Deep in the Valley this afternoon, 500 Startups’ 19th demo day drew to a close at the Computer History Museum. Business-to-business software, fashion and beauty products made up the largest proportion of companies, but 500 left room for a few outliers. It’s tough for anyone to say who the next Twilio will be, but it just might be hidden somewhere in the 40 companies that… Read More
from TechCrunch
There are many toys on the market today that promise to teach kids programming skills, and a good percentage require the use of a connected tablet or smartphone. At a time when parents are already struggling to keep kids’ screen time to a minimum, father and entrepreneur Nader Hamda wanted to build something different. He also observed a lot of expensive educational toys on the market,… Read More
from TechCrunch
Investors are seemingly growing more excited about L.A. by the day. The newest sign comes via a $40 million fund that L.A.-based Fika Ventures is announcing today. That’s none too shabby for a venture firm that was founded just last year. Fika was created by TX Zhuo, formerly a managing partner at Karlin Ventures, and Eva Ho, a former general partner and co-founder of San… Read More
from TechCrunch
StockX, a marketplace for sneakers, has announced that they’ve closed a $6M round from a group of high-profile investors like Mark Wahlberg, Scooter Braun, and Wale. They join existing investors like SV Angel and Detroit Venture Partners. The sneaker reseller space couldn’t be hotter right now. GOAT, one of the largest app-based sneaker marketplaces has raised more than $30M in… Read More
from TechCrunch
Walmart this morning announced it’s acquiring a leading outdoor retailer Moosejaw for approximately $51 million in an all-cash deal. Headquartered in Madison Heights, Michigan, the retailer has both a large online presence as well as 10 physical stores across Michigan and the midwest U.S. Walmart says it will allow Moosejaw to continue to operate its website and stores as a standalone… Read More
from TechCrunch
MiDrive, a U.K. startup that helps you learn to drive with a driving test app and instructor marketplace, has lost Scott Taylor as CEO, after he departed the company last month. He’s been replaced by Asher Ismail, who previously joined miDrive as COO in May 2016.
Curiously, the move comes shortly after miDrive has raised £2 million in further funding. Read More
from TechCrunch
Mozilla-backed Cliqz, a German startup building an anti-tracking browser with a built-in private search feature powered by aggregated usage of its products, is acquiring the consumer assets of ad-tracker privacy tool and browser extension Ghostery. Read More
from TechCrunch
London and Copenhagen-based fintech startup Pleo, which offers a card and app to manage company expenses, has closed an additional $3.25 million in funding. The round was led by European VC firm Creandum, with participation from pre-seed and seed investor Seedcamp, and previous backer Founders. Read More
from TechCrunch
It’s hard to fathom that the work of Reverend Thomas Bayes is still coming back to drive cutting edge advancements in AI, but that’s exactly what’s happening. DARPA-backed Gamalon is the latest carrier of the Bayesian baton, launching today with a solution to help enterprises better manage their gnarly unstructured data.
The world of enterprise is full of unstructured data. Read More
from TechCrunch
Japan’s SoftBank has made another acquisition to widen both its business strategy and its portfolio of investments. Today the company announced it would pay $3.3 billion in cash to acquire the Fortress Investment Group, an asset manager and investor in its own right, with significant holdings in Lyft, ZestFinance, Xapo, Jawbone and other tech companies. This is SoftBank’s… Read More
from TechCrunch