In the wake of Uber’s entry into the healthcare transportation market, Lyft wants to remind people that’s a space it’s been working at for years, with partnerships across brokers of non-emergency medical transportation that cover nine of the top 10 health care systems in the U.S. It’s adding Allscripts today, and already counts Blue Cross […]
Taking on the Big 4 accounting giants, Paro receives $5m for its labor marketplace for financial professionals
Accounting and financial controls are some of the most important functions of a modern company, but they are also serious cost centers. Hiring a full-time bookkeeper can be prohibitively expensive, and it can be difficult to find financial analysts and part-time CFOs that a company’s leaders can trust. Companies rely on accounting firms to manage […]
The 5 Biggest Social Media Lessons HubSpot Learned in 2017
2017 was a year of experimentation. We were committed to shifting our entire social media strategy to grow our viewership and audience, while continuing to engage with our audience where, when, and how they wanted. To successfully do this, we spent the year experimenting with how to best deliver content on all platforms, particularly on […]
Xiaomi phones could finally go on sale in the US before the end of this year
Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi could make its debut in the U.S. as soon as this year, according to its CEO. Lei Jun, the serial entrepreneur who leads the phone maker, told the Wall Street Journal that the company — which is being linked with an IPO this year — plans to finally begin selling phones […]
How to Bookmark a Tweet
Have you ever seen an article, thread, Tweet, or GIF on Twitter and thought, “I really want to save this for later?” Until now, the only way to save a Tweet was to like it, copy the link somewhere, or screenshot it. Now, there’s an easier way. Twitter just announced a new Bookmarks feature that […]
Zen Rooms, Rocket Internet’s budget hotel network in Asia, faces fire sale or closure
Zen Rooms, a budget hotel network funded by Rocket Internet among others, is facing shutdown if investors are unable to sell the loss-making business. The two-year-old company offers a network of affordable hotels in 50 cities across Southeast Asia that are designed as a happy medium between affordable guesthouses, which are typically not organized and hard […]
The Top Video Typography Trends of 2018 [Video]
Feedback on Creative Work Should Give Direction, Not Demand Changes
Giving feedback is tricky, but especially for creative work, where “good” may be subjective. The next time you have to provide input on a piece of creative work, such as a design prototype or a website mock-up, start by signaling that your opinion is exactly that: an opinion. Use first-person pronouns (I, me, and my) […]
Netflix’s ‘Icarus’ wins the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature
Notes from Shenzhen — the next Greater Bay Area
ICOs delivered at least 3.5x more capital to blockchain startups than VC since 2017
Jason Rowley Contributor Jason Rowley is a venture capital and technology reporter for Crunchbase News. More posts by this contributor: 2018 VC investment into crypto startups set to surpass 2017 tally The rise and rise of supergiant rounds Recently, we found that, for 2018, the amount of money being raised by blockchain and blockchain-adjacent companies via traditional VC […]
Snapchat is stuck in the uncanny valley of AR glasses
“Timing”, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel said cryptically when asked what the greatest threat was for Snap Inc. “I think the big risks are always the really big product ideas that we’re investing in that are just hard to get right” he told the Goldman Sachs conference two weeks ago. The statements got lost amongst flashier […]
WTF is CFIUS?
For many in the open source community, code and technology are meant to be free, shared with all of humanity in the pursuit of a better present and future. That is not how governments see it though. In their minds, technology is a strategic asset that provides a competitive advantage against other countries. These assets […]
YouTube removes ads from InfoWars’ Alex Jones channel but says it has no plans to delete it
As YouTube continues in its efforts to crack down harder on content that violates its terms of usage and promotes offensive and/or misleading content, it’s found itself in the fake news crossfire this weekend. After a video and some advertisers were removed from YouTube channels controlled by Alex Jones, the far-right commentator best known for […]
Tina Sharkey has something to sell you (300 things, actually)
Incubating tech in the shadow of the civil rights movement
When Birmingham led the charge in the civil rights movement in the sixties, the city inadvertently created big shoes for itself to later fill. Just how Birmingham was the birthplace of many civil rights actions in the sixties, the city wants to be the birthplace of true diversity and inclusion in the tech industry. [embedded content] […]
Startups Weekly: Raising huge sums quickly
Hey, did you know that TechCrunch sends out a weekly newsletter rounding up the latest startup news? Well, we do! But for as-yet-unidentified technical reasons, it doesn’t seem to have gone out today, so I’m publishing it here. And if you haven’t subscribed yet, what are you waiting for? 1. What does it take to […]
2018 VC investment into crypto startups set to surpass 2017 tally
For months now, much of the media attention on the crypto space has been directed at ebbs and flows in the price of bitcoin on one side, and whiz-bang ICOs on the other. The price of the most valuable cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (specifically the BTC chain), has backpedaled significantly from highs set in December 2017. The […]
