WorldStores, a U.K.-based online retailer of home and garden products going after supplier scale to fuel its growth, has raised £10 million ($15.2 million) in Series C funding, led by Serena Capital. Existing investors Balderton Capital and Advent Venture Partners also participated in the round. The new funding brings WorldStores’ total funding to £21 million. → Read More
CBTec, the e-learning startup founded by ex-Nokians and members of the now defunct MeeGo team, has released an Android app for its Eliademy MOOC platform that’s also compatible with the widely used open source VLE Moodle. That’s because both Eliademy and Moodle are based on the same codebase, while in addition it provides CBTec with a nice new revenue stream. → Read More
As mobile gaming has exploded, it follows that startups helping to feed and in turn feed off the mobile gaming ecosystem are poised for growth. One such company is AppLift, the mobile games marketing platform co-founded and backed by games distribution incubator HitFox, which today is announcing that it’s closed a $13 million Series A round from Prime Ventures. → Read More
A new startup called Pics.io out of the Ukraine hopes to take the next big leap in the online photography workflow, by making browser-based, fully collaborative RAW image file processing a reality. The team has plenty of experience working in digital photography, and is now looking for funding to help turn its very basic prototype into a full-fledged, shipping product. → Read More
Housebites, the London, UK-based startup that enables independent chefs to sell home-cooked meals as an alternative to a take-out, has shuttered in its current form as it gears up to pivot — once again. Its website has been replaced by a holding page that apologises for the withdrawal of the service and thanks “loyal and valued” customers for their support. → Read More
Believe.in, a VC-backed U.K.-based charity donation platform that’s disrupting the cause-giving space by not charging any fees on donations, has announced a partnership with easy payments API startup Stripe — to allow charities to receive direct payments faster than would otherwise be the case. The pair claim payments will be up to one month faster than the “existing norm”, as a result. → Read More
During the height of the Cold War the Soviet Union built up a network of “Naukograd” or “Science Cities”. These were state-created clusters of scientists working on technologies that could help it compete with the West, especially in the field of nuclear weapons and space exploration. Those days are of course long gone, but today Russia – though now freed from the days of the old USSR – now faces… → Read More
Fanatix, the U.K. startup that’s made a mobile-first social network for sports fans to chew over their team’s performance as and after they watch them play, has bolstered its seed round with another $1 million, from a series of undisclosed UK-based Angels. The additional funding brings its total raised to $3 million to date. → Read More
The mobile messaging space is exploding with ever more colourful ways to communicate, augmenting the basics of text and voice — whether that’s stickers, one-to-many video chats or the ability to leave random missives for strangers. Zoobe, a Berlin-based startup, has another cutesy option to add to the pile: cartoon avatars that animate your voice message so you can ramp up the kawaii. → Read More
Qriously, the “question network” that’s trying to reinvent the mobile ad, has announced that it’s closed a $3.5 million Series A round led by Spark Capital — funds it will use to expand its U.S. and European footprint and, more interestingly, to push its new mobile ad product based on what it calls “opinion targeting”. → Read More
Betapond, the Ireland-headquartered Facebook marketing technology startup, has raised €2 million (~$2.5m) in a new round of funding led by The Ulster Bank Diageo Venture Fund — money it plans to use to “accelerate development” of its forthcoming social commerce offering to retailers, which will power product recommendations from a consumer’s trusted Facebook friends. → Read More
Etece, a Spanish TaskRabbit style startup offering an online platform for people who need a job doing but don’t have the time to do it themselves, has just closed a €450k Series A funding round, with investment from Mola Capital, Faraday Ventures Partners and Starcaps Ventures. The company, which was founded in Madrid six months ago, had previously raised €500k from three European… → Read More
Calling startups from London to Lyon, from Tel Aviv to Trondheim, from Amsterdam to Athens: We want you. For the very first time, TechCrunch Disrupt is coming to Europe and we’re looking for the very best startups to launch on our Berlin stage.
