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Federacy wants to put bug bounty programs in reach of every startup Aug 13, 2018

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Federacy, a member of the Y Combinator Summer 2018 class, has a mission to make bug bounty programs available to even the smallest startup. Traditionally, bug bounty programs from players like BugCrowd and HackerOne have been geared toward larger organizations. While these certainly have their place, founders William and James Sulinski, who happen to be twins, felt there was a gap in the marketplace, where smaller organizations were being left out of what they considered to be a crucial service.

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Blissfully grabs $3.5 million seed investment to help companies get their SaaS in gear Aug 10, 2018

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Blissfully, a New York City startup that helps companies understand their SaaS usage inside their organizations, announced it has received a $3.5 million seed round. The investment was led by by Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Hubspot, Founder Collective, and several unnamed pre-seed investors also participated. They got a $1.5 million pre-seed investment, bringing the total so far to $5 million, according the company.

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Blippar is using AR to help customers find their way indoors Aug 10, 2018

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Blippar is using AR to help customers find their way indoors Remember the scene in Minority Report where Tom Cruz walks through the mall and thousands of holographic ads pop up around him? That reality may not be as far off as we thought. Blippar, the augmented reality startup that launched back in 2011, is today announcing the launch of a new product that would let retailers, airports, commercial real estate owners, etc. place augmented reality content across their space.

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Evolute debuts enterprise container migration and management platform Aug 09, 2018

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Evolute, a 3-year old startup out of Mountain View, officially launched the Evolute platform today with the goal of helping large organizations migrate applications to containers and manage those containers at scale. Evolute founder and CEO Kristopher Francisco says he wants to give all Fortune 500 companies access to the same technology that big companies like Apple and Google enjoy because of their size and scale.

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Soundcloud on the blockchain? Audius raises $5.5M to decentralize music Aug 09, 2018

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Audius wants to cut the middlemen out music streaming so artists get paid their fair share. Coming out of stealth today led by serial entrepreneur and DJ Ranidu Lankage, Audius is building a blockchain-based alternative to Spotify or SoundCloud. Users will pay for Audius tokens or earn them by listening to ads.

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Don’t fear the big company ‘kill zones’ Aug 08, 2018

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Ed Byrne Contributor Share on Twitter Ed Byrne is an entrepreneur, investor and co-founder of Scaleworks. Do you worry about the so-called “kill zones” of big tech companies? The Economistthinks you should. The theory basically suggests that if your product or service is anyway threatening or accretive to one of these incumbents, they will either force-buy your company or clone it and destroy your market.

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Researchers teach an AI how to dribble Aug 08, 2018

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While this animated fellow looks like something out of NBA 2K18, it’s really an AI that’s learning how to dribble in real time. The AI starts out fumbling the ball a bit and by cycle 95 it is able to do some real Harlem Globetrotters stuff. In short, what you’re watching is a human-like avatar learning a very specialized human movement. To do this researchers at Carnegie Mellon and DeepMotion, Inc.

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Boston-area startups are on pace to overtake NYC venture totals Aug 07, 2018

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Joanna Glasner Contributor More posts by this contributor Home run exits happen stealthily for biotech While tech waffles on going public, biotech IPOs boom Boston has regained its longstanding place as the second-largest U.S. startup funding hub. After years of trailing New York City in total annual venture investment, Massachusetts is taking the lead in 2018. Venture investment in the Boston metro area hit $5.

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Epic Games sidesteps the Play Store with Fortnite for Android launch Aug 06, 2018

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Epic Games continues to spread the love… to consumers, at least. Following the launches of Fortnite Battle Royale on iOS earlier this year and Fortnite for the Nintendo Switch earlier this summer, Epic Games is now confirming that the Android version of the game will be available exclusively through the Fortnite website. Users can visit Fortnite.com and download the Fortnite Launcher, which will then allow them to load Fortnite Battle Royale onto their devices.

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Google Maps is no longer #flatearth Aug 06, 2018

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Go to Google Maps and zoom out. Halfway out, the map’s perspective changes from a traditional flat map view to an interactive globe. Zoom all the way out and the Earth is presented as a globe with landmasses of the appropriate size. Greenland is no longer the size of Africa and all is right with the world. On flat maps, it’s impossible to represent land mass size on a relative scale.

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