January 2014
The Alternative Commerce Recipe
Alternative Commerce is a piece of cake, right? After all, while big box retailers are suffering, fun things like “the Internet” and “mobile phones” make it easier to sell stuff…
Yahoo could be getting back into the search game. Its long-suffering deal with Microsoft has underperformed, making recent revelations that the company is working on building new search products hardly…
Sunrise Calendar Stops Sending iCloud Credentials Back To Their Servers
The increasingly popular Sunrise calendar app faced a bit of a brouhaha last week, after a couple of well-respected developers (namely, Neven Mrgan and Instapaper creator Marco Arment) pointed out…
Ask A VC: Manatt’s Peter Csathy On The New Golden Age Of Content
In this week’s episode of Ask A VC, Manatt Digital Media Ventures’ Peter Csathy joined us in the studio to talk about the return of content, his firm’s investment strategy…
Airbnb Is Testing Out An Affordable Cleaning Service For Hosts In San Francisco
Peer-to-peer lodgings marketplace Airbnb has been focused on finding ways that it can help its hosts improve the quality of experience for guests that stay in their homes. As part…
Apple Said To Be Focusing On Health With iOS 8 And iWatch, Following Exec Meeting With FDA
Apple’s plans for iOS 8 focus on redefining health tracking via mobile devices, according to a new report from 9to5Mac, which has a terrific track record when it comes to…
Euro Secondhand Marketplace Vinted Raises $27M To Take On The Salvation Army
The clothes may be cheap, but prices for tech companies launching mobile and web-based marketplaces to sell secondhand and consignment clothing keep going up. The latest company trying to get…
Keen On… Hacking Gender: How Women In Silicon Valley Can Become Jane Bond
Despite incremental improvements, the gender bias issue in Silicon Valley remains an important one — and one that could benefit from special attention. Earlier this month, Y Combinator’s Jessica Livingston…
The march of the 2014 initial public offerings commences, with the latest one of the oldest brands on the internet. Coupons.com has just filed S-1 papers with the SEC for…
Gillmor Gang Live 01.31.14 (TCTV)
Gillmor Gang – Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Live recording session has concluded for today. Have you found us on Facebook yet? facebook.com/GillmorGang
BrightFunnel Raises Funding To Build Smarter Marketing Predictions
Marketing startup BrightFunnel is announcing that it has raised a small “advisory round” of slightly less than $1 million from some big-name investors. Co-founder and CEO Nadim Hossain served most…
This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Facebook Paper, Lenovo-Moto, Carbon 3D Printing, And Coffee!
Looking for a way to get through Friday? Here you go. Facebook launched a news reader app called Paper. (Teens will love it.) And Google sold Motorola to Lenovo for…
Obama Says Intelligence Director Who Fibbed To Congress “Should Have Been More Careful”
President Obama diplomatically defended embattled Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who is accused of lying to Congress about the existence of the National Security Agency’s spying program.
Vector Capital Makes Controlling Investment In CollabNet Developer Platform
CollabNet is one of the leading agile development platforms in the enterprise and the company behind the Subversion version control software. It has millions of users on its platform, which launched…
Previous TechCrunch Battlefield Contestants Have Raised $2.4 Billion. Ready To Apply?
TechCrunch’s Battlefield is a proven springboard for startups destined for great things. Fact. We ran the data and we’ll take you through it below. But before we get to that,…
Aereo, a TV streaming service looking to change the way we consume media, has just sold out of capacity in New York City. Founder and CEO Chet Kanojia confirmed the…
Twine Canvas Is Like Tinder But Based On Personality, Not Sex Appeal
Don’t judge a book by its cover. Beauty is only skin deep. It’s what’s on the inside that counts. These are the mantras of millions of young singles scouring the…
Ouya Updates Hardware With $129 16GB Console, 8GB Edition Remains At $99
Ouya’s original hardware featured just 8GB of storage onboard, but a temporary Limited Edition all-white version launched during the holidays doubled that to 16GB. Now, the game console startup is…
Investor Reaction To Microsoft’s Rumored CEO Choice: We’re Fine With That
Yesterday in after-hours trading, Microsoft picked up a minor gain. The trading period was interesting as news that Microsoft’s board was tipped to select its own Satya Nadella as its…
To Counter Investor Signaling, YC Partners Can No Longer Be The First Money Into The Incubator’s Startups
Y Combinator has long allowed its partners to invest their own personal money in the incubator’s startups — often times partners put money into these startups before institutional investors and…
VC Lip Reading Video Is The Best VC Video You’ll See Today
If you’re familiar with the ‘Bad Lip Reading of The NFL’ videos on YouTube, you might get a charge out of this hilarious mashup created by startup MeetBall. It puts…
Purr Pebble Smartwatch App Vibrates Your Life Away In 5 Minute Chunks
Yesterday, a new faceless “watch” called Durr that simply vibrates every five minutes got a big feature over at Verge. It’s an interesting concept, and in his article Aaron Souppouris…
At UC Davis, Amazon Demonstrates A Novel Way To Bypass College Bookstores
Why should college students waste their precious party days standing in line, when they can order Ramen from Amazon Prime? The University of California at Davis recently inked a deal…
App Annie 2013 Index Flags Up Freemium’s Onward March & Why Many Devs Still Go iOS First
Mobile app analytics firm App Annie has put out a retrospective report on app trends in 2013 and there are few interesting tidbits worth flagging for developers. Notably the continued…
Publishing Platform Issuu Hires Jeremy LaCroix, Formerly Of AOL, To Lead Design
Online publishing platform Issuu is announcing that it has hired Jeremy LaCroix as its head of product design and user experience. Joe Hyrkin, who became CEO last year, told me…
Meet The First 10 Companies To Take Part In Founders Fund And SOSVentures’ LEAP Axlr8r
Late last year, a couple of venture firms sought to invest in LEAP Motion’s gesture control technology by helping developers to build businesses around it with an accelerator. Today, the…
Miggo Camera Strap Protects Your Gear, Too, So You Don’t Need A Bulky Camera Bag
A new Kickstarter project takes a useful thing and makes it even more useful, by offering a strap that not only carries your DSLR but also protects it when not…
Telenav Held Talks With Navmii Before Acquiring Rival Navigation App Skobbler
TechCrunch understands that Skobbler wasn’t the only OpenStreepMap-powered startup to be on Telenav’s radar. We’re hearing that the U.K.’s Navmii, maker of Navfree, the free mapping and navigation app for…
India Fashion Portal Myntra Raises $50M On A $200M Valuation As Amazon And Flipkart Circle
India’s e-commerce market is projected to grow sevenfold to $22 billion in the next five years, and investors and global e-commerce companies want to have a piece of the action.…
Twitter Acquires Over 900 IBM Patents Following Infringement Claim, Enters Cross-Licensing Agreement
Twitter announced today that it has acquired over 900 patents from IBM, and that it has entered into a cross-licensing agreement with the Internet services and software company. IBM had…
