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Another development in the European edtech ecosystem: early stage startups with a plan to disrupt education are being encouraged to apply to join a new incubator that will kick off its first programme this September.
Cloud-based storage company Box is said to have filed an IPO, according to an initial report from Quartz, later followed up by confirmations from The Wall Street Journal and Forbes. It did so quietly, filing the paperwork recently (possibly at the beginning of this week), according to the reports, and also silently, something it shares in common with Twitter, and which is made possible under a provision of the JOBS act for companies that drive less than $1 billion in yearly revenue. Box, which is often compared to similar service Dropbox (which raised $250 million at a $10 billion valuation recently), only just closed funding of $100 million in December, at a valuation of $2 billion. The timing of that funding round seems unusual, given the intent to IPO, but Forbes says that round was actually about lining up international investors and getting a new, stronger business portfolio to show off to Wall Street during the process of going public. Unlike its competitor Dropbox, Box has a strong focus on enterprise storage and file sharing. This should help it produce more consistent quarterly results that a Forbes source tells that publication will reassure and please investors. Originally, Forbes had reported that the IPO could take as long as until summer to become public and get underway, but a second source says the company is actually looking to go public as soon as April, if all goes well. A Box spokesperson had only the following to offer: We don’t have anything to share at this time. We’re focused on continuing to build our business and expand our customer relationships globally.
GSF, the Indian startup accelerator behind Little Eye Labs, which was acquired by Facebook earlier this year, is launching a cross-border program with increased seed funding and global exposure for its third cohort starting April this year. The GSF Global Accelerator is partnering with AngelList, a platform that helps startups find funding and employees, to manage the application and selection process for its next batch. GSF’s next batch will have eight startups from India, and the remaining four from across South East Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa. “Little Eye Labs acquisition was the trigger for us to start thinking about a new model where startups could be exposed globally,” said Rajesh Sawhney who started GSF Accelerator in 2012 with support from investors including Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, InMobi founder Naveen Tewary, Blume Ventures and Kae Capital. The next batch starting mid-April will have four stopovers — starting with four weeks in Delhi, Bangalore, followed by two weeks at Singapore’s The Hub, then two weeks on the East Coast, and the final four weeks in the Silicon Valley. All this would also mean more funding for the selected startups. GSF’s next cohorts will get $40,000-$60,000 each in seed funding as part of the new program. Earlier, the startups received $30,000 in funding after getting selected. Out of the company’s two batches of 24 startups so far, nine have gone on to raise additional funding, and two of them have been acquired. Many Indian accelerators started with the idea of modeling on the kind of incubation provided by TechStars and Y Combinator in the U.S. But the Indian startup ecosystem is still nascent in terms of getting the global exposure. As Sharad Sharma, co-founder of iSpirt told me recently, Indian startups really need to get on the radar of newer Silicon Valley companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter who are more acquisitive. This is an area where more investors, accelerators and think-tanks in India are beginning to focus. For its part, GSF took several of its cohorts including Little Eye Labs for a World Expedition last year, which helped exposing them to potential acquirers including Facebook and Twitter. This year, GSF is planning demo days across important tech hubs in the world. “We’ll have four demo days — two in the U.S. and one each in Singapore and India,” said Sawhney. Clearly, the $10-$15 million acquisition of Little Eye Labs by Facebook is beginning
BTC China, the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, has started allowing users to purchase the digital currency with Chinese yuan again. This is significant because BTC China stopped accepting deposits in renminbi last month after the People’s Bank of China issued a memo warning national financial institutions not to trade in bitcoin. That decision triggered a quick and massive drop in its value. It also hurt Bitcoin’s public image, which has taken several shots in the past few months. BTC China CEO Bobby Lee told the Wall Street Journal that the exchange started accepting renminbi again on Thursday after studying the PBOC memo and determining that it was legal to accept deposits and transfer money into customer accounts, even though the banks that manage those accounts can’t conduct business in bitcoin. Reddit users and Coindesk picked up on BTC China’s decision, even though the exchange tried to keep it low profile. BTC China has not made an official announcement and timed the change to coincide with the Lunar New Year holiday, when trading volume is low. It’s still too early to tell what impact BTC China’s decision will have on bitcoin’s value. Lee told WSJ that BTC China, which recently closed a $5 million Series A round from Lightspeed China Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners, is treading carefully because the Chinese government can change its policies at any time. The Chinese government has taken a negative attitude toward digital currencies before. In 2009 the Chinese government banned the use of another popular digital currency, QQ, for the purchase of real-world items. Bitcoin is harder to control than QQ, however, because QQ was centrally managed by Internet company Tencent. “We are definitely in compliance with the Dec. 5 memo, but the government and the government agencies can change the rules anytime in the future. So we are going to take a wait-and-see approach,” Lee told the WSJ. We’ve emailed him for further comment.
Inq Mobile, one of the first companies to build a Facebook phone, announced that it has shut down with a message on its site (h/t Android Police). The U.K.-based, Hutchison Whampoa-backed company didn't say why it decided to close. We've emailed them for more information.
Marketing automation platform Salesfusion has purchased LoopFuse, an analytics platform that helps clients find promising new leads, for an undisclosed price. The acquisition comes two weeks after Salesfusion closed a $8.25 million Series B round, bringing its total funding raised so far to $10.1 million.
After five months of Microsoft CEO purgatory, we're finally reaching a climax: It's most likely going to be Microsoft enterprise head Satya Nadella, though everyone except Larry Page wants it to be Google's Sundar Pichai (kidding).
Mobile messaging and mobile communications tools have grown like a weed on the consumer side -- but what about in a work context? With more and more people buying better and better smartphones, taking them into work, where employers are beginning to pay for them and the services, are the conditions ripe for a breakout on the enterprise side? To hear Kakul Srivastava break it down, it appears the answer is "yes."
Implisit has raised $3.3 million from Gemini Israel Ventures for its self-learning platform that mines CRM data to help sales people close more deals and cut manual data entry.
Clinkle is the hottest app around to have done mostly nothing. The stealth payments service, which has raised $30 million from big-name investors, has yet to publicly launch. But that doesn't mean it can't be hacked. Today, a guest user posted a list of 33 usernames, user IDs, profile photos, and phone numbers to PasteBin. Based on the data provided, it seems as though these users are Clinkle employees who are testing the app.
Amazon Prime might be getting more expensive. The retailer revealed during its quarterly earnings conference call that it might jack up the price of the yearly subscription by up to 50%. Prime currently costs $79 a year. It’s the best service a person could buy. Free two-day shipping on most everything Amazon sells? I don’t have to go to the store for toilet paper. Yes sir. Amazon is in a tough spot. After being the street’s darling for so many years, the company’s stock is tumbling thanks to a sub-par performance this holiday season. Analysts expected Amazon to report revenue of $26.06 billion, and earn $0.66 per share. Put another way, in a quarter of strong GDP growth, Amazon managed to miss expectations on both its top and bottom lines. As Amazon stated on its investor relations conference call, the cost of shipping is increasing and Amazon is unsure if it can continue to offer Prime at $79. It said it was considering raising the price by $20 to $40 a year. Since its launch, Prime has become more than just a free shipping service. Amazon also bundles its video streaming and Kindle libraries with the subscription. As a long time subscriber, a price hike would put a frown on my face, but I would still re-subscribe. I simply hate going to the store.
Last-minute hotel booking startup HotelTonight just announced that it has landed a personal investment from Barry Sternlicht, founder of Starwood Capital Group and former chairman and CEO of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. Sternlicht, who has been described as the "king of hotels," is also joining HotelTonight as a strategic adviser.
CrunchFund, the early-stage investment firm that's basically one giant conflict-of-interest statement for TechCrunch, is raising $40 million for a second fund, according to a regulatory filing. I've emailed partners Michael Arrington and Patrick Gallagher for confirmation, and I'll update this post if I hear back. (CrunchFund's third partner, TechCrunch alum MG Siegler, left to join Google Ventures last year.)
