Skullcandy has always been an odd brand. Aimed at a younger, hipper audience, the headphones always featured wacky graphics and a lower price point. Now, facing competition from multiple players, they’ve decided to step up their game in terms of quality and style.
Their two new models, the noise-cancelling Venue and the bass-heavy Crusher 360, are designed to hit the Bose/B&O/Sony quality point while still maintaining a bit of Beats styling. The Venue are the most interesting of the pair. They are true over-ear noise-cancelling headphones that cost a mere $179 — more than $100 less than Bose’s best offerings.
The Venue’s noise cancellation was excellent, as was the sound quality. The headphones were solidly built and last for two five-hour flights, a first for me when it comes to wireless or wired noise-cancelling headphones. Usually in almost every model I’ve tested I’ve had to charge or change the battery after about eight hours. This is a vast improvement.
As for audio quality, I was quite impressed. Having heard earlier Skullcandy models, I went in expecting tinny sound and muddy bass. I got neither. What I got was a true sound without much modification and very nice noise cancelling. In short, it did exactly what it says on the tin.
One peeve is the size of the headphones and the case. Most headphones can fold up to a smaller package that is unobtrusive when it hangs off your back or sits in your lap. These headphones come in a massive, flat case that is not imminently portable. If you’re used to smaller, thinner cases, this might be a deal breaker. That said, the price and sound are excellent and the Venue is a real step up.
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Then we have the Crusher 360. These are also well-made headphones that collapse into a slightly smaller package than the Venue. They also offer what Skullcandy calls Sensory Bass and 360-degree audio. What that means, in practice, is that these things sound like a bass-lover’s very effusive home theater system on your head.
The Crusher, like the Venue, is wireless and lasts about 30 hours on one charge. They don’t have noise cancelling, but what they do have is a set of haptics inside the ear cups that essentially turn bass events into wildly impressive explosions of sound. You can turn this feature up and down using a capacitive touch control on the side of the headphones and, if you’re like me, you probably will be using that feature multiple times.
How do they work? Well, the bass these things pump out is almost comical. While I don’t want to completely disparage these things — different ears will find them pleasant if not downright cool – the Crushers turn almost everything — from a drama to a bit of dubstep — into a bass-heavy party. I used these on another flight and heard every single bang, boom and bop in the movies I watched and, oddly, I found the added bass response quite nice in regular music. If you like bass you’ll like these. If you don’t, then you’d best stay away.
The headphones cost $299.
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Skullcandy isn’t the audiophile’s choice in headphones. That said, their efforts to improve the brand, product and quality are laudable. I avoided the company for years after a few bad experiences and I’m glad to see them coming back with a new and improved set of cans that truly offer great sound and a nice price. While the Crushers are definitely an acquired taste I could honestly recommend the Venue over any similarly priced noise-cancelling headphones on the market, including Bose’s businessperson specials. These headphones aren’t perfect, but they’re also not bad.
Listen, if you’re the kind of person who wants to watch a rap video about scooters, here’s a rap video about scooters. Don’t let me stop you.
Also, if you make it to the end, you might as well stick around for the credits. For one thing, you’ll learn that it was directed by Andrew Oleck, the man who created that fake Mark Zuckerberg video, “A World Without Facebook.”
And then there’s the disclaimer: “This video is not an advertisement. It is comedic satire. Bayview Drive Films is not endorsed, affiliated or otherwise sponsored by Bird.”
It’s the kind of message that raises more questions than it answers. Like: What’s the joke here? Is the video pro-scooter, anti-scooter, neither, both? Was I supposed to laugh? I mean, I chuckled a little at the rubber chicken, but mostly I cringed. Is that normal? Would I have gotten more out of it if I listened to more rap? Or if I’d ever been on a scooter? Right now, in the year 2018, is “satire” even possible?
In related news, here’s a synth-pop song about Elon Musk. Happy Labor Day weekend!
The Village Voice is dead — at least, as a functioning journalistic organization.
Starting today, the legendary alternative newspaper will no longer publish new stories. Gothamist reports that at a staff meeting, owner Peter Barbey said that about half the team would be laid off, while the other half would remain on-board for now to “wind things down” and work on creating a digital Voice archive.
Barbey acquired the Voice in 2015 and took the paper online-only last year. In a statement released today, he said:
In recent years, the Voice has been subject to the increasingly harsh economic realities facing those creating journalism and written media. Like many others in publishing, we were continually optimistic that relief was around the next corner. Where stability for our business is, we do not know yet. The only thing that is clear now is that we have not reached that destination.
The Village Voice was created to give speed to a cultural and social revolution, and its legacy and the voices that created that legacy are still relevant today. Perhaps more than ever. Its archives are an indispensable chronicle of history and social progress. Although the Voice will not continue publishing, we are dedicated to ensuring that its legacy will endure to inspire more generations of readers and writers to give even more speed to those same goals.
Some of that wording suggests that although The Voice’s editorial operations are ending, Barbey may still be working to salvage or sell parts of the company. In fact, Gothamist says that he told staff that he’s been talking to potential buyers, and that “for some of them this is something we’d have to do before they could talk to us any further.”
Renesas is looking at buying IDT for $6 billion, reports the Nikkei. Renesas is engaged in something of a renaissance under CEO Bunsei Kure (pictured) who took over in May 2016. In February 2017, Renesas bought Intersil for $3.2 billion. Five years before that, in 2012, Renesas had to be bailed out by the Japanese ...
TT Electronics has announced a series of low profile (2mm) high power resistors for use on heatsinks. Called WDBR-UL, they are thick-film-on-steel resistors, developed from the existing WDBR series, with creepage, clearances and power ratings assessed in accordance with the requirements of UL508, “easing the compliance burden for UL approved end-users,” said the TT. “For circuit designers who need ...
Socionext has announced acoustics IPs in its “ForteArt” software family. ForteArt enhances the sound-related user experience, with applications including consumer products, public signage and automotive infotainment systems. The software IPs can be implemented with other vendors’ hardware, as well as with Socionext’s SoC products. ForteArt has been organized as a family of solutions to address ...
X-FAB is to double ssix inch SiC capacity at its fab in Lubbock, Texas. In preparation for doubling capacity, X-FAB Texas has purchased a second heated ion implanter for use in manufacturing 6-inch SiC wafers. Delivery of this heated ion implanter is expected by the end of 2018, and production release is planned during the ...
