount.
Nasdaq OMX is partnering with a startup, Noble Markets, on a new exchange platform for digital currencies. Considering that Nasdaq’s technology sites behind more than 30 other marketplaces, globally, that’s a big show of support. It doesn’t hurt that the team behind Noble Markets has experience boasts experience from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and UBS.
TRENDING
What’s behind that Twitter-Foursquare deal. Meaningful context about more than 7 billion check-ins at more than 65 million different locations. The immediate impact: Tweeps can now able to broadcast their 140-character manifestos from specific places, not just general geographic coordinates.
Really want to see the upcoming NFL game in London? Live? The league plans to sell the national broadcast rights to a “digital distribution” company like YouTube, reports The Wall Street Journal. Local television stations for the two teams, the Jacksonville Jaguars and Buffalo Bills, will also broadcast the game.
FTC bones up on Internet of things. It’s hiring technologists savvy about connected cars, mobile payments, smart homes, machine learning and big data algorithms. The goal: get ahead of consumer protection challenges. Basically, this is an evolution of its existing mobile technology team.
Ready to buy jeans from a vending machine? It’s just one idea being considered by new Gap CEO Art Peck as shoppers abandon low-end shopping malls. Other experiments will include mobile registers and interactive digital walls. “I would like to be able to articulate a nice linear path as to what our stores are going to evolve to,” Peck told Fast Company. “But I think it’s going to be a lot messier than that.”
THE DOWNLOAD
What keeps mobile apps users coming back? Marketing analytics company Localytics thinks it has the answer, and it just got another $35 million vote of confidence.
Its Series D funding round, led by Sapphire Ventures, also includes existing investors Foundation Capital and Polaris Partners. The new infusion almost doubles the 200-person Boston company’s backing, bringing total backing to $60 million.
“App marketing is seeing tremendous growth, and Localytics has the strongest customers base and the unique combination of app marketing and analytics needed to dominate this category,” said Sapphire managing director Doug Higgins, who has joined Localytics’ board.
The company’s technology supports more than 32,000 apps across 2.3 billion devices, including software for Nordstrom, Rue La La, eBay, The Weather Channel, and MyFitness Pal. The founders actually were mobile app developers before founding Localytics. The CEO Raj Aggarwal was involved with the strategy behind the iPhone App Store concept, while the CTO Henry Cipolla built the analytics technology for Microsoft’s desktop applications.
“We set off to build a mobile analytics company, that could tell mobile apps developers what they could do to create a better experience,” Aggarwal said. “What we started to discover in working with customers is that they were struggling with monetization.”
The funds will be used to build out Localytics’ vision for “predictive app marketing” that goes beyond the in-app messages and push marketing used to encourage certain behaviors.
“Predicting a user’s next move really brings personalization to life,” Aggarwal wrote in the company’s blog. “Our platform now takes the robust user and behavioral insights we collect for customers and users data science and machine learning to identify correlations and therefore a customer’s intent.”
According to Localytics research, 20% of all mobile apps are used just once. If someone doesn’t return within the first week, there’s a 60% probability that he or she will never come back. Predictive app marketing will help marketers decide which users are at risk and which ones are worth pursuing.
ALSO WORTH SHARING
Eric Schmidt: No really, Glass isn’t dead. “It is a big and very fundamental platform for Google,” the company’s executive chairman told The Wall Street Journal. As we know, the task of making the wearable technology fit for mainstream release rests in the hands of Nest co-founder Tony Fadell.
$80 million in funding for Android alternative. Cyanogen, which sells an open source edition of the mobile device operating system, just got an infusion from investors including Qualcomm; the new investment arm of Twitter; and the venture divisions of Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica and Indonesian carrier Smartfren Telecom. The new round brings Cyanogen’s total funding to $110 million, at an estimated valuation of $650 million, reports the WSJ.
eBay swaps out directors in anticipation of separation. GoPro President Tony Bates, Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern and Icahn Capital managing director Jonathan Christodo will begin their terms immediately.
