Sunday, July 31, 2016

Talking the future of education with Convergent Media founder Rob Anderson

Online education This week on Technotopia I talk to Rob Anderson, founder of Convergent Media Group and a former founding team member at MTV Russia. Anderson has some interesting ideas on education and the necessity for a true way to assess and hire based on personality types and skills. Anderson is constantly hiring for his media company and he’s looking forward to a future when we will all be working a… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

It’s a new era for female Israeli entrepreneurs

Seaside Homes The Israeli startup scene has dramatically changed within a couple of years because of the significant increase in investment prospects, events, meet-ups, competitions, lectures, academic programs and more. Especially interesting are the recent alterations in the diversity of the entrepreneurs, with more and more women entering the previously male-dominated startup habitat. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Saturday, July 30, 2016

In what contexts should messaging be the UI?

messaging-ui The current messaging hype is overstated. There are certainly some interesting and unique opportunities for messaging as an interface, but I contend the number of practical use cases is a fraction of what the current hype cycle suggests. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Serious privacy flaws discovered in Glow fertility tracker app

pregnant There are scores of startups making fertility tracker and family planning apps today, but a Consumer Reports investigation has singled out Glow Inc. for serious security and privacy flaws. First, Consumer Reports’ team was able to access very personal information including data and comments about users’ sex lives, history of miscarriages, abortions and more, through a privacy… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Tech trends that will impact your home

smarthome High-tech homes are about to revolutionize the way we live. While interior design once relied on color schemes and playful accents, new tech trends are completely revamping how we design, build and live in our spaces. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

10 most unlikely startup investments made by NBA legends

Sports and Gambling Concept. Basketball with American dollars. As the tech industry has heated up in recent years, athletes with an interest in startups have been jumping on deals. Most have stuck to what they know and supported sports-tech companies like CoachUp and The Players’ Tribune. But for some athletes, even that wasn’t enough. Here’s 10 of the most unlikely startup investments made by NBA legends. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Friday, July 29, 2016

Charging startups to apply to an accelerator is exploitative and dumb

money-208 Yesterday, a little birdie told me about Nextt, an accelerator (probably more accurately referred to as an incubator) for early-idea-stage startups. The idea is to take a napkin-stage idea and turn it into an MVP of sorts in six weeks. Not a shabby idea, but the insidious thing here is that Nextt charges $100 per idea. Not to participate, mind you — to apply. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Dedrone partners with Airbus to bring drone detection to wide open spaces including airports

Dedrone detects unmanned aerial vehicles in airspace around various venues and businesses. A startup that helps businesses determine when drones are flying unwantedly or otherwise into their airspace, Dedrone, has partnered with the electronics division of civil aircraft manufacturers Airbus to bring drone detection to wide open spaces and remote locations. Through their partnership, Dedrone will integrate Airbus’s long range radar technology into its systems which are… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Microsoft awards hardware startup ENTy the 2016 Imagine Cup

ENTy-pose The festivities have wrapped for Microsoft’s Imagine Cup, a global competition among students and young people to create new software and devices. The winner this year was ENTy, a polished and highly practical hardware solution for tracking posture, helping with diagnosis and possibly treatment of diseases that affect balance. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Lobster, the marketplace for user-generated content, integrates with DropBox

SONY DSC Lobster, the platform that lets brands and publishers license user-generated content from social sites like Instagram and Youtube, has today announced integration with Dropbox. Plus, the platform has builtout tools that will make it easier for brands and publishers to find the perfect picture. Lobster, in short, does all the heavy lifting when it comes to licensing user-generated content.… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Krawd turns the ad agency into a marketplace

potentiel-freelances Meet Krawd, a French startup that wants to rethink the way advertising agencies work. Like in other industries, Krawd thinks that it’s more efficient to build a marketplace than build a centralized, traditional company. Krawd is all about connecting the right freelancers with the right clients in this specific industry. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Thursday, July 28, 2016

Corporate venture growth in Brazil is another sign of a mature tech ecosystem

brazil high trees Despite recent positive news and a renewed interest of international investors in the country, the reality is that Brazil is suffering. The country has endured a profound financial crisis for several years. As the mess untangles and we go up from what many experts consider the bottom, the consequences for the region’s overall economy are now very real. For investors, it’s a… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Opternative and 1-800-Contacts now let users get updated prescriptions from home

The Opternative app lets patients get a new contact lens or glasses prescription from home. Telehealth and telemedicine companies have the power to help patients get the care they need from home, and often more quickly and at a lower cost than what they’d pay out of pocket at a clinic or office in person. Investors have backed scores of these companies, including the now publicly traded Teladoc and MDLIVE, as well as Doctor on Demand, Talkspace, Joyable, Curology and myriad… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

