As we kickoff of our second annual TechCrunch Disrupt conference, we’re clearly not the only ones who think there’s a substantive ecosystem brewing here beneath all the hype and the froth; Lerer Ventures is announcing the closing of its second seed-stage venture fund today. The total is $25 million, mostly from friends, families and small family investment groups.The fund comes 18 months after Ken… → Read More
Lazy bloggers and other online content creators from around the world, rejoice, for Eightfold Logic (formerly Enquisite) is today debuting a cloud-based social writing tool dubbed InboundWriter that should make it easier for you to create relevant and shareable online content.
The company has also announced that it has raised $2 million in Series C funding from existing investors, including Rho… → Read More
While there’s no replacement for actually being at TechCrunch Disrupt, we realize that not everyone can make it for one reason or another (like me, for example, due to massive volcanic activity). As such, we’re happy to offer the next best thing: a full live stream of the event.
We’ve embedded the stream above, be sure to tune in at 9 AM ET. Additionally, you can also watch the videos we shoot… → Read More
It’s that time of the half-year again! Time for TechCrunch Disrupt – or as it’s officially titled this year: AOL-HuffingtonPost-TechCrunch Disrupt, Part III: Back In Training.
For me, the highlight of the event is when Heather and Mike take to the stage and announce that they’re selling the company to someone ridiculous (this year my money’s on 4Chan!). For the rest of you, though, I know the… → Read More
Global Telecom & Technology (GTT), a global carrier and network integrator, has acquired privately-held UK company PacketExchange in an effort to scale its business internationally. GTT will pay up to $20 million in cash and assumed debt to buy PacketExchange, which serves approximately 500 customers (carriers, ISPs, etc.).
PacketExchange is said to generate over $20 million in annualized… → Read More
We are only a few hours away from kicking off the third TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York and we are thrilled to announce the 29 startups that were chosen out of nearly 1,000 applicants to pitch ideas and applications over the next few days. We will also hear pitches from the two StartupAlley companies that receive the most votes over the next two days. You can watch the livestream here.… → Read More
Gtrot, a service that leverages Facebook to help people make traveling decisions, is announcing a new round of funding from Lightbank. The company is declining to reveal the exact size of the round but says it is under $1 million.
Founded by Brittany Laughlin and Zachary Smith, Gtrot helps users source travel plans, deals, tips, and recommendations from other friends via their social graph. For… → Read More
Bleacher Report– one of the few new entrants in the sports content category to get significant traction against the portal giants– is continuing to build out its management team, announcing an important new hire today. Rich Calacci joins the company as chief revenue officer. Calacci was most recently senior vice president at CBS Interactive in charge of the sports vertical– one of the… → Read More
Weekend Giveaway: A REAL FREAKING THOR HAMMER This Is A Piranha Plant USB Keychain For Today’s Stylish Man Samsung Brings Its LED Lighting Line To The US Fake USB Cable? Check. Hilarity? Guaranteed! Superplayers Take Arcade Gaming To New Heights → Read More
TechCrunch Disrupt kicks off in New York City in about 3 hours. So naturally I’m sitting in a bar in Iceland.
Why? Well, the entire story is kind of long and many parts are probably more appropriate for a Paul Carr book than this post. But the keyword is “Grimsvotn”.
Yes, it just so happens that a giant volcano under Vatnajokull (Iceland’s largest glacier) decided to give us the biggest eruption… → Read More
Tesco’s wholly owned subsidiary Dunnhumby has acquired Boston based BzzAgent for around $60 million, we’ve confirmed. The companies will announce the acquisition today but is not disclosing the terms of the deal. And no, I didn’t make up any of the words in that first sentence. This is just how companies name themselves today.
BzzAgent was originally founded way back in 2001, and bootstrapped… → Read More
Software AG, a provider of business process management solutions with revenues of €1.1 billion in 2010, has acquired Terracotta, which develops and markets software for application scalability, availability and performance.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but I’m told the deal value amounted to “upper-middle double digits” (in millions of euros). Terracotta has raised over $23… → Read More
Australia’s online retailing group CatchOfTheDay, which operates e-commerce site CatchOfTheDay.com.au and daily deal site Scoopon.com.au, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding (presumably around $80 million) valuing the company at $200 million, the company announced this morning.