Custom MMIC has launched a line of GaAs Digital Step Attenuators (DSA). The DSA family is intended to ease the design of high dynamic range receivers and instrumentation. These applications often must accomplish gain control of 50dB or more. Fine step DSAs (e.g., 0.5dB Least Significant Bit [LSB]) are often used for these applications. However, when ...
Weebly is part of Square now, but it continues to update as a standalone product. This week, for example, the company announced a number of new e-commerce features for the Weebly mobile app.
Those features include the ability to ship and print labels, to respond to customer questions (via Facebook Messenger, which can be embedded on Weebly sites), to approve customer reviews, to create branded coupon codes and to edit every aspect of your store, including product listing and pricing — all from the app.
Much of this functionality already existed on desktop, so the announcement is about moving these capabilities onto smartphones. In a blog post, the company outlined a vision for the mobile phone to become “the new back office.”
Weebly CEO David Rusenko told me that as his team has been adding more features for merchants, he wants people to think of Weebly “increasingly as an e-commerce platform,” not just a simple website builder. And support for mobile was an important part of that.
“This is what our customers were requesting,” Rusenko said. “Basically, people are taking their entrepreneurial lifestyle and having the freedom to work on things wherever you are.”
And apparently mobile usage is already up significantly, with a 75 percent increase over the past year in customers using the Weebly mobile app to manage orders, as well as a 120 percent increase in mobile usage to manage product listings.
Twitter continues to roll out new policies aimed at increasing transparency, particularly around political advertising.
Amidst ongoing concerns about Russian election interference and misinformation on social media, the company recently announced political ad guidelines and launched an Ads Transparency Center where you can find more information about advertisers.
Initially, however, Twitter’s stricter standards were limited to ads for U.S. federal election candidates and campaigns. Now it’s announced a policy around the broader category of “issue ads.”
In a blog post, Twitter’s vice president of trust and safety Del Harvey and its general manager of revenue product Bruce Falck said the policy affects two categories:
* Ads that refer to an election or a clearly identified candidate, or
* Ads that advocate for legislative issues of national importance
In both cases, advertisers will need to apply for certification, which involves verifying their identity and location in the United States. Like election ads, issue ads will be labeled as such in the Twitter timeline, and they’ll allow users to click through and learn more about the advertiser. They’ll also be included in the Ads Transparency center.
As examples of the kinds of issues that would be covered, Harvey and Falck cited “abortion, civil rights, climate change, guns, healthcare, immigration, national security, social security, taxes, and trade,” though they also said that list will likely evolve over time.
News organizations that want to run ads around their political coverage can apply for an exemption. (Since the definition of what is and isn’t a news organization can be blurry, there are specific criteria that they’d need to meet, like providing editorial staff information online and not being “dedicated to advocating on a single issue.”)
“We don’t believe that news organizations running ads on Twitter that report on these issues, rather than advocate for or against them, should be subject to this policy,” Harvey and Falck wrote.
Twitter says it will start enforcing the policy (which, to be clear, is currently U.S.-only) on September 30.
The Drummond MTL15 test lamp has a 1,000V CAT IV safety rating, and LED indication for AC and DC voltages ranging from 50 to 690V, “ensuring compliance with health and safety requirements for safe working in all BS EN61010 installation categories”, said component distributor Martindale Electric, which is stocking the test lamp. Built-in LEDs provide ...
Consumer goods should be repairable, freeing owners from the cycle of ‘throw it away and buy a new one’. If, like me, you are angered by the increasingly “throw-away” culture which pervades technology products you might wonder, like me, why the government can’t be more active in encouraging, even forcing companies that make consumer goods ...
LoRa is emerging as the champion for low power data exchange for the ‘smart’ utilities the IoT relies on, writes Caroline Hayes. Smart city low power wide area (LPWA) is expected to achieve over 140 million connections. According to analyst ON World, there could be as many as 2.6 billion connected, wireless IoT devices for ...
Premier Farnell saw sales grow 11.1% y-o-y in its 2018 financial year with revenue of $1.5 billion. Q4 sales were up 13% y-o-y. “This is a significant result,” says Farnell president Chris Breslin (pictured), “we have built real momentum, delivering growth every quarter, in every region, and 13% year over year growth globally during the ...
Following Theresa May’s trip to Africa, the DCMS has announced a number of tech initiatives with Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya. Dedicated UK science, technology and innovation teams will build on the existing science relationships with South Africa and Kenya, including through the shared investments in the Newton Fund and high-end research programmes like the ...
Idec has improved the inherent safety inside its stop switches with two developments: By reversing the position of the spring, the contact’s relaxed state corresponds to its safety position (when contacts are open, the machine is at a standstill). The spring does not undergo any load once the plunger has been pressed down and as ...
Darpa’s decision to spread the R&D love will keep US tech ahead of big-spender China. Thirty-three years after Sematech was founded, the Americans are embarking on a new semiconductor research and development programme which could be just as significant. Unlike 1985, when the Japan had overtaken the US in memory process technology and in semiconductor ...
Sir James Dyson has applied for planning permission to build a ten mile test track for EVs at his ex-airfield base in Malmesbury. Dyson has also announced plans to spend another £150 million on an EV which will be launched the year after next. The investment will take Dyson’s total spend on the EV project ...
Insight SIP, the ultra-miniature RF modules specialist, has seen a consolidation of its investors. By buying the interests of existing shareholders, the Toulon investment firm 2C Invest has amassed an 18.6% share in the company. Over the last 10 years, the company has grown at an annual rate of over 30% per annum and has ...
Simplifying the design of low-to-mid-power motor controls in the 7V-45V range, ST’s STSPIN830 and STSPIN840 single-chip drivers contain flexible control logic and low-RDS(ON) power switches for industrial applications, medical technology, and home appliances. The STSPIN830 for driving 3-phase brushless DC motors has a mode-setting pin that lets users control the three half bridges of the integrated power stage with direct ...
Honeywell’s IHM Series Aerospace Proximity Sensors for commercial and military aircraft are available from TTI. Honeywell has over thirty years’ experience designing accurate and reliable aircraft proximity sensors for extreme environments, and its IHM Series reduces downtime and maintenance costs by obviating the need for unnecessary preventative maintenance and troubleshooting. The IHM Series has a ...
“The Other Side of the Wind” has had a long, torturous path to completion.
