500 Startups today presented its 14th batch of companies at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, with a spooky twist. Dave McClure said this batch was less international than previous batches, with only 39% of founders hailing from outside the United States. Of the 36 startups that went through the program, 25% had female founders. He made no mention of people of color.… Read More
from TechCrunch
If you’re not familiar with Shark Tank, it’s ABC’s show that drops companies in front of investors from all walks of life, including the very loud Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks. It’s oddly become a family favorite for a lot of people I know, mostly because they get to shout at the TV and make predictions on whether someone will invest or not, or talk about… Read More
from TechCrunch
The Seattle-based online home services platform Porch.com today announced that it has acquired Fountain, a service that connects Internet users with doctors, lawyers, mechanics, tech support and other experts through video chats, texts and annotated photos. Fountain was co-founded by Aaron Patzer, who is best known for founding and leading Mint.com. Patzer, who was also Fountain’s CEO,… Read More
from TechCrunch
Blippar, the ad platform that delivers AR content through real-world tags, has today announced the acquisition of Binocular. Binocular is an Austin, TX-based company that creates augmented reality applications for brands, with a specialty in the virtual try-on. The company created the Glasses.com app for Luxotica, which manufactures 75 percent of the world’s sunglasses, letting users try… Read More
from TechCrunch
Alteryx, which offers an analytics tool aimed at business users, announced an $85 million round today. Today’s deal comes on top of the $60 million deal last October and brings the total raised to an impressive $163 million to date. The round was led by Iconiq Capital and Insight Venture Partners. Meritech Capital Partners also participated. The company has been growing steadily and… Read More
from TechCrunch
IBM announced this morning it’s acquiring The Weather Company, the parent company to the The Weather Channel, as well as the company’s B2B, mobile and web properties, in a deal that’s being valued at more than $2 billion, according to a report from The Wall St. Journal. The companies are not disclosing the financial terms, however. The deal will see The Weather Company… Read More
from TechCrunch
Did someone leak the statement (again)?
At precisely 10am ET, everything jumped:
… Led by Crude, where 17,000 lots went through WTI Crude to smash it higher:
Another ETF glitch? USO volume exploded as shown below.
According to some this was just shot covering in the energy complex
pushing the entire market higher. Maybe, or did “boots on the ground”
chatter in Syria finally flow through?
from ZeroHedge
Filld, a startup that delivers gas on-demand, day or night, has raised $3.25 million in seed funding in a bid to take on the gas station model.
Investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and Javelin Venture Partners are betting this traditional model, which has remained largely unchanged for the last 50 years, is ripe for a shakeup.
If the idea of on-demand gas delivery sounds familiar, you might have seen the idea parodied on an episode of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” titled “The Gang Solves The Gas Crisis,” back in 2008.
But cofounder Scott Hempy tells Business Insider his company actually has an unlikely origin: Air Force One.
During a long car ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, Hempy was annoyed at running low on gas, and starting telling his wife about how efficient Air Force One is at refueling in the air with the help of a fuel plane that flies above it. Why isn’t it that easy to fill up your car with gas, they wondered. And then Hempy’s wife suggested a service that would pump gas just before you are ready to leave somewhere, say your office or your home. The idea for Filld took root.
Hempy, who worked in venture capital at the time, set out to prove this idea couldn’t work.
He assumed there would be a minefield of insane regulations (which there are), but as he dug into it with cofounder Christopher Aubuchon, he realized this wasn’t an impossible market to crack.
The result of their work is Filld, an iOS app (Android coming soon) that lets you order gas when you want. Right now, the app is only available in its pilot market around Silicon Valley, but Aubuchon says this new seed round will help them expand — first to the wider San Francisco Bay Area, and then to other cities.
Here’s how Filld works.
After setting up your profile on Filld, the app is simple. You order the gas like you would order an Uber, by placing a pin at the location, and one of Filld’s trucks comes and fills your tank. If you have a locking gas tank door, you have to leave it open a crack for them.
Unlike one of its main competitors in the space, Purple, Filld’s trucks are certified to determine exactly how much gas you need. While Purple can only fill a set amount — let’s say 10 or 15 gallons at a time — Filld uses a similar pump to one you’d find at a gas station, which clicks when it’s done. All you have to do is tell Filld to fill it up.
Aubuchon says the early adopters of the app have been drawn to the ability to have your tank filled overnight, and indeed this does seem convenient. Tap on the app, go to bed, and wake up with a full tank. You have just removed one annoying detail from your life.
The question is how much you are willing to pay for it.
Right now, Filld determines its price through an average of the gas stations around you — but then adds a $5 service fee. The founders say they are working to lower that fee, but as it stands right now, the value question is pretty simple: is it worth $5 to you not to go to the gas station?
Aubuchon says Filld has seen the lion’s share of its business from family vehicles — Minivans and SUVs — though this might have something to do with the demographics of the area Filld currently serves.
Filld buys its gas from wholesalers, and the founders say they haven’t experienced any pushback. The big players in gas, they explain, make their money further up the pipeline. And as to a logistics company swooping into the space, the pair feel that the complicated regulations around gas make entry into the market difficult.
