Rip Empson
Latest from Rip Empson
-
From Sprint And TechStars To The FDA, A Look At The Changing Landscape Facing Health Startups
The health-care industry in the U.S. is broken, and considering the industry itself represents some 18 percent of the U.S. economy, it's a sizable problem. While other sectors have begun to adapt, health care has managed to resist change -- particularly the technology-based variety. Meanwhile, 30 percent of total health-care spending in the U.S., or more than $750 billion per year, is wasted on… Read More
-
Siri 2.0? Skyphrase Wants To Make Data More Accessible With Natural Language, Starting With Analytics & Fantasy Sports
With an increasing number of commercial applications relying on its technology, natural language processing (NLP) has started to come into its own of late. After years of research and experimentation, it has emerged from geeky obscurity and into the limelight -- thanks to Watson, Siri and Nuance's Dragon, among others. Of course, every time Siri misunderstands a command, it's easy to dismiss those… Read More
-
Veteran Travel Search Engine Skyscanner Lands “One Of Largest” Sequoia Investments To Date At $800M Valuation
In travel search, most young people’s memories don’t extend much further back than Kayak, which began appearing, circa 2004. Though its name may be slightly less familiar among American travelers, Skyscanner is today one of the largest flight search engines on the Web, and outdates Kayak, with its origins going back all the way to 2001 B.C.E. Over the next 10 years, the Scottish… Read More
-
As Its Partner Ecosystem Expands, Box Taps Google Health Founder To Lead Its Cloud-Based Assault On Healthcare
Over the last year, Box has been ramping up its efforts to bring its cloud storage platform into new verticals. That began in April, when the seven-year-old cloud services company began making a major push into healthcare, which given the mayhem around the launch of the new healthcare exchanges yesterday, seems like it couldn't have come at a better time. Read More
-
Amidst Obamacare’s Marketplace Madness, The YEC Wants To Help Startups Take The Hassle Out Of Health Insurance
Amid partisan shenanigans, a government shutdown and much squabbling, The White House launched a new website today that will eventually allow Americans to compare the price of health insurance plans — which is now mandatory under the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. While the exchange, or the Insurance Marketplace as it’s being called, did in fact go live this morning, it’s… Read More
-
Senior Facebook, Netflix Scientist Joins Identified To Help It Fix Professional Search, Take On LinkedIn
This summer, Identified pulled back the curtain on a new artificial intelligence technology, called "SYMAN," which it developed to help organize and clean the swaths of unstructured professional data that today lives on the Web. In doing so, the startup moved away from its original focus -- a kind of Facebook data-driven "Klout score for professionals" -- essentially admitting that if it were… Read More
-
With 37M Users And Revenues At $34M, DIY Website Creation Platform Wix Files For $100M IPO On The NYSE
Capitalizing on the maturing Web and growing demand for DIY creation and publishing tools, the Israel and U.S.-based company has grown to 400 strong, raised $60 million from investors and built a user base of 34 million-plus. Behind its continuing growth, the company announced today that it is officially headed to the public markets -- the New York Stock Exchange, to be precise -- under the ticker… Read More
-
Bizness Apps Launches DIY Website Builder, Looks To Become A Full-Service Digital Marketing Suite For SMBs
Once upon a time, if you wanted your own website, you either had to speak fluent Internet, or write a large check to someone who did. However, thanks to the laundry list of companies and services that have sprouted over the last five years — like Weebly, Wix and Squarespace, to name a few — the barriers to building a snappy website have vanished. Today, website creators are free, and… Read More
-
Software For Auto Repair: With New Funding In Tow, Estify Sees Big Opportunity In An Unsexy Market
The collision industry probably doesn't rank at the top of the "Sexy Markets" list for startups, but sometimes the most obscure, fragmented and pulchritudinously challenged industries can offer the most opportunity to those willing to grit their teeth and immerse themselves in the mess. Estify, a graduate of Amplify LA's business accelerator, is doing just that. Co-founders Jordan Furniss, Derek… Read More
-
Tinder’s Sean Rad To Speak At Disrupt Europe About Expanding Overseas
Sean Rad's Tinder is growing rapidly and looking to Europe for new opportunities. With that we're excited to have him speak on expanding to international markets in a few weeks at Disrupt Europe. In 2009, Sean Rad co-founded Adly, a marketing platform that connects brands with celebrities and influencers to help them increase their footprint and reach their customers on social media. The… Read More