Google’s earnings call doesn’t feature CEO Larry Page this time around, which is a disappointment in terms of product discussion. But Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora discussed briefly hardware during the call, flagging the search giant’s growing satisfaction with the Nexus line and with the Nexus 5 in particular. Arora said that Google is seeing “strong interest in Nexus hardware,” and “great reception for Nexus 5,” especially during the holiday sales period. That’s due to the marketing team’s performance creating ads and also fostering a retail environment conductive to purchases. On the subject of Nest, Google reiterated the line it’s been touting so far, which is that they saw the goals of Nest and themselves in alignment. Google wants to help Nest scale, it said, and will continue to devote resources to this goal. That’s somewhat different from what TechCrunch heard recently, which suggested that the learning thermostat and smoke detector weren’t really the focus of the deal; instead, Google wants to put the Nest team in charge of all of its hardware projects. Asked whether the Motorola acquisition will affect their hardware plans, Arora said that he thinks their continued investments in other areas should show that they’re still committed to hardware. “As you know from the Nest acquisition, Glass and wearables, we’re continuing to innovate,” he said about their ongoing hardware projects. It’s an interesting characterization, because Google has yet to make anything public around wearables beyond Glass, yet Arora separated it out as a new category. Late last year, we heard that a Google smartwatch might be right around the corner, however, so this could be a tantalizing hint that this kind of device (or other wearable efforts) could indeed be on the horizon. Remember that Google acquired WIMM Labs last year, which made an Android-powered smartwatch.
The details are a bit sparse right now, but Yahoo has just disclosed by way of their Tumblr that they've detected what they're calling a "coordinated effort to gain unauthorized access to Yahoo Mail accounts".
After a search that stretched for months, reports are out today that Microsoft will select internal candidate Satya Nadella as its next CEO. Nadella is known for his work with cloud computing at Microsoft and deep technical knowledge. The company kicked off its hunt for a new head last year when long-time CEO Steve Ballmer announced that he would step down within a year. Nadella has long been a candidate for the role. If Microsoft does select him to replace Ballmer, it won’t be surprising. During the CEO dance, candidates from companies as far-flung as Ford were discussed. Internal candidates rose and fell, including the company’s soon to return former executive Stephen Elop. According to Bloomberg’s Emily Chang, the company’s founder and long-time chairman of its board could be replaced. The replacing of Gates would be more than symbolic. His stature on the board has caused some to fret that he could hold back a new CEO, exerting outsized influence as shareholder and former CEO. Microsoft declined to comment. Top Image Credit: Flickr
After reporting both a top and bottom miss, Amazon fell 10.32 percent in after-hours trading. The company had ended the day at $403.01 and is now trading at $361.41. As a company, Amazon is valued by investors on the strength or weakness of its revenue growth. Amazon’s current share count is 457.73 million. At a per-share loss of $41.60 so far today, Amazon has lost around $19 billion in value. Amazon not only failed to meet street expectations in terms of profit and revenue, the company also had first-quarter earnings guidance that was immediately called down as lackluster. As CNBC reported after the news dropped, Amazon’s stated revenue guidance for the current quarter of between $18.2 billion and $19.9 billion was below the market’s expected guidance of $19.67 billion. As a company, Amazon is not valued by investors on its current or near-term profitability. Investors have given the company wide berth to invest in its revenue growth. As such, the company’s owners are not expecting it to generate profit in a way that could be disbursed to themselves in the form of dividends — at least for now. The other side of that coin is that Amazon’s external growth expectations are steep, as investors are allowing it to invest their potential profits into its expansion. This means that lower than expected revenue growth is something of a cardinal sin for the firm. And when it misses, as it did today, down goes the share price. We’ll have to wait and see if the company can recover in after-hours trading. Apple, VMware, and Yahoo reported disappointing earnings this cycle. Facebook and Microsoft, on the other tip, had strong quarters.
Paired with the news of a big half-billion-dollar acquisition, Zynga is also laying off about 15 percent of its workforce, or about 314 employees. This is part of a cost-reduction plan that is supposed to generate $33 million to $35 million in savings this year, excluding a $15 million to $17 million restructuring charge. In an interview today, CEO Don Mattrick said these jobs would mostly come out of “infrastructure” areas and wouldn’t involve shutting down any individual studios. Zynga has roughly 2,000 employees at a time when better-performing competitors lack anywhere near the same kind of headcount. Supercell, which sold half of itself for $1.53 billion last fall to Japanese carrier Softbank, currently has about 130 employees and was producing just shy of $200 million a quarter in revenue in the beginning of last year. Since Mattrick took over the company from founding CEO Mark Pincus, Zynga has engaged in a series of layoffs, cut out middle layers of management and shut down poorly performing games. Last summer, the company let go of about 520 people, or 18 percent of its workforce.
Today after the market close Amazon reported its fourth quarter financial performance, including revenue of $25.59 billion, and earnings per share of $0.51. The company has operating income of $510 million in the period, up 26 percent year over year. The street had expected Amazon to report revenue of $26.06 billion, and earn $0.66 per share. Put another way, in a quarter of strong GDP growth, Amazon managed to miss expectations on both its top and bottom lines. In regular trading, Amazon was up a very strong 5 percent. In after-hours trading, Amazon is down sharply, nearly 8 percent. Amazon’s expected earnings-per-share growth was more than 200 percent, for reference. Despite the disappointing earnings, the company was upbeat: “It’s a good time to be an Amazon customer,” said founder and CEO Jeff Bezos on the earnings call. In the sequentially preceding quarter, for context, Amazon reported net sales of $17.09 billion, and an earnings-per-share loss of $0.09. That was the company’s second sequential loss. The gap between the company’s third and fourth quarter revenue is due to the holiday shopping period, a cyclically strong period for Amazon. In its year-ago quarter, Amazon had earnings per share of $0.21. For its calendar 2013, Amazon had revenue of $74.45 billion, up 22 percent year over year. Its operating income rose 10 percent in the same period to $745 million. Amazon ended the year with cash and equivalents of $8.6 billion. That Amazon was up in regular trading to more than $400 a share was perhaps due to Facebook’s stronger-than-expected earnings yesterday, which bolstered the social giant. Twitter was up a firm 8 percent today as well, riding the same winds. Now that we have the numbers, it appears those optimistic expectations were misplaced. For the coming quarter, Amazon expects to generate revenue between $18.2 billion and $19.9 billion, up 13 percent year over year. Amazon | Create Infographics Top Image Credit: Flickr
Google just published its Q4 earnings report and the results are mostly in line with Wall Street expectations, though it missed on earnings per share due to larger than expected losses at Motorola, which doubled from the year-ago-quarter. Over the last three months, the company reported revenue of $16.86 billion and $3.37 billion in net income. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $12.01 and GAAP EPS was $9.90. “We ended 2013 with another great quarter of momentum and growth. Google’s standalone revenue was up 22 percent year on year, at $15.7 billion”, said Larry Page, CEO of Google in a statement today. ”We made great progress across a wide range of product improvements and business goals. I’m also very excited about improving people’s lives even more with continued hard work on our user experiences.” Ahead of the earnings release, most analysts expected the company’s earnings per share to increase about 16 percent thanks to better ad revenues on mobile and YouTube. The analyst consensus was that Google would report revenue of $16.75 billion (up 37.8 percent from the year-ago-quarter) and earnings per share of $12.26. Last quarter, Google reported revenue of $14.89 billion and net income of $2.97 billion for an EPS of $10.74. Google Inc | Create Infographics For the last three quarters in a row, Google beat Wall Street’s expectations in large part thanks to improved results from its AdWords Enhanced Campaigns. Overall, though, cost-per-click, one of Google’s key metrics to measure its advertising performance, has been trending lower, with a 4 percent decrease in Q3 and an 8 percent drop year-over-year. Paid clicks, on the other hand, increased 8 percent in Q3 and 26 percent year over year. This quarter paid clicks increased by 31 percent and cost-per-click decreased by just 2 percent. Traffic acquisition costs increased to $3.31 billion in the fourth quarter, up from $3.08 million in the year-ago-quarter. This accounted for 24 percent of Google’s revenue, compared to 25 percent last year. The last few weeks have been particularly interesting for Google. The company announced its $3.2 billion Nest acquisition and just yesterday (and surely timed to preempt today’s earnings release), it said that it would sell most of Motorola to Lenovo. Motorola has been posting losses ever since Google acquired it in 2012. Last quarter it posted an operating loss of $248 million and this quarter it had revenues of $1.24 billion
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New European Edtech Accelerator Kicks Off Search For 10 Startups Eager To Disrupt The Classroom
Jan 31, 1:18PM
Another development in the European edtech ecosystem: early stage startups with a plan to disrupt education are being encouraged to apply to join a new incubator that will kick off its first programme this September.Box Said To Have Filed For IPO, Could Go Public As Early As April
Jan 31, 1:13PM
