CHKN, letting you build and raise creatures, is betaworks’ latest game

betaworks doesn’t often launch games, but when they do, it tends to stick. Just take Dots, for example, which ended up spinning out of betaworks as its own game studio. Today, the startup studio is launching its second game in the form of CHKN. Imagine that Minecraft had a baby w … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Billy lets you track your subscriptions and bills in a simple app

A new app called Billy wants to help consumers more easily manage their subscriptions and bills, by keeping track of your fixed costs and recurring payments, and make these accessible via a simple mobile interface. That means tracking monthly payments like rent, alongside subscri … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Krablr pivots to crab pricing messaging app for millennials

Krablr started off as a promising real-time crab pricing engine for amateur fishermen. After a long beta period and a $5 million round with Sequoia leading the round and Scranton Angels also investing, the startup is pivoting to focus on millennials going forward. Read More | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

John Borthwick, Naveen Selvadurai, and Heather Hartnett to school us on startup studios at TC Disrupt NY

Some of the most influential and successful companies in the game have come out of startup studios. Just look at Giphy, Reserve, and Operator. But what makes a startup studio successful? At Disrupt NY in May, we aim to find out. Betaworks’ John Borthwick, Expa’s Naveen Selvadurai … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Yammer co-founder Adam Pisoni raises $4.5 million for Abl Schools

A co-founder and former CTO of Yammer, Adam Pisoni, quietly raised a $4.5 million first round of venture funding for his new education tech startup in January. This week, he revealed what Always Be Learning Inc., known as Abl Schools, is working on. Read More | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

On-demand moving app Lugg hits Silicon Valley

Lugg, the startup that helps people with small moves, requested via an Uber-like mobile app, is this week expanding its reach into additional markets. While originally available in the San Francisco Bay Area, the company says it will now be available in Silicon Valley, from Palo … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

An oasis in the desert: Special purpose vehicles and behavioral economics

Like an oasis in the desert, special purpose vehicles (SPV) can offer investors critical liquidity and capital to exercise pro-rata rights, even in a world where overall returns in venture capital have been decreasing. With new regulations taking effect around secondary transacti … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Kik CEO Ted Livingston to discuss the future of mobile messaging at Disrupt NY 2016

Messaging is the hot topic of 2016, which is why we’re tremendously excited to announce that Ted Livingston, the co-founder and CEO of popular chat app Kik, is confirmed as a speaker at our upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt event in New York from May 9-11. We’ve already revealed a numb … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Google reverses Gmail April 1 prank after users mistakently put GIFs into important emails

It’s past midday on April 1 in some parts of the world, so already we’re seeing some of the inevitable glut of April Fools Day announcements from tech companies. There looks to be one (surprising) early loser: Google. Read More | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Here are 14 actual pictures of Tesla’s $35,000 Model 3

In a curious stray from the norm, Tesla had one strange rule at tonight’s Model 3 unveiling: no “big” cameras allowed. Camera phones were okay, but if it had a big zoom lens, it wasn’t supposed to come in.Why? We’re not 100% sure. I asked around, and the closest thing to an answe … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

New Model 3 will extend Tesla’s reach into India, Brazil and other global markets

Tesla finally unveiled its Model 3 today. The $1,500 car drew a staggering 115,000 orders — $115 million in deposits and $4 billion in potential sales — before it had even been unveiled, but another interesting point to note is that it will be Tesla’s first to be sold in India, B … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Google is getting rid of the physical debit cards linked to its Wallet payment service

Google is bidding “smell ya later!” to its Wallet Card, the physical debit cards linked to Google Wallet accounts. In a blog post, the company said it plans to focus instead on the Google Wallet app, which relaunched last September with a new focus on online peer-to-peer payments … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Tesla sold 115k Model 3 preorders before anyone even saw the car

Elon Musk just unveiled Tesla’s Model 3, the car designed to bring Tesla to the masses.The car will start at $35,000, compared to the Model S and X which can easily run close to $100,000.On stage, Elon said that 115,000 people had already preordered before the car had even been u … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

This is Tesla’s Model 3

And there it is. After years of speculation, the Tesla Model 3 has been unveiled. We’re live in Hawthorne, CA, where the company has just shown the car for the very first time. Story actively developing; refresh for updates as we hear them. Curiously, they’ve actually said no big … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Government report details Theranos quality control issues

A government report released late Thursday accuses Theranos of producing inaccurate test results, of failing to meet its own lab standards and hiring unqualified personnel. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service visited Theranos’ main facilities in Newark, California last … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Meeting cybersecurity challenges through gamification

When it comes to cybersecurity issues, we always seem to be dealing with either shortages or excess. With the dark shadow of bigger security incidents constantly looming on the horizon, both government agencies and private firms are always looking for new ways to meet the challen … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Reddit’s missing ‘warrant canary’ suggests classified data requests from feds

