When Spotinst rebranded to Spot in March, it seemed big changes were afoot for the startup, which originally helped companies find and manage cheap infrastructure known as spot instances (hence its original name). We had no idea how big at the time. Today, NetApp announced plans to acquire the startup. The companies did not share
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In entrepreneurship, timing is everything. Launch too early and the market or underlying tech may not be ready to support your idea. Launch too late and the opportunity may have already been conceded to competitors. For Endlesss, the music-making app from Tim Exile, the timing feels just right. Launched on March 31st, just as the
Dec.20 — Sinovation Ventures CEO Kai-Fu Lee, a former Google and Microsoft executive who led those companies’ efforts in China, discusses the road ahead for U.S. tech companies in China on “Bloomberg Studio 1.0” with Emily Chang.
Adam Guild Contributor Adam Guild is a growth marketing expert and the founder of Placepull. Imagine going from zero followers to 10,000,000+ followers in less than five months. I have watched somebody do exactly that. My brother Topper Guild is already reaping the benefits of fame: People stop him in the street for photos and
Lili, a startup building banking products to meet the needs of freelance workers, is announcing that it has raised $10 million in seed funding. The startup takes its name from its founders, CEO Lilac Bar David and CTO Liran Zelkha, who previously founded Israeli challenger bank Pepper. Bar David told me that while many neobanks have
Snap announced this morning that it will not be promoting content from President Trump’s Snapchat account in its Discover tab following statements from Trump last week on Twitter, which threatened that protestors could be met with “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons.” The move is notable for many reasons, but is particularly interesting because social media
Zoom’s latest earnings report was even better than expected, SoftBank announces a new fund to invest in founders of color and Google pulls a trending app that targets apps from China. Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 3, 2020. 1. Remote work helps Zoom grow 169% in one year, posting $328.2M in Q1 revenue Zoom’s
Monzo, the U.K. challenger bank, continues to be faced with tough decisions linked to the coronavirus crisis and resulting economic downturn. Following the shuttering of its Las Vegas-based customer support office and almost 300 staff being furloughed in U.K., the company has announced internally that up to 120 U.K. staff are being made redundant. Reuters
Meet Watchful, a Tel Aviv-based startup coming out of stealth that wants to help you learn more about what your competitors are doing when it comes to mobile app development. The company tries to identify features that are being tested before getting rolled out to everyone, giving you an advantage if you’re competing with those
French VC firm Idinvest has compiled some data about the European tech ecosystem. The firm has decided to focus on consumer tech in general, and there are some interesting trends that I’m going to break out here. You can read the full report here. The team has analyzed and surveyed 1,500 companies over multiple months.
Facebook is introducing a new tool to help users batch-delete old posts and shrink their digital footprint on the aging social network. Called “Manage Activity,” the new feature lets users prune their posts in bulk, making it less of a headache to delete content aging badly or anything else unnecessary that’s built up from years
Atlassian today launched a slew of DevOps-centric updates to a variety of its services, ranging from Bitbucket Cloud and Pipelines to Jira and others. While it’s quite a grabbag of announcements, the overall idea behind them is to make it easier for teams to collaborate across functions as companies adopt DevOps as their development practice
Team8, the Israel-based firm founded by a team of intelligence vets and backed by the likes of Intel, Microsoft, Walmart and Cisco to develop and spin out cybersecurity startups, is announcing a step change in its business model that underscores the huge amount of activity we’re seeing these days in the sector. Alongside its studio model,
Hala Hanna Contributor Hala Hanna is Managing Director, Community at MIT Solve, a marketplace for social impact innovation. In today’s new world completely engulfed by COVID-19, all sorts of innovations are emerging to help the world overcome this difficult time: 3D printers are cranking out medical supplies; rapid advancements in testing have been made — now providing
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Used-car marketplace Vroom continued its march towards going public yesterday with the release of an updated IPO filing. The documents it filed provides pricing information for a somewhat odd public offering. As a business, the heavily
