Meet Watchful, a Tel Aviv-based startup coming out of stealth that wants to help you learn more about what your competitors are doing when it comes to mobile app development. The company tries to identify features that are being tested before getting rolled out to everyone, giving you an advantage if you’re competing with those apps.

Mobile app development has become a complex task, especially for the biggest consumer apps, from social to e-commerce. Usually, mobile development teams work on a new feature and try it out on a small subset of users. That process is called A/B testing as you separate your customers in two buckets — bucket A or bucket B.

For instance, Twitter is trying out its own version of Stories called Fleets. The company first rolled it out in Brazil to track the reaction and get some data from its user base. If you live anywhere else in the world, you’re not going to see that feature.

There are other ways to select a group of users to try out a new feature — you could even take part in a test because you’ve been randomly picked.

“When you open the app, you’ll probably see a different version from the app I see. You’re in a different region, you have a different device,” co-founder and CEO Itay Kahana told me. He previously founded popular to-do app Any.do.

For product designers, it has become a nightmare as you can’t simply open an app and look at what your competitors are doing. At any point in time, there are as many different versions of the same app as there are multiple A/B tests going on at the same time.

Watchful lets you learn from the competition by analyzing all those different versions and annotating changes in user flows, flagging unreleased features and uncovering design changes.

It is different from other mobile intelligence startups, such as App Annie or Sensor Tower. Those services mostly let you track downloads and rankings on the App Store and Play store to uncover products that are doing well.

“We’re focused on everything that is open and visible to the users,” Kahana said.

Like other intelligence startups, Watchful needs data. App Annie acquired a VPN app called Distimo and a data usage monitoring app called Mobidia. When you activate those apps, App Annie captures data about your phone usage, such as the number of times you open an app and how much time you spend in those apps.

According to a BuzzFeed News report, Sensor Tower has operated at least 20 apps on iOS and Android to capture data, such as Free and Unlimited VPN, Luna VPN, Mobile Data and Adblock Focus. Some of those apps have been removed from the stores following BuzzFeed’s story.

I asked a lot of questions about Watchful’s source of data. “It’s all real users that give us access to this information. It’s all running on real devices, real users. We extract videos and screenshots from them,” Kahana said.

“It’s more like a panel of users that we have access to their devices. It’s not an SDK that is hidden in some app and collects information and do shady stuff,” he added.

You’ll have to trust him as the company didn’t want to elaborate further. Kahana also said that data is anonymized in order to remove all user information.

Images are then analyzed by a computer vision algorithm focused on differential analysis. The startup has a team in the Philippines that goes through all that data and annotates it. It is then sent to human analysts so that they can track apps and write reports.

Watchful shared one of those reports with TechCrunch earlier this year. Thanks to this process, the startup discovered that TikTok parent company ByteDance has been working on a deepfake maker. The feature was spotted in both TikTok and its Chinese sister app Douyin.

But Watchful’s customers aren’t news organizations. The company sells access to its service to big companies working in the mobile space. Kahana didn’t want to name them, but it said it is already working with “the biggest social network players and the biggest e-commerce players, mainly in the U.S.”

The startup sells annual contracts based on the number of apps that you want to track. It has raised a $3 million seed round led by Vertex Ventures .

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Watchful is a mobile product intelligence startup that surfaces unreleased features

Lili, a startup building banking products to meet the needs of freelance workers, is announcing that it has raised $10 million in seed funding.

The startup takes its name from its founders, CEO Lilac Bar David and CTO Liran Zelkha, who previously founded Israeli challenger bank Pepper. Bar David told me that while many neobanks have emerged over the past few years, most of them “are very focused on the consumer side.”

More broadly, she suggested that no traditional banking solutions are really designed to solve the problems faced by freelancers — whether they’re designers, programmers, fitness instructors, chefs or beauty professionals. She described Lili as the first “all-in-one” solution, offering both a bank account and a broader suite of financial tracking tools.

The account comes with a Visa business debit card and is unencumbered by account fees, overdraft fees, foreign transaction fees or minimum balance requirements. Bar David said Lili only makes money from card processing fees, which means “we will make money whenever you’re making money.”