Reddit issued its annual transparency report Thursday morning, listing the amount and type of data requested by various authorities. There’s plenty of interesting info, but perhaps most interesting is what’s not there: the site’s “warrant canary.” Read More | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Don’t hand over EV charging in Northern California to PG&E

Northern California has become a test-bed for electric vehicle charging. And it’s no accident; the region is home to more electric vehicles and EV charging stations than anywhere else in the country. Like other innovative industries, the EV charging models, products and services … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Sorry, Oculus, but Hololens gets my money

The battle between headsets you strap to your heads is being brought to a rolling boil this week, as Microsoft’s HoloLens Dev Kit and Oculus Rift both start shipping to customers. Being a lover of cutting-edge tech, you’d expect I’d be in lust with both technologies, but no. Holo … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

This neural network ‘hallucinates’ the right colors into black and white pictures

The machine overlords of the future may now, if it pleases them, eliminate all black and white imagery from the history of their meat-based former masters. All they’ll need is this system from Berkeley computer scientist Richard Zhang, which allows a soulless silicon sentience to … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Snapchat is down after Chat 2.0 boosts interest

Snapchat isn’t working for many users, with Stories failing to load and snaps not sending. The outage comes just days after Snapchat released its big Chat 2.0 update that brought stickers and other new features, but possibly more traffic than the service could handle. DownDetecto … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Xamarin CEO Nat Friedman on getting acquired by Microsoft

Microsoft announced in February its plans to acquire the cross-platform development platform Xamarin; the deal closed about two weeks ago. Even though the ink on the contracts has barely dried, Microsoft already made Xamarin the center of attention at its annual Build developer c … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Tesla will unveil the more affordable Model 3 tonight. Here’s where to watch.

After years of rumors, Tesla will unveil the Model 3 tonight. At a target price of $35,000 before incentives, the Model 3 is meant to be Tesla’s first car affordable by those of us (read: most of us) who can’t drop $70-$100k on a Model S or $80-$130k for a Model X. Besides the pr … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

DraftKings and FanDuel strike a deal with NCAA to suspend all college contests

DraftKings and FanDuel, the two largest providers of daily fantasy sports in the U.S, have simultaneously announced that they reached a deal with the NCAA to temporarily suspend college sports on both platforms after this weekend’s March Madness tournament ends. While the contest … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

How creative thinkers can thrive in a regulated industry

So you want to change the world and help people — and you’ve started a healthcare startup. You know it will take a great team to pull it off, and you’re starting to build the initial group that will mold the company’s DNA. You’re (hopefully) spending time thinking about the kind … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Beatie Wolfe shows off her NFC-powered musical jacket

The days of CDs and vinyl might be (mostly) over, but singer-songerwriter Beatie Wolfe is making music physical again, in a very literal way. Wolfe stopped by the TechCrunch New York office to show off her a jacket designed by Mr. Fish, who also created designs for legends like D … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Whistle acquired by Mars

Whistle, the “Fitbit for dogs,” has found a home at Mars Petcare, TechCrunch has learned.  The maker of Snickers and M&M’s also has a large pet division and has plans to integrate Whistle’s animal technology. “Whistle is excited to join the Mars Petcare family. This opportunity c … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Microsoft’s new tools let businesses integrate Skype into their own web and mobile apps

Following yesterday’s news about bringing bots to the Skype platform, Microsoft today unveiled two more SDKs for its Skype platform which will allow businesses and application developers a way to integrate Skype’s capabilities into their own applications. On stage at its annual B … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Apply now for Include Office Hours with Sequoia Capital

TechCrunch Include Office Hours are happening on April 15th! Bryan Schreier and Bill Coughran from Sequoia Capital will join TechCrunch to provide valuable advice and feedback to startups. Launched in 2014, Include is TechCrunch’s diversity program, aimed at facilitating opportun … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Wealthfront is updating its service with multiple integrations to give a more holistic view into financial health

Wealthfront, the West Coast robo-advisor battling Betterment for the top spot in tech-enabled wealth management, is launching a new version (and vision) of its wealth management service. The Redwood City, Calif.-based company is integrating with tools like Venmo and Redfin, to ge … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Microsoft gives developers new options to plug into Office 365

At the Build Developer conference in San Francisco today, Microsoft announced a series of new Office 365 developer tools designed to enhance how they interact with Office 365 platform. Microsoft outlined three new ways for developers to work with Office 365 including Graph APIs t … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Microsoft’s DocumentDB now lets you use your mad MongoDB skills

Are you fluent in MongoDB? Well today is your lucky day. Microsoft’s NoSQL document database service DocumentDB now supports drivers for MongoDB. So if you were using existing MongoDB tools and libraries, now you can use them with DocumentDB and take advantage of Microsoft’s clou … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

