We’re taking more digital photos than ever, but we’re not very good about printing them out to enjoy them in our homes. Meanwhile, the digital picture frame market has filled with cheap products that haven’t kept up with technology developments, like ubiquitous Wi-Fi, better photo quality, and higher resolutions, in order to instead chase ever-lower price points. Aura aims… Read More
It’s good news and bad news for the publishing industry. The good news is that print revenue was up 3.4 percent in April, primarily in trade paperbacks, with some solid grown in young adult print and religious titles. The bad news is that revenue is down 4.3 percent year-to-date with a 7 percent loss in April compared to 2015. Further, ebook sales were down 22.7% compared to last year.… Read More
As we inch closer to a time when we may rely on truly autonomous devices to move us or do things on our behalf, the need for software that’s able to think on its feet (or mid-air) will be essential. Now, an artificial intelligence startup working on this emerging area of machine learning has raised a seed round of funding to try to do just that. Cambridge, UK-based Prowler.io, which… Read More
SoundCloud as a company is a disaster, but its the only streaming service with the DJ sets and remixes kids love. So it makes perfect sense that Spotify is in advanced talks to acquire SoundCloud, the Financial Times reports. Spotify already declined to buy it twice over the past year and a half, but talks broke down over pricing. But since then, SoundCloud has hammered out deals with the… Read More
I live a pretty cosmopolitan futuristic life atop a glass skyscraper in New York City, but I’ve yet to get a pizza delivered by drone, order a taxi from Alexa or open a hotel door with my smartwatch. We’ve got the questions wrong: It shouldn’t be how are you innovating or which project is doing new things, but why are you doing it and on what level. Read More
MightyTV, an app that helps you figure out what to watch next, is now available on Android. The startup is led by AdMeld co-founder Brian Adams, and it presents users with a stack of movie and TV recommendations which you swipe through, Tinder-style. If you’ve seen something already, you can say whether or not you liked it, which will influence the recommendations you see next. If you… Read More
Home Chef just announced that it’s raised a new $40 million round of funding. This Series B comes on top of the $10 million round that Home Chef raised earlier this year. It was led by L Catterton Partners, the private equity firm formed by the recent merger of Catterton with the PE arm of luxury conglomerate LVMH. Founder and CEO Pat Vihtelic has argued that Home Chef differs from… Read More
A startup called Dozr Inc. has raised CAN $2.5 million (or $1.9 million USD) in seed funding to help contractors rent heavy industrial equipment from other construction professionals who have it, but aren’t using it. Based in Kitchener, Ontario Dozr’s marketplace lets builders rent equipment, like excavators, skidsteers or one day drones and industrial robotics, either alone, or with… Read More
Joining celebrity investors like Snoop Dogg, Ashton Kutcher, and Justin Bieber, Queen Bey is bringing her supreme business skills to the tech world. Beyoncé and the management company she started called Parkwood Entertainment have invested $150,000 into Sidestep, an app for buying concert merchandise and skipping the line to pick it up at the show. Sidestep originally started selling… Read More
For startup CEOs, tough economic periods are like stressful stretches in a marriage: They test your mettle while making ugly truths impossible to hide. These days, amid industry-wide belt-tightening, “down rounds” and a still-moribund IPO market, many venture-backed CEOs are baring it all to their board members. But how should you communicate with your investors when navigating a… Read More
The accelerator and seed-stage fund for business to business startups, Alchemist Accelerator, and the curated co-working community called Rocketspace, have partnered up in a way that should help both expand their influence beyond the San Francisco Bay Area. According to Alchemist managing partner Ravi Belani, startups admitted to the next cohort of the accelerator will work together in… Read More
Front has been around for three years, but the startup is only releasing a mobile app now. If you’re a Front user, it brings all the features from the desktop version to your phone so that you can manage emails and other communication protocols in multiplayer mode. Front’s basic premise is quite simple. With Front, you can collaborate, comment, assign and reply to those pesky… Read More
Hello, the makers of the Sense sleep tracker, has hired Angela Chang, a former marketing lead for Nest and who was most-recently head of marketing at DoorDash, as its chief marketing officer. Her hire comes at a time when the company is making an aggressive push to get into larger retailers — most recently Best Buy and Target — and get the device and brand in front of as many… Read More
On the fence about whether your child is old enough for their own smartphone? A new app called Luna Launcher can help you warm to the idea, by offering a simple way to limit access to select apps and actions, including who they can call or text – a list you can restrict to family members, for example. Of course, because of the way it needs to interact with your phone’s… Read More
Drizly, the service that lets you order alcohol online, has today announced a major transition of the company with the launch of its marketplace. The Drizly marketplace will let any retailer integrate with the Drizly software to generate extra sales. And for the user, the marketplace will allow more pricing transparency and flexibility. The old Drizly, by comparison, would use a set of criteria… Read More
The AOL Alto team is today delivering a new version of the product that may make some of your biggest email woes disappear. Enter the Alto Dashboard. With the latest version of AOL Alto, users can choose between a regular inbox view and a dashboard view of their communications. Dashboard view surfaces contextually relevant information right to the top of the page and offers the ability to… Read More
Robinhood says it will never charge commissions to trade stocks, but the $66 million-funded startup is finally ramping up monetization with the launch of “Robinhood Gold” premium features. For $10 per month, users can skip the three-day waiting period with instant deposits and reinvesting, trade 30 minutes before and 2 hours after the market is open, and borrow up to double the… Read More
Amid an increasing number robo-investors like Betterment, Stash, and Robinhood, a new San Francisco-based fintech startup called Grow is entering the fray to compete based on investment type, not only financial returns. While the app operates much like its rivals in terms of making it easier for novice investors quickly build their portfolios, its biggest differentiator is that it focuses… Read More
Boston-based Lose It! (incorporated as FitNow Inc.) has released a new beta feature today called Snap It within its weight loss and calorie tracking app. As is easily guessed by the name, Snap It beta lets users take photos of their daily meals and snacks to automatically log them and derive approximate calorie counts. For now, users will be able to open the Lose It! app, pick a meal-type… Read More
French startup Lydia raised $7.8 million (€7 million) from New Alpha AM and Oddo & Cie in order to expand to other European countries. The startup lets you easily pay back your friends without any fee using a mobile app — among other things. Think about it as a sort of Venmo for France. While Lydia has only been available in France, with today’s funding round, the company… Read More
Today, Skymind, a company developing an open-source deep-learning library for Java, along with tools for implementation, closed $3 million in financing from Tencent, SV Angel, GreatPoint Ventures, Mandra Capital, and Y Combinator. Skymind was previously a part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2016 batch and has taken money from Joe Montana’s Liquid 2 Ventures and a number of other… Read More
Today, goTenna is taking pre-orders for their new product, a device called the goTenna Mesh that lets smartphone users text and share their GPS locations, off-grid and across miles of terrain. The new device works like goTenna’s flagship product did in that it can be used where normal cellular, satellite or wifi services are not available. And like the company’s flagship goTenna,… Read More
TechCrunch is headed to Seoul, South Korea and we can’t wait to see what kind of gadgets and services are coming out of one of the biggest technology hubs in the world. We’re bringing the TC Meetup + Pitch-off to Seoul on October 27, and we need your help! If you are a founder or entrepreneur working in the area, we want you to pitch your product to a panel of expert judges and… Read More
For those of you unawares, the Entrepreneur Roundtable Accelerator, like other accelerators, is a program that provides participating start-ups exposure to potential investors. 
Interface design collaboration tool Figma is launching its Multiplayer feature, which allows designers to collaborate in real time on the same projects. 