TraceLink, the SaaS platform for tracking and tracing pharmaceuticals, has today announced the close of a $51.5 million Series C financing led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity. Existing investors, such as FirstMark Capital, Volition Capital, and F-Prime Capital, also participated in the round. As part of the deal, Goldman’s Jason Kreuziger is joining TraceLink’s board of… Read More
Dubsmash, the lip-syncing video app from Berlin that became a surprise social hit last year, has raised Series B funding. According to multiple sources — and now confirmed by the company — Sunstone Capital has led a €9 million (~$9.6m) round with participation from Index Ventures, Balderton Capital, Eniac Venture, and Lowercase Capital. Read More
Civis Analytics, a company founded by the chief analytics officer of Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, has raised $22 million in Series A funding. Founder and CEO Dan Wagner told me that after the election, he discovered that many organizations — whether they were in politics, government or business — were dealing with problems similar to the ones he faced during… Read More
Style transfer startup Prisma added support to its iOS app for livestreaming its art filter effects in real-time via Facebook Live earlier this month — but almost immediately the startup’s access to the Live API was cut off by the social media platform giant. Read More
Knotch promises marketers a better way to collect user feedback about the effectiveness of their sponsored content. Now it’s announcing that it has received a design patent for its approach. Basically, when a sponsored article uses Knotch, a survey question pops up at the end, which is supposed to help advertisers assess your state of mind after reading the article. The big difference… Read More
One of the challenges of Internet of Things is the poor availability and high price of mobile data. Twilio announced it was going to have a stab at changing that earlier this year. Today Soracom showed off its solutions to ease the pain of IoT adaptation across the industry. The company’s slightly byzantine pricing plans are optimized for a number of low-bandwidth, high uptime applications. Read More
In Ernestine Fu’s future, you shouldn’t have to wait more than a few seconds to launch a game or an app to connect with a friend. In fact, a few seconds might even be too long. That’s what prompted the birth of Blackstorm, a development platform that has the tools to build high-fidelity applications — the same you might get from an app in the App Store — in HTML5… Read More
Mental health is one of the buzzwords of the moment, especially now Royalty like Prince William and Duchess Katherine have been championing it, along with Kid Cudi, Cara Delevingne and others saying that they would be open to sending their children to counselling. One in five people have suffered from depression, one in two will suffer of some other mental disturbance in their lifetimes. If… Read More
A new venture fund called Starburst Ventures has raised a $200 million debut fund to invest in early stage aerospace startups over the next three years. The fund is an extension of the Starburst Accelerator, which was founded in 2012 to help aviation and aerospace tech startups raise seed funding, and score their first big deal with a corporate customer, typically representing $1 million or… Read More
Say you’re an app developer and you need to give your app users a way of uploading, storing and playing back video. Instead of having to build your own video content management system or licensing one of the existing ones, Synq offers developers a third option. The company is launching its “cloud video API for Developers,” service today, aiming to be a full video… Read More
Make way for another startup that wants to shake up the world of music and audio technology. Devialet, the French developer of high-end speakers and the IP behind the sound systems that make them go boom, has raised €100 million ($106 million). This is a strategic growth round that is bringing in a number of high-profile new investors — and with them, a lot more audio… Read More
If there was a product that could make you dig out your dust-collecting GoPro from the “misc” drawer and turn it into a 3D-filming camera, would you buy it? Of course you would; 737 people said “yes, please” in the Vitrima Indiegogo campaign, backing it to breathe some life into their GoPros. Shipping today, the product is available to order for $145 from the… Read More
The Yeehaw is a 3D printer aimed at the kids market. The company’s Indiegogo campaign carries a $249 early-bird price tag and promises to ship the first 50 units in time for Christmas. There were a few things about the company’s campaign that gave me pause. The device was designed with safety in mind, with sensors shutting off the printer in case some little fingers get a little… Read More
The original Facetune app made it easy and fast to make your selfies look next-level awesome. Lightricks just released a fully revamped version 2 of Facetune, complete with automatic 3D meshing built in, which makes it possible to have another level of editing prowess at your fingertips. Read More
Dick’s Sporting Goods is expanding its digital tools with the acquisition of GameChanger Media, the company behind the mobile scorekeeping app of the same name. A sporting goods company (with 675 locations across the United States) might not seem like an obvious buyer of tech companies, but it’s been building up its suite of digital products for youth sports — which it… Read More
After Disrupt in London I’ll be heading over to Wroclaw, Poland for a double dose of meet-up fun. The meetups, coinciding with ImpactCEE, will be Fintech- and Medtech-based and you’re welcome to come to one or both. The first meetup is part of ImpaceCEE and will be held on Thursday, December 8. You can RSVP here. It’s primarily Fintech-related but, again, you’re welcome… Read More
Diabetic health tracking startup Siren Care has created smart socks that use temperature sensors to detect inflammation — and therefore injury — in realtime for diabetics. Co-founder Ran Ma was working on growing biomass to grow back skin that had been damaged while at Northwestern University when she started learning how to treat diabetic feet and thought of making a… Read More
There’s no shortage of startup incubators and accelerators, but there’s always room for improvement and iterations on an old operating model. Expa Labs, a six-month program for startups that spun out of Uber co-founder Garrett Camp’s Expa Studios, has a different take on the startup accelerator/incubator model. Last week, it wrapped up its first batch of startups. Launched… Read More
Prisma has made quite an impression on the tech world, and Level Frames is looking to capitalize on the trend. The YC-backed company, which offers custom framing of physical artwork via an easy-to-use website, has developed its own AI photo filters for Level users. Level works by letting users upload their posters, art, or even their digital photos, and choose a frame, matting, etc. that… Read More
Every big company was a lean and mean startup at one time. Now, confronted with digital disruption all around us, we’re all rushing to rekindle the entrepreneurial flame that first put our businesses on the map. Every company wants to be “innovative,” but “innovation” has become an overused buzzword that has lost its meaning. Companies should focus more on the… Read More
One of the primary reasons for Thanksgiving was always the celebration of the end of the harvest and the promise of new growth. Home gardens wilted in the first November rains and the apples and herbs died out around the ides. The land goes from oregano and blanched green bean to tan and dust and brown and the leaves cover everything in preparation for snow. I’m no outdoorsman. Our… Read More
French startup Wynd has raised a $31.7 million Series B round (€30 million) from Sodexo Ventures and Orange Digital Ventures, with Bpifrance also participating. Orange Digital Ventures had already invested in the Series A round with Alven Capital. Wynd is working on a software-as-a-service solution to replace your existing point-of-sale service that you use in your restaurant or store.… Read More
There’s no end to the bottles, packs, and pills of various nutritional supplements out there, but vitamin startup Care/of plans to stand out by tailoring the vitamins you pop to your specific needs. The startup joins a growing number of others in tech hoping to cash in on the lucrative vitamin industry. Elysium offers pills they say will boost longevity, Ritual makes vitamins for… Read More
If you’re a little skeptical about trying out another news aggregator, Gong CEO Itzik Ben-Bassat knows what you’re probably thinking — after all, he heard the same thing when he was pitching investors. “They all kind of looked at me and said, ‘Not again,'” he recalled. But it seems like Ben-Bassat (who was previously an executive at Blizzard Entertainment and… Read More
Mojiworks, new startup from the founders of Wonderland, the UK gaming startup acqui-hired by Zynga back in 2011, is on a mission to turn Apple’s iMessage into a social gaming platform. 