That’s Instagram’s VP of Product Kevin Weil’s perspective about cloning Snapchat. He’s the man in charge of bringing Snap CEO Evan Spiegel’s vision to a much larger audience, reforging his features for the mainstream, and then taking Instagram a step further. But rather than showing guilt, remorse, or reluctance about copying what’s worked for Snap, he sees… Read More
Pinterest offers advertisers a unique opportunity for its audience of 175 million users: the ability to catch them at all points of their purchasing lifetime. Brands can advertise against moments of discovery and people searching for and saving products, eventually pushing them down to the point of actually buying a product. But since it fired up its ads business, it’s had to give… Read More
Like Tesla’s Powerwall, Watts is a big battery that can power your home. One Watts cell can support a few small appliances including computers and refrigerators and a few units can power TVs and electric washers. The units can charge via the grid or with solar panels and the Watts units include an app that shows discharge and battery remaining. The batteries, which were designed in… Read More
Biz Stone, one of the co-founders of Twitter, just announced that he’s returning to the company he helped start. Stone left Twitter to pursue new projects in 2011. Read More
There’s the $90 Fire TV, the $40 Fire TV Stick and now, for the dongle-averse, Amazon is giving the world its first set with the company’s streaming media offering built-in. It’s up now for pre-order, debuting on the internet’s most powerful billboard, Amazon’s own homepage. The simply named Amazon Fire TV Edition starts at $449 for the 43-inch model. Read More
The government of Thailand has backed down on a threat to ban Facebook if it did not block content deemed to be illegal in the country. The ruling military junta last week said it would ban the U.S. social network if it did not disable Thailand-based users from being able to access a selection of 131 “illicit” posts, including content that violates lese majeste laws that… Read More
Amazon has quietly launched a new program that will directly pay developers building high-quality Alexa skills — the voice-activated apps for Alexa-powered devices like the Amazon Echo speaker and related products. This is the first time Amazon has offered a means for Alexa developers to monetize their skills on its app store. Read More
Lucid Motors and Local Motors. Two companies, both looking to shake up how the world thinks about vehicles and mobility — but each one is trying to take an entirely different route to get there. Read More
Handy CEO Oisin Hanrahan, and Managed by Q CEO Dan Teran joined TechCrunch Disrupt in New York on Tuesday to discuss the evolution and shortcomings of the so-called “gig economy.”
Both startups help customers book quality cleaning and maintenance services, on-demand or at a convenient time. And both expect to be profitable within the next year. But the companies have taken… Read More
This morning the TechCrunch staff woke up at our Disrupt NY hotel to find out that the Starbucks in the lobby couldn’t accept any payments — meaning they couldn’t give us coffee. A quick Twitter check showed that we weren’t the only ones — people around the country were complaining that their local Starbucks’ payment system was down this morning. Read More
Caribou Bioscience co-founder and CEO Rachel Haurwitz joined us onstage at Disrupt this morning to help unpack some of the myriad complexities around her company’s pioneering work in the field of CRISPR biology. The gene editing tool has been the source of tremendous excitement over the last several years for its potential to help science hack everything from disease to food supply.… Read More
Renly thinks they have what it takes to be the platform for booking temporary beauty and fitness locations. Founder Chris Sheng calls it the “Airbnb for commercial business space.” He found that many studio and gym owners have unused spaces that they want to rent for short periods of time. Sheng also wants to make it easy for transient hair stylists and personal trainers to find a… Read More
A company providing very unique service has become a new client for SpaceX – Elysium, which creates memorial spacecraft commissioned to commemorate individuals, announced that It will launch its first ever extraterrestrial tribute aboard an upcoming SpaceX shared Falcon 9 launch. Dubbed SSO-A, the SpaceX mission is a “Dedicated Rideshare” launch, which includes payloads… Read More
LendUp has spent the last several years helping people who couldn’t get a loan build their credit and improve their financial well-being. Now the company is looking to empower those with little or no credit by giving them access to a credit card with low fees, financial education built in, and incentives to spend less and pay off their balance. Read More
Google Cloud launched a new Internet of Things management service today called Google Cloud IoT Core that provides a way for companies to manage IoT devices and process data being generated by those devices. A transportation or logistics firm, for example, could use this service to collect data from its vehicles and combine it with other information like weather, traffic and demand to place… Read More
Software might be eating the world, but the real estate industry remains one market segment that is still operating in an antiquated world full of phone calls, faxes and manual paperwork processing. Startup Battlefield company Houzeo wants to change that, by digitizing — and simplifying — the process of selling a home. Read More
Nexla, a competitor in the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield this week in New York City, has more on its plate than simply impressing the judges. It also chose to launch at the event and, while it was at it, announced $3.5 million in funding led by Blumberg Capital with participation from Storm Ventures, Engineering Capital and Correlation Ventures. Read More
Amazon is going to be adding notifications to its Alexa service, so that skills can provide you with information as it becomes available, unprompted, as opposed to only in response to active voice queries made by a user. The ability to add notifications to skills and devices will be made available through. both Amazon’s software and hardware development kits, but initially it’s… Read More
Can an app look you in the eye and know if you have a brain injury? That’s something being worked on by Startup Battlefield company Brightlamp, a computer vision and machine learning startup out of Purdue University. Read More
OK, I’ll say it: Buying clothes online still sucks. Unless you’re buying something from a brand you already own and know the sizing of, it’s nearly impossible to get the fit right on the first try.
This is why people often buy two sizes and return one, or just skip clothing e-commerce all together and head into the store to try it on in person. The result is either high… Read More
