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Multimodal Travel Startup, FromAtoB, Closes 7-Figure Series A To Expand Internationally & Go Mobile
Nov 27, 9:36AM
Munich-based multimodal journey planner startup, fromAtoB – which operates under the rather less catchy name of VerkehrsmittelVergleich.de in its home market of Germany - has closed a seven-figure Series A expansion round. The startup, which was founded back in 2008 but only launched its internationalized fromAtoB brand name in July this year, has snagged investment from French VC firm Seventure Partners and Daniel Wild, CEO of Ecommerce Alliance and Tiburon. Prior to this expansion round, the company raised a six-figure seed back in 2009 from four business angels, including Dr. Florian Heinemann, ex MD of Rocket Internet, now MD of Project-A; along with the aforementioned Wild. It also gained a subsidy from the German state to get the business off the ground. FromAtoB, whose website lets travellers figure out the quickest and cheapest way to get where they want to go, is already breaking even - via affiliate commissions with transport provider partners, plus cross-selling and display advertising. But Managing Director, Dr Johannes Graßmann, told TechCrunch it plans to use this cashflow plus the new funding to expand its integration with international carriers, especially in the rail and long distance bus sector. “We plan to internationalize further countries and develop a mobile app,” he added. If you're wondering why you haven't heard of fromAtoB, that may be because they haven't done any marketing yet - rather, they've been relying on SEO and partnerships with destination and reach portals, plus return visitors, to grow their user-base. They're also pretty skewed, in terms of usage, towards their home market - with circa 70% of their 2.6 million monthly visitors coming from Germany (making VerkehrsmittelVergleich.de their largest domain). But that's also set to change. ”We will, for the first time, spend money on marketing measures to further promote the service under the brand fromAtoB,” said Graßmann. FromAtoB's search engine is available in 15 countries, translated into 11 languages and generates total ticket sales for all its transport info providers of more than €16M annually. It broadened its focus out from the German market six months ago to Europe in general, and is also now eyeing up the US as what it see as one of its “core markets” in future. Currently fromAtoB's largest foreign markets are France, Italy, Austria and Switzerland, according to Graßmann. “With the money from the investment we have planned to penetrate 10 core markets. That are basically the most relevant markets in Europe plus U.S.,” he added. FromAtoB's multimodal search engine compares more than 700 providers of train,
Task Marketplace Mila Partners With Swisscom To Break Euro Fear Of Share Economy
Nov 27, 9:24AM
In the wake of news that a potentially aggressive and well-tooled played is about to end the market for itinerant, time-based tasks (prompt.ly), and with TaskRabbit rolling out internationally to significant markets like the UK and existing players like BookingBug ramping up, this whole arena is getting hotter. But one of the missing pieces of the pie is trust and scalability. Many ordinary citizens - especially in Europe - simply don't trust these new platforms to deliver someone who can do a task. One way to solve this inherent mistrust of the 'sharing economy' would be to partner up with a big player that people trust, giving instant validation and footprint. And that is exactly what Mila, a European mobile and online task marketplace startup, is doing today. 
PayPal Adds Support For Prepaid Gift Cards In Time For Holiday Shopping
Nov 27, 8:14AM
PayPal has added support for prepaid gift cards through PayPal Checkout, thanks to a "patent-pending and innovative method" that the company claims took "months of research and investigations" to develop. 
Priceonomics Dumps Price Guides To Marry Its True Love, Blogging (And Data Crawling)
Nov 27, 2:58AM
Stop what you're doing and read "Diamonds Are Bullshit" or "What Happens To Stolen Bicycles?". This is content marketing, and Priceonomics is very good at it. So good that today the Y Combinator startup announced it's pivoting from price guides to blogging, or more accurately, the web scraping and research it does to inform its blogging.
Machinima Names Stephen Semprevivo President And GM Amidst Management Turnover
Nov 27, 1:45AM
Machinima has had a rough year, as plans to bring on more funding have fallen through and the company has gone through a series of layoffs. But as it faces that and a shakeup of its senior management team, the YouTube gaming network has hired an executive to help manage operations and get things back on track.
