January 2014
Nokia Says Lumia & Other Phone Sales Declined In Q4 As It Prepares To Sell Division To Microsoft
In what is likely to be Nokia’s last quarterly earnings before it hands off its mobile phone making business to Microsoft, the Finnish mobile maker has reported lower sales of…
Mendix, An App-Builder Platform For The Enterprise, Closes $25M Series B Led By Battery Ventures
Mendix, an app builder platform for the enterprise, has closed a $25 million Series B, led by Battery Ventures. Existing investor Prime Ventures also participated. Mendix raised a $13 million…
EC Creates Corporates+Universities Group And A Thinktank To Help EU Startups
We’ve already covered the set of initiatives the European Commission plans to roll out in order to address the pressing need to support tech startups in Europe. Today in Davos,…
IBM Dumps Its Server Business On Lenovo For $2.3B
IBM has finally managed to sell its low-margin server business to the world’s largest PC maker Lenovo. The two companies have been negotiating this deal for past few years, and…
As Investor Interest Heats Up In Turkey, Pan-European Accelerator Startupbootcamp Launches In Istanbul
With news earlier this week that Earlybird, the Berlin-based VC, has launched a new $130 million fund targeting early-stage startups in Turkey and Central and Eastern Europe, it seems apt…
iZettle, Europe’s Square, Releases An SDK For Direct Mobile Payment Integration On iOS
iZettle — a mobile payments startup based out of Sweden that has been referred to as the “Square of Europe” for its small piece of hardware that attaches to a…
Old Spice Is Back With Another Set Of Viral Things — This Time, It’s Prank Websites
After a short break, Old Spice — otherwise known as “that company that makes really, really good ads and, I don’t know, deodorant or something” — is back with another…
GoEuro Gets “Multi-Million” Top-Up From Lakestar To Add More Markets To Its Journey Planner Platform
GoEuro, one of a raft of European startups attempting to simplify the tangled web of transport booking systems us ‘Old Worldian’ Europeans have to navigate if we wish to travel…
Singapore Online Grocer RedMart Raises $5.4M From Investors Including Facebook Co-founder
RedMart, an online grocery service based in Singapore, announced today that it has closed a $5.4 million bridge round led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin; Property Guru founders Steve Melhuish…
Renew OnDemand Provider ServiceSource Acquires Scout Analytics For $32M
ServiceSource, which provides recurring revenue management software for businesses like Renew OnDemand, announced today that it has acquired Scout Analytics, a Seattle-based provider of predictive analytics for subscription businesses. The…
Ominous Text Message Sent To Government Protestors In Ukraine
Someone is broadcasting creepy messages to defuse violent protests against the Ukrainian government. “Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance,” is a text being sent…
Eyeing International Growth, Stripe Raises $80M From Founders Fund, Khosla And Sequoia At A $1.75B Valuation
The payments industry has a new billion dollar company. Online payments company Stripe is announcing more than $80 million in Series C funding, at a $1.75 billion valuation. Peter Thiel’s…
VMWare’s $1.5B AirWatch Buy All About The Mobile Workplace
In the latest salvo in the battle to reshape the architecture by which business works VMWare, a multi-billion dollar server virtualization company, just spent $1.5 billion to buy AirWatch, which sells…
iPhone 5s Owners Gobbling “Unprecedented” Levels Of Data, Study Finds
A large-scale survey of mobile data consumption in 2013 conducted by JDSU has found flagship smartphone device users are continuing to outpace the data consumption rates of tablet users. But…
Microsoft Earnings Preview: The Surface Question
Tomorrow afternoon Microsoft will report its fiscal third-quarter financial performance, detailing how it fared during the critical holiday season. The company is working to revamp its key operating system, become…
Microsoft Gives Its Office Web Apps A New, Flatter Look
Microsoft is giving its Office Web Apps a new look today, it seems. While the company hasn’t done all that much to promote its Office Web Apps lately, they are…
Google’s Knowledge Graph Now Being Used To Enhance Individual Search Results
Google’s Knowledge Graph is getting baked into actual search results, the company is announcing today. In a blog post on its official Search Blog, Google explains how you’re now able to learn…
Mixpanel Aims To Help Developers Deliver Targeted Messages Through New In-App Notifications
Mobile analytics company Mixpanel is unveiling a feature today that co-founder Suhail Doshi said will give developers a new way to communicate with their users. Mixpanel customers will now be…
Glyph “Personal Theater” Goggles Beat $250K Kickstarter Goal In Four Hours
It only took four hours for the Glyph, a head-mounted “personal theater” from Avegant, to reach its $250,000 funding goal on Kickstarter. Unlike the Oculus Rift’s focus on virtual reality,…
Marissa Mayer Won CES
What’s that old saying? Software will eat the world? That was never more evident than at CES 2014. Now that the dust has settled, the Gorkana Group has released a…
Netflix Downplays Court’s Net Neutrality Decision, Says Internet Providers Unlikely To Act
In the letter to shareholders that accompanied today’s earnings report, Netflix addresses the recent circuit court decision that was seen as a threat to net neutrality. That decision could potentially…
Pinterest Is Testing A Personalized Home Page Based On Your Interests
Pinterest is introducing a new way to browse its site with the addition of a category called “Personalized for You.” This new section is essentially a version of Pinterest based…
SeaMicro’s Andrew Feldman On Pulling The Thread In Entrepreneurship
I’ve been lucky to host many great founders here on “Founder Stories” to date, but this particular video discussion with Andrew Feldman, a cofounder and CEO of SeaMicro (which was…
It may seem like small potatoes, but Polish 3D printer manufacturer Zortrax has chalked a 5,000 unit order from Dell. This is the first I’ve heard of a mass order…
eBay Squeaks Out A Win In Q4, With Revenue Of $4.5B And $0.81 EPS
eBay reported its fourth-quarter earnings today, including revenue of $4.5 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.81. The company’s revenue was up 13 percent from the same quarter last…
Netflix Beats Analyst Expectations With 2.3M New Domestic Subscribers, Earnings Of 79 Cents A Share
Netflix just announced itsfourth-quarter financial results, with the company beating analyst expectations. For the last three months, Netflix reported earnings of 79 cents per share on revenues of $1.175 billion.…
How T-Mobile’s New Mobile Banking Service Compares With Simple And Amex Serve
T-Mobile today announced its intentions to get into the business of providing banking services to its wireless customers, and any others who want an alternative to traditional banking accounts. The…
Nokia will report its fourth-quarter 2013 earnings, a seminal moment for the company as the figures will represent the last full period in which it will own the hardware assets…
Windows 8.1 Update Will Contain Improvements To Metro Apps
This morning Paul Thurrott detailed a number of tweaks that will appear in the 2014 update of Windows 8.1. Screenshots from WZor confirm a few of Paul’s earlier notes on…
Jelly’s Novelty Wears Off, But Long-Term Potential For A Mobile #Lazyweb Remains
Let’s get this out of the way up front: I was prepared to dislike Jelly after its reveal. After all, when Twitter co-founder Biz Stone described the new startup as…