Cloud-based storage company Box is said to have filed an IPO, according to an initial report from Quartz, later followed up by confirmations from The Wall Street Journal and Forbes. It did so quietly, filing the paperwork recently (possibly at the beginning of this week), according to the reports, and also silently, something it shares in common with Twitter, and which is made possible under a provision of the JOBS act for companies that drive less than $1 billion in yearly revenue. Box, which is often compared to similar service Dropbox (which raised $250 million at a $10 billion valuation recently), only just closed funding of $100 million in December, at a valuation of $2 billion. The timing of that funding round seems unusual, given the intent to IPO, but Forbes says that round was actually about lining up international investors and getting a new, stronger business portfolio to show off to Wall Street during the process of going public. Unlike its competitor Dropbox, Box has a strong focus on enterprise storage and file sharing. This should help it produce more consistent quarterly results that a Forbes source tells that publication will reassure and please investors. Originally, Forbes had reported that the IPO could take as long as until summer to become public and get underway, but a second source says the company is actually looking to go public as soon as April, if all goes well. A Box spokesperson had only the following to offer: We don’t have anything to share at this time. We’re focused on continuing to build our business and expand our customer relationships globally.After Little Eye Labs Exit, India's GSF Accelerator Goes Global
Jan 31, 9:52AM
GSF, the Indian startup accelerator behind Little Eye Labs, which was acquired by Facebook earlier this year, is launching a cross-border program with increased seed funding and global exposure for its third cohort starting April this year. The GSF Global Accelerator is partnering with AngelList, a platform that helps startups find funding and employees, to manage the application and selection process for its next batch. GSF’s next batch will have eight startups from India, and the remaining four from across South East Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa. “Little Eye Labs acquisition was the trigger for us to start thinking about a new model where startups could be exposed globally,” said Rajesh Sawhney who started GSF Accelerator in 2012 with support from investors including Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, InMobi founder Naveen Tewary, Blume Ventures and Kae Capital. The next batch starting mid-April will have four stopovers — starting with four weeks in Delhi, Bangalore, followed by two weeks at Singapore’s The Hub, then two weeks on the East Coast, and the final four weeks in the Silicon Valley. All this would also mean more funding for the selected startups. GSF’s next cohorts will get $40,000-$60,000 each in seed funding as part of the new program. Earlier, the startups received $30,000 in funding after getting selected. Out of the company’s two batches of 24 startups so far, nine have gone on to raise additional funding, and two of them have been acquired. Many Indian accelerators started with the idea of modeling on the kind of incubation provided by TechStars and Y Combinator in the U.S. But the Indian startup ecosystem is still nascent in terms of getting the global exposure. As Sharad Sharma, co-founder of iSpirt told me recently, Indian startups really need to get on the radar of newer Silicon Valley companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter who are more acquisitive. This is an area where more investors, accelerators and think-tanks in India are beginning to focus. For its part, GSF took several of its cohorts including Little Eye Labs for a World Expedition last year, which helped exposing them to potential acquirers including Facebook and Twitter. This year, GSF is planning demo days across important tech hubs in the world. “We’ll have four demo days — two in the U.S. and one each in Singapore and India,” said Sawhney. Clearly, the $10-$15 million acquisition of Little Eye Labs by Facebook is beginningBTC China Starts Accepting Deposits In Chinese Yuan Again
Jan 31, 7:49AM
BTC China, the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, has started allowing users to purchase the digital currency with Chinese yuan again. This is significant because BTC China stopped accepting deposits in renminbi last month after the People’s Bank of China issued a memo warning national financial institutions not to trade in bitcoin. That decision triggered a quick and massive drop in its value. It also hurt Bitcoin’s public image, which has taken several shots in the past few months. BTC China CEO Bobby Lee told the Wall Street Journal that the exchange started accepting renminbi again on Thursday after studying the PBOC memo and determining that it was legal to accept deposits and transfer money into customer accounts, even though the banks that manage those accounts can’t conduct business in bitcoin. Reddit users and Coindesk picked up on BTC China’s decision, even though the exchange tried to keep it low profile. BTC China has not made an official announcement and timed the change to coincide with the Lunar New Year holiday, when trading volume is low. It’s still too early to tell what impact BTC China’s decision will have on bitcoin’s value. Lee told WSJ that BTC China, which recently closed a $5 million Series A round from Lightspeed China Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners, is treading carefully because the Chinese government can change its policies at any time. The Chinese government has taken a negative attitude toward digital currencies before. In 2009 the Chinese government banned the use of another popular digital currency, QQ, for the purchase of real-world items. Bitcoin is harder to control than QQ, however, because QQ was centrally managed by Internet company Tencent. “We are definitely in compliance with the Dec. 5 memo, but the government and the government agencies can change the rules anytime in the future. So we are going to take a wait-and-see approach,” Lee told the WSJ. We’ve emailed him for further comment.Inq Mobile, One Of The First Facebook Phone Makers, Shuts Down
Jan 31, 6:18AM
Inq Mobile, one of the first companies to build a Facebook phone, announced that it has shut down with a message on its site (h/t Android Police). The U.K.-based, Hutchison Whampoa-backed company didn't say why it decided to close. We've emailed them for more information.Salesfusion Acquires Marketing Analytics Platform LoopFuse
Jan 31, 2:46AM
Marketing automation platform Salesfusion has purchased LoopFuse, an analytics platform that helps clients find promising new leads, for an undisclosed price. The acquisition comes two weeks after Salesfusion closed a $8.25 million Series B round, bringing its total funding raised so far to $10.1 million.This Is Satya Nadella's Twitter Account
Jan 31, 12:45AM
After five months of Microsoft CEO purgatory, we're finally reaching a climax: It's most likely going to be Microsoft enterprise head Satya Nadella, though everyone except Larry Page wants it to be Google's Sundar Pichai (kidding).Founder Stories: Kakul Srivastava On How Tomfoolery Will Make Our Work More Social And Fun
Jan 31, 12:25AM
Mobile messaging and mobile communications tools have grown like a weed on the consumer side -- but what about in a work context? With more and more people buying better and better smartphones, taking them into work, where employers are beginning to pay for them and the services, are the conditions ripe for a breakout on the enterprise side? To hear Kakul Srivastava break it down, it appears the answer is "yes."Implisit Raises $3.3M For Self-Learning Service That Predicts Next Steps For Sales People
Jan 30, 11:41PM
Implisit has raised $3.3 million from Gemini Israel Ventures for its self-learning platform that mines CRM data to help sales people close more deals and cut manual data entry.Clinkle Gets Hacked Before It Even Launches
Jan 30, 11:09PM
Clinkle is the hottest app around to have done mostly nothing. The stealth payments service, which has raised $30 million from big-name investors, has yet to publicly launch. But that doesn't mean it can't be hacked. Today, a guest user posted a list of 33 usernames, user IDs, profile photos, and phone numbers to PasteBin. Based on the data provided, it seems as though these users are Clinkle employees who are testing the app.Amazon Prime Could See $20 To $40 Price Hike
Jan 30, 11:03PM
Amazon Prime might be getting more expensive. The retailer revealed during its quarterly earnings conference call that it might jack up the price of the yearly subscription by up to 50%. Prime currently costs $79 a year. It’s the best service a person could buy. Free two-day shipping on most everything Amazon sells? I don’t have to go to the store for toilet paper. Yes sir. Amazon is in a tough spot. After being the street’s darling for so many years, the company’s stock is tumbling thanks to a sub-par performance this holiday season. Analysts expected Amazon to report revenue of $26.06 billion, and earn $0.66 per share. Put another way, in a quarter of strong GDP growth, Amazon managed to miss expectations on both its top and bottom lines. As Amazon stated on its investor relations conference call, the cost of shipping is increasing and Amazon is unsure if it can continue to offer Prime at $79. It said it was considering raising the price by $20 to $40 a year. Since its launch, Prime has become more than just a free shipping service. Amazon also bundles its video streaming and Kindle libraries with the subscription. As a long time subscriber, a price hike would put a frown on my face, but I would still re-subscribe. I simply hate going to the store.Barry Sternlicht, Former CEO Of Hotel Giant Starwood, Invests In HotelTonight
Jan 30, 11:00PM
Last-minute hotel booking startup HotelTonight just announced that it has landed a personal investment from Barry Sternlicht, founder of Starwood Capital Group and former chairman and CEO of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. Sternlicht, who has been described as the "king of hotels," is also joining HotelTonight as a strategic adviser.CrunchFund Is Raising $40M For Its Second Fund, According To Filing
Jan 30, 10:32PM
CrunchFund, the early-stage investment firm that's basically one giant conflict-of-interest statement for TechCrunch, is raising $40 million for a second fund, according to a regulatory filing. I've emailed partners Michael Arrington and Patrick Gallagher for confirmation, and I'll update this post if I hear back. (CrunchFund's third partner, TechCrunch alum MG Siegler, left to join Google Ventures last year.)Google Pleased With Hardware And Nexus Performance; Talks Nest, Glass And Other Wearables
Jan 30, 10:19PM
