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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 !

#USA Connecting African software developers with top tech companies nets Andela $100 million

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Andela, the company that connects Africa’s top software developers with technology companies from the U.S. and around the world, has raised $100 million in a new round of funding.

The new financing from Generation Investment Management (the investment fund co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore) puts the valuation of the company at somewhere between $600 million and $700 million, based on data available from PitchBook on the company’s valuation following its previous $40 million funding.

Previous investors from that financing, including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, GV, Spark Capital and CRE Venture Capital, also participated.

“It’s increasingly clear that the future of work will be distributed, in part due to the severe shortage of engineering talent,” says Jeremy Johnson, co-founder and CEO of Andela. “Given our access to incredible talent across Africa, as well as what we’ve learned from scaling hundreds of engineering teams around the world, Andela is able to provide the talent and the technology to power high-performing teams and help companies adopt the distributed model faster.”

The company now has more than 200 customers paying for access to the roughly 1,100 developers Andela has trained and manages.

Since its founding in 2014, Andela has seen more than 130,000 applicants for those 1,100 slots. After a promising developer is onboarded and goes through a six-month training bootcamp at one of the company’s coding campuses in Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda or Uganda, they’re placed with an Andela customer to work as a remote, full-time employee.

Andela receives anywhere from $50,000 to $120,000 per developer from a company and passes one-third of that directly on to the developer, with the remainder going to support the company’s operations and cover the cost of training and maintaining its facilities in Africa. Coders working with Andela sign a four-year commitment (with a two-year requirement to work at the company), after which they’re able to do whatever they want.

Even after the two-year period is up, Andela boasts a 98 percent retention rate for developers, according to a person with knowledge of the company’s operations.

With the new cash in hand, Andela says it will double in size, hiring another thousand developers, and invest in new product development and its own engineering and data resources. Part of that product development will focus on refining its performance monitoring and management toolkit for overseeing remote workforces. 

“We believe Andela is a transformational model to develop software engineers and deploy them at scale into the future enterprise,” says Lilly Wollman, co-head of Growth Equity at Generation Investment Management, in a statement. “The global demand for software engineers far exceeds supply, and that gap is projected to widen. Andela’s leading technology enables firms to effectively build and manage distributed engineering teams.”

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2MpazKK

#USA Electric, the startup that automates IT, raises $25 million from GGV

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Electric.ai, the New York-based startup that offers chat-based IT support, has announced the close of a $25 million Series B round led by GGV. As part of the deal, partner Jeff Richards will be joining the board.

Founder Ryan Denehy launched Electric in 2016. Previously, he’d run two startups that were sold to USA Today Sports and Groupon, respectively, where he realized that all of the simplicity that came with using a service like Zenefits simply didn’t exist in the IT world.

“It was all local service providers, and they all charge way too much money,” said Denehy. “I thought ‘this is so nuts!’ Companies are using more and more technology every day.”

With his second startup, Swarm, he saw even more clearly how big of a problem this was as the company sold a product that required hardware installation at retailers.

“We were building a company on top of local IT providers, and I saw up close and personal how difficult it was and how fragmented the industry was.”

And so, Electric was born.

The premise is relatively simple. Most of IT’s tasks focus on administration, distribution and maintenance of software programs, meaning that the individual IT specialist doesn’t necessarily need to be desk-side troubleshooting a hardware issue.

Companies using Electric simply install its software on every corporate laptop, giving the top IT employee or the org’s decision-maker a bird’s-eye view of the lay of the land. They can grant and revoke permissions, assign roles and make sure everyone’s software is up to date. By integrating with the APIs of the top office software programs, like Dropbox and G Suite, most of the day-to-day tasks of IT can be handled through Electric’s dashboard.

This leaves IT professionals time to focus on actual troubleshooting, hardware installation, etc.

For startups that haven’t yet hired an IT person, Electric connects startups that need help with installation or in-person troubleshooting with local vendors.

Electric says it has automated around 40 percent of IT tasks, with plans to automate 80 percent of IT tasks over 2019.

The company currently has around 300 customers, which rounds out to about 10,000 total users, and serves 10 U.S. markets, including New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago and Austin, among others.

The new funding brings Electric’s total funding amount to $37.3 million.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2sIb4qw

#Blockchain Money Transmitter License Not Required for Crypto Businesses in Pennsylvania

Money Transmitter License Not Required for Crypto Businesses in Pennsylvania

On Wednesday, Jan. 23, the Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities (DoBS) published guidance for virtual currency businesses operating in the state. The state’s financial agency has decided a money transmission license for cryptocurrency operations is not required.