In a way, it’s one of the final chapters in the longer saga of Orson Welles — who, after making “Citizen Kane” (often cited as the greatest film of all time) and “The Magnificent Ambersons,” spent most of the ensuing decades in Europe, piecing together the funding for projects like “Chimes at Midnight.”
He shot “The Other Side of the Wind” throughout the 1970s and even managed to edit part of the film before running out of funding. Since his death in 1985, Peter Bogdanovich and other Welles supporters have tried to complete the film, but they’ve been stymied by additional legal and financial issues.
As further proof that this really is happening, Netflix has released the first trailer. While the trailer is a bit cryptic, it gives us a good look at Jack Hannaford, the reactionary director at the center of the film — he’s played by John Huston, the legendary director and occasional actor who also portrayed the villain in “Chinatown.”
Netflix has hired Vernā Myers in the newly-created role of vice president, inclusion strategy.
Myers has spent the past two decades at the head of The Vernā Myers Company, where she consulted on issues around diversity and inclusion. She’s also written and spoken broadly on those topics.
In the announcement, Netflix notes that it’s already worked with Myers as a consultant, and that her new job will be to “devise and implement strategies that integrate cultural diversity, inclusion and equity into all aspects of Netflix’s operations worldwide.”
“I have been a longtime fan of the inclusive and diverse programming and talent at Netflix, and then I got a chance to meet the people behind the screen,” Myers said in a statement. “I was so impressed by their mission, their excellence, and decision to take their inclusion and diversity efforts to a higher level. I am so excited and look forward to collaborating all across Netflix to establish bold innovative frameworks and practices that will attract, fully develop, and sustain high performing diverse teams.”
Sinemia continues its campaign to take advantage of MoviePass’ high-profile struggles and win over the better-known movie ticket subscription service’s customers. Today, it announced a new plan priced at $9.99 per month.
MoviePass, after all, recently announced that it would be keeping its monthly subscription price at $9.95, but limiting subscribers to three movies per month (with discounts on additional tickets).
The new Sinemia tier also includes three tickets each month, but it has the additional benefit of allowing subscribers to buy tickets for any 2D, non-IMAX screen, and to buy those tickets in advance. MoviePass, in contrast, is rotating the available movies each day, and it requires subscribers to buy their tickets at the theater, on the same day as the screening.
Just a couple weeks ago, Sinemia announced a refer-a-friend program that rewards subscribers who convince their friends to leave other subscription services. The company makes no secret of the fact that it’s targeting MoviePass in particular — in today’s announcement, it describes the new plan as one that “matches MoviePass’ latest.”
Sinemia offers a variety of other options, ranging from $3.99 per month for one ticket, to $14.99 for three tickets, with IMAX and 3D access.
Half of the industry’s capex this year will be spent on memory, says IC Insights. This year’s capex will be $102 bilkion, says I C Insights, the first rime it has topped $109 billion. This year’s capex is 9% on thec$93.3 billion spent in 2017, which was a 38% surge over 2016. More than half ...
Tydrolyte of Texas is introducing an electrolyte solution for automotive, motive, and stationary storage lead battery manufacturers. Tydrolyte is a less toxic drop-in replacement for sulphuric acid in lead batteries, claims the company “Tydrolyte is a novel innovative chemistry and a promising new approach to advancing lead batteries. It eliminates the drawbacks of handling sulfuric ...
AVX has increased the maximum operating temperature for its TWD High-Temp Max-Cap (HTMC) Series axial leaded, hermetically sealed wet tantalum capacitors from 125°C to 175°C. Currently available in two ratings, 50mF/6.3V and 25mF/10V the series achieves high capacitance values previously only offered by supercapacitors and delivers exceptional electrical and mechanical stability for extended lifetimes of ...
Pandoraannounced three new capabilities for advertisers today — the ability to dynamically assemble different audio ads for different listeners, the ability to sequentially target ads so that they fit together into a larger strategy and shorter ad formats that range from four to 10 seconds in length.
Claire Fanning, Pandora’s vice president of ad strategy, told me via email that the company is announcing these capabilities at the same time because “they work together in really powerful ways.”
For example, she also sent along campaign mock-ups that showed how ads could be tailored to include both the day of the week and a call-to-action tied to the listener’s location, and how the ads could be also specifically sequenced so that listeners start with the longer message, then hear shorter and shorter spots.
“We believe that an advertiser’s personalized audio strategy will not only be unique to that advertiser, but also unique to each campaign,” Fanning said. “In some cases, leveraging one capability may be best (short form, dynamic, sequential) — and in other cases, leveraging 2 or 3 may be most powerful. It’s really dependent on the advertiser’s creative strategy and which solution, or solutions, will support that strategy best.”
While Pandora launched its own on-demand music service last year, advertising remains the main way the company monetizes its 72.3 million active listeners. It says it’s the first company to make these features available in a large-scale way, and it’s already been testing them with 20 advertisers, enlisting Veritonic to measure the results. For one thing, it says that Lay’s found short-form audio had a 56 percent higher return on ad spend.
As the company looks to deliver more personalized advertising, it may face more questions about privacy, but Fanning said Pandora doesn’t collect any personally identifiable information about users except for their email addresses.
“We use industry-standard security practices to protect our data and have developed internal tools and processes to ensure compliance with our privacy commitment,” Fanning added. “We’ll continue to fortify this by tightening certain contractual language, auditing existing 3rd-party data partners, and evaluating future partnerships with enhanced rigor.”
The high-performance plastic PEEK – polyether ether ketone – used in connectors, medical implants and oil industry seals – can now be 3D printed, following the introduction of a PEEK-based filament for fused filament printers by German firm Apium Additive Technologies. “PEEK is considered as one of the most powerful high-performance polymers due to its ...
Former CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services UK, Jacqui Ferguson has taken a role at EngineeringUK as a trustee. EngineeringUK has plans to broaden its industry and business support activities across a wider range of technology sectors. Ferguson’s appointment will bring new expertise to the organisation. Prior to Hewlett Packard she worked for Electronic Data ...
Spanish high-voltage tester firm Diael has chosen a UK-made PC oscilloscope as part of is latest partial discharge analyser – partial discharge measurement is a way to assess the condition of insulation in high-voltage installations. Diael’s new system, dubbed MS Pico, uses Diael’s proprietary ‘BlueBox’ technique in which digital processing separates transient events that are ...
Omron Electronic Components has added to its range of AC latching power relays with devices that have interfaces for electric vehicle (EV) charge stations, PV inverters and lighting control. The G9TA AC range of power latching relays are designed for applications up to 60A maximum switching current. These G9TA relays feature 2mΩ contact resistance, 6kV ...
