Today Estonian startup Pipedrive presented at the demo day of the often publicity-shy AngelPad, the San-Francisco-based accelerator founded by ex-Googlers.
The only eastern European startup out of the 15 teams in the accelerator’s summer 2011 edition, Pipedrive is developed by sales people for sales people. What other cloud-based CRM systems are missing, Pipedrive attempts to deliver. The main… → Read More
Europe’s Square competitor iZettle. has raised $11.2 million in Series A funding (€8.2 million) led by Index Ventures with co-investor Creandum and further investment from Charles Dunstone, CEO and Co-founder of The Carphone Warehouse. We heard of the reported investment in August, but the deal has been confirmed today.
iZettle, which is based in Sweden, launched earlier this year as a card… → Read More
“If they’re [the solar panels] not producing energy, you’re not paying for it.” That was Vivint CEO, Todd Peterson on Vivint Solar, the company’s latest attempt at bringing renewable energy to consumers in a disruptive fashion. Through Vivint Solar, customers do not have to pay anything up front for solar power. They simply sign a contract, allow Vivint to strategically place solar panels on their… → Read More
While hardware junkies like myself may have spent the past few weeks drooling over the Galaxy Nexus, the onstage demo of Android 4.0 (a.k.a Ice Cream Sandwich) proves that the software powering the device is just as impressive (if not a little moreso).
Our hands-on with the Galaxy Nexus and Ice Cream Sandwich will be coming shortly, but here’s a quick rundown of what Android 4.0 will be… → Read More
Today DropBox decided to officially announce its $250 million series B round (which actually closed in Sepetember and we called last summer, and filled in with follow up reports). I took a break from the Web 2.0 Summit to drop by the DropBox offices down the street in San Francisco to talk to CEO and founder Drew Houston about what may be the largest series B funding round ever.
In the… → Read More
While introducing the new Galaxy Nexus today in Hong Kong, Samsung’s senior VP for product innovation, Kevin Packingham, said something that surprised me a little. He said that Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, is “specifically designed” to work with 720p as its native resolution. That seems a bit odd considering there will likely be only a handful of phones with displays capable of… → Read More
I wrote a while back about the eventual necessity for the internet to become beautiful. The trouble is that the things in the world we consider beautiful in an informational context — magazine and book layouts, typography, etc. — are necessarily limited in the information they have to present. It’s this limitation, the known quantity aspect, that lets designers work effectively.
How… → Read More
There’s still half an hour to go until the Galaxy Nexus officially takes the stage in Hong Kong, but the official spec sheet has already begun to make the rounds.
The Galaxy Nexus is, of course, the first device to run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, but the spec sheet has confirmed a few nifty features we were hoping would make the final cut. → Read More
A new venture backed by European Seed accelerator HackFWD has launched today. Fantasy Shopper is a new social shopping game where players discover and share the latest fashion from real-world online retailers.
On Fantasy Shopper, users spend Fantasy Money to buy virtual clothing, create outfits and stock out their virtual wardrobe. Launching first in the UK with over 100,000 virtual items from 40… → Read More
Speaking today at Web 2.0, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was boisterous as usual. In a rousing talk with John Batelle, Ballmer talked about how, since last being on stage at Web 2.0 three years ago, Bing has doubled its market share, Microsoft hasn’t completely given up on competing with Google+ and social, the tech giant bought Skype for a boatload, among other topics of interest for Microsofties… → Read More
This afternoon at The Web 2.0 Summit, Pandora Co-founder Tim Westergren sat down with Fortune Editor Adam Lashinsky to talk about what’s going on at everybody’s favorite personalized radio platform. For those who may have missed it, Pandora recently enjoyed a relatively high-profile IPO, putting its “P” ticker symbol right smack in the middle of “IPO” — and the NYSE. And its stock has remained… → Read More
Six months after the second cohort launched, the ex-Googler fueled AngelPad is ready to have at it again with a third brood of 11 business Internet-focused, technology driven companies. A little over a year into its existence, AngelPad has launched 22 companies, 19 of which have raised money and one of which was acquired.
“At AngelPad we deliberately work with a highly selected small… → Read More
Thousands of companies from Dropbox to Netflix rely on Amazon Web Services to provide storage and computing in the cloud. Amazon’s cloud computing offerings range from storage to on-demand computing cycles. ow, Amazon is about to add a new service. Amazon wants companies to ask themselves what their engineers could do if they had access to a supercomputer?
Today at the Web 2.0 Summit, Amazon… → Read More
Today at Web 2.0, John Batelle sat down with Bill Maris and Graham Spencer of Google Ventures for a quick peek inside Google’s venture arm. For those unfamiliar, Google Ventures’ team of 43 invests up to $200 million a year and in 2011 will make upwards of 100 investments. The value proposition of Google’s venture wing is that, according to Maris, it’s highly focused on engagement with the… → Read More
Sony’s Playstation Vita has long been slated for a December release in Japan, but Sony has just announced at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco that their new portable will be hitting shelves stateside and in Europe on February 22. → Read More
Mary Meeker gave her annual slide presentation at the Web 2.0 Summit today. The standout slides for me are the ones which track the breakout growth of the mobile web, a trend she was focused on last year and has continued to track closely. Mobile just keeps on ramping up growth. I’ve pulled out five of her slides which illustrate this trend.
