Wonderloop App Tries To Make It Easier And Safer To Meet New People On Video

Wonderloop is a new iPhone app that launches today allowing users to connect through first-person short-form video. This is not Face-time. It's short video messaging about 10 to 20 seconds long. It allows short elevator style pitch introductions so you can get a sense of who someone is. Think of it as an About.me if they copied the video-profile feature. As Wonderloop founder Hanna Aase says, it's designed around the idea of how you might meet someone in real life. Aase made the app because she was not able to meet people easily living in a small village in Norway and it addresses the whole “stranger space,” which has been left open by the failure of Chat Roulette into a rather forbidding space. Facebook isn't into making these random connections. It wants a genuine social graph, and Airtime hasn't quite taken off on the desktop. Wonderloop is a little app that just might do well addressing this problem. Aase says she wants to have 10 seconds of video from every person on Earth. She believes these short video profiles are way easier to digest than just reading about someone. To start with the app will be invite-only at launch. It lets you join networks, use hashtags, add a short bio, and will initially be available on the iPhone. An Android app is under development as is a web browser-based version. You will need to create a video profile to register in the first place.

Digital Content Seller Gumroad Eyes International Growth With Payment Support In Japan

In what founder and CEO Sahil Lavingia said is its first feature built for international users, online sales platform Gumroad is announcing that it's now accepting Japanese payments. The company already worked with Japanese sellers. In fact, Lavingia said Japan is Gumroad's second largest market (after the United States). However, the actual payments required the use of PayPal - not exactly arduous, but not desirable either given Gumroad's goal of providing the simplest way for creative people to sell digital goods. By integrating with Japan's Zengin system for money transfers, Lavingia said, “Any Japanese creator can now use Gumroad end-to-end, the way that they sort of expect.” Sellers are also able to localize their listings, so a visitor from Japan won't have to read the listing in English. Gumroad quietly released the feature to Japanese sellers already, he said, resulting in a 28 percent increase in money processed for those sellers. Lavingia added that thanks to the new feature, some big Japanese sellers who left the system have now returned. And yes, the company plans to do something similar in other countries: “Going from one to two is a lot more difficult than going from two to three.” Over time, he predicted that Gumroad could go beyond currency and language to become “smarter” about localization - for example, he noted that a lot of novels in Japan are written for SMS, so Gumroad could add a feature in that country for forwarding novels to a buyer's SMS account.

Tinder’s Sean Rad Hints At A Future Beyond Dating, Says The App Sees 350M Swipes A Day

Sean Rad, founder and CEO of mobile dating app Tinder, offered his broader vision for the app and hinted at future features today at Disrupt Europe. Rad acknowledged that the “unwritten context” of Tinder right now is romantic relationships, but he argued that the basic mechanism, where two people are only connected when they both express interest in each other, is “a universal thing across friendships, across business, across anything.” The ultimate goal, he said, is to “overcome every single problem you have when it comes to making a new relationship.” That may seem like a stretch, but maybe my boss Alexia Tsotsis (who interviewed Rad onstage) represents Tinder’s future — as she emphatically pointed out to the audience that she has a boyfriend but still uses the app to meet new people. Rad suggested that there’s been a larger shift, where social networks allow people to improve existing relationships, but they haven’t made it easier to meet new people. That’s because those new connections have developed a “hunter/hunted” dynamic, and social networks might even exacerbate that situation, making the hunters feel like they have to hunt more aggressively and the hunted feel more uncomfortable. In terms of specific functionality, Rad suggested that Tinder (which already filters its recommendations by proximity) could become more closely tied to real-world locations. Eventually, he said users should be able to spot someone else they want to meet in the same room, find them on Tinder, and swipe right to show that they’re interested in connecting right then and there. To make that happen, Tinder could do more to incorporate the context of who and where you are into its recommendations. Rad also addressed the question of whether Tinder’s interface encourages superficiality, since you’re making connections based entirely on photos. He said that’s something we do anyway, and that at least with Tinder, people are choosing the right picture to “express themselves.” “Tinder is less superficial than our everyday lives, our everyday interactions with people,” he said. The team behind Tinder actually launched a previous product, Cardify, at TechCrunch Disrupt NY in 2012. Rad said that while working on Cardify, he became excited about the idea behind Tinder, and when Tinder took off, Cardify was put “on the shelf.” When asked about Tinder’s business model, Rad said the team is still focused on product and user growth, though they’re considering a number of revenue options, including in-app purchases. As for how much Tinder has actually grown, Rad said he couldn’t share user counts, but he did reveal that the app sees 3.5 million matches and 350 million swipes a day. (About 30 percent of those are the right swipes that indicate interest.) And the app has seen 30 billion swipes and 300 million matches total. One of those matches, by the way, was between Rad and his current girlfriend. Alexia asked him how that happened, and he replied, “She swiped right.”