The latter director was elected as part of an agreement with activist investor Carl Icahn. Long-time board members Bill Ford (executive chairman of the automaker) and Richard Schlosberg (the retired CEO of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation) are retiring effective May 1. Also buried in the announcement is the revelation that an official, Form 10 filing about the separation plan will be filed during the second quarter.
The first big legal challenge to net neutrality has arrived, in the form of a lawsuit filed by trade association U.S. Telecom. The papers describe the new rules as “arbitrary” and “capricious.” Separately, a small broadband service provider from Texas has also file a suit of its own.
Now playing, in a Tweet near you. The social network is testing video autoplay (like what Facebook uses) to gauge whether the feature improves viewership for promoted content.
Microsoft chairman, ServiceNow CEO among funders of cloud backup service. Angel investors John W. Thompson, Frank Slootman and Veritas founder Mark Leslie are contributing to data management startup Rubrik’s $10 million Series A round. Also participating is Lightspeed Venture Partners.
MY FORTUNE BOOKMARKS
Exclusive: Pinterest unpins employee tax bills by Dan Primack
ISIS: the Internet’s biggest disruptor by Bhaskar Chakravoti
At Kleiner Perkins sexism trial, it’s all about ‘thought leadership’ by Kia Kokalitcheva
3 reasons why you should be making mistakes at work by Paul J.H. Schoemaker
Cantor Fitzgerald sets Apple’s market value at $1 trillion by Phil Elmer-DeWitt
Why system testing, a critical aspect of data security, is worsening by Robert Hackett
ONE MORE THING
Now that he’s got an IPO in the works, GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving wants you to forget about his company’s sexist past. So, he just produced a documentary “debugging” the technology gender gap.
MARK YOUR CALENDAR
Gartner Business Intelligence & Analytics Summit: Crossing the divide. (March 30 – April 1; Las Vegas)
AWS Summit. First in a series of cloud strategy briefings. (April 9; San Francisco)
Knowledge15: Automate IT services. (April 19 – 24; Las Vegas)
RSA Conference: The world talks security. (April 20 – 24; San Francisco)
Forrester’s Forum for Technology Leaders: Win in the age of the customer. (April 27 - 28; Orlando, Fla.)
MicrosoftIgnite: Business tech extravaganza. (May 4 – 8; Chicago)
NetSuite SuiteWorld: Cloud ERP strategy. (May 4 – 7; San Jose, California)
EMC World: Data strategy. (May 4 - 7; Las Vegas)
SAPPHIRE NOW: The SAP universe. (May 5 – 7; Orlando, Florida)
Gartner Digital Marketing Conference: Reach your destination faster. (May 5 – 7; San Diego)
Cornerstone Convergence: Connect, collaborate. (May 11 - 13; Los Angeles)
Annual Global Technology, Media and Telecom Conference: JP Morgan’s 43rd invite-only event. (May 18 - 20; Boston)
MongoDB World: Scale the universe. (June 1 - 2; New York)
HP Discover: Trends and technologies. (June 2 - 4; Las Vegas)
Red Hat Summit: Energize your enterprise. (June 23 - 26; Boston)
Brainstorm Tech: Fortune’s invite-only gathering of thinkers, influencers and entrepreneurs. (July 13 - 15; Aspen, Colorado)
VMworld: The virtualization ecosystem. (Aug. 30 – Sept. 3, 2015; San Francisco)
Dreamforce: The Salesforce community. (Sept. 15 - 18; San Francisco)
BoxWorks 2015: Cloud collaboration solutions. (Sept. 28 - 30; San Francisco)
Workday Rising: Meet and share. (Sept. 28 - Oct. 1; Las Vegas)
Gartner Symposium ITxpo: CIOs and senior IT executives. (Oct. 4 - 8; Orlando, Florida)
Oracle OpenWorld: Customer and partner conference. (Oct. 25 - 29; San Francisco)