Two visual marketing startups are teaming up — Olapic is announcing that it has acquired Piqora. Both companies promise to help help businesses promote themselves through user-generated photos, but Olapic co-founder and CEO Pau Sabria said his company’s strength has been on Insta … | Continue reading
People often misunderstand Y Combinator’s accelerator, with its broad range of startups that sometimes pivot before launch. That’s in part because YC’s president and spokeperson Sam Altman is too busy to tell its stories over and over, and he’s more of a techie type than a polish … | Continue reading
New roads (rather than new walls) are, therefore, the key to reinventing the American economy. Read More | Continue reading
Are you ready for a big fight over Yahoo’s control? Activist investor Starboard Value LP is really unhappy about Yahoo’s current state and wants everyone to know about it. In an open letter to shareholders, the activist hedge fund is saying that many things are broken at Yahoo ri … | Continue reading
Launched this week, London-based startup Trax & Wax is the first vinyl subscription service focused on sub-genres within dance music. It works with the most prominent distributors of dance music including Rush Hour, Clone, Syncrophone and Word & Sound to curate a personalized mon … | Continue reading
French startup Mapstr is a nifty bookmarking apps, but for your favorite places. It lets you keep track of restaurants, bars, shops or your friends’ homes. With today’s update, you can now get walking, driving and public transport directions with integrations with Google Maps, Ub … | Continue reading
As promised, Hulu has entered the world of VR. The streaming service today announced the launch of an app designed for Samsung’s Gear VR powered by Oculus. Now available on the Gear VR Oculus Store, the new app is the first of what the company says will be several VR apps for dif … | Continue reading
A year after blatantly copying Timehop, Facebook’s nostalgia feature is proving how successful big platforms can be when they rip off smaller products. Each day 60 million people visit On This Day, and 155 million have subscribed to its notifications that show your photos, status … | Continue reading
In the world of gaming accessories, “budget-friendly” is not a word frequently used. Naturally, one of the biggest players industry, Razer, aims to change that with the Blackwidow X. The newest set of keyboards added to their existing lineup, the Blackwidow X has changes made not … | Continue reading
In case there was any doubt that messaging apps were the future of communication in the mobile-first era, a new study released this morning puts some solid numbers behind their traction – and their increasing dominance over email, among today’s youngest users. According to a repo … | Continue reading
Foursquare has just launched Swarm 4.0, complete with brand new profile pages, updated search capabilities, full-screen photos and a weekly Swarm update from your friends. The most important update to the app comes by way of new individual user profiles. These profiles show a cli … | Continue reading
DoorDash is unveiling new versions of its website and app today, putting each restaurant’s delivery experience front-and-center. That’s happening through a new “Delight” score, which Head of Design Josh Abrams described as an “industry-first” rating — one that doesn’t just reflec … | Continue reading
Call it on-demand on steroids. A San Francisco company called Recharge has developed an app that enables users to book a stay in hotel for just for 67 cents a minute, or $40 an hour. The offering sounds both brilliant and preposterous, yet it has already attracted some smart inve … | Continue reading
Music streaming service Vevo has been working to extract itself from YouTube’s shadow over the past several months, despite the two networks’ symbiotic relationship. The company recently launched new, more personalized music applications on iOS, Android and Apple TV. Today it’s t … | Continue reading
Bitbucket Server, Atlassian’s self-hosted Git version control service, and Bitbucket Data Center are getting a small but potentially very useful feature in preview. The new early access version of Bitbucket now features the ability to search for code in your repositories. With th … | Continue reading
Google is increasing the visibility of security warnings inside Gmail to help protect the service’s billion-plus active users more adequately. Read More | Continue reading
AppDirect, a company that helps customers manage multiple cloud vendors, announced today it was buying former TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield participant Xendo for an undisclosed amount. Xendo, which actually launched at my first TechCrunch Disrupt in September, 2014 enables users … | Continue reading
Not every great business is VC backable. But every business needs capital to grow. If you’re launching a great business, but you don’t plan on being a unicorn, keep reading. Read More | Continue reading
Microsoft today launched a preview of the next version of Skype for Windows 10. This preview, which is now rolling out to Windows Insiders, is the first full Universal Windows Platform (UWP) version of Skype. The new version was written from scratch and features a redesigned user … | Continue reading
Juno, a months-old, New York-based ride-sharing service that is planning to take on Uber, is talking with investors about a $30 million round of funding, according to several sources, one of whom said of the valuation that Juno seeking, “it’s high.” Asked to confirm, the company’ … | Continue reading
Microsoft’s newly launched A.I.-powered bot called Tay, which was responding to tweets and chats on GroupMe and Kik, has already been shut down due to concerns with its inability to recognize when it was making offensive or racist statements. Of course, the bot wasn’t coded to be … | Continue reading
A now-vacated court order requiring Apple to undermine the security of its users prompted an ongoing controversy over government access to encrypted devices. While the court in San Bernardino may never rule on the flood of arguments supporting Apple’s defense of user security, ob … | Continue reading
F6S, the community and deal platform for startups, announces today that they are launching a new, invite-only membership for select startup founders. Dubbed the Alpha Card, membership includes VIP access to $1 million of free growth services for each founder. Read More | Continue reading
When an app wins an Apple Design Award and has hundreds of thousands of people on its waiting list, people are going to want to know how exactly the founders did it.So, TechCrunch is excited to announce that Baiju Bhatt, cofounder of the popular commission-free stock trading app … | Continue reading
