Category: Tech news

 If you’re in the tech world, then you know exactly what Slack is and does. As you eke outside of our little techosphere, however, you might get some puzzled faces when you talk about your favorite work communication tool. Read More

 Apple wants to show consumers how its devices – including Macs, as well as mobile devices like iPhones and iPads – can be used to create art. Specifically, its latest pushback at the dated concept that mobile devices aren’t tools for creation, the company is planning to host a series of workshops in Apple stores that will teach people how to shoot professional-quality… Read More

 It looks like another chapter is in the works for Hem, the home design startup headed by Jason Goldberg that first emerged as a pivot from the Fab.com design marketplace in 2014. We’ve heard from multiple sources that Hem.com has been trying to sell itself and that Vitra, a high-end furniture company based in Switzerland, is currently in the frame to buy it. From what we… Read More

 One of the great promises of the Internet — a democratic, transparent, open network that would disintermediate entrenched industries, remove fee-taking middlemen and thereby lower the costs of goods — has seemingly been realized. And yet, just as surely as we thought they were gone for good, middlemen have come surging back to life — rebranded as our best friends: the… Read More

 CES is a horrible, god-awful experience that will shave years off your life. The casinos, the food, the people, the germs. Horrible. All of it. But we love it! And we’re sending a huge contingent to the show again this year and want to see your gadgets, toys and products. TechCrunch cares much more for the hardware startups than the big CE players. We want to see the future FitBits and… Read More

 Credit and finance management platform Credit Karma, known best as the startup that offers free, no-strings-attached credit scores, has made its first acquisition. The company has acquired the makers of the mobile application Snowball, with plans to leverage the team’s expertise in mobile notifications. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and the Snowball app will be pulled from… Read More

 Las Vegas just got a touch more bearable. Uber is using Vinli and T-Mobile to equip its Vegas cars with Wifi. Thanks to Vinli’s hardware, the cars will become mobile hotspots. This is a limited time offer — just for CES. Vinli is working to add Wifi into the ridesharing equation. This is a good first step. And a wise one at that. Vegas is packed with the consumer industry’s… Read More

 Foodpanda, the restaurant delivery service backed by Rocket Internet, has laid off about 300 of its employees in its Indian unit. This means Foodpanda India, which launched in 2012, has lost 15 percent of its workforce. Read More

 Qualcomm announced today that it has inked new patent licensing deals in China with smartphone manufacturers Beijing Tianyu Communication Equipment and Haier Group. The San Diego-based chipmaker has made a series of similar agreements over the past two months as it recovers from an antitrust investigation by the Chinese government. Read More

 Based on practical experience with hundreds of early stage companies over many years, we generally recommend the following budgeting best practices. We call it the Bessemer Optimal Budget, and it involves explicitly recognizing probabilities in budgeting and forecasting. Read More

 Things weren’t looking good for Tesla in China in early 2015. The luxury automaker faced tax breaks that favor domestic manufacturers, complex local license-plate laws and an army of sophisticated domestic copycats. Such hurdles are to be expected when any U.S. tech startup expands into China, but they seemed to hit Elon Musk’s Silicon Valley darling particularly hard. Read More

 After seeing big and small competitors collapsing or withdrawing altogether from the race, Groupon still enjoys an undisputed leadership in the deal space. However, with slow growth in North America, and no growth at all in the international markets, the once fastest-growing company in history is having a hard time meeting the growth expectations of public markets. Read More

 The subject of contention is Free Basics, Facebook and Internet.org‘s app that offers free data access but only to a limited section of the Internet. Free Basics is available in roughly 35 countries through Facebook’s partnerships with mobile carriers who see it as a way to persuade people to buy data plans. But Facebook’s control over the technical guidelines for what… Read More

 Gone are the days of the 40-hour work week that kept us at work eight hours a day. I find that most startup founders or business owners in Silicon Valley work 50-60 hours a week. Today, freelancing is becoming the accepted norm of the startup world. As more startups are starting to use the millions of freelancers, it’s driving more and more people to join the freelancer generation. Read More

 Merry Christmas! 2015 was a truly great year in technology, bringing us self-driving electric cars, reusable orbital rockets, the rise of precision gene editing… and some lesser achievements. Since nothing of interest will happen in the next four days, I have decided to jump the gun; today I announce my annual dubious achievement awards, named, in a fit of awe-inspiring humility,… Read More