Author Archives: Startup365

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Chaque jour nous vous présenterons une nouvelle Startup française ! Notre pays regorge de talents et d'entrepreneurs brillants ! Alors partons à la découverte des meilleures startup françaises ! Certaines d'entre elles sont dans une étape essentielle dans la vie d'une startup : la recherche de financement, notamment par le financement participatif (ou crowdfunding en anglais). Alors participez à cette grande aventure en leur faisant une petite donation ! Les startups françaises ont besoin de vous !

#Blockchain 7 Major Exchanges in Korea to Create Healthy Cryptocurrency Ecosystem

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7 Major Exchanges in Korea to Create a Healthy Cryptocurrency Ecosystem

Seven major crypto exchanges in South Korea have joined forces to create a sound cryptocurrency ecosystem. They have agreed on joint measures such as information sharing and real-time monitoring of abnormal transactions. Meanwhile, the Korean government is working on institutionalizing crypto exchanges.

Also read: Indian Supreme Court Moves Crypto Hearing, Community Calls for Positive Regulations

Seven Crypto Exchanges Join Forces

A parliamentary policy debate on the subject of cryptocurrency exchanges was held on Monday in Seoul, according to local media. Representatives of seven major crypto exchanges in South Korea attended the event and signed an “Agreement for the creation of sound cryptocurrency ecosystem.” The exchanges are Upbit, Bithumb, Korbit, Coinone, Gopax, Coinplug (Cpdax), and Hanbitco. They aim to create “a healthy cryptocurrency ecosystem … to prevent crime and protect investors by creating a sound cryptocurrency ecosystem and preventing money laundering,” Sedaily elaborated.

7 Major Exchanges in Korea to Create a Healthy Cryptocurrency Ecosystem
Representatives of seven major crypto exchanges in South Korea.

Under their agreement, the exchanges will establish a consultation system for crime prevention and investor protection, implement real-time monitoring of abnormal transactions such as money laundering and voice phishing, strengthen customer identification, prevent illegal transactions, and introduce some restrictions on transactions with unverified customers.

It was pointed out at the forum that there is an urgent need for government-level regulation since self-regulatory measures are not legally binding, Business Watch reported, and quoted an industry official as saying:

With this agreement, exchanges can establish a close cooperation system and improve their image for investors, but in fact, there is no special penalty for failing to comply.

Regulations and Standards in the Works

7 Major Exchanges in Korea to Create a Healthy Cryptocurrency EcosystemKwon Dae-young, head of the financial innovation bureau at the Financial Services Commission (FSC), explained that “Currently, the government’s position has not changed much since it was revealed last December or January this year.”

He further detailed, “We are trying to institutionalize” cryptocurrency exchanges, “but before we do, we have to answer the question of how to deal with the damage and tears of many virtual currency investors. We must see if any of the projects that can help the people in their daily lives have been presented. Trust and authenticity are important.”

Lee Seok-woo, president of Dunamu Inc. which operates cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, was at the meeting. He proposed a number of measures for cryptocurrency exchange regulation. His recommendations include minimum qualifications and standards, AML/KYC (anti-money laundering / know-your-customer) obligations, and an exchange registration system. Lee was quoted by Business Watch as saying:

If you [crypto exchange] cannot meet the standard after a six-month or one-year grace period, you should close it.

What do you think of these exchanges collaborating to create a sound crypto ecosystem? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Sedaily.

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#Africa Nigeria’s Hello Tractor in AI, blockchain partnership with IBM Research

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Nigerian agri-tech startup Hello Tractor has partnered IBM Research to pilot an agriculture digital wallet and decision-making tool that provides demand and supply visibility for farmers, tractor fleet providers and banks.

Launched in 2014, Hello Tractor is focused on improving smallholder farmers’ access to timely and affordable tractor services, along with other farm inputs. Its mobile app aggregates tractor service requests and then pairs them with recommended tractors and operators, while tracking how many hours each piece of equipment is in the field and area serviced.

“Through valued relationships with companies like John Deere, we’ve been very successful in increasing mechanisation access in smallholder communities. To reach the next level, we need to add additional services including predictive fleet utilisation and maintenance; operator and tractor scoring; financing and the crop yield forecasting,” said Jehiel Oliver, chief executive officer (CEO) and founder of Hello Tractor.

