CrunchBase has grown like a tree planted in a quiet corner of the yard and left to do its thing. Six years in, our free and editable industry database gets 1.5 million unique visitors a month and has had 90,000 users create 105,000 companies and 140,000 individual profiles. It’s proven to be one of the most successful products that TechCrunch has launched over the years. Now it’s time… → Read More

In a very surprising twist to Keith Rabois’ departure from Square yesterday, the reason is now known, and it wasn’t about business like everyone speculated. He was charged with sexual harassment by an employee. Here’s Square’s statement, which highlights both that it has found no evidence for the claims, and that he used poor judgement: The first we heard of any of these… → Read More

The Crunchies are next week and we’ve already sold out the beautiful Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco…. Well, we had sold out, but then we found a little more space in the balcony. We opened up that space, so you can still buy a few more tickets if you’re fast, right here.

And one other thing before the show starts — voting ends tonight. Please help us decide the hottest new thing… → Read More

Dustin Curtis is a developer, designer, and blogger who has accomplished the rare feat of getting a blogging platform off the ground. Called Svbtle, it launched in early 2012 as a sort of application-required Tumblr — a few tech thought leaders using a uniform minimalist theme to publish long posts. But it’s grown to more than 200 writers and raised an undisclosed amount of money… → Read More

Aviary isn’t done with the news this year. In a nod to power users, it’s sending its advanced flash suite off as an independent product. The suite’s original developer, Mario Klingemann, is leading the effort and today has relaunched a core part of it, node-based photo manipulator Peacock, as a new AIR download called Nodewerk.

You can get it here and take a look at some of the visual… → Read More

Max Levchin has been many things in his long run in Silicon Valley — PayPal cofounder, Slide founder, angel investor, etc. etc. — but now he’s trying on something more traditional. He’ll be joining Yahoo’s board of directors, in the latest move by the storied web company to reinvigorate itself as a tech leader. Two current members of the board will be stepping away… → Read More

We now have a foil for all the young consumer startups trying to raise their first venture rounds. Snapchat, an increasingly popular mobile app that auto-deletes photos shortly after viewing, is about to close a big new round of funding from Benchmark Capital. We’ve been chasing for the last week or two, but Om Malik has published first — with a few different details. → Read More

Early-stage startups die if they don’t nail their core products quickly. But like all companies, they also need to process loads of paperwork required for basic operations, from crunching numbers in Quickbooks to churning out piles of human-resource forms for new hires. So, as any startup executive knows, the balance between product development and rote paperwork is a constant frustration — which… → Read More

Spotify, the streaming music startup, was having serious trouble paying its bills, if you believed reports from earlier this year. Its 2011 financials showed a loss of nearly $60 million on revenues of $244 million. But this information is out of date, because the company has had a relatively strong 2012.

It made $200 million in total revenue over the first six months of 2012, and is on an… → Read More

Genetically modified food promises to cheaply feed the world, but is it dangerous? The agriculture industry will tell you no, organic food advocates will tell you yes, and science won’t give you a firm answer because test results are inconclusive so far.

TechCrunch, meanwhile, won’t tell you much on food tech topics like this because we usually focus on what’s interesting in Silicon Valley… → Read More

Imagine Google Analytics but for world trade, with graphs showing data like shipping volume instead of site visitors. Combine that with LinkedIn-style profiles, but for manufacturers, and you get Panjiva. The six-year-old New York company is rolling out a new global search feature this week that takes the dozens of data sources it has been quietly accumulating about anyone shipping in bulk — port… → Read More

Klout hasn’t just defied influential tech pundits, its social reputation scorecard has won them over. Now the sometimes-controversial startup is aiming at search. The startup has just signed a strategic investment and partnership with Microsoft that, on top of new funding, will create a product and business relationship with the Bing team.

You’ll begin seeing Klout scores — the combined… → Read More

Vox Media‘s 312 SB Nation sites for sports teams around the country are getting a major upgrade today that spans its user interfaces, editorial workflows and ad displays (including for mobile). Publishers who still don’t care about perfecting their web products need to pay close attention.

Readers will immediately notice fancy new homepages for their favorite teams, with classy site-specific… → Read More

New entrepreneurs dream about making an impact that spans decades. Bill Campbell has done it. Some readers may know him as a key early Apple executive featured in the Steve Jobs biography, and as an Apple board member today. Others will recognize him for his work as CEO turned now chairman of Intuit. But ask around in Silicon Valley executive circles and you’ll most likely just hear that he’s “… → Read More

The whole world wants to know what’s on Mark Zuckerberg’s mind, and we’re going to find out. The Facebook CEO has agreed to his first interview on stage since his company’s IPO, and it’s happening at TechCrunch Disrupt next Tuesday at 2pm.

While once Zuckerberg’s dorm-room project, Facebook has transformed into a world-changing social utility and the CEO’s story has inspired a generation. Not… → Read More

After a decade bereft of IPOs, venture-backed tech companies have come roaring back into the public markets over the last couple of years. But in case you think this means we’re in a bubble, some of these companies — including Zynga, Groupon and Facebook — have struggled in their market debuts.

So how are top investors handling the opportunities and pitfalls of taking top companies public in… → Read More

We are excited to announce that Reid Hoffman is the next special guest to join our incredible lineup for Disrupt SF. During his two decades in Silicon Valley, he has helped build seminal Silicon Valley companies of our time, including PayPal and LinkedIn, and invested in dozens of others including Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm, Ning, Six Apart and Zynga. He now leads top venture firm Greylock… → Read More