Seedcamp-backed travel startup, Much Better Adventures, which lets you book ‘active holidays’ with independent providers, has raised £400,000 in seed funding to expand its ski offering and launch a second vertical in the form of road cycling holidays. Read More | Continue reading
Another transportation startup has run out of gas while larger companies continue refuelling to tap into economies of scale. Tripda — a carpooling startup operating in 13 countries including the U.S. and backed by the Berlin-based incubator Rocket Internet — has announced that it … | Continue reading
Amazon has signed a wholesale supply deal with Morrisons, one of Britain’s largest supermarket chains, to deliver fresh and frozen groceries to Amazon Prime Now and Amazon Pantry customers. Read More | Continue reading
Snapchat is famous for its disappearing messages, but not everything is ephemeral. Today the company disclosed that a number of its current and former employees had their identifies compromised following a phishing attack staged on the company this month. Read More | Continue reading
A major new Raspberry Pi microprocessor has been announced today: the Pi 3 Model B board becomes the new top-of-the-line Pi, with a 64bit 1.2GHz quad-core chipset and 1GB RAM it’s being slated to offer a 50 per cent power bump over the Pi 2. But is still priced at just $35… Read … | Continue reading
When a startup manages a successful exit, its earliest adopters usually don’t get much in return except for bragging rights. RocketClub wants to change that. Read More | Continue reading
E-commerce giants with ambitions to build regional Amazon rivals in emerging markets continue to rake in huge amounts of funding. Today, comes the latest development: Souq — an online marketplace that has been described as the Amazon of the Middle East — has announced that it has … | Continue reading
Snapchat rolled out the red carpet for web users to catch up on snaps from tonight’s Academy Awards. Visitors to the snapchat.com site were greeted with an online player offering Snapchat Live updates on the awards show. This is the first time Snapchat has shown off content in th … | Continue reading
It takes a much heartier stomach to jump into the startup game now than it did a year ago. Zenefits recently became the latest unicorn to face devaluation after compliance issues forced the CEO to resign. Publicly traded tech companies like Twitter weathered layoffs and stock sel … | Continue reading
On Thursday night, at a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco, this editor talked with GV CEO Bill Maris about a wide range of issues, including what happened with its Europe fund, why GV didn’t invest in Zenefits, and why Maris alone makes every decision on behalf of the powerful ve … | Continue reading
Marketing technology has become big business over the last five years, securing $134 billion in venture funding and spawning more than 2,000 new companies. New channels, new data streams and new workflow have emerged to disrupt important aspects of marketing at big and small comp … | Continue reading
While most of the current Hollywood headlines are focused on the Academy Awards, there were some new movies this weekend, too — including Triple 9, a sprawling crime drama with a cast that includes (deep breath) Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anthony Mackie, Aaron Paul, Kate Wi … | Continue reading
The Brooklyn TC Meetup crept up faster than any of us anticipated. In just two short days, we’ll head over to Output in Williamsburg and ten companies will have exactly sixty seconds to pitch their wares to a panel of judges and an adoring, primarily hipster audience. But which c … | Continue reading
The Oscars are finally here. Will Leonardo DiCaprio finally get his Oscar? Will we see another epic celeb-filled selfie from Ellen?If you want to catch all the action but won’t be in front of a TV, here are all the ways you can stream the event tonight, starting at 5:30pm PT / 8: … | Continue reading
About 15 years ago, the Internet triggered a platform shift in the delivery of enterprise software; a wave of cloud startups quickly unseated the kings of the server era. Now, another platform evolution — the mobile era — is upon us. For nimble and opportunistic founders, the shi … | Continue reading
The mobile gaming industry made $29 billion in 2015 — and it is only set to continue growing (with estimates as high as $49 billion by 2018). But the mobile gaming industry is in the “wild west” phase of its history right now, with the constant improvement of mobile devices and s … | Continue reading
The startup gold rush of the last ten years is over. Sorry. Those hordes of ambitious entrepreneurs still stampeding to the Bay Area in the hopes of building their Minimum Viable Product, getting into Y Combinator, and growing their app into the Next Big Thing–they’re already too … | Continue reading
I’ve argued in the past that Netflix will have the last laugh — that its success with content production will soon rival and surpass traditional TV networks and movie studios. Now I’m more convinced than ever. Ironically, it’s a smear campaign spearheaded by NBC to undermine Netf … | Continue reading
In 1966, Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek would boldly go where no man had gone before, telling the tale of Captain Kirk and his crew as they explored the galaxy while taking on myriad sci-fi adventures. In the opening scene of the franchise’s 1982 motion picture, Star Trek II: The W … | Continue reading
Silicon Valley has disrupted disruptive innovation, and Clayton Christensen isn’t happy about it. Christensen vaulted to rock-star status in the tech world in 1995 when he introduced the theory of disruptive innovation. Two years later, he published his bestselling book, The Inno … | Continue reading
Vice President Joe Biden showed up for a round table discussion at the University of California San Francisco’s Genentech Hall this morning for a round table discussion with those in the tech industry about efforts towards a future without cancer. Biden’s 46-year-old son Beau pas … | Continue reading
On Thursday night, this editor hosted nearly 200 investors and entrepreneurs who came together in San Francisco to hear several guest speakers, including Heidi Roizen, a former entrepreneur, a longtime VC, and a Stanford alum who has taught entrepreneurship at the university for … | Continue reading
The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, February 26, 2016. The Gang finds it hard to concentrate purely on technology as we wake up to the increasing likelihood of more Trump in our diet. + G3 with Halley Suitt Tucker, … | Continue reading
From Britain’s railway mania of the 1840s to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, innovative new technologies have routinely touched off periods of near hysteria as marketers and commentators promise world-changing disruption; excitement builds to a fever pitch and the marketpla … | Continue reading