Also Read: Former Mt Gox CEO Reflects on Incarceration in Japan While Facing More Prison Time

Banking Department in Pennsylvania Declares Cryptocurrency Businesses Don’t Need a Money Transmitter License

Banking officials from the state of Pennsylvania have revealed that cryptocurrency business operators are not required to apply for a money transmission license. The DoBS has issued a statement concerning the state’s Money Transmitter Act (MTA) and guidance for virtual currency businesses explaining that bitcoin and other digital assets are not considered legal tender in the U.S. In fact, the Pennsylvania guidelines emphasize that thus far, there is no state in the country that has “designated virtual currency as legal tender.” Furthermore, the DoBS explains that it has received “multiple inquiries from entities” who were looking for further guidance toward money transmission laws and setting up a cryptocurrency operation.

“The DoBS will not be responding to these requests for guidance on a case-by-case basis, the DoBS is providing the following guidance on the applicability of the Money Transmission Business Licensing Law,” reads the banking department’s announcement.

Money Transmitter License Not Required for Crypto Businesses in Pennsylvania

Cryptocurrency Kiosks, ATMs, and Vending Machines Don’t Need a License

If the platform does not directly deal with handling fiat currency then a money transmission license is not needed. When a business operating in Pennsylvania solely transacts in virtual currency settlements then ultimately the platform is not engaged in the business of providing payment services or money transfer services. The DoBS also stated that operators of virtual currency kiosks, automated teller machines (ATMs), and vending machines have all attempted to contact the agency.      

“In both the one-way and two-way Kiosk systems, there is no transfer of money to any third party — The user of the Kiosk merely exchanges fiat currency for virtual currency and vice versa, and there is no money transmission,” the DoBS MTA guidelines explain.

Thus, the entities operating the Kiosks would not be money transmitters under the MTA.

Regulatory Inconsistencies Across Several States and the Federal Government

Over the course of the past few years, U.S. officials have had a hard time reaching consensus when it comes to classifying bitcoin and other digital currencies. For instance, on Sept. 19, 2016, Federal Judge Alison Nathan from Manhattan ruled that “bitcoin is money.” Nathan detailed during the legal proceedings against Coin.mx exchange operator Anthony Murgio that “Bitcoins are funds within the plain meaning of that term — They, therefore, function as pecuniary resources and are used as a medium of exchange and a means of payment.” Virtual currency businesses in the state of New York have to apply for a money transmission license (Bitlicense) that is issued by the state’s financial regulators.

Money Transmitter License Not Required for Crypto Businesses in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania’s Department of Banking and Securities (DoBS) guidelines section 1.

However, Miami-Dade’s Circuit Judge Teresa Mary Pooler tossed out anti-money-laundering charges against website designer Michell Espinoza and declared that “bitcoin was not money.” “It is very clear, even to someone with limited knowledge in the area, that Bitcoin has a long way to go before it [becomes] the equivalent of money,” Judge Pooler declared. Although the state of Florida’s prosecution agency filed an appeal against the decision to dismiss charges, the case took went on for years after Pooler’s verdict and the charges were eventually dropped.

So far the state of Pennsylvania seems to be in the same regulatory boat as Florida once was in 2016 but the sunshine state has since changed the regulatory guidelines since Judge Pooler’s decision. Back in May of 2017, House Bill 1379 passed in Florida, defining virtual currencies as a money transmission instrument and prohibiting money laundering by using virtual currency as a vehicle. Pennsylvania’s new rules may also run into issues with the federal government’s laws and how the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) classifies virtual currency operations as money transmitters. The DoBS money transmission laws in regard to cryptocurrency businesses have been discussed by Pennsylvania since 2016.

What do you think about Pennsylvania’s Department of Banking and Securities ruling on virtual currencies and the state’s money transmission laws? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.


Images via Shutterstock, and the DoBS of Pennsylvania.


There are no bigger believers in Bitcoin than the team at Bitcoin.com. That’s why this site is a one-stop-shop for everything you need to get into bitcoin life. Bitcoin store? Check. Earning bitcoin? Check. Forum discussions? Check. A casino? Yep, we have that too. Information? All here.

