Cities, regions and states are throwing everything at Amazon in the hopes the giant company will pick them to house its second headquarters. Amazon says 238 cities submitted proposals and many cities included sizzle videos in their pitch. Here are the videos from Detroit, Boston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Atlanta, and Dallas and Fort Worth. Each are different. Some show building… Read More
Independently-owned hotels sometimes fall through the cracks of the hospitality industry because they struggle to compete with major chains, but don’t belong on Airbnb or HomeAway. Zuzu Hospitality Solutions bridges the gap in Asia by providing essential revenue management and marketing services to small hotels while allowing them preserve their own brands. The Singapore-based startup… Read More
Fintech startup TransferWise has built a solid reputation when it comes to transparency. The startup just announced new fees for transfers initiated from the U.K. And it’s quite hard to understand if transfers are going to be cheaper or not after the change. The company claims that in most cases transfers should be cheaper. But it’s a bit more complicated than that. TransferWise… Read More
CBS seems to be happy with its bet on a new Star Trek series — the network just announced that it’s renewing Star Trek: Discovery for a second season. Discovery premiered on CBS, but subsequent episodes aired on the paid streaming service CBS All Access. The network says this led to a record — though unspecified — number of sign-ups. (Along with The Good Fight, a… Read More
PayPal today is beginning the rollout of a new product designed for customers operating larger online marketplaces, like ride-sharing platforms, crowdfunding portals, peer-to-peer e-commerce sites, room rentals platforms, and others. The solution, called simply PayPal for Marketplaces, is designed to be tailored to the business’s needs, based on how much risk they want to manage with… Read More
One thing is clear, Cisco is not afraid to use its considerable cash on hand to fill in holes in its product portfolio. Today it wrote out a big fat check for $1.9 billion to acquire BroadSoft, a Maryland company that delivers unified communications via service providers. The purchase gives Cisco a new way to sell its communications tools as it shifts its focus from a pure networking… Read More
WeWork, the behemoth co-working company valued at $20 billion, has today announced the acquisition of Flatiron School. Flatiron School is a coding education platform that offers both online and offline classes to folks who want a career in the world of tech. The coding academy was launched in 2012 and has raised more than $14 million since inception, according to Crunchbase. The terms of the… Read More
Nested, the U.K. estate agent that provides a cash advance to help you buy a new house before you’ve sold your old one, has raised £36 million in further funding. The round was led by Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital, and brings the less than two year old startup’s total funding to just shy of £50 million. Read More
There’s now more evidence Google is testing a touchscreen Home device. AndroidPolice points to sections of code of the latest Google app that refers to a device that sports a new on-screen interface. The APK teardown of 7.14.15 beta version revealed a long list of on-screen menus and functions that are utilized by a device with the code-name of Quartz. These abilities include YouTube… Read More
Lyft has hired Katie Dill as its new Vice President of Design, overseeing design in a broad sense across the company, covering user experience, product and more. Dill joins from Airbnb, where she was Director of Experience and helped usher in the peer-to-peer rental business’s new brand identity. Prior to her time at Airbnb, Dill was a Creative Director at renowned firm frog design in… Read More
Nintendo is going to ride the retro cash cow to the bank. The company recently announced an SNES-themed 3DS XL for Europe and apparently its coming to the States, too. The handheld is available for pre-order for $199 and ships two weeks after the European release on November 27. To sweeten the deal, a download code for Super Mario Kart is included with the system. wait what, New Nintendo 3DS… Read More
The trend of using big data analytics to glean more targeted insights for your business continues to be democratized, with an increasing number of startups hitting the market to help those who are not data scientists nor engineers take advantage of these kinds of tools. In the latest development, a startup called ActionIQ — a marketing activation platform that gives marketers better… Read More
Few companies have more data about the financial health of individuals in the U.S. than Intuit, thanks to its TurboTax, Mint and QuickBooks tools. For the longest time, though, the company didn’t bring these tools together. That’s slowly starting to change however, as the company is realizing that in this new age of machine learning, it’s this kind of data that allows it to… Read More
Just one-third of young adults have a credit card, according to a Bankrate survey. It’s partly due to concerns about debt. A startup called Zero thinks it has a solution to this and it is gearing up to launch a credit card that functions like a debit card. The startup is also raising $8.5 million in a funding round led by ENIAC Ventures, including participation from NEA, Lightbank… Read More
Russian cybersecurity software maker Kaspersky Labs has announced what it’s dubbing a “comprehensive transparency initiative” as the company seeks to beat back suspicion that its antivirus software has been hacked or penetrated by the Russian government and used as a route for scooping up US intelligence. Read More
While we are going to have to wait a little longer for Apple to launch payments in iMessage, this weekend, Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s VP of Apple Pay, announced a series of other milestones for the digital wallet and payments service that competes against the likes of Android Pay from Google (which today announced its own expansions), Samsung Pay, and others efforts from retailers and… Read More
Countingup, a new fintech startup from Tim Fouracre, who previously founded cloud accounting software Clear Books, wants to simplify the life of sole traders by reinventing the business bank account. Specifically, Fouracre’s vision is that for one-person enterprises, business banking and accounting software should be merged so that book keeping and filing accounts can be automated. Read More
Google announced today it’s launching a new way to pay on mobile devices, using any card you have on file – including those saved to your Google Account via products like Google Play, YouTube, Chrome, or Android Pay. This “pay with Google” option ties all these saved payment options together in a single interface, which app makers and retailers can then implement using… Read More
SoFi, the online lending giant, held conversations with Charles Schwab about a potential acquisition by the brokerage firm, according to a source with knowledge of the discussions.
The M&A talks were first reported by the Financial Times and were said to take place earlier this year. In addition to Charles Schwab, the FT reported that there were discussions with several other unnamed… Read More
When Zuiily went public in 2013, it sparked a resurgence of interest in an otherwise lagging e-commerce market. Quickly trading up to reach an $8B market cap — valuing the company at over 10 times revenues — Zulily became the poster child of the flash sales boom. Over the ensuing months and years, concepts such as curated commerce, conversational commerce, flash sales,… Read More
