Poor Bixby. We admittedly haven’t had a lot of nice things to say about Samsung’s smart assistant since launch — but that’s not for lack of potential. The company has promised great things since day one, but has been slow to deliver on, well, just about everything. Third-party integration was supposed to be one of…
“I can’t wait to pay up to €500 more than necessary to go to Disrupt Berlin 2018” — said no one EVER. Heed our call: the early-bird ticket price ends today, 2 November. Miss that deadline, and you’ll be one sad startupper. While Europe’s top startup conference delivers amazing ROI at full price, why pay more?…
Instagram hopes dollars from the long-tail of small businesses and social media stars can help it pull its weight in the Facebook family. A new ad type called “Promote” for Stories allows Instagram business pages to show their ephemeral slideshows to more users without doing much work. Admins can choose to auto-target users similar to…
Esther Delignat-Lavaud Rodriguez Contributor Cannabis-infused drinks. Burgers grown in laboratories. Entire meals in bottles. Consumers, retailers and farmers alike are hungry for the next generation of food, and investors are beginning to acquire the taste, too. Early-stage investment in agrifood tech startups reached $10.1 billion in 2017, a 29 percent increase on the previous year. Agrifood can be split into two…
Netflix is finally changing its long-held policy around the theatrical release of its original films. In the past, the streaming service has been willing to release its films in theaters, but it refused to grant those theaters an exclusive release window, which meant that few of them were interested. That, in turn, may have hurt…
ICEYE CEO Rafal Modrzewski is obsessed with SAR satellites. He’s so obsessed that his company plans to launch dozens of satellites into space. According to him, ICEYE satellites should be much better than existing SAR satellites — call it the Tesla or satellites if you want. That’s why I’m excited to announce that Modrzewski is…
In the first of many annual letters Chamath Palihapitiya will be penning as part of his firm’s new era as a technology holding company, the founder of Social Capital criticized the venture capital industry. After highlighting the latest trends within VC — i.e. SoftBank’s Vision Fund, private equity activity in VC deals and inflated valuations — Palihapitiya divulged…
Mavrck has raised another $5.8 million in funding, bringing its total raised to $13.8 million. When the company raised its Series A back in 2015, it was focused on helping brands work with “micro-influencers” who were already using their products. Now it describes itself as an “all-in-one” influencer marketing platform, offering a number of tools…
This is clever. Made by HyperDrive, the USB-C Hub slips onto an Apple USB-C power adapter and adds two USB 3.0 ports. That’s all. I love it and it addresses a major shortcoming of Apple’s current notebook lineup. Apple ditched full-size USB ports in favor of the versatile USB-C. It makes sense on some levels.…
Monzo, the U.K. challenger bank that now boasts more than a million customers, has raised £85 million in Series E funding. The round is led by U.S. venture capital firm General Catalyst, and Accel. Existing backers Passion Capital, Goodwater, Thrive Capital, Orange Digital Ventures, and Stripe also participated. The latest funding was at a pre-money…
