Startups

The newest companies that could change the world
  • Don’t make founders’ equity evenCRUNCH NETWORK

    Don’t make founders’ equity even

    Sometimes I think about replacing the table in my office with a sofa and a box of tissues. I’m a lawyer, but sometimes I feel like a therapist. When startup founders sit down with me to hash out equity splits and trust and commitment issues, their tempers sometimes flare. Uncomfortable silences ensue. Feelings get hurt, and tears sometimes fall. Read More
  • Recasting Silicon Valley’s role in societyCRUNCH NETWORK

    Recasting Silicon Valley’s role in society

    At Bloomberg’s recent technology confab in San Francisco, Marc Andreessen offered a vision for entrepreneurship, defining it as the ability to see how the world potentially could be, then inventing what is needed to change it. Herein lies the dilemma for Silicon Valley: The same questions that spur its entrepreneurs to remake the world are often the same questions that lead it into conflict. Read More
  • Pop culture stimulates the evolution of the LA tech sceneCRUNCH NETWORK

    Pop culture stimulates the evolution of the LA tech scene

    It wasn’t so long ago that venture capital was a suburban California phenomenon. Los Angeles didn’t have much in terms of a real tech scene — and even San Francisco only had a few VCs or tech companies. Now, VC offices have sprung up in San Francisco, moving more of the investment energy up there. That great migration of companies and activity touches upon what is now… Read More
  • Let’s meet in Chicago for a mini-meetup

    Let’s meet in Chicago for a mini-meetup

    I’ll be in Chicago this week and I’d love to meet some startups. I’m thinking about holding a micro-mini-meetup on Tuesday, July 26 at a location to be determined. Here’s what I need from you all: Email or tweet me with recommendations where we can meet. I like to just hang out in bars but I could do a co-working space. I know there are a few in town but I’ve… Read More
  • Bad UX killsCRUNCH NETWORK

    Bad UX kills

    It clogs systems, causes accidents, wastes energy and makes people unhappy. It’s more than a bad experience on a website — in cities, bad user experience (UX) design can actually kill. We’re talking about signage, public spaces, civic and emergency communications and other forms of urban design that influence our daily routines and, in some cases, are there expressly for… Read More
  • Waiting for the right professional networkCRUNCH NETWORK

    Waiting for the right professional network

    Today there is enough data available to bring people of similar or adjacent profiles closer, and inform them about signals and contexts where they could either help, pay it forward or seek help. Over a period of time, a community (a micro-market network) will form that will prospect for each other — be it for a job or a deal or funding. Read More
  • RNDMWRK randomizes remote work with subscription spaces

    RNDMWRK randomizes remote work with subscription spaces

    Toronto entrepreneur David King learned something over the past four months, doing random bringing people together for random dinners at restaurants in Toronto: Many of the people participating were freelancers and entrepreneurs, and many of them wanted somewhere to work more often than they wanted a dinner party. He already had the two ends to his double-sided marketplace, he just… Read More
  • Hacking poverty through mobile tech and social entrepreneurshipCRUNCH NETWORK

    Hacking poverty through mobile tech and social entrepreneurship

    In Silicon Valley the term “hacker” has evolved to connote high praise for someone particularly creative, ingenious and adept at finding clever new ways to accomplish a difficult task. And it’s with that framework in mind, rather than some of the other meanings that “hack” has represented over time, that I suggested during my recent TEDx talk that Pope Francis and… Read More
  • 100% Fun

    100% Fun

    If 2016 taught us anything it’s that the internet isn’t fun anymore. It’s not that a soulless network of computers interconnected via TCP/IP was ever supposed to be fun. It’s that eventually fun overlaid itself on that network and created a world where nearly everyone could interact without fear. Kids grew up in a world where it was easier to talk to someone in… Read More
  • 7-Eleven delivers by drone in Reno including, yes, Slurpees

    7-Eleven delivers by drone in Reno including, yes, Slurpees

    7-Eleven Inc. and a tech startup called Flirtey have beaten Amazon to the punch in making the first drone delivery to a customer’s home in the U.S. Most already know 7-Eleven, the convenience store retail chain that boasts about 10,800 stores in North America and 59,500 in total around the world. Flirtey is a privately held company based in Reno, Nevada, which builds and operates drones… Read More
  • Now anyone can build features for Cola messenger

    Now anyone can build features for Cola messenger

    Cola, a messaging app that integrates apps into chats, is opening up its developer kit today to enable anyone to build new apps. The updated version available today comes with 12 “bubbles” that are essentially applications that run inside the messaging app. Users can share weather and flight information, gifs, and more without creating accounts with individual tools. The… Read More
  • Grover lets you rent electronics on the cheap

    Grover lets you rent electronics on the cheap

    Shopping online for electronics can be overwhelming. First you have the tech blog reviews, and then the forums, and then the product page itself. Finding the right product, at the right price, can be difficult. That’s where Grover (formerly ByeBuy) comes in. For roughly 5 percent of the retail price, users can rent electronics for a month and try before they buy. Plus, users can extend… Read More
  • Hopper’s travel app helps you pick the best dates, airports to save more money on your trip

    Hopper’s travel app helps you pick the best dates, airports to save more money on your trip

    Fresh off its $16 million funding round from earlier this spring, popular airfare prediction app Hopper is moving beyond simply helping travelers figure out when to fly in order to snag the best deal. With the launch of Hopper 3.0, out this morning, the app will now also make personalized recommendations regarding how to adjust your trip plans to save more money, as well as point users to… Read More
  • Inkbox’s short-term tattoos raise $1M from Alison Sweeney, Jeff Probst and more

    Inkbox’s short-term tattoos raise $1M from Alison Sweeney, Jeff Probst and more

    Inkbox’s two-week tattoos made waves when the company debuted its product on Kickstarter last year – Toronto-based founders Tyler and Braden Handley raised nearly $300,000 for their organic limited-time body art invention, which was a refinement of their original product offering that cut application time to just 10 minutes. A year later, they’ve raised $1 million in… Read More
  • Number26 is now a true bank as it now has a full banking license

    Number26 is now a true bank as it now has a full banking license

    Berlin-based startup Number26 is trying to reinvent the bank. This might sound crazy, and that's why the startup has processed step by step. After partnering with Wirecard for the banking back end, attracting 200,000 users and raising tens of millions of dollars, the company now has a full banking license to operate in Europe. Read More
  • Tesla and Uber have more in common than you might think

    Tesla and Uber have more in common than you might think

    Elon Musk’s new master plan catapults Tesla into a new market; car-sharing. While the idea of Tesla car-sharing seems new, it is not the first time the company’s cars, coupled with autonomous technology, have come up in discussions about the sharing economy. Back in 2015, Steve Jurvetson, a partner at Uber investor DFJ, told an audience that Uber’s Travis Kalanick had… Read More
  • Website-building platform Brandcast raises $13.9M

    Website-building platform Brandcast raises $13.9M

    Brandcast, a startup allowing marketers and designers build mobile-friendly websites without having to write code, announced today that it has raised $13.9 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Shasta Ventures with participation from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Correlation Ventures. (Brandcast co-founder and chief strategy officer Hayes Metzger previously worked at Salesforce… Read More
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