Around the world, drones have been delivering life-saving drugs and blood to clinics, and contrarily tasty treats like burritos, pizza, and Slurpees to homes or campuses. Civilian drones have also conducted countless surveys of farms, construction sites, and surveillance around venues with a high security risk. Now, in a stunt that begs to be spoofed by Mike Judge for his HBO… Read More
Justin Kan, YC Partner, serial entrepreneur and one of the internet’s most-loved reality stars, has started another venture in the form of Whale, a video Q&A app. Whale lets users post questions and enter into a one-to-one video conversation with an influencer or expert who can offer up the perfect answer. Those videos answers are then recorded and added to a library of existing… Read More
Giphy, the NY-based search engine and platform for GIFs, has raised $72 million in funding led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Institutional Venture Partners and China Media Capital. This brings Giphy’s total funding to just short of $151 million, according to Crunchbase, with a valuation reported at $600 million by the WSJ. Giphy started as part of a Hacker-in-Residence program at… Read More
Brave, the new web browser company co-founded by former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, has launched a do-over on Android. The earlier version of the ad-blocking browser utilized an odd user interface involving floating link bubbles, which didn’t sit well with all users. The design made the experience more cumbersome and confusing, when what people really wanted was an alternative browser… Read More
Does the world need another live video app? Meerkat’s demise might suggest not, but that hasn’t stopped Vine’s co-founders from screwing their courage to the sticking place and stepping into a highly contested space with the launch of an iOS app called Hype — days after Twitter announced it would be shuttering their looping video app, apparently without even doing them… Read More
Joey DeVilla is my blogging hero. He’s run his blog for most of two decades and he’s worked at Microsoft, Shopify, and Tucows. Most recently he’s taken on the mantle of evangelist for SMARTRAC, an NFC/RFID company. In this episode of Technotopia we talk about the cyclical nature of culture – how, for example, Nine Inch Nails sounds pretty tame to us now – and… Read More
When Lume Cube first crashed into the world’s consciousness, they did so with an $80 smartphone-controlled, waterproof light aimed at the GoPro-loving extreme sports market. Today, the company launched a Kickstarter campaign for Life Lite, its followup. Life Lite is 33% less bright, but also half the price and half the size. The new addition is aimed at people shooting live video with… Read More
500 Startups’ 18th demo day wrapped up this afternoon in San Francisco. The companies that presented ranged from financial technology all the way to yet another attempt to try and fix conference calls. 500 Startups has to compete with a lot of other accelerators like Techstars and Y Combinator, and in order to be successful it needs to generate hits from these classes. The firm has had… Read More
What happens when you tell two smart computers to talk to each other in secret and task another AI with breaking that conversation? You get one of the coolest experiments in cryptography I’ve seen in a while. In short, Google Brain researchers have discovered that the AI, when properly tasked, create oddly inhuman cryptographic schemes and that they’re better at encrypting than… Read More
Gfycat, the startup that recently raised a whopping $10 million for its user-generated content platform that lets you creating silent, looping animations and videos, has now launched its first mobile app. Designed for iMessage, Gfycat lets you search for, send and create your own “Gfycat Loops,” which you can also augment with your own emojis and captions. There are already a number… Read More
How do you get excited about a new snack food or laundry detergent when virtual reality, artificial intelligence and autonomous cars dominate the news? It’s easy: Because consumer goods impact every facet of our lives, from our personal health and comfort to how we socialize with each other and care for our environment. Read More
A new mobile application called 60dB, launching today, wants to offer a better, more personalized radio service focused on short-form audio content. The app includes news, sports, business, entertainment, comedy stories, and more, from a variety of publishers, which are customized to your interests the more you use the service. A separate section for longer stories is also available, when… Read More
Having made headway in building out its community for creatives, Twine recently flicked the monetization switch by adding a marketplace to its wares. This lets businesses post creative briefs and the type of specialism they are looking for from which Twine’s community can pitch for the advertised work. Read More
A Houston-based startup called BrainCheck has raised $3 million in seed funding for an app that helps users understand, by simply playing some games on an iPad, if they or a loved one may have suffered a concussion. Founded in 2014 by Dr. David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, BrainCheck adapts commonly accepted assessments that neuropsychologists and neurologists… Read More
The big night is tonight! At 6pm, the TC Meetup + Pitch-off is going down in Seoul, South Korea. We’ll be joined by some of the brightest minds in the local tech scene to discuss going global and diversity, and then we’ll dive straight into the Pitch-off itself. Each of these ten companies will have exactly sixty seconds to pitch their wares to a panel of expert judges, including… Read More
Verizon is buying Vessel, the subscription video service founded by Jason Kilar (Hulu’s former CEO) and Richard Tom (its former CTO). Vessel enlisted YouTube stars and other video creators, offering early access to their videos for $2.99 a month. It raised more than $130 million from investors including Benchmark, Greylock, Bezos Expeditions and Institutional Venture Partners. Tom… Read More
In May earlier this year, Snapchat raised around $1.8 billion in a financing round that valued it at around $18 billion — and now it looks like that valuation could double in its upcoming IPO. Bloomberg is reporting that Snapchat is looking to raise as much as $4 billion in its initial public offering that could value it as high as $35 billion. Previously, the company was reportedly… Read More
Darkstore is expanding its warehouse-as-a-service product into New York and Phoenix, following the launch of its San Francisco Darkstore in May. The decision to launch in additional markets is driven by the demand from Darkstore’s brand customers,” Darkstore CEO Lee Hnetinka told me via email. Tuft & Needle, Darkstore’s first customer, is based in Phoenix and is one of… Read More
WhoIsHiring is a clever site that aggregates startup jobs around the world. The unique angle – a map that shows you exactly how many jobs are in a particular area – is a clever and fun hack on the boring job boards of old. Created by Ania Bywanis and Sebastian Pawluś the site is based in Krakow, Poland. It was a reaction to difficult job searches using outdated methods.… Read More
Imagine if you could see a map of the city around you based on the photos that best represent the area. That’s the concept of Streetography, a brand new photography app for iOS launched this week. The app uses various sources of photo content, showing the map of the world around you seen through the lens of photographers who’ve explored the area before you. Read More
Culture Trip, a London-based media startup with a heavy tech bent (or is that the other way round?) has raised $20 million in Series A funding. The round is being led by the PPF Group, the fund managed by entrepreneur Petr Kellner. Read More
Its founders, including CEO Fabian Dudek, left the company in May having already lost majority ownership to Rocket Internet, while the pivot sees the company become an aggregator — or meta-search engine — for furnished apartment rentals. Read More
French startup Selency (formerly known as Brocante Lab) has raised a $3.3 million Series A round (€3 million) led by Accel with Kima Ventures participating. Many of you should be familiar with online furniture retailers like Made.com. But what about second-hand furniture? Right now, you still have to go to an antique shop, or maybe look for classified ads on the web. Or maybe you’ll… Read More
Wait, wait, wait! Before your eyes glaze over at the word “slideshow,” stay with me for a moment. Yes, we’re all bored to tears with slideslows, but Sharalike’s brand new VR app has been rubbing its medical paddles together to try to jolt some life into your old 2D photos by teleporting them into your VR headset. Read More
Encore, a U.K. startup and graduate of Entrepreneur First, is another example of a company attempting to disrupt the traditional agency model. 