One thing is clear, Cisco is not afraid to use its considerable cash on hand to fill in holes in its product portfolio. Today it wrote out a big fat check for $1.9 billion to acquire BroadSoft, a Maryland company that delivers unified communications via service providers. The purchase gives Cisco a new way to sell its communications tools as it shifts its focus from a pure networking… Read More
from TechCrunch
Nested, the U.K. estate agent that provides a cash advance to help you buy a new house before you’ve sold your old one, has raised £36 million in further funding. The round was led by Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital, and brings the less than two year old startup’s total funding to just shy of £50 million. Buying and selling houses is a pretty capital intensive… Read More
from TechCrunch
The trend of using big data analytics to glean more targeted insights for your business continues to be democratized, with an increasing number of startups hitting the market to help those who are not data scientists nor engineers take advantage of these kinds of tools. In the latest development, a startup called ActionIQ — a marketing activation platform that gives marketers better… Read More
from TechCrunch
Just one-third of young adults have a credit card, according to a Bankrate survey. It’s partly due to concerns about debt. A startup called Zero thinks it has a solution to this and it is gearing up to launch a credit card that functions like a debit card. The startup is also raising $8.5 million in a funding round led by ENIAC Ventures, including participation from NEA, Lightbank… Read More
from TechCrunch
Countingup, a new fintech startup from Tim Fouracre, who previously founded cloud accounting software Clear Books, wants to simplify the life of sole traders by reinventing the business bank account. Specifically, Fouracre’s vision is that for one-person enterprises, business banking and accounting software should be merged so that book keeping and filing accounts can be automated. Read More
from TechCrunch
Winnow, the U.K. startup that has developed smart kitchen tech to help commercial kitchens reduce food waste, continues to be on a roll. It counts the likes of IKEA, Compass Group, and AccorHotels as customers, and estimates its 600-plus clients are saving 4,300 tonnes of food waste annually through the use of the Winnow system. Read More
from TechCrunch
Ian Rountree, the twenty something captain at the helm of Cantos Ventures, an SF-based micro-fund, is characteristic of a new breed of venture capitalists in tech — a group of small funds looking to go toe-to-toe with some of the valley’s most entrenched seed funds like First Round Capital and SV Angel. Rountree is experimenting with a strategy so antithetical to the venture… Read More
from TechCrunch
Translation earbuds might eliminate some utilitarian reasons to know a language, but if you want to understand jokes, read poetry, or fall in love in a foreign tongue, you’ll have to actually learn it. Unfortunately, products like Rosetta Stone leave people feeling burned after claiming the process should be easy while never helping you practice talking with a real native speaker. You… Read More
from TechCrunch
Grab is in the process of raising $2.5 billion for it ride hailing service in Southeast Asia, but that hasn’t stopped the Uber rival from tapping banks for $700 million in debt facilities to develop its business. The Singapore-based company said it had pulled in the financing from “leading global and regional banks” to expand its car rental fleet in Singapore and Indonesia,… Read More
from TechCrunch
Welcome to Equity, TechCrunch’s podcast about venture capital and the tech business. On the latest episode, we were joined by Barry Eggers, co-founder and a general partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. There was a lot of IPO news this week. MongoDB debuted and we saw filings on Thursday for both Stitch Fix and SendGrid. And, of course, there was the inevitable ridesharing news.… Read More
from TechCrunch