The post Money Transmitter License Not Required for Crypto Businesses in Pennsylvania appeared first on Bitcoin News.

from Bitcoin News http://bit.ly/2Dtwq0W Money Transmitter License Not Required for Crypto Businesses in Pennsylvania

#USA Desktop Metal just raised another $160 million

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Desktop Metal announced this morning that it has raised $160 million. That Series E brings the Burlington, Mass.-based metal 3D printing company up to a whopping $438 million. The startup’s tagline says the company “is reinventing the way design and manufacturing teams print with metal” — and now it undoubtedly has the money to do so.

Koch Disruptive Technologies (yes, that Koch) led the round, joined by GV, Panasonic and Techtronic Industries. The latest round follows $65 million last March, which found Ford investing in the technology,  which has applications for both prototyping and manufacturing. Big names like BMW and Lowe’s have also pumped money into Desktop’s impressive additive manufacturing technology.

The company will be investing the massive funding back into its technology. “This new funding will fuel the continued development of our metal 3D printing technology and rich product roadmap, the scaling of operations to meet a growing demand of orders, and the financing of major new research and development initiatives,” co-founder and CEO Ric Fulop said in a press release tied to the news.

Desktop Metal’s technology clearly represents a bright spot in the world of 3D printing/additive manufacturing — at least so far as investors are concerned. Much of that is due to the speed and durability of the printing process, which is helping it move from simple prototyping to real-world product manufacturing.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2DrKTKA

#USA Idera acquires Travis CI

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Travis CI, the popular Berlin-based open source continuous integration service, has been acquired by Idera, a company that offers a number of SQL database management and administration tools for both on-premises and cloud applications. The move comes at a time where other continuous integration services, including the likes of Circle CI, seem to be taking market share away from Travis CI.

Idera, which itself is owned by private equity firm TA Associates, says that Travis is complementary to its current testing tools business and that the acquisition will benefit its current customers. Idera’s other tools in its Testing Tools division are TestRail, Ranorex and Kiuwan. “We admire the business value driven by Travis CI and look forward to helping more customers achieve better and faster results,” said Suhail Malhotra, Idera’s General Manager for Travis CI .

Idera clearly wants to move into the DevOps business and continuous integration is obviously a major building block. This still feels like a bit of an odd acquisition, given that Idera isn’t exactly known for being on the leading edge of today’s technology (if it’s known at all). But Travis CI also brings 700,000 users to Idera and customers like IBM and Zendesk, so while we don’t know the cost of the acquisition, this is a big deal in the CI ecosystem.

“We are excited about our next chapter of growth with the Idera team,” said Konstantin Haase, a founder of Travis CI, in today’s announcement. “Our customers and partners will benefit from Idera’s highly complementary portfolio and ability to scale software businesses to the next level. Our goal is to attract as many users to Travis CI as possible, while staying true to our open source roots and community.”

That’s pretty much what all founders write (or what the acquiring company’s PR team writes for them), so we’ll have to see how Idera will steer Travis CI going forward.

In his blog post, Haase says that nothing will change for Travis CI users. “With the support from our new partners, we will be able to invest in expanding and improving our core product, to have Travis CI be the best Continuous Integration and Development solution for software projects out there,” he writes and also notes that the Travis CI will stay open source. “This is who we are, this is what made us successful.”

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2AZ5sfI

#USA How we’re finding the best lawyers for early-stage startups

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We’re nearing 1,000 submissions from startup founders and leaders in Silicon Valley and across the world about the best early-stage tech lawyers to work with. As we’ve sorted through survey responses and begun scheduling interviews with the first qualified nominees, we’ve gotten a bunch of questions. We love questions.

First of all, why are we creating a living list of great tech startup lawyers? Lawyers don’t create startups, but they can help great startups succeed. They can also kill promising ventures before they have time to get off the ground. Who you use as your lawyer matters, and yet, there are no great resources to help early-stage founders navigate this decision.

Need more detail before you take the survey? Read on.

A living list

We are not making a listicle or an occasional ranking like what you might see on other news sites or legal review services. Instead, we are making a living body of knowledge about service providers by and for people who are building companies. This survey will be staying open indefinitely and we’ll be updating our findings whenever we have enough feedback from our community about an individual lawyer. Ultimately, we will add as many lawyers as there are lawyers in the world who qualify.

We are just beginning what will be a continuous process. Each additional recommendation will help you know more about who to hire to help you with your work.

