This is the best way to get up to speed on everything going on in tech. Kleiner Perkins venture partner Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends report is essentially the state of the union for the technology industry. The widely anticipated slide deck compiles the most informative research on what’s getting funded, how Internet adoption is progressing, which interfaces are resonating,… Read More
Pokémon Go-maker Niantic says it has driven 500 million visitors to sponsored locations like McDonald’s Japan where gamers can score a special virtual good. But it never said how much those sponsors paid per visitor delivered by the game. But in an interview published yesterday by Brazil’s Globo newspaper, Niantic VP of strategic partnerships Mathieu de Fayet said (translated)… Read More
You probably still get plenty of snail mail at your home — whether that’s wedding invitations, bills or advertisements for new credit cards. But despite all the efforts to kill that snail mail and get it sent directly to an inbox, there really doesn’t yet seem to be a replacement to that experience of getting home and stepping over those letters from businesses (important… Read More
Concord wants to be your all-in-one solution for everything related to contracts. The startup just raised a $3.7 million Series A round from Alven Capital, with existing investors Streamlined Ventures, Bruno Deschamps and Thibault Poutrel also participating. Many departments rely on contracts to work with clients, suppliers, legal partners and more. But it’s still a tedious process as… Read More
Robot arms have come a long way since the 1960’s when George C. Devol and Joseph Engelberger created the earliest industrial models. Those had two-finger grippers that, in retrospect, look fit to pluck a rubber ducky out of a bin in a carnival game, but nothing too sophisticated. By now, robots in factories and warehouses can adjust their grip like human hands, or use suction and… Read More
Through Lyft and Uber, the sharing economy has taken a charge at cabs. Airbnb is making hotels palpitate in their pants. If TRVL has its way, it’s the travel agencies’ turn to tremble. Armed with 2.7 million freshly minted dollars from a conglomerate of angel investors, the company is hoping to augment services like Booking.com, Hotels.com and Tripadvisor by adding a soupçon of… Read More
CEO Yaron Ben Shaul originally launched Hometalk as an engagement platform for customers of Networx, his lead-generation business for home contractors. That engagement platform has since grown into a social network for the “do-it-yourself” community. How did Hometalk bootstrap their growth and what is the future of the company and the DIY industry? Read More
On this week’s episode of Technotopia we talk to Sarah Kaufman, the Assistant Director at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy & Management. Kaufman is working to create new transit opportunities for New Yorkers – and the world – and expects the future to be quite interesting. Her prediction? As we move towards self-driving cars we will see more options for… Read More
In our 16th episode, we talk with Tom Kelly, a partner at IDEO, about the definition of innovation, how to take back your creative confidence, and the habits that can shape not only your current design team, but the up-and-coming design leaders of the world. The word “innovation” has gotten overused. Kelley says innovation, at the most fundamental level, is a fresh… Read More
After decades spent funding technologies tailored to deprive us of sleep (see: streaming video, gaming, social networks and 24/7 online shopping), the venture capital industry has decided to direct its considerable capital reserves at helping us get more shut-eye. Read More
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman announced today that he’s making a big bet on Change.org, the site for social justice petitions. Hoffman is leading a $30 million round, with other investors including big names like Bill Gates and Y Combinator president Sam Altman. “Change.org, the global hub for collective action, is a crucial democratizing force in this era of growing civic… Read More
KidPass, a monthly membership program that gives parents access to a variety of kid-friendly activities across their city, has raised $5.1 million in Series A funding, the startup reported this week. Currently live in New York, the new funds will allow the service to expand to new markets including L.A., San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Chicago. The round was… Read More
After a painful first quarter miss, Snap is looking to avoid the same fate in the current quarter. According to Digiday, Snap, the parent company of the popular social app Snapchat, is working to drive new and increased business ahead of the end of its second quarter. To do so, the company is said to be cutting deals. Read More
Businesses usually spend lots of time and money trying of attract potential customers. Now a startup called Riley aims to help them prioritize those sales leads. Riley was part of the winter class at Y Combinator. (In fact, CEO Daniel Ahmadizadeh said he and his co-founder Helson Taveras applied several times with different products and ideas before getting in.) The startup is announcing… Read More
I’ll be in Reykjavik next week and you know what that means… I want to meet you! So we’ll be holding an small meetup (not really a pitchoff but feel free to pitch me while I’m there) at Bryggjan Brugghús, Grandagarði 8, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland. The event is being on Tuesday, May 30, from 5 PM to 7 PM UTC. Event starts at 5pm and you can meet the speakers and… Read More
The League, a a dating app that prides itself on selectiveness and requires members to be approved before joining, has traditionally taken expansion pretty slow. Originally launched in early 2015, the app is still only in 7 cities – New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C and London. But the startup just announced they are about to embark on a summer… Read More
When Solar Impulse pilot Bertrand Piccard set out to fly around the world in a plane that uses no fuel, he knew he wasn’t going to get much rest. During the journey, he would be able to sleep, at a maximum, three hours per day with rest meted out in twenty-minute intervals. The plane, which could only accommodate one aviator, required a human systems check every twenty minutes. For part… Read More
Binded aims to make it easier for photographers to protect their intellectual property by creating a permanent record of their copyright in a public database, namely the blockchain. The startup was previously known as Blockai, but it’s rebranding today — the new name is meant to focus less on technology and instead emphasize the idea of creating a legally binding record. Put… Read More
Target has reportedly rolled $75 million into Casper, the direct-to-consumer mattress startup you may have heard about in all those podcasts. The funding is a good chunk of what should end up being a more than $100 million round, according to a source at Recode, which first reported the news. Target has confirmed it gave a bunch of money to Casper but would not confirm the amount (sigh). Read More
Nearly two decades after the release of the original Pokémon Red and Blue in the U.S., the Pokémon company has come out with another true masterpiece. It’s called Magikarp Jump, which came out for iOS and Android earlier today. It’s about training Magikarp, the most beloved Pokémon in the universe, to jump as hard as it can and squash the hopes and dreams of its opponents.… Read More
Managed marketplaces have been one of the hottest categories of venture investment over the past several years. They garner a lot of press because the consumer experiences are often radically different than what’s previously been available in the market. But there is confusion over what a true “managed” marketplace is. It’s fairly easy to spot if you know what to look for. Read More
Mogees, the London startup behind the Mogees Pro and Mogees Play contact microphone and machine learning-based music and gaming devices, has raised $1.1 million in seed funding — capital it plans to use to embed its “gestural recognition tech” into new devices and applications. Read More
Bike sharing has taken a turn in the U.S., following trends in China. The new mode is “dockless,” where companies distribute bikes around a city or campus to be rented per trip instead of dispensing them from one station. The bikes are tracked via GPS, and can be located by users, paid for and unlocked using their smartphones. Best of all, whenever riders are done with one of… Read More
If pops are hard to vet, and IPO pricing remains an art-science hybrid, what measuring stick can we use to decide when an IPO did well, versus gains so steep that it probably could have raised a bit more in its flotation? 
CrowdJustice, a startup that brings crowdfunding to “public interest” litigation, has raised $2 million in seed funding for U.S. expansion. 