Giphy, the NY-based search engine and platform for GIFs, has raised $72 million in funding led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Institutional Venture Partners and China Media Capital. This brings Giphy’s total funding to just short of $151 million, according to Crunchbase, with a valuation reported at $600 million by the WSJ. Giphy started as part of a Hacker-in-Residence program at… Read More
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Encore, a U.K. startup and graduate of Entrepreneur First, is another example of a company attempting to disrupt the traditional agency model. Read More
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500 Startups’ 18th demo day wrapped up this afternoon in San Francisco. The companies that presented ranged from financial technology all the way to yet another attempt to try and fix conference calls. 500 Startups has to compete with a lot of other accelerators like Techstars and Y Combinator, and in order to be successful it needs to generate hits from these classes. The firm has had… Read More
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Blackline, a Los Angeles-based accounting software company, debuted in the U.S. markets Friday. After pricing at $17 per share, the stock closed at $23.70. In what has been a slow year for tech IPOs, Blackline decided to go public right now because it’s “part of a longer term plan to raise awareness for what we do,” said CEO Therese Tucker. She said the IPO, which raised… Read More
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Lazada, under Alibaba’s stewardship, is in advanced talks with Redmart, a Singapore-based grocery delivery service, to make a major investment or acquire the company outright, three sources with knowledge of the deal told TechCrunch. Once a deal is agreed, it could be completed as early as next week, once source said. Read More
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Samsung’s mobile operation has taken a big hit of late, with profits plunging 30% in the last quarter in the wake of the Note 7 recall. But today, the company is announcing an acquisition of a wireless enterprise startup that speaks to how it wants to grow other areas of its business to offset setbacks like this, as well as the larger overall slowdown in handset sales globally. Samsung… Read More
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Singapore-based Carousell has complete its second piece M&A following the Craigslist-like mobile commerce company’s $35 million Series B round in August. Read More
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MIT is getting into the incubator business in a big way with “The Engine,” a major fund and accelerator space aimed at nurturing early-stage companies solving big, difficult problems in tech and science. After The Engine raises its targeted $150 million fund, up to 60 companies at a time will benefit from the university’s equipment, services, and considerable pool of expertise. Read More
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While Uber and others fight over private car transportation, there remains an elephant in the room which has simply not been disrupted yet and which actually carries far more people on the planet: Buses. You may laugh at the idea, but we are not talking about creating an “Uber for buses” here. The complication for passengers is not the bus coming to you, but the ability to… Read More
from TechCrunch
We all want to feel like we belong somewhere. In today’s connected world, one-fifth of adults in the U.S. are online “almost constantly,” according to Pew Research Center. But the internet can be a lonely place. Although “social” media sites like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter exist, it can be hard to have genuine interactions with people.… Read More
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