Early-stage focus

We are interested in featuring lawyers who are today heavily focused on early-stage technology startups. We realize that “early-stage” can mean multiple funding rounds and many, many millions of dollars, so we are not drawing hard boundaries. As a rule of thumb, think of startups in the process of finding product-market fit and/or a scalable business model, and are maybe even in the early stages of growth.

We realize that attorneys who have succeeded with early-stage companies over the years will themselves often move into later-stage legal work. We’re happy to hear about these folks — particularly what they have done for a company in key early moments — but we know they’re often busy and will take on few if any young companies today.

We’re happy to feature them when relevant, but we’ll also note that if you’re looking for the overall top technology lawyers in Silicon Valley or elsewhere, you should really be checking out Chambers and Partners, Martindale-Hubbell, Super Lawyers, The American Lawyer, National Law Journal and the numerous other established sources for lawyer rankings.

Tech focus

“Tech” has been heavily abused by marketers in recent years. If you’re leaving a review as a founder, but you’re not clearly building some sort of meaningful technology yourself, we will likely discard your recommendation. There are plenty of great lawyers out there who can assist with starting a business, who are not going to be familiar with the myriad challenges that a startup faces when it attempts meaningful technology innovation.

Global breadth

We’re open to submissions about lawyers working anywhere in the world. As the tech industry has gone global, locally focused attorneys have helped nurture their startup hubs and develop new crops of successful companies. Based on our survey results so far, we’re going to be featuring a geographically broad range of people to help the next generation of entrepreneurs get the best support from people who understand their surroundings.

Online legal services

While traditional law firms continue to be the preferred route for many founders, especially when they scale into the later stages of company-building, we’ve gotten a number of strong recommendations about attorneys working through software-enabled services. We see this as an important part of the future of the industry — if you’ve had a great experience, let us know about both the lawyer and the product they’re working within.

Attorneys who haven’t made partner (yet)

While submissions to date tend to focus on lawyers who have already made partner at larger firms, or have founded their own established operations, we have also gotten glowing recommendations about folks who are earlier in their careers. Like companies themselves, the top lawyers of tomorrow are working hard to get there today — so we very much want to hear about them now. Maybe we can even help them get to the top faster?

Remember, we invite any lawyer who is actively working with early-stage technology companies anywhere in the world to share this survey with their clients.

Now go take the survey if you haven’t already.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2R9E3Nw

#USA Uplift raises $123M to bring flexible payments to the travel industry

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Travel financing startup Uplift is announcing that it has raised $123 million in Series C funding.

Uplift has been relatively quiet about its business until now. Its founder and CEO is Brian Barth, who previously sold his travel startup SideStep to Kayak for $200 million

“We’ve been exceedingly low-profil,e because it’s a really good idea and we wanted to keep it a secret,” said President Robert Soderberry. “But now we’re at a size and scale where we’re ready to raise our visibility.”

Besides, he acknowledge that it would be hard to “keep a $123 million Series C financing round a secret.”

The idea is pretty straightforward: Uplift works with partners like the vacation package sites of United Airlines, Southwest and American Airlines, as well as Allegiant Travel Company and Kayak, to offer financing to travelers, allowing them to pay for their trips in monthly installments. (It has a bank partner for the loans.)

For example, Soderberry said that if a family is considering a trip to Disneyland for a price of $2,000, Uplift might be able to offer a one-year financing plan with monthly payments of $189 a month.

“We make it really easy for consumers to understand,” he said. “It’s a convenient way to book travel, it reduces the upfront cost and encourages them to book more often, which in turn drives conversion for our travel partners. It’s really a win-win.”

It’s an idea that’s spreading in other industries through companies like Affirm — and in fact, Affirm has been moving into travel. But Soderberry said Uplift is is the only company focused entirely on the travel industry.

“Planning and purchasing travel is really different buying a mattress or a gym membership,” he said. “It’s a different kind of product and different technology.”

And although Uplift launched less than two years ago, Soderberry said the company is on-track to drive nearly $1 billion in loans in 2019. He said that for some partners, Uplift represents 20 percent of their business.

The new funding should allow Uplift to bring on new partners, offer new services and otherwise grow the business. At the same time, Soderberry said the company will remain focused on travel, and on reaching consumers through its partners rather than launching a marketplace of its own

“Travel companies want to protect their customers and they don’t want us to be sourcing or acquiring their consumers,” he said. “We stand behind our partners … We don’t bring [customers] to our site to try to create a marketplace, we’re not trying to build a consumer platform, we’re building a platform for travel partners.”