Logic Supply has introduced a fanless ventless industrial PC with an 8th Generation (Kaby Lake) Intel Core i7 CPU. It is based around an Intel Dawson Canyon motherboard – one of Intel’s ‘NUC’ small size motherboards, which are 4x4in (~100x100mm). “ML100G-31 provides a fully solid state, passively cooled computing solution, designed for reliability in demanding ...
Schurter has overhauled its robust metal push-button range. The switches of the MSM family retain the original 19, 22 or 30mm diameters, and stainless steel or aluminium housings, but have changed in two places, both involving the illumination: Ring illumination is more even – “by cleverly selecting a new material that diffuses the light much ...
Globalfoundries is giving up on 7nm. Instead, the company will concentrate its resources on its 14/12nm Finfet process. “GF is putting its 7nm FinFET program on hold indefinitely,” says the company. It is assumed that the 5nm and 3nm programmes are also scrapped. The 7nm process, which was expected to see customers’ designs tape out ...
Arthur C Clarke’s concept of a space elevator could stsrt to be realised by experiments beginning next month by a Japanese university and construction company. Shizuoka University and contractor Obayashi aim to launch two small (10 sq cm) satellites connected by a 10m steel cable from the International Space Station. Containers on the cable will move ...
On Wednesday the first meeting will be held by a group put together by the Japanese government to pursue flying cars. The group includes Airbus, Uber, Boeing, NEC, Cartivator (a Toyota-backed start-up), ANA, Japan Airlines, and Yamato Holdings. Japan’s Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry and the Transport Ministry plans to draft a road map this year. Economy, ...
Fujitsu has developed a crystal structure that increases both current and voltage in GaN HEMTs, effectively tripling the output power of transistors used for transmitters in the microwave band. GaN HEMT technology can serve as a power amplifier for equipment such as weather radar. By applying the new technology to this area, it is expected ...
The government has allocated £100 million to come up with a plan for a UK GPS system, according to the Sunday Telegraph. The Continentals are threatening to ban the UK from using the military encrypted signals from the EU Galileo satellite constellation. Richard Wimmer, Project Manager of the Aeolus satellite at Airbus in Stevenage, told ...
Toshiba is sampling a 50V / 5A rated bipolar stepping motor driver that supports 1/128 microstepping. The TB67S128FTG meets the often conflicting requirements of high speed, high performance and reduced power consumption making it suitable for a variety of modern applications including 3D printers, office equipment, cash dispensers, amusement machines and home appliances. At the ...
The government’s £1 million Digital Skills Innovation Fund is now open for bids from Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) and Combined Authorities for initiatives which specifically aim to help people take up digital roles. The funding will be used to help women, disabled people, people from minority backgrounds or those living in lower socioeconomic areas to ...
Automotive infotainment designers can upgrade to bigger, higher resolution displays with Maxim’s MAX20069. The MAX20069 integrates four I2C-controlled, 150mA LED backlight drivers and a four-output thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display (TFT-LCD) bias in a single chip. The chip supports larger screen sizes and higher resolution by providing positive analogue supply voltage (PAVVD) and negative analogue supply voltage ...
What’s next for robotics? At at Disrupt SF, we’ll be joined by four experts to discuss how new technologies are changing the field.
Those experts include Peter Barrett, founder and CTO and Playground, a venture fund and design studio focused on hardware startups. Barrett is a 30-year veteran of the tech industry, whose accomplishments include developing Cinepak (video compression software that was included as part of Apple QuickTime) and working at WebTV — which was acquired by Microsoft, where he led Internet TV efforts for more than a decade.
We’ll also be joined by Helen Boniske, a partner at early stage hardware investor Lemnos. Before joining Lemnos, Boniske was a front office executive for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
The panel will also include Claire Delaunay, Nvidia’s vice president of engineering. Delaunay was previously robotics program lead at Google, co-founder of autonomous vehicle startup Otto and director of engineering at Uber. At Nvidia, she leads the Isaac robotics initiative.
The final panelist will be Cyril Ebersweiler. Ebersweiler is founder and managing director of Hax, a hardware accelerator with offices in both Shenzhen and San Francisco. He’s also a general partner at global venture capital firm SOSV. And somehow, he pulls off describing himself as a “visionary punk” on his LinkedIn profile.
Disrupt SF will take place in San Francisco’s Moscone Center West from September 5 to 7. (The robotics panel will be at 1:15pm on the 5th.) You can still buy tickets right here.
If you’re not sure about watching a whole movie where your point-of-view is limited to computer and smartphone screens, you’re not alone — “Searching” filmmakers Aneesh Chaganty and Sev Ohanian told me they had very similar reservations.
Chaganty said that when the pair was first approached by Timur Bekmambetov’s Bazelevs (the production company behind the “Unfriended” movies), the idea was to contribute a segment to an anthology of short films set on computer screens. That’s when they came up with the basic plot of “Searching” — after a teenaged girl goes missing, her father (played by John Cho) goes through the laptop she left behind in an effort to find her.
But then the studio proposed turning the idea into a feature film, with Chaganty directing, Ohanian producing and the two of them writing the screenplay.
“It was this incredible moment where no filmmaker ever gets this opportunity,” Chaganty recalled. “But in that instant, I said no.”
It seemed to him that they’d come up with a way to make the format more than a gimmick —but as a short film. He worried that extending it into a feature might “stretch it right back into a 90-minute gimmick.”
Chaganty and Ohanian kept talking about the idea, though, and ultimately moved forward after coming up with an opening sequence — which is indeed the opening sequence of the finished film. It’s a seven-minute montage of footage stored on a desktop computer, which doubles as a compressed (and surprisingly emotional) history of the Kim family.
“In that moment, there was a click, there was a lightbulb that went off, where we realized the potential of this format with this story,” Chaganty said. “And we realized, despite the films that had existed before, there was a way to make this feel not only new … but also for once emotional, engaging, cinematic.”
“Searching” is in limited release this weekend, before opening more widely on Friday, August 31. You can read more about how Chaganty and Ohanian actually made the movie in the edited transcript below.
Director/writer Aneesh Chaganty and Debra Messing on the set of “Searching.”
TechCrunch: How much of this started with the format, and how much with the kidnapping plot?
