What Does A Downturn Mean For Tech Regulation?

nomoney All it takes is a quick look at the market to see that we are in for a bumpy ride — and a longer-term downturn may be imminent. Tech is not immune to that, which means we’ll see a hit to valuations, VC funding and fundraising. Lots of experts have talked about what that might mean for activity in the tech sector broadly. But what does it mean for the intersection of regulation… Read More

Tribeca Venture Partners Closes Its Second NY-Focused Fund

EN2A8291 Tribeca Venture Partners, a New York-based early-stage venture firm founded in 2011, is today announcing that it has closed its second fund with $107 million — significantly more than its $65 million debut fund. That’s good news for New York startups. In a conversation earlier this week with Brian Hirsch and Chip Meakem — Tribeca’s co-founders and its sole… Read More

Luxe Could Be Getting $50M From Hertz At $110M Pre-Money Valuation

luxe 2 Luxe is in talks with a strategic investor that will infuse the company with “tens of millions” in new financing from Hertz, our sources tell us.
One source tells us that the round could be around $50 million at a pre-money valuation above $110 million. This source also suggested that existing investors may participate in this round. Our understanding is that the round is still… Read More

Augmented Reality Computer Vision Startup Wrnch Gets $1.8M Series A Led By Mark Cuban

wrnchTeam201507 Talk to anyone in the AR space right now and the phrase “democratizing x” is bound to arise two or three dozen times.
Wrnch CEO Paul Kruszewski says that concept is especially true for the computer vision space, with war chest-toting companies like Magic Leap powering their own technologies while dramatically smaller teams are left to piecemeal their own solutions.
Today… Read More

Drawbridge Is Building A Business Beyond Ad Targeting

Drawbridge Drawbridge isn’t just an ad-tech company anymore. We’ve written about how the company, which is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital, has built technology to determine when the same person is using multiple devices — so data from one device can be used (in an anonymized way) to target ads another. However, CEO Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan said that… Read More

Bullish: LGBTQ People In Tech

Welcome back to another episode of Bullish! This time, I sat down with Lesbians Who Tech founder Leanne Pittsford to talk about LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) inclusivity in the workplace. Although some tech companies have released data around people of color and female representation in their workforce, only one company, Slack, has actually released data around LGBTQ… Read More

Forge Looks To Make It Easy To Save Short Clips In Gaming Sessions

Forge post-game highlighter Jared Kim might not be the best gamer — but he still wants to be able to share highlights from his sessions, and save them to remember them in the future. So much so that he decided to take a second crack at the premise with Forge, a new service entering beta today that helps gamers find short clips of the action and share them on different networks. Read More

Google Fiber Is Coming To Certain Areas Of San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - FEBRUARY 04:  Super Bowl 50 signage is displayed on the San Francisco Ferry Building on February 4, 2016 in San Francisco, California.  (Photo by Mike Windle/Getty Images) Google announced plans today to bring its lightning-fast Google Fiber service to “some apartments, condos and affordable housing properties” in San Francisco, notably utilizing existing fiber instead of building their own fiber-optic network as they have in the past.
A blog post detailed that the move was done in an effort to bring the service to residents more quickly. San… Read More

Captain401, A Service For Spinning Up And Managing 401(k) Plans, Raises $3.5M

Captain401 Dashboard At Roger Lee’s last startup, he wanted to set up a 401(k) plan for his employees. He soon realized how frustrating and outdated the process was; it required stacks of paperwork and even faxing documents. That’s what prompted him to start Captain401, a service built for quickly spinning up 401(k) plans for small- to medium-sized businesses that aims to be less complicated. The… Read More

Computer Science Is Now A High School Graduation Requirement In Chicago’s Public School District

??Julie-Jamora-Photography_CodeNow_2013-11-24_DSC_3806 Following a unanimous vote by the Chicago Public School Board of Education, computer science will become a graduation requirement for all high school students in what is the nation’s third largest school district. Starting with next school year’s class of freshmen (class of 2020), students in Chicago Public Schools will be required to complete curriculum around computer… Read More

In Advance of Next Fund, Andreessen Horowitz Brings Aboard Martin Casado As GP

Martin Casado Andreessen Horowitz’s team continues to grow and change. Today, the Sand Hill Road firm is announcing the appointment of its newest and ninth general partner: Martin Casado, the cofounder and CTO of Nicira and a pioneer of so-called software defined networking; Nicera was among the first companies to decouple software from networking hardware, allowing companies to see greater… Read More

Microsoft Is Buying Mobile Cross-Platform Development Company Xamarin

Microsoft-Xamarin-930x517 Microsoft announced today that it has acquired Xamarin, a company that allows developers to build fully native apps across several platforms from a single shared code base.
Microsoft and Xamarin have worked closely together since a global partnership was announced in 2013 to make it more simple for mobile developers to build native apps on platforms in Visual Studio.
A possible… Read More

Astro Digital Releases Platform For Anyone To Analyze Satellite Imagery

Landsat image Astro Digital, a satellite imaging and imagery analysis company, released the newest version of their image processing software today. Anyone can access their software, for free, and retrieve satellite imagery of any area on Earth. The company also offers an API that developers can use to incorporate satellite data into their products. The software itself compiles global satellite imagery… Read More

500 Startups Launches A Pair Of $25M Funds Focused On India, FinTech

money in india 500 Startups is adding a couple new micro-funds as it looks to further grow its investments in India and FinTech Markets. The $25 million funds, named 500 FinTech and 500 Kulfi (after a popular Indian frozen dairy treat), will continue to focus on early stage investments in those spaces. 500 Startups currently has over 80 FinTech investments that have made over the past six years,… Read More

LinkedIn’s First TV Ad Says 3M Members Are Qualified To Become An Astronaut

linkedin Okay, be honest. How many of you dreamed of becoming an astronaut when you were a kid? I certainly did — and in my heart of hearts, I still kind of regret that it didn’t happen. Well, that might not be as unrealistic as you might think, at least according to a new ad from LinkedIn. The company says this is actually its very first TV ad, and it will air during the Academy Awards.… Read More