Uplift previously raised $23 million in funding. The Series C was led by Madrone Capital Partners, with participation from Draper Nexus, Ridge Ventures, Highgate Ventures, Barton Asset Management and PAR Capital.

Uplift’s focused business model of bringing flexible payments to travel is a winner,” said Madrone’s Jamie McJunkin in a statement. “Our confidence to invest was driven by an experienced management team, a very large market opportunity and the competitive advantages driven by the innovations Uplift has brought to the travel market.”

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2U5Ffn4

#USA Dog cancer treatment startup raises $5 million from Andreessen Horowitz and others

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One in every three dogs gets cancer, according to the National Canine Cancer Foundation. One Health, a startup that just raised a $5 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s Bio fund with participation from Lerer Hippeau and Y Combinator, aims to make it easier for humans to treat canine cancer, which is the number one disease killer of pups.

“Prevalence and incidence for cancer is much higher with dogs,” One Health founder and CEO Christina Lopes told TechCrunch over the phone.

One Health’s FidoCure product is designed to make treating your dog’s cancer more accessible and affordable. It specifically utilizes next-generation gene sequencing to better understand the genetic mutation that is causing an individual dog’s cancer. From there, FidoCure offers recommendations and an action plan to the human, outlining the best therapeutic implications and targeted treatment.

“The purpose of the company is actionability,” Lopes said. “The test is the first step. From there, if there’s a certain mutation present, we’ll say what the FDA-approve drugs with data in dogs available are. We’ve been able to then work with pharmaceutical partners and other compounding pharmacies.”

If your dog gets diagnosed with cancer, your veterinarian may recommend One Health’s product. Still, you’ll continue to take your pup to the veterinarian, as One Health says it is “100 percent partnered with veterinarians,” who must be able to see the furry friend in real life.

The drugs recommended are FDA approved for humans, but do have data relevant to dogs. That’s where One Health says it has invested time and money in understanding those targeted drugs and their impact on dogs.

“While we didn’t develop the drugs, we’ve had to be the ones to do a lot more to close the information gap,” Lopes said.

One Health charges veterinarians directly. From there, the vet may or may not charge the patient. Average cancer care for dogs cost $6,700, Lopes said. With markup, One Health is designed to cost less than the average cost of care, she said.

“Advances in our understanding of cancer biology have revolutionized how we diagnose and treat human cancers,” a16z GP Jorge Conde said in a statement. “As research continues to uncover similarities between certain dog and human cancers, One Health not only will harness these advances to transform how we care for our pets, but also has a unique opportunity to impact human health as it discovers better ways to manage this devastating disease in dogs.”

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2WaS0P4

#USA Uplift raises $123M to bring flexible payments to the travel industry

//

Travel financing startup Uplift is announcing that it has raised $123 million in Series C funding.

Uplift has been relatively quiet about its business until now. Its founder and CEO is Brian Barth, who previously sold his travel startup SideStep to Kayak for $200 million

“We’ve been exceedingly low-profil,e because it’s a really good idea and we wanted to keep it a secret,” said President Robert Soderberry. “But now we’re at a size and scale where we’re ready to raise our visibility.”

Besides, he acknowledge that it would be hard to “keep a $123 million Series C financing round a secret.”

The idea is pretty straightforward: Uplift works with partners like the vacation package sites of United Airlines, Southwest and American Airlines, as well as Allegiant Travel Company and Kayak, to offer financing to travelers, allowing them to pay for their trips in monthly installments. (It has a bank partner for the loans.)

For example, Soderberry said that if a family is considering a trip to Disneyland for a price of $2,000, Uplift might be able to offer a one-year financing plan with monthly payments of $189 a month.

“We make it really easy for consumers to understand,” he said. “It’s a convenient way to book travel, it reduces the upfront cost and encourages them to book more often, which in turn drives conversion for our travel partners. It’s really a win-win.”

It’s an idea that’s spreading in other industries through companies like Affirm — and in fact, Affirm has been moving into travel. But Soderberry said Uplift is is the only company focused entirely on the travel industry.

“Planning and purchasing travel is really different buying a mattress or a gym membership,” he said. “It’s a different kind of product and different technology.”

And although Uplift launched less than two years ago, Soderberry said the company is on-track to drive nearly $1 billion in loans in 2019. He said that for some partners, Uplift represents 20 percent of their business.

