TechCrunch Startup News
2,977 episodes - English - Latest episode: 2 days ago - ★★★★ - 16 ratingsListen to select TechCrunch articles on startups coverage—who's raising, who's exiting, who's changing the world.
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Boosted Boards founders launch heavy-duty scooter renter Skip
May 18, 2018 08:00 - 12 minutesAll electric scooters are not created equal. I’ve found ones from Spin, Bird, and Lime to often be broken, shaky, or out of battery. But now the founders of Boosted Boards, which makes the steadiest and safest-feeling electric skateboards, are bringing their rugged hardware expertise to the scooter world. Today, they’re coming out of stealth with a supposedly stronger and longer-lasting dockless electric scooter rental startup called Skip. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoic...
The SEC creates an educational “token” to stop scammers
May 17, 2018 16:32 - 4 minutes“Travel is expensive, but we are at the cusp of a revolution that will democratize travel and leisure for everyone,” reads the breathless white paper for HoweyCoins. “The Internet was the first part of the revolution. The other part is blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies.” “I’m all about HoweyCoins – this thing is going to pop at the top!” writes @boxingchamp1934, an official celebrity backer of the token. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Coinbase’s first investment, Compound, earns you interest on crypto
May 17, 2018 08:00 - 8 minutesCompound wants to let you borrow cryptocurrency, or lend it and earn an interest rate.Most cryptocurrency is shoved in a wallet or metaphorically hidden under a mattress, failing to generate interest the way traditionally banked assets do. But Compound wants to create liquid money markets for cryptocurrency by algorithmically setting interest rates, and letting you gamble by borrowing and then short-selling coins you think will sink. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/...
BrainQ raises $5.3M to treat neurological disorders with the help of AI
May 16, 2018 16:31 - 3 minutesBrainQ, an Israel-based startup that aims to help stroke victims and those with spinal cord injuries treat their injuries with the help of a personalized electromagnetic treatment protocol, today announced that it has raised a $5.3 million funding round on top of the $3.5 million the company previously raised. The company’s investors include Qure Ventures, crowdfunding platform OurCrowd. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Lerer Hippeau raises a new $122M fund, plus $60M for follow-on investments
May 16, 2018 08:00 - 4 minutesLerer Hippeau has raised two new funds — $122 million for a sixth fund devoted to seed stage investments, as well as $60 million for a “Select Fund” focused on later-stage deals. Managing Partner Eric Hippeau said both funds will be used to continue the firm’s existing strategy: “We continue to be seed-first investors and New York-first investors. We’re big believers in New York. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Xage introduces fingerprinting to protect industrial IoT devices
May 15, 2018 08:00 - 5 minutesAs old-school industries like oil and gas increasingly network entities like oil platforms, they become more vulnerable to hacking attacks that were impossible when they were stand-alone. That requires a new approach to security and Xage (prounounced Zage), a security startup that launched last year thinks it has the answer with a concept called ‘fingerprinting’ combined with the blockchain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Monzo, the U.K. challenger bank, now lets you pay ‘Nearby Friends’
May 11, 2018 08:00 - 3 minutesMonzo, one of a plethora of U.K. fintech startups aiming to re-invent current account banking, has launched a new feature that makes it even more frictionless to transfer money to friends. Dubbed ‘Nearby Friends’, the new geolocation functionality uses Bluetooth to let you see anyone else that uses Monzo who is nearby so that you can initiate a payment without needing their phone number to be in your contact book first. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Fantasmo is a decentralized map for robots and augmented reality
May 10, 2018 16:32 - 5 minutes“Whether forAR or robots, anytime you have software interacting with the world, itneeds a 3D model of the globe.We think that map will look a lot more like the decentralized internet than a version of Apple Maps or Google Maps.” That’s the idea behind new startup Fantasmo, according to co-founder JamesonDetweiler. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
On Fridays, HQ Trivia will let you see your friends’ answers during the game
May 10, 2018 08:00 - 4 minutesHQ, the live trivia game that is now seeing up to 2 million players per game, is introducing some new social features, including answer sharing with friends. The company has been testing this feature across a small group of users already, but on Friday the feature will roll out to all HQ users. Here’s how it works: Users can connect their address book to HQ and add their friends. Once they have added friends, they can see which of their friends are playing the game alongside them. Learn more...
