Month: December 2019

Pandora has begun to test a new type of advertising format that allows listeners to respond to the ad by speaking aloud. In the new ads, listeners are prompted to say “yes” after the ad asks a question and a tone plays. The ads will then offer more information about the product or brand in
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Salesforce announced today that it has named Bret Taylor as president and chief operating officer of the company. Prior to today’s promotion, Taylor held the position of president and chief product officer. In his new position, Taylor will be responsible for a number of activities including leading Salesforce’s global product vision, engineering, security, marketing and
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Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the grey space in between. This morning we’re digging into the current IPO market, asking ourselves how much damage WeWork really did to other companies hoping to go public. Is the IPO window closed, and if not, what sort of companies
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French startup Yubo has raised a $12.3 million funding round led by Iris Capital and Idinvest Partners. Existing investors Alven, Sweet Capital and Village Global are also participating. The startup has managed to attract 25 million users over the years — there are currently tens of thousands of people signing up to the platform every
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Portify, the London fintech startup that offers an app and various financial products to help gig economy and other modern, flexible or “self-employed” workers better manage their finances, has raised £7 million in Series A funding. The round, which comes a year after the company raised £1.3 million in seed investment, is led by Redalpine
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I’ve been following Estonia-headquartered Jobbatical and its founder, Karoli Hindriks, for years. Part of the vanguard of startups working on infrastructure for digital nomads, the startup has been building the base platform to help global job seekers hire and fire their governments. As Jobbatical has worked with more and more companies and governments though, it
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BMW today announced that it is finally bringing Android Auto to its vehicles, starting in July 2020. With that, it will join Apple’s CarPlay in the company’s vehicles. The first live demo of Android Auto in a BMW will happen at CES 2020 next month and after that, it will become available as an update
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Childcare is one of the biggest expenses for American parents and it’s not just families who are taking a hit. Childcare issues cost the United States’ economy an estimated $4.4 billion in lost productivity each year and also impacts employee retention rates. Kinside wants to help with a platform that not only enables families to
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By Miles, the U.K. pay-by-mile car insurance provider, is launching a “connected car” insurance policy specifically for Tesla drivers. The new insurance product pulls real-time mileage information directly from a car owner’s Tesla account and uses the distance they have driven to price their insurance each month. It claims to be the first car insurance
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The team at Wotch has created a new social video platform — but wait, don’t roll your eyes quite yet. “Obviously, we’re very used to someone creating a new internet video-sharing platform,” said co-CEO Scott Willson. “It must be very irritating for everyone to hear that.” And yet Willson and his co-founder/co-CEO James Sadler have
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Electric vehicle startup Nio is laying off 141 people at its North American headquarters. According to a filing from Employment Development Department of California, the employees at its San Jose office received notice on December 6. Nio, whose global headquarters are in Shanghai, announced last month that it is partnering with Intel’s Mobileye to develop
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Wefox Group, the Berlin-based insurtech startup behind the consumer-facing insurance app and carrier One and the insurance platform Wefox, is disclosing $110 million in a second tranche of Series B funding. Sources tell TechCrunch that this gives the company a pre-money valuation of $1.65 billion. WeFox Group declined to comment on the financials. The Series
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