Sev Ohanian: Honestly, it was almost neither of those things. Aneesh and I are writing partners — he directs, I produce, we met each other at USC film school. We had made a two-minute short film that takes place on the Google Glasses, if you remember those at all? It kind of blew up — it was called “Seeds” — and one of the results of that was he got hired by Google to come out here and start writing commercials for one or two years.
I’ve been an indie producer for a couple of years now and I had an opportunity to meet with Timur Bekmambetov’s company Bazelevs. He had just released “Unfriended,” it was super successful, and he asked me if there were any filmmakers I wanted to collaborate with. I immediately thought of Aneesh, of course.
Aneesh Chaganty: When I came in and we had the meeting together, they were like, “We want to follow-up ‘Unfriended’ but we don’t want to follow it up with a traditional feature, we want to follow it up with an anthology feature, basically comprised of a bunch of shorts, all of which take place on computer screens.”
Immediately to me, that was a lot more interesting than a feature film, because we had seen all the feature films that took place on screens and none of them were proof that this was a direction we should be going in. A short film, though, I knew we could make it into not a gimmick, which I think all the other films were. [Pauses.] Sort of rude, but whatever.
About a month and a half later, we ended up texting each other with the idea for “Searching” — first as a short film, that’s how it started out. Same plot. Basically, Dad breaks into his daughter’s laptop to look at clues to find her.
We thought in eight minutes it could be not a gimmick and really cool and engaging and get out before anyone got bored. And we sent a few pages back to the company and I happened to be in Los Angeles a few weeks later for a Google photo shoot and they called us into a board room. All of a sudden, it was Sev and myself in front of a big table of execs and financiers and all that stuff.
They basically told us, “Hey, we don’t want to make the short.” We go, “Well, that’s a bummer.” And they go, “We want to turn it into a feature. Sev and Aneesh, you guys can write it, we’ll pay you guys to write it, Sev, you can produce it, Aneesh, we’ll pay you to direct your first feature, and we’ll finance the whole thing. What do you guys say?”
It was this incredible moment where no filmmaker ever gets this opportunity — but in that instant, I said no.
Ohanian: He said no!
Chaganty: On my left side, he was like kicking me, like, “What are you doing?” and everything like that. But in the moment, it felt like what we were being asked to do was take a concept that we had found to not be a gimmick and then stretch it right back into a 90-minute gimmick. And more than that, make a film not because ours had any artistic merit, but because another film was a hit. Not that ours deserved to exist.
And so for the right reasons I said no, and for the right reasons, Sev said, “We’ll be in touch.” And we left the room and we just kept talking about the enormity of the opportunity, obviously, and how that never happens, despite the parameters of what we were being asked to do. And we were like, “If we hit a wall, we hit a wall, but we should pay respect to this by talking.”
So for two months we just tried to figure out a way into the story and we couldn’t. Until one day, I was living in Williamsburg at the time, and I was texting Sev, and I was like, “Hey, I have a really random idea for an opening sequence.” And Sev goes, “I have an idea for an opening sequence.” And we get on the phone and we pitch each other the exact same opening scene. And to this day, that’s the opening sequence of the film, which is a standalone, very unique seven-minute montage that takes place over 16 years of a family’s life stored on their desktop computer.
In that moment, there was a click, there was a lightbulb that went off, where we realized the potential of this format with this story. And we realized, despite the films that had existed before, there was a way to make this feel not only new, but also for once emotional, engaging, cinematic.
Director/writer Aneesh Chaganty and John Cho on the set of “Searching.”
Ohanian: Our idea with the opening scene was, we wanted to create something that within five minutes, audiences would just forget that what they were watching was unfolding on screens and just get sucked into the story. Hopefully we did that.
Chaganty: So we put together a longer pitch, because immediately [after] that idea of the opening scene, we were like, “And I guess the next scene would be this, and the next scene would be this.” And we started plotting it out immediately. We had a structure very quickly.
We sent that structure back to the company, they bought in, they were like, “We’re paying you guys to do this.” I quit my job at Google, and I got on a flight, moved to L.A. and we made a movie.
TechCrunch: My understanding is that you had created a lot of what happens on the computer screen first, and then John and Debra [Messing] and the other actors were acting on webcams to a certain extent based on what you’d already created.
Chaganty: The way that we like to describe this movie is, we sort of made an animated movie, then shot a live action film, and then put the live action film within the animated film and just kept refining it and refining it.
The reason we started with an animated movie was Sev’s idea, and basically coming from a movie called “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.” It was made in a very similar way, in the sense that it was made before it was made.
Basically, what we realized was that in our film, there are two cameras. There’s all the footage that you’re seeing on this screen, and then there’s the way that you’re framing it, because the camera in our film is always moving around. We realized those two need to play with each other and also inform one another. We need to know what the final product is going to look like, before we even went to set.
So basically, seven weeks before we even hired the actors, we brought in the editors to the film and took them to a room about this big, with two iMac computers, and said, “Welcome home.” And literally just said, “Go.”
They started screen capturing the Internet, like doing text messages, voicemail, whatever, every single thing, zooming in, putting together a cut. And by the end of seven weeks, we had an hour-and-40-minute cut of the entire film, starring me playing every role — dad, daughter, brother, mother, father. You know, all of the friends, talking to myself. And we would understand how the camera was moving and everything, and how to make this movie.
We showed that cut to the crew the night before we started shooting and it was in that moment that they were like, “Oh, that’s the movie we’re making.” Because up until that point, this movie is impossible to talk about. Now we have a trailer, we have a poster, it’s all very easy to be like, “Oh, this is what we made.” But before that I’m saying, “We’re making a thriller, but it takes place on a computer screen, but it’s going to be really good.” And it’s really hard to sell people on that idea. So for them to finally see what we were thinking was very helpful.
And then on set, John’s character, who’s literally operating the computer in the movie, his eyeline — he needs to know exactly where every button is, where every cursor moves, where everything pops, where every video message comes in, he always needs to have a perfect eyeline in the film and know what’s happening. We literally needed to show him that temp video as he’s shooting, so he understands where what he’s shooting is actually being placed in the larger film.
Debra Messing and John Cho in “Searching.”
Ohanian: And the idea with that previz version of the movie was, we wanted the final version of the film to feel polished and cinematic and grab the audience’s attention. It’s a studio movie now with worldwide distribution, but it started off as an indie film. You’ve seen the movie: There’s aerial stuff, car stuff, crowd scenes, water, ravines. We shot it in 13 days.
