January 2014
Health Catalyst Raises $41M For Healthcare Data Storage And Analysis
In another sign of the growing VC interest in healthcare technology companies, data warehousing and analytics software company, Health Catalyst, has raised another $41 million in funding. Firms including Sequoia Capital,…
With Cash From Sequoia And General Catalyst, Yahoo’s Former CTO Debuts Altiscale To Run Hadoop As A Service In The Cloud
Raymie Stata, the former CTO of Yahoo, is taking the wraps off his new startup, Altiscale, today, which in short runs Hadoop as a Service in the cloud. The company,…
Tapastic Raises $2M To Build Out Its YouTube Of Webcomics And Visual Storytelling
Santa Clara-based startup Tapastic has raised a new $2 million funding round, in a Series A sourced from South Korea’s Daum Communications, Inc. The startup offers a portal for webcomics,…
GiveMeSport Raises Series B Round From IMG To Expand In The US
UK-based GiveMeSport – not dissimilar to the Bleacher Report which uses thousands of bloggers to create and curate content around sport – has announced a Series B fundraising (amount undisclosed)…
Enterprise Messaging App Cotap Nabs $10M To Make ‘Every Worker A Knowledge Worker’
Cotap, a messaging startup co-founded by two ex-Yammer executives, came out of stealth last year with a very specific aim: using the boom in smartphone usage to break down communication…
Google’s Acquisition Of DeepMind Could Shine A Light On Other British AI Startups
Most headlines surrounding Google’s acquisition of DeepMind focused on the $500 million+ price tag, what its new owner may or may not be planning to do with the AI talent…
Google Glass Gets Prescription Options With Four Titanium Frame Styles And Shades
Google has taken the step that many asked for regarding its Google Glass head-mounted computer – it introduced prescription frames for the device, via an update to the Google Glass…
Rachel Blumenthal Debuts Cricket’s Circle, A New Site To Help Moms Shop Better
A new online destination for current and expecting moms, Cricket’s Circle, wants to offer more than a selection of goods for sale – it also wants to help you decide…
Sightly Snags $1.7M To Expand Its Localized Online Video Ad Business
Sightly, a company that helps businesses create localized online video ad campaigns, has raised $1.7 million in seed funding. The investment was led by Mack Capital with participation from Tomorrow…
Stealthy Payments Startup Clinkle Adds PayPal Exec Mike Liberatore As CFO
Mobile payments startup Clinkle continues to add senior management types to its executive ranks. Mike Liberatore, who has 15 years of experience in financial positions at PayPal, Adobe, and others,…
Madison Reed Raises $12M To Disrupt Hair Dye Market
Madison Reed, a hair-dye company that offers digital tools and mobile apps to help its customers color their hair at home, is raising $12 million in Series B funding led…
Apple Patents Two Ways To Extend Mobile Device Camera Performance Via Hardware Add-Ons
Apple has been granted two patents relating to ways it might look to extend/augment the built in camera lenses on its mobile devices in future. The two patents, granted to…
YC Alum GoCardless Raises Another $7M, Aims To Be The Stripe Of Direct Debit Payments
GoCardless, a Y-Combinator alum that has created a simple way for online businesses to set up and accept direct debit payments (that is, money that comes straight out of your…
Pinterest For Business? Somewhere Is A New Visual Platform To Share Your Work
At over 260 million users LinkedIn appears to have the professional CV and business connections market place fairly sown up. There are other players, such as Viadeo and Xing, but…
Indiegogo Raises $40 Million In Series B To Expand Their Crowdfunding Reach
Institutional Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have led a $40 million Series B round for Indiegogo, the self-described first and largest crowdfunding platform. The company, which raised…
Rocket Internet Fashion Ecommerce Startups, Lamoda & Dafiti, Get €25M From World Bank Group’s IFC
Rocket Internet has secured new funding for two of its fashion-focused ecommerce startups, with a €10M investment for Lamoda, which operates predominantly in Russia and Kazakhstan, and €15M in equity investment for LatAm’s…
Yahoo Is Buying Tomfoolery, An Enterprise App Studio Led By Ex-Yahoos And AOLers
Yahoo’s acquisition spree continues apace, with the next deal likely to cover a few different bases for the company: mobile, enterprise and bringing ex-Yahoo talent back into the fold. We…
European Carpooling Site BlaBlaCar Rides Into Russia And Ukraine Via Acquisition
The carpooling race in Europe has yet to produce a definitive winner, as Germany’s Carpooling.com and France’s BlaBlaCar continue to go head-to-head. Today, the latter is making its next move:…
Jason Calacanis’ Mahalo Is Reborn As Mobile News App Inside
Jason Calacanis is getting back into the news business with a new app called Inside, which highlights and summarizes the top news stories. Although Calacanis has been involved in several…
Global Smartphone Shipments Top 1 Billion For The First Time Thanks To Cheap Android Devices, Says IDC
The global smartphone market shipped one billion units in a single year for the first time, with Samsung as the leading vendor, according to a new report by research firm…
Strategy Analytics: 1.7B Mobile Handsets Shipped In 2013, 990M Of Them Smartphones
If you needed an indicator of just how much the mobile market today is a smartphone market, look no further than the figures put out early today by Strategy Analytics.…
Tom Perkins Presents GOP Boilerplate As Solution To Wage Inequality
Tom Perkins compared what he sees as a “progressive war on the American one percent” to Kristallnacht, the series of coordinated attacks against the Jews during Nazi Germany. Today on…
Twitter Mobile Update Bubbles Trending Events To The Top Of The Timeline, Adds Photo Editing
Twitter has just released an update to its Android client (coming soon to iOS) that brings new photo editing tools to the service, which are likely meant to make it…
Apple’s Mixed 1st Quarter In Charts
Apple’s December quarter was a mixed bag. If you just read the numbers, revenue has never been so high thanks to continued growth in iPhone and iPad sales. But analysts…
Flickr’s Upside-Down “About” Page Was Actually A Clever Job Ad
Some Flickr users noticed the company’s “About” page was upside-down yesterday. Yes, literally upside-down. And yes, we checked, it wasn’t just us. As it turns out, yes, Flickr’s upside-downness was…
CEO Tim Cook Says Touch ID Was Part Of Apple’s Thinking Around Mobile Payments
Apple CEO Tim Cook actually discussed mobile payments directly on the company’s earnings call today, saying that it’s an area that has “intrigued” the company and that mobile payments actually…
Nintendo May Go Mobile This Year (But Not In The Way We’d All Like)
OMG! Mario on iOS! Not! According to a brief in Japan’s Nikkei (translated by TC writer Serkan Toto), Nintendo will announce plans to use Android and iOS as marketing vehicles,…
Apple Says International Took 64% Of Revenues In Q1, Led By Growth In China And Japan
Apple CEO Tim Cook today admitted that in its home market of North America, “we did not do as well…our business contracted year over year.” But to counterbalance that, the…
Apple Pays Out $2 Billion To Developers In Q1 2014
One number in Apple’s results indicates significant year over year growth, and it’s a number that’s vital to the continued success of the platform – the company announced that it…
Despite Multi-Year MSFT Surface Deal, Nearly All NFL Teams Use iPads As Playbooks, Says Apple
On today’s Q1 earnings call, Apple’s CFO Peter Oppenheimer bragged that “nearly all NFL teams use iPads as playbooks.” This wouldn’t necessarily be interesting, except for the fact that Microsoft…