500 Startups launches $30M micro-fund in Canada

500 Startups is moving north of the border for its next micro-fund. The fund, called 500CAN, is targeting a $30 million size that will be focused on checking out what investments in Canada are all aboot. 500 is specifically looking to build presences in Toronto and Waterloo where … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Apple releases iOS 9.3.1 with fix for bug that causes tapping links to crash iPhones

Well that was quick. A couple of days after a bug affecting iOS started making the news, Apple has released a fix. iOS 9.3.1, now available on the iPhone and iPad, fixes this bug. The changelog is quite sort as there’s only one item. “Fixes an issue that caused apps to be unrespo … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Postmates launches Amazon Prime-style subscription service, hits 1 million monthly deliveries

Postmates, which is now completing 1 million deliveries a month, is digging in deeper to the e-commerce space with the launch of Postmates Plus Unlimited, a $9.99 per month subscription service that gets you free deliveries on all “Plus” orders over $30, minus the service fee. Pl … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Blispay, the financing program for SMBs, raises $12.75m in seed funding

Big box retailers like Best Buy and Target have all kinds of financing card programs for their customers. But smaller and medium-sized merchants have no way to give their customers the same kind of financing plans. Until now. Blispay is a new startup founded by Greg Lisiewski, fo … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Microsoft now lets developers embed Power BI visualizations into their own apps

Power BI is Microsoft’s tool for analyzing data and building interactive data-based dashboards and reports. At its Build developer conference in San Francisco, the company today announced the preview of Power BI Embedded. With this, developers will be able to integrate Power BI a … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Microsoft’s Azure Service Fabric microservice platform hits general availability

Microsoft today removed the “preview” label from Azure Service Fabric, its service for building and running both stateful and stateless Docker-based microservices in the cloud and on-premises. Service Fabric, which is the same service Microsoft uses to power much of the core infr … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Even Microsoft’s own presenters have given up on Windows Phone

Sitting through all the keynotes at Microsoft’s Build, there’s one giant gaping hole in the coverage: Windows Phone was barely mentioned. In fact, it seems like the keynote speakers were actively avoiding the platform in most of the sessions, showing that Microsoft have basically … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Microsoft answers AWS Lambda’s event-triggered serverless apps with Azure Functions

Microsoft announced it was previewing a new service today at its annual Build Developer conference that lets programmers create event-driven triggers without deploying any underlying infrastructure. If it sounds familiar, it’s because AWS introduced a similar service called Lambd … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

The new Samsung+ app will rescue you from your parents’ incessant tech questions

Sometimes you just hit a dead end in troubleshooting what’s going on with your phone. You’ve tried everything you can think of, but no dice. For tech-savvy users this may be messing with carrier settings or navigating file menus, for the less-digitally inclined it might be connec … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Thanks to Microsoft, small teams can now get Xamarin’s IDE and core tools for free

Microsoft acquired the cross-platform iOS, Android and OS X development service Xamarin last month and the new acquisition is already at the center of attention at Microsoft’s annual Build developer conference this week. As the company announced during today’s keynote, the core X … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Microsoft celebrates strong Azure adoption at Build 2016

Microsoft’s Azure cloud services are growing at an increasing clip, and at the company’s Build conference today, it showed off some of the numbers it for the past year. At last year’s conference, Microsoft celebrated that it had 100k new Azure customer subscriptions per month, bu … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Spain’s Glovo acquires Italy’s Foodinho to expand on-demand delivery service

Spain’s Glovo, which operates a local on-demand delivery service similar to Postmates in the US, or Jinn and Quiqup in the UK, has acquired Italy’s Foodinho. Read More | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Mission 360 is a VOD platform for yoga, meditation, fitness classes

We all want to be in better shape, but the commitment of going to a gym or a yoga class can be costly and time-consuming. Mission 360 is looking to eliminate all of the friction involved with working out, letting users work out right from their home through on-demand video classe … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

PayPal’s Braintree Auth launches to bring its payments platform to more merchants, service providers

Following yesterday’s news of Square’s entry into the online checkout space, the PayPal-owned payments platform Braintree today announced news of its own, with the launch of Braintree Auth. The system is designed to allow e-commerce platforms a way to give their merchants easier … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Flipd app forces you to put your iPhone away so you can get some work done

Let’s face it, your phone is a blessing and a curse. Behind its sleek glass front is a whole world of excitement. All your friends, the entirety of the Internet and omg, a kitten video… If you haven’t the self-discipline to keep the phone away when you’re trying to get some work … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Watch the Microsoft Build 2016 Day 2 keynote live right here

Microsoft is holding its annual Build developer conference in San Francisco this week and after focusing on Windows, Xbox, HoloLens, and Cortana yesterday, the company will shine the spotlight on its cloud and developer tools today. You can watch the live stream right here. Read … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago