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Klarity uses AI to strip drudgery from contract review Aug 20, 2018

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Klarity, a member of the Y Combiner 2018 Summer class, wants to automate much of the contract review process by applying artificial intelligence, specifically natural language processing. Company co-founder and CEO Andrew Antos has experienced the pain of contract reviews first hand. After graduating from Harvard Law, he landed a job spending 16 hours a day reviewing contract language, a process he called mind-numbing.

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Credit Karma acquires mortgage platform Approved Aug 17, 2018

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Credit Karma, the service best known for providing free credit score monitoring and other financial advice(mostly to millennials), is getting into the mortgage business. The company today announced that it has acquired Approved, a mortgage platform that brings modern technology to a process that even today often still involves faxing documents back and forth. The companies did not disclose the financial details of the transaction.

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Shelf Engine uses machine learning to stop food waste from eating into store margins Aug 17, 2018

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Shelf Engine’s team While running Molly’s, the Seattle-based ready meal wholesaler he founded, Stefan Kalb was upset about its 28 percent food wastage rate. Feeling that the amount was “astronomical,” he began researching how to lower it — and was shocked to discovered Molly’s was actually outperforming the industry average.

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To fight the scourge of open offices, ROOM sells rooms Aug 16, 2018

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Noisy open offices don’t foster collaboration, they kill it, according to a Harvard study that found the less-private floor plan led to a 73 percent drop in face-to-face interaction between employees and a rise in emailing. The problem is plenty of young companies and big corporations have already bought into the open office fad. But a new startup called ROOM is building a prefabricated, self-assembled solution. It’s the Ikea of office phone booths.

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Owl raises $10 million for two-way car dashboard camera Aug 16, 2018

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Owl, the two-way dash cam founded by a team of ex-Apple and Dropcam executives, has secured a $10 million Series A1 round led by Canvas Ventures. This brings Owl’s total funding to $28 million. “We’ve seen a lot of pent-up demand for car security, and Owl is tapping into that demand with a product that’s easy to install and use,” Canvas Ventures General Partner Rebecca Lynn said in a statement.

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“Unhackable” BitFi crypto wallet has been hacked Aug 15, 2018

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The BitFi crypto wallet was supposed to be unhackable and none other than famous weirdo John McAfee claimed that the device – essentially an Android-based mini tablet – would withstand any attack. Spoiler alert: it couldn’t. First, a bit of background. The $120 device launched at the beginning of this month to much fanfare. It consisted of a device that McAfee claimed contained no software or storage and was instead a standalone wallet similar to the Trezor.

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HQ Trivia downloads spiral downward as it hits Apple TV Aug 15, 2018

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HQ Trivia’s app store ranking has continued to sink the past three months, but it’s hoping a new version on your television could revitalize growth. HQ today launched an Apple TV app that lets users play the twice-daily live quiz game alongside iOS Android players. “Everything about the game is still the same – same questions, same time, same rules” says a spokesperson, except you’ll play with the Apple TV remote instead of their phone’s screen.

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Openbook is the latest dream of a digital life beyond Facebook Aug 14, 2018

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As tech’s social giants wrestle with antisocial demons that appear to be both an emergent property of their platform power, and a consequence of specific leadership and values failures (evident as theypublicly failto enforce even the standards they claim to have), there are still people dreaming of a better way. Of social networking beyond outrage-fuelled adtech giants like Facebook and Twitter.

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Startups should read this checklist before they go ‘whale hunting’ for big partners Aug 14, 2018

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David Frankel Contributor David Frankel is a managing partner at Founder Collective. More posts by this contributor You earn a million dollars a year and can’t get funded? Dear auto entrepreneurs, please think outside the gearbox A top-four tech company recently approached the CEO of one of our B2B portfolio companies with a tremendous offer.

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Google isn’t sure how to spell “Fortnite Battle Royale” Aug 13, 2018

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The launch of Fortnite Battle Royale has left Google in a slight predicament. While Google is in no way hard up for cash, Fortnite Battle Royale for Android certainly represented the potential for a relatively big revenue stream for an app. That is, until Epic Games decided it would launch Fortnite for Android from its own website, circumventing the Play Store.

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