Koreas Alwayz aims to make online shopping fun again with $46M in funding

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Seoul-based e-commerce company Levit, an operator of the shopping app Alwayz, wants to make the shopping experience more entertaining and affordable. The two-year-old startup has recently raised $46 million in a Series B round of funding led by DST Global Partners with participation from new investor BOND and existing backers KB Investment, Mirae Asset Capital, Korea Investment Partners, GS Ventures, and Klim Ventures. With the latest round, Levit has raised a total of $67 million since its inception.

Alwayz offers a wide range of products, from daily groceries to home appliances and apparel to cosmetics. But it deviates from typical e-commerce platforms by incorporating social features like short videos and gamification into online shopping to draw customers. 

For example, users can earn rewards by playing games nurturing the pig character Don-Don-E, or receive crops in real life after successfully cultivating crops by playing a game called AI-Farm in its app. In addition, Alwayz recently introduced a “Shorts” feature that allows users to watch short videos and, in return, get discounts when shopping.  

It also attracts customers with low-price products. Users get discounts if they purchase products with other users or their friends on Alwayz. Alwayz’s C2M (consumer-to-manufacturer) model removes layers of distributors, including logistics, inventory and other intermediaries, allowing the app to offer high-quality products at lower prices. Most sellers on Alwayz are producers or manufacturers, according to the company.

“Our average product selling price is around 20% cheaper than the lowest prices on other e-commerce platforms,” chief executive officer and co-founder of Levit, Jaeyun Kang, said. “This has been made possible because lesser-known brands, which traditionally spent nearly 30-50% of the selling price on marketing in search-based [e-commerce] platforms, can now sell their products more efficiently on Alwayz through discovery-based shopping.” 

Levit says games and social features help users enter the Alwayz app daily and be exposed to various products, even if they do not immediately intend to buy.

“As users enjoy the engaging experience on our platform, we leverage their high engagement to expose them to a range of items through our recommendation algorithms. This way, even if items are from lesser-known brands, customers can discover and buy them,” Kang said. Levit describes this user experience as a “discovery shopping experience.” 

When asked about how it ensures low-priced products are high-quality, the company CEO said its recommendation algorithms assess all items on Alwayz, using factors such as conversion and customer repurchase rates. “We ensure an item isn’t widely exposed until it has proven its quality, and this approach allows us to maintain the quality of items,” he said. 

Image Credits: Levit / Alwayz

Since its launch in September 2021, the startup claims Alwayz has amassed 1 million users within three months and has reached 7 million users, 2.5 million monthly active users (MAUs) and 1.3 million daily active users (DAUs) in one and a half years. Alwayz aims to secure more than 12 million registered users, 5 million MAUs, and 3 million DAUs by the end of 2023, Kang said, adding that it has nearly 20,000 sellers registered on the app. 

Three founders of Levit — Kang, Sangwoo Park and Hyunjik Lee — have set their sights on two ambitious goals: establishing Levit as the leading e-commerce company in South Korea and capturing a significant share of the global discovery shopping market.

Alwayz has to compete with local peers, the likes of Coupang, Naver and Kurly, but its business model is more similar to the U.S.-listed e-commerce Pinduoduo and China-based AliExpress in terms of social features and lower-price products. 

The outfit, which has 20 people on the team, is planning to bring its platform to the U.S. market as early as this year. 

“Disruption in horizontal commerce is rare,” said Daegwon Chae, general partner of BOND. “Dislodging large incumbents requires meaningfully better, faster, cheaper experiences, which are difficult to achieve in a mature and efficient market. Alwayz has broken through with its relentless focus on user experience, engagement and value.” 

Korea’s Alwayz aims to make online shopping fun again with $46M in funding by Kate Park originally published on TechCrunch

source https://techcrunch.com/?p=2563168

Hacker responsible for 2020 Twitter breach sentenced to prison

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Three years after one of the most visible hacks in recent history played out in real-time in front of millions of Twitter users, one of the hackers responsible for the breach will now serve time in federal prison.

