Michael Goguen — a longtime venture capitalist whose career at Sequoia Capital ended earlier this year after he was sued in a salacious breach of contract suit that accused him of sexually mistreating a woman named Amber Baptiste and then refusing to honor a financial arrangement they made afterward — has been hit with yet another strange lawsuit. But this one has a surprise… Read More
Just over a month after making it available to a select number of users through public beta, long-awaited third-party app support for Spotify is officially official. The feature, which was first announced in August, brings the native Spotify experience to the streaming music hardware – a much requested feature in light of the somewhat awkward work around that accessed the music library… Read More
Facebook will compete directly with Slack through a full-fledged new collaboration app platform built atop its pay-per-user enterprise communication product Workplace. Exclusively announced on stage today at TechCrunch Disrupt London, the Facebook Workplace platform will support integration with apps for CRM, file sharing, email, calendars and more. By allowing clients’ IT teams to… Read More
Green energy projects for data centers and other facilities are goals for a lot of tech companies, but one of the largest – Google – now says it’s going to tip the scale at 100% renewable energy powering its entire global operations by 2017. Google notes this will include both its data centers and its corporate offices. How’d it get here? Google kicked off its… Read More
Twitter’s sluggish approach to combating harassment looks even slower today as Instagram pushed its third round of safety features this quarter. The company announced this morning three new features aimed at giving Instagram users more control over their accounts and the way they interact with others on the service. This includes the ability to turn off comments on individual posts,… Read More
Last summer, One Drop raised $8 million in Series A funding for its diabetes management app. At the time, the company said the money would go, in part, to developing hardware designed specifically for its mobile health software. The result is the Chrome, a glucose monitoring system that, well, looks pretty slick, so far as glucose monitoring systems go. It’s a four-piece set that… Read More
Citymapper founder and CEO Azmat Yusuf took the stage today at TechCrunch Disrupt London to talk about the future of cities and Citymapper. Now that the startup works in dozens of cities, it plans to start monetizing in 2017. While Citymapper is a mobile star in Europe and most people living in big cities are using it every day to use public transportation, it has been a long ride. Originally,… Read More
Elysium Health markets a pill formulated with ingredients it says will keep you feeling young and, according to a source close to the matter and documents obtained by TechCrunch, the startup has closed on $20 million in Series B financing at what we’re told is a $157 million pre-money valuation from ARCH Venture Partners. Reached for comment, Elysium suggested that our… Read More
Virtual reality is a revolution with a lot of moving parts. Sure, it’s a renaissance for PC component manufacturers that once again need to push the limits on hardware, but it’s also pushing ISPs to better serve users with better download speeds so that they can enjoy VR content. There’s still a long way to go, but to make up the gap for the meantime and ensure that a few… Read More
Fog Creek Software, responsible for the births of Trello and Stack Overflow, is today launching Gomix, a platform that wants to democratize app building. Gomix gives people working apps they can remix and modify, and then host and deploy for free. At a high level, Gomix is designed to make building things on the web as fun as it used to be, Anil Dash, Fog Creek Software’s newly-hired… Read More
TechCrunch, in partnership with some of the UK’s best known entrepreneurs and VC’s, announced today at TechCrunch Disrupt London a set of key recommendations for government about its approach to the tech startup industry in a ‘post-Brexit’ Britain. The panel of nine key figures have set out the issues that must be addressed during Brexit negotiations, to ensure the… Read More
Meizu’s another in a long list of Chinese phone makers with a strong foothold that has yet to make a dent in the US market. But the company is growing pretty rapidly, selling 20 million phones last year alone, and with such growth comes diversification – which means, naturally, wearables. If nothing else, the company’s first device to market is dirt cheap. The simply named… Read More
Aftermarket heads-up driving accessory maker Navdy is teaming up with Harman, one of the leading suppliers of connected car systems and other components for automobiles. Harman, recently acquired by Samsung, has made a strategic investment in Navdy, and will also co-brand a new “Navdy with Harman” aftermarket HUD device that will be sold both directly to OEM automotive companies,… Read More
French VC firm Partech Ventures announced that they closed their seed fund of $107 million (€100 million) for early stage startups. Partech Entrepreneur II is focusing on seed rounds, and the firm plans to invest in 80 different startups. The firm already announced the creation of the seed fund 18 months ago. At the time, Partech had $65 million (€60 million) under management. So it looks… Read More
Back when Britannia ruled the waves her beautiful lighthouses were wonders to behold. Many a sailor found solace in the pale light cast out over the ocean and now the Schofield Watch Company is celebrating these by releasing a watch that glows like a radioactive trash fire and is made almost entirely of carbon fiber. The Blacklamp Carbon is a mechanical watch with a few interesting facets.… Read More
It’s hard to know if the Apple Watch is a hit or a miss. The company doesn’t disclose sales numbers directly, but Tim Cook wanted to react to IDC’s report on wearables, saying that sales are doing just fine. According to the report, Apple is only the fourth wearable company now behind Fitbit, Xiaomi and Garmin. It represents a stark 71 percent decline in shipments compared… Read More
Tech accelerators have been a hot topic over the past few years, especially within industries that have traditionally eschewed the world of startups and technology. Media companies, sports teams, and even the U.S Government have opened their own accelerators. And now, The NFL Players Association (NFLPA) is joining the action. The group announced that they are launching The One Team Collective,… Read More
BetterCloud, the 5-year old startup that launched originally as a way to manage G Suite (nee, Google Docs), has been in the midst of a transformation — rebuilding its entire product from the ground up with the goal of making it a generalized SaaS management dashboard. Today, it unveiled the new platform. The company completely redesigned the service, according to CEO David Politis,… Read More
David Rutter, founder and CEO of the four-year-old, New York-based blockchain startup R3 took the stage at Disrupt London this morning to discuss the progress of his company and underscore Wall Street’s enthusiasm over digital ledger technologies more broadly.
While on stage, he also confirmed earlier reports that R3 is in the process of raising a $150 million round, saying that it… Read More
Berlin-based startup N26 got its own banking license a few months ago. As N26 is building a mobile-first bank without any physical branch, the startup can expand to new countries much more easily. N26 co-founder and CEO Valentin Stalf is announcing on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt that the startup is now active in 17 countries across Europe. As a European banking license works across the… Read More