Chamath Palihapitiya Owns $5 Million In Bitcoins, Wants To Own $10-$15 Million

We already knew that Chamath Palihapitiya, ex-Facebook executive, and founder and partner of The Social+Capital Partnership, was bullish on Bitcoins. But how bullish? He actually owns the equivalent of $5 million in Bitcoins, representing one of the largest positions in the world with the Winklevoss twins. But that’s not all, Palihapitiya wants to own even more than that — up to $10 and $15 million. He didn’t say whether he counts on an increase in value of Bitcoins or whether he will start right away to purchase more Bitcoins. Palihapitiya seems to be very aware of the risks involved with betting on a digital currency, but is willing to take those risks. He already shared his thoughts about Bitcoins and why he believes that it is a disruptive idea. But until now, we didn’t know how much Bitcoin he actually owned.

Among the reasons why Palihapitiya is bullish on Bitcoin, he cited the usual key advantages of the currency: it’s an electronic, peer-to-peer, mostly unregulated currency. Yet, he sees Bitcoin as a well-crafted money protocol to remove any kind of friction. It is like what the TCP/IP protocol did to the Internet — it enabled countless of innovations. As he now holds a significant position in Bitcoins, expect Palihapitiya to talk more about the cryptocurrency. He could become one of the most prominent advocates for the digital currency. Just like he loves poker because it reminds him of how startups work, Bitcoin has a level of risk that he must find fascinating.

And The Winner Of TechCrunch Disrupt Europe 2013 Is… Lock8!

The first ever TechCrunch Disrupt Europe is drawing to a close today, after two days of incredible speakers and a dramatic pitch-off competition, not to mention the two day Hackathon that preceded the show itself. Only one of the four finalists (Import.io, Lock8, Voicesphere and Asap54) can ultimately emerge victorious. The top fourteen teams were chosen from hundreds of applicants, and one lucky company – Integreight – was chosen based on audience response and editorial input after the first day of the show to become a fifteenth entrant. Each of the final four this year presented in front of a panel of judges including Michael Arrington of CrunchFund (and founder of TechCrunch), Index Ventures’ Neil Rimer, Lakestar founder Klaus Hommels, Dave McClure of 500 Startups, and Bindi Karia of Silicon Valley Bank. After much deliberation and hand-wringing, the judges arrived at a decision regarding a winner and runner-up. So here’s your winner for the inaugural startup Battlefield Europe. The Winner: Lock8 London and Berlin-based Lock8 is a startup that aims to make your bicycle more thief-proof. They’ve created a smart bike lock system that’s embedded with sensors to detect attempts to hack or bash it off, and even changes in temperature that might indicate freezing it or trying to get in with a blowtorch. The team is launching a crowdfunding campaign to make the product a reality, and will eventually retail the Lock8 for $199 US, though it’ll only cost £69 according to the company’s founder and CTO Daniel Zajarlas-Fainsod. It’s also designed to be sold to municipalities to support their bike sharing programs and make them more cost-effective.

