Amid the shift of commerce to online stores like Amazon, one huge segment of the industry has been overlooked: dollar stores. Many assumed that’s because with retail price points that low, there’s little room for profitability – after all, if dollar stores could be a successful o … | Continue reading
Scoop, a corporate carpooling service that works with companies like Tesla, Twitter and Cisco, has raised a $5.1 million round of funding led by Signia Venture Partners with participation from Index Ventures, BMW i Ventures and Workday Corporate Ventures. Scoop was founded by bro … | Continue reading
While it may seem like we just wrapped up in the Big Apple, TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2016 will be here before you can say “how do you do, fellow kids?” We will once again be giving college students the chance to buy deeply discounted tickets to Disrupt SF, so all you undergrad and g … | Continue reading
Pattern, a year-old, Redwood City, Ca.- based startup, wants to become a kind of external brain that lightens the load of managing customer relationships for salespeople. Felicis Ventures, SoftTech VC, and First Round Capital have just furnished the company with $2.5 million in s … | Continue reading
The on-demand transportation service continues to heat up, and today the spotlight is shining on a New York startup whose business is based primarily in Europe. Gett, a cab-hailing startup with operations across some 60 cities, is getting a $300 million investment from German car … | Continue reading
As demonstrated by the overwhelming bipartisan support to overhaul the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, privacy laws passed in the 1980s are difficult to apply to today’s technology. Nowhere is this difficulty more evident than in cases dealing with the Video Privacy Protec … | Continue reading
We are once again learning the old lesson that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably shouldn’t get a SaaS multiple. Read More | Continue reading
Partially confirming earlier reports, Twitter announced this morning plans that will begin to distance it from its strict adherence to the rule that tweets can only contain 140 characters. The company says that, among other changes designed to welcome new users to its service, it … | Continue reading
“This is Pebble Core,” Eric Migicovsky says with a smile. “It’s our first non-watch product. The simplest way to explain it is that it’s a computer that fits on your keychain. It’s a tiny Android computer without a screen. It has 3D, GPS, Wi-Fi, a little bit of memory and both An … | Continue reading
Sometimes in science the answer is right there in front of your nose the whole time. Like, say, when the issue of limitations in a solar technology can be addressed with, of all things, light. Over the past several years, perovskite compounds have garnered increased interest arou … | Continue reading
I spotted an Otterbox case on the train ride in this morning that more or less confirmed my feelings about the company’s products: big, bulky and protective. Swaddling one’s phone in an Otterbox case for a New York City subway ride is the smartphone equivalent to wearing a bullet … | Continue reading
Fresh on the heels of the launch of Tech:NYC, Jersey is getting in on the action with the unveiling of Newark Venture Partners new incubator, NVP Labs. Over the next five years, NVP has plans to invest $10 million per year into startups as part of the incubator. Alongside investm … | Continue reading
SigFig, the developer of tech-enabled financial advisory services products, has raised $40 million from the venture investment arms of a slew of big banks. The new round is a testament to the company’s belief that partnering with large financial institutions is the best way to ge … | Continue reading
Varsity Tutors, the online platform that lets top-of-the-line tutors connect with students who need some brushing up, has today launched a native mobile app.Back in 2012, the company started by simply matching tutors with students for in-person consultations. Over time, the compa … | Continue reading
“We believe that IT has nothing to do with math and physics … it is more artistic than scientific,” says Nicolas Sadirac, as he cheerfully slaughters whole herds of sacred cows. “Knowledge is not useful any more, because IT advances in revolutionary ways, not iterative ones … We … | Continue reading
Other Machine Co. CEO Danielle Applestone is audibly excited. She has something she really wants to show me during our video chat before she gets down to the proper business of firing up her demo. It’s something tiny. Something that has room to breathe of the tip of a finger, whi … | Continue reading
Education tech startup Bloomz has raised $2.3 million in seed funding for an app that connects teachers and parents, securely. The company’s app features tools that help teachers push updates about students or share photos of them from the classroom back to parents throughout the … | Continue reading
This story has been going on for years, but it looks like France’s equivalent of the IRS (Direction générale des finances) wants more proofs. According to Le Monde and Le Parisien, Google’s office in Paris is being raided right now. According to the DGF, Google should be paying m … | Continue reading
OnePlus is making another push into VR after it announced plans to run the launch of its next smartphone in virtual reality (again), with a shopping experience to match. The China-based firm jumped on the VR wagon when it launched the OnePlus 2 last summer. For that launch, OnePl … | Continue reading
Menu Next Door just raised $2 million (€1.75 million) from Index Ventures, Local Globe, Kima Ventures and TheFamily. The startup is all about home cooking, literally. On Menu Next Door, you can either cook for people around you or buy a menu from someone around you.I’ve heard thi … | Continue reading
Cyber security continues to infiltrate our daily news feeds and make headlines on a regular basis. It’s touched our most iconic companies such as Apple and it has risen to the forefront of our government’s attention on several occasions. One thing is clear amid all these developm … | Continue reading
You gotta hand it to Pepper. Even in the face of worldwide economic woes, Softbank’s plucky little robot has never had an issue holding down a job. The ‘bot’s latest gig isn’t exactly the most glamorous we’ve seen it take on, but it will likely do so with a smile – or the approxi … | Continue reading
L.A. has a new venture firm in March Capital Partners, a $240 million fund that has a few tricks up its sleeve. For starters, though it invests in both Southern and Northern California, it considers itself a global investor and has already made bets in India (in online payments c … | Continue reading
Sony warned that its annual earnings will be lower than expected as it recovers from an earthquake that struck the south of Japan last month. The company had previously delayed its forecast for fiscal year 2017 as it assessed the impact of damages. Read More | Continue reading
