Author: Thomas Crown

 Another day, another new VC fund closes in Europe. This time it’s the turn of Helsinki-headquartered Open Ocean, backer of startups such as Truecaller and EyeEm. Read More

from TechCrunch

 When Craig Shapiro and his team at Collaborative Fund are making investments, they don’t exactly ignore the devil on their shoulders. They look for companies that fall somewhere in the nexus between companies that will address the broader interests of the world around them — but also generate a return on their investment, Shapiro says. Read More

from TechCrunch

 Today, Megan Quinn shared that she’d be joining Spark Capital as a general partner for its growth stage fund, a fund which we covered last year. Quinn stepped down from Kleiner-Perkins this year after nearly three years with the firm. Here’s what Quinn had to say on the new role: Three and half years ago I made the transition from product builder to investor. It has been an amazing… Read More

from TechCrunch

 Home24, the Rocket Internet-founded online European furniture store, has acquired competitor Fashion For Home, another German company most comparable to the U.K.’s Made.com. Specific terms of the acquisition aren’t being disclosed, although I understand it’s an all-stock deal. Read More

from TechCrunch

 The iPad helped introduce the concept of interactive books, where stories are accompanied by games and other tappable animations to complement their tales. But a company called Hullabalu offers a twist. Instead of digital stories with interactive bits, kids advance the story’s progress by interacting with the world and playing with the characters. Now the company has raised an… Read More

from TechCrunch

 Israel is a small country with a thriving security startup industry, and Microsoft appears to be have a taste for them. Today it announced an agreement to buy Secure Islands, its third Israeli security firm in the last year. While Microsoft did not reveal a specific price, various reports peg the deal at between $77 million and $150 million. Microsoft made the announcement official in a… Read More

from TechCrunch

 Dublin-based WhatClinic — a healthcare comparison site for dental, plastic surgery and cosmetic treatments — has acquired the U.K. dental booking site Toothpick. Read More

from TechCrunch

 Welcome to another episode of CrunchWeek, TechCrunch’s weekly roundup show where we talk the biggest things in tech. This week we’re chatting about Twitter’s issues with diversity, Activision paying a lot of billions for the maker of the addictive game Candy Crush (hear Megan talk about her recovery), and Facebook’s earnings. They crushed it. So: As our resident… Read More

from TechCrunch

 Today, Google acquired Fly Labs to join its Google Photos team. The company aimed to help people edit videos and photos and it sported 3 million downloads over the past 18 months. Their suite of apps (Tempo, Fly and Crop) will be made available for the next three months. You’ll still be able to use them, but there will be no more updates. We're excited to announce that we've… Read More

from TechCrunch

 If you had a few dozen billion dollars, an appetite to cut deals and a desire to change your image a few states away, how would you go about it? That is a question Microsoft is trying to answer. Cash-rich, profitable and sporting new leadership, the company wants to change its image in Silicon Valley. Long ensconced in the Pacific Northwest, the company has boosted its focus on the Bay Area. Read More

from TechCrunch