The Runner-Up: Asap54 Asap54 does fashion tech, which is a hot and growing space. It also combines image recognition and recommendation algorithms to help people buy the things they see, and the things that are similar to those things they see others wearing. It works by letting users snap a photo of the articles of clothing they want to purchase, and returning links to either the item itself, or to something very similar. Asap54 has to contend with Pinterest and Instagram, to some extent, but it hopes its instant purchase options can help it stay ahead. It’s launching to 200 beta testers in a limited debut, and the team says it needs to build more feeds into the product to expand beyond a pool of 20,000 product which are initially identifiable.

Aaron Levie Talks About Box’s Early Struggles, The NSA And Microsoft’s Next CEO

At TechCrunch Disrupt Europe in Berlin today, Box’s founder Aaron Levie took to the stage with CrunchFund’s Michael Arrington for a wide-ranging conversation that touched on everything from the early days of Box and who the next CEO of Microsoft should be all the way to the recent NSA revelations and their repercussions on cloud businesses. As for the NSA, Levie said that – as far as he knows – nobody has never received a request to disclose data to the NSA. “We have never handed data over to the NSA,” he said categorically, and noted that in his view, “the NSA fucked up royally with what they did.” At the same time, though, he also said that the NSA scandal – and especially the reaction to it in Europe – has not hurt Box’s business. “We have no data that it’s hurt the business, but it hasn’t helped,” he told Arrington. “The only thing we’ve seen so far is that customers who were already skeptics can now use this as a reason to avoid moving to the cloud.” He also warned that the reaction to the U.S. actions shouldn’t lead to a balkanization of the Internet and cloud technologies. For the kind of tech that Box provides, an open Internet is important, after all. People have to be able to work with each other across countries and networks. Otherwise, the value of the cloud is essentially gone. To get to the point where Box needs to worry about this, however, it first had to overcome the odds against it. The company launched in Seattle, after all (which Levie likened to the “Hannover of America”), and in his retelling of the company’s early days, nobody in Seattle wanted to put money into it. “All of the VC community was afraid of what we were doing,” he said. In the end, though, they raised $80,000 and then moved to Silicon Valley. As so often during Disrupt Europe, the discussion then also touched upon whether a startup has to move to Silicon Valley to be successful. Levie offered a pretty reasoned argument here. In his view, there are some ideas that are just bad and justifiably don’t get funding, and there are some companies that are misunderstood by VCs even though they have a great idea. For the second type of company, moving to Silicon Valley gives it a greater chance of finding the people who will finally understand it. Box itself, it’s worth noting, has now expanded from the U.S. to Europe and has recently opened an office in London and may expand into Germany, too. He said Europe is now Box’s second-largest market. While Arrington tried to get Levie to name a possible next CEO of Microsoft, Levie focused on the qualities that the next CEO should have. In his view, the next CEO of Microsoft has to be a visionary and not just an operational type. While he admitted that it would be hard for Microsoft to find somebody like that – simply because visionaries aren’t likely to be attracted to this kind of job – he believes that Microsoft needs somebody who can re-architect the company.