Gillmor Gang: Paying Attention
The Gillmor Gang — Doc Searls, Frank Radice, Denis Pombriant, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, March 3, 2018. Doc Searls: “Steve was 15 years ahead of his time with Attention. His idea didn’t work until the only way to pay for attention arrived. Cryptocurrency is that way.” @stevegillmor, @fradice, @Dsearls, @DenisPombriant, @kteare […]
Front-door tech is hot, and it’s not just Amazon who wants in
Joanna Glasner Contributor Joanna Glasner is a reporter for Crunchbase. More posts by this contributor: Not a minimalist? Startups will gladly store, manage and deliver your items The state of the unicorn Most of us tend to think people trying to open the door when we’re away want to steal stuff. Amazon.com would like to change that […]
No one wants to build a “feel good” internet
If there is one policy dilemma facing nearly every tech company today, it is what to do about “content moderation,” the almost-Orwellian term for censorship. Charlie Warzel of Buzzfeed pointedly asked the question a little more than a week ago: “How is it that the average untrained human can do something that multibillion-dollar technology companies […]
This FREE blog post will show you the secret to MORE MONEY
One of the most common questions I get when helping marketers with their email marketing, is related to certain words being in the subject line of a marketing email. “Don’t use FREE in all caps, don’t use exclamation points, don’t use terms like ‘Offer expires’ or ‘last chance’ if you want your mail delivered!” are […]
Come to TechCrunch’s party and SXSW panels
TechCrunch invites you to our annual Crunch By Crunch Fest party in Austin, Texas. RSVP to come meet our writers while enjoying free drinks and musical performances by live electronic pop wizards Autograf, digital RnB drummer Mobley, angelic songwriter MIEARS, and yacht dance DJs Glassio. It’s going down from noon to 4pm, Sunday March 11th. […]
Air’s app lets you record high-quality home movies without running out of space
These days, home movies aren’t recorded with handheld video cameras, but rather with our smartphones. Unfortunately, there’s a downside. Our iPhones default to lower quality video so recordings won’t eat up storage space; and while you can adjust that all the way to 4K on newer devices, that would drastically increase your storage consumption. You’d […]
Blockchain will work in trucking — but only if these three things happen
These electronic skiers hit the slopes in style
[embedded content] Researchers took part in the Ski Robot Challenge last month and the resulting videos – essentially quick cuts of robots in ski jackets totally whanging off the gates and spinning out in the powder. The Challenge, run by the Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement, is sort of a Winter Olympics for wonky […]
UiPath raising around $120M at $1B+ valuation for its ‘software robots’ for internal business tasks
The initial hype around bots — applications that run partly or entirely using natural language processing, machine learning, computer vision and other AI tech to help consumers ask and answer questions, buy things and get other stuff done — may have waned a bit, but a startup building the equivalent for the enterprise world, in […]
Amazon Prime Video will now slake your thirst for bad but great reality TV
Amazon Prime Video just added a heaping helping of reality TV to its catalog, including multiple seasons of Hell’s Kitchen, River Monsters, Whale Wars, Miami Ink, Survivorman, Hoarding: Buried Alive and a whole lot of other shows that have ruined the once sterling reputations of networks like TLC, A&E and others (via Variety). These shows […]
Another small business complains of counterfeiters on Amazon
It’s become a standard part of my dwindling Amazon shopping trips that I check the reviews and merchants carefully to make sure I’m not buying a poor quality counterfeit of the item in question. But not everyone is as suspicious as me — especially when Amazon sells the counterfeit under the official listing for the […]
AWS Batch As Amazon CloudWatch Target
AWS Batch is a fully managed service that automatically provisions compute resources and optimizes the workload distribution based on the volume and resource requirements of submitted jobs. It eliminates the need to install or manage batch computing software. You only pay for the AWS resources (e.g. Amazon EC2 instances) you create to store and run […]
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn reiterates need to fight for open internet
When the FCC rolled back net neutrality protections in December, advocates for the free, open internet came out in masse. Although the decision has been made, the fight isn’t over yet, and that’s what FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn reiterated today at the 5th annual Lesbians Who Tech conference at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. […]
Micropodcasting? Facebook tries Voice Clip status updates
More intimate than text but easier to record than video, Facebook hopes voice could get people sharing more on its aging social network. And internationally where users may have to deal with non-native language keyboards, voice lets them speak their mind without a typing barrier. Facebook is now testing Voice Clips as a status update […]
Fret Zealot adds lights and learning to your guitar
I’ve been messing around with LED-embedded guitars since the original GTar. Designed to help beginners learn and players look like all supersonic freakadelic on stage, they have quickly become commonplace if expensive. Now Fret Zealot has something that can turn your guitar into a laser light show in a few minutes. Designed as an $199 […]