Joseph James O’Connor, 24, was sentenced Friday in a New York federal court to five years in prison after pleading guilty in May to four counts of computer hacking, wire fraud and cyberstalking. O’Connor also agreed to forfeit at least $794,000 to the victims of his crimes.

O’Connor, a U.K. citizen, was extradited from Spain at the request of U.S. prosecutors earlier this year and has remained in custody since.

In the hearing, Judge Jed S. Rakoff said O’Connor will likely serve about half of his sentence after spending more than two years in pre-trial custody.

O’Connor faced a maximum of 77 years in prison, according to Reuters. Justice Department prosecutors called for O’Connor to serve at least seven years in prison.

In court, O’Connor said his crimes were “stupid and pointless,” apologized to his victims, and asked the judge for leniency.

According to prosecutors, O’Connor “used his sophisticated technological abilities for malicious purposes — conducting a complex SIM swap attack to steal large amounts of cryptocurrency, hacking Twitter, conducting computer intrusions to take over social media accounts, and even cyberstalking two victims, including a minor victim.”

The government said O’Connor, known by his online handle PlugWalkJoe, was part of a group that broke into dozens of high-profile Twitter accounts, including Apple, Binance, Bill Gates, Joe Biden and Elon Musk, to spread cryptocurrency get-rich-quick scams in July 2020.

O’Connor used phone-based social engineering techniques to trick Twitter employees into granting the group of hackers access to Twitter’s network. One of the other hackers convicted of the Twitter breach, Graham Ivan Clark, also known as Kirk, used the access to Twitter’s network to abuse an internal admin tool to hijack and reassign Twitter user accounts.

A screenshot of the Twitter admin panel that the hackers breached in order to reassign access to Twitter user accounts. Image Credits: TechCrunch (supplied)

Twitter temporarily blocked users from posting to the site as it grappled with the intrusion, as millions of users watched in real time as their timelines flooded with cryptocurrency scams from some of the most recognizable names on the planet.

A subsequent investigation by New York’s Department of Financial Services, which accused Twitter of inadequate cybersecurity protections, found that the hackers broke in by “calling Twitter employees and claiming to be from Twitter’s IT department,” then hijacked the Twitter accounts of politicians, celebrities, and entrepreneurs to tweet “double your bitcoin” scams.

The scam netted about $120,000, according to public blockchain records.

Several of the tweets that were published during the 2020 Twitter hack. Image Credits: TechCrunch

The breach prompted Twitter to improve its cybersecurity controls, introducing hardware security keys for its employees to prevent future phishing attempts.

Two years on from the hack, more explosive allegations about the breach came to light.

Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, who was hired as Twitter’s head of security months after the breach, later described the hackers’ access as achieving “god mode,” which allowed them to imposter-tweet from any account they wanted. Zatko called the incident “the largest hack of a social media platform in history” in a whistleblower complaint filed with federal regulators in 2022, in which Zatko accused his former employer of cybersecurity failings.

Twitter auto-replied with a poop emoji in response to an emailed request for comment, as it has done since a short time after Elon Musk acquired the company.

A hacker used Twitter’s own ‘admin’ tool to spread cryptocurrency scam

Hacker responsible for 2020 Twitter breach sentenced to prison by Zack Whittaker originally published on TechCrunch

source https://techcrunch.com/?p=2560856

Philippines startup Shoppable Business smooths bumps in the business procurement process

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Shoppable Business Chris Blanquera, Sam Blanquera and Carlo Silva

Shoppable Business wants to make it easier for businesses in the Philippines to source and procure branded products and other inventory, with an emphasis on making sure products are authentic. The B2B e-commerce marketplace announced it has closed what it says was an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round of $1.15 million.

