SpaceX has concluded its investigation into the cause of an accident on a Cape Canaveral launchpad during which one of its rockets exploded, the company reported Monday. The investigation, conducted in partnership with federal safety and space agencies including the FAA and NASA, involved closely reviewing all recorded materials and data, as well as running tests at SpaceX’s facilities in Hawthorne, CA and McGregor, TX.
The results of the investigation point to the issue that caused a Falcon 9 rocket to explode in September during pre-launch fueling. SpaceX’s investigation team found that there was a failure of a pressure vessel found inside a tank used to store liquid oxygen for the rocket’s second stage fuel burn. The problem in this case was that oxygen built up between the liner and overwrap of the vessel, which was probably made worse by loading helium so cold it turned the pooled oxygen from liquid to solid. SpaceX says it will enact both short- and long-term fixes to address these problems and is confident they will ensure a safe fueling process both immediately and in the future.
Now that the investigation is concluded, SpaceX hopes to get back to flying on January 8, the target date for its launch with client Iridium satellites. SpaceX will use a Falcon 9 to deliver a payload of 10 Iridium satellites to orbit, which the telecommunications network is using to create a voice and data network. The satellites from Iridium are already loaded into the Falcon 9’s transport capsule.
If SpaceX does indeed meet their launch window and successfully return to active mission status, their turnaround time between the September accident and getting back to launches will be unprecedented, and would go a long way toward returning full confidence to the other clients on its launch manifest.

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PixTeller is a unique little service. Created by a Romanian web designer, Alexandru Roznovat, it is a sort of instant design studio with plenty of ready-made templates so you can create clever Instagram memes or fun book cover designs in a few seconds.
After creating an account you’re presented with dozens of pre-made designs that are fairly innocuous. You can select a Facebook header, a book cover, or a snappy meme.
You then begin editing. Everything on the screen works like a vector graphic – except, obviously, photographs – and you can edit text and add shapes like you would in a standard design program. Like Tinkercad it makes for a fun and easy way to get small design projects done with a minimum of fuss. The service is free to try and $9 a month if you want to download edited documents without a watermark. You can share images with friends for comment.
“Our Editor is really fast to use. For example, I created all our current templates (more than 4000 designs) in about 3 weeks.” Roznovat told ImpactCEE. Roznovat previously worked at web applications house Geco.ro
Web-based software seems like a great solution for, say, folks with tablets or smaller laptops. While it will never truly replace a good design tool I could see this as a way to sketch out ideas and share them quickly. The company launched about a year ago but things have been quiet. Here’s hoping we can all up our meme game in 2017 thanks to tools like this one.

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New Year, new news. We’re kicking off 2017 with a nod to CES, where I’ll be for the remainder of this week checking out more gadgets than you can shake a stick at. I don’t know why you’d want to do that but here we are. Check out The Daily Crunch for January 1, 2017.
1. CES is this week
CES is this week, and it’s easily the world’s biggest consumer electronics expo. If you follow any journalists on Twitter, you may know that it’s considered one of the most gruelling stretches of work in the entire year, but it’s also pretty fun (the less thorny of us will admit to that begrudgingly).
In Las Vegas, around 200,000 people swell the city to its transportation bursting point, and everyone comes to show off what they’ve been up to in consumer gadgets Expect a lot of AI this year, including tons of intelligent automobiles. Hopefully a Herbie the Love Bug or two.
2. SpaceX wants to go back to space next week
SpaceX has been grounded since an explosion destroyed one of its Falcon 9 rockets on September 1. Now, the company says it’s satisfied its investigation into the cause, and resulting countermeasures, are ready. Mars isn’t getting any younger, so hopefully it can get back to shooting stuff beyond the atmosphere at a steady clip.
3. Tesla Autopilot update for latest cars begins rolling out
Tesla made good on its promise to return Autopilot features to so-called “HW2” equipped vehicles. CEO Elon Musk said that it’s being deployed to a small group of initial test users first, with a larger rollout planned if that goes well. The highway commute relief is in site, you pampered Tesla owners you.
4. Another Twitter eyed flies the coop
Twitter’s executive turnover continues, with its head of business in China the latest to depart. She only joined seven months ago, but basically it’s made the China-specific position obsolete with a restructuring of its Asia business.
5. Get the DL on VPN
If you weren’t exactly sure what a VPN is, Romain has you covered. Basically it’s a tunnel escape for car chases where you have to evade the helicopter. It makes sense, just go read it.
6. Fiat and Google put Android in cars
Android in the car is better than Android Auto, or so hope Fiat Chrysler and Google. The two are teaming up to make Android a more integral part of a car’s infotainment system, handling everything from radio to cabin comfort. It’s a big bet on being closer to where Google wants to be as cars become more autonomous and more a site for actual computing, and it’s very smart.