Brazil’s tech startups begin to expand globally
May 09, 2018 16:31 - 8 minutesStartups in Brazil, Latin America’s largest entrepreneurial ecosystem, are no longer solely focused on Brazil as their only frontier to conquer. Based on conversations with founders and in tracking the news, dozens of startups born in Brazil have realized they can compete on a global scale and expand their companies quickly by exporting their business models to other regional markets around the world, including Canada, Colombia, Europe, Japan, Mexico, the U.K. and the U.S. Learn more about yo...
Gamalon scores $20 M led by Intel Capital
May 09, 2018 08:00 - 4 minutesGamalon wants to change the game when it comes to understanding text-based customer communications. Instead of using neural networks to learn about vast corpuses of information, the startup takes a different approach, putting the text in a database and building decision trees to very rapidly train the data to arrive at the required information. Today, it announced a $20 million Series A investment led by Intel Capital. Other participants in the round included . Learn more about your ad choice...
The formula behind San Francisco’s startup success
May 07, 2018 16:31 - 9 minutesWhy has San Francisco’s startup scene generated so many hugely valuable companies over the past decade? That’s the question we asked over the past few weeks while analyzing San Francisco startup funding, exit, and unicorn creation data. After all, it’s not as if founders of Uber, Airbnb, Lyft, Dropbox and Twitter had to get office space within a couple of miles of each other. We hadn’t thought our data-centric approach would yield a clear recipe for success. Learn more about your ad choices...
ICO services: Lots of barnacles but no whales
May 03, 2018 16:31 - 5 minutesNearly every aspect of the current ICO market is pay-for-play or otherwise tainted. I do not paint the industry with such a broad brush lightly but this sort of chicanery hasn’t existed since the heyday of print media when journalists – myself included – took long, convoluted trips to distant headquarters where they enjoyed, as I wrote back in 2007, “suckling on the sweet teat of junket whoredom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sling TV expands cloud DVR service to a bunch of new devices
May 03, 2018 08:00 - 2 minutesSling TV expands cloud DVR service to a bunch of new devices Dish’s Sling TV service is expanding its Cloud DVR to a wide variety of new devices. Chrome browser, Chromecast, Xbox One, LG Smart TVs, and more recent models of Samsung Smart TVs (2016 and 2017 models) will all now support Sling TV’s Cloud DVR service. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
SoFi founder Mike Cagney is back with a new startup and $50 million in funding, too
May 02, 2018 16:31 - 4 minutesSoFi founder Mike Cagney is back with a new startup and $50 million in funding, too Mike Cagney, who was ousted last summer from the lending company he founded, is back with a new startup and a whole lot of funding from at least one of his previous investors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Hustle rallies $30M for grassroots texting tool Republicans can’t use
May 02, 2018 08:01 - 8 minutesHustle 20X’d its annual revenue run rate in 15 months by denying clients that contradict its political views. It’s a curious, controversial, yet successful strategy for the startup whose app lets activists and marketers text thousands of potential supporters or customers one at a time. Compared to generic email blasts and robocalls, Hustle gets much higher conversion rates because people like connecting with a real human who can answer their follow-up questions. Learn more about your ad choi...
There’s something called Bacoin now
May 01, 2018 08:01 - 3 minutesTo paraphrase a saying popularized by countless dorm room stoners: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you use the hype around decentralized crypto economies to sell bacon.” The latest example of this age-old adage comes to us from Oscar Meyer and involves their exciting new cryp-faux-currency, Bacoin. The currency can be redeemed for bacon and you “mine” it by sharing the good news of bacoin with your friends. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podc...
From dorm room to Starbucks, Rip Van Wafels is bringing Euro-inspired snack to the masses
April 30, 2018 16:31 - 6 minutesRip Pruisken waffled in college (we got that pun safely out of the way for now). He was a student in the Ivy League at Brown University, and had focused on academics for much of his life. His parents were physicists, and “I thought I would study some sort of cookie-cutter path of studying something that I would use post-college,” he explained. “I didn’t really consider entrepreneurship to be a viable option because I was still in that frame of mind. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit po...
