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In 2017, Airbnb needs to grow into your full-fledged travel bookings hub
Airbnb can find you a well-appointed place to crash during your next big trip, but it’d really prefer to hang out every step of the way. To that end, in 2017, we can expect Airbnb to expand its horizons considerably, moving well beyond the vacation rentals that it’s remained synonymous with since launching in 2008. As the company confirmed last month, its plans to expand… Read More
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This bed with built-in subwoofer, TV, lamp and power outlets may be your last purchase, ever
Furlenco’s new “Pod” might just be the most outrageous product hitting the market this holiday season. The Bangalore, India based furniture rental startup has always had a penchant for targeting the millennial subset, but this is something else entirely — because as any 20-something knows, adding a bed to things makes them universally more practical. The Pod includes… Read More
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Pana’s travel companion app goes free, can automatically check you into flights
Pana, a travel companion that organizes your plans and sends personalized trip alerts, is now making its app free to challenge rivals like TripIt, Google Trips and others. First launched two years ago, Pana had previously focused on its paid subscription service for individuals and companies needing a 24/7 travel concierge — a move that may have limited its potential market. The… Read More
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A $250 million office space is vying to be the future home for New York’s startup culture
Three years might as well be 50 in startup land. It’s hard to say precisely where New York City’s tech community will be by the time 2020 rolls around, but living in the Big Apple certainly doesn’t look to be getting any easier for recent grads looking to make a name for itself. As Fast Company notes in a new profile on the upcoming 14th @ Irving workspace, the whole… Read More
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Xplenty raises another $4 million to help you integrate all your data
The internet has changed a lot over the last two decades, but many companies are still using legacy technologies to extract, transform and load their data into warehouses. One new entrant, Xplenty, is hoping that its fresh approach, prioritizing cloud services, will provide a solid foothold in the massive market for data integration tools. Having grown to serve over 100 customers, Xplenty… Read More
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BitTorrent Live’s “cable-killer” P2P video app finally hits iOS
Cable companies rule TV because they control the expensive wires and satellites that can deliver low-latency live content at scale. Cable companies can then dictate how much per monthly paying subscriber they offer the channel owners for access because there are few alternatives for live distribution. And the cable companies can charge consumers exorbitant prices because they’re… Read More
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Semantic Machines hopes to best Google in the conversational AI game
I believe it was Sartre who wisely said hell is conversational AI. Despite the best intentions of engineers, today’s machine learning really is the savior and handicap of personal assistants. Berkeley-based startup Semantic Machines might suffer the same Achilles’ heel, but its team of 18 artificial intelligence PhDs thinks it can get farther than the current… Read More
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Everyone got into the tech M&A game in 2016
Neither public markets nor tech giants offered any solace in 2016 for the ever-growing list of private unicorns. There are 180 tech companies circling the runway with valuations over $1 billion, the most in history. While interest in an all-expenses paid trip to the NYSE valuation guillotine was at an all-time low, non-traditional Fortune 500 companies did pluck a lucky few from the skies at… Read More
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GM taps 500 Startups to find early-stage investments in upcoming classes
GM has made a number of big acquisitions and investments in the past few years. It picked up self-driving company Cruise earlier this year and dropped $500 million into Lyft, Uber’s biggest competitor. For the most part, GM acknowledges that it needs to figure out how to tap into new aspects of the automotive experience, CTO Jon Lauckner said. But all these companies start somewhere. And… Read More
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Backtrace, a debugging startup led by former AppNexus engineers, raises $5M
Debugging startup Backtrace I/O was launched to solve a real problem that its founders faced when they were engineers at adtech company AppNexus — at least according to Backtrace CEO and co-founder Abel Mathew. Mathew told me Backtrace aims to “solve the process of debugging,” something that most companies tackle by “cobbling together very old, outdated solutions”… Read More
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Personalization company Dynamic Yield raises $22M and adds Baidu as an investor
Dynamic Yield, a company offering tools to help online businesses deliver personalized experiences, has raised $22 million in series C funding. CEO Liad Agmon told me that he started Dynamic Yield (in 2011) because even existing personalization tools tended to be “point solutions for solving tactical problems.” With Dynamic Yield, on the other hand, Agmon wanted to deliver a… Read More
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LaunchDarkly gets $8.7M to get access to the right features in front of right users
LaunchDarkly originally launched to nail a big pain point for developers that has been a luxury at larger companies for a while — soft-launching features and new code for a small set of users seamlessly and being able to quickly roll them back. But since the company launched and last raised $2.6 million in June, CEO Edith Harbaugh and the team have found a new audience for that: the… Read More
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eSUB Construction Software raises $5 million to help subcontractors track jobs and get paid
A San Diego startup called eSUB Construction Software has raised $5 million in a Series A round led by Revolution Ventures according to President and CEO Wendy Rogers. The company’s cloud-based project management apps help subcontractors track and get compensated for all the work they do on construction jobs. Rogers said, “There’s a saying that subcontractors get paid for… Read More
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HandUp just expanded its gift card program for homeless people in SF
HandUp, a startup combating homelessness, just announced the expansion of its gift card program in San Francisco. The $25 gift cards, which HandUp launched last August, enables homeless people to redeem them at Project Homeless Connect and Glide. Starting today, homeless people can also redeem the gift cards at the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center, MSC South Shelter in SOMA and the… Read More
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A stealthy startup called Cerebras raised around $25 million to build deep learning hardware
Benchmark is doing another big investment before the end of the year, and this time it’s in a hardware startup called Cerebras Systems. From what we hear from sources, the round (which we heard others were participating in) is somewhere around $25 million, though it could be as high as $30 million. Details on the company are extremely sparse — we can’t even really find… Read More
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WTF is Brexit?
At 10pm on June 23, 2016, the polls closed in the UK on a referendum on EU membership and the counting began. The next morning Europeans woke to the news that the British public had voted to leave the 28 Member State bloc called the European Union. The ugly word Brexit — coined during the campaign as a shorthand media conflation for ‘British exit’ — was apparently… Read More
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Crunch Network
Technology dispersion is accelerating
Copycats are a dying breed. Each month the gap shrinks between a new digital service emerging in the U.S. and it being copied in other markets. This trend has big implications for global businesses, forcing them to rethink investment and innovation strategies. Read More
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Crunch Network
Growth as a false signal in Y Combinator startups
One has to appreciate how Paul Graham built Y Combinator into the world’s flagship accelerator. In fact, I have yet to meet a founder who regrets joining the program. But after stepping away from the YC scene for five years and then returning to observe the last two demo days, I wonder if some of the views Paul shared in his original, widely read Essays are being taken to absurd extremes. Read More
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