Pinterest business lead Tim Kendall is leaving the company

 Pinterest president Tim Kendall, who has since joining in 2012 overseen the growth of the startup’s advertising business and launch of a wide array of ad products, is leaving the company at the end of the year. Kendall oversaw the company’s business operations for the past five years as it sought to grow from a niche advertising product in experimental budgets to something worth… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Lyft gained from Uber’s scandals, sees revenue triple

 Lyft appears to have benefited from Uber’s tough year. The U.S. rival has seen its revenue growth more than triple, according to a report from The Information.  The media outlet viewed financial reports, which showed Lyft brought in $483 million in revenue in the first half of 2017, compared to about $150 million in the same timeframe last year. The company also greatly improved its… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Dropbox acquires publishing platform Verst, will shut it down on Dec. 21

 The team behind Verst is joining Dropbox, in an acquisition that marks the end of the Verst publishing platform. The startup actually started life as DWNLD, a platform that transformed websites into mobile apps. It raised a $12 million Series A led by Grelock Partners before shifting focus to Verst, which launched earlier this year as a blogging platform that has traffic and revenue… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

H20.AI’s snares $40M Series C investment led by Wells Fargo and Nvidia

 H20.AI started almost 6 years ago with a mission to simplify and democratize artificial intelligence. Today the company announced a $40M Series C round. Nvidia and Wells Fargo led the round with participation from New York Life, Crane Venture Partners, Nexus Venture Partners and Transamerica Ventures. Today’s investment brings the total raised so far to $75 million. The last round was… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

WeWork has big plans for Alexa for Business

 Amazon is soon to announce Alexa for Business, and WeWork is one of the first partners to have hopped on the platform. WeWork’s vision is to use technology to help businesses make the most out of their physical space, all while customizing that space to each individual’s personal needs. The co-working giant has been on the Alexa for Business platform for about a month now, as part… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Innovid acquires Taykey to provide more data to video advertisers

 Video advertising company Innovid has acquired another advertising startup, Taykey. We’ve written about Taykey as a tool that companies can use to target their ads based on the topics that their desired audience is interested in. Innovid says that by combining Taykey’s analysis with its own data about video engagement, it can show advertisers how targeting relevant content affects… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Fractyl Labs raises $44 million in Series D to develop a treatment for type 2 diabetes

 Fractyl Labs, a Lexington, Massachusetts-based startup developing treatments for diabetes, has raised $44 million in Series D financing from a slew of VC firms, including GV, True Ventures, the IDO Fund, General Catalyst, Bessemer Venture Partners, Domain Associates, Mithril Capital Management, Emergent Medical Partners, L.P., and Deerfield Management Company, L.P. Fractyl has been working on… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

FDA clears AliveCor’s Kardiaband as the first medical device accessory for the Apple Watch

 The Food and Drug Administration has just cleared AliveCor’s Kardiaband EKG reader as the first medical device accessory for the Apple Watch. Europe has been able to use a version of the Kardiaband for Apple Watch for some time now but, thanks to the new FDA approval, the device can now be used in the U.S., marking the first time an Apple Watch accessory will be able to be used as a… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Stationhead allows anyone to become a streaming radio DJ, with live listener calls

 Streaming services like Spotify have turned playlists into one of the main ways to discover new music, but I’d argue that they’re missing some of the personality of traditional radio — the kind of radio where I knew not just the names of my favorite DJs, but also what kind of music they liked and random details about their life. That’s the experience that Stationhead,… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Netflix is slowly teasing Black Mirror Season 4 with another trailer

 Netflix has been tight-lipped about the release date for Season 4 of Black Mirror. However, the streaming giant continues to tease with trailers for each of the episodes. Thus far, we’ve got our hands on trailers for Arkangel (directed by Jodie Foster) and Crocodile, both of which were creepy to our satisfaction. Today, Netflix has released a trailer for the third of six episodes. This… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

GE Ventures unveils new blood collection startup Drawbridge Health

 Drawbridge Health wants to make it easier for doctor’s offices and clinics to collect small samples of your blood for testing on site with a handheld device. The device uses proprietary technology to collect and stabilize just a few drops of blood for various tests like hormone levels, genetic testing, monitoring disease and other things patients normally have to get done at an outside… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

InsurTech Gateway is a new insurance tech accelerator backed by Hambro Perks

 In what appears to be a first, at least in the U.K., InsurTech Gateway is an FCA-authorised insurance broker in its own right. This, it reckons, should dramatically cut down the time it takes for the startups it backs to launch new and innovative products. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