And part of the idea of doing this version was that we wanted to spend every one of those days making them count as much as we can, and the final product would have consistency and good screen composition and mise en scene and all these amazing things. So it wouldn’t feel accidental, it would feel polished.
TechCrunch: When you were working with the actors, how much did they instinctively know what to do, and how much, given that this is not a format that exists already, did you have to train them for a different kind of acting?
Chaganty: I think every single person on the cast and the crew had to relearn aspects of the job to make this movie. Michelle [La, who plays the daughter Margot] actually says this, that it’s a lot easier for her to behave in front of a screen than it was for John. Maybe it’s a generational thing or whatever, but for us, all the rules visually are different. None of us have ever made another movie like this. I know for a fact, none of us are going to do this again. We’re on-set, we’re all learning together.
I really equate this whole movie with cast and crew holding each other’s hands, we all walk into a dark cave, every single person thinks the person to their right knows a little more than them, but nobody does. And I’m on the far right being like, “Uh, I don’t know … ” But jumping in, and at every point of this cave, in the pure darkness, realizing that there’s one person on this crew or cast who knew how to get to this next challenge.
Now that you’re at the end of the process, to what extent do you feel that okay, [computer screen movies are a genre] where other directors can come in and do interesting stuff? And to what extent to do you feel like this is probably something that you can make four or five films with, and at the end of it, the possibilities are exhausted?
Chaganty: At the end of the day, I keep saying this, but I think that if you asked Christopher Nolan how many more backwards films are going to happen [after “Memento”], is he starting a subgenre with backwards films? I don’t think the answer would be yes.
We feel the same way about this movie. This, at the end of the day, is a gimmick. It’s a style of telling the story. We found a way, I think, to make it not that and tell the story first, but at the same time, a computer screen only has set imagery. It’s even more limiting than traditional found footage, because with traditional found footage you can set yourself in Singapore, or Hong Kong, or New York, or whatever. You’re always on a laptop screen with a computer screen film.
Maybe the lesson people will learn from us is something that I’ve learned: There is a way still to show technology accurately and honestly — because I don’t think Hollywood has done that yet — using screens and using traditional cinematic language when you’re showing screens. You can still combine that with a live action film, and in a way that feels consistent with your tone and style and genre of whatever larger piece you’re making.
Essex-based contract electronics manufacturer (CEM) Challenger Solutions has achieved AS9100 accreditation – the extension to ISO 9000 that adds aerospace quality management standards. “Everyone gets ISO 9000,” Challenger business development manager Richard Hancock told Electronics Weekly. “AS9100 means that we can work on jobs to a better specification. You need it for anything that is ...
Oxford Instruments Plasma Technology (OIPT),has announced that Sino-semic have selected its Cobra plasma etch systems for their manufacturing facilities in Taizhou City. Sino-semic is a manufacturer of VCSELs for face recognition. The vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser, or VCSEL is a semiconductor laser diode which emit a perpendicular beam from the top surface, rather than the edge ...
The PI354x-00-BGIZ is the latest addition by Vicor to its 48V Cool-Power ZVS buck regulator portfolio, offering a BGA package option to the existing PI354x-00-LGIZ LGA series. The device’s ZVS topology is designed to enable 48V direct to point of load. And step-down regulation from a higher voltage source will improve efficiency and reduce I2R ...
Labcenter Electronics has partnered with SamacSys to provide free PCB symbols, footprints and 3D models for its users, via the SamacSys CAD library content. SamacSys, which also powers the Electronics Weekly Component Search Engine, has been selected to provide high-quality CAD models for Labcenter’s Proteus design tools. Components can now be downloaded into Proteus without ...
Stable but uninspired – this describes the German component distribution market during the second quarter 2018. Sales by companies registered with the Fachverband Bauelemente Distribution (FBDi e.V.) grew in the months April, May and June by 5% (compared with Q2/2017) to 949 million Euros. The order situation performed better, and with 1.04 billion Euros exceeded ...
July billings by manufacturers of semiconductor equipment were $2.36 billion which was 4.9% down on June’s $2.48 billion and 4.1% up on June 2017’s billings of $2.27 billion, reports SEMI. “Global billings declined for the second month in a row, indicative of customer push-outs,” says SEMI CEO Ajit Manocha, “we expect the industry to weather ...
Cree has announced an extension to the XLamp XP-G3 LED product line optimised for connected lighting. It is designated the XLamp XP-G3 S Line. With the XP-G3 S Line, Cree delivers high-power LED technology optimized for long-lifetime, high-power general lighting applications where sensors and the internet of things (IoT) are becoming common, such as commercial ...
TT Electronics of Woking has introduced a compact, infrared LED emitter with a spot diameter of 7mm for super-reliable optical sensing and position encoder applications. With up to 10mW total radiated power at the maximum drive current of 100mA, and 2.25° angle of half intensity, the OP207CL couples optical flux extremely efficiently onto the receiving ...
Apple has placed a series order for Foundation, an adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s classic series of science fiction stories and novels.
Deadline reported earlier this year that the show was in development, but this was just the latest of several attempts to adapt Foundation, including a version developed by Westworld’s Jonathan Nolan for HBO.
Now, however, it looks like Foundation really will happen at Apple, with David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman as showrunners. (Like Nolan, Goyer was one of the writers on The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, while Friedman created Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.) The series will be produced by Skydance Television, and Asimov’s daughter Robyn will be one of the executive producers.
The Foundation series (initially a set of stories published in the 1940s, then collected into book form in the ’50s and followed up by long novels that Asimov wrote in the ’80s) focuses on the fall of a long-lived Galactic Empire, with a small group of scientists at the edge of the galaxy working to preserve knowledge and minimize the period of chaos.
Elements of that plot description might make it sound like the ingredients for Apple’s version of Star Wars— and indeed, Asimov’s work is seen as a big influence on George Lucas’ films.
But in its print form, at least, Foundation is far from your typical space opera, focusing more on debate and political intrigue than action, and taking place over hundreds of years, with often interchangeable characters swapped out between stories. In other words, Goyer and Friedman will probably have to make some significant changes.
These are my favorite books by my favorite author, so I’m more excited about this than any of the other original shows that Apple’s planning (even the company’s other space opera, which is being developed by Battlestar Galactica’s Ron Moore). I sure hope they don’t screw it up.
Paper can be turned into an actuator by applying a thin layer of conducting thermoplastic by 3D printing, or even by hand, according to Carnegie Mellon University. When current is fed through the thermoplastic – off-the-shelf graphene polyactide composite – it heats and expands causing the paper to bend or fold – an process which ...