Buzzy Photo App Frontback Shuns Twitter Interest, Raises Millions Instead

Frontback, the photo app that lets users create composite images using the front and rear cameras on their iPhone handsets, is on a roll. Launched only in August of this year, it's now picked up some 300,000 downloads on virtually zero marketing budget - but a lot of buzz from the likes of Ashton Kutcher, Jack Dorsey and… wait for it… the Prime Minister of Belgium, posting their Frontbacks on Twitter and elsewhere. And that is giving it some other momentum: Frontback has closed a new round of funding of around $3 million, and we have also learned that before that round was closed, Twitter approached Frontback to buy it. Frederic della Faille, Frontback's cofounder, won't confirm the funding amount (sources tell us $3 million), but he does tell us that it comes from existing investors Lerer Ventures, Index Ventures and SV Angel; and new angels including CrunchFund's Michael Arrington (also founder and former editor of TechCrunch); Chris Howard at Fuel Capital; Michael Birch; Charlie Cheever; and Initialized Capital's Harj Taggar, Garry Tan and Alexis Ohanian. It comes after a $910,000 seed round in June 2012, when della Faille was still mainly working on his previous social publishing venture Checkthis. Della Faille declined to comment on Twitter. “Nothing to say about that,” he says. “We are totally committed to building a wonderful product with an A class team.” That product has had an update in the past few days that points to how Frontback is gearing up to scale. Users can now connect their address books to find more friends, and they can now share Frontback pictures to Tumblr, email and SMS in addition to the existing ability to share to Facebook and Twitter. The iPhone app is also expanding in terms of features. It includes a personalised feed with the most recent posts from friends (with Staff Picks under that); post captions in the feed; and a very cool feature that gives you the ability to flip top and bottom images, and to select whether the cameras will take forward-facing or self-facing images. (Yes, that's right, you can now have double selfies if you so choose.) There is also a new offline feature that means users can restore posts they may not have sent. All of this will mean more users playing with Frontback, more time on the app, and more pictures. From the back to the front of the pack Frontback has had nothing short of a remarkable rise, and is a good example of how a startup's fortunes can quickly change when the founders decide to pursue what originally looks like a tangential or secondary avenue. Checkthis - a light publishing platform that lets users create one-off blog posts with photos to share with others - was originally founded in Belgium, and it made the move to New York with that $910,000 seed round to fuel its growth. It's not clear if that growth was just not coming as fast as it wanted - Checkthis is still alive, by the way - or if its founders were just very interested by one particular application of how to use it: the first Frontback came by way of a Checkthis post from della Faille in March 2013, which explained what became the basic concept for the app with a picture of himself in his Williamsburg living/co-working space. “The idea of a #frontback post is a super simple and fun way to share an instant. You stop everything, take one picture with the front, one with the back, and you hit share - jokes are authorized. “If you're crazy enough, you can even write a description like: “This is me right now, interacting with you from my sofa in our apartment in Williamsburg. Behind me you can see (or trying to see) Etienne from Poutsch working at his desk.” Fast forward four months to the launch of a standalone Frontback app, it turns out that it came when the company had just weeks to live on its funding. But the app came through, with 200,000 downloads in its first weeks; that quickly led to a relocation to San Francisco (and new live/work digs just this week) and some starting to ask “Is Frontback the next Instagram?“ From what I and others saw, things really changed for Frontback at Disrupt in San Francisco - the same place where della Faille revealed the 200,000 downloads figure and the startup's near-death experience. There, behind the stage, della Faille was holed up in a room - Mike Arrington's green room, I think - where VCs, one after another, filed in to meet with him. “It was quite obvious. He was holding court,” one person told me. It's interesting that Twitter approached Frontback in this process. It speaks to how the company, leading up to its IPO and keen on growing more engagement on its platform, has been developing and acquiring services that fit well with the kind of rapid-fire engagement that Twitter is known for - Vine being a key example of that strategy. It also points to reports we've seen that Twitter is looking to revisit its messaging portfolio. At its heart, Frontback is both a medium for sharing pictures but also offers a way to send direct to specific users, via SMS, and of course further direct messaging channels could be added in the future. It's also interesting that della Faille and Co. didn't incubate and try to grow Frontback in their native Belgium. Despite all the progress we have seen around the theme of tech becoming increasingly decentralised outside of Silicon Valley (and this week's Disrupt in Berlin is a testament to that), della Faille believes that it's inherently more challenging to take chances in the Old World. “In Europe you can't be too ambitious,” he says, “because people don't take you seriously.” He also believes that the ethos generally is not to focus too much on the little details in Europe. “The time we spent working on the camera on Frontback, I'm pretty sure in Europe investors wouldn't have accepted that level of detail. They'd say, ‘It's working. Take the photo app and go ahead and launch it.'” And there will eventually be apps for iPad and Android to help the service scale… but not quite yet. Conscious that there will of course be more and more camera apps today and tomorrow, the goal for Frontback is to make itself the one that more people use because it is the best. “Right now the focus is on the design. We take that seriously,” he says.