Google’s earnings call doesn’t feature CEO Larry Page this time around, which is a disappointment in terms of product discussion. But Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora discussed briefly hardware during the call, flagging the search giant’s growing satisfaction with the Nexus line and with the Nexus 5 in particular. Arora said that Google is seeing “strong interest in Nexus hardware,” and “great reception for Nexus 5,” especially during the holiday sales period. That’s due to the marketing team’s performance creating ads and also fostering a retail environment conductive to purchases. On the subject of Nest, Google reiterated the line it’s been touting so far, which is that they saw the goals of Nest and themselves in alignment. Google wants to help Nest scale, it said, and will continue to devote resources to this goal. That’s somewhat different from what TechCrunch heard recently, which suggested that the learning thermostat and smoke detector weren’t really the focus of the deal; instead, Google wants to put the Nest team in charge of all of its hardware projects. Asked whether the Motorola acquisition will affect their hardware plans, Arora said that he thinks their continued investments in other areas should show that they’re still committed to hardware. “As you know from the Nest acquisition, Glass and wearables, we’re continuing to innovate,” he said about their ongoing hardware projects. It’s an interesting characterization, because Google has yet to make anything public around wearables beyond Glass, yet Arora separated it out as a new category. Late last year, we heard that a Google smartwatch might be right around the corner, however, so this could be a tantalizing hint that this kind of device (or other wearable efforts) could indeed be on the horizon. Remember that Google acquired WIMM Labs last year, which made an Android-powered smartwatch.Yahoo Detects Mass Hack Attempt On Yahoo Mail, Resets All Affected Passwords
Jan 30, 10:13PM
The details are a bit sparse right now, but Yahoo has just disclosed by way of their Tumblr that they've detected what they're calling a "coordinated effort to gain unauthorized access to Yahoo Mail accounts".Microsoft's Next CEO Reportedly Will Be Its Cloud Boss Satya Nadella, Gates Could Be Replaced On Board
Jan 30, 10:11PM
After a search that stretched for months, reports are out today that Microsoft will select internal candidate Satya Nadella as its next CEO. Nadella is known for his work with cloud computing at Microsoft and deep technical knowledge. The company kicked off its hunt for a new head last year when long-time CEO Steve Ballmer announced that he would step down within a year. Nadella has long been a candidate for the role. If Microsoft does select him to replace Ballmer, it won’t be surprising. During the CEO dance, candidates from companies as far-flung as Ford were discussed. Internal candidates rose and fell, including the company’s soon to return former executive Stephen Elop. According to Bloomberg’s Emily Chang, the company’s founder and long-time chairman of its board could be replaced. The replacing of Gates would be more than symbolic. His stature on the board has caused some to fret that he could hold back a new CEO, exerting outsized influence as shareholder and former CEO. Microsoft declined to comment. Top Image Credit: FlickrAmazon Sheds 10% In After-Hours Trading, Erasing $19B In Market Cap
Jan 30, 9:51PM
After reporting both a top and bottom miss, Amazon fell 10.32 percent in after-hours trading. The company had ended the day at $403.01 and is now trading at $361.41. As a company, Amazon is valued by investors on the strength or weakness of its revenue growth. Amazon’s current share count is 457.73 million. At a per-share loss of $41.60 so far today, Amazon has lost around $19 billion in value. Amazon not only failed to meet street expectations in terms of profit and revenue, the company also had first-quarter earnings guidance that was immediately called down as lackluster. As CNBC reported after the news dropped, Amazon’s stated revenue guidance for the current quarter of between $18.2 billion and $19.9 billion was below the market’s expected guidance of $19.67 billion. As a company, Amazon is not valued by investors on its current or near-term profitability. Investors have given the company wide berth to invest in its revenue growth. As such, the company’s owners are not expecting it to generate profit in a way that could be disbursed to themselves in the form of dividends — at least for now. The other side of that coin is that Amazon’s external growth expectations are steep, as investors are allowing it to invest their potential profits into its expansion. This means that lower than expected revenue growth is something of a cardinal sin for the firm. And when it misses, as it did today, down goes the share price. We’ll have to wait and see if the company can recover in after-hours trading. Apple, VMware, and Yahoo reported disappointing earnings this cycle. Facebook and Microsoft, on the other tip, had strong quarters.
Zynga Lays Off 314 Employees, Or 15% Of Its Workforce
Jan 30, 9:40PM
Paired with the news of a big half-billion-dollar acquisition, Zynga is also laying off about 15 percent of its workforce, or about 314 employees. This is part of a cost-reduction plan that is supposed to generate $33 million to $35 million in savings this year, excluding a $15 million to $17 million restructuring charge. In an interview today, CEO Don Mattrick said these jobs would mostly come out of “infrastructure” areas and wouldn’t involve shutting down any individual studios. Zynga has roughly 2,000 employees at a time when better-performing competitors lack anywhere near the same kind of headcount. Supercell, which sold half of itself for $1.53 billion last fall to Japanese carrier Softbank, currently has about 130 employees and was producing just shy of $200 million a quarter in revenue in the beginning of last year. Since Mattrick took over the company from founding CEO Mark Pincus, Zynga has engaged in a series of layoffs, cut out middle layers of management and shut down poorly performing games. Last summer, the company let go of about 520 people, or 18 percent of its workforce.Amazon's Stock Price Stumbles After Hours On Revenue, Earnings Miss And Weak Guidance
Jan 30, 9:09PM
Today after the market close Amazon reported its fourth quarter financial performance, including revenue of $25.59 billion, and earnings per share of $0.51. The company has operating income of $510 million in the period, up 26 percent year over year. The street had expected Amazon to report revenue of $26.06 billion, and earn $0.66 per share. Put another way, in a quarter of strong GDP growth, Amazon managed to miss expectations on both its top and bottom lines. In regular trading, Amazon was up a very strong 5 percent. In after-hours trading, Amazon is down sharply, nearly 8 percent. Amazon’s expected earnings-per-share growth was more than 200 percent, for reference. Despite the disappointing earnings, the company was upbeat: “It’s a good time to be an Amazon customer,” said founder and CEO Jeff Bezos on the earnings call. In the sequentially preceding quarter, for context, Amazon reported net sales of $17.09 billion, and an earnings-per-share loss of $0.09. That was the company’s second sequential loss. The gap between the company’s third and fourth quarter revenue is due to the holiday shopping period, a cyclically strong period for Amazon. In its year-ago quarter, Amazon had earnings per share of $0.21. For its calendar 2013, Amazon had revenue of $74.45 billion, up 22 percent year over year. Its operating income rose 10 percent in the same period to $745 million. Amazon ended the year with cash and equivalents of $8.6 billion. That Amazon was up in regular trading to more than $400 a share was perhaps due to Facebook’s stronger-than-expected earnings yesterday, which bolstered the social giant. Twitter was up a firm 8 percent today as well, riding the same winds. Now that we have the numbers, it appears those optimistic expectations were misplaced. For the coming quarter, Amazon expects to generate revenue between $18.2 billion and $19.9 billion, up 13 percent year over year. Amazon | Create Infographics Top Image Credit: FlickrGoogle Q4 '13 Beats With $16.86B Revenue, Misses With EPS Of $12.01 Because Of Motorola Weakness
Jan 30, 9:06PM
Google just published its Q4 earnings report and the results are mostly in line with Wall Street expectations, though it missed on earnings per share due to larger than expected losses at Motorola, which doubled from the year-ago-quarter. Over the last three months, the company reported revenue of $16.86 billion and $3.37 billion in net income. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $12.01 and GAAP EPS was $9.90. “We ended 2013 with another great quarter of momentum and growth. Google’s standalone revenue was up 22 percent year on year, at $15.7 billion”, said Larry Page, CEO of Google in a statement today. ”We made great progress across a wide range of product improvements and business goals. I’m also very excited about improving people’s lives even more with continued hard work on our user experiences.” Ahead of the earnings release, most analysts expected the company’s earnings per share to increase about 16 percent thanks to better ad revenues on mobile and YouTube. The analyst consensus was that Google would report revenue of $16.75 billion (up 37.8 percent from the year-ago-quarter) and earnings per share of $12.26. Last quarter, Google reported revenue of $14.89 billion and net income of $2.97 billion for an EPS of $10.74. Google Inc | Create Infographics For the last three quarters in a row, Google beat Wall Street’s expectations in large part thanks to improved results from its AdWords Enhanced Campaigns. Overall, though, cost-per-click, one of Google’s key metrics to measure its advertising performance, has been trending lower, with a 4 percent decrease in Q3 and an 8 percent drop year-over-year. Paid clicks, on the other hand, increased 8 percent in Q3 and 26 percent year over year. This quarter paid clicks increased by 31 percent and cost-per-click decreased by just 2 percent. Traffic acquisition costs increased to $3.31 billion in the fourth quarter, up from $3.08 million in the year-ago-quarter. This accounted for 24 percent of Google’s revenue, compared to 25 percent last year. The last few weeks have been particularly interesting for Google. The company announced its $3.2 billion Nest acquisition and just yesterday (and surely timed to preempt today’s earnings release), it said that it would sell most of Motorola to Lenovo. Motorola has been posting losses ever since Google acquired it in 2012. Last quarter it posted an operating loss of $248 million and this quarter it had revenues of $1.24 billionIf at any time you'd like to stop receiving these messages, just send an email to feeds_feedburner_com_techcrunch+unsubscribe-hmdtechnology=gmail.com@mail.feed2email.net.
