Rip Empson is a writer and rabble-rouser at TechCrunch. He covers startups, music, social, mobile, health, and education. You can reach him at rip[at]techcrunch[dot]com
Are you ready for your close-up? In early June, the dynamic, disrupting duo of Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning launched their new video chat and sharing network, called Airtime. As a matter of course, the founders built Airtime on top of Facebook, with a cool $33.5 million in funding to get the operation off the ground — and more.
Today, the startup released a polished new video that aims to demonstrate the power of the service and attract those elusive mainstream consumers. The entertaining spot naturally leverages a little star power to grab your attention, with cameos from the likes of MC Hammer, Kurt Russell, Ronnie Lott and Gary Vaynerchuk. → Read More
For many, the appeal of realtime, local commerce platforms like Zaarly is evident almost immediately. For those unfamiliar, the mobile-centric reverse Craigslist allows users to post requests to Zaarly’s app — for anything from data entry to a fancy Starbucks mocha Frappuccino and how much you would be willing to pay for it. As appealing as the idea may be initially, I must admit that I was skeptical at first. What about trust? Wouldn’t people just prefer using TaskRabbit and craigslist? How would it scale?
In March, the team launched Zaarly 2.0, which went a long way towards addressing the trust issue, removing the anonymity component, allowing users to create profiles along with the opportunity to recommend and review both buyers and sellers. And today, the startup is answering that latter question with another piece in its evolution, launching its “Zaarly Anywhere” API to extend its marketplace to other sites to let users turn requests into reality without leaving the content they happen to be browsing. The goal is to help publishers monetize their content, and Everyday Health, The Fancy, LA Times, Cookstr and IKEA Hackers. → Read More
It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from Totsy, which, for those unfamiliar, was one of the first flash sales sites to focus exclusively on mothers. The startup launched in 2009, capitalizing early on what would become the Flash Sales Gold Rush, following in the footsteps of successful predecessors like Rue La La and Gilt Groupe. From the outset, Totsy sought to differentiate itself from the crowd by focusing not on fashion, but on offering deals on products that busy young mothers need — everything from prenatal products and baby gear to toys and clothing.
In two-and-a-half years, Totsy has been quick to scale, growing to a team of over 110 employees that now serves more than 3 million moms. This came, in part, from the $5 million in series A funding it raised in the winter of 2010 from DFJ Gotham and Rho Ventures. Today, both DFJ Gotham and Rho Ventures have renewed their commitment to Totsy in a big way, sinking $18.5 million into the New York City-based startup. → Read More
So here’s something you may have seen floating around on Hacker News or elsewhere, but we thought it was cool enough to share in case you’re looking for something to do with your weekend. After all, there are few of us who don’t love stories that end with robots. Especially robots controlled by phones.
Robots have indeed fascinated many of us since childhood, and thanks to modern technology, those imaginations and tinkerings of yore are now increasingly becoming reality. Thankfully, in the hands of those smarter (and less inclined to hatch plots to take over the world) than I. → Read More
At the end of August, mobile TV and video platform MobiTV filed its S-1 and announced its plans for a $75 million initial public offering. Founded in 1999, the company had been one of the early movers in the movement to bring live and on-demand TV to mobile devices, which led to partnerships with NBC, ESPN, Disney, CBS, and a bunch of other sizable media companies. The company closed over $100 million in outside investment in their time, had partnered with the big four carriers, and revenue was on the rise, so it seemed like a company on the road to a successful IPO, right?
Wrong. → Read More
There’s a good chance that you’ve never heard of The Echo Nest. As a self-professed music intelligence company, Echo Nest is at its best when running quietly behind the scenes, providing developers with insight into their listeners’ musical tastes and behaviors. In fact, you might better know Echo Nest as the company that powers Spotify Radio and VEVO’s new personalized recommendation features.
Thanks to its machine learning technology, Echo Nest has laboriously built what is now one of the largest repositories of dynamic music data in the world, with 5 billion data points encompassing over 30 million songs. The Somerville-based company has come along way since spinning out of MIT’s Media Lab in 2005, having inked deals with Clear Channel’s iHeartRadio, eMusic, MOG, Spotify, Nokia, the BBC, and VEVO. And today, its progress has been validated in a serious way, as the company announced that it has closed a $17 million round of financing. → Read More
The Crowd is on the loose. Thanks to the JOBS Act, mainstream attention came to crowdfunding this year, and platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have been benefitting in kind. (Exhaustive post on the subject here.) The Crowd has pledged $275 million to some 63,000 Kickstarter projects to date, for example, and companies of all breeds are now using these platforms as launchpads and for a little proof of concept.
But, sadly, you know who really isn’t benefitting from the crowdfunding boom? Healthcare startups. In fact, Kickstarter officially prohibits health, fitness, and medical projects. That’s why serial healthtech entrepreneur Alex Fair and founding Kickstarter product manager Mike Pence have set out to give health-focused entrepreneurs and projects a Kickstarter of their own. Medstartr, which launched in beta today, is a crowdfunding platform designed specifically for healthcare companies, providing startups with a vehicle to market their wares, generate awareness and raise capital — direct from strangers, investors, and Doogie Howsers alike.