Twitter Continues Tweet Recommendation Experiments With Fav Happy @Magicstats
Nov 27, 1:31AM
Twitter continues to pull the string on personalization and recommendation with a new account called @magicstats. The account, whose description reads ‘I favorite the best tweets I see in real-time' appears to be doing just that. Though the account is protected and its activity closed down, we've been tracking it for several weeks now and have gained a bit of insight into how it works. Several of my personal tweets and some TechCrunch tweets have been favorited by the account, which appears to be working on several metrics including velocity of activity (like favs and retweets from other accounts). We investigated the account and it's followed by many members of Twitter's search and relevance team, just like Twitter's other experiments @magicrecs and @eventparrot. The account, from what we understand, was originally dedicated to monitoring the Magicrecs experiment, but was repurposed to its new role once that was rolled into the product proper. Previously, the account's profile said it was recording data related to Magicrecs. Twitter declined to comment about the status of the account. The account's tweets were not originally protected, and we were able to browse its favs for a while. The account often awarded a fav to a tweet very quickly after it was posted, but we never saw it fav a tweet ‘first'. It always followed other favs and RTs very quickly. Judging by this, it's likely that the account is looking for tweets that are getting rapid attention in its network or on the Twitter network as a whole. Twitter has noticed the rise of products like the third-party fav-and-RT-tracking Favstar, which a source with knowledge of its user base told us was ‘surprisingly popular'. The service offers a visual dashboard of re-tweets and favorites that are tied to user profiles and presented very well. It's fun, visual and addictive. Twitter also has a statistics package, but accessing it is a bit obscure as you have to go to the ads.twitter.com page and sign in with your account there. The page is interesting and information packed, but it's not nearly as fun as the Favstar profiles are. I check Favstar several times a day at least, just to see how recent tweets faired, and it can be an interesting long-term indicator of what the best tweets on your account are. And that, in the end, could be the bit that interests Twitter the most, which tweets
Box Acquires dLoop To Enhance Security With Fine-Grained Data Analytics Technology
Nov 27, 12:10AM
Box has acquired dLoop, a startup that provides ways for IT administrators to control access to content with finer granularity. The acquisition will give Box a level of data analytics that is often a required feature for enterprise customers. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Senators Want Tech Companies To Serve As Healthcare.gov Alternative
Nov 26, 11:15PM
Eight Democratic senators are finally asking the Obama Administration to let startups act as an alternative to the malfunctioning healthcare website, Healthcare.gov. “There are long-term advantages to providing Americans multiple ways to find and sign up for the health coverage that best meets their needs,” reads the letter to the Department of Health And Human Services [PDF]. I've been writing about this since I discovered that tech companies could have likely saved the Affordable Care Act from an IT epic failure had the feds legally allowed startups to enroll new consumers. From the beginning, Obamacare made government-run websites the hub of all new enrollments. Startups and tech companies, such as Fuse Insurance, which are building Orbitz-like price-comparison health insurance alternatives, still have to route all traffic through government websites. Some states, including California and New York, have just completely denied tech companies access for a few years. As the key Thanksgiving holiday approaches without a working Healthcare.gov, HHS began to let big insurance companies enroll new consumers, but tech companies are still left waiting. Even worse, the insurance companies still have to route traffic through the malfunctioning federal website, so the pilot is still a theoretical hope. According to sources familiar with matter, the federal government can't let tech companies directly access the database like the state e-commerce sites (“exchanges”), because the IRS forbids private access to their data. Technically speaking, tech companies could build a fully functioning alternative, but they couldn't determine income-based discounts, which would defeat the purpose of the new law. It's not clear what the senators' push could accomplish. When we find out, we'll let you know. [Image Credit: TheInspiredDaily]
TC Cribs: Inside SoundCloud, The Berlin-Based Startup Fueled By Music (And Club-Mate)
Nov 26, 11:07PM
Berlin is buzzing with entrepreneurial energy at the moment, and SoundCloud is one of the companies that has emerged as an anchor to the city's growing tech startup scene. So when TechCrunch TV was in Berlin recently to cover the Disrupt Europe conference, we made sure to stop by SoundCloud's office to check it out for ourselves. 
Google Makes Talking To Your Computer Slightly Less Crazy With Speech Search Chrome Extension
Nov 26, 9:40PM
Google has a new Chrome extension released today that brings a recent mobile feature to the desktop. The feature is automatic voice search, which is triggered whenever you utter the phrase “Okay, Google.” The company announced the new feature on Google+ today, (via 9to5Google), and it's live now and available for users in U.S. English. Previously, Google had made it possible to search the web from the desktop by speaking, but you had to actually click a button to get the website to listen. Now, so long as you have the extension installed, whenever you navigate to Google.com, you'll be able to just say “Okay, Google” and instantly speak what you're looking for to receive results. The service has some useful limitations, meaning that a Google search page has to be the active tab in order for it to work. You'll know if it's primed to listen because the little microphone icon will be filled in, as you can see in the side-by-side example below. But it works on any results page, too, so that once you've done a search, you can continue just using your voice so long as you don't navigate away or click on another open window. It shows you the words as you speak them, and seems pretty accurate based on my brief testing. The use cases are actually pretty extensive: You can use it for cooking, as Google suggests, for instance, to ask your computer for measurements and more while your hands are dirty. Or just ask Google some questions from the sofa if you're running a media center PC. It'll even speak back to you some of the results, like when you ask for measurement or currency conversions. It's fun, and at least marginally handy, and free, so check it out. We're inching ever nearer to the day when your computer hears everything, and anticipates your needs based on all that data. Scary/awesome.