TradingView, a community for chart-obsessed investors, moves into new markets

TradingView HomePage Data-driven investor community TradingView has hit one million monthly active users and is expanding globally to under-served markets. TechCrunch last covered TradingView in 2012 when the site was seeing 2,000 visitors per day. The site differs from other investor communities like Seeking Alpha because of its emphasis on visuals. TradingView takes a chart based approach to supporting investing. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Sketchfab makes it easier to look at 3D models in virtual reality

Screen Shot 2016-07-22 at 12.03.59 PM Step by step, Sketchfab is turning into the best platform to view 3D models using a virtual reality headset. First, the company added a VR button on every browsing page, then it released apps to support all VR headsets and showcase a few models. Now, the New York-based startup is making it easier to move around 3D models. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Peek.com raises $10 million, strikes partnership to bring tour and activity booking to Yelp

Peek.com cofounders Oskar Bruening (CTO) and Ruzwana Bashir (CEO). Peek.com has raised $10 million in equity funding to become what it calls an “OpenTable for the $100 billion activities market,” according to CEO and co-founder Ruzwana Bashir. Based in San Francisco, with additional offices in Salt Lake City, Utah, Peek.com lets travelers, and locals, find and book activities such as tours, tastings and lessons, online or via mobile. The Peek.com… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Uber cofounder launches new real estate venture for Expa called Haus

Screen Shot 2016-07-28 at 9.33.56 AM Garrett Camp, Uber cofounder and CEO of Expa Studios, is today unveiling Expa’s latest project, Haus. Haus is the studio’s first real estate play and focuses entirely on the buying and selling of residential property, digitizing and organizing offers from buyers so that all parties (the buyer, seller, and agents) have more transparency and immediacy through the negotiation… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Monese, the UK banking app for immigrants and expats, finally lands on iOS

monese_teaser For all the hype around fintech, not least in London, Monese is a startup that has pragmatism at its heart. It’s not trying to be an actual bank — in the technical, banking license sense — but does enable immigrants and expats, who might otherwise find it hard to open a bank account outside of their home country, to access core banking services. Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Sales and marketing startup LeadGenius raises $10M

leadgenius LeadGenius announced today that it has raised $10 million in Series B funding. Formerly known as MobileWorks, LeadGenius helps customers find likely sales leads and reach out to them with automated emails. The company says revenue increased 6x in the past 20 months, with customers including eBay, Box and Weebly. LeadGenius has now raised more than $21 million in funding. The new round was… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Hyperloop One unveils new manufacturing plant in Nevada

Screen Shot 2016-07-27 at 4.56.59 PM Hyperloop One is today announcing the opening of its first manufacturing plant. Called Hyperloop One Metalworks, the 105,000 square-foot building in North Las Vegas will be the new professional home of many of the company’s 170 employees, including engineers, machinists and welders. These folks will build and test a number of components for the DevLoop, a full-system prototype of the… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Good Eggs, take two: the online organic grocery raises $15 million to expand across the U.S.

good eggs A San Francisco startup that many people assumed was toast, Good Eggs, has raised $15 million in a new round of venture funding led by Index Ventures to expand its online, organic grocery business across the U.S. In recent years, Good Eggs tried to ramp up its eco- and farm-friendly grocery business only to face logistics problems, high costs and lagging customer satisfaction in some markets.… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Phosphorus genomics startup raises $10 million to test fertility

DNA molecules As the world of DNA sequencing becomes more efficient and less expensive, a number of companies are sprouting up within the space. The latest, Phosphorus, has just raised a $10 million Series A led by FirstMark. Phosphorus is actually a spin-out from a previous genomics company called Recombine, which sold to CooperSurgical last year in a transaction valued at $85 million. Recombine, led by… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Awair air quality monitor teams up with Nest, Amazon Echo and IFTTT

bitfinderawair Awair, the IoT product that sits in the home and measures the quality of your air, has today announced integrations with a number of other platforms to improve the experience. The company behind Aawir, Bitfinder, has teamed up with Nest, the Amazon Echo, and IFTTT to offer users new ways to interact with the data gathered from air quality monitor and more seamlessly automate their other… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Density raises $4 million to track crowds at the DMV, theme parks and corporate campuses

density The Department of Motor Vehicles is one of the most notorious ways to waste your life away. Density could help ease this pain. Today, Density is launching its people-counting sensor for measuring how many people are inside a space at any given time. The company is also announcing a $4 million Series A round led by Upfront Ventures Managing Partner Mark Suster with participation from Ludlow… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com

Big Health, the startup behind Sleepio, raises $12M to scale delivery of non-drug mental health solutions

Sleepio Today Big Health, which is already backed by Index Ventures, is disclosing that it has raised $12 million (£9.15m) in new funding led by Octopus Ventures. Also participating are Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Index, Sean Duffy (CEO, Omada Health), and JamJar Investments (the UK-based investment fund of the innocent drinks founders). Noteworthy is that Esther Dyson, and Peter Read are also… Read More Post by startupsnows.blogspot.com