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Apple has filed a new patent (via AppleInsider) for supplementary tech that adds pressure sensitivity to its iOS devices, via special pressure sensors located around the corners of the device or otherwise hidden beneath the display. The tech described in the patent would allow for detection of gestures coming from beyond the touch-sensitive regions of the display, so you could have swipes recognized as coming from the bezel for instance. Other benefits would include the ability to better detect and discount thinks like a palm resting on the display, or a thumb that’s on-screen and yet just being used to support or hold a device, rather than as part of a touch input gesture. Already, Apple’s iOS displays are among the best when it comes to accidental touch detection, but this system would make that even better, which could potentially allow for further reduction of bezel size, for instance, or even making it possible to determine different kinds of input based not only on how many fingers are used, but on the force of the press. Bezel-based input gestures are another big possibility here. BlackBerry already used swipes in from the bezel to activate different actions in both the BlackBerry Playbook and its BB10 line of smartphone devices. Apple could implement similar actions based on this patent, or it could go even further and use the bezel itself as an input surface, to be used in tandem with on-screen cues in software while keeping the screen completely unobscured at the same time, the patent says. This isn’t he first we’ve heard of pressure sensitive screens from Apple: It filed a patent in November last year that described a similar system but with sensors that were placed beneath the screen and reacted to being actually pressed, rather than located in key areas and using triangulation and relative force detection to triangulate input. A Bloomberg report from November also suggested that Apple was working on improving touchscreen sensors by adding fine pressure sensitivity for introduction in devices beyond this year, so hopefully this new patent means Apple’s making progress on how to bring that to market without adding a lot of complexity to its existing internal device designs.
Facebook has made a big point over the years of having real identities for its users, but it looks like that requirement is soon going to disappear, and users will able to use made-up names for more anonymity. Call it the Snapchat effect.
Personalized greeting card company Cleverbug, whose CleverCards mobile app lets you customize cards using Facebook photos then share with friends either digitally or via postal mail, has raised an additional $6 million in Series A funding. The round was led by seed round investor Delta Partners. The funding comes at a time when the company has been scaling its service to reach new consumers across iOS, Android and web, and has expanded its product line of greeting cards and other photo gifts. Others in the round include Enterprise Ireland, and mix of Irish, London and U.S.-based investors. To date, Cleverbug has raised $8 million in outside investment, the company says. Last fall, Cleverbug rebranded its app under the new name “CleverCards,” adding also Android support, a new address book option called “CleverBook,” and new photo gift products, like photo calendars, holiday card packs, and customizable gift cards from retailers. The app has since been installed in over 150 countries worldwide, and connects with 75 print and logistics facilities to help manage its orders. However, the company declines to provide exact user numbers, actives or downloads. (AppData sees it as having a few thousand monthly active users, but this is an imprecise measurement). According to CEO Kealan Lennon, CleverCards users combined have now added 50 million friends and family to their address books. What makes the app so “clever” (ha) is the way it allows users to customize their greeting cards. Plenty of mobile apps on the market today, including Red Stamp, Sincerely Ink, Shutterfly’s Treat, and others, let you create greeting cards using your own photos. But CleverCards lets you pull in photos from Facebook, too, and even offers premade cards that are automatically personalized using those Facebook photos. In my personal experience, its premade cards have been hit-or-miss, often pulling in the wrong photos for the occasion – but everyone’s experience will differ here. A lot of it depends on what photos you’ve shared on Facebook, and how well they’ve been tagged. CleverCards can also remind you of friends’ upcoming birthdays and other special occasions, so you won’t forget to send out cards. The print cards themselves sell for $2.99, and while the company doesn’t discuss revenue, Lennon says users are active, retention is high and users convert at a rate of 45%+. “Our users are sending over 2,000 cards per day and this has been rapidly growing,” he says, noting
Just over a year ago holiday attractions booking startup GetYourGuide closed a $14 million Series A funding round. Today it's bulked up that round with a further $4.5 million in what it's describing as strategic expansion funding -- owing to two of the new investors the round brings on board.
Apple is moving fast on securing intellectual property related to the making and usage of sapphire glass, filing another patent related to the material recently that has been published by the USPTO today (via AppleInsider). Previously we saw Apple file a patent for a method of attaching sapphire glass display windows to a device, and now its looking to insure that its method for manufacturing and shaping the material into forms usable in gadgets are legally protected. The patent is fairly technical, describing how sapphire can be grown, the collected and polished down into wafers, as well as treated with various coatings including oleophobic coatings (the kind used on the iPhone to prevent fingerprints) and ink masking (presumably to enable printing of logos and other elements on the sapphire). Sapphire is a difficult material to work with in terms of manufacturing electronics, since it’s hardness makes traditional methods of cutting and shaping it more challenging. Apple’s methods include using lasers to cut the sapphire into usable chunks, and it specifically mentions smartphone displays as one potential application. To get the material to where it needs to be for use in assembling phones and other devices, it describes a means by which it’s grown and then turned into cores which can be sliced into wafers. Those wafers can be sliced using lasers, which is both cleaner and faster than using machine grinding, which could be a clue into how Apple plans to make manufacturing sapphire components at scale cost-efficient. A new report from 9to5Mac says that Apple is keen on ramping up its sapphire manufacturing plant in Arizona, which it will be running with GT Advanced Technologies as part of a $578 million deal. The facility should be live by February, according to 9to5Mac, and it will aid in producing “a new sub-component of Apple products,” say documents obtained by the blog. An earlier report also said that Apple manufacturing partner Foxconn was already doing test production runs using sapphire glass screens in assembling iPhones. Apple gearing up for sapphire use on both the IP and the manufacturing front is a pretty safe sign that we’ll see this component feature prominently in future designs. In terms of timing, it’s likely that at this point we’ll have to wait until late this year before anything reaches consumers, but the wheels are turning, and the result could be much more durable devices. Photo![1_NewsFeed[7]](http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/1_newsfeed7.jpg?w=100&h=70&crop=1)
You miss great content because you aren't subscribed to the right sources. So Facebook wants to bring you content serendipity with Paper, a standalone iOS news reader app it revealed today that delivers human and algorithm-curated full-screen articles and photos in categories you select like Tech, LOL, and Pop Culture. Paper launches in the US February 3rd, a day before Facebook's 10th birthday.
Index Ventures recently backed the computing education-focused hardware startup Kano -- via one of its partners, Saul Klein. Today the firm is putting some money behind a more mainstream education startup, called Gojimo, that's targeting mobile as a delivery and engagement platform for learning.
BrightFarms, which builds greenhouses in urban areas, announced that it has raised $4.9 million in Series B funding from NGEN Partners, Emil Capital Partners, BrightFarms founder Ted Caplow, and others.
