Talent drain? That’s what they’re saying. The explosion of early stage startups has made it harder for companies to find the best engineers and designers because everyone’s trying to do their own startup. GroupTalent (a startup, of course) wants to be the solution for that.
In an effort to make the process of finding work even less painful than before, today the company is launching a newly revamped website which introduces a matching algorithm for automatically pairing projects and engineers. → Read More
Anthony Ha, who previously worked for tech blog Venturebeat, reports on Adweek that SAY Media has acquired tech blog ReadWriteWeb. He also says Dan Frommer, former editor at tech blog Silicon Alley Insider and founder of tech blog SplatF, will be joining tech blog ReadWriteWeb as its new editor-at-large. The news comes shortly after Marshall Kirkpatrick, who has long been a senior writer for tech blog ReadWriteWeb after working as a reporter for tech blog TechCrunch, announced that he would be leaving his fulltime position at tech blog ReadWriteWeb. → Read More
Ex-Googler and previously head of AOL Media and Studios – and I guess you could say the former boss of my boss’s boss – David Eun has been appointed Executive Vice President at consumer electronics giant Samsung.
At Samsung, Eun will be helping the company develop a ‘global media strategy’ for its array of digital TVs, smartphones, tablets and other connected devices. → Read More
Another startup accelerator is debuting in LA today—Amplify. With the backing of some well-known Hollywood and Silicon Valley names, the Venice Beach-based incubator is launching a $4.5 million incubator and fund. Investors include Mark Burnett (Apprentice, Survivor), Brian Grazer, Jarl Mohn, Accel Partners, BV Capital, Greycroft Partners, Rustic Canyon, Tomorrow Ventures (Eric Schmidt), Tim Draper, Gordon Crawford, Vivi Nevo, Paige Craig, Diego Berdakin and Tom McInerney.
The accelerator, which is being managed by Paul Bricault and Richard Wolpert, will be looking to incubate and invest in companies at the intersection of technology and entertainment.
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A new Chicago-based startup is emerging today as a contender in the local business customer loyalty and rewards space. Belly (formally Bellyflop) is hoping to replace those old punchcards you receive at local merchants. And the startup is debuting with an investment from Lightbank, the venture firm founded by Groupon co-founders Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell. While the exact amount of the investment was not disclosed, we understand it is in the seven-figures.
Belly wants to reinvent customer loyalty rewards through gamification and digital check-ins. But the startup has a slightly different take on how to achieve this. Here’s how Belly works. Belly offers a quick-setup, plug-and-play rewards platform to merchants. Part of this is an in-store iPad (which Belly supplies) that is used to validate paying customers right at the point of sale, and serves as a check-in point. Belly will also train employees to encourage them to participate in the program. → Read More
iSwifter, an iPad app that allows developers to stream flash games to the tablet device, is debuting Rover, an iPad browser that gives educators and students access to Flash-based educational content on the device. The startup has partnered with Discovery Education, FunBrain, Mathletics developer 3P Learning to create content for the new app.
As we’ve written in the past, iSwifter allows users to browse, play and rate Flash games from gaming portals on the web, with each game optimized for iPad. The startup actually spun out of incubator YouWeb last year. With iSwifter, Flash does not run on the device at all but it is streamed to the tablet just like a Netflix movie or a YouTube video.
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While consumer electronics (CE) merchandise returns are often an overlooked scenario for consumers they are undoubtedly top of mind for manufacturers and retailers because of their billion dollar price tag. “Put another way, manufacturers spend about 5 percent to 6 percent of revenues to manage all aspects of a customer return. For retailers, returns represent approximately 2 percent to 3 percent of sales,” according to a new study put out by Accenture.
What’s more shocking is that, typically, only 5% of those returns are due to defective products. The other 95% of returns are either because of product frustration or buyer’s remorse. In the end, the items make their way back to stores in good shape but at a cost to retailers and manufacturers, the study continues. → Read More
LinkedIn has put out its annual list of top buzzwords (over)used on members’ professional profiles. The top word people in the U.S. use to describe themselves on LinkedIn? “Creative.” That word did not even make the top ten list last year, when “Extensive Experience” topped the list.
And it’s not just the U.S. If you look at the country breakdown, this was the most used word in economies such as the U.S., UK, Canada, Netherlands, and Germany. (People in Spain like to think of themselves as more “Managerial;” India, “Effective;” Brazil, “Multinational;” France, “Dynamic”).
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Car sharing network operator Zipcar this morning announced the exercise of its option to purchase a majority ownership interest in Barcelona-based Catalunya Carsharing, better known as Avancar, after investing in the company almost exactly two years ago.
In fact, the option had been extended for an extra year after Zipcar decided last year it wouldn’t yet exercise it, opting instead to give Avancar a loan that could be converted into equity. → Read More
Today, content discovery platform Outbrain is announcing it has secured $35 million in Series D funding in a round led by Index Ventures. Existing investors Carmel Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners also participated in the round. As a part of the deal, Dominique Vidal, partner at Index Ventures, will join the company’s Board of Directors.
