Acquired.io launches today with a funding round of $2M. Founded by the team behind AppScotch (acquired by App Annie), they claim to be taking the grunt work out of user acquisition. It allows publishers to manage user acquisition channels from a single place and also help them discover new ones. The investors include Jonathan Zweig, founder of AdColony (acquired by Opera), and John… Read More
Following rumblings of a shakeup over the weekend, Pandora confirmed today that co-founder Tim Westergren is stepping down from his role as CEO. Naveen Chopra, who stepped in as the company’s CFO back in February, will be filling in the top spot as interim CEO while the board of directors looks for a permanent replacement. Read More
When you hear about companies raising tons of money for “smart glass,” the first thing that hits your mind might be something augmented reality-related like the HoloLens. But View, which just closed a $200 million funding round, is using smart glass to make better windows that adjust to the outdoor environment. Read More
JASK is emerging from stealth today with $12 million in the bank and a machine learning technology that automates network monitoring and management for overtaxed security teams. The thesis behind JASK’s service is the somewhat depressing (and frightening) thought that these days there aren’t enough security experts to meet the demands of running a modern business. Read More
Facebook M, the company’s AI-powered assistant that lives inside Messenger, was launched widely back in April, giving suggestions to users based on the context of their conversations. Today, M is getting a bit smarter and more socially capable. Read More
The global app economy will be worth $6.3 trillion by 2021, up from $1.3 trillion last year, according to a new report this morning from app analytics firm App Annie. During that same time frame, the user base will almost double from 3.4 billion people using apps to 6.3 billion, while the time spent in apps will grow to 3.5 trillion hours in 2021, up from 1.6 trillion in 2016.
These figures… Read More
Whale, the Q&A app backed by Twitch co-founder Justin Kan, has gotten a major update and refreshed design that makes it easier to discover video content on the service. The iOS-only app launched in October 2016, pivoting from a music app after Kan was inspired by Chinese Q&A service Fenda. The goal was to enable users to ask questions or get advice from subject matter experts, such… Read More
If none of what’s in the above headline makes sense, you probably haven’t been following the biohacking trend for the last couple of years. But Silicon Valley is brimming with tech execs trying to become faster, stronger and smarter by “hacking” their genetic code through various experimental methods called biohacks. Read More
When I spoke to Box CEO Aaron Levie last year at the Boxworks customer conference, I had to ask the obligatory machine learning question. Surely Box was of sufficient size with enough data running through its systems to take advantage of machine learning. All he would say was they were thinking about it. Today, the company announced a deepening relationship with Microsoft in which Box will… Read More
ThredUP, the online secondhand clothing store that has raised over $130M in funding is going old school.
The startup has announced they will be opening at least five brick and mortar retail stores by the end of the year, with the first one soft-opening today in San Marcos, Texas.
Why San Marcos, a small town of ~60,000 located somewhere between the cities of San Antonio and Austin? Because… Read More
Freelance marketplace Fiverr has for years worked on connecting buyers and sellers of online services that range from writing to design to programming to digital marketing. Today the company is launching Fiverr Pro, a new offering that highlights a curated group of professional freelancers on its marketplace. Read More
Cloudflare launched a brand new app development platform today called Cloudflare Apps, and announced the $100 million Cloudflare Developer Fund, started by its investors to back some of the better ideas. The platform lets developers build apps that take advantage of the Cloudflare ecosystem, place them in the Cloudflare Apps store and provide an easy way to add new functionality such as a map or… Read More
Ludlow Ventures, a young, early-stage venture firm in Detroit, has closed its second venture fund with $45 million in capital commitments, founder and managing partner Jonathon Triest tells us. Ludlow’s team, which includes partner Brett deMarrais and associate Blake Robbins, was originally targeting $40 million; its investors, or limited partners, include four institutions, along… Read More
Uber is adding a new feature that lets you specify someone else in your phone’s contact book as the rider for the trip. It was always possible to hail a ride and specify another pickup point if you wanted to, but the new feature really streamlines the process, allows both rider and driver to contact one another directly and still makes sure the requester is the one who foots the bill.… Read More
We already knew that the next version of Windows 10, the Fall Creators Update, will feature a large number of new tools for consumers. While it was always clear that business users would also get their fair share of updates, Microsoft remained pretty quiet about what those would look like. That’s changing this week, as the company today announced a number of new security features for… Read More
Self-driving technology startup Drive.ai has raised a $50 million Series B funding round, led by NEA and with participation from GGV and previous investors, including Series A lead Northern Light. The new funding will help the company pursue its evolved business strategy, which now focuses on creating retrofit kits that can be used to add self-driving capabilities to existing commercial and… Read More
For anyone who’s ever wanted to break a lease, but felt trapped by their contract, Flip has the service for you. The company, which allows users to sublet or get out of their lease, has just raised $2.2 million in new financing to grow its business and is looking to expand beyond its suite of offerings to renters in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. Vila said Flip is… Read More
Klarna, the $2 billion+ startup out of Sweden that works with some 70,000 e-commerce sites to enable payments and provide flexible financing to make purchases, is adding one more key investor to help take its next steps into a wider range of services. Today it announced that credit card giant Visa is making an equity investment in the company, and as part of it, the two are forging a… Read More
With the announcement of Apple’s ARKit, I’ve been bombarded with questions about what ARKit means for Augmented Reality (AR) developers, specifically ones building hard mobile AR technologies. We, along with our friends at Modsy, were even called out in a recent TechCrunch piece as being “Sherlocked” by Apple. So let me make it very clear up front what ARKit does to the… Read More