Lili also supports direct deposit, saying it provides access to payments up to two days earlier than a traditional bank. And to help freelancers manage their finances, there’s a tool for tracking and categorizing expenses, and another tool that will put a percentage of income into a sub-account for taxes.

The startup estimates that it can save freelancers up to 60 hours and $1,700 per year. (Bar David said customers may choose to use individual Lili products, but “the benefits of using the product are definitely enhanced when you use it as your main account.”) The company launched in 2019 and says it’s already used by tens of thousands of freelancers across all 50 states in the U.S.

Bar David also suggested that the freelance economy is only going to grow with the economic instability caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, with millions more people turning to freelance work as either their primary source of income, or as a supplement.

The funding was led by Group 11, with participation from Foundation Capital, AltaIR Capital, Primary Venture Partners and Torch Capital.

“Lili is redefining banking for freelancers and we’re thrilled to be partnering with the team,” said Group 11’s Dovi Frances in a statement. “As the future of work continues to evolve more quickly than ever in these uncertain times, Lilac and Liran’s forward-looking vision is changing how modern workers manage their finances, while saving them valuable time and money.”

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Lili raises M for its freelancer banking app

Tembici, which says it owns 80% of the market share in Latin America’s micromobility space, now has $47 million more in capital to double down on its docked e-bike offering. 

The Series B round was led by Valor Capital and Redpoint eventures. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank Group, and Joá Investimentos also participated in the round. The new funding marks IFC’s entry into the micromobility market, a notable move that will allow Tembici to work more closely with city regulators as it expands its e-bike offering. 

During the pandemic, in which global funding into tech startups has declined by 20%, the $47 million will allow Tembici to double down on the rollout of more electric bikes, and increase access to bikes in the major cities where the service is operative. The capital will also be used to further invest in R&D. 

As Uber scraps thousands of JUMP bikes in San Francisco that sit unused during the pandemic, CEO Tomás Martins tells me that Tembici is seeing increased ridership in São Paulo and other Brazilian cities. He says 20 million rides were taken on Tembici bikes in the past year, with 2 million rides happening per month. 

Tembici riders are split into two categories, says the CEO. As delivery demand increases during the pandemic shelter in place lockdown, more couriers are using Tembici’s bikes to circulate items and food. As Brazilians work from home, commuter rides are declining. But the people who are commuting around cities like São Paulo and Rio are choosing Tembici. 

Tembici co-founders Tomás Martins and Mauricio Villar

Tembici was co-founded by Tomás Martins and Mauricio Villar in 2010 at the University of São Paulo, and scored an early sponsorship from Brazil’s largest private bank, Itaú. Tembici uses a docking station (similar to Citi Bike in New York City) system for the return and removal of bikes. Tembici is operative in Latin America’s main urban capitals such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Recife and Porto Alegre in Brazil, as well as Buenos Aires in Argentina and Santiago in Chile.

“Bicycles will undoubtedly play an important role in the post-pandemic world because they’re being strongly recommended by public health agencies for safe, sustainable transportation for individuals. As more people change their habits, the new investment will help us meet the increasing demand,” says CEO Martins.

Tembici says it has learned tons from observing China’s pioneering micromobility efforts — but there are some key differences in the Latin America market. Asian mobility companies scaled the dockless solution, but Tembici thinks the docked business model will yield more success and win the favor of Latin American city regulators. 

E-bike and scooter makers like JUMP and Mobike became acquisition targets for companies like Uber and WeChat that are building the “super app” (although there have since been some issues here, as Mobike was removed from WeChat’s payments system and JUMP pulled its bikes from a handful of cities in the U.S.). However those issues don’t seem to be happening in Latin America. While the region has seen consolidation in micromobility over the past few years with Yellow and Grin, micromobility companies have remained relatively independent compared to their foreign super-app owned counterparts. 

Scott Sobel, managing partner at Valor, is joining Tembici’s board of directors, along with Redpoint managing partner Romero Rodrigues. Sobel says we can expect to see more government partnerships and eventually consolidation from micromobility companies in Latin America in the future. 

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Tembici raises M Series B to expand its fleet of electric bikes