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Security is one of the few tech sectors that thrives primarily thanks to the cruel intentions of bad actors. White hats and black hats exist symbiotically. Without the criminal element to create demand, CISOs would just hang up their spurs and call it a day.
While the tension between adversaries is a necessary function of the security industry, and spurs innovation, 2016 was an especially brutal year for the good guys.
So let’s begin 2017 with a sense of gratitude, because at least 2016 is behind us and having seen the best that black hats have thrown at our collective networks last year, now is the time for the white hats to respond.
From meddling with elections to the IoT bot DDOS attacks, we experienced pain, but I believe we are entering a golden age of security automation and resilience.
This market is Yuge
Gartner estimates that the security market size will be $120bn by 2020. In my While last year’s predictions for the market were significantly higher ($170 billion vs. $120 billion) the size of the industry is vast. A few unicorns can still range across the market without poking horns into each other’s eyes.
And look at the services portion of the market pie – it’s $55 billion — big getting bigger. If you are a security startup and think it’s all about auto-magical products, think again. Forget that VC mantra of all product and no service — listen to your customer. Managed security service providers are growing at triple digit rates. Even though it’s somewhat annoying, a self-congratulatory pat on the back is necessary here – we called this “need for security services” last year.
The incumbents need help
All the major security companies – Symantec, Cisco, HP, Juniper – cannot move fast enough. Partnerships and acquisitions are the way.
As of November 2016, Momentum Partners tracked over 120 mergers and acquisitions transactions worth over $17 billion. Symantec acquired Blue Coat for $4.7bn and Lifelock for another $2.3bn. At Bluecoat, Greg Clark and Mike Fey grew by acquisitions.
They are now leading Symantec, so expect more acquisitions. And partnerships. Cisco completed its twelfth security acquisition – Cloudlock – this year. Oracle acquired CASB Palerra and DNS provider Dyn. And HP, Juniper, and Microsoft are likely to get on the prowl soon.
VC Investments cross $4bn
In 2016, VC investments crossed $4 billion. At least three venture capital funds are dedicated largely to security – Trident Cyber Security , Allegis Capital and TenEleven Ventures. When we cut the investment data (sourced from Pitchbook & Momentum Partners) by number of deals done, this market is flattening.
The number and size of later stage investments and rounds continue to grow as do their valuations. For entrepreneurs the message is clear — investors will fund your growth, not your powerpoint slideware. Seed stage valuations are lower, which is good for seed stage investors like me.
But the counterpoint is that I also see a lot of noise, me-toos and junk. Tracking some 1200 companies, these sub-sectors are obviously overheated. Put it differently, over $20bn has been invested in 1700+ security companies since 2010. By any estimates, less than 10% are profitable. And while we have a few Unicorns, we have yet to see meaningful exits.
Religious overtones aside, it’s time we put the spotlight on the soldiers of the digital age. It will be sometime before we start giving out Congressional medals of honor to CISOs – the silent majority who protect our data every day. In the meantime, take a minute to empathise with their condition.
A typical CISO has to deal with at least twenty five different technology solutions to identify, protect, detect, respond and remediate their assets. And the range of assets include applications, data, endpoints, networks and identity. Stuart McClure, CEO of Cylance pointed out that the CISOs are often the fall guys when things go wrong. Their role has been relegated to a Chief Apology Officer. The C suite / board needs to understand that a CISO is the soldier on the front lines. They need to be respected, honored and protected, sometimes from their own management hubris. And when they are done with protection, the sales guys never stop.
As we look at 2017, it’s evident that the CISO has moved from “we will be hacked someday” to “we are already compromised” to “give me that disaster recovery solution NOW.” It doesn’t get any worse. The mindset has moved precipitously towards hot backups in the age of ransomware and DDOS.
This is leading to new opportunities such as splinternet, where new companies will create tightly controlled overlay networks. Networks and security are no longer separate conversations and this trend will create a whole new set of opportunities over the next five years. Notwithstanding the regulatory / data residency laws, the push for a closed network is driven by the fact that security will never keep us 100% safe. So its time to extend the span of control into the traffic.
Other growth trends include the push for automation in the era of talent shortage. The hype of AI has already set in but a lot of remains to be proven.
The 2016 DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge was an epic milestone but its commercial implications are yet to be achieved. With 86% workloads anticipated to move to the cloud by 2020, data center security is rapidly gaining traction. Visibility and orchestration are major themes that are playing out well.
Before Amazon Web Services kills everyone and reigns the world, several startups are optimistic enough to address this market opportunity. As we look at IoT, physical security becomes of paramount importance. Companies like DeDrone (backed by Menlo Ventures) are redefining data center security.
Industrial automation and oil/gas verticals are amidst major overhaul. Tom Le, Executive Director of Cyber, GE Digital Wurldtech remarked that “OT is at least 15 years behind IT, and that gap is only growing wider.” ExxonMobil is working with Lockheed Martin to develop process automation infrastructure. By some estimates is a $40 billion expenditure. Companies like Security Matters (backed by Bosch Ventures) Tempered Networks (backed by Ignition, Rally Capital) Indegy (backed by Aspect Ventures) and Nozomi Networks (backed by GGV) have raised capital in 2016 to solve for “critical infrastructure” security.
As we look at 2017, I hope for three changes:
Security vendor accountability ought to get better. We can no longer operate, as some accuse us to be, as snake oil salesmen. Fear driven tactics never work in the long haul. Shame on us when ransomware ‘vendors’ offer SLAs and we cannot. Shame on us if we cannot “red team” our own security products.
Secondly, design matters. Our products are not for nerds but for noobies. They have just arrived, on their second day in that SOC. They should be able to use your products, integrate it easily without a CISSP / PhD.
Finally, security sales should induce less nausea and more joy. Bob Lord, CISO of Yahoo who has been beset with “got a minute?” sales calls pleads, “Never pitch a transaction. Please.” So let’s aim to solve problems and win customers for life. That’s better than being slick and winning a deal. Lets empower the frontlines. Because it impacts all of us.