The main question, then, is the demand for Filld’s service. And with this new infusion of cash, we’ll see whether Filld can catch on outside of tech-forward Silicon Valley.
from BusinessInsider
DETROIT (AP) — Ford is recalling 129,000 midsize SUVs in parts of the U.S. and Canada to fix potential fuel leaks.
The company says the recall covers the 2009 and 2010 Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX.
In places where salt is used to clear the roads of snow, the fuel tanks can rust under the reinforcement brackets that hold them to the SUVs. This can cause a fuel leak or activate the check engine light. A leak could cause a fire.
Ford says it doesn’t know of any fires caused by the problem.
Dealers will inspect the fuel tanks and repair or replace them at no cost to customers.
The recall covers 21 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. In Canada, seven provinces are covered.
from BusinessInsider
In 2004, Bombardier, maker of business jets and high speed trains, decided it was going to build a larger airliner.
Called the C-Series, the jet is meant to compete with Boeing’s 737 and Airbus’ A320 – which dominate the medium range airliner market.
Bombardier is a sprawling business, making everything from Learjet’s for wealthy businessmen to cars for New York’s subway system.
But the C-Series has become an anchor around its neck. More than a decade after the plan was conceived, the jets still aren’t in commercial service.
Bombardier spent $5.5 billion on their development, and delays and cost overruns have meant its debt has ballooned. Ratings agencies are worried about future cash flow, and the shares have fallen by two thirds this year.
The company, which had nearly $10 billion of debt on its books at the end of June, burned through $1.6 billion of cash in the first half of 2015, according to Moody’s analyst Darren Kirk.
“Bombardier needs to the get the plane into service, prove that it is successful and generate more demand if it wants to correct its cash flow shortage,” he said.
With this as a backdrop, the Canadian firm will release its results for the third quarter on Thursday. Analysts expect sales and profits to continue falling, but a day ahead of the report investors got a glimmer of hope: Canada’s LaPresse reported Wednesday that Quebec may announce an aid package for Bombardier as well.
The company says things are better than investors recognize. The aviation business currently $34 billion worth of orders on the books with $22 billion in business aircraft and $12 billion in commercial aircraft.
Bombardier’s relatively small size means it doesn’t require nearly as many orders as Boeing and Airbus to keep the factory busy, spokesman Yan Lapointe said.
And the company isn’t way off its target of 300 C-Series jets sold by the time the aircraft is ready to ferry passengers. Bombardier Aerospace vice president Ross Mitchell told Business Insider that, with the jet scheduled to enter service next year, the company has 243 firm orders on the books.
But the concern is that those orders aren’t coming fast enough. A whole year has come and gone since the last time Bombardier announced a new buyer for the C-Series, and one of its largest buyers so far, Republic Airways, could be about to bolt.
Republic, which originally ordered the plane for its now-sold Frontier subsidiary, has said it is considering backing off from its commitment to the aircraft amid a slowdown in its own business.
“The Republic Airways planes are never going to be delivered to Republic,” Airways News senior business analyst Vinay Bhaskara said in an interview.
In June, Bombardier flew both the CS100 and the larger CS300 to the Paris Air Show. The planes arrived at Le Bourget airport with great fanfare, but left without booking a single new order.
The painful thing for Bombardier is that there’s nothing wrong with the airplane. In fact, the C-Series has garnered generally positive reviews.
“The CS300 kills the Boeing 737 Max 7 and the Airbus A319neo in terms of ability and efficiency,” Bhaskara said.
At the Paris Air Show, aircraft leasing company, Air Lease Corp.’s president and CEO John Plueger told the Seattle Times that it’s not enough for people to like the plane because what Bombardier needs are orders.
It’s a stark contrast to Bombardier’s other aircraft. The company’s CRJ-Series regional jets are among the most in-demand aircraft of its type with nearly 2,000 examples in service. Its Q-Series turboprop airliner is a staple of regional airlines around the world with more than 1,000 of the planes in service. That’s on top of the company’s iconic Challenger, Global, and Learjet families of private jets.
Part of the problem is that the C-Series is tapping a part of the market that the world’s largest aircraft makers have deemed unworthy because of thin profits. Boeing and airbus both discontinued their regional jets, the 737-600 and A318.
All may not be lost.
Analysts such as Bhaskara predict room for as many as 2,500 planes in the 100-150-seat jet category, and Bloomberg recently reported that Bombardier is in talks about a possible order with JetBlue Airways.
Another major buyer, according to Bloomberg, could be United Airlines which told pilots it plans to order small jetliners, Bloomberg also reports.
There’s also room for the C-Series to recover as the older Boeing and Airbus aircraft are phased out and need to be replaced, said Tom Capital, Deloitte’s vice chairman and head of global aerospace and defense.
Boeing and Airbus are focusing on larger aircraft with longer range,” Captain said. “This has left an opening for others such as Bombardier to come in with new and efficient equipment.”
The trick for Bombardier now, is to turn that optimism into actual orders. And fast.
from BusinessInsider