French startup Alan is expanding beyond health insurance by offering telemedicine appointments directly from Alan . The company is partnering with Livi, Kry’s French subsidiary. While a handful of European countries already let you talk to a doctor using video calls, France’s national health system just started allowing remote appointments. If you need to renew
Month: October 2018
This year has been a breakout one for micro-financing startups in Southeast Asia, which are becoming among the most funded within the region’s fintech space. Next in line to raise capital is First Circle, an SME-lending service that’s based in the Philippines which has pulled in $26 million as it begins to consider regional expansion
In what looks like a European first, the London-based early-stage venture capital firm Balderton Capital is announcing it has closed a new $145 million “secondary” fund dedicated to buying equity stakes from early shareholders in European-founded “high growth, scale-up” technology companies. Dubbed “Balderton Liquidity I,” the new fund will invest in European growth-stage companies through
“Right now we’re in this Empire Strikes Back moment,” says Initialized Capital’s Garry Tan, referring to tech giants ruthlessly copying and competing with fresh ideas. “We think the startups represent the Return Of The Jedi.” It’s that willingness to stand up against incumbents and give founders their best shot at disrupting them that’s won Initialized
Foursquare has today announced the partial close of a $33 million Series F financing, with $25 million already closed out and another $8 million inbound, according to the blog post. The round was co-led by Simon Ventures and Naver Corp, with participation from Union Square Ventures, an existing investor. Over the past four years, Foursquare
Cratejoy, a startup that runs a marketplace for subscription businesses and helps founders launch and scale their own subscription box services, has laid off 18 members of its 43-person team. The company’s co-founder and chief executive officer Amir Elaguizy confirmed the lay-offs to TechCrunch. He says the cuts are part of a restructuring effort to
Apple is about to release the public beta version of iOS 12.1. And before everybody freaks out, the company announced that this update will feature new emojis — best feature update ever. In other words, Apple is releasing its own take on Unicode 11.0 emojis. Other devices and major services will soon all support the
Walmart is expanding further into apparel with today’s announcement of its plans to acquire the digitally native, women’s plus-size clothing brand ELOQUII for an undisclosed amount. The deal includes ELOQUII CEO Mariah Chase, her executive team and its 100 employees, who will continue to be based in Long Island City, NY and Columbus, OH. They’ll
Apple Business Chat launched earlier this year as a way for consumers to communicate directly with businesses on Apple’s messaging platform. Today the company announced it was expanding the program to add new businesses and support for additional countries. When it launched in January, business partners included Discover, Hilton, Lowe’s and Wells Fargo. Today’s announcement
Facebook today announced the global launch of Premieres, its new interactive video format that allows creators to pre-record a video for fans, then release it during a viewing window they choose, as more of a live event. The move follows YouTube’s introduction of a similar Premieres format just a few months ago. In addition, Facebook
Maybe you’ve never heard about Tiny, but chances are, you’ve used its products. Tiny is the company behind the text editors you’ve likely used in WordPress, Marketo, Zendesk, Atlassian and other products. The company is actually the result of the merger of Moxiecode, the two-person team behind the open source TinyMCE editor, and Ephox, the
If you’ve ever tried to write something long – a thesis, a book, or a manifesto outlining your disappointment in the modern technocracy and your plan to foment violent revolution – you know that distractions can slow you down or even stop the creative process. That’s why the folks at Astrohaus created the Freewrite, a
Empires rise and fall, and none more so than business empires. Whole industries that once dominated the planet are just a figment in memory’s eye, while new industries quietly grow into massive behemoths. New York City has certainly seen its share of empires. Today, the city is a global center of finance, real estate, legal
Twitter has announced more changes to its rules to try to make it harder for people to use its platform to spread politically charged disinformation and thereby erode democratic processes. In an update on its “elections integrity work” yesterday, the company flagged several new changes to the Twitter Rules which it said are intended to provide “clearer
It is four months since fintech ‘unicorn’ Revolut announced its intention to add commission-free trading to its banking app, in a bid to compete with Silicon Valley’s Robinhood (although, curiously, the two companies share two investors, namely Index and DST). However, one London startup looks to be first out of the gate this side of
Lingokids, the Madrid, Spain-based (and U.S. incorporated) edtech startup that helps children to learn a second language, has bolstered its balance sheet. The company has raised $6 million in Series A funding, and been awarded a $1.3 million grant from the European Union’s taxpayer funded H2020 programme, Leading the Series A is HV Holtzbrinck Ventures,
Less than 10 percent of the 50 million users attacked in Facebook’s recent breach lived in the European Union, tweeted the Irish Data Protection Commission, which oversees privacy in the region. However, Facebook still could be liable for up to $1.63 billion in fines, or 4 percent of its $40.7 billion in annual global revenue
Serverless has become a big buzzword of late, and with good reason. It has the potential to completely alter how developers write code. They can simply write a series of event triggers, while letting the cloud vendor worry about providing whatever amount of compute resources are required to complete the job. It represents a huge
Another day, another announcement from Facebook that it has failed to protect your personal information. Were you one of the 50 million (and likely far more, given the company’s graduated disclosure style) users whose accounts were completely exposed by a coding error in play for more than a year? If not, don’t worry — you’ll
Former Facebook VP of News Feed and recently appointed Instagram VP of Product Adam Mosseri has been named the new head of Instagram following the resignation of Instagram’s founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger last week.. “We are thrilled to hand over the reins to a product leader with a strong design background and a
Bespoke Post says it has more than 100,000 subscribers signed up to receive a monthly “box of awesome” (that’s what it calls its bundles of curated men’s products). Next up: Creating brands and products of its own. It’s a common move for retailers and ecommerce companies to launch their own brands, but it sounds like
Just when you thought you were safe from IoT on your keyboard, Das Keyboard has come out with the 5Q, a smart keyboard that can send you notifications and change colors based on the app you’re using. These kinds of keyboards aren’t particularly new — you can find gaming keyboards that light up all the colors
UK members of parliament have once again called for Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, to travel to the country to face questions about how his business operates. They’re renewing calls for facetime with the Facebook CEO in light of the massive data breach it disclosed on Friday — which the company said could affect as many as
Google just announced new features for Google Maps on Android and iOS. The update is rolling out this week and features a bunch of new features focused on commuting, music and getting more personal data from you. While Google Maps is particularly useful for road trips and vacation, the app can also be useful for
The slow and steady rise of Babbel has been impressive on many fronts. The company is now managing the top-grossing language learning app in the world. That’s why I’m excited to announce that we’ll have founder and CEO Markus Witte as well as CEO U.S. Julie Hansen at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin. Babbel has been around