To achieve this, Hello Tractor has partnered with IBM Research, which struck a similar partnership with Kenya’s Twiga Foods earlier this year. Scientists at IBM’s research lab in Nairobi are working with Hello Tractor’s developers to apply several technologies, including the Watson Decision Platform for agriculture, blockchain, IoT and cloud, to bring new services to the app for tractor owners and dealers, farmers and banks.

The new services will be tested in a pilot starting in the first half of 2019. The backbone of the agriculture digital wallet is a blockchain-enabled and AI-based decision support platform, which enables capturing, tracking, and instant sharing of data, while creating end-to-end trust and transparency for all the parties involved across the agribusiness value chain.

“Our vision is to leverage AI, blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT) to digitise, optimise, and streamline agricultural business processes to create efficiencies and new services from farm-to-fork around the world,” said Dr Solomon Assefa, vice president for emerging market solutions and director at IBM Research Africa.

For the next phase of the project, IBM researchers and Hello Tractor engineers are looking to use machine learning with image recognition to predict the quality of cultivation. Plans are also underway to expand the platform beyond Nigeria to Kenya, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

The post Nigeria’s Hello Tractor in AI, blockchain partnership with IBM Research appeared first on Disrupt Africa.

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#Africa This Nigerian startup uses Chinese drones to help African farmers

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Nigerian startup Beat Drone is using drones imported from China to execute spraying on farms, engage in crop supervision, and map farmland to improve agricultural yields.

The Beat Drone platform allows a farmer to request a drone and schedule a date, and make payment, before drones are deployed for things like crop counting and mapping.

All of its service, president Odionye Confidence told Disrupt Africa, will help farmers grow their businesses.

“It enables the farmer to achieve optimum results, increased harvest yields and lower cost of operations, thus reducing the cost of food in the open market, eliminating hunger and poverty,” he said.

The Beat Drone team came together in 2016, with Confidence joined by co-founders Chidinma Nwokonko and Yinka Ojomo. With the help of angel funding and a board of directors that includes Paga brand manager Daniel Oparison and Passion Incubator founder Olufunbi Falayi, the startup has had a positive start to life in Nigeria.

“We’ve had increased demand and our product has had immense advantage to the farmers. We have increased their harvest yield by 20 per cent from their previous harvest output,” said Confidence. “We currently have over 30,000 hectares under our operation.”

Beat Drone also recently signed a deal with the Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria to access 1.5 million hectares of rice farming lands within the next 12 months. Confidence says the startup is solving a serious problem, with the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimating that over 50 per cent of planted crops in developing markets die due to inadequate crop supervision and inefficient application of chemicals to kill weeds, kill pests and nutrients.

“This means they don’t meet the local food demand, thus making food expensive due to dependence on imported foods,” he said.

Such is the scale of the problem that Beat Drone, which charges clients for every operation per hectare, has ambitious expansion problems, and plans to be in 30 African countries within the next five years.

The post This Nigerian startup uses Chinese drones to help African farmers appeared first on Disrupt Africa.

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#Africa This Nigerian startup uses Chinese drones to help African farmers

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Nigerian startup Beat Drone is using drones imported from China to execute spraying on farms, engage in crop supervision, and map farmland to improve agricultural yields.

The Beat Drone platform allows a farmer to request a drone and schedule a date, and make payment, before drones are deployed for things like crop counting and mapping.

All of its service, president Odionye Confidence told Disrupt Africa, will help farmers grow their businesses.

“It enables the farmer to achieve optimum results, increased harvest yields and lower cost of operations, thus reducing the cost of food in the open market, eliminating hunger and poverty,” he said.

The Beat Drone team came together in 2016, with Confidence joined by co-founders Chidinma Nwokonko and Yinka Ojomo. With the help of angel funding and a board of directors that includes Paga brand manager Daniel Oparison and Passion Incubator founder Olufunbi Falayi, the startup has had a positive start to life in Nigeria.

