Given the massive chunk of our lives spent at work, shouldn’t we enjoy the tools we need to use for our jobs? Shouldn’t they feel more human and delightful, like Amazon’s Alexa or some of the other consumer-facing applications we rely on daily? And how much more effective and productive could you be if you had something like TARS or Jarvis helping you with your job? I think… Read More
Earlier this week, we sat down with Naval Ravikant, cofounder of five-year-old AngelList, a popular platform that matches startups with early-stage investors. Three million people, including 50,000 accredited investors, have created profiles on AngelList since its founding, and AngelList now uses that information to pair startups with capital, pair startup employees with employers and, more… Read More
Guys like Walter Duncan know what they’re talking about when it comes to edtech. Before becoming co-founder of Quick Key, Duncan spent years teaching in schools public and private and knows what teachers deal with on a daily basis. His product, which reduces the amount of time it takes for teachers to grade tests, is ingenious and is taking off. I spoke to him this week on Technotopia… Read More
Bluetooth beacons are proven technology. So why isn’t anyone using them effectively? Sure, companies are using them to track users and boost sales — but are we seeing a return on that investment? Read More
Artificial intelligence pops up as a buzzword every few years, but it has never moved beyond novelty status. This time, though, it is here to stay, and startups are poised to drive the AI economy forward. Read More
Every important technology goes through a hype cycle. You’ve probably seen the Gartner Hype Cycle diagram: inflated expectations, followed by despair and eventually a pragmatic understanding of the technology’s value. World-changing promises tend to turn into mundane reality — if they don’t fall off the roller coaster entirely. Read More
There are two kinds of crowdfunded watches – fashion accessories and real efforts at classical design and workmanship. Thankfully the Reverie Classic holds the latter place. The Classic is made by Samuel Tay who previously crowdfunded and built the Sea Spirit a handsome, nautical-themed automatic that did quite well.
The Classic costs $350 and runs a Miyota 8218 movement – bog… Read More
Fundraising for a startup is a notoriously stressful process. Much ink has been spilled dissecting every aspect of what works when pitching a venture capitalist, and there are countless “tips” out there that promise to help close deals. But for all the attention paid to VCs, little has been paid to limited partners — the money behind the money that makes the venture world… Read More
The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Keith Teare, Frank Radice, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, August 26, 2016. Oh no, Volumetrics meets the Beatles in a trip forward down memory lane. Eventually we discover the chewy center. Plus, G3 with Mary Hodder, Elisa Camahort Page, Francine Hardaway, and Tina Chase Gillmor.
@stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @kteare, @kevinmarks… Read More
Retailers grasp the web-focused future of the industry, but the sale of Jet.com to Walmart earlier this month has sped up the shift and validated the online marketplace approach to e-commerce. Read More
August, the weekend of months. This week a zero-day hack rocked Apple, WhatsApp announced a major privacy change and Tesla announced a new model that takes Ludicrous Mode to the next level. Would you rather get the Weekly Roundup in your inbox? Same, TBH. 1. Hackers are honing in on mobile devices. The latest example was an Apple zero-day hack targeting activist Ahmed Mansoor that… Read More
Without leverage, the private equity sector as we know it wouldn’t exist. While some tech execs and VCs recoil at the thought of using leverage, the truth is that the Innovation Economy has accessed debt for more than 35 years. Given that, debt is worth spending the time to understand. Read More
I won’t insult your intelligence by pretending to be unbiased. I think exactly what you’d expect a Canadian who lives in San Francisco to think: how could anyone with a reasonable command of the available evidence even consider voting for Donald Trump? …But my search for an answer has led me to the uncomfortable sense that the tech industry is partly responsible for… Read More
Opera, which recently agreed to sell its browser business in a Chinese consortium, has reset user passwords for one of its services after it servers were breached by hackers. Read More
Justin Kan swings by the TC studio to talk YC, Snapchat and a new app he is working on, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is working on a proposal to retain foreigners who build startups, a new type of shape-shifting material is created out of MIT, three tech stories about cars, and Rackspace is going private. All this on Crunch report. Read More
Accusations that Spotify has been punishing artists for signing exclusives with other streaming services hit the internet in full force this morning, originating from a Bloomberg article.
When confronted by TechCrunch, a Spotify spokesperson gave the same response they have been giving since the story broke — that the accusations about burying search results are “unequivocally… Read More
Pokémon Go has been downloaded more than 100 million times since its July debut, making it the biggest-growing mobile game ever. Naturally, the phenomenon has drawn much commentary about what this means for marketing, but I am more interested in what it teaches us about making money. Read More
TechCrunch recently went down south to Los Angeles for our mini-meetup and to catch up with the region’s burgeoning tech scene.
One of the startups that caught our attention is HopSkipDrive, which aims to be an Uber for picking up your kids. Uber passengers need to be at least 18-years of age to ride alone, so HopSkipDrive hopes to solve a transportation problem for busy… Read More
Microsoft today pushed out in a blog post for users of its consumer services new resources to reduce hate speech. Users will now be able to communicate directly with the company to report hate speech, and petition for reinstating content via new online forms.
Most people are familiar with efforts by social networks like Twitter and Facebook to ensure safety within their respective online… Read More
IT is shifting from the SaaS workflow applications that characterized the cloud computing era to those that help customers make decisions: the intelligence era. The source of competitive advantage is shifting from code to unique data + self-learning code. This brings a change in the expectations of investors. Here we review the requirements of enterprise software investors in the intelligence era. Read More
