McClure steps back at 500 Startups after internal sexual misconduct investigation

 Dave McClure, the founder and public face of 500 Startups — one of the most prolific and best-known accelerator programs for early stage companies — has stepped away from managing the firm he set up and largely built in his own image. McClure is the latest venture capitalist to be ensnared in the industry’s investigations into alleged sexual misconduct by investors with… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Crunch Report | Facebook Helps You Find Wi-Fi

 Today’s Stories Facebook is rolling out its ‘Find Wi-Fi’ feature worldwide Delivery Hero’s valuation surpasses $5B following successful IPO Chat app Kakao raises $437M for its Korean ride-hailing service Cabin secures $3.3M for its ‘moving hotel’ Credits Written and Hosted by: Anthony Ha Filmed by: Matthew Mauro Edited by: Chris Gates Notes: Tito… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Game publisher GameMine inks a $20 million partnership with South Africa’s Vodacom

 On the heels of a $20 million funding round last month, the new game publishing company GameMine has inked its first big deal with a global carrier. The company has partnered with the South Africa mobile carrier Vodacom Group to bring GameMine’s subscription-based mobile games to the South African market. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Real estate site Redfin files for IPO

 Redfin, the popular real estate listings site, has filed for IPO. The Seattle-based company unveiled its filing, suggesting that it will raise $100 million, a placeholder that is subject to change. The timing of the filing implies that Redfin is likely to debut in late July or early August. Because of the JOBS Act, most companies can wait until 15 days before their investor roadshow to… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Snapchat bought the AR location intellectual property of startup Drop

 Snap Map is Snapchat’s plan to tie together its online content with ways to augment your offline reality, and its got the patent to back it up. Augmented reality location startup Drop tells TechCrunch that Snap Inc acquired its intellectual property in 2015 including its “Location-based messaging” patent. In 2013, Drop developed an app that would let you post photos or text to… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Tintri up slightly after lowering IPO price

 Enterprise cloud company Tintri was supposed to debut on the public markets yesterday with an IPO price between $10.50 to $12.50, but then pushed things back a day and lowered its price to $7. Shares were up about 3.5% midday Friday, trading at roughly $7.25 per share. In what seems to be a tough week for tech IPOs, cooking kit delivery service Blue Apron also significantly lowered its price… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Kinetica scores $50 million Series A for super-charged in-memory database solution

 Kinetica’s roots as a company go back to a 2009 consulting project for US intelligence services. When they couldn’t find a solution on the market to meet the strict demands of the army and NSA to track terrorists in real-time, they decided to build it. Today, it’s an in-memory database solution that relies on commodity hardware running Nvidia GPUs to supercharge the processing.… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Blue Apron tumbles again in its second day as its IPO settles for a down round

 Blue Apron is now down from its IPO price during trading today, falling around 4% and down to around $9.60 — a bit south of its original price. Early in the planning process, Blue Apron was shooting for a price range of between $15 and $17, which would have helped it raise even more money and value the company at around $3 billion. Instead, it had to settle for a valuation below $2… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Andy Rubin’s Playground Ventures is raising another $15M

 Playground Ventures — the VC fund co-founded by Android inventor and former Google exec Andy Rubin that sits alongside an eponymous incubator/startup studio and is making some big bets in areas like artificial intelligence and new generations of hardware– is raising more money. A Form D filed with the SEC notes that Playground Ventures is in the process of adding another $15… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

The latest in the Binary Capital blowup and what it means for startup investing

 Binary Capital, the San Francisco-based early stage fund whose cofounder, Justin Caldbeck, resigned this past Sunday, is shutting down for all practical purposes. A source tells Bloomberg that the young firm, which had closed its second fund last year with $175 million in commitments but barely begun to invest that capital, will be wound down. Binary’s portfolio companies, including from… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Atacama uses microfluidic technology to create moisture-control fabric that actually stays dry

 Imagine sportswear that not only stays dry through the most sweat-inducing workouts, but also turns perspiration into a design element. Named after the driest desert in the world, Atacama uses microfluidic technology to create textiles that can do just that. The recipient of a grant from the National Science Foundation, Atacama is also exploring how its technology can be applied in a diverse… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Storage company Omni now lets users share their belongings with friends