The University of Minnesota has sputtered a ‘topological insulator’ – a solid that conducts on its surface but not inside – avoiding the single crystal growth process or molecular beam epitaxy normally needed. Bismuth selenide (Bi2Se3) is the material, magnetron-sputtered into a thin film of particles <6nm across in hetero-structures with CoFeB – “Using the sputtering ...
The UK government has published the first tranche of guidance should the UK leave the EU with ‘no deal’. They can be found on here on the Department for exiting the European Union website. According to the Department in the introductory document: “This document puts the government’s technical notices in context, explaining the current progress ...
Canadian firm D-Wave Systems has calculated its way through a ‘topological phase transition’ using its 2,048-qubit ‘annealing quantum computer’. Several huge organisations have bought D-Wave computers – including Google and NASA (Lockheed-Martin even up-graded its D-Wave system) – but, in a world where folk are having trouble quantum-coupling a handful of qubits, there remain questions ...
Toshiba has introduced a bipolar driver for two-phase stepping motors up to 44V 5A that includes 1/128 micro-stepping. TB67S128FTG, as it is to be known, also supports full, half, quarter, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32 and 1/64 step operation – micro-stepping is by PWM, using sine-wave derived on-off ratios – output chopping frequency can be adjusted by external ...
ADI has broken ground on its new headquarters in Wilmington, Massachussetts. The facility will feature laboratories, design and manufacturing and cross-functional group collaboration space. In addition to 13,700 additional square metres for R&D, the global headquarters will include a 4,700 m² Hub comprising a café, fitness facility and auditorium designed to enable and encourage employees from all ...
Taxing social media companies to support quality journalism is one of Jeremy Corbyn’s new ideas, along with a ‘digital licence fee’ on ISPs and publishing the social class of BBC employees. Corbyn will put forward the ideas later today in the Alternative MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival. The money raised will go to ...
gInfineon has availability of a new member of its CoolMOS P7 family, the 950 V CoolMOS P7 Superjunction MOSFET. The 950 V CoolMOS P7 attributes include improved DPAK R DS(on) enabling higher density designs. Similar to the other members of the P7 family from Infineon, it comes with an integrated Zener diode ESD protection. This results ...
Mouser has released the fourth video episode in the Generation Robot series, part of Mouser’s Empowering Innovation Together programme. In the video, Grant Imahara tours the Cyberdyne Studio just outside of Tokyo to learn more about the company’s Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL) — a robotic medical suit that combines human, machine, and information functionalities to restore or improve ...
The Sill, a startup that sells potted plants online and in physical stores, announced this weekend that it has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Raine Ventures.
The company was founded in 2012 and has now raised a total of $7.5 million. It was bootstrapped until last year, when it raised seed funding from Brand Foundry Ventures, Halogen Ventures, BBG Ventures, Tuesday Capital, Blueseed and The Chernin Group. (BBG Ventures is backed by TechCrunch’s parent company Oath.)
That seems like a long time for a startup to go without outside funding, and indeed, CEO Eliza Blank acknowledged that she “probably waited too long to go out and raise.” Still, she said those first few years also gave her time to find the right business model (like focusing “exclusively on the direct-to-consumer business,” rather than selling to offices as well).
And while it’s easy to group The Sill among all the startups using the internet to build a consumer business around a traditional category of retail, Blank said her vision is bigger than “just putting plants online and being another direct-to-consumer brand.”
After all, there are plenty of people (myself included) who are interested in owning plants but don’t really know how to care for them properly. And our casual interest level probably isn’t going to get us to the local horticultural society to learn more.
Blank said she founded the company in response to her own experience wanting to buy plants, and realizing how limited the resources were for learning “how to approach the category as a newbie.”
So The Sill doesn’t just sell you a plant (along with basic care instructions). It also allows you to ask questions of the company’s plant experts — and with the opening of its first brick-and-mortar stores in New York City, it also offers weekly workshops.
“We have a much longer relationship than a typical transaction business,” Blank said. “Making the purchase is almost like the start — or maybe the middle — of a conversation.”
The company says it sold more than 75,000 products in the last six months, with sales up 500 percent year-over-year, and anticipated revenue for the year of more than $10 million.
Latch announced this morning that it has raised $70 million in Series B funding.
The round was led by Brookfield Ventures, the investment arm of Brookfield Asset Management. As part of the deal, Brookfield Properties will also be installing Latch systems in its multi-family properties that are currently under development.
“We are thrilled to support Latch, the clear market leader in a nearly $25 billion space that is expected to grow at twice the rate of traditional access over the next several years,” said Brookfield’s Josh Raffaelli in the funding announcement.
Lux Capital, RRE Ventures, Primary Venture Partners, Third Prime, Camber Creek, Corigin Ventures, Tishman Speyer and Balyasny Asset Management also participated int he new funding.
Latch’s smart lock system is designed for apartment buildings rather than single family homes, allowing you to open doors with a smartphone, keycard or door code. It also allows residents to create temporary access codes for guests and service providers.
Speaking of service providers, Latch announced a pilot partnership with UPS earlier this summer that will allow UPS drivers to receive unique credentials for entering buildings to make deliveries.
Fifty-nine startups took the stage at Y Combinator’s Demo Day 2, and among the highlights were a company that helps developers manage in-app subscriptions; a service that lets you create animojis from real photos; and a surplus medical equipment-reselling platform. Oh… and there was also a company that’s developed an entirely new kind of life form using e coli bacteria. So yeah, that’s happening.
Based on some investor buzz and what caught TechCrunch’s eye, these are our top picks from the second day of Y Combinator’s presentations.
With a founding team including some of the leading luminaries in the field of biologically inspired engineering (including George Church, Pamela Silver and Jeffrey Way from Harvard’s Wyss Institute), 64-x is engineering organisms to function in otherwise inaccessible environments. Chief executive Alexis Rovner, herself a post-doctoral fellow at the Wyss Institute, and chief operating officer Ryan Gallagher, a former BCG Consultant, are looking to commercialize research from the Institute around accelerating and expanding the ability to produce functionalized proteins and sequence-defined polymers with diverse chemistries. Basically they’ve engineered a new life form that they want to use for novel kinds of bio-manufacturing.
Why we liked it: These geniuses invented a new life form.