→ Read More
APIs are marching into education, and it’s about time. Education is rife with legacy infrastructure, with one of the primary offenders being Student Information Systems (SIS). Schools use these systems to store huge amounts of sensitive student information (class lists, attendance, grades and allergies, etc.), but they differ widely from school to school, which, among other things, forces developers to manually integrate with each unique system, making it difficult for their cool educational software or apps to achieve any kind of scale.
LearnSprout, a recent graduate of the education-focused startup accelerator Imagine K12 wants to help both schools and developers unleash those opaque educational data silos with the help of a few clean, standardizing APIs. While the recently-launched startup is not alone — Y Combinator-backed Clever launched a similar platform last month — LearnSprout now has the benefit of some notable investors to help fuel its fires. → Read More
Founded in 2006, 23andMe set out with an ambitious goal: To one day make the human genome searchable by becoming the go-to resource for personal genetic information. Leveraging DNA analysis technology and web-based interactive tools, the company developed a “Personal Genome Service” that allows anyone and everyone to access and better understand their genetic data, including their ancestry and predisposition to certain diseases.
But, today, the company believes that its true differentiation and value proposition today derives from its crowdsourced research model, which lets users contribute their genetic data to studies and research with the goal of finding cures. So, when 23andMe was recently awarded its first patent for determining a user’s risk for Parkinson’s Disease, it was seen as a big validation of its novel research model. Naturally, 23andMe is eager to double down, so what better way to follow your first patent than with your first acquisition? → Read More
According to the Interactive Media In Retail Group, global eCommrece sales will surpass $1.25 trillion by 2013. As eCommerce continues to explode, Shopify wants to help you get a piece of the action. The startup’s platform allows individuals and businesses to set up their own customizable, online storefront in minutes, quickly integrate PayPal or other payment processors, on the way to eCommerce glory.
To showcase its platform and demonstrate how easy technology is making it to build a successful eCommerce business, Shopify is teaming up with four industry veterans to help aspiring entrepreneurs build a million-dollar business in just a few months. This morning, the company announced the launch of its third annual Build-A-Business competition, in which the team compete for seed funding while being mentored by 4-Hour Workweek author Tim Ferriss, FUBU founder and Shark Tank resident Daymond John, swissmiss creator Tina Roth Eisenberg, and Lean Startup author Eric Ries. → Read More
Over the last few years, we’ve seen an increase in the number of high profile hacks and cyber attacks and, as a result, both government and enterprise finally began making security a priority and addressing it from the top down. AlienVault, a California and Madrid-based startup that provides unified management of critical security systems across networks, like threat detection, vulnerability assessment, and security intelligence, has been among those to benefit from the security market’s recent growth.
In January, its traction enabled it to steal seven senior security executives away from HP and secure $8 million in series B financing from Trident Capital and others. Today, the cyber security startup is adding another big chunk of change to its coffers, announcing that it has closed a $22.4 million series C round, led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and Sigma Partners. → Read More
It’s a good time to be Kickstarter. The crowdfunding platform has had a blockbuster year, breaking into mainstream consciousness with campaigns that raised millions of dollars, like the Pebble e-paper watch above. The platform has seen almost $275 million pledged to some 63,000 projects to date, with $231 million going towards successful fundings.
As Devin wrote at the time, before February, no Kickstarter project had ever raised over $1 million, but since then, seven projects have surpassed $1 million, including the current #1, Pebble, which raised an astonishing $10 million. And this growth applies to multiple categories, not just sexy wrist watches. Prior to February only one gaming project had reached $100K in funding. Since then? 37. Even something as niche as webcomics saw its number of pledges double in February. → Read More
With so much information, content and so many services now living online, there’s a lot of choice — even for something as simple as where to go to buy a new pair of socks. Oh, and there’s a lot of data. As it’s evolved and gotten better at making sense of its new Big Data, the Web has become an extraordinary engine for discovering new stuff: News, cat videos, porn, you name it. Naturally, scores of sites are becoming (or are building) recommendation engines to help users wade through the noise, and, dining on Big Data, they get smarter every day.
However, as it stands today, the discovery process is pretty fragmented, as recommendation engines tend to be domain-specific. Want to find a good movie? Try Netflix. Want to find a good book? Go to GoodReads, etc. And this fragmentation makes for a crappy user experience. So, frustrated with the fact that there’s no one-stop shop for great recommendations on, well, everything, a couple of seniors at MIT have developed, and quietly launched, Tipflare to be that general solution. → Read More
While many flash sales sites focus on luxury products and/or fashion, NYC-based startup NoMoreRack is finding success by bringing consumers the stuff they need in everyday life at significantly-reduced prices — by focusing on variety and affordability. Co-founder Melina Ash tells us that she envisions the startup as a mass market version of the uber popular Fab.com — a Walmart of flash sales — with a little TJ Maxx and Target to boot.
