A Vice President Pence would be bad for building US culture of innovation
With a Tweet from The Donald himself, it’s official that Governor Mike Pence of Indiana will be Donald Trump’s running-mate come November. Gov. Pence has been loudly parading his innovation and entrepreneurship plans for the state of Indiana this week in the run-up to his likely selection as the presumptive Republican Vice Presidential nominee. Thinking of Gov. Mike Pence as… Read MorePat launches private beta to help AI understand what you say
How many times have you wanted to throw your phone out the window of your car because Siri couldn’t understand the most basic phrases? Call Cheryl, no Vyshakh. Siri calls Cheryl anyway. Then a 20-minute argument develops with a series of “Hey Siri” commands followed by a string of unwanted Google searches and maybe even an iTunes song. I personally gave Siri a British accent… Read MoreGreen City Solutions wins TechCrunch Berlin Pitch-Off
The summer in Northern Europe may have been a bit hit and miss so far this year but no one had cause to complain of being chilly inside a packed Glashaus yesterday evening at TechCrunch’s 2016 Berlin Meet Up + Pitch-Off… Read MoreMushroom leather, tiny Zika detectors and lab-made breast milk debut at IndieBio’s third demo day
The accelerator’s demo day has grown so big we’re now live streaming it on TechCrunch. But it was just a couple years ago that the only pure biotech accelerator launched out of SOS Ventures. Many accelerators and venture firms have started to take a keen interest in the space since then, but Indiebio is still the one many look to in the industry for weird and interesting ideas like… Read MoreHow far does the Pokémon brand have to carry Pokémon Go?
How far can the Pokémon brand carry Pokémon Go? Will its popularity fade after that initial burst of activity thanks to the power of its brand? That’s a huge question that’s circulating now that the game has immediately popped to the top of the App Store and has cemented itself as one of the most successful game launches of all time. The mechanics of the game are fundamentally… Read MoreMentat will apply for jobs on your behalf and guarantee you get an interview
Did you know nowadays there are more people who dislike their jobs than like them? While there was once a time where the vast majority of Americans were happy with their current job, now anywhere from 50 to 70 percent of employees are dissatisfied with their current position. Combine that statistic with the fact that more than 90 percent of millennials expect to switch jobs every three years… Read MoreAva promises to clone high-end wines without using any grapes
You’ve heard of turning water into wine, but Alec Lee and his founding team of bioengineers have taken to their San Francisco laboratory to turn molecules into wine. “We create the wine without any grapes, yeast or any kind of fermentation,” Lee, the founder of Ava Winery, told TechCrunch. Ava does this by analyzing molecular profiles of select wines and reconstructing them… Read MoreAtlassian acquires StatusPage
Atlassian today announced that it has acquired StatusPage, a Y Combinator-incubated service that allows online businesses to keep their users updated about the status of their online services. The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. This marks Atlassian’s first acquisition since going public last December. Adding a service like StatusPage, which launched three… Read More
Pinterest acquires the team behind Highlight and Shorts
Pinterest today said it was acquiring the team behind Math Camp, the creators of Highlight, and will be sunsetting its applications Roll and Shorts in the next few weeks. The acquisition shouldn’t seem like a twist — Highlight captured a ton of buzz at SXSW a few years ago, but the reality is Highlight and Math Camp’s later applications never really blew up in such a way… Read MoreThis AI-powered VC is smarter than your local startup cash dispensary
You don’t have to sit through a lot of pitches before your will-to-live-o-meter points to “kill me now.” Imagine you’re a VC, sitting through your fifteenth pitch that day — are you still going to be enthusiastic? Probably not. So what happens if you could instead feed your pitch deck into a chatbot that gives you feedback, suggestions and eventually invests… Read MoreGetaround for camera gear ShareGrid raises $1M
Even if you’re an active photo or video creative, chances are that your gear will be gathering dust on a shelf at least part of the time. At the same time, other photographers and filmmakers are in need of equipment. If that sounds like a business opportunity, ShareGrid is way ahead of you, raising $1 million from Archer Gray and MHS Capital to grow beyond its test markets and open… Read MoreTrace Genomics launches a 23andMe for farms, raises $4 million to improve the world’s food supply
A San Francisco startup called Trace Genomics wants to help farmers diagnose and improve the health of the soil where they want to raise crops before it’s harvest time and too late to change course. So the startup has developed a soil testing kit and “pathogen panel,” that tells the growers of high-value crops, like berries or lettuce, whether or not their soil has… Read MoreSpareMin helps you fill your extra time with spontaneous phone calls
Even though TechCrunch readers can get really busy with their jobs, their side hustles and everything else in their lives, you’ll probably still have a few moments of downtime today — maybe when you’re driving home from work. A new startup called SpareMin aims to help you fill that time with phone calls. The app, which is available for both iOS and Android, was created by… Read MoreLondon’s Behavox offers surveillance software to help financial institutions remain compliant
Behavox is a London-based startup that has built “compliance surveillance software” to enable financial institutions to search and interrogate huge amounts of employee-generated data in real-time, such as emails, text messages and voice calls, to identify potential rogue activity. Read MorePokémon Go expands to Europe starting with Germany
Pokémon Go isn’t a global phenomenon just yet as the game has only been available in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. But the game is preparing for its European launch. Pokémon Go is now available in Germany on the iPhone and Android — other European countries should follow soon. Read MoreAR helmet maker Skully investors boot founders, replacing them with Martin Fitcher as CEO
Anonymous sources have confirmed to TechCrunch that Skully co-founders Marcus and Mitch Weller have been kicked out of the company by investors. Marcus served as CEO of Skully while his brother Mitch served as chief of staff and provided business operations, product management, and material logistics support to the company. Skully jumped into the tech scene two years ago after a highly… Read MoreFiveAI picks up $2.7M to build AI-driven software for autonomous vehicles
FiveAI is a rather ambitious U.K. startup that’s building AI-driven software to help accelerate the development of autonomous vehicles. The young company wants to apply the latest developments in computer vision and AI/machine learning to enable self-driving cars to do more of the heavy-lifting in regards to understanding and navigating their immediate environment. Read MoreUber for 911 transport is a horrible idea
The Washington D.C. Fire and EMS Department is considering a plan to use Uber to transport low priority 911 callers, according to NBC Washington. It’s a horrible idea. Washington’s plan is to hire a team of nurses who could evaluate a caller’s condition over the phone and direct them to an Uber if they are deemed stable. Already this is odd given that the purpose of an… Read MoreAn interview with the anonymous founder of PostGhost
PostGhost was a service that stored and displayed the deleted Tweets of celebrities and politicians. Created as a way to keep public discourse honest, Twitter shut it down with a cease and desist warning citing a failure to comply with API rules. The resulting brouhaha led me to track down the anonymous founder and ask him or her a few questions about what happened. TC: Who are you? How… Read More
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