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Ecwid, a Russian startup that enables people to set up an online store on their website or on a social network in mere minutes, has raised its first round of institutional funding, securing $1.5 million from Runa Capital.
The e-commerce software company says it currently has over 100,000 customers in 174 countries, but given that about 40 percent of its customers are located in the United States, Ecwid will part of the capital to open its first office in Mountain View, California in early 2012. → Read More
Database virtualization startup Xeround has raised $9.3 million in Series C funding Benchmark Capital, Giza Venture Capital, Ignition Partners and Trilogy Partnership. This brings the startup’s total funding to over $30 million.
Xeround offers a cloud database-as-a-service for MySQL-based applications. Currently the service is offered for EC2 MySQL databases, as well as Rackspace-MySQL and Heroku-MySQL applications. Xeround’s cloud database allows service providers, ISVs and customers to run their applications in the cloud and automatically scale up or down, all while ensuring availability in the event of failure or schema changes. → Read More
PowerCloud Systems, a spin-out of Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) that offers a ‘networking-as-a-service’ platform for OEMs and service providers, has raised $6 million in Series B funding in a round led by Qualcomm Ventures, with prior backers Walden Venture Capital, Javelin Venture Partners and PARC participating.
The capital will be used to enhance the company’s online software platform, CloudCommand. → Read More
Code for America, a non-profit which tries to bring the people and the power of the internet into government, has received a $1.5 million grant from Google.
Code for America, which was founded by Jennifer Pahlka, launched this year to help governments become more transparent, connected, and efficient by connecting web developers with people who deliver city services. Earlier this year, Code for America debuted its inaugural fellowship program, which pairs technologists with leading cities to help them innovate. → Read More
Exclusive - KidZui, maker of family-friendly Internet products like a safe browser and a video destination for kids, has scored another $2.4 million in funding from existing investors, led by Mission Ventures and Costella Kirsch.
The capital will be used for the development of a new video production division dubbed Zui Studios. → Read More
Without Google, no one ever graduated college. At least that’s the message of “College Tips By Google“. It’s a new site where Google shamelessly suggests its products as the answer to all the problems facing today’s students.
Here’s a list of the 16 products Google suggests and how I think they’re actually used by college students:
Glassdoor, a jobs and career community where employees can anonymously rate companies and CEOs, has just released its fourth annual Employees’ Choice Awards, listing the top 50 “Best Places to Work,” based on surveys collected from U.S. employees in 2011. The top five Best Places to Work, according to employees, are: Bain & Company, McKinsey & Company, Facebook, MITRE, and Google.
Looking at just the tech sector, the 2012 best places to work in technology are Facebook, MITRE Google, Apple and Rackspace. Facebook actually slipped from the top spot last year to number 3 on the 2012 list and Google had moved up to the fifth slot from number 30 on last year’s list. → Read More
Ebay for real world labor TaskRabbit, has seen lightning fast growth in the past couple of months, and has taken advantage of that growth by raising another $17.8 million in Series B funding. Participating in the round are existing investors Shervin Pishevar, Baseline Ventures, First Round Capital, FLOODGATE Fund, Collaborative Fund and Shasta Ventures, in addition to new partners LightSpeed Ventures, Allen & Company, and Tornante Company, former Disney CEO Michael Eisner’s new investment firm. → Read More
Lookout, a company that offers security services for a number of smartphone platforms, is releasing its 2012 Mobile Malware Predictions, based on data collected from its Mobile Threat Network, a cloud-based network which constantly analyzes global threat data to identify and quickly block new threats with over-the-air app updates. The network includes more than one million apps and 15 million user devices worldwide.
For background, Lookout’s web-based, cloud-connected applications for Android, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and most recently iOS devices help users from losing their phones and identifies and block threats on a consumer’s phone. Users simply download the software to a device, and it will act as a tracking application, data backup and a virus protector much like security software downloaded to a computer.
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Unless you live in Japan, chances are you’ve never heard of Pixiv. Even if you do live in Japan, unless you are young and really into drawing manga characters, chances are you’ve still never heard of Pixiv. But its 3.6 million visitors a month generate an astounding 2.9 billion pageviews.
According to comScore, Pixiv is the 12th largest site in Japan measured by pageviews, slightly bigger than Facebook in Japan. And that’s just on the Web. Pixiv generates another 900 million pageviews a month on mobile phones. All of this for a site that is stil a pretty barebones image board that up until a year ago required a login to see anything.
Pixiv is about to get a major redesign. When I visited Pixiv on my trip to Japan a couple weeks ago, CEO Takanari Katagiri and his team showed me their plans (see video above and screenshots below). A beta of the new site will be ready around Christmas, but 222 TechCrunch readers can sign up now to reserve their spots (use the code “techcrunch”). → Read More
