The short answer for why Snap lowballed its initial valuation for its initial public offering is that it probably won’t be that low for long. Normally these prices are set by expectations the underwriters and executives can divine from their conversations with Wall Street. It’s essentially a matching game — how does Snap and its underwriters figure out where to price the… Read More
from TechCrunch
YotaScale, a graduate of Alchemist’s enterprise accelerator, is announcing a $3.5 million venture round today from Engineering Capital, Pelion Ventures and angels Jocelyn Goldfein, Timothy Chou and Robert Dykes. The startup employs machine learning to help balance performance, availability and cost for enterprise cloud computing. Competitors CloudHealth Technologies and Cloudability… Read More
from TechCrunch
Cervin Ventures, under the direction of Preetish Nijhawan and Neeraj Gupta, is announcing its latest $56 million fund. Built on the success of previous angel and micro-venture portfolios, Cervin is targeting seed-stage startups across the enterprise stack — running the full gamut of infrastructure, data and software. Both Nijhawan and Gupta come from operational roles. Preetish… Read More
from TechCrunch
Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, has set a valuation range of $16.2 billion to $18.5 billion for its upcoming IPO. That’s according to an updated filing which revealed that Snap shares will be priced between $14-$16, meaning it could bring up to $3.2 billion in capital. Snap’s pricing is below its initial range of $20 billion-$25 billion — and below what it raised at… Read More
from TechCrunch
You may have seen the startup Brightwheel scoring an investment from Mark Cuban and Chris Sacca on Sharktank last year. Or you may know Brightwheel if you have kids in preschool, daycare, or other early education programs these days. Brightwheel’s mobile app helps pre-K teachers and care providers to manage their business, while sending parents updates about their kids throughout… Read More
from TechCrunch
Dating app Tinder is looking to get into video. The company announced today it’s acquiring an L.A.-based startup called Wheel, which had developed a social network for sharing “video stories” that were said to closely resemble Snapchat’s Stories. Deal terms were not revealed, but Tinder says that it will integrate video features into its app in the future.
Wheel was… Read More
from TechCrunch
What if our photographs and social media updates could be turned into memories we – or our children – could later access just by asking a virtual assistant, like Amazon’s Alexa? That’s the premise behind a new startup called Mylestone, which is experimenting with turning our digital footprints into narratives that help us recall highlights from our lives, as well… Read More
from TechCrunch
Truebil, a marketplace for selling used cars in India, has closed a $3 million post-Series A funding round from China’s Shunwei Capital. Its $5.5 million Series A was raised in January 2016. Unlike more traditional rivals like CarTrade, which just raised $55 million led by Singapore’s Temasek, its sister site CarWhale and Cardekho, Truebil dis-intermediates the professional… Read More
from TechCrunch
Baidu is furthering its push into artificial intelligence after it announced the acquisition of Raven Tech, a Chinese startup that developed an AI voice assistant platform. Baidu confirmed it has bought the startup’s tech, product and staff of 60. The deal comes a month after Baidu hired noted AI expert Qi Lu, formerly with Microsoft, as its COO and Group President.… Read More
from TechCrunch
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