I hate to say I-told-you-so… Who am I kidding? I love to say that. But while I’m happy about being correct, I’m sad for Nintendo. I love Nintendo. I really do. And so it pains me to see them in such a state. But I come bearing gifts. Rather than being the millionth person to advise them to move their games to smartphones, I thought I’d offer another alternative. It’s one I’ve laid out previously, and the response to it seemed positive enough that I thought it was worth elaborating upon. Because again, I want Nintendo to survive. And thrive. What Nintendo needs to do right now is create another console. They can continue support for the Wii U through their current roadmap of games, but then it’s time to call a spade a spade and put all their resources behind this new system. Here’s what I’m thinking: a $99 box built from the ground up to play retro Nintendo games. Mario. Zelda. Icarus. Donkey Kong. Pokemon. You name it. Have a bunch of titles ready to go at launch to ensure a blow-out. Release more as time goes on. But not in stores, entirely online. This device would not have any physical media. No cartridges. No optical drives. Only a hard drive and an online store. Games would be $5 to $15 depending on the title. Hundreds of titles would be available within months of launch. Thousands within the year. Stagger them. And that’s just step one. Step two of my strategy would involve updating old classics to run with updated HD graphics and new levels. New Mario. New Zelda. New Icarus. New Donkey Kong. New Pokemon. Same idea. Updated graphics. New levels. These games would be $15 to $25 depending on the game. Stagger them. There’s more: step three. Strike deals with other “retro” game makers such as Atari and Sega to license their old games and give them the same treatment. Updated graphics, new levels. Sell the games through your online store at $15 to $25 a pop. Watch the money roll in. Does anyone in their right mind doubt that such a box would be an immediate best seller? It would be massive. It would blow all the other consoles out of the water. $99! The Wii offered some of this via the Virtual Console. But it wasn’t nearly good enough. It was too slow. Too
Lenovo’s ThinkPad is the brand of choice when it comes to enterprise notebooks – Dell has a strong footing still, to be sure, but Lenovo dominated the PC market in 2013, followed by HP and then Dell. The acquisition of Motorola Mobility today gives them a chance to parlay that success in the traditional computing world into the booming enterprise hotspot of mobile tech. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Lenovo Chief Executive Yang Yuanqing and CFO Wong Wai Ming explained that the purpose behind the purchase was to help Lenovo enter the U.S. smartphone market and make the company a worldwide player in the smartphone market. But we’ve also learned that Lenovo has been conducting research about what customers might be looking for in a ThinkPad-style smartphone, particularly at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. Lenovo asking prospective buyers what they might expect in a ThinkPad phone doesn’t necessarily equate to a major mobile enterprise push, but there are more pieces to the puzzle to consider, too. One important one is that Lenovo made a bid for at least portions of BlackBerry, but the deal was ultimately nixed by the Canadian government since BlackBerry was so important a part of the Canadian telecommunications infrastructure. It’s true that the company already sells Android phones abroad, and that these aren’t necessarily enterprise-focused. But the ongoing demise of BlackBerry leaves a gaping hole in the industry in terms of secure devices, and so far the only company really making a concerted effort to capture the attention of that market is Samsung, which has been touting its Knox security software for Android a lot in the past few months. But Knox isn’t without its detractors, and Samsung hardly has the brand cachet that does Lenovo when it comes to building enterprise hardware. Lenovo says it will keep its Motorola brand separate in the same way it has done with ThinkPad, but that doesn’t mean it’ll keep the focus solely on consumer devices. Lenovo is clearly interested in that side of things too, as proven by its existing line of mobile hardware, but the growth opportunity in the U.S. is ironically replacing BlackBerry at the moment, so I think we’ll see an attempt by Lenovo to use Motorola to build on its strengths and give business users the phones they’ve been looking for.
Two of India’s biggest e-commerce retailers — Flipkart and Myntra — are apparently in talks to merge, a proposal being pushed by their common investors Accel Partners and Tiger Global. The Times of India reported this morning that Flipkart has already approached Myntra, and a decision on whether to go with the merger would be taken in two weeks. Flipkart has been looking to expand in newer categories such as fashion retailing, its co-founder Binny Bansal had told me recently. By merging with Myntra, Filpkart can add another category, and also widen the gap with everybody else even further. Flipkart is aiming to achieve $1 billion in gross merchandise value by next year. Flipkart has raised $540 million so far from investors including Accel, Tiger, Dragoneer Investment Group and Morgan Stanley Investment Management. In October last year, it raised $160 million, taking its Series E funding to be the largest ever by any Indian Internet company. India’s nearly $3.1 billion e-commerce market (excluding online travel industry) is dwarfed in size by China’s nearly $200 billion market for online sales, but it’s expected to grow by over seven times to $22 billion in five years, according to a CLSA report published in November 2013. Myntra, one of India’s biggest online clothing and footwear retailers, has been in discussions with several investors to raise around $50 million, sources are telling us. These discussions included a proposal to merge with Flipkart or acquire another e-commerce company to gain certain size, but nothing has been finalized yet, the source added. Clearly, the signs of consolidation are very visible in India’s e-commerce sector. An intense battle for market share is being fought among Flipkart, eBay-backed Snapdeal and Amazon. A lot is riding for investors backing Flipkart, so any proposals that help it garner a larger share of the market cannot be ruled out. We have reached out to Flipkart, Myntra and their investors for reactions and we will update after hearing from them.
In after-hours trading today, investors rewarded Facebook with a rising share price after it reported stronger than expected revenue. The company reported that it earned $0.31 per share, and had revenue in the quarter of $2.59 billion. As reported earlier, the analyst set had predicted that Facebook would earn $0.27 on revenue of $2.33 billion. The earnings beat sent the company’s stock up 5 percent in moments. Facebook has since risen more than $6 per share, and is still up more than 12 percent in after-hours trading. The company briefly passed the $60 mark in its post earnings frenzy, though it has since ceded back ground and fallen below the mark. According to Google Finance, before today, Facebook’s 52 week high was $59.31. Given Facebook’s prior ranges outside of that period, we can assert that Facebook traded over the $60 per share threshold in its history. Essentially Facebook has never been more richly valued than it is at the moment. Using a non-diluted share count, Facebook’s market capitalization is creeping up on the $150 billion mark. In another milestone long in the making today, Facebook reported that it now generates the majority of its advertising dollars from mobile. Mobile fears brought the company’s share price down, and mobile strength has brought them back and pushed them higher. Facebook faces concerns regarding its user base along certain demographic lines, but at least for today, the company can rest easy.
Today, with more product information and data on consumer goods living on the Web than ever before, Consumr launched in 2011 to give average Joes like you and me a better way to make sense of that data and find the best products. In an effort to become the Rotten Tomatoes or Yelp of consumer products, Consumr has been building a platform and mobile apps that allow users to create and peruse reviews on any product — written by other buyers — while strolling down the aisle in their local supermarket. The startup’s app allows users to both search and browse its crowdsourced data on products by way of keyword search or actually scan barcodes with their phone to view customer reviews. Founded by the former head of mobile at Zagat, Ryan Charles, and CTO Noah Zitsman, the app’s clean design and clear use case were recognized in the mobile category at the 2013 Webby Awards and have managed a 4.5-star rating on the App Store. Over the last year, however, Consumr has been focused on expanding its potential use case and developing a more personalized recommendation system and user experienced. In the first case, on Black Friday 2012, Charles says, he was lured into buying a laptop that seemed like a great deal. However, it turned out that it was a lemon, and was slower than the laptop he had replaced. In these cases, it would make perfect sense for users to be able to turn to Consumr for electronics reviews, but the startup was initially focused exclusively on packaged goods. With the long-term goal of building a better shopping guide for all products, Consumr has since expanded from the world of impulse buys into more considered purchases, including appliances and electronics. For those categories that don’t yet have enough reviews, Consumr offers reviews from outlets like Best Buy to fill in the blanks. More recently, the startup has begun to add more personalization features to its platform and app, surfacing categories users are likely to be interested in based on their tastes and habits. If you don’t own a pet and don’t want to be shown pet care products, then presto, Consumr analyzes your taste profile and prioritizes its recommendations accordingly. Users can specify the categories they’re interested in, as well, so that new parents can customize their experience so that baby, toys and grocery products are the
The investigation behind Target's data breach, which affected 40 million customers and is one of the largest hacking incidents in retail history, has intensified. The U.S. Justice Department has joined the investigation, which already includes the FBI and the Secret Service, which usually oversees the federal government's credit card fraud cases.