It was in 1909 when Henry Ford, master of efficiency and standardization, famously said that a “customer can have a car painted any color…so long as it is black.” While the First Industrial Revolution introduced machines to replace hand labor, Ford helped usher in what was ultima … | Continue reading
Despite not unboxing a new high end smartphone at Mobile World Congress this week, embattled mobile maker HTC has told TechCrunch it’s not ready to admit premium defeat — saying it has a new flagship device coming soon… Read More | Continue reading
Did you hear about that crazy-popular game that sat in the No. 1 Games spot on iTunes for more than a month and a half? I’ll give you a hint, it has color in the title. Color Switch is a tap-based obstacle game that adds an additional level of difficulty because you are constantl … | Continue reading
A new book declaring the end of the golden age of economic growth has set the wonky world of economics aflame. Robert Gordon’s The Rise and Fall of American Growth juxtaposes the world-altering impact of 19th-century inventions with a disbelief that today’s digital transformatio … | Continue reading
This week, we went to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress 2016. We covered a panel about mobile ad blocking, Mark Zuckerberg talked about Free Basics and encryption, Samsung announced the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, we went hands on with the modular LG G5, and oh, by the way, tablets … | Continue reading
This week the Apple vs. FBI battle raged on, we went to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, Facebook changed up the Like button, and more. Here are the top stories of the week. Read More | Continue reading
Gary Liu on why Digg’s struggles, evolution, and the need for content creators to change in as ad dollars diminish. Read More | Continue reading
Ready for your semi-regular reminder that some people are just way, way too clever?These folks managed to make a BB-8 model…. completely out of LEGO parts. And it actually rolls. And its head actually stays in place on top, as BB-8’s head should. Read More | Continue reading
This is not how you run a platform. Developers remember. Pull the rug out from under them once, and they’ll be reluctant to stand with you in the future. So despite having a record-setting January with $1 billion transferred in its peer-to-peer payments app, Venmo just shot itsel … | Continue reading
Gillmor Gang – Dan Farber, John Taschek, Robert Scoble, and Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. LIVE recording session today 1pmPT/4pmET. Chat with us live during the show at chat.center/gillmorgang Gillmor Gang on Facebook HERE Our LIVE chat on Chat Center (during the LIVE show broa … | Continue reading
All it takes is a quick look at the market to see that we are in for a bumpy ride — and a longer-term downturn may be imminent. Tech is not immune to that, which means we’ll see a hit to valuations, VC funding and fundraising. Lots of experts have talked about what that might mea … | Continue reading
Tribeca Venture Partners, a New York-based early-stage venture firm founded in 2011, is today announcing that it has closed its second fund with $107 million — significantly more than its $65 million debut fund. That’s good news for New York startups. In a conversation earlier th … | Continue reading
Luxe is in talks with a strategic investor that will infuse the company with “tens of millions” in new financing from Hertz, our sources tell us. Our understanding is that the round is still in negotiations — and, of course, could change at any time. The Information also reported … | Continue reading
Talk to anyone in the AR space right now and the phrase “democratizing x” is bound to arise two or three dozen times. Wrnch CEO Paul Kruszewski says that concept is especially true for the computer vision space with warchest-toting companies like Magic Leap powering their own tec … | Continue reading
Talkwheel, a company that offers a unique way to visualize customer conversations, has been acquired by Clickable.I last wrote about Talkwheel in 2014. The company aggregates the online conversation around a given company or topic in a circular format — it’s supposed to help you … | Continue reading
Tower above your army of monsters, lean across the battlefield and make your opponent’s face explode. That’s Dragon Front, a virtual reality card game coming to Oculus Rift. While many VR games see you flailing your arms or head about, or swinging swords and shooting bows and arr … | Continue reading
Google.org has awarded a total of $3 million in grants to San Francisco Unified School District’s My Brother and Sister’s Keeper program (MBSK), Oakland’s Roses in Concrete Community School, Beyond 12 and Equal Justice Initiative, all of which are local organizations working to e … | Continue reading
Zenefits is laying off around 17% of its employees, or 250 people, with the layoffs largely concentrated in the company’s sales divisions, according to an email sent by CEO David Sacks to the company. Most of the layoffs are happening in the sales division, according to the email … | Continue reading
Spark, the email program that is set to replace the ever-popular but defunct Mailbox, has landed on the iPad and iPad Pro, a move that should please email power users. The app features a number of popular features including read later and mailbox organization. However, the system … | Continue reading
The bots are coming, and Quang Hoang knows it — so much so that he’s willing to bet his entire company on it. So what once started out as an app like Expensify is now Birdly, a Slack bot that makes it easier to call up customer data directly within Slack from sources like Salesfo … | Continue reading
As a CEO and immigrant worker (take that, Trump!), I always get asked about moving my company to Silicon Valley. I usually answer that I believe you can build a world-changing organization anywhere, but the job is always easier at your industry’s center of gravity. For fashion, i … | Continue reading
Every few weeks I dig through the deepest recesses of Kickstarter and Indiegogo to find a few good watches. This time I’ve hit pay dirt. The $227 Hastings & Co Heritage Edition is a mechanical watch with enough class and high design to make it an heir to watches like the Tissot L … | Continue reading
When we last saw BioBots, company CEO Danny Cabrera took to the Disrupt stage to pitch his 3D printer for living cells to our panel of judges in the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt NY 2015. Cabrera showed off his company’s debut 3D bioprinter, and actually printed out a living 3D … | Continue reading
Facebook is expanding its live-video feature to Android users, the company announced in a blog post today. This rollout is initially for Android users based in the U.S. next week, but “more countries [are] coming soon,” Facebook confirmed. Read More | Continue reading