There have been many attempts to update keyboards for the digital era and speed up typing by rethinking the antique Qwerty layout. Problem is you’re going up against muscle memory, and resistance to change the habit of a lifetime. And that’s a very hard nut to crack. But a Swiss … | Continue reading
There isn’t a lot of data on the potential of technology in Southeast Asia, which is why many in the industry have been excitedly flipping through a new report released today by Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek and Google. The biggest takeaway: Southeast Asia’s internet … | Continue reading
Cybercrime is a rising problem — expected to cost organizations between $500 billion and $2 trillion by 2019. Now a startup that has built what it markets as an economical tool to fight cybercrime has raised some money to help it grow. vArmour — a startup that offers security sol … | Continue reading
Woomoo, the startup behind app prototyping tool POP, has been acqui-hired by Priceline. All six of the company’s employees have relocated from Taipei, where Woomoo was based, to Bangkok to work on app development for Agoda, the hotel booking website owned by Priceline. The deal’s … | Continue reading
Another week, another story about a promising independent self-driving vehicle company. Last week, Otto came out of stealth to offer autonomous technology for trucks, and today MIT spinoff NuTonomy announced $16 million in funding to go after its ambitious goal of offering self-d … | Continue reading
Terms and conditions suck, as we’ve said before. They are designed to be impenetrably unreadable to convince app users not to bother. The ‘Click here to AGREE’ button might as well have a giant cartoon arrow winking away on it. Read More | Continue reading
While EBay continues to build out its core marketplace for physical goods, it’s also investing to expand other businesses and brands, too. Today the company announced that it has acquired Ticketbis, an online ticket marketplace based out of Bilbao. EBay plans to roll Ticketbis in … | Continue reading
Rumor has it that Apple is about to update the MacBook Pro with a retina display in the coming months. And according to well-informed analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from KGI Securities and 9to5mac, it should be much more than a specification bump.The company wants to keep two screen sizes … | Continue reading
Applications are now closed for startups who want to pitch on stage at the TechCrunch Stockholm Meetup and Pitch-off on June 7. Whether you’re on stage or not, we’d love to see you there, so head over here to get your tickets! We’ve had an amazing response from startups wanting t … | Continue reading
Founded by Australian brothers Travis and Shawn Pittman but relocated to Austria of all places, TourRadar, the travel tour booking site, seems to be on a roll. The startup has just closed $6 million in Series A funding, based, I’m hearing, on a major growth spurt over the last 7 … | Continue reading
Atlassian is hosting its annual developer conference not too far from my favorite absinthe bar this week. During its keynote, the company today announced a number of new products and updates, all of which focus on making life a little bit easier (and collaborative) for developers … | Continue reading
Cray has always been associated with speed and power and its latest computing beast called the Cray Urika-GX system has been designed specifically for big data workloads. What’s more, it runs on OpenStack, the open source cloud platform and supports open source big data processin … | Continue reading
Malaysia-based fintech startup Saving Plus has closed a $3 million Series A round and renamed itself as Jirnexu. Read More | Continue reading
Over the past few years, cyber insurance markets have been growing at between 25-50 percent CAGR each year. According to The Betterley Report 2015, annual policy premiums are approaching $2.75 billion. The ecosystem of insurance underwriters, intermediaries/brokers, analysts/mana … | Continue reading
Today’s Stories Spotify family plan is now cheaper, $14.99 for up to 6 peopleFacebook Live lets you skip to the good partComparably launches Glassdoor competitor that filters employee reviews by race and genderKleiner is raising two new funds totaling upwards of $1.3 billion‘Stev … | Continue reading
Charity or opportunism? It’s so hard to tell, sometimes. In RideAustin’s case, it looks to be a bit of both. It’s a non-profit car-for-hire service that’s happy to abide by the city’s rules — and adds a layer of budget- and conscience-friendly features that may help it stay diffe … | Continue reading
Utah Senator Todd Weiler has proposed a bill to rid the state of porn by adding Internet filters and anti-porn software on all cell phones and requiring citizens to opt-in before viewing porn online. It’s to save the children, he says. Weiler successfully pushed an anti-porn reso … | Continue reading
In the midst of a quest to become an international video streaming success, Netflix has been drawing criticism from core, U.S. customers who say its film and TV library — beyond original series and films — isn’t robust enough to whet their viewing appetites. Today, Netflix made a … | Continue reading
Attorneys for Oracle and Google presented their closing arguments today in a lawsuit over Google’s use of Java APIs owned by Oracle in Android. Oracle accused Google of stealing a collection of APIs, while Google suggested that Android transformed the smartphone market and Oracle … | Continue reading
Snapchat may have first made its name in the crowded world of mobile apps with an ephemeral messaging service, but the startup and its wildly popular app are not disappearing anywhere soon. TechCrunch has learned from multiple sources that Snapchat is raising yet more financing a … | Continue reading
Facebook responded today to official queries regarding its Trending Topics feature, specifically allegations made over the last few weeks that the team responsible for it was deliberately suppressing conservative views and arbitrarily elevating stories with little oversight. It d … | Continue reading
Machine learning is accomplishing Facebook’s mission of connecting the world across language barriers. Facebook is now serving 2 billion text translations per day. Facebook can translate across 40 different languages in 1800 directions like French to English. And 800 million user … | Continue reading
Apple CEO Tim Cook made an uncharacteristic admission today in an interview with Indian news channel NDTV — that iPhones are too expensive. He immediately qualified it, and the context really is important, but it’s just one of those things you don’t hear very often. Read More | Continue reading
I’m pretty excited and happy to announce that today I’m taking over Crunch Report. “I am the captain now.” I edited over 150 episodes of Crunch Report back when Sarah Lane hosted the show and I learned a lot: how to be super efficient at editing; learning what I personally liked … | Continue reading