The new funding should allow Uplift to bring on new partners, offer new services and otherwise grow the business. At the same time, Soderberry said the company will remain focused on travel, and on reaching consumers through its partners rather than launching a marketplace of its own

“Travel companies want to protect their customers and they don’t want us to be sourcing or acquiring their consumers,” he said. “We stand behind our partners … We don’t bring [customers] to our site to try to create a marketplace, we’re not trying to build a consumer platform, we’re building a platform for travel partners.”

Uplift previously raised $23 million in funding. The Series C was led by Madrone Capital Partners, with participation from Draper Nexus, Ridge Ventures, Highgate Ventures, Barton Asset Management and PAR Capital.

Uplift’s focused business model of bringing flexible payments to travel is a winner,” said Madrone’s Jamie McJunkin in a statement. “Our confidence to invest was driven by an experienced management team, a very large market opportunity and the competitive advantages driven by the innovations Uplift has brought to the travel market.”

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2U5Ffn4

#USA pi-top’s latest edtech tool doubles down on maker culture

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London-based edtech startup, pi-top, has unboxed a new flagship learn-to-code product, demoing the “go anywhere” Pi-powered computer at the Bett Show education fare in London today.

Discussing the product with TechCrunch ahead of launch, co-founder and CEO Jesse Lozano talked up the skills the company hopes students in the target 12-to-17 age range will develop and learn to apply by using sensor-based connected tech, powered by its new pi-top 4, to solve real world problems.

“When you get a pi-top 4 out of the box you’re going to start to learn how to code with it, you’re going to start to learn and understand electronic circuits, you’re going to understand sensors from our sensor library. Or components from our components library,” he told us. “So it’s not: ‘I’m going to learn how to create a robot that rolls around on wheels and doesn’t knock into things’.

“It’s more: ‘I’m going to learn how a motor works. I’m going to learn how a distance sensor works. I’m going to learn how to properly hook up power to these different sensors. I’m going to learn how to apply that knowledge… take those skills and [keep making stuff].”

The pi-top 4 is a modular computer that’s designed to be applicable, well, anywhere; up in the air, with the help of a drone attachment; powering a sensing weather balloon; acting as the brains for a rover style wheeled robot; or attached to sensors planted firmly in the ground to monitor local environmental conditions.

The startup was already dabbling in this area, via earlier products — such as a Pi-powered laptop that featured a built in rail for breadboarding electronics. But the pi-top 4 is a full step outside the usual computing box.

The device has a built-in mini OLED screen for displaying project info, along with an array of ports. It can be connected to and programmed via one of pi-top’s other Pi-powered computers, or any PC, Mac and Chromebook, with the company also saying it easily connects to existing screens, keyboards and mice. Versatility looks to be the name of the game for pi-top 4.

pi-top’s approach to computing and electronics is flexible and interoperable, meaning the pi-top 4 can be extended with standard electronics components — or even with Littlebits‘ style kits’ more manageable bits and bobs.

pi-top is also intending to sell a few accessories of its own (such as the drone add-on, pictured above) to help get kids’ creative project juices flowing — and has launched a range of accessories, cameras, motors and sensors to “allow creators of all ages to start learning by making straight out of the box”.

But Lozano emphasizes its platform play is about reaching out to a wider world, not seeking to lock teachers and kids to buying proprietary hardware. (Which would be all but impossible, in any case, given the Raspberry Pi core.)

“It’s really about giving people that breadth of ability,” says Lozano, discussing the sensor-based skills he wants the product to foster. “As you go through these different projects you’re learning these specific skills but you also start to understand how they would apply to other projects.”

He mentions various maker projects the pi-top can be used to make, like a music synth or wheeled robot, but says the point isn’t making any specific connected thing; it’s encouraging kids to come up with project ideas of their own.

“Once that sort of veil has been pierced in students and in teachers we see some of the best stuff starts to be made. People make things that we had no idea they would integrate it into,” he tells us, pointing by way of example to a solar car project from a group of U.S. schoolkids. “These fifteen year olds are building solar cars and they’re racing them from Texas to California — and they’re using pi-tops to understand how their cars are performing to make better race decisions.”

pi-top’s new device is a modular programmable computer designed for maker projects

“What you’re really learning is the base skills,” he adds, with a gentle sideswipe at the flood of STEM toys now targeting parents’ wallets. “We want to teach you real skills. And we want you to be able to create projects that are real. That it’s not block-based coding. It’s not magnetized, clipped in this into that and all of a sudden you have something. It’s about teaching you how to really make things. And how the world actually works around you.”