Galaxy S9’s display takes honors alongside its camera
Earlier this morning Samsung’s Galaxy S9’s camera was awarded the highest-yet score from DxOMark, and now its screen gets the best-of-all-time nod from DisplayMate and display wonk Ray Soneira. The margins between the victor and the vanquished, however, are growing thinner every generation. The S9 beats its competitors, chiefly the iPhone X if we’re honest, […]
Voice shopping estimated to hit $40 billion across U.S. and U.K. by 2022
The growing popularity of smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home will lead to an explosion in voice-based shopping, according to a new market research report from OC&C Strategy Consultants out this week. The firm is bullishly predicting that voice shopping will grow to a whopping $40 billion-plus in 2022, up from $2 billion […]
Alexa has literally lost her voice as users report outages and unresponsiveness
Amazon’s Alexa smart assistant seems to be down this morning. We’ve been hearing reports over the last hour of either delayed responses or just total loss of connection. While Amazon doesn’t have a status page for its consumer products, Down Detector is reporting a huge spike in Alexa-related complaints over the last hour. For example, Alexa […]
Twitter is now specifically focusing on increasing black, Latinx and female representation
Twitter met or surpassed many of the diversity and inclusion goals it set for itself for 2017, the company announced today. Twitter is now 38.4 percent female, compared to 37 percent in 2016. Regarding underrepresented minorities at Twitter, representation increased from 11 percent in 2016 to 12.5 percent in 2017. While Twitter increased the overall representation […]
Google expands snippets to answer more questions right in the search results
For years, Google’s “featured snippets” have offered quick answers to users’ search queries by pulling information from web pages and placing it in a box above the search results. This week, Google began rolling out a new snippet experience for web searchers with multiple answers to the question posed in the search box – something […]
Alibaba rival JD.com posts first annual profit as a public company
You might hear e-commerce in China and assume ‘Alibaba,’ but another company is making progress to challenge that assumption. JD.com, the nearest e-commerce competitor to Alibaba in China, has reported its first year of profitability as a public company. The Beijing-headquartered company was founded in 1998 and it went public on the Nasdaq nearly four years ago. For […]
Snap reportedly working on new Spectacles, including two-camera version
Snap, Inc. calls itself a “camera company” so it shouldn’t be all that surprising that it’s working on new versions of its Spectacles hardware (especially since we reported just that last June). But a new report from Cheddar has surprised some with news that Snap is working on a refresh of their hardware´set to launch […]
If You Think Twitter Is Unhealthy, You Can Now Apply to Study It
Equity podcast: Spotify’s anti-IPO, Dropbox is going public, Amazon’s $1B doorbell, and more money for DoorDash
[embedded content] Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. We had the full crew on hand this week with Matthew Lynley, Katie Roof, and myself, along with Mar Hershenson from Pear Ventures who stepped into the guest chair. It was a damn busy week, with news raining down from the skies. We […]
Toyota creates a new advanced research company fo focus on self-driving
Toyota has an existing think tank, research organization and long-term development wing courtesy of Toyota Research Institute (TRI), but now it’s expanding TRI with a new sub-company of its own: Toyota Research Institute-Advanced Development (TRI-AD), which I have to assume was so named just so they could have the really cool acronym. The new company […]
Maven brings its Maven Gig service for on-demand economy workers to Austin
Maven has launched its Maven Gig offering in Austin, just ahead of SXSW when there will probably be a fair amount of ride-hailing and on-demand food delivery activity. Maven Gig is the arm of GM’s Maven mobility brand that caters specifically to gig economy workers, with cars available to freelancers who drive only occasionally, and […]
How to Use Twitter's Advanced Search
Let’s say you want to find a specific @elonmusk tweet about machine learning, but can’t find the tweet when you scroll back in your feed. Or you’re hosting a “2018 web design” webinar and want to compile a list of experts using Twitter. Or maybe you just want to see Twitter conversations between @garyvee and […]
UK and Australian governments now use Have I Been Pwned
Troy Hunt is turning Have I Been Pwned into an essential pwning monitoring service. The service monitors security breaches and password leaks so that you and your users remain secure. And now, the U.K. and Australian governments are monitoring their own domain names using the service. Most people are familiar with the consumer-facing version of […]
Angry Birds maker Rovio sinks to new low on missed Q4 sales of €73.9M and EPS of €0.10
Gaming and entertainment company Rovio continues to have a very hard time of it as it faces the music on the waning popularity of its once-might Angry Birds franchise. Today, the Helsinki-based company reported Q4 and full-year financials that fell short of even analysts’ most conservative estimates as it blamed lower-than-expected interest in its new […]
AI Is Going to Dramatically Change Your Company’s Structure
You have a tenure problem. Per Business Insider, out of the top 10 largest tech companies, only Facebook breaks the two-year mark (2.02) in average tenure. Uber falls at 1.23, Snap at 1.62, and Airbnb at 1.64. I wonder how long the average onboarding period is per company? Or how long it takes to fill […]
