Catherine Shu
Catherine Shu has covered startups in Asia and breaking news for TechCrunch since November 2012. Her other interests include anything related to fiber and textiles, design and cats. Catherine was raised in California and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She is now based in Taipei, Taiwan and can be reached at shu@techcrunch.com, @catherineshu on Twitter or keybase.io/catherineshu
Disclosures: None
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PayKey raises $10M for its millennial-targeted “social banking” smartphone keyboard
Banks face an increasingly crowded battlefield in the fight for millennial customers. Not only do they have to compete with services like Venmo, but many messaging apps are adding their own peer-to-peer payment services. Tel Aviv-based startup PayKey thinks it has the solution with a smartphone keyboard that lets bank customers access financial services without having to log onto a banking app. Read More
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Led by Stellar cofounder Joyce Kim, SparkChain Capital is a new $100M fund for blockchain and cryptocurrency startups
Over the past 18 months, investments in blockchain startups tackling a variety of problems have climbed. SparkChain Capital, a new $100 million early-stage fund launched by SparkLabs Group, wants to contribute by backing blockchain and cryptocurrency-related companies that are solving real-world issues. Read More
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Genetic testing startup Prenetics gets $40M from investors, including Alibaba’s Hong Kong fund
Prenetics, a genetic testing startup, plans to expand into more Asian countries after raising a $40 million Series B led by Beyond Ventures and Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund. Read More
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Google Maps ditches automatic calorie estimates after users say it’s not helpful and even potentially harmful
Google Maps will remove a widely criticized experimental iOS feature that estimated how many calories its users could potentially burn by walking a route. A Google rep told TechCrunch that the decision was “based on strong user feedback” and the calorie estimator will no longer appear in Google Maps for iOS starting this evening. Read More
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Social commerce startup Meesho gets $3.4M Series A to build a reseller network in India
While most of the attention paid to India’s e-commerce boom focuses on big players like Flipkart, there’s another fast-growing sector: people, mostly women, who resell items on social media. Several startups now exist to serve the so-called “housewife reseller” market. One of them, Y Combinator alum Meesho, announced today that it has raised a $3.4 million Series A led… Read More
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Samsung forecasts a strong quarter on the same day its CEO resigns citing ‘unprecedented crisis’
This post has been updated to reflect the announcement of Oh-Hyun Kwon’s resignation. Samsung Electronics made two announcements today that contrasted starkly with one another in tone. First, it issued an optimistic third-quarter earnings guidance. Then, a few hours later, it posted a resignation letter from chief executive officer and vice chairman Oh-Hyun Kwon. Read More
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After raising $16M in funding, CastBox plans to fix podcast discovery
More people than ever are listening to podcasts, but as they soon find out, discovering new ones is a cumbersome process that lacks the serendipity users take for granted in other apps. CastBox wants to fix that by becoming “the YouTube of audio.” Read More
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Kudos wants to be a gentle introduction to social media sharing for kids
Just as pre-teens in the 1990s were warned away from dialing 1-900 numbers, kids now need to learn how to navigate social media responsibly. Kudos, an app for kids aged eight to 13 with around-the-clock moderation, positions itself as a safe introduction to social media that also teaches its young users, some of whom were born before the first iPhone was released, how to be “good… Read More
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MioTech gets $7M to build artificial intelligence based tools for wealth managers in Asia
MioTech, a financial tech startup with offices in Hong Kong and Shanghai, has raised $7 million in Series A funding to develop artificial intelligence based software for investment managers. The round was led by Horizons Ventures, the private investment arm of Hong Kong business tycoon Li Ka-shing, with participation from returning investor Zhenfund. Read More
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Alibaba Group will invest $15B into a new global research and development program
Alibaba Group announced today that it plans to invest more than $15 billion over the next three years into a global research and development initiative called Alibaba DAMO Academy. The Chinese tech giant said the program, which it is currently recruiting 100 researchers, will help it reach its goal of serving two billion customers and creating 100 million jobs by 2036, while also… Read More
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Twitter says it may “refine” its policies after reversing position on Blackburn campaign ad
For the second time in less than three weeks, Twitter has said it will look at its policies following controversy over tweets by a politician. On Tuesday, Twitter reversed a decision it made the day before to block a campaign video from Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican representative from Tennessee, for breaking its ad policies. In a media statement, a Twitter spokesperson said “While… Read More
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Zefo, an online store for secondhand goods, gets $9.2M Series B led by Sequoia India
Zefo, which bills itself as “India’s fastest growing used goods marketplace,” said today that it has raised $9.2 million in Series B funding. The round was led by returning investors Sequoia India and Helion Venture Partners, with participation by Beenext. Read More
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Ohio State University launches its new Digital Flagship University with Apple
Ohio State University has announced a new digital education initiative in collaboration with Apple that includes a new iOS Design Lab on its Columbus campus and the distribution of iPad Pros to incoming first-year students. Called the Digital Flagship University, the project starts this academic year with the goal of allowing Ohio State’s community to “develop modern mobile skills… Read More
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Bambino app helps parents find babysitters recommended by their neighbors
Parenting young children involves a lot of logistics, including what to do with them when you need to run a last-minute errand, go to an appointment or just have a few hours to decompress. For parents who don’t have friends or relatives they can call on for babysitting, this can be tricky. Bambino wants to help by connecting parents with nearby babysitters who have already been… Read More
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The due diligence report commissioned by Uber before acquiring Otto is now public
A potentially pivotal document in the legal fight between Uber and Waymo, the self-driving car company that was originally part of Google, has been released. It is a report (embedded at the bottom of this post) commissioned by Uber from cybersecurity firm Stroz Friedberg last year as part of its due diligence before acquiring Otto, a self-driving truck startup founded by former Google employees. Read More
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Instagram opens its shoppable posts feature to retailers on Bigcommerce’s platform
Businesses based in the United States that use Bigcommerce now have access to Instagram’s shoppable posts, the e-commerce platform announced today. This is one of the latest steps in Instagram’s gradual roll out of the feature over the past ten months. Read More
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Yomee wants to take the guesswork out of culturing yogurt at home
In a post-Juicero world, the bar has been set high for any piece of smart kitchen hardware that only makes one type of food. Enter Yomee, which bills itself as the Keurig of fresh yogurt and is now raising funds on Kickstarter. Lecker Labs, the startup behind Yomee, hopes that its relatively low price (each unit will retail for $99) and cost-savings will let it succeed where Juicero failed. Read More
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AI startup Appier hires Sean Chu from Microsoft to head its Asia growth strategy
Appier, the artificial intelligence startup that recently raised a $33 million Series C from three of Asia’s biggest Internet companies, has hired former Microsoft Japan marketing senior director Sean Chu to oversee its growth strategy. As Appier’s new chief strategy officer, Chu will be based in Tokyo and helm Appier’s operations in Japan and Korea. Read More
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Twitter says it hasn’t deleted Trump’s provocative North Korea tweet because of “newsworthiness”
After North Korea’s top diplomat described President Donald Trump’s recent tweets about the country as a “declaration of war,” Twitter explained why it hasn’t deleted the offending tweets. Read More
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Marketing startup Synup gets $6M Series A to help brands manage their online reputation
Synup, a startup that helps marketers monitor where their brands are mentioned online, announced that it has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Vertex Ventures. Existing investor Prime Venture Partners also returned for the round. Read More
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