On-Demand Cleaning Startup Hassle Merges With Rocket Internet’s Helpling

cleaning According to multiple sources, the U.K. on-demand home cleaning startup Hassle.com, which also operates in Ireland and France, has been acquired by Rocket Internet’s Helpling. Both companies declined to comment. However, TechCrunch understands that this is now a done deal. Read More

Trash-Focused Rubicon Global Hires Its First CTO

trash cans Rubicon Global, a startup helping customers find money-saving, environmentally-friendly ways to handle their waste and recycling, is announcing the hire of its first chief technology officer — Phil Rodoni, previously vice president of software at Esurance. Atlanta-based Rubicon doesn’t haul trash itself, but instead connects businesses with waste hauling and recycling companies… Read More

Media Server Company Plex Hacked – Forum Servers Affected, But Payment Info Safe

plex-logo Plex, a popular application that lets users organize and stream their media collections across devices, has been hacked. However, the attackers were only able to compromise the servers hosting the company’s forums and blog – not account information or users’ financial data, the latter which Plex says is not stored on its own servers at all. That being said, many Plex users… Read More

Read This Before Meeting VCs For Pre-Pitch “Advice”

footindoor Startups often ask VCs for pre-pitch meetings. These requests usually are positioned along the lines of, “We aren’t looking for money yet, just advice.” Of course, we all know this is just a nice way of getting your foot in the door for a soft pitch. And that’s ok; these meetings enable both sides to get acquainted before the real ask. However, when startups come… Read More

Twitter Pushes Ads With A New Button Atop Mobile Users’ Profiles

twitter-earnings Twitter’s latest push to monetize its service has led to the rollout of a new “Twitter Ads” button, which is now prominently appearing on user profile pages on both the iOS and Android client applications. The newly added button, which some users may have initially mistaken as a shortcut to Twitter analytics, is found right next to the “Edit profile” button,… Read More

Prince Won’t Stream 4 U (Unless You’re On Tidal, Or Maybe Google Music)

Screen Shot 2015-07-02 at 13.50.47 Call it the Taylor effect: it looks like another high-profile musician is sharpening his arrows to take aim at how streaming music services pay artists. Music from the artist currently known as Prince has been pulled from Spotify and Rdio. And Deezer — where at the time of writing Prince’s music is still streaming — has confirmed to us that it has received a takedown notice… Read More

A Third Classification of Worker? Don’t Count On It

uber-smile1 Of late, there’s been a steady drumbeat of accusations that on-demand startups are unfairly wringing profits out of independent contractors. The concern: No one is withholding their taxable wages for them, they aren’t being given health care, and they have almost none of the same protections as full-time employees. In fact, one of the only protections independent contractors… Read More

Here’s How Microsoft Will Release Windows 10

windows10-laptop After some general market confusion and bad headline writing, Microsoft this morning detailed how it will roll out Windows 10 to testers, consumers, and large-scale customers.
First, scale: Microsoft said in its blog post this morning that there are now 5 million Windows Insiders, up from 3.7 million in May. The company also said that it has collected “millions” of… Read More

When The Disrupted Push Back

Riot police officers stand next to a cab with posters which reads, "Uber go home" and "Uber get out out," during a taxi drivers demonstration in Paris, France, Thursday, June 25, 2015. French taxis are on strike around the country, snarling traffic in major cities and slowing access to Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport after weeks of rising and sometimes violent tensions over Uber. (AP Photo/Michel Euler) We tend to think of disruption as kind of a passive activity. The determined upstart enters the market and the established business doesn’t give it a second thought. Then ever so slowly before it can even react, the industry suddenly realizes it’s lost control. In most cases, the incumbent tries the usual tactics, perhaps making a half-hearted effort to change strategies to be… Read More

Prêt d’Union Grabs $34 Million For Its Online Credit Marketplace

Euro Dollar Bill French startup Prêt d’Union just raised $34 million (€31 million) from Eurazeo, Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet as well as its existing investors. Prêt d’Union is a European online credit marketplace that matches lenders and borrowers without any financial institution in-between. You can call it a sort of Lending Club for Europe. Read More

Anki Will Ship The Second Generation Of Its Robotic Slot Cars On September 20

anki-overdrive Think of Anki Overdrive as slot cars for the smartphone age. With upgrades, achievements and characters, it’s a perfect marriage of smartphones with physical toys. The system debuted two years ago and the company has steadily upgraded the system since. But today, the company revealed the ship date and price of its next generation product, Anki Overdrive. Anki debuted the Overdrive… Read More

Gozoomo Gets $5M To Make Buying Used Cars In India Easier

Gozoomo buyer When Arnav Kumar started looking for his first car, he was determined to buy a used one to save money. The process of sorting through online listings and trying to figure out which ones were legitimate was so tedious that he gave up after a day. To save other buyers from the same headache, Kumar founded Gozoomo, which just landed a $5 million Series A from returning investors SAIF Partners. Read More

Tech Visionaries Share Their Best Career Advice With Interns

Altman “Someone in this room, I am very confident is going to found a multi-billion dollar company and change the world in a big way, and 90 percent of the people in this room will end up with a career they somewhat regret and will wish that they had gone in a different way.” – Sam Altman Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator, was the final speaker of the evening at Internapalooza,… Read More

Microsoft Will Power AOL Search, Transfer Some Advertising Work As It Sheds Hundreds Of Employees

microsoft-earnings Update: In an interview, Microsoft indicated that Bing now doesn’t lose money. That’s several quarters ahead of its stated public cashflow schedule.  Following the news that it will shed around 100 employees to Uber in a mapping technology deal, Microsoft announced this afternoon that it will now power AOL’s search property, and will apportion parts of its advertising work… Read More