Tyra Banks rang the closing bell at the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center in San Francisco this afternoon. The supermodel turned entrepreneur and startup investor was there to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the launch of Tyra Beauty. Tyra Beauty is both “beauty business and badassery,” Banks quipped in a video chat with TechCrunch. It’s a “cosmetics experience, not… Read More
Be honest: Have you ever spent an entire day working at a coffee shop, despite only buying a single cup of coffee? I’ve definitely been guilty of this, and I’ve also been to coffee shops that try to fight back by removing outlets, turning off their WiFi or outlawing laptops on certain tables. A startup called GoGoGuest is taking a different approach that could help coffee shops… Read More
Tinder is introducing a new premium feature called Tinder Boost. The feature will let users pay to have their profiles displayed first to other users on the app in the same locale for thirty minutes. According to the announcement, it’s all about saving users’ time and making sure that the Tinder experienced is maximized during the time that they’re actually using the app.… Read More
LendUp was supposed to be different than the payday loan sharks that rip off the poor when they need emergency cash. But in its early days, LendUp charged customers illegal fees, miscalculated interest rates, falsely advertised loans nationwide that weren’t available there, and misled people that borrowing from LendUp would boost their credit score. Now LendUp will have to pay $6.3… Read More
Classpass, the subscription service for fitness classes, became a household name because of one simple innovation. The business model. Combining the breadth of a marketplace with a subscription pricing structure sparked a handful of similar startup launches (like Vive, which does the same thing with hair blowouts). But more importantly, it was the turning point for the company, putting it… Read More
The startup world moves at breakneck speed — what’s hot one minute is old news the next, and it can feel like the rules of the game change every day. For successful startups, rapid growth often attracts the attention of incubators and accelerators. However, there are other options. Namely, partnering with tech “titans” — bigger tech companies that used to be… Read More
It was only a matter of time before the same forces that brought competition to the taxi industry turned their attention to the bus business. And now, what Uber and Lyft have done for ride-sharing inside cities and towns across America, startups like Skedaddle want to do for ride-sharing across America. Launched by a clutch of east coast entrepreneurs led by Adam Nestler, his brother Craig,… Read More