CB Therapeutics
Sher Butt, a former lab directory at Steep Hill, saw that cannabinoids were as close to a miracle cure for pain, epilepsy and other chronic conditions as medicine was going to get. But plant-based cannabinoids were costly and produced inconsistent results. Alongside Jacob Vogan, Butt realized that biosynthesizing cannabinoids would reduce production costs by a factor of 10 and boost production 24 times current yields. With a deep experience commercializing drugs for Novartis and as the founder of the cannabis testing company SB Labs, Butt and his technical co-founder are uniquely positioned to bring this new therapy to market.
Why we liked it: Using manufacturing processes to make industrial quantities of what looks like nature’s best painkiller at scale is not a bad idea.
RevenueCat
RevenueCat helps developers manage their in-app subscriptions. It offers an API that developers can use to support in-app subscriptions on iOS and Android, which means they don’t have to worry about all the nuances, bugs and updates on each platform.
The API also allows developers to bring all the data about their subscription business together in one place. It might be on to something, though it isn’t clear how big that something is quite yet. The nine-month-old company says it’s currently seeing $350,000 in transaction volume every month; it’s making some undisclosed percentage of money off that amount.
Why we liked it: Write code. Release app. Use RevenueCat. Get paid. That sounds like a good formula for a pretty compelling business.
Ajaib
Indonesia is a country in transition, with a growing class of individuals with assets to invest yet who, financially, don’t meet the bar set by many wealth managers. Enter Ajaib, a newly minted startup with the very bold ambition of becoming the “Ant Financial of wealth management for Indonesia.” Why the comparison? Because China was in the same boat not long ago — a country whose middle class had little access to wealth management advice. With the founding of Ant Financial nearly four years ago, that changed. In fact, Ant now boasts more than 400 million users.
China is home to nearly 1.4 billion, compared with Indonesia, whose population of 261 million is tiny in comparison. Still, if its plans work out to charge 1.4 percent for every dollar managed, with an estimated $370 billion in savings in the country to chase after, it could be facing a meaningful opportunity in its backyard if it gains some momentum.
Why we liked it: If Ajaib’s wealth management plans (to charge 1.4 percent for every dollar it manages) work out — and with a total market of $370 billion in savings in Indonesia — the company could be facing a meaningful opportunity in its backyard.
Grin
The scooter craze is hitting Latin America and Grin is greasing the wheels. The Mexico City-based company was launched by co-founder Sergio Romo after he and his partner realized they weren’t going to be able to get a cut of the big “birds” on the scooter block in the U.S. (as Axios reported). Romo and his co-founder have already lined up a slew of investors for what may be the hottest new deal in Latin America. Backers include Sinai Ventures, Liquid2 Ventures, 500 Startups, Monashees and Base10 Partners.
Why we liked it: Scooters are so 2018. But there’s a lot of money to be made in mobility, and as the challenge from Bird and Lime to Uber and Lyft in hyperlocal transit has revealed, there’s no dominant player that’s taken over the market… yet.
Emojer
Creating animated emojis made from real photos, Emojer just might be the most fun you can have with a camera. The company’s software uses deep learning algorithms to detect body parts and guides users in creating their own avatars with just a simple photo take from a mobile phone. It’s replacing deep Photoshop expertise and animation skills with a super simple interface. The avatars look very similar to Elf Yourself, a popular site that let you paste your friends’ faces on dancing Christmas elves goes viral every year at Christmastime. Founders have PhDs in machine learning and computer vision.
Why we liked it: As the company’s chief executive said, Snap was for sexting, and Facebook was hot or not, so who says the next big consumer platform couldn’t be the Trojan horse of easily generated selfiemojis (akin to Elf Yourself)?
Osh’s Affordable Pharmaceuticals
Osh’s Affordable Pharmaceuticals is a public benefit corporation connecting doctors and patients with sources of low-cost, compounded pharmaceuticals. The company is looking to decrease barriers to entry for drugs for rare diseases. Three weeks ago the company introduced a drug to treat Wilson’s Disease. There was no access to the drug that treats the disease before in Brazil, India or Canada. It slashes the cost of drugs from $30,000 a month to $120 per month. The company estimates it has a total addressable market of $17 billion. “Generic drug pricing is a crisis, people are dying because they can’t get access to the medicine they need,” says chief executive Alex Oshmyansky. Osh’s might have a solution.
Why we liked it: Selling lower-cost medications for rare diseases in countries that previously hadn’t had access to them is a good business that’s good for the world.
Medinas Health
Tackling a $75 billion problem of healthcare waste, Medinas Health is giving hospitals an easy way to resell their used supplies. The company has already raised $1 million for its marketplace to help healthcare organizations buy and sell equipment. With a seed round led by Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures, and General Catalyst’s Rough Draft Ventures fund, the company is also working to lower costs for cash-strapped rural healthcare centers.
Why we liked it: Finding uses for hospital equipment that’s been lying fallow in corners is a big business. A $75 billion business if Medinas’ estimates are correct. Add helping cut costs for rural medical facilities and Medinas is a business we can get behind.
And Comfort
Plus-size women have limited clothing options even at the largest retailers like Nordstrom and Macy’s. While a majority of American women fall into the plus-size clothing category, 100 million women are constrained to shopping for a very small percentage of options. And Comfort wants to solve the supply problem. To do this, the founders, two former Harvard classmates, are building a direct-to-consumer fashion brand with stylish, minimalist offerings for plus-size women, including tunic shirts and an apron dress. It’s very early days for the brand, but since launching in recent weeks, they’ve seen $25,000 in sales.
Why we liked it: This direct-to-consumer fashion brand is bringing higher quality, better-designed clothing options to a market that’s underserved and growing quickly. What’s not to like?
ShopWith
Influencers of the world are uniting on mobile app, ShopWith, which allows shoppers to browse virtual storefronts and aisles alongside their favorite fashion and beauty creators and YouTubers. Users can see exactly what products those influencers have featured and can buy them without ever leaving the app. It’s a free download and hours of commercially consumptive fun.
It’s like the QVC model, but for GenZ shoppers whose buying habits are influenced by social video content on YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat. The company revealed that one beauty influencer made $10,000 within five hours using the ShopWith platform. The founders are former product managers with experience building social commerce products at Facebook and Amazon.
Why we liked it: The QVC for GenZ not only has a nice ring to it, it’s a recipe for making cash registers hum. A mobile-first, influencer-based shopping company is something that we’d definitely not call an impulse purchase.
