- CRUNCH NETWORK
Why founders should care where their VCs get their money
Fundraising for a startup is a notoriously stressful process. Much ink has been spilled dissecting every aspect of what works when pitching a venture capitalist, and there are countless “tips” out there that promise to help close deals. But for all the attention paid to VCs, little has been paid to limited partners — the money behind the money that makes the venture world… Read More Spotify might not suppress search, but that doesn’t mean artists with exclusives get treated equally
Accusations that Spotify has been punishing artists for signing exclusives with other streaming services hit the internet in full force this morning, originating from a Bloomberg article. When confronted by TechCrunch, a Spotify spokesperson gave the same response they have been giving since the story broke — that the accusations about burying search results are… Read MorePlowz and Mowz raise $1.5 million from LA-based Science for on-demand landscaping services
Launching with a marketplace for landscaping, snow plowing and other home care and repair services, Plowz & Mowz has raised $1.5 million from the Los Angeles-based startup studio Science and undisclosed angel investors. On the heels of the firm’s successful exit from Dollar Shave Club, Science has turned to the marketplace industry for its next investment. The idea for the… Read MoreNewly proposed rules for foreign entrepreneurs will help some, but not all, found U.S. startups
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an office under the Department of Homeland Security, put forward a proposal today that would allow the U.S. Government to offer parole (temporary permission to be in the country) to foreign entrepreneurs starting their businesses in the United States. The proposal specifies that a founder can qualify if they started a company in the U.S. in… Read MoreFlirtey flies pies for Domino’s in New Zealand
Domino’s Pizza Enterprises has demonstrated delivery of hot pizzas by drone in Auckland, New Zealand. The company has a long history of embracing high-tech concepts. Last year, they tested out a four-wheeled, driverless pizza delivery vehicle. And in 2012, Domino’s launched a casual build-a-pizza game that also let players order the pizza they built digitally for real life… Read MoreRheo, a personalized video app designed by ex-Apple product vets, scores $2.3 million
A personalized video channel for Apple TV, Rheo, has now closed on $2.3 million in seed funding, the company announced this week. It has also updated its application and expanded its content lineup, thanks to a new deal with Vimeo which brings the network’s catalog of short videos, including its “Staff Picks,” short films, animations, music and more, to Rheo’s… Read MoreMobile ad startup AppLovin in talks for $1.5 billion acquisition
Mobile ad startup AppLovin is in talks with a Chinese buyer for an acquisition of around $1.5 billion, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the company. We have not confirmed the identity of the acquirer. The deal is not yet finalized and details may change. Founded in 2012 by CEO Adam Foroughi along with Andrew Karam and John Kyrstynak, San Francisco-headquartered AppLovin operates… Read MoreBreaking a myth: Data shows you don’t actually need a co-founder
We are often told that starting a startup on your own is madness. There are thousands of articles out there that tell you that and why why you need a co-founder. Probably solid advice, but data from CrunchBase shows a different side of the story. More than half of startups with an exit did so with just a single founder. The average is 1.72 founders. Read More
Kids app maker Duck Duck Moose joins Khan Academy
Sequoia-backed kids educational startup Duck Duck Moose is heading to Khan Academy, to add preschool learning to the non-profit’s digital education offerings. The startup’s 21 mobile apps aimed at children ages two and up are now available for free as a part of the move, which is not technically being considered an “acquisition,” due to the way the deal was… Read MoreHow rival challenger bank Starling pranked Mondo on day new name Monzo was unveiled
When I wrote “it’s game on” after Mondo became the last of the four British challenger banks to secure a banking license earlier this month, I didn’t think competitor Starling Bank would take my words quite so literally. Read MoreDropbox is resetting passwords for accounts that haven’t changed them since mid-2012
Dropbox is requiring users who have not changed their passwords since mid-2012 to reset their passwords this afternoon. The action appears to be related to continued fallout over the massive hack on LinkedIn in 2012 where credentials for 117 million accounts were posted online. In recent months, treasure troves of user credentials and passwords — in addition to a large MySpace hack… Read MoreSpaceNet satellite imagery repository launched by DigitalGlobe, CosmiQ Works and NVIDIA on AWS
A consortium of companies, including DigitalGlobe, CosmiQ Works and NVIDIA, today launched SpaceNet, an open-data initiative aimed at improving image analysis tools. The data are being hosted by Amazon Web Services as part of a partnership. With an increase in the number of CubeSats, high-resolution satellites and drones of every shape and size, we have accumulated petabytes of… Read MoreWeVideo revamps its online video editor for HTML5
WeVideo has rebuilt its browser-based video editor using HTML5 instead of Flash. For many of you, the whole debate about HTML5 versus Flash may seem like a weird flashback to 2010. But Flash is taking a while to die completely — Google Chrome, for example, continues to phase out Flash gradually. CEO Krishna Menon said that in the case of WeVideo’s new editor (which launched… Read More- CRUNCH NETWORK
The new collaboration economy
Technology is creating a new generation of companies that increasingly choose to collaborate as a coordinated ecosystem, even if they have overlapping or competitive offerings. This transparent way of doing business is transforming the way services are delivered and products are developed. Read More Grabr, the international shopping and delivery platform, picks up $3.5 million
Grabr, the peer-to-peer marketplace that lets anyone become an international shopper, has today announced the close of a $3.5 million seed round led by Alexey Repik from RBV Capital. Konstantin Nikolaev of N-Trans Group also participated in the round, along with various angel investors. Grabr works like this: Shoppers who are having trouble finding a certain item (or affording to ship a… Read MoreBuzzFeed names Todd Levy as its new CTO
BuzzFeed has a new chief technology officer — Todd Levy, who was already serving as the vice president of engineering. Levy also co-founded and served as CTO at Bitly. He joined BuzzFeed through the acquisition of startup Torando Labs in 2014. As part of the deal, he was tasked with creating a new data engineering team at the company. “It is without hyperbole when I say that… Read MoreApple may be building a Snapchat-like video app
After a failed attempt to go social with Ping in 2010, Apple may have a renewed sense of excitement over the social space, according to a report from Bloomberg. Sources told Bloomberg that Apple is working on a video recording/editing app that would be similar in functionality to Snapchat, though there’s no mention of disappearing or self-destructing content in the report. Instead, the… Read MoreThingThing iOS keyboard app adds meeting invites to woo Sunrise users
Productivity focused third party iOS keyboard app ThingThing is hoping to woo fans of the Sunrise calendar by adding a meeting invite feature — following the latter’s kiss-of-death acquisition by Microsoft last year. Read More
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