Google today sold Motorola to Lenovo for $2.91 billion. While many speculated that Google would release phones after it bought Motorola in 2011, it didn’t happen — Motorola remained a partner like other Android OEMs. Recently, Google acquired Nest, and TechCrunch has learned that Google has big plans for the team behind the connected device company. Google will keep the Nest group intact inside the company. The new division will still work on hardware devices, but not necessarily thermostats or smoke detectors. In fact, Google would like Fadell to work on gadgets that make more sense for the company. Will it be a phone or a tablet? It’s unclear for now. While Nest first became popular with its thermostats, Google didn’t buy the company for these devices. First and foremost, the company wanted to snatch the great product team. Nest founder and CEO Tony Fadell used to work for Apple on the iPod and was a founding member of the iPhone development team. Many people working in hardware consider him one of the best executives that understand both hardware and software — he is comfortable working at the intersection of the two. Moreover, Fadell managed to attract great Apple engineers when he started working on Nest. They wanted to follow Fadell’s plans and were good engineers. And that’s exactly what Google was looking for when it acquired Nest. When it comes to budget, Google is willing to let the Nest team use as many resources as it needs. In other words, the company is getting serious about consumer hardware, and Motorola was just a false start. Google will keep Motorola’s patents, and it seems pretty clear now that Google only wanted that from the get-go. Acquiring Nest and selling Motorola now make more sense when you put these two things side by side. Something was missing with Motorola. With Nest, Google finally has the right team and mindset to create and produce gadgets.
So much for Intel's bid to get hip with our app-filled times: the company is shutting down its consumer-facing 
After all the VC deals that get done at Blue Bottle Coffee, it's only fitting that Blue Bottle Coffee's fundraising be one of them. The tony coffee brewery announced its $25.7 million investment, completed at its flagship store in Oakland, earlier today. The investment was led by Morgan Stanley Investment Management, the same Morgan Stanley adviser behind the investments in Twitter and Facebook, according to a source.
Earlier today, the 
LARPers rejoice! A new Kickstarter project, called Sabertron, will allow you and your fellow followers of the great goddess of the Whispering Eye to fight to the death using wirelessly connected foam swords. The swords, which cost $99 for a two-weapon set, have rings of colored lights around the hilt that note when you've been hit by other players. Once the lights go out, you become one of the the Eaten Ones, forced to roam the World of the Undead in the Nevermere for all eternity until the kiss of Princess Mooncake brings you back to life or you just have to sit out the round and drink a Capri Sun over by the backpacks.
In the first earnings call since Evan Spiegel rejected Zuck's $3 billion offer to buy Snapchat, the Facebook CEO sent a very clear signal to competitors. "Our vision is to create a set of products that let our users share with any audience they want," said Zuck. "Not everyone wants to share with all of their friends at once. A lot of the new growth we see is from giving people power to share with different, separate groups of people." Three products, in particular, help Facebook achieve that vision: Messenger, Instagram, and Groups.
A new patent granted to Apple today (via AppleInsider) introduces a concept that shows how it might go about introducing touch-based input to its notebook line. The patent describes a special notebook display that has two sides, as well as photovoltaic cells for charging, and touch input sensors on its outward shell. The design is quite different from anything Apple currently puts out, and has an almost sci-fi style top surface that features glass which can be triggered via electrical sensor to appear either solid and opaque or transparent. Solar charging cells are built into the surface so that when it’s transparent it can use ambient light to charge the notebook’s battery. There are also provisions for either an embedded Apple logo to be included beneath the glass surface, a small secondary LCD display or a series of touch sensors. The secondary display could thus be optionally hidden away from view entirely when not in use. And it sounds like the secondary display could provide vital information when needed, or at-a-glance access to notifications and updates even when the device is closed or in sleep mode. Touch sensors on the shell could trigger mechanical lock or software locks, according to the patent, as well as allow a user to input pass codes, or control media playback on the device. Other types of input could be accommodated as needed, according to the patent, so you can imagine it serving as supplementary for a number of applications, or as a potential trackpad replacement if the laptop is being used in closed mode with an external monitor. The patent was originally filed in 2010, so this may be relegated to the R&D labs, but it would make for a very interesting and novel Apple notebook design. The solar-powered element alone would do wonders for all-day usability and possibly alleviate space requirements for batteries within the case, so it could be an area of continued study for Apple engineers.
In another sign of the growing VC interest in healthcare technology companies, data warehousing and analytics software company, Health Catalyst, has raised another $41 million in funding. Firms including Sequoia Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Sorenson Capital, CHV Capital and Partners Healthcare doubled down on their commitment to Health Catalyst with the new financing. Health Catalyst plans to invest $50 million in product development over the next 24 months, including production of a slew of what it calls “content-driven clinical applications”, according to a statement from the company. Chief executive Dan Burton called data warehousing and analytics tools “foundational” to the success of healthcare organizations under new payment models. The Salt Lake City-based company said its bookings had increased fivefold year-over-year and that it expects to see positive cash flows during the calendar year. Customers using the company’s software include: Crystal Run Healthcare’ a New York-based healthcare group; Kaiser Permanente, whose venture group was an investor in Health Catalyst’s $41 million Series B round last year; Memorial Hospital in Gulfport, Miss.; and the Bay Area nonprofit NorthBay Healthcare. Venture investors are backing companies developing information technology for the healthcare industry, as healthcare providers and insurers grapple with the overhaul of the entire industry mandated by the Affordable Care Act. There’s no argument from venture investors that healthcare is a big opportunity. In 2013, investors spent over $1.9 billion in 195 deals with commitments over $2 million, according to a report from early stage investment firm Rock Health. Funding was up 39% from 2012 and 119% from 2011, the Rock Health report said. Photo via Flickr user Josh McGinn
Santa Clara-based startup Tapastic has raised a new $2 million funding round, in a Series A sourced from South Korea’s Daum Communications, Inc. The startup offers a portal for webcomics, and what founder and CEO Chang Kim sees as online visual storytelling in general. There are a surprising number of startups chasing digital comics as an opportunity, but Tapastic is unique in its approach and its treatment of the medium. Daum Communications is a key strategic partner for Tapastic: It operates the largest webcomic (or webtoon) portal ins South Korea, which is a huge business in that market. The company has a market value of over $1 billion, and its titles have been turned into Korean TV dramas and movies multiple times over. Kim is hoping that with Daum’s help, Tapastic can start to expand the appeal and reach of the webcomics medium in the U.S., as well as bring over some successful Korean titles to see if they can find success in the English-speaking market. But there’s a larger goal for Kim, who previously ran Blogger at Google, and that’s to popularize visual storytelling as a medium and get people to realize that comics aren’t just a narrow audience tool with limited appeal. “Webcomics is not just about comics in the traditional sense,” he explained in an interview. “It’s just about telling amazing stories. More than 20 webcomic series on Daum has been made into blockbuster movies on Daum, and as consumers, everyone likes to read visual stories; they’re much more interesting than, like, 200 page novels.” It’s true that the Internet is an overwhelmingly visual medium, and Kim notes that websites like The Oatmeal which have used comics as a way of conveying a message have done tremendously well on the web. The goal for Tapastic is to continue to democratize the medium, and make it so that people who don’t think of themselves as comics fans find themselves engaging with content regularly. “When we say we’re about building a webcomics platform, people think of that as a comics company,” he said. “But we definitely want to build a service that can cater to the mainstream audience. What we think is webcomics can be something much more generic and mainstream, as in just great stories told visually.” Currently, creators on the platform are supported via sharing of ad revenue, with comics makers typically getting 70 percent and Tapastic
Most headlines surrounding Google's 
Google has taken the step that many asked for regarding its Google Glass head-mounted computer – it introduced prescription frames for the device, via an update to the Google Glass website. Google has created four different varieties of frames that should fit the fashion tastes of a number of different shoppers, and a pair will add $225 to the existing $1,500 cost of Glass for Explorer program participants. Explorers who already have Glass can just pick up a pair of the new glasses themselves, and then simply attach their existing device to them. The frames come in a Split version with a thinner lower frame and a sudden change in thickness, a Thin version that tapers at the bottom, a Bold model that are essentially squared thick-frame glasses, and the Curve which is similar but rounded. They can work with either transparent or shaded lenses (additional $150 for the tinted shades, which also comes in three styles) and Google currently offers custom fitting by optometrists at locations in SF, LA and NYC, with plans to seed the program in more cities worldwide. There are only 200 doctors currently versed in the fitting system, but Google tells CNET it hopes to increase that number to 6,000 by year’s end. Google is working with eye care insurer VSP VisionCare to get the training done, and the insurance partnership should help with adoption, too. Just introducing a prescription option should widen the appeal of Glass considerably, but a big goal of the program is to set an example for existing eyeware makers, Google told CNET. Much like its Nexus program, the company is viewing this effort as a means of setting a baseline for what prescription Glass can be. The new Glass glasses can hold lenses with up to either a +4 or -4 corrective factor, and they can also be bought with clear lenses with no corrective element at all, if you’re strictly in it for the fashion. These are admittedly good-looking lenses, but the point isn’t the fashion – it’s the fact that Glass is being built-in to something used by a huge percentage of the population every day already. There’s no behavior conditioning required to get people to use Glass once it’s attached to glasses, since it’s already on your face to begin with. It still looks a little awkward thanks to the bulky computing/screen module, but this is a
A new online destination for current and expecting moms, Cricket’s Circle, wants to offer more than a selection of goods for sale – it also wants to help you decide what to buy and why. The website, launching today, was created by Rachel Blumenthal, a parent herself, wife and advisor to Warby Parker co-founder Neil Blumenthal, and an entrepreneur, who previously founded and ran her own fashion jewelry brand, Rachel Lee, for nearly eight years, before licensing it to Glamhouse in 2012. Shortly after exiting Rachel Lee, she started working on the concept for what later became Cricket’s Circle, while also informally advising and consulting for Warby Parker. “As I started to think about what was next, I was fascinated by the idea that technology solves problems,” explains Rachel. She says she was vetting several ideas around that broader concept, but one kept resonating with her because of her own experiences. Rachel explains she had once asked her friends for advice on baby products, and later ended up with an overwhelming number of documents and Excel spreadsheets shared with her via email. Hoping to offer others a simpler solution, she decided to create Cricket’s Circle, a site which promises to provide women with short answers about what you need for baby. “There are about 150 buying decisions that have to happen within that first year,” Rachel explains. “These are brands that [most women have] never heard of. And these are not only confusing decisions, they’re emotional decisions. We wanted to take the guesswork out of it,” she says. At launch, Cricket’s Circle offers 600 products on its site, which you can browse by category. Within each category, three product recommendations are provided, all of which have been tested and rated by members of the site’s “mom community,” a group of some 200 women. Alongside each product is also a brief description offering an overview, ratings, as well as the various pros and cons. For example, Dr. Brown’s glass bottles are described as being known to help with colic and gas on the “pro” side, but as a “con, it’s noted they’re difficult to clean due to their half-dozen pieces. It’s hard to argue with the selection on Cricket’s Circle, which also offers an online registry checklist for expecting mothers. But that’s because the site tends to favor premium products where price and practicality is a secondary (if even) a concern. For example,
Sightly, a company that helps businesses create localized online video ad campaigns, has raised $1.7 million in seed funding. The investment was led by Mack Capital with participation from Tomorrow Ventures and 500 Startups. All three firms are returning investors.