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Two years here. Three years there. Another five somewhere else. Frequent job-hopping used to be a red flag, suggesting to prospective employers that a candidate was unfocused and disloyal.
That stigma seems to be gone. Changing jobs might be the best way to score a significant salary bump and move up the career ladder. And younger workers — the fuel driving every startup machine — are more likely than older ones to switch employers. Employees ages 25-34 had a median tenure of just 2.8 years on the job in January 2016, compared to 7.9 years for workers ages 45-54, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics .
Concern about turnover is yet another worry that keeps founders and management up at night. They know their business success depends in large part on keeping a stable and productive team on the job for the long haul — or at least long enough to make it through a key milestone such as a product launch, a critical round of funding or an exit event.
Stock options are a powerful incentive. But in this supercharged era of unicorns and staggering valuations, are they enough, particularly if you have no plans to go public anytime soon? This has been an abysmal year for IPOs as companies readily draw capital from the private market. In this climate, are you providing enough access to liquidity to keep your critical team from dusting off their resumes?
Let’s take a closer look at some of the vesting schedules and exercise periods that companies are debuting and weigh their risks and rewards.
The default for startups is a four-year vesting schedule. A quarter of the options vest after the first anniversary of the initial option grant — the “one-year cliff” — and then employees can begin to exercise them. After that, one forty-eighth (1/48) of the employee’s shares vest each month for the remaining 36 months. After four years, the employee holds them all, and the options are fully vested.
This schedule is a sweet deal for long-term, early hires because exercising options is feasible when the strike price is a bargain. These employees can exercise all their options for just a few hundred dollars. Those who join the team several years later, however, might not be so enthusiastic. If the strike price skyrockets, exercising those options can set an employee back tens of thousands of dollars — or more.
Or perhaps the company is a unicorn, valued at 13 figures but, tantalizingly, privately held; there may be little or no liquidity. The biggest hitch, though, is that an employee can walk away at any time with a chunk of vested options. There’s no significant upside to sticking around.
The standard four-year vesting schedule, as described above, has been recently reimagined by companies, including Snapchat. Some of these schedules vest 10 percent of the shares after the employee’s first year on the job. Another 20 percent are available after the second year. A worker gets another 30 percent on his third anniversary. And the big payoff — 40 percent — comes in the fourth year, rewarding loyalty right around the time when they might otherwise have been tempted to start a job search.
As part of Airbnb’s recent refinancing, the room-rental business threw a tasty bone to employees with at least four years of tenure. It arranged for investors to buy about $200 million in common shares held by employees as part of an $850 million funding round.
The goal, according to The Wall Street Journal, was to “relieve some of the pressure to go public” and “give longer-term employees the option to get cash for some of their shares.” You might want to explore this option if your company, like Airbnb, is a glittery-maned rainbow unicorn valued at $30 billion. If it’s not, you’ll need to consider other strategies.
Employees who leave a job get a tasty perk if they exercise their incentive stock options within 90 days of their last day: They maintain the coveted incentive stock option status, which allows them to kick down the road the tax liability on the spread — until they sell or otherwise unload the underlying vested stock. Otherwise, the stock options morph into non-qualified options, and exercising them can trigger costly capital gains. This isn’t an issue for early, longer-term employees, but it can be a problem for later hires, who might need six figures to purchase their options and cover their tax liability.
So how about extending the exercise period in a big way, from 90 days to 10 years? That would give workers (and former employees) much more time to amass enough cash to cover the options and taxes. I’m not a fan of this tactic, though. It encourages job-hopping — which founders would rather prevent — as workers bounce from one startup to the next, scooping up options along the way and hoping that one of these companies will strike it big and the options will then be worth exercising.
To prevent this problem, Andreessen Horowitz’s Scott Kupor suggests requiring a period of tenure to activate the 10-year window or implementing a sliding scale that ties length of the exercise period to number of years on the job. Both strategies enable founders to reward talent for sticking around.
If your company has a high valuation and your stock options are flirting with a high strike price… congratulations. That’s good news for your employees, too — or at least for those few who can cough up enough money to cash out their options.
But to keep everyone else incentivized, it’s time to explore some alternative vesting options. Your plan cannot operate retroactively, so you might face some pushback from longer-term employees. Explaining in detail that you want to reward loyalty and enable workers to exercise their options might help allay fears — and go a long way toward keeping your team loyal and engaged.

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