Dinner Lab is laying off around 30 employees from their full-time positions as it shifts to a contract-based model for its events staff, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. Most of those layoffs consisted of on-the-ground events execution staff. The crux of the issue was that these events staffers were being paid as full-time employees, which CEO Brian Bordainick said was not that sustainable… Read More
Startups can now reach international markets almost immediately at launch. Product/market fit is geographically, industry and company-size agnostic — SaaS makes your product adoption almost instantaneous. Although this early global traction can happen organically at the beginning, the reality is that startups must be strategic about systematically scaling from a local region to any number… Read More
In the words of Pitbull, “Ask for money, get advice. Ask for advice, get money twice.” When you’re shopping for a VC, you might want to take Pitbull at least a little seriously, because he seems to know what he’s talking about. If you think VCs are just a source of money, you’re sorely mistaken. Most startup founders fail to recognize that the best venture… Read More
Gojimo, an app that helps U.K. high school students prepare for exams, has picked up a further $1.8 million in funding, bringing total raised by the 2013-founded startup to just over $3 million. Read More
Airplane ridesharing startup Flytenow today announced that it is shutting down after a court recently upheld the FAA’s power to regulate what does (and does not) constitute a commercial aviation operation. Flytenow wanted to bring together private pilots and those who wanted to fly with them. From the get-go, though, Flytenow and similar startups like Airpooler were going to run into… Read More
Around ten years ago, Jules Urbach was sitting at the table at his mom’s house, coding away, when there was a knock at the door. His mom answered, but the visitor was for him. Directors J.J. Abrams and David Fincher had some questions about a rendering technology Urbach was working on, which had the potential to make movie scenes look much more realistic with shorter load times.… Read More
One year old HomeTouch, which has just picked up additional undisclosed funding from Passion Capital, operates a home care marketplace to let families with elderly parents and others needing “care” to find a vetted carer local to them. Read More
Burnout is as real as it gets. Burnout is a period of life when your thinking has become relentlessly intrusive, and quieting such thinking only makes it worse, similar to that of anxiety, depression and chronic stress. Burnout happens when the separation between your thinking and work has evaporated and your reasoning leads you to the path of trying to work your way to a solution, only… Read More
Stratos isn’t dead yet. The Michigan-based startup just signed an agreement with Ciright One LLC to take over the fledgling company. Under their agreement, Ciright One will manage and fulfill all outstanding consumer and commercial and Thiago Olson, Stratos co-founder, ensures me that Stratos Cards will continue to function as normal. There is a plan to reinstate customer support in… Read More
We’re hearing from a lot of chatter that Foursquare is in the process of raising a new fundraising round that will be a down round. The exact dollar value of what the company is raising, as well as the exact valuation of the round, couldn’t be learned but either way the company is looking at another haircut to its valuation. One source tells us that Microsoft, which participated in… Read More
If you’re buying a Tesla Model S, you can probably afford to bring your own tunes to the mix, but the company has announced today that you’ll get free Spotify Premium integration with your purchase in Europe, Australia and Hong Kong. Not for the US, but it’s still one final burn for the previously implemented and now acquired Rdio. Here’s what Spotify’s… Read More
Lyft has authorized a Series F round in which it could raise as much as $1 billion, according to a report by Bloomberg, citing a Delaware state filing. We hear that Credit Suisse is running the fundraise — the big banks are getting involved with some of these large rounds, sorting everything out amongst the many investors. Goldman has been handling Uber’s mega-rounds,… Read More
2015 was not a good year for IPOs. In fact, it was the worst year for tech IPOs since the financial crisis in 2009, with more and more startups opting to remain private longer. Stock market swings stemming from an oil crisis and a delayed interest rate decision meant that some companies in the pipeline decided to postpone their IPO until 2016. “Investors in the market were looking… Read More
We Heart It, an image bookmarking service popular with teenaged girls, is out now with its second mobile application called Easel. The new app is designed to complement We Heart It’s main app, as it serves as a way to quickly create images using quotes that can be shared on We Heart It’s service or elsewhere on social media, including Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook.… Read More
Blaze has come a long way. After participating in our Hardware Battlefield competition two years ago, the company signed a deal with a big client, London’s bike-sharing program. Read More
Administrate, the Scottish startup that offers a Sofware-as-a-Service for training providers, has raised a $2.5 million funding round. So far, so routine. But the company is also talking up a recent HR “innovation”: Its entire staff have moved to a four-day week, with no loss in productivity, apparently. Read More
Gusto (formerly ZenPayroll) is looking to raise $50 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange commission. That’s only natural for the startup, which is increasingly competing with the well-funded — and cash burning — Zenefits. So far, the company has raised about $22.2 million of its funding round, according to that filing. It looks like General… Read More
The Stratos Card is about to jump in the deadpool. The company behind the universal credit card is shutting down, TechCrunch has confirmed from several sources. Founded in 2012 by Thiago Olson and Chris Bartenstein, the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based startup raised $6.63 million over three rounds of financing with the most recent being a $5.8M Venture round in October of 2014. We hear they ran out… Read More
In the past few months, Tinder has been working on a feature called Super Like, which let users tell one of their matches that the situation is more serious than simply swiping right. Today, Coffee Meets Bagel has added something similar in ‘Send A Woo’, letting CMB users express higher-than-usual interest in a potential match. Coffee Meets Bagel launched in 2013 with an… Read More
CellSavers CEO Itai Hirsch was not a fan of driving to a local repair shop after he’d broken many of his phones and tablets. So he decided to take a run at building CellSavers, an on-demand repair service that’s like an Uber for smartphone repairs. To do that, CellSavers has raised $3 million in seed funding from Sequoia Israel. CellSavers connects users with technicians that will… Read More
Looking at startups from the outside, it’s easy to assume the startup game is just that, a game. A game with big winners and glorious and rapid rises to the top. Of billion-dollar valuations and worldwide conquests. Of apps serving hundreds of millions of people and liquidity to ensure glory for one’s heirs for generations to come. But entrepreneurship is not a game. Read More
Four of these fabled creatures popped up along the Wasatch this last year, including Omniture founder Josh James’ business intelligence platform Domo. There’s also Pluralsight, Qualtrics and InsideSales – with several more “soonicorns” in the ready. Utah has seen the most economic growth in the nation for the past two years, with tech leading the charge. But many… Read More
There are two types of people in the world: people who will encrypt and people who will not. The former cohort is far smaller than the latter. That should change, but it won’t. In essence the argument over what anyone means about the “Manhattan Project” of encryption is a silly one. The Manhattan Project of encryption means nothing to millions of people who are just fine… Read More
Lily, a drone that is meant to satisfy all your selfie needs, has today announced the close of a $14 million Series A of funding, with investors including Spark Capital, SV Angel, Stanfrod-StartX Fund, Steve Aoki and Joe Montana. That said, the company also announced it would be postponing its ship date until Summer 2016. Lily originally put their flying camera up for pre-sale (via their… Read More