Launched initially in Vancouver, NoMoreRack has flown under the radar compared to others in the space, even though it’s sneaking up on the bigs. Today, in just 18 months, the startup has grown to a team of 30, with 4.5 million subscribers, 25 million page views per month, and is selling 8,000 items a day — and 5 items per minute. What’s more, in the first two quarters of 2012, NoMoreRack did $46 million in revenue, and Ash tells us that they’re projecting to do $100 million in revenue this year. Not bad for a startup that hasn’t taken a penny in outside funding. → Read More
Here’s something that you’ll either want to buy immediately — or that will just strike you as a giant waste of paper. There’s no in between. Though I will venture a guess that Sergey Brin was going to get to this after he finishes with his Google Spectacles. From Crap Is Good, we’ve learned that two London artist/designers, Ben West and Felix Heyes, have created a visual dictionary, courtesy of Google.
In other words, the artists took an average dictionary and replaced every single word (that’s 21K words for those of you counting along at home) with the first Google Image result for that particular word. Crazy? Maybe. Slightly brilliant? Call it maybe. The result is a 1,240-page pic-tionary comprised of JPEGs and PNGs that will shock, confuse, and amaze. → Read More
Last fall, ex-Googlers Jon Tirsen and Douwe Osinga launched a new mobile travel platform called Triposo, which aimed to bring a little PageRank order to an unruly ocean of travel content in service of a greater good: Giving we, the end user, more relevant, personalized travel recommendations. Because there’s already a mess of public destination and travel information in databases like Wikitravel and Open Street Maps, rather than become another player in the brimming social travel space, Triposo took an algorithmic approach to travel recs.
Even though models, users and money have favored the social approach, Triposo has seen high ratings and has attracted nearly two million downloads of its travel guides on iOS and Android since launch. This early traction has also been appealing to investors, with the latest interest coming in the form of a $3.5 million series A round led by Keval Desai of InterWest Partners. → Read More
As we spend more and more time online, as our virtual interactions increase, so too does our appreciation for tangible, real-world experiences — especially those that arrive via the mailbox. Remember how good it feels to receive a letter from a friend in the mail? Now imagine that friend is someone you admire and that letter is an awesome gift, and you have the basis for Quarterly, a subscription-based service that launched last December.
Promising curated gifts from notable designers and tech industry celebs for $25/month, Quarterly quickly found an eager audience. In fact, founder Zach Frechette tells us that due to high demand (i.e. $100K in gross sales in 12 weeks), Quarterly had to shut its doors on new users so it could catch up on fulfilling original prescriptions and re-architect for scale. And today, those doors are being re-opened, with new contributors waiting in the wings. → Read More
When it comes to learning, BenchPrep believes that the most effective educational content doesn’t come in the form of books — or even eBooks. Instead, it’s interactive and cross platform. That’s why the Chicago-based startup is on a mission to build an adaptive learning hub for interactive courses, where students can study content from any publisher, on the Web or on any mobile device. The startup has already released 100 courses, which are being consumed by 250K students, but the team has bigger ambitions — they want to reach 500 courses and one million students within the year.
To help it meet this scale, BenchPrep is today announcing that it has closed $6 million in venture funding, led by New Enterprise Associates with participation from Revolution Ventures. This is BenchPrep’s second round of funding, following the $2.2 million it raised from Lightbank last year, bringing its total to $8.2 million. BenchPrep was one of Lightbank’s first investments and Eric Lefkosky and Brad Keywell continue to sit on the startup’s board of directors. As a result of the round, NEA partner Peter Barris also joins the board. → Read More
Thanks to increasingly powerful mobile and web technologies, people can work from practically anywhere. One eCommerce startup, the Utah-based Needle, sees a big opportunity for this mobile, remote, and telecommuting workforce to change the way businesses connect with their customers and influence the way consumers make purchasing decisions. Rather than relying on customer service reps stuffed into rows of cubicles in call centers to offer canned answers to customer questions, Needle offers a social eCommerce platform that connects online shoppers to experts and brand evangelists — people that actually use the product.
In April, as a way of demonstrating the “work anywhere” model — and that Needle practices what they preach — the team swapped out its traditional office for a decked-out Airstream motorhome. While this alternative approach may sound gimmicky, it seems that investors are intrigued, as the company announced today that it has closed a $10.5 million round of series B financing. → Read More
Commerce Sciences, an Israeli eCommerce startup currently shrouded in the infamous “stealth mode,” wants to help personalize your online shopping experience.
To do so, the Palo Alto and Israeli-based company is announcing today that it has raised $1.8 million in seed funding from a number of familiar names. The investors include Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, veteran Israeli VC firm Genesis Partners, T5 Capital, and a number of angel investors, including Backplane board chairman and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. → Read More
