Kim-Mai Cutler
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Andreessen-Backed Game Developer TinyCo Lays Off 27 Employees
TinyCo, an early mobile game developer that picked up funding from Andreessen Horowitz, is laying off 27 employees as it moves toward a new strategy. The company says it will outline its new moves in the coming few weeks. “We’ve moved 10 steps forward on executing a specific strategy around how we build games and what games we build. To execute against this strategy, we decided to… Read More
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GGV Capital Brings On Early Xiaomi-Backer Hans Tung As Their Newest Partner
GGV Capital, a cross-border venture capital firm that focuses on China and U.S., is bringing on its sixth general partner through hiring Hans Tung from Qiming Ventures. He’s a VC that made an early bet in Xiaomi, a Chinese handset maker that piggy-backed off the Android ecosystem to build a business that was most recently valued at $10 billion. The firm and Tung have known each for about… Read More
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Optimizely CEO Dan Siroker’s Trick For How To Test Investors, Board Members
Dan Siroker, the co-founder and CEO of Optimizely, a Y Combinator-backed company that helps businesses A/B test their webpages, says he’s got a trick for testing prospective investors. He runs them through mock board meetings, he told founders and hackers at Y Combinator’s Startup School today in Cupertino. Siroker says that the classic ways founders meet potential board members… Read More
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Phil Libin On Evernote’s Close Call: Just 3 Weeks of Cash Left During The 2008 Financial Crisis
While Evernote now has north of 75 million users and a valuation that’s reportedly more than $1 billion, the company faced many close calls. In fact, it had just three weeks of cash left during the 2008 financial crisis when an investor bailed at the last minute, said CEO Phil Libin today at Y Combinator’s Startup School in Cupertino. The investor dialed Libin saying they had seen 60… Read More
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Chinese Game Developer Chukong Raises $50M Series D Led By New Horizon
Chukong, one of China’s largest mobile game developers, has picked up $50 million in extra funding led by Chinese private equity fund New Horizon Capital. It comes on top of three previous rounds that included investors like GGV Capital, Sequoia Capital’s China fund, Disney’s Steamboat Ventures and Northern Light. That brings the company’s funding to a whopping $83 million… Read More
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Trailerpop, An App That Makes Movie Trailers A Game, Looks To Tap Video Advertising
Because games are the overwhelmingly most actively used and lucrative category in the two major app stores, it’s no surprise that apps from other categories have tried to employ gaming mechanics to boost engagement. Trailerpop is an app that’s trying to re-invigorate video advertising by turning movie trailer watching into a game. They have about 20,000 trailers and hundreds of… Read More
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ff Venture Capital Leans On SEC’s New Rules To Raise Its Third Fund Publicly
With the SEC’s new rules allowing startups and venture funds to raise capital publicly, a wave of firms and companies is starting to experiment with the new regulations. Now we’re seeing one of the very first institutional venture capital firms come forward to publicly market its new fund. ff Venture Capital is publicly fundraising for its third fund, following its second $27 million… Read More
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YC-Backed Kippt Takes Its Enterprise Tool For Sharing Useful Content Out Of Beta
They’re a talented team of two from Finland that got Y Combinator’s stamp of approval and built a promising product for storing and sharing content from across the web. But consumer-facing browser extensions can prove difficult for growing a large user base, so this startup, Kippt, did a little pivot. After launching more than a year ago, they refocused on the enterprise market with a… Read More
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Pokkt, An Alternative Payments Platform For Mobile Users In India, Raises Seed Funding
Pokkt, an India-based platform for game developers who want to earn revenue through ways outside of virtual currency transactions, raised a seed round of funding led by Singapore’s early-stage fund Jungle Ventures. Also participating in the round is Samir Bangara, who is a co-founder and managing director of Qyuki Digital Media and the former managing director of digital media for Disney… Read More
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Behind South Korea’s Big $65M Mobile Gaming Merger
They’ve been rivals for more than 10 years. Both Com2uS and Gamevil have battled for the local South Korean gaming market through the era of candy-bar phones until today. But in a new twist this month, they’re actually joining forces with Gamevil’s deal to spend roughly $65 million for a 21 percent stake in its longtime competitor. The reason? Android and iOS have fundamentally… Read More
