Matthew Douglass Contributor Matthew Douglass is a board member of the nonpartisan Business for America and previously co-founded digital health company Practice Fusion in 2007. More posts by this contributor A Digital Healthcare Argument For Net Neutrality In America, democracy and capitalism go hand in hand. Watching our democracy function (or, more accurately, malfunction) over…
The origin story of Blackbird, a startup that links travelers to planes and commercial pilots through an app, didn’t begin with air travel. It was prompted by car sickness. Blackbird CEO and founder Rudd Davis, who was getting his pilot’s license at the time, asked his flight instructor if he would fly his family to…
It’s a tricky proposition for a product launch: last year’s model, but with fewer features. But sometimes the rules of consumer electronic update cycles were made to be broken — or at the very least, a little bent. Last year’s Versa was itself a paring down from the company’s first true smartwatch, the Ionic. In…
Google paid a total of $105 million to Andy Rubin and Amit Singhal after they were accused of sexual harassment at the company, The Wall Street Journal first reported. This confirms The New York Times report that Google paid $90 million to Rubin and reveals Google also paid $15 million to Singhal, who left Uber…
Alphabet’s self-driving vehicle subsidiary Waymo may raise outside capital for the first time at a valuation “at least several times” that of Cruise, the General Motors-owned autonomous vehicle business worth nearly $15 billion, according to a report published by The Information on Monday. We’ve reached out to our sources to confirm. Waymo didn’t immediately respond…
If you’re like me, you let out a heavy sigh every month or so when you reach out and unexpectedly find an empty bag of coffee. Bottomless, one of the 200-plus startups in Y Combinator’s latest batch, has a solution for us caffeine addicts. For a $36 annual membership fee, a cost which co-founder Michael…
Crypto represent a ‘border-less’ that anyone can own, but actually getting hold it isn’t easy for everyone. Amun, a company that wants to make buying crypto as easy as stock, has pulled in $4 million in funding to offer more established channels for crypto ownership. The startup currently offers punters an ETP (exchange-traded product) on…
Starling Bank, the U.K. challenger bank founded by banking veteran Anne Boden, is to open a second U.K. office this summer, where it plans recruit up to 50 software engineers and up to 100 customer service team members. The planned location is Southampton, on the south coast of England, and will be Starling’s first office…
With the smartphone operating system market sewn up by Google’s Android platform, which has a close to 90% share globally, leaving Apple’s iOS a slender (but lucrative) premium top-slice, a little company called Jolla and its Linux-based Sailfish OS is a rare sight indeed: A self-styled ‘independent alternative’ that’s still somehow in business. The Finnish…
U.S. smart speaker owners grew 40 percent over 2018 to now reach 66.4 million — or 26.2 percent of the U.S. adult population — according to a new report from Voicebot.ai and Voicify released this week, which detailed adoption patterns and device market share. The report also reconfirmed Amazon Echo’s lead, noting the Alexa-powered smart…