 On-demand storage startup Omni wants to make it easier for you to have access to your favorite items without them taking up space in your closet. But now the company is taking a huge step toward making those items available to your friends, and to other people in your local community. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Pray.com, a community-building app for faith organizations, raises $2M in seed funding

 Pray.com, an interfaith mobile app that helps religious leaders keep in touch with their congregants, will grow its team after receiving $2 million in seed funding. The round was led by Science Inc., an accelerator whose portfolio also includes Dollar Shave Club and DogVacay, with participation from Greylock Partners and Spark Capital. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Just a few more weeks to apply for Startup Battlefield Africa

 Startups in sub-Saharan Africa, your time is running out. You have just a few short weeks to apply for TechCrunch’s inaugural Startup Battlefield Africa competition, so those looking to participate in the competition should apply soon. Startups can apply to one of three categories: social good/productivity and utility/gaming and entertainment. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

The Eero Beacon is the perfect addition to its family of mesh WiFi products

 Since launching two years ago, wireless networking startup Eero has sought to make it easier for consumers to blanket their homes in strong WiFi. With the its newest hardware products, Eero took a step forward in that goal, in part by introducing a small-footprint Beacons that can be placed nearly anywhere in a person’s house or apartment. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

LendUp gets strategic investment from PayPal and adds to its executive team

 LendUp has built business providing personal loans to customers that traditional financial institutions wouldn’t touch. As it looks to expand into credit cards and other services, the company has raised some strategic funding from PayPal and also has expanded its executive ranks. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Coca-Cola has built a commercialization ‘Bridge’ to startups worldwide

 Why would a 131-year-old soda company with $44 billion in international sales possibly want to partner with small, pre-revenue technology companies emerging from places far-flung from its Atlanta headquarters? If the company is Coca-Cola (and it is), the answer is all about strategy. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Zume Pizza adds extra automation as it rolls out to new cities

 Zume Pizza has its eyes set on disrupting legacy pizza players like Pizza Hut and Domino’s by improving on both speed and quality with the help of robots. Over the last two years, founder Julia Collins has been steadily adding new machines to her pizza assembly line to maximize consistency without resorting to cheats that sacrifice the pizza itself. Today the company is announcing… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Blue Apron significantly lowers its valuation with slashed IPO pricing

 Blue Apron — the next big consumer IPO for 2016 — isn’t looking as good as it was just a few weeks ago. The company said in an updated filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it would cut its IPO price range target to between $10 and $11 per share, down from between $15 and $17 per share. Normally these price ranges move around, but this is a pretty… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Wayra UK launches accelerator to tackle the ‘poverty premium’

 Wayra, the Telefónica backed accelerator network, is launching a new startup program in the UK that aims to tackle the so-called ‘poverty premium’ — whereby people on low incomes pay more for some goods and services. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Cannabis delivery startup Eaze confirms theft of some user data from service provider

 An anonymous source tipped off Crunchbase News that Eaze, the Series B-stage cannabis delivery startup with over $24 million in venture funding, has experienced a security incident. Some of its user data may have been stolen by a former employee of Don Davidson, MD, a medical service provider that provides patient consultations and medical cannabis recommendations (the equivalent of a… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Boundless, Navigator CRE and Off the Record take prizes at TechCrunch’s Seattle pitch-off

 It was a lovely day for a meetup in Seattle, and the Showbox SoDo was packed as TechCrunch’s annual pitch-off in my home town took place last week. But as impressive as our ten contestants were, only three would leave with tickets to Disrupt SF. And here they are. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Dating apps are embracing video

 Dating apps are, in their own way, a form of social networking – especially as they expand into new areas like friend-finding or professional networking. So it only makes sense that they would adopt video as well, given the growing popularity of the format on social apps like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, as well as the industry’s larger embrace of “Stories” as a… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Feather launches a high-end furniture rental service for liminal living

 People already rent housing and lease cars, why not rent the furniture, as well? Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Nootrobox is now HVMN and will sell biohacking products beyond nootropics

 If none of what’s in the above headline makes sense, you probably weren’t following the biohacking trend for the last couple of years. But Silicon Valley is brimming with tech execs trying to become faster, stronger and smarter by “hacking” their genetic code through various experimental methods called biohacks. These would be the people drinking buttered coffee,… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com