“We’ve had increased demand and our product has had immense advantage to the farmers. We have increased their harvest yield by 20 per cent from their previous harvest output,” said Confidence. “We currently have over 30,000 hectares under our operation.”

Beat Drone also recently signed a deal with the Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria to access 1.5 million hectares of rice farming lands within the next 12 months. Confidence says the startup is solving a serious problem, with the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimating that over 50 per cent of planted crops in developing markets die due to inadequate crop supervision and inefficient application of chemicals to kill weeds, kill pests and nutrients.

“This means they don’t meet the local food demand, thus making food expensive due to dependence on imported foods,” he said.

Such is the scale of the problem that Beat Drone, which charges clients for every operation per hectare, has ambitious expansion problems, and plans to be in 30 African countries within the next five years.

The post This Nigerian startup uses Chinese drones to help African farmers appeared first on Disrupt Africa.

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#Blockchain Onegold Customers Can Now Purchase Digital Bullion With Bitcoin

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Onegold Customers Can Now Purchase Digital Bullion With Bitcoin

Online bullion marketplace Onegold announced on Tuesday that its customers can now purchase precious metals with bitcoin cash (BCH) and bitcoin core (BTC). Onegold’s digital silver and gold products are fully allocated physical metals stored at the Royal Canadian Mint and can be redeemed at any time through Apmex.

Also read: Only Five Bitcoin Mining Devices Released in 2018 Are Profitable This December

Onegold Now Accepts Cryptocurrencies

Onegold Customers Can Now Purchase Digital Bullion With Bitcoin Cryptocurrency proponents can now purchase digital gold and silver bullion products on the Onegold platform using BCH and BTC. Onegold is a blockchain-based platform that stores precious metals and allows customers to redeem their digital bullion holdings at any time. The concept was created by the precious metals e-retailer Apmex and alternative asset manager Sprott. Their recent decision to support BCH and BTC is due to a partnership with Bitpay which had a prior relationship with Apmex.

“Bitpay and Apmex have worked together for years, making it easy for Apmex to accept cryptocurrency — When they started Onegold, we were ready to help them accept bitcoin and bitcoin cash through Bitpay,” explained the chief commercial officer at Bitpay, Sonny Singh.

Singh continued:

Cryptocurrency is an ideal payment method for e-commerce and precious metals where the risk of chargebacks, fraud and identity theft with traditional credit cards is high.

International Bullion Buyers Are Interested in Alternative Payment Methods

Onegold Customers Can Now Purchase Digital Bullion With Bitcoin Ken Lewis, chief executive officer at Onegold, explained that credit card chargebacks were one of the big reasons the company chose to accept BCH and BTC. Because the digital assets act like cash and are a “push transaction” system, users need to pay for products up front, making traditional fraud cases much harder to accomplish. Lewis also detailed that blockchain payments provide greater accountability and some international buyers are more apt to purchase Onegold’s collateralized assets using cryptocurrencies.

“We anticipate a large number of cryptocurrency buyers from international markets, where accepting credit cards is not always practical,” Lewis explained during the announcement. “In addition to helping protect our own interests, adding bitcoin and bitcoin cash to the payment options for Onegold also increases our payment transparency and efficiency.”

Onegold Believes Cryptographically Secured Metals Are Better Than Exchange-Traded Funds

Onegold believes that its digital bullion is far superior to gold-backed paper like exchange-traded funds (ETF), such as the gold trust Comex and LBMA Gold. Both products are similar because they can be electronically traded, but Onegold is cryptographically secured by a distributed ledger and has 100 percent physical metal backing.

Onegold Customers Can Now Purchase Digital Bullion With Bitcoin
The Onegold system.

Onegold customers can redeem their stored assets with the click of a button, and have physical metals shipped to their door by Apmex. Quite a few gold and silver ETFs cannot be redeemed so quickly and some cannot be traded for physical assets at all, making customers settle for fiat. Onegold believes adding the ability to purchase digital metals with cryptocurrencies was the company’s next logical step.

What do you think about Onegold adding BCH and BTC support for digital bullion purchases? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images via Shutterstock, Onegold, and Pixabay.

Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.