The Samsung Galaxy S9+ camera bumps the Pixel 2 for DxOMark’s top spot
You know the drill, right? A new flagship comes out and bumps the last big name out of the top spot. We’re still a couple of weeks out from the Samsung Galaxy S9/S9+ release date, but the premium handset just got the DxOMark treatment, and it seems the company’s got another feather to put in […]
Google’s Song Maker experiment makes making songs easy
Google has added a new instrument to its Chrome Music Lab: Song Maker. As the name implies, Song Maker is all about making songs. It’s essentially an easy to use sequencer that lets you draw melodies in the browser (though it doesn’t feature some of the automation in the Music Lab’s Melody Maker tool). It’s […]
The world’s largest DDoS attack took GitHub offline for less than tens minutes
In a growing sign of the increased sophistication of both cyber attacks and defenses, GitHub has revealed that it weathered the largest-known DDoS attack in history this week. DDoS — or distributed denial of service in full — is a cyber attack that aims to bring websites and web-based services down by bombarding them with so […]
Don’t Let Stress Lead to Bad Decisions
It’s hard to think clearly when you’re under stress. Your blood pressure and heart rate rise, adrenaline and cortisol flood your body, and your survival instincts kick in — all of which interfere with decision making. To avoid making bad decisions when you’re stressed, pay careful attention to your physical symptoms. We all have an […]
BGF Ventures leads ticket search engine TickX’s £3M Series A
TickX, a U.K., Manchester-based startup that has developed a search engine and discovery platform for events and other “attractions” tickets, has raised £3 million in Series A funding. The round is led by BGF Ventures, the early-stage venture arm of BGF, which has been going through a restructuring that saw three partners depart this week. […]
Amazon CloudWatch Events now Supports AWS Batch as an Event Target
Amazon CloudWatch now allows you to use AWS Batch as an event target to run batch computing workloads. Amazon CloudWatch Events enables you to respond quickly to application availability issues or configuration changes that might impact performance or security by notifying you of AWS resource changes in near-real-time. You simply write rules to indicate which […]
AWS Fargate Supports Container Workloads Regulated By ISO, PCI, SOC, and HIPAA
Containers running on the AWS Fargate Launch Type now meet the criteria for ISO, PCI, SOC 1, SOC 2, and SOC 3 compliance along with the criteria for HIPAA eligibility. This means container workloads on AWS Fargate can now process regulated financial data or protected health information (PHI).
Amazon EC2 T2 instance types are now supported on Windows with SQL Server Enterprise
Customers can now launch and run SQL Server Enterprise on t2.xlarge and t2.2xlarge instance types and enjoy fully supported Microsoft software licenses bundled with Amazon EC2. Buying from AWS with Microsoft licensing included has many benefits: Pay as you go with no upfront costs or long-term investments AWS managed Windows image AWS managed licensing compliance […]
Google’s new YouTube Stories feature lets you swap out your background (no green screen required)
Google researchers know how much people like to trick others into thinking they’re on the moon, or that it’s night instead of day, and other fun shenanigans only possible if you happen to be in a movie studio in front of a green screen. So they did what any good 2018 coder would do: build […]
Instagram code reveals unreleased voice and video calling
Instagram wants to be your phone, not just your camera. And it wants to be better at it than Snapchat. Files buried in Instagram and the Instagram Direct standalone app’s Android Application Packages (APKs) are files and icons for “Call” and “Video Call”. APKs often show files for unreleased features that are lying dormant in […]
Travis Kalanick joins medical tech startup’s board of directors
Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has joined the board of directors for Kareo, a medical health tech startup, Axios reports. This is Kalanick’s first public appointment since his ouster from Uber in June. Kalanick was an angel investor in Kareo, a company that has raised about $125 million in venture funding. The company is geared […]
Uber co-founder Garrett Camp is creating a new cryptocurrency
Garrett Camp, best known for being a co-founder of Uber and founder of the accelerator/venture fund Expa, is launching his own cryptocurrency. The currency is called Eco, and Camp wants it to be a digital global currency that can be used as a payment tool around the world for daily-use transactions. There will be one […]
Amazon RDS for SQL Server Increases the Maximum Provisioned IOPS
Your actual realized IOPS may vary from the amount you provisioned based on your database workload, instance type, and database engine choice. Refer to the Factors That Affect Realized IOPS section of the documentation to learn more. Amazon RDS for SQL Server makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale SQL Server deployments in […]
AWS Server Migration Service is now Available in the AWS Asia Pacific (Singapore) Region
AWS SMS is an agentless service which makes it easier and faster for you to migrate thousands of on-premises workloads to AWS. It allows you to automate, schedule, and track incremental replications of live server volumes, making it easier for you to coordinate large-scale server migrations. To learn more, visit AWS Server Migration Service (SMS).