The round was secured from New York-based Tiger Global and a group of Australian businessmen, including… → Read More
One of the winners at today’s TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon is Docracy, an open source site where users can share and sign legal documents, similar to what GitHub provides for code. The site is the brainchild of mobile app developers Matt Hall and John Watkinson, who are the founders of app development startup Larva Labs.
Docracy is an online, opensource hub for quality legal documents like… → Read More
Q&A platform for video VYou is announcing today $3 million in Series A funding, lead by RRE Ventures and Highland Capital Partners and followed on by High Peaks Ventures, Broadway Video Ventures, Kevin Wall, David Tish and Rick Web.
Gunning for a media play, the New York-based VYou recently partnered up with Hearst Newspapers, MTV/VHI, Simon and Shuster and the Newark Peace Summit in order to… → Read More
A 5:45 this morning, a man told another man to walk into traffic blindfolded. Using an iPhone app connected to their service, joysti.cc, Jarod Reyes moved Jon Gottfried through light traffic in what amounted to a real-life game of Frogger. While I often think that we’d be better off if most start-up founders went to play in traffic, I never meant that they had to do it in real life, yet these two… → Read More
Despite becoming embroiled in the UK’s increasingly controversial row about injunctions which gag the press but not Twitter users, Twitter itself is going ahead with plans to open a new office in London.
Its first UK-based employee is Tony Wang who relocates from San Francisco this weekend, according to his own tweets. → Read More
Three friends, including a 17-year-old high schooler, who met at New Work City, a co-working space, built Dispach.io to solve the problem of disperse information. The product, as it exists currently, is a Chrome extension that allows you to grab Word files and PDFs and automatically place them into Google Docs or Dropbox. Future iterations, probably available in the next month, should support more… → Read More
Here’s why I’m glad I was wrong about RSS being dead. The latest evidence of that comes from Jesse Stay who reported a week or so ago that both Facebook and Twitter had discontinued RSS streams or something like that. I really didn’t bother to read up on the details since it’s now years since I gave up on the stuff. These days I obsess about Lady GaGa and whether Brian Wilson’s version of Good… → Read More
Many companies and IT administrators are reluctant to move directly into the public cloud for file sharing and storage. Today, GroupLogic is unveiling a new product, mobilEcho, which attempts to give these companies a secure way for employees to access their files (stored on servers) from the iPad.
mobilEcho allows enterprise IT organizations to enable and manage mobile file management for their… → Read More
In case you missed it, hackers were busy building new ideas and products at TechCrunch Disrupt’s Hackathon in New York last night. Fueled by RedBull, coffee, and massive quantities of junk food, hackers burned the midnight oil last night, preparing to show off their designs to the judges, who included VC Jeff Clavier and Canv.as founder Christopher Poole, and Google VP of Product Bradley… → Read More
A month or so ago, after a particularly irksome stay at the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas, I declared the era of toothless social media reps “over”. How successful that declaration will prove to be, it’s too early to tell – but what is clear is that I was far from the only person to be frustrated by brands not living up to their implicit or explicit social media promises.
The stories of good and bad… → Read More
It’s been a whirlwind twenty-four hours: yesterday, hundreds of talented coders poured into New York City’s Pier 94 for a marathon session of coding that ran through the night. At 9:30 AM this morning, they pushed their last lines of code. And beginning at 10:30 AM, each of them took the stage for a rapid-fire series of quick pitches showcasing what they’d built. Now it’s time to announce the… → Read More
We’re midway through the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon (which, by the way, you should be watching live here), and the range of stuff that the hackers have managed to throw together in a mere 24 hours is astounding. Some are trying to find their big payday — others are going for the cool factor or a quick laugh. Some, however, spent their weekend trying to change the world for the better.
It’s… → Read More
In the early hours of Hackathon day two, bleary-eyed hax0rz roamed the conference hall, checking out each others’ apps. TCTV caught up with a few who were still standing to see how they fared after twenty-four hours, heads down in the code and design… (video) → Read More
At the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon today, local hackers Bill Magnuson and Jon Hyman presented an e-commerce plugin for flash sales site Gilt.com that is worth a look. Called Gilt-ii, the bookmarklet allows Gilt members to auction their items in their shopping cart during the actual buying process.
So here’s the basic premise behind Gilt-ii. Everyday at noon ET, Gilt releases daily price cuts on… → Read More
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