An executive order from the White House targeting Twitter for moderating one of the president’s posts is being challenged in a new lawsuit from a digital rights group. The president signed the order last week after Twitter added a fact-checking label to one of his tweets that made false claims about mail-in voting. The order,
Today after the bell, video-chat service Zoom reported its Q1 earnings. The company disclosed that it generated $328.2 million in revenue, up 169% compared to the year-ago period. The company also reported $0.20 per-share in adjusted profit during the three-month period. Analysts, as averaged by Yahoo Finance, expected Zoom to report $202.48 million in revenue,
Back in August 2019, the BBC made some waves with the news that it was developing a voice assistant called Beeb, an English language “Alexa” of its own that could interact with and control its array of radio and TV services, and its on-demand catalogue, and able to understand the array of accents you find
It was a busy week in security. Newly released documents shown exclusively to TechCrunch show that U.S. immigration authorities used a controversial cell phone snooping technology known as a “stingray” hundreds of times in the past three years. Also, if you haven’t updated your Android phone in a while, now would be a good time
May.08 — Chamath Palihapitiya, founder of Social Capital, joins us for an extended conversation on the biggest issues in the tech and venture capital worlds right now — regulation, Tesla, Apple and the Facebook data scandal. He speaks with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang on “Bloomberg Technology.”
Like many parents, Zigazoo founder Zak Ringelstein worries about his children’s screen time. His worries only grew when COVID-19 led to school shutdowns and kids came home to a world of remote learning. Now, as lockdowns extend, Ringelstein is learning to embrace screen time as a way to sneak education and entertainment into his kids’
Overjet, a startup focused on using AI to help dentists and insurance companies understand dental scans, today announced that it has raised $7.85 million in what it describes as a seed round. According to Overjet’s CEO Wardah Inam (an MIT PhD in electrical engineering and computer science), the company raised the funds from Crosslink Capital,
Facebook staff protests the social network’s stance on Trump posts, Volkswagen finalizes its $2.6 billion investment in Argo AI and we examine complaints about the layoff process at events and travel startup Pollen. Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 2, 2020. 1. Facebook employees stage virtual walkout in protest of company’s stance on Trump posts
In 2015, Atlassian was preparing to go public, but it was not your typical company in so many ways. For starters, it was founded in Australia, it had two co-founder co-CEOs, and it offered collaboration tools centered on software development. That meant that the company leaders really needed to work hard to help investors understand
The European Commission is asking for views on how online platforms should be regulated in future, launching a public consultation today on the forthcoming Digital Services Act (DSA). This pan-EU legislative proposal, due before the end of the year, is slated to rework the regional rulebook for digital services, including tackling controversial issues such as
French startup Majelan is pivoting a year after launching a podcast player and service. The company, created by former Radio France CEO Mathieu Gallet and Arthur Perticoz, is ditching the podcast aggregation side of its business and focusing on premium audio content going forward. Like many podcast startups, Majelan has faced some criticisms shortly after
Pollen, the U.K.-headquartered travel and events marketplace, describes its company culture as built on principles of “freedom” and openness, including a well-publicised pay transparency policy. However, that doesn’t appear to always be the case with regards to the treatment of recently departing employees. When the word-of-mouth marketing company laid off 69 staff from its various
Lost in the news of the George Floyd protests against police brutality and racism in the U.S., Facebook last week quietly noted it will now require Facebook Profile pages with large followings in the U.S. to verify their identity. The company said that profiles with sizable audiences, who also have a pattern of inauthentic behavior
When Salesforce announced it was acquiring Vlocity for $1.33 billion in February, it was a deal that made sense for both companies. Today, the company announced that the deal has closed and Vlocity CEO David Schmaier has been named CEO of a new division called Salesforce Industries. Vlocity has built several industry-specific CRM tools such
“Employee Wellbeing” SaaS platforms have been around for some time. Both regulation and increasing stress levels and health problems in the workplace have fed the rise of this sector of tech, and with many corporates painting long-term contracts with providers, it’s a lucrative business. Furthermore, with the COVID-19 pandemic ongoing, large remote-workforces look here to