Facebook’s next money-maker: Messenger Broadcasts
Users might hate it, but Facebook is now testing a self-serve sponsored messaging tool for small businesses that aren’t sophisticated enough to build bots. TechCrunch first reported Facebook internally building a prototype of the Messenger Broadcast tool back in November that let companies blast a message to anyone who’s already started a conversation with them. […]
Facebook ends its experiment with the alternative “explore” news feed
Facebook is ending its short-lived (and misguided) experiment with the alternative news feed feature called “Explore”. In a blog post today, Facebook head of news feed, Adam Mosseri wrote: We constantly try out new features, design changes and ranking updates to understand how we can make Facebook better for everyone. Some of these changes—like Reactions, […]
A new sports startup buys VOD platform Colony
London-based We Are Colony has been acquired by sports media startup Fantastec. Fantastec was founded just last year by Steve Madincea, a sports marketing veteran who created sponsorship agency Prism and continued to run it after selling to ad giant WPP. Fantastec’s goal is to engage sports fans through technology like video on demand, virtual reality, […]
Jaguar reveals the new all-electric I-PACE SUV
Jaguar has finally fully revealed the official I-PACE all-electric SUV, a vehicle with just under 240 miles of range and a 0 to 60 mph time of under five seconds. The car can also charge to 80 percent from empty in 40 minutes using special quick charger hardware, and a 15-minute top-up is good for […]
Twitter wants help measuring healthy online interactions
Twitter, which some people use to abuse, harass and manipulate others, is soliciting proposals from the public to help the social network capture, measure and evaluate healthy interactions on the platform. This is part of Twitter’s commitment “to help increase the collective health, openness, and civility of public conversation,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted earlier […]
Experience Account-Based Marketing at the Optimizing ABM Impact Conference
As a member of the ABM alliance, Pardot is participating as a sponsor in the Optimizing ABM Impact Conference. Join us on March 8 to learn how to create an account-based marketing strategy that will truly revolutionize your business. Learn the basics of getting started, expand your existing strategy with real-life use cases and examples, […]
Caterina Fake on turning down VC roles a decade ago: “I just kind of didn’t fit in”
Ten years ago, not long after Yahoo had acquired Flickr, its cofounder, Caterina Fake, bounded up and down Sand Hill Road taking meetings with venture firms that were interested in hiring her. She knew most of them. In fact, she already knew a lot of investors at that point. Flickr was created out of a […]
Microsoft advances several of its hosted artificial intelligence algorithms
Microsoft Cognitive Services is home to the company’s hosted artificial intelligence algorithms. Today, the company announced advances to several Cognitive Services tools including Microsoft Custom Vision Service, the Face API and Bing Entity Search . Joseph Sirosh, who leads the Microsoft’s cloud AI efforts, defined Microsoft Cognitive Services in a company blog post announcing the enhancements, as “a […]
Dropbox to add native G Suite integration in new partnership with Google
It’s been an eventful week for Dropbox coming off its announcement last Friday that it was finally going public, but that doesn’t mean the business stops. The company announced plans to partner with Google today to bring native G Suite integration to Dropbox storage. The fact is that more than 50 percent of Dropbox users […]
ScopeAI helps companies analyze their customer feedback
If you’re running a company with a lot of customers, it can take time to sort through all that feedback. A startup called ScopeAI is working to make that process a lot easier. The startup is announcing that it’s raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Y Combinator (where it was part of the […]
Graphene-based edible electronics will let you make cereal circuits
Researchers at the have successfully etched edible circuits onto the surface of food, paving the way for RFID tagged edibles that can help us track food from farm to tummy. The project, which uses something called laser-induced graphene (LIG), is a process that creates a “foam made out of tiny cross-linked graphene flakes” that can […]
Box shares fall over 20% on concerns over slowed growth
Cloud storage provider Box started out the day Thursday down over 20% on the stock market. The company reported quarterly earnings after the bell on Wednesday, and while its losses of six cents per share surpassed analyst expectations of negative eight cents, investors were concerned about the outlook. Revenue was $136.7 million, in line with […]
The new Light Phone 2 keeps things basic but adds e-ink and ‘essentials’
Light is back with a new twist on its anti-smartphone phone. But this time, instead of doing just one thing, the Light Phone 2 does a few, and exists somewhere between the original Light and your overwrought iPhone – though still far closer to the first-generation Light phone overall. The new design features a matte […]
ClassPass introduces credits
ClassPass is not accustomed to sitting idle. The startup, a subscription marketplace that lets users find and book fitness classes, is today introducing credits. ClassPass CEO Fritz Lanman hinted at the change at Disrupt SF last year, explaining that the service has a great market fit with a certain demographic, but doesn’t work as well […]
Harley-Davidson and Alta Motors to co-develop electric motorcycles
Motorcycle giant Harley-Davidson is now a stakeholder in Alta Motors, the electric motorcycle and light vehicle EV drivetrain maker based in Brisbane, California. Harley-Davidson and Alta made the investment public today, and also announced that Alta Motors will collaborate with the legendary motorbike maker on building future electric motorcycles as part of the deal. This […]
Bugcrowd bug bounty platform gets big boost with $26 million Series C investment
Bugcrowd and HackerOne both launched in 2012 and both companies are competing in the growing bug bounty market to pay a network of white hat hackers to bang on client software to find vulnerabilities. Today, Bugcrowd announced a $26 million Series C jolt led by Triangle Peak Partners. Bugcrowd is built on the premise that it’s better to […]
Uber launches Uber Health, a B2B ride-hailing platform for healthcare
