Tyra Banks on startup investing and her new TV show
Tyra Banks rang the closing bell at the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center in San Francisco this afternoon. The supermodel turned entrepreneur and startup investor was there to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the launch of Tyra Beauty. Tyra Beauty is both “beauty business and badassery,” Banks quipped in a video chat with TechCrunch. It’s a “cosmetics experience, not… Read MoreGoGoGuest helps coffee shops manage their Wi-Fi, customer-by-customer
Be honest: Have you ever spent an entire day working at a coffee shop, despite only buying a single cup of coffee? I’ve definitely been guilty of this, and I’ve also been to coffee shops that try to fight back by removing outlets, turning off their Wi-Fi or outlawing laptops on certain tables. A startup called GoGoGuest is taking a different approach that could help coffee shops… Read MoreTinder Boost lets you pay your way to the front of the line
Tinder is introducing a new premium feature called Tinder Boost. The feature will let users pay to have their profiles displayed first to other users on the app in the same locale for 30 minutes. According to the announcement, it’s all about saving users’ time and making sure that the Tinder experience is maximized during the time that they’re actually using the app. From… Read More“Good guy” loan startup LendUp fined $6.3M for overcharging
LendUp was supposed to be different than the payday loan sharks that rip off the poor when they need emergency cash. But in its early days, LendUp charged customers illegal fees, miscalculated interest rates, falsely advertised loans nationwide that weren’t available there and misled people that borrowing from LendUp would boost their credit score. Now LendUp will have to pay $6.3… Read MoreClassPass sacrifices 10% of customers in pursuit of healthier margins
Classpass, the subscription service for fitness classes, became a household name because of one simple innovation. The business model. Combining the breadth of a marketplace with a subscription pricing structure sparked a handful of similar startup launches (like Vive, which does the same thing with hair blowouts). But more importantly, it was the turning point for the company, putting it… Read More- CRUNCH NETWORK
Avoid the startup graveyard
The startup world moves at breakneck speed — what’s hot one minute is old news the next, and it can feel like the rules of the game change every day. For successful startups, rapid growth often attracts the attention of incubators and accelerators. However, there are other options. Namely, partnering with tech “titans” — bigger tech companies that used to be… Read More Skedaddle wants to take ride-sharing out of cities and across the country
It was only a matter of time before the same forces that brought competition to the taxi industry turned their attention to the bus business. And now, what Uber and Lyft have done for ride-sharing inside cities and towns across America, startups like Skedaddle want to do for ride-sharing across America. Launched by a clutch of east coast entrepreneurs led by Adam Nestler, his brother Craig… Read MoreColor Genomics raises $45 million to provide cheaper genetic tests that detect cancer risk
Othman Laraki and Elad Gil were sitting on Twitter’s roof deck after their previous company Mixer Labs had been acquired. Gil had brought a small hard drive with him — which happened to contain data on his genome being sequenced — and Laraki wanted to take a look at the data. That led to the original hypothesis of Color Genomics: what if you could apply the same principles… Read MoreThe mPod is a 3-D body scanner coming to a gym near you
Looking in the mirror or stepping on a scale can tell us much about our bodies and wellbeing, but not with the greatest precision. Now, a Sydney, Australia-based company called mPort is bringing its mPod body scanners to gyms and malls in the U.S., where they think users will be interested in getting granular data about their bodies. The mPod, which looks like a large photo booth or a… Read More
Hinge closes the door on casual dating to focus on serious relationships
Hinge, the dating app that uses Facebook to connect you with friends of friends, has today announced that it will be sunsetting its original app. In its place, Hinge will be launching an entirely new version of the app, focused on relationships. The new app, built from the ground up, will go live on October 11. Oh, and by the way, the new app will be a paid app for all users. CEO Justin… Read MorePullstring launches bot-authoring tools for fun & profit
Pullstring — née ToyTalk — today launched its eponymous product out of private beta and into the hands of creators of conversational interfaces everywhere. Out of the box, creators can make bots for Facebook Messenger, Slack, Skype, Kik, Telegram and — using the company’s Web API — pretty much every other platform out there. Read MoreRed Points bags $2.2M to help brands fight counterfeiting and piracy
Spanish startup Red Points has closed a €2 million (~$2.2M) funding round to grow usage of its piracy detection and removal SaaS by expanding from Europe into new markets, including North America. It’s also intending to broaden its customer focus. Read More- CRUNCH NETWORK
Fishing in the dead pool
I have used my free time this summer revisiting a childhood passion: fishing. My father loved to fish. He would take me to Central Park’s Ramble and Lake with a hook and lure. I would inevitably catch something very small, put it in a cup and hope it would survive overnight to show my friends. As I grew older, we graduated to fishing boats launching from City Island and Sheepshead Bay. Read More Zenly raises $22.5 million from Benchmark for its location-sharing app
French startup Zenly has raised $22.5 million over the summer from Benchmark and a few other investors. Business Insider first reported the round and TechCrunch got an official confirmation. Here’s what we know. Benchmark is leading the round with Peter Fenton joining the board of the company. Fenton has invested in a few social network companies and also is a board member of Twitter. Read MoreUnsexy Flexport scores $65 million as software eats shipping
Freight forwarding is a multi-trillion industry, but most people don’t even know what those words mean. It’s the business of moving boats trucks, and planes full of stuff across the world that’s recently been neglected by technology. Read MoreAppLovin is selling a majority stake to Orient Hontai Capital for $1.4B
Mobile ad startup AppLovin announced today it has agreed to sell a majority stake of the company to Chinese private equity firm Orient Hontai Capital for $1.4 billion. We first reported that AppLovin was in talks with a Chinese company for a $1.5 billion acquisition back in August. In his blog post announcing the deal, co-founder and CEO Adam Foroughi wrote: While this deal is a tremendous… Read MoreScience, tech and geek culture site Inverse raises $6M
Inverse, a new-ish digital media startup founded by Bleacher Report’s Dave Nemetz, is announcing that it has raised $6 million in Series A funding. The Inverse site launched in August 2015 and covers a mix of science, technology and entertainment news — as I write this, the front page features stories on astrobiology, future cities and The Simpsons. Nemetz told me the goal is to… Read More
Can’t wear Snap sunglasses at night Unless you plan on bumping into stuff, don’t expect to record after-dark concerts and parties on your Snap Inc Spectacles. The company formerly known as Snapchat (they really should have just changed it to the
emoji, Prince-style) confirms to me its new camera glasses are not currently built to be worn at night. Their lenses are like normal sunglasses, so it’d be too shady to… Read More
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