Aloe Bud is the adorable self-care app you’ve been waiting for
April 30, 2018 08:00 - 6 minutesThe buzz or chime of a push notification on your phone is, at best, a distraction, and at worst, a source of stress and anxiety. A new app called Aloe Bud wants to make those push notifications into something more welcome: gentle reminders to take care of yourself and your own needs. With its configurable reminders, Aloe Bud will encourage you to take a break, drink water, move your body, rest, breathe, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The alternative to the four-hour workweek mindset
April 27, 2018 08:00 - 7 minutesOften when I attend a conference or a networking event I am surprised by how many people operate at the periphery of the tech industry. Social media gurus, SEO “ninjas,” bloggers, etc. It’s a coterie of tech “club promoters.” The hype men of the industry. “Hack your way to success.” “Meet the right people.” “Become a business superstar.” They’ve found their silver bullet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Drew Houston to upload his thoughts at TC Disrupt SF in September
April 26, 2018 08:00 - 3 minutesDrew Houston to upload his thoughts at TC Disrupt SF in September Dropbox is a critically important tool for more than 500 million people. The company launched back in 2007 and founder and CEO Drew Houston has spent the last decade growing Dropbox to the behemoth it is today. During that time, Houston has made some tough decisions. A few years ago, Houston decided to move the Dropbox infrastructure off of AWS. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Bose acquires Andrew Mason’s walking tour startup, Detour
April 25, 2018 16:31 - 4 minutesGroupon founder Andrew Mason’s audio tour startup Detour has been sold to Bose. The acquisition, which involves only the software and tour content – not the team – was quietly announced on Detour’s blog a few days ago, followed by an email to customers. Bose, initially, seems like an unlikely acquirer for an app designed to help people discover a city through narrated walking tours. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Etleap scores $1.5 million seed to transform how we ingest data
April 25, 2018 08:00 - 4 minutesEtleap is a play on words for a common set of data practices: extract, transform and load. The startup is trying to place these activities in a modern context, automating what they can and in general speeding up what has been a tedious and highly technical practice. Today, they announced a $1.5 million seed round. Investors include First Round Capital, SV Angel, Liquid2, BoxGroup and other unnamed investors. The startup launched five years ago as a Y Combinator company. It spent a good 2. Lea...
In the NYC enterprise startup scene, security is job one
April 24, 2018 16:31 - 7 minutesWhile most people probably would not think of New York as a hotbed for enterprise startups of any kind, it is actually quite active. When you stop to consider that the world’s biggest banks and financial services companies are located there, it would certainly make sense for security startups to concentrate on such a huge potential market — and it turns out, that’s the case. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
BigID lands in the right place at the right time with GDPR
April 24, 2018 08:00 - 4 minutesEvery startup needs a little skill and a little luck. BigID, a NYC-based data governance solution has been blessed with both. The company, which helps customers identify sensitive data in big data stores, launched at just about the same time that the EU announced the GDPR data privacy regulations. Today, the company is having trouble keeping up with the business. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Pivotal CEO talks IPO and balancing life in Dell family of companies
April 23, 2018 16:31 - 4 minutesPivotal has kind of a strange role for a company. On one hand its part of the EMC federation companies that Dell acquired in 2016 for a cool $67 billion, but it’s also an independently operated entity within that broader Dell family of companies — and that has to be a fine line to walk. Whatever the challenges, the company went public yesterday and joined VMware as a separately traded company within Dell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Funding Societies, a Southeast Asian lending platform, gets $25M Series B led by Softbank Ventures Korea
April 23, 2018 08:00 - 7 minutesFunding Societies co-founders Reynold Wijaya and Kelvin Teo. Funding Societies, a peer-to-peer lending platform in Southeast Asia, said today that it has raised a $25 million Series B led by Softbank Ventures Korea, the Japanese tech conglomerate’s early-stage venture capital unit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices