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A funny thing happened in the second half of 2018. At some moment, all the people active in crypto looked around and realized there weren’t very many of us. The friends we’d convinced during the last holiday season were no longer speaking to us. They had stopped checking their Coinbase accounts. The tide had gone […]
Posted on 19 January 2019 | 7:17 pm
Last April, Spotify surprised Wall Street bankers by choosing to go public through a direct listing process rather than through a traditional IPO. Instead of issuing new shares, the company simply sold existing shares held by insiders, employees and investors directly to the market – bypassing the roadshow process and avoiding at least some of Wall […]
Posted on 19 January 2019 | 7:07 pm
Illinois’s startup market in 2018 was very strong, and it’s not slowing down. Let’s take a quick look at the state of venture in the Land of Lincoln.
Posted on 19 January 2019 | 5:09 pm
Behold, the LEGO Chevrolet Silverado. The full-size truck is basically a giant ad for Chevy and the new LEGO Movie, which is due out in February. Apparently they have to fight Duplo blocks from outer space. No, seriously, that’s the plot. Anyway, the 2019 Silverado is six-feet tall, weighs 3,307 pounds and took 18 builders […]
Posted on 19 January 2019 | 1:30 pm
We’re three weeks into January. We’ve recovered from our CES hangover and, hopefully, from the CES flu. We’ve started writing the correct year, 2019, not 2018. Venture capitalists have gone full steam ahead with fundraising efforts, several startups have closed multi-hundred million dollar rounds, a virtual influencer raised equity funding and yet, all anyone wants to talk […]
Posted on 19 January 2019 | 1:00 pm
Bill Goodwin Contributor Share on Twitter Bill Goodwin is the head of legal policy at Airmap. Tyler Finn Contributor Tyler Finn is the policy manager at Factual. Something odd is in motion in Los Angeles. On a recent day at the office, colleagues debated the merits of the Boring Company’s proposal to alleviate Dodger traffic […]
Posted on 19 January 2019 | 11:30 am
Days after Snap announced the departure of its CFO, reports have emerged that the company’s HR chief was asked to leave following an internal investigation late last year that had led to the firing of its global security head. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Snap fired global security head Francis Racioppi late last […]
Posted on 18 January 2019 | 11:45 pm
Reports emerged today that the FTC is considering a fine against Facebook that would be the largest ever from the agency. Even if it were 10 times the size of the largest, a $22.5 million bill sent to Google in 2012, the company would basically laugh it off. Facebook is made of money. But the […]
Posted on 18 January 2019 | 10:58 pm
If you’ve ever enthusiastically sent your spit off in the mail, you were probably anxious for whatever unexpected insights the current crop of DNA testing companies would send back. Did your ancestors hang out on the Iberian peninsula? What version of your particular family lore does the science support? Most people who participate in mail-order […]
Posted on 18 January 2019 | 10:08 pm
They may be free, but they sure pay. Games with no upfront cost but a plethora of other ways to make money generated a mind-blowing $88 billion in 2018 according to SuperData’s year-end report — leaving traditional games (and indeed movies and TV) in the dust. While it may not come as a surprise that […]
Posted on 18 January 2019 | 9:56 pm
Tom Griffiths has founded four companies, two of which “weren’t much to write home about,” he jokes. The third captured the world’s attention: FanDuel, the fantasy sports company that was routinely in the press — not always for desirable reasons — from nearly the day it launched, to its near merger with rival DraftKings, to its […]
Posted on 18 January 2019 | 9:50 pm
One SF startup wants you to get home from a day at work and polish off a bottle of wine by yourself. Vinebox isn’t really trying to get you wasted though, these bottles are cute and tiny. The small startup is hoping that they can get consumers into the idea of buying premium quality wine-by-the-glass […]
Posted on 18 January 2019 | 9:04 pm
Salesforce put the finishing touches on a tower in San Francisco last year. In October, it announced Salesforce Tower in Atlanta. Today, it was Dublin’s turn. Everyone gets a tower. Salesforce first opened an office in Dublin back in 2001, and has since expanded to 1,400 employees. Today’s announcement represents a significant commitment to expand even further, […]
Posted on 18 January 2019 | 8:42 pm
Sony’s venture capital arm has invested in what3words, the startup that has divided the entire world into 57 trillion 3-by-3 meter squares and assigned a three-word address to each one. Financial details were not disclosed. The startup’s novel addressing system isn’t the whole story. The ability to integrate what3words into voice assistants is what has […]
Posted on 18 January 2019 | 8:20 pm
Big week for Google wearable news — which, honestly, is not a phrase I expected to write in 2019. But a day after the company announced an agreement to purchase Fossil’s wearable technology for $40 million, Alphabet-owned research group Verily just scored FDA clearance for its electrocardiogram (ECG) technology. The clearance pertains specifically to the […]
Posted on 18 January 2019 | 6:51 pm
DJI, the world's leading maker of consumer drones, said today that extensive corruption discovered within the company could lead to losses as great as $150 million in the 2018 financial year. The exact nature of the corruption is not stated, but it seems to involve dozens of people at the least.
Posted on 18 January 2019 | 6:25 pm
Eisar Lipkovitz, a veteran Google executive who most recently led the video and display advertising team there, is leaving the company to head up engineering efforts at Lyft . As executive vice president of engineering, Lipkovitz will be leading Lyft’s engineering team, which now eclipses 1,000 people. Lipkovitz’s hiring comes on the heels of massive […]
Posted on 18 January 2019 | 6:04 pm
There are just three short weeks until Silicon Valley’s startup community takes a night off to relax, connect and get down at the 2nd Annual TechCrunch Winter Party at Galvanize. It’s not just an opportunity to have a great time — although you will. It’s also the chance for promising early-stage startups to strut their […]
Posted on 18 January 2019 | 6:00 pm
How do you do, fellow kids? After Facebook Watch, Lasso and IGTV failed to become hits with teens, the company has been quietly developing another youthful video product. Multiple sources confirm that Facebook has spent months building LOL, a special feed of funny videos and GIF-like clips. It’s divided into categories like “For You,” “Animals,” […]
Posted on 18 January 2019 | 5:59 pm
With an inaugural investment into the Los Angeles-based entertainment startup Culture Genesis, Clifford Harris Jr., who’s better known as “T.I.”, has launched a new syndicated investment vehicle called Tech Cypha. Launched by the music and cultural impresario with more hustle than hustle and his business partner Jason Geter, the new collaborative investment strategy focused on tech startups will […]
Posted on 18 January 2019 | 5:50 pm