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#Asia #China How VCs do due diligence: blockchain and priorities with Aly Madhavji and Mansoor Madhavji, Partners of Blockchain Founders Fund

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In the second episode of our series on due diligence, we learn from Blockchain Founders Fund about how they evaluate blockchain startups and what they specifically look for in the due diligence process.

Recording from Money 20/20 China in Hangzhou, our host Oscar Ramos had an in-depth discussion with Aly Madhavji and Mansoor Madhavji, partners of the Blockchain Founders Fund, who shared their insights about their due diligence process, strategy and preferences when evaluating blockchain projects, and the examples how they work with early-stage projects, which is also illuminating for other startups. Here are some keywords they mentioned: Trust, product, traction, finance, etc.

Show Notes:
01:32 Introducing Aly and Mansoor

03:00 Portfolio and their Investment Strategy & Philosophy

06:10 How do they work globally?

07:21 Stages of Investment

07:35 First Step in Due Diligence for Blockchain

10:37 Transparency and Trust Matters

11:54 Checking Background and Company’s Strategies

13:30 How do companies react to your due diligence and how does that matter

14:38 Bringing in External Parties to the Due Diligence Process

15:23 Other Important Areas for Due Diligence

16:48 Product Evaluation in Blockchain Companies

19:06 Role of Stress Test

20:10 Measuring Traction and Evaluating Analytics

22:08 Financial Due Diligence

25:52 Their Perspectives on Startups Outsourcing Key Team Roles (e.g. CFO)

27:41 Do they look into Cliffs? 
28:55 Additional Tips from Aly and Mansoor

30:29 Due Diligence in East Asia

32:37 Contact Information and Signing Out

Contact them!
Twitter: @BlockchainFF
Twitter: @aly_madhavji
Email: mansoor@blockchainff.com

Companies mentioned:
https://www.cryptyk.com/
https://every.shop/
https://www.taloflow.ai/

Many thanks to our host Oscar Ramos and guest Aly Madhavji and Mansoor Madhavji , editor David and Geep, producer Eva Shi, organizer Chinaccelerator and sponsor People Squared. Be sure to check out our website www.chinaccelerator.com.

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#UK Cambridge trio in alliance to drive autonomous vehicle technology

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The relentless search for holy grail technologies for safe autonomous and nextgen vehicles has been bolstered by Cambridge trio Linaro, Arm and Huawei.

Linaro, an open source collaborative engineering organisation, has joined forces with Japan-based intelligent vehicle technology company Tier IV, Inc., and US-based autonomous mobility systems software company Apex.AI to form the Autoware Foundation. Arm and Huawei are adding technology and tech muscle to the alliance.

The non-profit organisation has been created to initiate, grow, and fund open source collaborative engineering Autoware projects, starting with Autoware.AI, Autoware.Auto, and Autoware.IO. 

Autoware.AI is the original Autoware project started in 2015 by Shinpei Kato at Nagoya University that is being used globally by more than 100 companies in more than 30 vehicles today. 

Autoware.Auto is a rewrite of Autoware using ROS 2.0 for certifiable software stacks used in vehicles. Autoware.IO focuses on heterogeneous platform support based on 96Boards products, vehicle control interfaces as well as a collection of third-party software and hardware tools to help deliver the core values of Autoware.

Examples of Autoware.IO projects include simulators, device drivers for sensors, by-wire controllers for vehicles, and hardware-independent programs for SoC boards.

Shinpei Kato from Tier IV and the University of Tokyo, Jan Becker from Apex.AI and Stanford University and Yang Zhang from Linaro 96Boards and the Chinese Academy of Sciences AI Institute have together formed the founding board of directors for the Autoware Foundation. 

A technical steering committee is being formed from representatives of the Premium Members to drive the technical direction of the projects. Founding Premium Members include Cambridge tech trio Linaro 96Boards, Arm and Huawai, Apex.AI, AutoCore, AutonomouStuff, Kalray, LG, Parkopedia, StreetDrone, Tier IV and Velodyne. 

The premium members are supported by founding Industrial and academic & non-profit members including eSOL, Intel, Nagoya University, OSRF (Open Source Robotics Foundation), RoboSense, Semi Japan, SiFive, TRI-AD (Toyota Research Institute Advanced Development, Inc), and Xilinx.