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Oscar, The New York Health Startup Looking To Revolutionize Insurance, Launches
Oscar, the New York-based startup from Thrive Capital’s Josh Kushner, has finally launched. Their debut comes as the U.S. government unveils new health insurance exchanges where consumers can pick and choose plans. The startup, backed with $40 million in funding, is an insurer itself and is looking to make the consumer experience less opaque. They’ve launched four tiers of plans for… Read More
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A Chinese Mobile Startup With Global Reach: Android-Based GO Launcher’s Apps Touch 80M Monthly Actives
Update: An earlier version of this story had a headline that suggested only one of GO Launcher’s apps had 80 million monthly active users, when that user base is, in fact, spread across all of its apps. As I’ve written about before, while the Chinese startup scene is sometimes criticized for producing copycats of Western businesses, there are emerging entrepreneurs building software… Read More
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Cue, The Startup Formerly Known As Greplin, Shuts Down Its App
Cue, the personal assistant app that grew out of a promising search product, has shut down. The company left a brief note on their main page today, shown below. Cue is Shutting Down We appreciate all of the support from you, our users, as Cue has grown over the last few years. However, the Cue service is no longer available. Cue Premium users who registered through the website will receive a… Read More
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Quantopian, A Community Of Quants, Picks Up $6.7M From Khosla, Spark
Quantopian, a community where around 11,000 or so quants collaborate on algorithmic trading strategies, has raised $6.7 million from Khosla Ventures and Spark Capital. The new round brings the company’s total funding to $8.8 million. Quantopian says it is the world’s first browser-based algorithmic trading platform. Developers can build and test algorithmic trading strategies on the… Read More
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Yahoo To Acquire Sports-Centric Mobile Developer Hitpost
Yahoo is set to acquire Hitpost, the maker of a handful of sports-centric mobile apps, to beef up its own sports offerings on iOS and Android, say sources familiar with the deal. The company's team of seven or so is heading over to join Yahoo. Read More
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Chukong Rides China’s Android Wave To 14X Its Gaming Revenue Year-Over-Year
With a tidal wave of Android devices finally supporting real revenues for app developers in mainland China, the biggest domestic mobile game makers are scaling up quickly. Chukong, the parent company behind mainland China’s hit game Fishing Joy, says its revenues are up 14 times year-over-year in the first half of this year, according to Jimmy Lai, the company’s chief financial… Read More
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Mounza’s App Connects Students To On-Campus Recruiting Events
Sharran Deora said it took a lot of hustle to get his first job out of school. “I went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I didn’t have the right connections,” said Deora, who was dreaming of working in banking. He ultimately ended up at Lehman Brothers and then Barclays Capital in product marketing and product management. But now that he’s back out of the finance… Read More
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Bang With Friends To Change Names After Trademark Settlement With Zynga
Bang With Friends’ catchy name unfortunately is getting tossed after the startup reached a settlement with Zynga. The social gaming company had accused the casual sex app of infringing on its “With Friends” line-up. But now both are saying they’ve reached a settlement. Neither company is talking about the terms, however. It seems like a clear win for Zynga. Bang With… Read More
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Extreme Reality, Which Gives Any Webcam Kinect-Like Powers, Opens Its Developer SDK
Extreme Reality, an Israeli startup backed by SV Angel, has been at work for eight years on building motion capture technology. Now they’re opening up the kimono with a platform that can turn any basic webcam or laptop cam into something like a Kinect, with the power to capture a three-dimensional range of movement. “We’re aiming to give people a console-like experience without… Read More
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Anfacto Lets You Create Single-Purpose Android Devices For The Workplace, Restaurants And Events
While there are plenty of enterprise mobility and device management companies, they may not go deeply enough in controlling the end-user experience for an employee or a customer. Many of these enterprise mobility startups use standalone apps that a tablet user can switch in and out of to the browser. That might be a security risk for restaurants that, for example, want to let their customers order… Read More
