Wayra, the Telefónica backed accelerator network, is launching a new startup program in the UK that aims to tackle the so-called ‘poverty premium’ — whereby people on low incomes pay more for some goods and services. Read More
Okay, European startup fans. You’ve procrastinated long enough. Tomorrow, we’ll be releasing a batch of 50 pairs of tickets to Disrupt Berlin 2017, but in order to take advantage of this limited-time 2-4-1 opportunity, you’ll need to sign up today. Read More
Alibaba is doubling down on Southeast Asia after it announced a deal to pay close to $1 billion to raise its stake in e-commerce firm Lazada from 51 percent to 83 percent.
The Chinese firm made an initial $1 billion investment in April 2016 at a valuation of $1.5 billion — this second deal raises that valuation to $3.15 billion, Lazada disclosed. The deal sees Alibaba buy shares from… Read More
Samsung is reportedly gearing to revive the Galaxy Note 7, its disastrous 2016 smartphone that was recalled after battery problems caused units to catch fire, with the limited release of a new model. The company hinted a few months ago that it planned to make such a move, but now we have more details. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Note 7 FE (that stands for ‘Fandom… Read More
Berlin-based GoEuro, the well-funded European travel planner platform, is looking to the Far East for business growth, announcing today that it’s inked a distribution partnership with Chinese travel booking platform, Qunar. Its hope: to capture some of the spending power of Chinese tourists wanting to take less well traveled routes around Europe. Read More
Alphabet/Google’s self-driving car division Waymo disclosed earlier this month that it is working on (semi-)autonomous trucks, and now we have our first look at the vehicles in question. Jalopnik published a number of photos of a Waymo branded truck kitted out with a radar, lidar and ultrasonic radars. Waymo is, of course, not alone in exploring autonomous trucking. The company took Uber… Read More
Almost every year my buddy Jack Deneut has helped set up PragueCrunch, our kind-of-semi-annual celebration of Czech startups. And it’s happening again this year! The event is on July 13, 2017 at Riegrovy Sady Beer Garden. You can RSVP here. We’ll have Kozel and Gambrinus beer all night and traditional Czech pub food for purchase at the venue. Startups will have 90 seconds to… Read More
Binary Capital, the San Francisco-based early stage fund whose cofounder, Justin Caldbeck, resigned this past Sunday, is shutting down for all practical purposes. A source tells Bloomberg that the young firm, which had closed its second fund last year with $175 million in commitments but barely begun to invest that capital, will be wound down. Binary’s portfolio companies, including from… Read More
This week Apple is beginning to roll out the first new personalized playlist under Apple Music’s ‘For You’ section. The playlist, entitled ‘Chill’ is muxed based on editorial curation and algorithmic interpretation of your musical tastes. A small number of test users got the new playlist yesterday evening. An updated Chill playlist will be delivered every Sunday… Read More
Today’s Stories
A massive new ransomware attack is spreading around the globe
Target’s next-day essentials delivery service opens to customers in pilot test
Cloudflare launches app development platform, announces $100M investment fund
Uber now lets you request a ride for someone else
Credits
Written and Hosted by: John Mannes
Filmed by: Joe Zolnoski
Edited by: Gregory… Read More
An anonymous source tipped off Crunchbase News that Eaze, the Series B-stage cannabis delivery startup with over $24 million in venture funding, has experienced a security incident.
Some of its user data may have been stolen by a former employee of Don Davidson, MD, a medical service provider that provides patient consultations and medical cannabis recommendations (the equivalent of a… Read More
If you need to transfer a couple hundred megs to a coworker or friend across the country, you aren’t short on options. In fact, options are thick on the ground, and all have their own issues. Don’t you wish you could just speak a few magic words and send stuff directly to them, no intermediate upload, no web interface, no login? Magic Wormhole is a clever way to do just that. Read More
An augmented reality headset startup founded by former Valve employees and funded by Android co-creator Andy Rubin’s Playground Global is shutting down after it failed to receive further investment. CastAR was building a headset device that projected holographic images into the field-of-view of a user, similar to products being built by companies like Microsoft and Magic Leap. Read More
Everyone’s excited about the SNES Classic Edition, what with its twee 90s look and fantastic selection of games. But as with its NES predecessor, the Japanese version of the device is significantly different, outside and in — here are the differences between the two. Read More
People often use the term “time machine model” in Japan. It refers to the lag with Silicon Valley when it comes to startups and innovation. When a time machine model gains momentum locally, usually it means war. The most notable recent example of this is the war of the news apps. Now there is a similar war brewing in Japan; this time it is for mobile P2P payments. Read More
After years of sticking with essentially the same design, nobody was going to accuse Google News of looking modern. While the rest of the company’s portfolio received major facelifts in recent years, Google News started looking a bit neglected (and cluttered). That’s all changing today. Read More
It was a lovely day for a meetup in Seattle, and the Showbox SoDo was packed as TechCrunch’s annual pitch-off in my home town took place last week. But as impressive as our 10 contestants were, only three would leave with tickets to Disrupt SF. And here they are. Read More
On KQED’s Forum show today host Queena Sook Kim discussed venture capital’s sexist culture. But during the call, someone claiming to be a VC emailed the show to say he would not hire a woman “out of fear that we will get sued.” Not hiring women capable of filling a role at your workplace simply because they are female is illegal. Read More
It turns out that you can make a lot of money by giving stuff away for free. That’s the lesson from Credit Karma, which today is announcing that it’s running its business profitably after earning $500 million in revenues last year. Read More
Ford’s GoBike dock-based bike-share program kicks off tomorrow, June 28 in the Bay Area. The program is being run in collaboration with Motivate, a platform operator and service provider for bike-sharing networks, and will offer up 3,500 bikes by summer’s end throughout San Francisco, the East Bay and San Jose. By the end of 2017, the plan is to have the network cover 546 stations… Read More
