Cisco announced today that it was acquiring Worklife, a member of the Y Combinator winter 2015 class, for an undisclosed sum. Worklife was founded with the idea of improving online meetings, something that Cisco has been working on for years. It of course owns WebEx and has been trying to enhance that experience in recent years with Cisco Spark. Cisco intends to add the Worklife team to… Read More
Consumers have made a big shift to using mobile phones as their primary, and often sole, telephone, but as they have done so, they’ve also created something of a rift in the business world: many of the companies that count those consumers as customers are still using landlines — 275 million businesses in the U.S. alone — resulting in a feature gulf between how the two… Read More
Things are a little askew when we start referring to 5.2-inch handsets as “mini,” but then, that’s just the crazy, upside down world we live in. And really, for ZTE, it’s just a way of differentiating its new handset from its flagship, which, for the record is only just slightly larger at 5.5-inches, which was announced about a month or so before the Axon 7 Mini. But… Read More
The new ecobee3 lite cuts a full $80 of its namesake (and, for that matter, its chief competitor, the latest Nest), while maintaining the majority of the original’s functionality, minus ecobee’s room sensors, designed to locate hot and cold areas in the home. Otherwise, you’ve still got the same 3.5-inch color touchscreen display and third-party smart home compatibility… Read More
Last week, the White House held its Frontiers Conference in Pittsburgh, with a focus on what the U.S. Government is doing for the future, in areas including space exploration, smart cities and more effective police accountability. President Obama ended the conference with a speech that included some real talk for startup founders and others in Silicon Valley who might think the White House… Read More
Tesla and Panasonic have agreed to begin production of photovoltaic (PV) cells for use in solar power home installations that works with Tesla’s Powerwall and Powerpack solar storage products. The arrangement is non-binding at this stage, however, and will depend on the Tesla acquisition of SolarCity going through to take effect. If the SolarCity/Tesla deal does close, Panasonic will… Read More
TechCrunch Disrupt in London is on December 5-6. Seen the HBO/Sky show “Silicon Valley”? Yes, this is the real-life version. But unlike the show, this can catapult startups into the stratosphere. And we have amazing content and speakers to match the startups you’ll see launched. Today we’re delighted to say Roxanne Varza is also joining. Varza is the Director of Station… Read More
If it were an issue for you, what would you pay to get rid of stress, anxiety, loneliness, sadness, physical and mental pain, or depression? Or conversely, what would you pay to be happy, feel connected, feel understood, change bad habits into better ones, have a healthy brain as you age, or to fulfill your full potential and really thrive? Read More
Germany’s Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) has asked Tesla to stop using the term ‘Autopilot’ to refer to its driver assistance technology because of the risk of misleading consumers about the capabilities of the technology. Read More
It was long-rumoured that Sebastian Diemer, who co-founded credit scoring and loans company Kreditech, was doing another startup in the fintech space and today that new venture de-cloaks. Bezahlt.de, which, along with Diemer, counts numerous other ex-Kreditech employees as part of its founding team, is taking aim at the German ‘factoring’ market. Read More
Paris-based VC firm Daphni is announcing its inaugural fund for seed and Series A investments. The team will manage a $165 million fund (€150 million) and try some new things when it comes to venture capital in Europe. On paper, Daphni looks like many other funds. A bunch of limited partners have given a big pile of money so that a team of tech-savvy people can invest everything in startups.… Read More
Joining the likes of Kibo Ventures, Seaya Ventures, Nauta Capital, and JME Ventures, Spain has a new VC on the block. K Fund is a €50 million fund that will invest in Spanish startups with an international outlook, making lead investments at both the seed and Series A stages, writing checks of between €100,000 to €2 million. I’m also told it will do follow-on rounds with a maximum… Read More
You can’t go to a developer conference today and not hear about software containers: Docker, Kubernetes, Mesos and a bunch of other names with a nautical ring to them. Microsoft, Google, Amazon and everybody else seems to have jumped on this bandwagon in the last year or so, but why is everybody so excited about this stuff? To understand why containers are such a big deal, let’s… Read More
For better or for worse, Chile is often held up as the economic model for Latin America. More so even than other up-and-coming tech centers, the story of startup entrepreneurialism in Chile is a story of concerted government policy. That policy is formulated by the Corporación de Fomento de la Producción de Chile, which is tasked with promoting economic growth in the country. Read More
With nearly 8 million Americans unemployed and looking for work while nearly 6 million jobs remain unfilled, it’s fair to say that technology has not disrupted the labor market in a good way. Read More
This weekend in Baghdad, tech entrepreneurs and local government officials gathered at the Fikra Fair to network, demo their apps and show the world that Iraq has more to offer than oil. According to the Human Rights Watch, challenging realities of daily life for many people in Iraq include sky-high food prices, cash shortages, a lack of communications infrastructure, and restricted access… Read More
The danger is taking the election for granted and then being sucker punched by a vast undercurrent of populist anger against the establishment. Read More
Japanese telecoms firm SoftBank recently acquired British microchip manufacturer ARM Holdings. ARM’s shareholders approved the $32 billion deal at the end of August, and the company was delisted from the London Stock Exchange on September 5. The deal represents the largest acquisition of a European technology company. Ever. Read More
Peter Thiel surprised Silicon Valley enough when he endorsed controversial Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump at the Republican National Convention earlier this year. Valley investors and entrepreneurs — the vast majority of whom do not support Trump — are likely to be even more taken aback by the news that Thiel has chosen this point to donate $1.25 million to his campaign.… Read More
