TechCrunch Startup News

Latest Episodes:

By automating code compliance, UpCodes AI is “the spellcheck for buildings” Jun 12, 2018

Show notes

For many architects, the hardest part of their job starts after they finish designing a building, when the onerous process of code compliance begins. Written to ensure the safety and accessibility of buildings, codes dictate everything from the height and depth of stairs and where railings end, to the amount of floor space in front of toilets and the height of windows.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Workday acquires Rallyteam to fuel machine learning efforts Jun 11, 2018

Show notes

Sometimes you acquire a company for the assets and sometimes you do it for the talent. Today Workday announced it was buying Rallyteam, a San Francisco startup that helps companies keep talented employees by matching them with more challenging opportunities in-house. The companies did not share the purchase price or the number of Rallyteam employees who would be joining Workday . In this case, Workday appears to be acquiring the talent.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Self-driving robot delivery startup Starship Technologies raises $25 million Jun 11, 2018

Show notes

The robots are here and one company, Starship Technologies, has raised $25 million to bring even more to the mainstream. This latest round of funding includes a follow-on investment from Matrix Partners and Morpheus Ventures. New investors include Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk, Skype founding engineer Jaan Tallinn and others. These autonomous robots can carry items, like groceries or packages, within a two-mile radius.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Devo scores $25 million and cool new name Jun 08, 2018

Show notes

Logtrust is now known as Devo in one of the cooler name changes I’ve seen in a long time. Whether they intended to pay homage to the late 70s band is not clear, but investors probably didn’t care, as they gave the data operations startup a bushel of money today. The company now known as Devo announced a $25 million Series C round led by Insight Venture Partners with participation from Kibo Ventures. Today’s investment brings the total raised to $71 million.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speech recognition triggers fun AR stickers in Panda’s video app Jun 08, 2018

Show notes

Panda has built the next silly social feature Snapchat and Instagram will want to steal. Today the startup launches its video messaging app that fills the screen with augmented reality effects based on the words you speak. Say “Want to get pizza?” and a 3D pizza slice hovers by your mouth. Say “I wear my sunglasses at night” and suddenly you’re wearing AR shades with a moon hung above your head.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Uberization of telcos Jun 06, 2018

Show notes

For the past decade, telecommunications companies around the globe have been grappling with falling average revenues per user equaling stagnant growth rates. While particularly mobile operators have enabled increasing prosperity in third-world countries, new ways of working and fueled entirely new markets, much of the wealth created has landed on the books of companies that we look upon with increasing discomfort: Google, Amazon, Alibaba, Tencent and others.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Microsoft has acquired GitHub for $7.5B in Microsoft stock Jun 05, 2018

Show notes

After a week of rumors, Microsoft today confirmed that it has acquired GitHub, the popular Git-based code sharing and collaboration service. The price of the acquisition was $7.5 billion in Microsoft stock. GitHub raised $350 millionand we know that the company was valued at about $2 billionin 2015. Former Xamarin CEO Nat Friedman (and now Microsoft corporate vice president) will become GitHub’s CEO.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Scaling startups are setting up secondary hubs in these cities Jun 04, 2018

Show notes

America’s mayors have spent the past nine months tripping over each other to curry favor with Amazon.com in its high-profile search for a second headquarters. More quietly, however, a similar story has been playing out in startup-land. Many of the most valuable venture-backed companies are venturing outside their high-cost headquarters and setting up secondary hubs in smaller cities. Where are they going? Nashville is pretty popular. So is Phoenix. Portland and Raleigh also are seeing some jobs.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bitcoin exchange abandons Poland even as the government invites it to a working group Jun 04, 2018

Show notes

In a delightful bit of irony BitBay, a Central European exchange, has shut down operations in Poland even as it received an invitation by the Polish government to participate in a national blockchain working group. The news, which appeared in a Tweet, states that the group will assess regulations for cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and ICOs. “Our exchange has received an invitation from the PFSA to participate in the Blockchain Working Group.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Weights & Biases raises $5M to build development tools for machine learning Jun 01, 2018

Show notes

Machine learning is one of those buzzwords that nearly every tech company likes to throw around nowadays — but according to Lukas Biewald, it represents a genuinely new approach to programming. “Software has eaten alot of the world, and machine learning is eating software,” Biewald said.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected