San Francisco, CA | September 8 - 12, 2012
The founders of Oblong Industries said myopia is a real problem in the world of startups today at Disrupt San Francisco 2012.
TechCrunch writer and moderator Josh Constine set up the discussion when he asked Oblong founders Kwindla Kramer and John Underkoffer about how startups seem to be increasingly doing the bare minimum to get their startup up and running. A trend is emerging for startups… → Read More
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said UberX, the lowest-cost option of the popular car service, is “probably at or above” rival Lyft in numbers. Kalanick discussed Uber’s struggles against regulators, expansion and competition with TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Tsotsis at TechCrunch Disrupt today.
“Competition is good,” Kalanick said. “If somebody can offer value at a cheaper price, they should. But that… → Read More
Our own Josh Constine is speaking to Oblong Industries at TechCrunch Disrupt today, and they’re discussing the future of human interface when it comes to technology.
Kwindla Kramer and John Underkoffer from Oblong had this to say about its mission. → Read More
This is it. TechCrunch Disrupt is back in San Francisco, and even though the show is sold out, we’re still going to bring you all the action on our official Ustream feed and on the site. Disrupt is just too big for one site. Watch TechCrunch’s social feeds for even more action! → Read More
Editor’s note: Joe Kraus is a partner at Google Ventures. In 1993, he co-founded Excite.com, an early Internet search engine. He also co-founded JotSpot in 2004, a wiki company acquired by Google in 2006. Follow him on his blog, JoeKraus.com, and on Twitter: @jkraus.
Before I became a VC in 2009, I was an active angel investor for about ten years. During that time, I got exposed to the age… → Read More
This year’s TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco has been the biggest yet. Nearly 3,000 people poured in to watch a wonderful keynote by top product CEO Jack Dorsey, talks with legends like Reid Hoffman and Ben Horowitz, and they were standing in the aisles during Michael Arrington’s historic post-IPO interview with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg today.
Tomorrow, we end on a high note with the Startup… → Read More
I’ve had a sense for a while that infrastructure-as-a-service (like Amazon Web Services) and platform-as-a-service (like Heroku) are converging. Developers love the idea of using a PaaS to speed up provisioning and deployment, but don’t necessarily want to completely give up control of their environments. One sign of this convergence is Pagoda Box, a PaaS that provides a deeper level of control… → Read More
Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt is tricky enough to navigate when you’re being pitched every few feet by hungry young startups.
So we’ve harnessed that energy into a fast run through some of the companies out there today. One of the major themes is that social is by no means over.
Plenty of startups are still mining that rich seam, and it’s interesting to see the sheer variety of firms… → Read More
Think about when you go to a wedding (in my ripe old age, I have been to one) and you jot down a note in a big book for the couple. Imagine if instead you could record a video or audio message (or be boring and stick to the text) for them. That’s what Evergram offers. → Read More
Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco is full of disruptive companies, and it’s hard to pick a favorite.
But to give you a sense of the craziness, you need to tune in for just 5 minutes and check out these companies.
There’s plenty more where these came from and some more videos coming, including the country Pavilions. Stay tuned.
The companies covered here include: → Read More
Yesterday, famous cartoonist Hugh MacLeod started drawing all the action taking place at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. We present you the second batch of drawings.
In these cartoons, you will see overheard conversations, a quote from Michael Arrington, what it feels like to be an entrepreneur at TechCrunch Disrupt and general thoughts about our industry. Check back tomorrow for another… → Read More
It’s Day 2 in Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, and the startups just keep coming. This year’s Alley is bigger than it’s ever been, so it’s pretty tough to get through all the companies.
Indeed you could spend all day going through every single one, but we do our best to give you a flavour of the companies in a few bite-sized TechCrunch TV videos like this one. Enjoy!
The… → Read More
What a day! TechCrunch Disrupt SF day two kicked off with super angel Ron Conway and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee. Then we had Kevin Rose, Marc Benioff, Aaron Levie and many others. Not to mention Mike Arrington’s epic chat with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Be sure to check out all of our live coverage of Disrupt SF day two here.
Yesterday, 15 companies presented in the Startup Battlefield… → Read More
Peer-to-peer bike rental service Spinlister was chosen by the audience from amongst the Startup Alley companies today to pitch on stage as part of the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield in San Francisco this week.
There are over 100 million bikes in the US and over a billion on the planet. But most bikes are not used daily, meaning there’s plenty of opportunity to meet demand. Normal bike rental… → Read More
As Eric Ries pointed out in a TechCrunch post last year, although many may be familiar with “A/B testing” as a direct marketing technique (what it was initially developed for), it can be an even more powerful tool when used in product development.
Of course, while A/B testing has long been an integral part of web development, for native mobile apps, utilizing the process to test new designs… → Read More
This was no sweaty, hoodie-clad boy genius. Today at TechCrunch Disrupt, Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated he’s a business man, a mobile product visionary, and most importantly, a leader Facebook’s employees can look up to.
Speaking quickly but confidently, he admitted mistakes. But Zuck’s accomplishment today was meeting his biggest questions and criticisms head on. With the smile of man holding a… → Read More
Debuting at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2012, Chronos is a new time-tracking application for iPhone that shows you how you spend your time as well as who you’re with, where and when, so you can set goals for yourself. Using the built-in sensors on the iPhone like the compass and accelerometer, for example, in combination with location databases from Google and Foursquare, Chronos can track whether… → Read More
Ever since Apple launched its voice-driven personal assistant Siri, a slew of clones have appeared on the scene. Most of these, however, clearly show that Siri was the result of a massive research project that isn’t easy to replicate. Maluuba, which is launching at TechCrunch Disrupt today, is the closest thing I’ve seen to a viable Siri competitor on Android. In many ways, Maluuba is actually… → Read More
North Carolina-based INRFOOD aims to add some much-needed context to the food we eat every day by highlighting all the (occasionally funky) ingredients that tend to appear in it. To that end, the bootstrapped startup just launched its iOS and Android app on the TechCrunch Disrupt SF stage and it’s clear that the team wants to bring that age-old adage about watching what you eat into the 21st… → Read More
Studyhall, which launches at TechCrunch Disrupt SF today, is a peer-to-peer platform and network that is built specifically for students. Sorry, teachers, it’s not for you. Yet.
A number of startups have emerged in the last year looking to dethrone the old guards of higher education technology, like Blackboard. Yet, while many educational platforms are limited in what they offer students… → Read More
Prior Knowledge debuted its predictive database for application developers today at Disrupt San Francisco 2012.
Based upon work first done at MIT, the service is offered through the company’s Veritable API, which the company says is designed to make applications smarter. The technology uses state of the art machine learning behind the scenes to handle the complexity for real world data. → Read More
We’ve all been there before. You’re on a phone call or video chat when someone brings up a topic you’re unfamiliar with. What are your options? You either lie about knowing what the other person is talking about or you scramble to Google or Wikipedia and search on whatever the topic might be. It happens all the time.
Wouldn’t it be easier if there were a piece of software that could analyze… → Read More
HackerRank, a new social platform for coders, is launching at TechCrunch Disrupt today. The Y Combinator-backed company, which was founded by the same team as job site InterviewStreet, wants to create a community of hackers based around puzzles, game bots and real-world challenges. HackerRank, as the name implies, will also offer leaderboards and other competitive elements. → Read More
The web makes it easy to find instructional videos on practically any topic. There are 18,600,000 search results for “how to” on the site at the moment. Obviously not all of them are relevant, but that’s a staggering number. But if you’re trying to learn a physical skill — like dancing, yoga or martial arts — how can you tell if you’re doing the moves correctly? → Read More
TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington sat down with AOL CEO Tim Armstrong this afternoon at TechCrunch Disrupt SF – yes, the CEO of the same company that Arrington sold the blog he created to two years ago (…before later being forced out). The last time the two were on stage together was when AOL bought TechCrunch, in fact. Arrington started off by complimenting Armstrong on tripling the AOL stock… → Read More
Well, that’s that then. All the talk a while ago about AOL possibly merging with Yahoo is officially off the table for now, according to AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong.
“I’ve never talked to Marissa [Mayer, the new CEO of Yahoo] about merging AOL and Yahoo,” he said, speaking at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco today. Nor did he deny that it was something that had been discussed with… → Read More
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the social network is focused on supporting Instagram’s growth, following the close of a roughly $750 million deal to buy the photo-sharing app. Instagram is the most unusual acquisition in Facebook’s history, considering the huge sticker price, the startup’s small team, and a pledge to stay hands-off with the service. Most of Facebook’s other deals have been… → Read More
Organizer, a startup that just took the stage at Disrupt, aims to bring political campaigns a smarter, faster way to manage their field work through smartphone apps — and eventually to do the same thing for businesses.
Since we’re less than two months away from the November elections, Organizer wouldn’t have much time to get its product into the hands of its biggest customers if it was… → Read More
Alicanto, launching today at Disrupt San Francisco 2012, is bringing machine learning, data analytics and the concept of forming neighborhood business alliances to the small business market.
Alicanto is entering one of the most difficult markets to tackle. The small business market is local, businesses are run by people who have little time for marketing. They are not particularly tech savvy. → Read More
This afternoon at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Facebook chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat down with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington for his first interview since the company’s closely watched (and much criticized) initial public offering — and needless to say, it was a pretty big deal. Nearly everything he said was headline-worthy in one way or another.
And… → Read More