-
After Kickstarter Success, Ministry of Supply Lands $1.1M To Expand Its Tech-Savvy Men’s Line
Founded by a couple of MIT grads in 2010, Ministry of Supply set out on a mission to breathe a little fresh air into the starchy world of business attire. Using some of the same technology found in NASA's space suits, the Boston-based startup developed a line of more "technologically-savvy," adaptive dress shirts that help control perspiration, reduce odor and wrinkling but don't make you look… Read More
-
Quantified Work: Meet Stir, A Former iPod Engineer’s Smart, Health-Tracking And Height-Adjustable Desk
If you're anything like me, you spend too much of your day at your desk, in front of your computer. During busy days -- especially once you go deep into "the zone" -- it's easy for a few hours to fly in our usual, sedentary position. For this reason, I'm probably not the only one who could use a gentle reminder: "Hey Rip, you've been sitting for two hours, how about a walk?" Read More
-
Rock Health Debuts Its Fifth Digital Health Class, Partners With AngelList To Let Investors Fund All 10 Startups Online
It’s been a busy last 24 hours for Rock Health — and last three years for that matter. Today, the San Francisco-based accelerator for digital health startups held its fifth Demo Day at UCSF’s Genentech Hall. Pitching their ideas to a crowded room full of investors and entrepreneurs, the ten companies in Rock Health’s latest collectively offered a vivid cross-section of the… Read More
-
Bitcoin-Infused Accelerator Boost.vc Gains Momentum With The Launch Of Stellar Second Batch
Last summer, Adam Draper and Brayton Williams launched Boost.vc, a 12-week accelerator program for early-stage startups. Taking a familiar approach to business incubation, the San Mateo-based accelerator and investment fund offers a handful of on-site services to its chosen companies, including housing, office space, mentoring and seed funding. Read More
-
Elance, SkilledUp & Smarterer Launch New Learning Platform To Let You Learn, Validate & Find Work In One Place
Everyone knows that the educational system in the U.S. hasn't changed much in, oh, the last 100 years. And that there's a lot of inertia within the system, gumming the gears and slowing its transformation. But rather than change for change's own sake -- or because everything technology does is great! -- the current system just isn't working anymore. Drop out rates are "too damn" high, as is the… Read More
-
Google Earth Meets The Body: BioDigital Gets $4M To Bring Its 3-D, Virtual Anatomy & Health Platform To Every Browser
While the film is extremely compelling, it turns out that there's actually a better way to learn about and visualize the human body than by watching Osmosis Jones on repeat. It used to be that students and the anatomically curious had to turn to pictures in textbooks or plastic models (Gasp! I know) to get a virtual tour of the human body. Well, thankfully, it turns out that some graduate students… Read More
-
Practice Fusion Lands A Whopping $70M To Bring A Big Data Cure To The Healthcare Crisis
The world of digital health startups has begun to explode over the last two years -- and innovation in healthcare along with it -- but nonetheless, the latest reports show a landscape that is still suffering from a dearth of seed investments, investors that are still "dabbling," and an absence of a powerful player like Google or Facebook. Today, however, Practice Fusion appears poised to take up… Read More
-
With $3B Under Management, Simplee Grabs $10M To Carry Medical Bill Payments Into The Smartphone Era
In 2009, Tomer Shoval went on vacation with his family to Mexico, which unfortunately ended on a sour note — and one with which many travelers can empathize — they all got sick. Back in the U.S. several months later, Shoval and his wife started receiving a series of invoices and summaries of benefits, which seemed to add insult to injury. The bills were expensive, the invoices were… Read More
-
Why Startups Fail: A Postmortem For Flud, The Social Newsreader
In late July, news broke that Flud, the social news reader for iOS, Android and Windows Phone, was headed to the deadpool. Startup failure is an all-too familiar, even cliche, story in Silicon Valley. But when San Diegoan co-founders Bobby Ghoshal and Matthew Ausonio officially shuttered the Flud app and website in August, after three years of development, it was a disappointing final chapter for… Read More
-
WTF Is Calico, And Why Does Google Think Its Mysterious New Company Can Defy Aging?
The sad truth is that, if everyone on the Forbes 400 list simultaneously (and tragically) got Cancer, or Parkinsons (or any given disease for that matter), the world would probably be well on its way to finding a cure for these illnesses, thanks to the enormous wealth that would be incentivized to back those efforts. Read More
