EveryMove, an alum of TechStars’ Seattle accelerator program building what they’ve dubbed a “mileage plan for health benefits, today announced that it has closed a $2.6 million round of series A financing. Participating investors include Penera Blue Cross, Blue Cross, Blue Shield of Nebraska, BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners, Founders Co-op, Summit Capital, Jonathan Sposato, Voyager Capital Partner Geoff Entress, Matt Shobe, William Lohse, BuddyTV Co-founder Andy Liu, Ken Kuntz, and others.
Founder and CEO Russell Benaroya tells us that the way health care is set up (in the U.S.) today, the people making healthy lifestyle choices end up subsidizing those who are making unhealthy decisions; instead, they should be rewarded for it. If the country is going crazy for consumer-centric healthcare, then that inherently demands that people be given control over their health (and healthcare). That’s where EveryMove comes in. → Read More
More Facebook riches all around! The company granted about $796 million in restricted stock units to employees less than a week ago, according to an amended IPO filing.
These are ”employee refresher grants,” or new grants for employees. They don’t replace existing ones. These restricted stock units, or RSUs, could be worth anywhere from $707 million to $884 million based on Facebook’s expected $28 to 35 price range per share. Of course, if people hold on for longer and the stock pops by the time their lock-up period finishes, these shares could be worth a great deal more. → Read More
Most people probably don’t stick around social music service SoundCloud’s site to ogle its design, but apparently the team felt there was plenty of room for improvement.
To that end SoundCloud, who not long ago raised a $50 million funding round led by Kleiner Perkins, officially pulled back the curtains on their handsome new interface in San Francisco earlier today. → Read More
Facebook has just filed a sixth amendment to its S-1 filing to IPO in order to provide more transparency about how the shift of its user base from the web to mobile is causing it to show fewer ads per user, which could hurt revenue in the long term. Facebook also granted about $796 million in restricted stock units to employees less than a week ago, which was in the previous S-1 amendment but wasn’t widely reported. I’ve excerpted the significant changes and embedded the whole S-1 below. Specifically, Facebook is warning investors that daily active user count is rising faster than the number of ads the site is showing, which it predicts will lead to a lower average revenue per user.
As we noted when Facebook originally filed, it hasn’t proven its ability to monetize mobile yet. It now has Sponsored Stories ads running in the mobile news feed, but it can’t show nearly as many ads in this format as it does on the web, where it often shows four to seven ads per page, though less prominently in the sidebar. → Read More
Facebook’s platform may have come to life on the back of freemium apps, but now it’s taking another page from Apple’s playbook by offering paid apps. A beta program starting now will let developers charge Facebook users a flat fee to use their apps. This will cover both HTML5 apps and apps on the canvas (meaning on Facebook.com).
Here’s the excerpt from Facebook’s post: “Many developers have been successful with in-app purchases, but to support more types of apps on Facebook.com, we will give developers the option to offer paid apps. This is a simple-to-implement payment feature that lets people pay a flat fee to use an app on Facebook.com. If you are interested in the beta program, please sign up to receive more information.” → Read More
Today, Facebook app discovery too heavily favors the loudest apps with the most users, so Facebook today announces it will soon launch the App Center, a single, personalized hub for discovering the highest quality Facebook-integrated games and utilities from across the web and mobile. And for the first time, Facebook is beta testing the option for developers to sell pre-paid web and HTML5 apps. You’ll be able to access App Center via the web or mobile, and you can send apps you discover on a the web to your littler devices.
App Center could be a huge boon to app growth on Facebook, especially for those that are beloved but not inherently viral. With any luck, App Center will usher in an age where your news feed is filled with apps you actually want use, not just the spammiest ones or those with the biggest marketing budgets. → Read More
Bottlenose is a web-based smart social media dashboard that, in many ways, directly competes with Hootsuite and Tweetdeck. Bottlenose, however, puts a stronger emphasis on filtering your stream, both by implicitly learning about your interest and by giving you a sophisticated set of tools to create your own filters. Today, the company is launching version 3 of its service. This new version introduces a new design, as well as about 30 new features, including support for multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts, Google Reader, RSS feeds Facebook pages and groups, as well as LinkedIn accounts. → Read More
Just yesterday, I finally moved the Google+ iPhone app atrocity to the back screen of my iPhone, and then the company goes out and does this. It makes the darned thing all pretty with a fresh update. And maybe even more usable? (I can’t confirm this as the update has somehow not hit my iPhone’s “Updates” section, but early reports are saying nice things).
If you’re at all familiar with Google’s previous iOS developments, you’ll remember how the Google+ iPhone app was a dog to use. I couldn’t even scroll through long comment threads with the screen locking up. Plus, it regularly crashed. And it kept pinging me with updates every time someone “Circled” me…although, apparently, that last one was by design. → Read More
Samsung Electronics has acquired mobile entertainment startup mSpot, according to a release issued today. Financial terms were not disclosed, but previous reports point to an acquisition price of $8.8 million.
mSpot let users stream and watch full-length movies on their mobile phones and on the web. The company had struck deals with Sony, Disney, Paramount, NBC/Universal, Lionsgate, Warner, Image Entertainment, and Screen Media Ventures to stream full-length movie rentals to users’ PCs and cell phones, allowing you to switch between both devices as you pick up and leave off throughout a movie. → Read More
The last time TechCrunch heard from the internet-for-everyone proponents at FreedomPop, they revealed to us that they were working on an iPhone 4/4S case with a built-in WiMax radio running on Clear’s network that would give their users monthly access to free mobile broadband.
Now, according to my high-level source, the company is very close to bringing these things into the real world. Ahead of their beta launch slated for the summer, the company has just quietly begun to take pre-orders for the nifty iPhone accessory, though some of their plans for the product have changed over the past few months. → Read More
People deal with the pain of online hotel search is different ways. For many, it means spending hours and hours of research spread across dozens of browsers tabs. In my case, I usually throw up your hands and say, “Screw it, I give up, I’m just going to pick an affordable hotel that doesn’t look completely terrible.” Either way, there’s something broken here — the fact that without being there, it’s hard to tell what a hotel is really like.
That’s the problem that a startup called SimpleHoney wants to solve. It was co-founded by Eric Nakagawa, a software developer who created the famous Icanhascheezburger blog, and Joyce Kim, a former corporate attorney who was previously CEO of Korean pop music site Soompi.com and is probably best-known to the startup community as co-host of the GigaOm Show. The company has raised a seed round from Socialcast and About.me co-founder Tim Young, Mochi Media co-founders Jameson Hsu and Bob Ippolito, former Middleware Company CEO Ed Roman, Causecast founder Ryan Scott, and 500 Startups’ Dave McClure. Nakagawa (who’s CTO) and Kim (who’s CEO) also invested. → Read More
Google today announced its latest update for Google Maps for Android with support for Google Offers. One interesting piece of this announcement that stood out was that Google Maps for Android users now get access to free Google Offers – think coupons for a free coffee or dessert – through the app. Turns out, that’s actually just a small part of a wider update to Google Offers. Merchants across the U.S. – including towns where Google’s pre-paid offers haven’t launched yet – can now use a new self-service interface to create these free offers. → Read More
We’re thrilled to announce that two of President Obama’s technology gurus, Todd Park, the US Chief Technology Officer, and Steven VanRoekel, its Chief Innovation Officer, will be joining us on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC on Wednesday, May 23. Big Data has been all the rage this year, and the government is a massive stockpiler of lucrative datasets in energy, health, and range of other fields. As former Silicon Valley brethren, Park and VanRoekel want to open up the floodgates on the government’s data warehouse in a way that’s useful to savvy entrepreneurs and the nascent “civic startup” industry (think Code for America).
After a joint-announcement of their upcoming agenda, Park and VanRoekel will be joined by myself and Matt Lira, the Digital Communications Director for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. → Read More
Simple (formerly known as BankSimple), the startup with $13.1 million in funding to build a better banking experience for customers, has today introduced its first mobile application, surprisingly ahead of its public launch. Operating in private beta/invite-only mode for now, co-founder Joshua Reich says that anyone with a Simple account can now use the app, which had been limited to TestFlight distributions since its private launch last November.
→ Read More
So first things first: We’re not being sold! Instead, we’ve just hired a bunch of brilliant writers and a new COO. Also, we have seen a resurgence of community support (with over a thousand people attending our NYC meetup last night, for example), are back at around 12% on the much-lauded Techmeme leaderboard and are gearing up for our NYC Disrupt conference.
Our traffic is up with regards to unique visits year over year and we are working on getting our pageviews up to pre-awful redesign levels. More importantly, we cheer stuff like “TechCrunch fuck yeah” all the time in our company Yammer, which for us is a better indicator of progress than all of the above. → Read More
Google just launched an update for Google Maps for Android that brings three interesting new features to the app: integration with Google Offers, support for Google Business Photos and indoor walking directions.
With the new Google Offers integration, Android users will now be able to see which nearby stores currently offer deals. This, says Google, includes both offers that can be purchased, as well as “free” offers that are available immediately. Users can also opt-in to receive notifications when there are offers near them. → Read More
Chicago-based Base, a company that develops a cross-platform CRM product, has raised $6.8 million in Series B funding led by Index Ventures with Social+Capital Partnership, OCA Ventures and the I2A fund participating. The startup previously raised $1.1 million in funding.
Founded in 2009 by Uzi Shmilovici, Base is a CRM product that is catered towards small businesses. Base wants to let businesses manage their customers and sales everywhere they are, and offers applications for the Android phone, the iPhone, Mac and Windows. The company also plans to release tablet and Windows Phone 7.5 apps soon. → Read More
When we planned our mini meet-up series, we expected a few geeks in a bar somewhere drinking and swapping stories about C#. Nothing prepared us for the onslaught. At one point, 1,256 of us filled all three floors of Bar 13, a techno club near Union Square, and for most of the night I was jostled, bumped, and generally mauled by the crowd. It was, in a word, amazing.
If you missed it, shame on you. If you were there and we talked, email me. I do, however, hope you enjoyed what amounted to TechCrunch’s triumphant return to the New York start-up scene. → Read More
Last month, Klout launched its iPhone app. Today, it’s announcing its first big mobile partnership, one that should make app pretty appealing to any air travelers in San Francisco.
So Klout is launching a Perk with Hong Kong-headquartered Cathay Pacific Airways. Anyone in the international terminal at San Francisco International Airport with a Klout score of 40 or higher will be allowed into the airline’s lounge, which is normally limited to Cathay’s first class and business class passengers. Just use the app to show your score the lounge receptionist and you’ll get access to seven workstations, three showers, and a noodle bar. → Read More
Ask a VC, the TCTV show where you ask the questions, is back after a long hiatus and we’re kicking things off with two partners this week from Spark Capital and Andreessen Horowitz!
If you’ve got questions about what it’s like to shift from being an entrepreneur to being a venture capitalist, both our interviewees can actually tell you. So how does this show work? You ask questions either in the comments or at askaVC(at)TechCrunch(dot)com and we’ll put them forward to our VC guests.
So for our first taping, we have Nabeel Hyatt, who just joined Spark Capital in February after serving as a general manager at Zynga (pictured at the right). He sold his company Conduit Labs to the social gaming giant and that deal set the groundwork for Zynga’s Boston studio. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