Mobile payments startup Clinkle continues to add senior management types to its executive ranks. Mike Liberatore, who has 15 years of experience in financial positions at PayPal, Adobe, and others, will join the company as its new CFO.
Madison Reed, a hair-dye company that offers digital tools and mobile apps to help its customers color their hair at home, is raising $12 million in Series B funding led by Norwest Venture Partners. Founded in 2013 by Amy Errett, Madison Reed is among a growing breed of startups that are leveraging technology for disrupting their traditional businesses. As TechCrunch’s Jonathan Shieber pointed out yesterday, these startups are demonstrating that no industry is safe from VC disruption. The latest funding brings total capital raised by the San Francisco-based startup to around $16 million. Madison Reed’s existing investors include True Ventures and Maveron. The startup will be using the new capital to offer online shopping and at-home hair color services to its customers. Madison Reed’s mobile apps help women use their tablets and phones for how-tos on coloring their hair without having to visit the salon. “We will have technology enable the best customer experience, from custom online consultations, and certified trained colorists that are on-call, to a mobile app that lets customers shop from anywhere and apply color formulas hands-free,” said Amy Errett, Madison Reed co-founder. Using Madison’s apps, its customers take pictures of themselves and send them to stylists sitting in the salon who help find the colors that match best. “Customers can watch how-to videos online or through the Madison Reed iPhone app to apply it to their hair. Then, they can set a delivery schedule so that they never have to worry about their next salon appointment or hunt through a drug store again,” the startup added in a statement. Madison Reed aims to leverage a growing trend of more salon-going women looking to shop online. According to an IBIS World report, around 90 million women in the U.S. color their hair, each spending around $330 annually, but they are limited to an expensive and time-consuming visit to the salon. According to several estimates, the market for women’s hair coloring in the U.S. is around $15 billion annually, with around $3-$4 billion of that spent every year on home hair coloring. Madison Reed’s founder Amy and her investors believe there is a market to be disrupted using technology. “The beauty industry is ripe for innovation and hair coloring in particular has long been divided between elite salons and low-quality do-it-yourself boxes,” said Jeff Crowe, NVP managing partner.
Apple has been granted two patents relating to ways it might look to extend/augment the built in camera lenses on its mobile devices in future. The two patents, granted to Cupertino by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, are: Patent No. 8,638,369 for a "Back panel for a portable electronic device with different camera lens options" and Patent No. 8,639,106 for a "Magnetic add-on lenses with alignment ridge".
At over 260 million users LinkedIn appears to have the professional CV and business connections market place fairly sown up. There are other players, such as Viadeo and Xing, but they have struggled to get the same global traction. Out there in the business social networking niches, Dribbble and Behance have developed good platforms for designers. About.Me are in the personal profile space, but it's pretty static stuff. Other like Zerply went for the online CV, and SkillPages are after… skills. So it looks crowded, right? Well, 
Institutional Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have led a $40 million Series B round for Indiegogo, the self-described first and largest crowdfunding platform. The company, which raised $15 million in 2012 will use the cash to move further into mobile and to expand their global reach. “We’re already operational in every country in the world,” said CEO Slava Rubin. “We’ve been able to grow 300% in Europe over the year and we’re planning on adding more currencies and languages for more countries.” “There will also be a lot of focus on mobile and on personalizion and trust,” he said. Additional funders include Insight Venture Partners, MHS Capital, Metamorphic Ventures and ff Venture Capital. The company has come off a banner year with a number of high-profile projects including the Mistfit Shine, the Canary, and a number of notable movies and books (Full Disclosure: myself included.) The company has hosted 190,000 campaigns from 190 countries. Rubin said he was most excited about Indiegogo’s appearances at CES 2014 where 40 Indiegogo-funded companies showed their completed projects. I asked him if he’d ever consider crowdfunding his next equity round. He said it wasn’t off the table. “Equity crowdfunding is coming in 2014,” he said. “We’re staying closely connected to that.”
Rocket Internet has secured new funding for two of its fashion-focused ecommerce startups, with a €10M investment for Lamoda, which operates predominantly in Russia and Kazakhstan, and €15M in equity investment for LatAm’s Dafiti (active in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico). The target market of these startups is key to this funding being as it’s coming from the World Bank Group’s IFC investment arm: a global development institution which focuses on the private sector, using funding investments with the aim of helping to eliminate extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity. That’s right, Rocket Internet is attracting funding for being an engine of economic development and job creation in emerging regions of the globe — which is rather at odds with the negative tone of some of the press the Samwer brothers’ business efforts tend to attract (whether it’s for cloning, or for its own charged working environment that apparently fuels high staff churn rates). Also giving pause for thought: a World Bank Group poverty-alleviating institution sharing investor status with the likes of JP Morgan (JP Morgan invested in Lamoda in 2012, and also previously put $45M into Dafiti). Or not. Wealth creation has many parents (and, er, foster parents). In a press release announcing the funding, the IFC notes that both the Rocket Internet businesses employ thousands of people in Latin America and the CIS region — with over two-thirds of them being women. (Lamoda alone employs more than 2,000 people, while Dafiti employs 1,500+ just in Brazil.) It also flags up the two startups’ indirect support of additional jobs in logistics, IT and by “facilitating demand for locally sourced goods”. “Internet companies are speeding up modernization of the retail supply chain in developing countries, which promotes consumer spending—a key component of economic growth,” said Atul Mehta, IFC Global Director for Manufacturing, Agribusiness, and Services, in a statement. “Their investments in logistics, information technology and marketing are rapidly generating employment, especially for women and young people.” The IFC’s fiscal year 2013 investments apparently hit an all-time high of nearly $25 billion — with some $600 million of that going towards the retail sector — making today’s cash injections into Rocket’s fashion ecommerce sites something of pocket change for the organisation. The Dafiti investment is also relatively incremental for that business. In three years the Dafiti Group has pulled in some $275 million in funding from investors, including anchor investor, Investment AB Kinnevik, as well as the aforementioned JP Morgan, plus Quadrant Capital Advisors and Teachers’
Yahoo's acquisition spree continues apace, with the next deal likely to cover a few different bases for the company: mobile, enterprise and bringing ex-Yahoo talent back into the fold. We have heard that Yahoo is in advanced talks to acquire 
The carpooling race in Europe has yet to produce a definitive winner, as Germany's 
Jason Calacanis is getting back into the news business with a new app called 
