Today Benchmark Capital announced with Mayor Ed Lee our long-term commitment to the City of San Francisco, opening a new office on the top floor of the Warfield Theater, in the heart of the Tenderloin district. It’s our intention to create a counterpart to our existing office on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, in keeping with the new spirit of entrepreneurship in the city. → Read More
It looks like the webOS contingent at HP isn’t done losing people. HP laid off 275 webOS employees back in February shortly after they announced their plans for the Open webOS project, and now their Enyo team is being picked apart.
The Verge reported late last night that key members of the Enyo team have left their posts at HP, and will migrate over to Google.
Enyo, in case you’re not steeped in webOS lore, is a JavaScript framework that allows devs to “build and maintain HTML5 applications of any size and complexity” that debuted alongside the ill-fated TouchPad. Considering that the platform is meant to help devs create platform-agnostic apps that can be tailored either for the web or for a mobile device, the team behind it apparently made for an enticing target for Google. → Read More
Well, that’s one way to get some attention for your product launch.
Manpacks is announcing a new Startup Perks program, and to promote it, the company mailed boxes of free condoms to more than 100 startups, including Path, Udemy, Scribd, and GetAround. Supposedly, the boxes started arriving today — includes a custom URL where workers at that specific company can sign up for the program. → Read More
Launched in 2009, Yahoo’s Connected TV was one of the first platforms to introduce an open app development kit (ADK) for Internet-capable TVs. Now it’s making those apps even more powerful, by allowing developers to build apps that integrate TV and mobile capabilities.
At a meeting with developers Thursday evening, the Yahoo Connected TV team is rolling out the newest version of its ADK, in addition to open source availability of its device communication library for Android devices on GitHub. → Read More
BetterWorks, the employee perks startup led by Los Angeles entrepreneur and investor Paige Craig, has told its customers that it will be shutting down May 31.
The company offered tools to help businesses manage discounts and rewards programs for employees. In the past few months, BetterWorks still seemed to be rolling out a steady stream of new features like catering and groups and permissions. In fact, Director of Product Varun Krishna told me that BetterWorks was seeing growing interest from larger enterprises (though in retrospect that may have been a polite way of saying that it wasn’t making enough money from small- and medium-sized businesses).
→ Read More
Two big customer review platforms are teaming up: Bazaarvoice just announced that it has agreed to acquire PowerReviews.
The agreement is for up to $31 million in cash, plus stock, bringing the total estimated value to be $151 million. Bazaarvoice says the acquisition should close before the end of July. → Read More
Thanks to health-focused startup accelerators like San Francisco-based Rock Health and New York City-based BluePrint Health lacking intimate familiarity with HIPAA or med school experience is no longer a disqualifier for entrepreneurs looking to enter the health space. There are plenty of problems to tackle, and there’s growth capital to be found.
To that point: One of the first graduates of BluePrint’s healthtech accelerator is a startup called Meddik, which wants to combine the Web’s medical data with advice from regular people (and experts) to create a smart repository for health information. To give it the fuel it needs as it gears up for launch later this summer, the startup is today announcing that it has raised $750K in seed funding from a flock of notable angel and early-stage VCs, including Chris Dixon, Nat Turner, Zach Weinberg, Bob Stern, Vivek Garipalli, as well as Collaborative Fund, Founder Collective, Great Oaks, and Silicon Badia. → Read More
Knowing how users react to Facebook’s product changes is crucial to the site making the right moves, so today it closed an acq-hire of part of design research firm Bolt | Peters — specifically its leading man CEO Nate Bolt and several other employees from the six person consultancy. Those coming over will be joining Facebook’s design team that’s headed by Kate Aronowitz.
Bolt | Peters started 10 years ago and specialized in recruiting actual visitors to a website through its tool Ethnio and then observing their usage remotely so it could deliver insights on what to improve to their clients, which numbered over 90. Bolt | Peters will shut down on June 22nd, and has already spun out its Ethnio real-time research service.
Facebook tests product changes more frequently than nearly any service. Bringing in Nate Bolt and some of his teammates will help it understand exactly how users feel about changes and avoid blunders like Beacon. → Read More
This is guest post by Julia Szopa , program director at the blackbox.vc incubator in Silicon Valley which specialises in moving European startups into the US.
It is not uncommon for European entrepreneurs to come to the Silicon Valley to learn how to launch globally. However, they often play “the startup game” by the wrong rules. With scarce venture resources in Europe, founders learn to compromise way too much and accept what’s typically unacceptable by those who build great, successful companies with global potential. → Read More
“In the Studio” continues this week with an engineer who began programming at the end high school, double-majored in CS/EE in college, dropped out of Stanford’s graduate CS program to become the second employee at Mint.com, and after spending some time at Intuit (which acquired Mint), now has her own company focused on building software for the small-medium business market.
Poornima Vijayashanker is not your average engineer. Growing up in a household where electronics were regularly taken apart for fun, she started coding toward the end of high school and ended up majoring in CS for her undergraduate degree. After a brief stint as an R&D engineer for Synopsis, she wanted to dive into the Valley’s startup scene and elected to enroll in a master’s CS program at Stanford. It was there she initially met Aaron Patzer, the founder of Mint, and when the opportunity arose for her to join the small team, she dropped out of Stanford and helped build the company. From that experience, she ended up at Intuit, where she started plotting her next move, and now is the founder and CEO of Bizeebee, member manage software to help small business manage their customers, inventory, and a host of other services. → Read More
Apple is continuing its “famous person uses Siri” commercials by bringing in famous person John Malkovich to add a soupçon of Old World weltschmerz and philosophizing to what is, in short, a way to schedule a wake-up call without unlocking your phone. The commercials feature Malkovich in what appears to be the house above the nasty places in Hostel where he muses on fine meats and the meaning of life.
I don’t quite get these celebrity appearances but, in the end, I suppose they’re good for brand awareness. Siri isn’t for the geeks – it’s for the folks who may have once been in love with BlackBerries. Siri suggests a certain ease, a certain subsumed technicality that would draw in the C-level exec and, in parallel, well-known superstars. It is, in short, a little assistant that will never talk back to you, never ask for a raise, and never request that you stop cursing. → Read More
Insta-who? Today Facebook begins rolling out Facebook Camera for iOS to English-speaking countries, a standalone photos app where you can shoot, filter, and share single or sets of photos and scroll through a feed of photos uploaded to Facebook by your friends. Developed by Facebook’s photos team without the help of Instagram because the acquisition deal hasn’t closed yet, Facebook Camera looks a lot like the app TechCrunch leaked images of a year ago, and is designed for quicker publishing than Facebook’s multi-featured primary mobile app.
Facebook Camera lets you rapidly pick one or more photos, apply filters, tag friends and locations, add a description, and post. While its 14 filters, batch uploads, and streamlined interface are a big step up from Facebook for iOS, the design isn’t as beautiful as Instagram and neither are the photos you’ll see in it. When asked if Facebook Camera would become a direct competitor to the photosharing network it bought last month, a spokesman told me “As Mark asserted, we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently, so I anticipate some healthy competition.” → Read More
In what should be a very welcome addition for Android developers, Google is adding subscription billing to its app store.
That should give developers yet another to earn revenue on top of in-app purchases of virtual currency, downloads of paid apps and advertising. It will probably most benefit mid and hardcore game developers, who are more likely to have rabid fans willing to pay for monthly access. It will also help magazine publishers, who are still figuring out how to sell content on tablets.
All of the subscriptions are auto-renewing and can be set with monthly or annual fees. Developers set the price themselves. There’s also an HTTP-based publisher API that lets enterprise-scale backend servers validate or cancel subscriptions. It’s inter-operable with subscriptions on the web, so users can take their paid access with them across devices and web destinations. → Read More
Dan Misener, in a fit of inspired data mining, scraped half of Kickstarter to find failed projects. He could not, it seems, find a single one. Why? Because Kickstarter hides them behind a non-searchable wall. They exist, sure, but you won’t find them with google and they never, ever show them in their “Discover” browsing system.
And good for them.
In a general sense, Kickstarter isn’t a marketplace. It’s not like Etsy or eBay or Amazon where the slow-sellers sit next to the hot items. It is, instead, more of a competition. It’s a competition for eyeballs, for cash, and for media attention. It is more a dog show than flea market, and you don’t keep the ugly dogs on stage after the first round of judging.
→ Read More
Crowdfunder, the Los Angeles-based startup creating an online platform for the “crowdfunding” of startups and small businesses, has launched the first public beta version of its site this week. The launch comes on the heels of Crowdfunder closing on $400,000 in seed funding from a group of angel investors earlier this month, CEO Chance Barnett tells me.
But: Since the crowdfunding portion of the JOBS Act has not taken effect yet — it’s still being reviewed by the Securities and Exchange Commission — Crowdfunder is holding a unique sort of beta launch, with a series of contests planned in cities across the US. → Read More
One of the hot companies at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York this week was the real-time people-powered translation service Babelverse. Quite often, though, Google Translate-style machine translation is good enough and there is clearly a huge market for all kinds of translation services. SayHi Translate, a $0.99 iOS app that focuses on machine translation, just announced that it has now translated over 10 million phrases since its launch just four weeks ago. To celebrate this milestone, SayHi is releasing version 2.0 of its app today, which features a redesigned and easier to use interface, as well as new controls over how its spoken translations sound. → Read More
Huddle, the six-year-old company that makes cloud collaboration software for the enterprise, has closed on $24 million in new funding, bringing its total equity funding to $40 million.
The new round, which serves as Huddle’s Series C, was led by Jafco Ventures, with DAG Ventures participating along with previous backers Matrix Partners and Eden Ventures. → Read More
There’s a lot of talk these days about what you can do with “big data.” Here’s one of the more eye-catching uses: A startup called Recorded Future pulls data from around the Web to give customers a better handle on — that’s right — the future.
The company just announced that it has raised $12 million in Series C funding from Balderton and Google Ventures. Balderton partner and former Business Objects CEO Bernard Liautaud is joining the board. → Read More
Today, Israeli startup Superfly, which offers a secure tool that combines worldwide flight information with personal travel preferences to help people organize and maximize the value of their travel rewards among other things, is quietly launching a shot across the bow of the industry’s giants — in this case, uber popular metasearch engine, Kayak.
That’s because the startup now has the benefit of calling on the significant operational and financial experience of Willard (Bill) Smith, who was, until recently, Kayak’s CFO. Smith joined Kayak in May last year (as the company’s first-ever CFO) to help the startup prepare for and actually move forward with its perpetually-delayed IPO. → Read More
Ad startup 140 Proof is opening up a partner platform for companies that want to take advantage of its social ad targeting.
The company currently delivers ads to 50 social apps, including Echofon, TweetCaster, and Plume. Underlying the network is something that 140 Proof calls “Interest Graph Targeting,” where users are assigned different “personas” based on what they say and who they follow. Those personas allow advertisers to serve ads to people with specific interests, and the new platform makes this interest targeting available to other companies.
→ Read More
San Francisco, CA