The round was co-led by Foxmont Capital Partners and Seedstars International Ventures, along with angel investors. Shoppable Business previously got backing from AHG Lab.

Shoppable Business was founded in 2022 by a team including Carlo Silva, who previously started and exited e-commerce business process outsourcing company 2ndOffice. The founders also include Sam Blanquera and Chris Blanquera, who co-founded and existed Openovate Labs and Galleon.ph.

Silva told TechCrunch that after working at startups and conglomerates in the Philippines since 2013, Shoppable Business’ founding team noticed that there was a huge gap in the marketplace for a efficient digital procurement process. “The traditional methods were slow, opaque and painstakingly manual and it was hard to find trusted suppliers,” he said.

One problem that businesses face when procuring online is not knowing if goods are authentic. While there have been a lot of e-commerce innovations in the Philippines, like social commerce, a lot of them are targeted toward consumers. But businesses often have to rely on Facebook Marketplace and classified ads for procurement, which means processing orders is a time consuming business.

Silva said that in the Philippines, the traditional procurement process is manual, with orders usually processed through messaging apps, email or in person. Quotations are sent through word documents or spreadsheets. “It’s also difficult to search for authentic products online, and to compare quotations as they are funneled through messenger apps and email, making it an inefficient process,” he said.

Shoppable Business is aimed at businesses that want to procure goods quickly and more cheaply, but don’t have a dedicated procurement team. It also works with companies that manufacture their own brands and distributors. The platform specializes in branded products and services for resellers.

Shoppable Business helps them by operating as a horizontal B2B marketplace for products and services from multiple categories. In addition to using the platform to find products, businesses can also access services like marketing, sales support, procurement outsourcing, logistics, financing and payment infrastructure. Shoppable Business also issues official BIR (Bureau of Internal Revenue)-certified sales invoices and receipts, which companies need in the Philippines to claim the full purchase. To ensure authentic products, Shoppable Business is a marketplace partner of GS1 Philippines (GS1 is the standard for barcodes and product identification in 116 countries, and has 2 million member companies).

In terms of convincing sellers and businesses to move off Facebook Marketplace and the other platforms they are currently using, Shoppable Business makes the process easier by providing a single product listing catalog feature, which means if a product is already in its catalog, sellers don’t need to recreate the product listing. Instead, they can start selling it with a few clicks, by inputting their selling price, stock and any bulk discounts they would like to offer.

Sellers also get their own store on Shoppable Business that enables them to accept payments from different options like Gcash, Maya, credit cards, bank transfers and even check or manual bank deposits. Shopppable Business also does away with the hassle of shipping by arranging deliveries through third-party logistic partners.

To make it easier for sellers to move their current customer base to Shoppable Business, the platform offers a program called Shoppable Direct which enables them to refer existing customers to become buyers. Shoppable will tag seller’s customers as their direct customers if they buy something from the seller that referred them. It also waives marketplace fees for the buyer.

Silva said the wide array of services Shoppable Business offers sellers and buyers, like sales support, procurement outsourcing and logistics, helps it compete with other B2B marketplaces. In addition, it guarantees the issurance of BIR (Bureau of Internal Revenue)-certified sales invoices and receipts for every transaction, and also protects product authenticity through its partnership with GS1 Philippines.

The funding will be used to hire for Shoppable Business’ business development team, product and feature development and expanding into new markets in Southeast Asia. Silva said the startup will target new markets by the first half of 2024.

In a statement about the investment, Foxmont Capital Partners managing partner Franco Varona said, “Sourcing and procurement have traditionally been a very manual and a very challenging experience in the Philippines. The lack of transparency in pricing and difficulty in finding goods at scale and quickly is something Filipino companies have had to deal with for too long.  Shoppable Business helps to directly solve that problem, and we believe Carlo and his team are exactly the right team to do it.”