For certain large Internet services, mobile already… → Read More
If you still weren’t convinced that Google and Samsung will be revealing the Verizon-bound Galaxy Nexus in Hong Kong tonight, check out what an eagle-eyed reader managed to dig up on Samsung’s own website.
Yep, that’s the Galaxy Nexus alright. Interestingly, this is the first peek we’ve gotten at the device’s rear end, though it doesn’t actually reveal much. The Galaxy Nexus, like its… → Read More
Good news for European venture house DN Capital. Oracle is to acquire Endeca Technologies, the Cambridge, MA-based enterprise search and e-commerce tech company. No word on terms, but DN capital was the only VC invested in the company. Endeca is a long time Bost-based company. Aside form DN Capital, investors have included Bessemer Venture Partners, Venrock Associates, Ampersand Ventures, Intel… → Read More
When I go on a trip or just out a-shooting with my camera, I often have a moment of slight panic, in which I try to decide whether I should take my nice big expensive lens with me and risk getting it damaged during the adventure, or take the cheap one for less impressive pictures but also a load off my mind. It’s really a problem when lenses cost more than cameras.
So if you’re shooting an … → Read More
Yes, Apple missed with their earnings today. It’s the first time in a long time that has happened. Some are suggesting that hasn’t happened since 2002. That’s big news. But it’s also masking even bigger news: Apple’s expectations for next quarter.
In a press release, it can be hard to tell what numbers on a page signify. But those who follow Apple closely must have taken one look at Apple’s… → Read More
Vodaphone and Canonical today announced the Vodacom “Webbook”, the fruit of a joint effort to develop a low-cost mobile computing solution for South Africa. Most of the specs are about what you’d expect for such a device, with one extremely interesting twist: it’s powered by a Freescale IMX 51 processor (Cortex A8) CPU in order to lower cost and power consumption. This represents the first… → Read More
Look out, Windows-based PCs: the iPad is gettin’ ready to gobble you up. At least, so suggests Apple’s newly settled CEO, Tim Cook.
Early on in this afternoon’s earnings call, Cook touched on the success of the iPad with a passing prediction, saying that he “still believe[s] it will be larger than the PC market” in the long run.
Pushed on the matter a bit later — or, more accurately, on… → Read More
Well, Rovio doesn’t need much of an introduction: It’s the company behind the now ubiquitous game that features everybody’s favorite affronted and chafed birds. Back in September, a whopping month and a half ago, Rovio’s North American General Manager Andrew Stalbow revealed some brand growth stats at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, peeling back the curtain a bit.
As a testament to how… → Read More
Kleiner Perkins partner and former Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker has taken the stage here at Web 2.0 Summit to present on Internet trends, as does every year.
I’ll be writing this up live, so keep refreshing. For now, you can flip through the slides above and take a gander at her 11 trend topics below. → Read More
BREAKING: Waze, social satnav which turns driving into a game, has raised $30 million in further funding. Investing is Hong Kong billionaire Mr. Li Ka Shing of Horizons Ventures Hong Kong and the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) Digital Growth Fund and iFund. The company now has 7 million drivers and plans to launch its platform in China.
Here’s the release just out: → Read More
David Vladeck, The Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection (a wing of the FTC), was appointed by the Chairman of the FTC, Jon Leibowitz, in April 2009. Today, Vladeck took the stage to speak in conjunction with Dr. Ann Cavoukian, The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, to talk about privacy and consumer protection in the digital age.
Vladeck started out his portion of the… → Read More
Intel has released their Q3 financials, and for the most part it’s good news for their investors. Their revenue (GAAP) was a record $14.2bn, up $3.1bn from last year’s Q3. Gross margin is down by 2.6%, but net and operating income are both up quite a deal, $3.5bn (16%) and $4.8bn (17%) respectively. Their CFO reports that it was their most profitable quarter ever.
The source of this prosperity… → Read More
Apple has just announced their Q4 2011 earnings. As expected, they’re big — but unlike the last several quarters where Apple has destroyed the number expected by the Street, Apple actually fell short of those expectations this time.
How short? Well, even though Apple’s own guidance for the quarter was $25 billion in revenue, analysts seem to have wised up to Apple’s always-low estimates and… → Read More
The rumor that was making its way around before the iPad 2 debut last year is back for an encore. At the time, it was suggested that the iPad would be getting a refresh and a smaller, low-cost version at around 7″ would also come out. It would have directly contradicted Jobs’ own dismissal of that smaller form factor, but the rumor mill churned mightily anyway. And of course there was no… → Read More
Yahoo reported third quarter earnings today. Revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs (“revenue ex-TAC”) was $1.072 billion for the third quarter of 2011, a 5 percent decrease from the third quarter of 2010. Net earnings per diluted share decreased 21 percent to $0.23 in the third quarter of 2011, compared to $0.29 in the third quarter of 2010. Yahoo actually beat Wall Street expectations… → Read More
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