Startup Battlefield is the heart and soul of our conferences. Such companies as Yammer, Dropbox, FitBit, Swype and hundreds more have launched from… → Read More
Another reason Twitter is awesome: Cambridge University linguists are using it to track how the usage of one of the U.K.’s Celtic languages, Welsh, is changing. Welsh is only spoken by around a sixth of the population of Wales but enough of those Welsh speakers are tweeting in Welsh to have allowed the researchers to compile a database of source material to use as a jumping off point. → Read More
MyCadbox, from Finland’s CadFaster, is probably best described as a Dropbox for CAD files, but unlike its competitors it largely shuns the Web for native desktop and mobile apps that it says affords it the ability to share and view much larger 3D models and at a higher frame rate than browser-based technologies allow. In the future, however, it has more ambitious plans to add Evernote-style… → Read More
Applications for Ignite100′s third programme have duly opened. It’s seems that rumours of the accelerator’s death were greatly exaggerated. In fact, I’m hearing that this year’s plans are more ambitious than ever, and include extending the length of the programme, raising funds for a new Google Campus-styled co-working space, and building a permanent bridge to New York City. → Read More
After closing a $4m round in March, led by Battery Ventures and Hasso Plattner Ventures, Berlin-based multi-mode travel search platform GoEuro has now launched its website in open beta in the U.K. and Germany, as the first stage of its European rollout. The startup is aiming to simplify the problem of figuring out the best mode of transport to get from A to B. → Read More
Everything.me is a clever app that lets users search for specific content across both native and mobile apps. The app, available in beta, is a replacement app launcher and home screen for Android devices. It simply makes apps appear that are relevant to your request. From there you can download the relevant content or apps. It’s launching its app in the UK and Spain tomorrow. → Read More
Europe’s Competition Commissioner has indicated he is very likely to ask Google for more concessions as part of the EC’s ongoing investigation into Mountain View’s search and advertising practices. Google submitted proposals to the Commission to allay their concerns back in February but now it looks like the company has not done enough to please the EC. → Read More
Carnet de Mode (CDM), the Paris-based online fashion marketplace, has announced that its closed a $1.5 million Series A round — yes, in Europe we call that a Series A — led by Elaia Partners with participation from a number of angels. This brings the total raised by the company to approximately $1.8 million, having previously raised €100k in seed funding in July 2012. → Read More
Here’s an opportunity for European app developers to work on a project aimed first and foremost at helping others, rather than on the off-chance it will catch Yahoo!’s eye and lead to insane riches. Carrier Vodafone’s philanthropic arm has kicked off an app competition seeking iOS and Android apps that are “designed to improve people’s lives and deliver substantial public benefit”. → Read More
Spanish startup Ticketea, the leading DIY ticketing platform in Spain, has raised $4 million in a Series B round of funding. The investment is being led by newly-established Spanish VC Seaya Ventures, and will be used by the company to consolidate its position in Spain through new m-commerce products, as well as for international expansion with a specific focus on emerging markets. Latin America… → Read More
If there’s one thing we know about the explosion in the use of tablets like the iPad, it’s that people have been increasingly using them to consume video content. However, hard data on this has come in only dribs and drabs. Now a video platform which works with major publishes has released data which shows just how big tablet consumption of video is. → Read More
In this post, I’ll attempt to scratch beneath the surface a little and explore the story behind the undisclosed investment or exit. It will draw on conversations with investors and founders who have been directly involved in multiple funding rounds, acquisitions and exits, all of whom agreed to be as candid as possible for the purpose of this article and on the strict condition of anonymity. → Read More
Russian startup Unface.me has created a new social network inspired by the Gossip Girl TV series which lets users create an alter ego to — let’s face it — troll their friends, or even post even worst types of gossip entirely anonymously. The site connects with Facebook and Russian social network VKontakte so it can pull in users’ genuine friend networks, then let them dish salacious gossip. → Read More
We’re all familiar with the bill shock associated with roaming abroad with our cellphones. There are plenty of players that allow you to swap out your SIM card and use cheaper traffic, including Cubic Telecom. However, that process is tedious. So Cubic has secured new funding to enable a range of tablets and notebooks to have their technology built into partner devices. To do this they’ve raised a… → Read More
Imonomy, an Israeli startup which makes software that analyses webpages and automatically inserts relevant, copyright-free images to accompany the content, has closed a $400,000 seed round from a group of angel investors. Investors include Inon Axel, former CEO of Kasamba, Liron Rose, cofounder of AfterDownload, and Itai Levitan and Tal Shaked, partners at AfterDownload. → Read More
JustFab, the subscription-based fashion commerce site, is putting the $109 million that it has raised so far to use: today it is announcing the acquisition of The Fab Shoes, a European e-commerce shoe club in France and Spain, to build out its global operations. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. → Read More
After the aesthetic elegance of Dots, prepare for another injection of minimalist puzzle game beauty. Blip Blup is the new game from London-based design house and app studio ustwo — maker of Whale Trail, a mobile game that snagged an e-book deal, plus a raft of other interesting apps including most recently Rando (random photo-sharing) and Honk (visual messaging). → Read More
No, we still don’t have any word from Amazon on where it stands with a smartphone, but it’s definitely making its mobile ambitions clear anyway. Today, the e-commerce giant took two more steps in its strategy to scale up its Kindle Fire tablet business. It announced that it will now sell the two higher-end versions of the device, the Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HD 8.9″, in 170 countries. And it… → Read More
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