We ended last year with a high energy and frequently marketed indiegogo crowdfunding campaign with the hopes of raising enough capital to fund our 2016 beta toilet pilot in Zambia as well as in a resettled refugee community in Atlanta.
(A company spokesperson noted that Grok "is in private beta and pilots with select customers in a variety of vertical markets, including electric energy, I.T. management, online advertising, and finance").
So we never had a beta or a pilot.
The company, which is relocating to silicon valley, has been in stealth mode for the last year and will launch a pilot beta in Europe in May.
"Since it is a very early pilot (beta), you might notice some things that need improving," Secretguru says on its About page.
While these programs are not as intensely structured as accelerator curricula, they require a greater commitment of employee time and typically see a product through from inception to beta testing and pilot phase.
And this isn't something that's still so far away as to be purely contemplative: Google said back then it would be launching a pilot beta test of the Ara soon.
This offers speed and performance improvements, alleviates privacy concerns, and keeps costs down, the founders explained to me in an interview, and as someone who has used both early and later versions of the Mail Pilot beta, I can personally attest to the improvements in general performance.
Instead, project leaders have signed up more than 17,000 volunteers as "beta testers" in a pilot phase of the program.