How to approach customer discovery as an early-stage startup (and beyond)

Philippines startup Shoppable Business smooths bumps in the business procurement process by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

source https://techcrunch.com/?p=2558847

Radiant is a no-frills iOS client for Mastodon

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While platforms like Reddit and Twitter are changing rules and making life difficult for developers of third-party clients, the ecosystem of Mastodon apps is still growing. Today, indie developer Jake Nelson released a simple iOS app called Radiant, which focuses on simple and functional design.

Other clients, such as Ivory, Mammoth, and Woolly are made by developers who had popular Twitter clients before the Elon Musk platform ostracized them. However, Nelson had no social media app in his development portfolio. He has released various apps like a cookie blocker for Safari, a barcode scanner app to store them in a digital wallet, and a word game under a company called Small Colossus.

Nelson said that he started making Radiant because he had moved to Mastodon and didn’t find any suitable app for the decentralized social network.

“I found that with the rollout of Twitter Blue and the algorithm changes my feed became noticeably worse. A lot of the iOS community on Twitter started talking about moving to Mastodon, and then did, so I took the plunge and did the same. I started to thoroughly enjoy the platform very quickly, but there wasn’t an iOS app that suited me perfectly. Apollo by Christian Selig was previously my most used social media app, by far, and is probably my favorite iOS app ever, and nothing I tried had a similar feel to it,” he told TechCrunch over email.

Image Credits: Radiant.social

Radiant lets you sign in to your existing Mastodon account or create an account on a suggested server. There are plenty of options for posting content including polls, high-quality media, multi-language support and a thread creator tool.

The app has some neat features that are nice to have. For instance, you can filter out duplicate boosts or boosts that you have already seen, show/hide counts for boosts and favorites, display a ring around profile picture of an account which follows you back, and enable advanced post-filtering options.

Image Credits: Radiant.social

One of the biggest challenges with Mastodon is to discover people to follow. Radiant provides recommendations based on people you follow and have interacted with. Nelson said that recommendation features including people, trending hashtags, and popular articles are dependent on the instance where your account has been hosted. He said that he is trying to tap into bigger instances to include some trends from those servers.

Nelson admitted that some parts of the feature set might look like it is overlapping with other popular Mastodon clients, but its unique design and the ability to personalize the interface are the biggest differences. He said that, at this moment, Radiant might cater more to people who are already on Mastodon — but down the line, he wants the app to contribute towards people discovering and joining Mastodon and potentially the broader decentralized social media ecosystem.

Image Credits: Radiant.social

Radiant is free to use app with most features available without any cost. For $1.99 per month, users can get a Premium account and features like custom themes and icons, push notifications, and support for multiple accounts.

Earlier this year, Twitter booted out third-party clients by changing its API rules. Currently, Reddit is taking similar steps to limit commercial alternative clients. Nelson said that he has faith in Mastodon in maintaining the open-sourced nature of the network.

“I view Mastodon as truly open, in that it is open source and its foundations center around interoperability and API access, compared to Reddit and Twitter where the API access can be taken away. While Mastodon the software is technically built and run by a company, that company is a non-profit organization. Mastodon gGmbH also runs the largest Mastodon instances mastodon.social, but I don’t think there is any risk of the API going away or becoming paid which would threaten the future of Radiant, as the non-profit’s goals are broadly toward openness and greater access to the decentralized social web,” he said.

Radiant is a no-frills iOS client for Mastodon by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

source https://techcrunch.com/?p=2558850

How to Use Digital Marketing and PR Together for the Best Results

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Digital marketing is good for creating awareness about your brand and driving traffic to your website or blog. PR, on the other hand, is good for building relationships with journalists, influencers, and customers.

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source https://normbondmarkets.com/?p=18322

Volume of Dead Crypto Coins By Death Year 2013-2022

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Ranked in order by percentage the coin killers were Lack of Trade Volume (66%), Scam or Fraud (22%), ICO Fail (10%) and Joke or No Purpose (1%).

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source https://normbondmarkets.com/?p=78677