The pi-top 4 starts at $199 for a foundation bundle which includes a Raspberry Pi 3B+,16GB SD card, power pack, along with a selection of sensors and add-on components for starter projects.

Additional educational bundles will also launch down the line, at a higher price, including more add ons, access to premium software and a full curriculum for educators to support budding makers, according to Lozano.

The startup has certainly come a long way from its founders’ first luridly green 3D printed laptop which caught our eye back in 2015. Today it employs more than 80 people globally, with offices in the UK, US and China, while its creative learning devices are in the hands of “hundreds of thousands” of schoolkids across more than 70 countries at this stage. And Lozano says they’re gunning to pass the million mark this year.

So while the ‘learn to code’ space has erupted into a riot of noise and color over the past half decade, with all sorts of connected playthings now competing for kids’ attention, and pestering parents with quasi-educational claims, pi-top has kept its head down and focused firmly on building a serious edtech business with STEM learning as its core focus, saving it from chasing fickle consumer fads, as Lozano tells it.

“Our relentless focus on real education is something that has differentiated us,” he responds, when asked how pi-top stands out in what’s now a very crowded marketplace. “The consumer market, as we’ve seen with other startups, it can be fickle. And trying to create a hit toy all the time — I’d rather leave that to Mattel… When you’re working with schools it’s not a fickle process.”

Part of that focus includes supporting educators to acquire the necessary skills themselves to be able to teach what’s always a fast-evolving area of study. So schools signing up to pi-top’s subscription product get support materials and guides, to help them create a maker space and understand all the ins and outs of the pi-top platform. It also provides a classroom management backend system that lets teachers track students’ progress.

“If you’re a teacher that has absolutely no experience in computer science or engineering or STEM based learning or making then you’re able to bring on the pi-top platform, learn with it and with your student, and when they’re ready they can create a computer science course — or something of that ilk — in their classroom,” says Lozano.

pi-top wants kids to use tech to tackle real-world problems

“As with all good things it takes time, and you need to build up a bank of experience. One of the things we’ve really focused on is giving teachers that ability to build up that bank of experience, through an after school club, or through a special lesson plan that they might do.

“For us it’s about augmenting that teacher and helping them become a great educator with tools and with resources. There’s some edtech stuff they want to replace the teacher — they want to make the teacher obsolete. I couldn’t disagree with that viewpoint more.”

“Why aren’t teachers just buying textbooks?” he adds. “It takes 24 months to publish a textbook. So how are you supposed to teach computer science with those technology-based skills with something that’s by design two years out of date?”

Last summer pi-top took in $16M in Series B funding, led by existing founders Hambro Perks and Committed Capital. It’s been using the financing to bring pi-top 4 to market while also investing heavily in its team over the past 18 months — expanding in-house expertise in designing learning products and selling in to the education sector via a number of hires. Including the former director of learning at Apple, Dr William Rankin.

The founders’ philosophy is to combine academic expertise in education with “excellence in engineering”. “We want the learning experience to be something we’re 100% confident in,” says Lozano. “You can go into pi-top and immediately start learning with our lesson plans and the kind of framework that we provide.”

“[W]e’ve unabashedly focused on… education. It is the pedagogy,” he adds. “It is the learning outcome that you’re going to get when you use the pi-top. So one of the big changes over the last 18 months is we’ve hired a world class education team. We have over 100 years of pedagogical experience on the team now producing an enormous amount of — we call them learning experience designers.”

He reckons that focus will stand pi-top in good stead as more educators turn their attention to how to arm their pupils with the techie skills of the future.

“There’s loads of competition but now the schools are looking they’re [asking] who’s the team behind the education outcome that you’re selling me?” he suggests. “And you know what if you don’t have a really strong education team then you’re seeing schools and districts become a lot more picky — because there is so much choice. And again that’s something I’m really excited about. Everybody’s always trying to do a commercial brand partnership deal. That’s just not something that we’ve focused on and I do really think that was a smart choice on our end.”

Lozano is also excited about a video the team has produced to promote the new product — which strikes a hip, urban note as pi-top seeks to inspire the next generation of makers.

“We really enjoy working in the education sector and I really, really enjoy helping teachers and schools deliver inspirational content and learning outcomes to their students,” he adds. “It’s genuinely a great reason to wake up in the morning.”

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2FK8bO7