SoftBank confirms that Benchmark and Menlo intend to sell Uber shares

 SoftBank Group has confirmed that it has found likely sellers for the tender offer for Uber’s shares, which launched tonight. These are the shares from existing shareholders that will be sold at more than a 30% discount to Uber’s last private round.  The Japanese investment firm provided us with the following statement. “SoftBank and Dragoneer have received indications… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Japanese bitcoin exchange bitFlyer is coming to the U.S

 Japansese cryptocurrency exchange bitFlyer announced today it’s expanding to the U.S, with approval to operate in 41 states starting today. This includes regulatory approval in New York via the state’s Department of Financial Services’ “BitLicense”, which only three other cryptocurrency companies currently have. For comparison, Coinbase has approval to operate in… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Instacart signs deal with Albertsons

 Instacart has inked a deal with Albertsons to offer same-day delivery from the grocery store chain. The deal will include 1,800 of Albertsons stores across the country by mid-2018, helping Instacart deliver on its promise to be available in 80 percent of markets across the U.S. by the end of 2018. This isn’t Albertsons first foray into the tech space. Earlier this year, the company… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Adobe previews new Photoshop feature that uses AI to select subjects

 While Photoshop users have gotten pretty damn good at masking humans and other subjects over the years, it still remains one of the most tedious tasks in the app. But the days of Magic Wand masking will soon be over. Adobe today teased an upcoming feature that uses AI to identify and automatically mask subjects in the image. The feature is called Select Subject and it uses Adobe’s AI… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Airbnb launches payment splitting for group trips

 In February of this year, Airbnb acquired social payments startup Tilt. Today, the fruits of that acquisition are being passed along to Airbnb users. Starting now, Airbnb users have the ability to split payments with their fellow travelers. Before now, one traveler was forced to front the cost of the trip and hope that their friends/colleagues/family were responsible enough to pay them back in… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Veem opens up global payments platform to developers with new API

 If you’ve ever tried to do business across borders, you know how painful it can be to send a wire transfer, wait for the payment to clear the bank and pay a set of fees along the way. Veem is a startup trying to simplify all of that for SMBs by providing a platform to ease the international transfer of funds between businesses. Today, it announced it was opening up that capability to… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

StrideUp wants to help you buy a portion of your home

 StrideUp, a U.K. startup founded last year by Sakeeb Zaman and Rohan Trivedi, both formerly of Deutsche Bank, wants to make shared home ownership more readily available within the private housing sector. The company, which launched in the summer, lets you buy a portion of your home while you continue to rent the remainder. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Doctolib raises another $42 million for its medical care scheduling service

 French startup Doctolib is raising money for the second time in the past twelve months. The company is building a sort of Salesforce for the healthcare industry with a big emphasis on bookings. Doctolib just raised $42 million (€35 million) from Eurazeo and existing investor Bpifrance. The startup announced another round of funding back in January 2017. If you combine those two rounds,… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Netflix keeps the mystery alive with Black Mirror

 Fans are stoked for a fourth season of Black Mirror, as they should be. The Emmy-award winning series, which shows the dark side of our inevitable future, does an outstanding job of story-telling while encapsulating an entire plot line in a single episode at a time. But Netflix is keeping its cards close to the vest. The streaming giant has yet to announce a release date for Season 4, but… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Jellies is a kid-friendly, parent-approved alternative to YouTube Kids

 As YouTube reels from a series of scandals related to its lack of policing around inappropriate content aimed at children, obscene comments on videos of children, horrifying search suggestions, and more, a new app called Jellies has arrived to offer parents a safer way to let their kids watch videos on mobile devices. Jellies was built by Ken Yarmosh, founder of Savvy Apps, which has been… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Flitto’s language data helps machine translation systems get more accurate

 Artificial intelligence-powered translation is becoming an increasingly crowded category, with Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook all working on their own services. But tech still isn’t a match for professional human translations and machine-generated results are often hit-and-miss. One online translation service, Flitto, is now focused on providing other companies with the language… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Find your red-eyed fans

 I’ve been thinking about token sale marketing lately mostly because it’s been so bad. I’ve gotten hundreds of emails asking me to be an ICO advisor or evangelist or influencer primarily because the ICO marketing techniques come to us straight out of the spammiest corners of affiliate marketing. I’ve gotten emails from founders who have been promised “posts on… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Balderton Capital closes new $375M fund to invest in Series A-stage European startups

 More VC money sloshing around Europe: In what was probably one of the worst kept secrets in European VC, London-based Balderton Capital is announcing a new $375 million fund. I understand that it actually closed earlier this year, however, and I’m told has already been used to make ten investments. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com