The crowded landscape of programs teaching non-technical people to become software developers has been a proving ground for a new model of education financing: income share agreements (ISAs). With an ISA, students avoid paying tuition upfront or taking out private loans, instead paying a percentage of their income for a time after graduation after they’re…
Last month, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) general partner Chris Dixon announced at TechCrunch Disrupt that the VC firm would run a free crypto startup school. And the company is officially launching its school today. Applications are now open and you have four weeks to apply. With this initiative, a16z wants to democratize cryptocurrencies. Dixon and the…
Google said on Friday it has appointed Sanjay Gupta, a former top executive with Disney India and Star, as the manager and vice president of sales and operations for its India business. Gupta will be replacing Rajan Anandan, who left the company to serve VC fund Sequoia Capital India as a managing director in April…
Early adopters of Disney+ are mostly watching Marvel and Star Wars movies and TV shows, according to a new third-party report by SimilarWeb out today. The analytics firm measured Disney+ usage in its debut market, the Netherlands, where the service went live for a trial run back in September ahead of its global rollout, and…
Robotic arms can move fast enough to snatch thrown objects right out of the air… but should they? Not unless you want them to unnerve the humans they’re interacting with, according to work out of Disney Research. Roboticists there found that slowing a robot’s reaction time made it feel more normal to people. Disney has,…
Plant-based replacements are so hot right now, they’re even hitting the coolest thing in food — ice cream. The new plant-based dairy replacement maker, Eclipse Foods, has just signed a deal with hipster ice cream brands Humphry Slocombe and Oddfellows to put its dairy replacements into their mixes. Unlike other plant-based products which provide an…
Immo Investment Technologies, a London-based fintech startup that purchase homes on behalf of buy-to-let investors, has closed €11M in Series A funding. Backing the round is Talis Capital and HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, with participation from Tom Stafford and Rahul Mehta of DST Global, and Mato Peric, among others. In addition, the company is disclosing that…
Saudi Arabian officials allegedly paid at least two employees of Twitter to access personal information on users the government there was interested in, according to recently unsealed court documents. Those users were warned of the attempt in 2015, but the full picture is only now emerging. According to an AP report citing the federal complaint,…
Tim Hsia & Neil Devani Contributor More posts by this contributor Getting press for your startup: the true role of communications ‘The Operators’: Finance in startups with Duda CFO Stephanie Hsiung and Zeus Living’s Head of Finance Mark Kang Welcome to this edition of The Operators, a recurring Extra Crunch column, podcast and YouTube show that…
Amazon announced a plan today to build a $40 million, 350,000 square foot robotics innovation hub in Westborough, MA. The new facility will bring 200 technology and advanced manufacturing jobs when it opens in 2021. The new facilities will include corporate offices, research and development labs and a robotics manufacturing space. The company said that…