Fantasy Sports Startup DraftKings Raises $24 Million From RedPoint And Others
Nov 26, 8:21PM
Fantasy sports startup DraftKings has just raised $24 million in Series B funding led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation by GGV Capital, Atlas Venture, and BDS Ventures. The funding comes as the company has announced some pretty impressive growth stats. Just 18 months old, DraftKings facilitates fantasy baseball, fantasy football, fantasy basketball, and fantasy hockey matchups online and through a series of mobile apps. Since August, the company has tripled its customer base - most likely due to the start of fantasy football, basketball, and hockey seasons - and has seen revenue grow 10x year-over-year. About three-quarters of all users who signed up in 2012 came back to use its products again this year, which is pretty impressive, and they're also pretty well engaged. Users on average spend more than five hours per week using its website and mobile apps. The new funding was closed just six months after DraftKings raised a $7 million Series A round.
Wire, A Would-Be Snapchat Competitor From Ex-Amazon Engineers, Raises $1.8 Million
Nov 26, 8:13PM
Wire Labs, a company founded by ex-Amazon engineers Piragash Velummylum and Jordan Timmermann, has raised $1.8 million in seed funding for their new - what else? - mobile messaging application called simply "Wire." The app, currently in a private beta release, is targeting the teen audience with photo and video messaging features and promise of real-time feedback. 
Metaio CEO Thomas Alt Discusses Augmented Reality For Smartwatches, Google Glass And More
Nov 26, 7:44PM
Augmented Reality pioneers Metaio hardly qualify as a startup these days (being incorporated since 2003 and funded by a stream of project work from the likes of Volkswagen and IKEA), but they behave very much like a startup and are constantly inventing new systems for their considerable augmented reality SDK. 
Moto G Review: Motorola Bridges The Gap Between Cheap And Good In Smartphones
Nov 26, 7:11PM
Motorola has done its best to deliver a premium experience with an affordable price tag with the Moto G, the little sibling to the higher priced Moto X. Both phones have Google's stamp all over them, and share a surprising amount in common besides that, too. Best of all, the Moto G is a phone that mostly delivers on its marketing premise, offering an experience that'll have many doing a double take at that price tag.
Microsoft Enlists Pawn Stars To Mock Google's Chromebooks
Nov 26, 6:29PM
Microsoft's anti-Google Scroogled campaign is showing no signs of slowing down. Its latest target is Google's Chromebook. Microsoft has enlisted the stars of the successful reality TV series Pawn Stars to lampoon what it wants you to perceive as the Chromebook's limitations ("It's not a real laptop!").
Bib + Tuck Has An App Now, Begins More Stringent Filtering On What Brands Users Can Swap
Nov 26, 6:06PM
The fashion swap site Bib + Tuck launched in November 2012 as a private, invite-only community and opened up to the public late this summer. The startup is now pushing its product with the release of its first app today, while sharpening its aesthetic perspective through a new rule, implemented today, that users can only sell items from a list of approved brands. 
YouTube Addresses Massive Spam Problem Following Rollout Of Much-Maligned Google+ Commenting System
Nov 26, 5:21PM
Google says it's taking steps to address the increase in YouTube comment spam that arose from the recent shift to the new commenting system powered by Google+. YouTube users have already been fairly displeased with the new system for reasons related to privacy, confusion, and the ability to leave anonymous comments, having already left over 31,000 comments of their own on a video post announcing the changes, many negative. In addition, the most popular petition begging Google to reconsider a move back to the old system has over 215,000 signatures today.
Target (Yes, That Target) Wants To Launch An Accelerator In India
Nov 26, 5:13PM
Target has long looked to India to fuel its software applications and back-office projects. Now, the Minneapolis-based retailer is doubling down on the country's tech potential. 
Backed With $3.5M From Social+Capital, Athos Is Creating Connected Workout Clothing That Tracks Your Muscle Output And More
Nov 26, 5:00PM
University of Waterloo college students Dhananja Jayalath and Christopher Wiebe were frustrated by their workouts in the gym--they felt like there was no way to know whether they were actually working the right muscles when lifting weights. A personal trainer wasn't an option for these cash-strapped students, and as electrical engineers, both thought there could be a frictionless way where hardware technology could collect this data from your muscles. But this hadn't been developed yet. Flash forward three years, and Jayalath and Wiebe are debuting this connected, wearable workout gear to the public after spending that time developing both the hardware and software side. Backed with $3.5 million in seed funding from Chamath Palihapitiya's Social+Capital Partnership, Athos offers a wearable technology that is fully integrated in workout clothing, and can track your muscle groups, heart rate, breathing level and more. You can pre-order the Athos, which will be available in the Spring of 2014, here.
Nickelodeon Partners With Ludei To Bring HTML5 Games To Its Upcoming Android App
Nov 26, 4:43PM
Ludei, which offers an HTML5 platform for building games and other apps, is announcing today that it's powering the games in Nickelodeon's upcoming Android app. Ludei CEO Eneko Korr said that Nickelodeon is basing its entire game development strategy on his company's technology, with the kids' entertainment channel treating the new app as a "container" that will include dozens of HTML5 games. The app is scheduled to launch on November 15. 
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