Mark Hambleton, vice-president open source software, Arm said: “As we work towards the mass deployment of safe, fully autonomous vehicles, we need to ensure that automotive players have the ability to influence technical direction and implement platform support for their solutions.
“This partnership will allow the Autoware ecosystem to further collaborate on certifiable software stacks for secure, safe, and efficient next-generation vehicles.”

Jerry Su, chief architect of Huawei Autonomous Driving. said: “We are thrilled to be joining the Autoware Foundation. Huawei is a leading global ICT solutions provider.

“We advocate customer-centricity, dedication, and continuous innovation based on customer needs. Collaboration with Autoware enables us to work with the community to develop the self-driving vehicle software that accelerates the industry growth and benefits our customers.”

 • Image courtesy of Arm

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Posted in #UK

#UK Cambridge startup secures £1m for AI-powered expert finder

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Cambridge startup techspert.io has secured £1 million in second round funding for its pioneering expert-finding and evaluating technology.

The round was led by Cambridge angel Simon Thorpe who has already demonstrated the Midas touch. He was an investor in Swiftkey and Vocal IQ – Cambridge-founded businesses bought by Google and Apple, respectively, for a combined $350 million.

The new round was also backed by Angel CoFund, a VC fund that co-invests alongside angel investors. John Spearman, GW Asia Capital Ltd and Adrian Lloyd also participated, and all three non-exec directors from round one have re-invested.

techspert.io has developed the first search engine capable of scouring the internet for experts available to answer the complex questions of all types of business. 

Quick access to expertise on demand is essential for growth and progress in everything from rare disease research to the development of sustainable fuels.

The startup plans to eliminate companies’ current dependency on established ‘expert networks’ like that of current market-leader, US-based Gerson Lehrman Group. 

The techspert.io AI pinpoints niche specialists who may not be members of current networks, in any given country, and quantitatively evaluates expertise in a move to create greater objectivity and transparency.

The team will now build on its profitable start in the healthcare and life sciences sectors to target the $5 billion ‘economy of knowledge’ – the global spend on sourcing and speaking to experts across all sectors and geographies. It is changing its name from Biotechspert to techspert.io as a result.

David Holden-White, co-founder and managing director of techspert.io said: “Our vision is for any company with a thorny question to get a better answer, quicker. Before techspert.io, companies seeking specialist knowledge typically had to use experts signed up to networks, leading to a high degree of self-selection. 

“Existing service providers generally use employees to search partial databases manually on behalf of clients, and experts often have to confirm their own suitability for a task.

“Our platform can scour more than 150 million experts in minutes to pinpoint and connect companies to highly-specific expertise. That’s a pool of experts around 30 times larger than they can access through any single expert network. 

“What’s more, the AI enables techspert to learn continuously, adjusting its ranking as it perfects its ability to recognise genuine expertise, and to evolve as experts do.”

Simon Thorpe added: “techspert.io’s potential to use truly specialist expertise to power more informed decisions and create faster progress is immense. The company has already proved its capability and market fit by satisfying one sector. This investment will accelerate techspert.io’s plans to revolutionise expert input across many other industry sectors.”

Clients of the groundbreaking service include in Europe, PwC, IQVIA and Sofinnova Partners, while ZS Associates is a US user.

Co-founders Graham Mills and David Holden-White set up the company in 2016, having found themselves at a loss trying to find healthcare and life sciences industry-specific expertise without contacts or significant budget. Several hours spent trawling the web led to a deep frustration that they discovered others shared. 

In setting up techspert.io their goal was to democratise access to expertise across the globe. Clients are charged for the time they spend speaking to experts, with techspert.io taking a percentage of this charge, or can opt for a subscription to the service.

• PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: David Holden-White and Graham Mills, co-founders of techspert.io

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Posted in #UK

#Blockchain This London Taxi Driver Sells Cryptocurrency to Passengers

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This London Taxi Driver Sells Cryptocurrency to His Passengers

If you hail a taxi in downtown London, you could wind up paying for more than just your fare. Pseudonymous cab driver Dave Jenkins is known as the Crypto Cabbie because as he drives passengers around London he provides the ability to purchase BTC.