A new company with a cool name, Galactic Exchange, came out of stealth today with a great idea. It claims it can spin up a Hadoop cluster for you in five minutes, ready to go. That’s no small feat if it works as advertised and greatly simplifies what has traditionally been a proc … | Continue reading
Mesosphere, the container-centric company that aims to help enterprises better utilize their data centers with the help of its Data Center Operating System (DCOS), today announced that it has raised a $73.5 million Series C funding round. The round was led by Hewlett Packard Ente … | Continue reading
Much as we love Manhattan, this year, TechCrunch decided to move our annual Disrupt NY event to Red Hook, Brooklyn, just across the East River from Manhattan. The more we get to know Red Hook, the more on target this very startup-like part of Brooklyn seems for TechCrunch. The Re … | Continue reading
Weeks before Facebook is expected to open Messenger to third-party bots at its F8 event, Line, the messaging app based in Japan, has beaten its rival to the punch. Well, in announcing its bot intention, at least. Read More | Continue reading
We hear a lot about the Internet of Things on the consumer side. The oft trotted out example of the ‘smart’ refrigerator that tells consumers when they’ve run out of the milk, and so on. But more serious potential for IoT — and potentially seriously big wins — are likely to be on … | Continue reading
The combination of three factors — aggression, legislation and government opposition — arguably makes Colombia one of Uber’s toughest battlegrounds. Read More | Continue reading
Apple’s unveiled its new four-inch iPhone SE and 9.7-inch iPad Pro earlier this week, and now the two devices are up for pre-order in the first wave of countries. Read More | Continue reading
It looks like Sony will follow Nintendo’s cue and focus on mobile gaming. The company announced today [in Japanese] that it has formed a new business unit that will bring PlayStation titles and IP to iOS and Android devices. Read More | Continue reading
Kreditech — the German startup that offers loans and other financial services to consumers who have little or no credit history by using some 20,000 data points online to assess their suitability — has added another $11 million (€10 million) to its Series C round of funding. This … | Continue reading
Smartwatch pioneer Pebble is laying off 25 percent of its staff amid increased financial concerns. This situation has been coming. Last year, we reported the company was in some trouble and had turned to debt funding and loans, as well as traditional investor cash, “in order to s … | Continue reading
Gobi Partners has partnered with Malaysia Venture Capital Management Berhard (MAVCAP), which claims to be the country’s largest venture capital firm, to launch a $14.5 million fund dedicated to seed-stage companies in Southeast Asian. Read More | Continue reading
NASA has released close-up images of the dwarf planet Ceres, the biggest object in the asteroid belt, revealing new details about its mysterious bright spots. These images were taken by the Dawn spacecraft, which left Earth nearly a decade ago. Dawn was the first mission to reach … | Continue reading
“Food, housing, healthcare, transportation. Life essentials made better and more affordable.” These are the types of startups that partner Paul Buchheit said were demoing today at Y Combinator’s Winter 2016 Demo Day 2. Yesterday, we covered the first 60 startups from the batch, a … | Continue reading
As strange as it may seem, only a small percentage of Americans can legally invest in most startups today. Under long-standing rules governing who qualifies as a so-called “accredited investor,” only quite wealthy individuals (those make at least $200,000 in annual income or have … | Continue reading
BMW was among the first auto manufacturers to introduce integration with iPhones in 2011. Now, five years later, the company has at last announced at the New York International Auto Show that BMW Apps will integrate with Android devices. The first three apps to work with the iDri … | Continue reading
If traveling first class is just a teensy bit too plebeian for you, JetSmarter has you covered. The company lets you book a private jet from your smartphone, and announced today it is expanding into Europe, with scheduled routes between London, Nice, Paris, Geneva and Moscow. Jet … | Continue reading
Investor, entrepreneur, billionaire and Bill Gates’ other half in the founding of Microsoft Paul Allen has announced a $100 million investment in the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, a fund focusing on the future of biotech research. Allen, who is worth about $15.3 billion, announc … | Continue reading
Degreed, a startup promising to “jailbreak the college degree,” announced today that it has acquired Gibbon. Degreed offers tools for tracking lifelong learning and earning additional credentials. Gibbon, meanwhile, is supposed to help you learn by curating and sharing playlists … | Continue reading
Tristan Walker is becoming, if he’s not already, a household name in Silicon Valley. He’s the founder and CEO of Walker & Company Brands, the startup behind the successful Bevel razor and shaving cream products for people of color. I first spoke with Walker in December 2013, when … | Continue reading
Y Combinator-backed Gecko Robotics is hoping to save a few human lives at our nation’s power plants with wall-climbing robots.Gecko’s proprietary magnetic adhesion technology works much like the sticky foot of a gecko, allowing its robots to crawl up walls to inspect for damage a … | Continue reading
We asked investors what their favorite startups were from the 60 that launched at Y Combinator’s Winter 2016 Demo Day 1. After huddling with our writers and adding our input, here are TechCrunch’s picks for the 7 most promising companies from the batch, plus an honorable mention. … | Continue reading
A new report from U.S. consumer rights and privacy advocacy group, the Center for Digital Democracy, has set out the case for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to tighten data protection rules around how ISPs and telcos collect and use consumer data. Read More | Continue reading
The topic of women in tech can take on different forms. It is about women’s positions and promotions (or the lack thereof) in the tech industry, with initiatives meant to help women network, find opportunities or hold discriminating industry leaders accountable. It is also about … | Continue reading
Have you heard about Boom? Boom is a relatively new startup that’s aiming to build something pretty crazy. They’re not building an app… or a social network… or even some new gadget for the Kickstarter crowd. Boom wants to build planes. Really, really, really fast planes. Specific … | Continue reading