Uber’s launching a new business line called Uber Health on Thursday that will provide a ride-hailing platform available specifically to healthcare providers, letting clinics, hospitals, rehab centers and more easily assign rides for their patients and clients from a centralized dashboard – without requiring that the rider even have the Uber app, or a smartphone. […]
DoorDash raises $535M, now valued at $1.4B
Restaurant delivery service DoorDash is joining the unicorn club with its latest round of funding. The company is announcing that it’s raised $535 million in a Series D round. And while it’s not saying anything about valuation, a source close to DoorDash told us that the new funding values the company at $1.4 billion. DoorDash […]
GoFundMe relaunches nonprofit fundraising site CrowdRise
After acquiring CrowdRise over a year ago to double down on fundraising for non-profits, GoFundMe is today taking the wraps off a new product that will supercharge the service. CrowdRise by GoFundMe is a new version of the site that signifies the next step of development for GoFundMe, as it starts to work with larger organizations […]
How to Optimize for Google's Featured Snippet Box [Video]
Helix holds first close on a planned $200 million investment in its genetic services marketplace
Welcome to the future… where startups are willing to customize everything from a diet regimen to a workout plan, or family planning to personal fashion based on an individual’s genetic code. Angling to be the go-to marketplace for these gene-based businesses, Helix, the spin out from genetic testing research and technology giant Illumina, has held a first […]
Microsoft Soundscape helps the visually impaired navigate cities
Microsoft today launched Soundscape, a new iOS app that aims to give people who are blind or visually impaired a greater awareness of their surrounding by using 3D cues. It’s worth stressing that the app isn’t about replacing guide dogs or canes. Instead, it’s all about enriching people’s perception of their surroundings. A guide dog […]
Daimler buys remaining 25% stake of car sharing startup car2Go from EuropCar for $85M
German automaker Daimler has been steadily investing in a stream of new transportation services as it positions itself for the next generation of car ownership and travel. Today, it consolidated its position in one of those business: it paid €70 million ($85 million) to buy the remaining 25 percent of car-sharing company car2Go that it […]
Asus’ Zenfone 5 is the king of the MWC iPhone X knockoffs
Sure, Apple didn’t have any sort of official presence at this year’s MWC, but this was the week the iPhone X really came into its own. The company’s premium flagship was everywhere in spirit, through the design choices from the competition. For some it was the mere legitimization of the notch — for others, the […]
The SEC is reportedly investigating a number of ICOs
The SEC is getting up close and personal with companies that have raised ICOs, according to a new report. Citing sources, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the commission has “issued dozens of subpoenas and information requests” to tech companies that have held token sales and a number of advisors associated with them. More […]
Apply for Startup Battlefield Europe Today
Ah, springtime in Paris — the City of Love. Couples strolling hand-in-hand down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. Early-stage tech startups converging on the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles…um, say what? That’s right. Love of technology is in the air, and TechCrunch will host Startup Battlefield Europe at VivaTech on May 24th – 25. Applications are […]
Microsoft signs its first renewable energy deal in Asia with Singaporean solar firm Sunseap
As part of its goal to use more renewable energy in its datacenters, Microsoft said it has entered an agreement with Singapore-based clean energy firm Sunseap. The value of Microsoft’s investment was not disclosed, but an announcement today said it will create “the single-largest solar energy portfolio in Singapore to date.” During the 20-year agreement, […]
Before Negotiating, Ask Yourself What You Don’t Know
Negotiations are won in the preparation. And a key part of preparing is figuring out what relevant information you don’t have. Of course, you need to research your counterpart, their organization, and the context, but think about what details might be useful. Make a list of questions to ask your counterpart that, once answered, will […]
Amazon Polly is Now Available in AWS GovCloud (US) Region
With this new region, Amazon Polly is now operating at sixteen AWS regions worldwide. You can learn more about our growing footprint at the Global Infrastructure page. In the meantime, we encourage our government customers and their partners to take advantage of the new AWS GovCloud (US) region for Amazon Polly. For more information about […]
Tencent Music, Spotify’s strategic partner in China, is valued at over $12B
Spotify has finally filed to go public, and in doing so the Swedish company has shed light on another huge music company that has been tipped for IPO — Tencent Music — which is now valued at over $12 billion. Tencent and Spotify announced a share swap in December that saw each side take an […]
Amazon Prime Video will now show pay-per-view UFC fights
If you’re a UFC fan you’ll now have another place to watch fights – Amazon Prime Video. The online retailers just announced that starting with UFC 222 on March 3rd, all pay-per-view UFC fights will be available to buy and watch on Amazon prime. Fights can be preordered and also purchased up to four hours […]
Virtualitics grabs another $7M in funding to drive its VR data visualization platform
After raising $4.4 million last March, Virtualitics has closed a $7 million Series B round led by Centricus with participation from The VR Fund. The startup is building a sort of “Excel for VR,” that lets people see data in a more immersive and collaborative way. “[B]usiness intelligence platforms need to be 3D and collaborative by […]
Going public pits Spotify’s suggestions versus everyone
The secret to Spotify’s public market debut is actually an acquisition it made in 2014. The Echo Nest was powering music recommendations for Beats Music, Rdio, Vevo, and iHeartRadio too before Spotify pulled it out from under them by buying it for a reported $100 million — 90 percent in Spotify equity. That deal paid off […]
The mystery of the public marketplace
Steve Sloane Contributor Steve Sloane is a principal at Menlo Ventures. More posts by this contributor: Getting to the root of the revenue multiple The rise of APIs Note: This is the second article in a three-part series on valuation thoughts for common sectors of venture capital investment. The first article, which attempts to make sense of […]
See you tonight in New York
A reminder that I’m going to have Paul Vigna and Michael Casey, authors of The Truth Machine, onstage with me next week at Knotel, a co-working and event space in Manhattan. I’ll see you there tonight. RSVPs are closed. It starts at 7pm and will feature a 35-minute talk with two of the top writers […]
You Can Apply for Jobs on Facebook Now
Today Facebook announced a new feature that will allow business Pages to post jobs and manage applications on its platform. In over 40 countries, administrators will be able to create job listings directly from their Pages, where they’ll appear throughout Facebook like any other post or ad would: the Page itself, followers’ News Feeds, and […]
LittleThings blames its shutdown on Facebook algorithm change
A recent Facebook algorithm change seems to have claimed a high-profile casualty: LittleThings, a digital publisher focused on inspirational and how-to content for women, which shut down yesterday. I wrote about the company at the beginning of 2016, when it raised debt funding from City National Bank. At the time, it seemed to be flying […]
Spotify plays the long game with Family and Student Plans even as revenue per user drops
Spotify’s “Family Plan,” a variation of which launched in 2014, as well as its “Student Plan” appear to be driving a significant portion of the company’s growth and improving retention, as the company points to it multiple times in its filing for a direct listing on public markets today. But that also comes at a […]
Here’s what Spotify shares will be worth when they start trading
Spotify has finally filed to go public. But unlike most tech offerings, Spotify won’t be raising any money by issuing new shares. Instead they’ll just allow existing shares owned by investors and employees to be traded publicly on the New York Stock Exchange. No IPO means there are no investment banks to underwrite and price […]
Piccolo is building a gesture-based smart home ‘vision assistant’
Voice assistants may be the hottest thing since sliced bread when it comes to controlling your $60 wifi light bulbs, but Piccolo is launching out of the latest Y Combinator class with a desire to put a camera in every smart home that can translate your physical motions and gestures into commands. The company’s “Vision […]
The Leaky Tech Pipeline framework explains how to address diversity and inclusion
It’s clear there is a diversity and inclusion problem in tech. What some companies still struggle with, however, is how to fix it. Part of that is because it can be a hard problem to solve if one doesn’t scratch the surface of understanding it. Nearly four years since tech companies who previously sued to […]
Even with double the subscribers, Spotify says Apple will always have an edge owning the app store
Spotify just filed for a direct listing in the U.S., sidestepping the traditional IPO process, and now we’re starting to see some of the true financial guts of the company — and some of the significant risks it faces from challenging services from Apple and Google. Apple, for example, charges apps a percentage of revenue […]
Spotify has filed to go public
Music streaming service Spotify is going public and they’ve just unveiled their filing. The documents state that it is targeting a $1 billion IPO, but it’s been reported and we’ve heard from sources that the company plans to do a direct listing, meaning it goes public without the fundraising event. The filing is a standard […]
Pagedraw UI builder turns your website design mockup into code automatically
For years, one of the holy grails of web design has been trying to automate turning front-end design into clean back-end code. Early attempts included tools like Dreamweaver and FrontPage. Pagedraw, a member of the Y Combinator Winter 2018 class, has developed a tool to fulfill that vision in a modern context. Typically, a web […]
Amazon WorkDocs Now Offers Data Retention Capabilities
You can apply a retention policy to your WorkDocs site using the Administrator console. Simply set the number of days you would like files and folders to be retained in the recovery bin settings. When files and folders are deleted by a user, they are stored in the user’s recycle bin for 30 days. At […]
Facebook Watch to live-stream ‘The Oscars: All Access’
Awards season might be coming to a close, but there is still one awards show left, and it’s a big one. The Academy Awards airs Sunday, March 4. The awards show will air live on ABC, but Facebook users will also have the ability to tune in to “The Oscars: All Access” via Facebook Watch. […]
Rhino is getting rid of security deposits for rental apartments
Arguably the most frustrating part of renting an apartment, especially in an expensive city like New York, is dealing with the security deposit. One startup wants to make renting easier by getting rid of security deposits, with a solution that is beneficial for both renters and landlords. Here’s how it works: For a monthly fee […]
Collective Health nabs $110 million in funding
Enterprise health management startup Collective Health has added another $110 million to the coffers from existing high-profile investors such as Founders Fund and Alphabet’s investment arm GV, bringing the total now raised to a cool $230 million. The structure is partially a follow-on from a previously unannounced C-1 for $30 million and another $80 million in Series […]
Haier jammed a tiny projector into a smartwatch for some reason
Sure wearables have been having a tough go of it lately, but maybe the problem is just a general lack of tiny projectors jammed into the products. It’s an idea a few folks have flirted with in the past, and it’s one the folks at Haier are ready to deliver in the future. The Asu […]
Amazon will now pay Alexa developers for top-performing skills for kids
Last year, Amazon announced a program that would reward developers for building popular and well-received Alexa skills, by doling out cash payments for top-performing skills. Initially, the program was only open to game skill developers – as that was a category Amazon wanted to encourage – before expanding in August to a limited set of […]
Triplebyte has raised more money for its “background blind” tech recruiting platform
Triplebyte is a three-year-old, 25-person, San Francisco-based hiring platform that says it makes recruiting and technical screening for tech companies more efficient. It’s hardly alone in making this claim, of course. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a tech recruiting platform that claims to improve on the ways that companies identify and recruit talented […]
Can a headphone company pivot to AI?
According to Bragi, headphones are just the “tip of the iceberg” of what the company’s been working on for the past four years. Last month at CES, the company announced Project Ears, an initiative aimed at enhancing hearing aid capabilities in the smart headphone category. This week at MWC, it’s pulling the curtain back on […]
OpenStack gets support for virtual GPUs and new container features
OpenStack, the open source infrastructure project that aims to give enterprises the equivalent of AWS for the private clouds, today announced the launch of its 17th release, dubbed ‘Queens.’ After all of those releases, you’d think that there isn’t all that much new that the OpenStack community could add to the project, but just as […]
Hangouts Chat, Google’s Slack competitor, comes out of beta
Hangouts Chat, Google’s take on modern workplace communication, is now generally available and is becoming a core part of G Suite. Hangouts Chat was first announced at Google I/O 2017, together with Hangouts Meet. While Meet went right into public availability, though, Chat went into an invite-only preview. Now, Google is rolling Chat out to all […]
Designed for enterprise, PullString Converse lets anyone create Alexa apps
PullString, the voice technology company that began its life as ToyTalk, and counts among its customers brands like Mattel, Activision, and Samsung, is today publicly launching software that allows non-technical creative professionals the ability to design, prototype and publish voice apps for Amazon Alexa. Originally focused on helping companies build voice-enabled toys like Hello Barbie […]
Rodolfo Rosini enters VC, joins AI and machine learning accelerator Zeroth.ai as Partner
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Rodolfo Rosini, a genuine serial entrepreneur and well-liked and well-connected figure in the U.K. startup scene, is giving up startup life to move over to the “dark side” and become a VC. Read More
Porsche’s EV lead takes shots at Tesla while hyping the Mission E
Porsche is readying its Mission E for launch, with a 2019 target sales date. The all-electric Tesla Model S competitor has a lot of car fans excited, and has been drawing covetous looks since the concept’s unveiling back in 2015. Now that launch is drawing closer, however, we have some new info about the car, […]
Edgybees raises $5.5M to bring better AR to cars and drones
It’s one thing to dispatch a drone when an accident happens to get an aerial overview of what’s happening on the ground, but you get far better situational awareness if you can use augmented reality (AR) to add the names of roads, the location of key personnel, cars and other assets to that view. That’s […]
Facebook rolls out job posts to become the blue-collar LinkedIn
LinkedIn wasn’t built for low-skilled job seekers, so Facebook is barging in. Today Facebook is rolling out job posts to 40 more countries to make itself more meaningful to people’s lives while laying the foundation for a lucrative business. Businesses will be able to post job openings to a Jobs tab on their Page, Facebook […]
Waymo 360-degree video shows how autonomous vehicles work
Fresh on the heels of settling a contentious and expensive lawsuit with Uber, Alphabet’s self-driving unit Waymo is looking to get out there and educate the public on how its autonomous vehicles work. In a blog post announcing that Waymo self-driving cars have racked up 5 million miles of driving experience on public roads, the […]
Apple Watch apps now track ski performance
Skiers, rejoice! It just got a lot easier to track your mountain treks. Due to an Apple Watch update that combines GPS and altimeter (altitude) measuring, ski apps are now able to quantify performance. If you’re wondering how many calories you’ve burned or how fast you were going, all that data is available and more. […]
Here’s What Your Subscribers Really Think About These Email Strategies
Sometimes, email marketing can feel like a guessing game: will they open this, will they read that? If you’re an email marketer, you care about open and click-through rates, unsubscribe rates, and conversions. But your subscribers don’t share these incentives when receiving marketing emails. They don’t open your emails because they know you’ll appreciate the […]
Sea President Nick Nash is leaving to start his own Asia-focused investment fund
Nick Nash is leaving his role as group president of Sea, the Singapore-based games and e-commerce company that went public in the U.S. last year, to start his own startup fund. Sea announced that Nash will exit the company at the end of 2018, giving it plenty of time to transition and find a replacement. […]
Baidu’s video business iQiyi to raise up to $1.5B in US IPO
Baidu’s iQiyi video division is set to become the latest Chinese tech company to go public in the U.S. after it filed to raise up to $1.5 billion via an IPO on the Nasdaq. The service was started in 2010 by search giant Baidu, which owns a dominant 70 percent of the company. Xiaomi (eight […]
TechVets launches to offer UK military veterans a route into cyber and startups
There’s a problem in the UK tech industry and it’s staring us in the face. The tech industry is growing at twice the rate of the wider economy and now contributes around £97bn a year, up 30pc in five years. And yet only 4% of military veterans work in ICT, which is 20% fewer than […]