Also read: Only Five Bitcoin Mining Devices Released in 2018 Are Profitable This December

Meet the Crypto Cabbie

This London Taxi Driver Sells Cryptocurrency to PassengersThere’s a taxi driver in London who will not only give you a ride, but might also ask you if you’re interested in purchasing BTC. Dave Jenkins travels with a device that enables people to purchase bitcoins. As he explained in a recent interview, the hardware is manufactured by a company called Fastbitcoins, and allows the Crypto Cabbie to sell BTC for cash before furnishing the buyer with a receipt. Essentially, the service is a voucher system that can be redeemed for BTC after the purchase at certain locations.

Jenkins says dealing with him is much easier for customers than signing up for an exchange or using a crypto ATM in London that might require KYC identification. The Crypto Cabbie reckons he’s the first taxi driver to offer cryptocurrency purchases. “You know, you just turn up, get in the cab, hand the cash over and you’ve got your bitcoin and away you go,” Jenkins explained during his interview. The Crypto Cabbie is good friends with Danny Brewster, the creator of the U.K.-based Fastbitcoins point-of-sale (PoS) terminal company.

This London Taxi Driver Sells Cryptocurrency to Passengers

Hailing a Cab in the Digital World

According to Brewster, he sells the crypto-enabled PoS devices to retail stores and businesses worldwide and is confident of developing his business during the crypto bear market, believing it makes his company stronger. His buddy Jenkins has been accepting BTC for taxi rides since 2017 and doesn’t seem concerned by its drop in value. The Crypto Cabbie explained:

I only care about owning bitcoin itself — Bitcoin to bitcoin, satoshi to satoshi, whatever.

Jenkins noted that to hail his cab in the digital world, individuals can contact his Twitter handle and provide him with a pickup location. While being driven to their destination, passengers can purchase BTC from the taxi driver using pounds, euros, and U.S. dollars. However, Jenkins only sells BTC during his regular shift hours which are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in London. The cabbie professes to only makes a few cents’ worth of BTC for his efforts but doesn’t sell the coins to make money. Rather, he simply enjoys getting more people into cryptocurrencies. “I don’t feel I’m going to become a millionaire out of it,” the cab driver conceded.

What do you think about Jenkins and his crypto taxi service in London? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments sections.

Disclaimer: Bitcoin.com does not endorse these products/services. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the mentioned companies or any of its affiliates or services. This editorial is intended for informational purposes only. Bitcoin.com and the author are not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

Images via Shutterstock, and Twitter. 

Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.

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#USA Wix launches a new suite of products for support, sales and marketing

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Wix is taking a big step beyond website building today with the launch of a suite of products called Ascend.

PR Manager Matt Rosenberg explained that just as Wix was founded with the aim of “demystifying and democratizing how you get online,” Ascend has a similar mission: “You don’t have to be a developer and designer to bring the same thing to business management and marketing.”

Other website builders like Squarespace and Weebly (now owned by Square) have also introduced marketing tools, but Ascend seems like a particularly ambitious expansion, encompassing 20 products in areas like chat, memberships, email marketing and search engine optimization (in some cases, these are existing Wix products being brought under the Ascend umbrella).

For example, Nitzan Achsaf, the company’s vice president and general manager of customer experience, demonstrated how a (fictional) tennis instructor could use the various Ascend products to answer questions from and offer discounts to one customer interested in purchasing a tennis racket, while also interacting with and providing official price quotes to someone else looking to book a birthday party for their child.

“What we’re proud of is, there’s no juggling of vendors or of third party platforms,” Rosenberg added.

Inbox - Ascend

In fact, all of a business’ interactions with a customer, regardless of channel, are routed into a single inbox, which can be accessed on any device — in the case of the tennis instructor, Achsaf said, “The whole conversation is [conducted via mobile phone] on the court, probably in between sessions.”

Wix is also developing a workflow editor, so that a business’ website and other channels can respond automatically depend on how customers behave.

Ascend by Wix is available as a separate subscription, with pricing ranging from $9 to $45 per month. Technically, you could use it even if you don’t have a Wix subscription, but Achsaf said, “The tight integration into a Wix website is a very big advantage for our users.”

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