Category: Tech news

 Many founders ask me for advice on their latest startup. Of all the things I’ve learned, some of the most compelling tips come from starting a business out of an old truck. When I joined the founding team of Kogi BBQ with Chef Roy Choi in 2008, all we had was a food truck and “seed funding” from a maxed-out credit card. We had no idea that it would change the entire food… Read More

 Donating money to a political candidate is now as simple as firing a 140-character joke about Donald Trump’s hair. Twitter on Tuesday announced it would partner with payments service Square to allow its users to donate to political candidates via tweets. Political candidates sign up for accounts through Square Cash, and then their campaigns can tweet a $Cashtag to request donations… Read More

 We enter the land of ride-sharing startup Lyft on this week’s episode of Cribs. Lyft’s San Francisco headquarters are a bit like entering Willy Wonka’s factory – if it were painted head-to-toe in hot pink. Large mop-like displays in Lyft’s signature hue greet visitors to the 66,000 square-foot space on the edge of San Francisco’s Mission district. Fuzzy… Read More

 Skype introduced a method to bring brief film segments into its chat service today, adding something akin to GIF support inside of the communications platform. Dubbed ‘Mojis,’ Skype’s new addition are, in its own words, “short clips from your favorite movies and TV shows” that can be used when talking, via text, to other users of the service. Two TechCrunch… Read More

 Maureen Sullivan, president of AOL.com and the company’s lifestyle brands, is departing AOL to join fashion rental service Rent the Runway as president. In her current role, Sullivan has been overseeing the company’s homepage, the MAKERS video series and lifestyle sites including Style Me Pretty. She’s been working with AOL CEO Tim Armstrong since their days at Google, where… Read More

 With an eye toward building what EdCast chief executive Karl Mehta calls “the next big social media company,” his company has launched a new interactive platform with the help of some titans of media, technology and finance.
“We know we are building something that will be worth $20 billion,” says Mehta of his education startup. Read More

 If you’ve dreamt of taking a ride in one of the beautiful Tesla S sedans, you have options. You could go to one of Tesla’s showrooms and try to take one for a test drive.
Or you could get arrested in Los Angeles if you don’t mind sitting in the back seat. LAPD introduced one of the all-electric Model S’es (P85D) last week to its fleet. They also have a BMW i3 driving… Read More

 New Form Digital is a video distribution and production company backed by Discovery, Brian Grazer, and Ron Howard. But, as the name implies, the company has stepped away from traditional channels and blurs the line between new and old media. New Form approaches both sides of the media business with the same goal – generating audience and revenue online. It works with popular YouTubers,… Read More

 We’re excited to be hosting this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt SF Hackathon. We’re less than a week away from the main event and are giddy with excitement.
Throughout the week, we’ll be releasing information about the event, and we figured where better to start than with details about spectator tickets, our sponsors and their awesome prizes. Read More

 The man (the legend, rather) needs no introduction, though that’s exactly what Snoop Dogg is going to get at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2015.
Snoop will be joining us onstage for a fireside chat with Ted Chung, who is also the founder of Cashmere Agency and co-managing member of Snoop’s VC fund called Casa Verde Capital.
We’ll be discussing his foray into the tech world, with… Read More

 White label social networking service Grou.ps is now closed for new signups as the company is changing its strategy from being a general private social networking service to focusing solely on the health and fitness industry. The company is also changing its name from Grou.ps to GymGroups. Grou.ps was one of the first private social networking services on the market — together with… Read More

Stripe yesterday rolled out a set of new tools called Stripe Relay geared at helping retailers essentially put buy buttons in multiple platforms. This offers retailers a big opportunity to reduce the clunkiness of a buying experience that requires jumping through mobile websites, according to Stripe’s John Collison. We sat down with him to find out more about Relay and how the company… Read More

 No one really expected Sony’s upcoming VR headset to keep its “Project Morpheus” code name when it eventually made it to the shelves — but no one knew what its actual name would be… until now. Alas, just about anyone with three guesses and a brain could have worked out the name that Sony’s marketing team ended up at: Playstation VR. It’s less creative… Read More

 Snapchat’s new animated selfie Lenses come courtesy of a new acquisition: Looksery. In a suspicious turn of events, Selfie animation app Looksery disappeared from the App Stores this morning just as Snapchat launched Lenses. Meme artist Ronen V informed me that Lenses looked identical to Looksery’s technology. And after I inquired, Snapchat confirmed to me that it has in… Read More

 Deep in the wilds of St. Louis, a little company run by Dan Lohman, Yomi Toba, and Jan Christian Andersen wants to add all the social media things to all the web things. How? With Pushup Social. Pushup Social essentially adds a social media page to your web page. For example, the Endangered Wolf Center created a social community that lets them share photos, Instagram content, Tweets, and… Read More