If you are reading this article, chances are you have taken an Uber, are familiar with Upwork and maybe even sold something on Etsy. Business models that fall under the “gig economy” umbrella have been proven for business-to-consumer and peer-to-peer markets because they make it possible to crowdsource products and services from huge communities of people. Read More
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Restaurant reservation startup Reserve announced today that it has acquired Dash. When you make a reservation through Reserve, the app already handles payment (including splitting the bill), but by acquiring Dash, it will be able to integrate with point-of-sale systems like Micros and Aloha. The company wasn’t just attracted by Dash’s payment technology. In a blog post, Reserve… Read More
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Plenty of startups have tried and failed to make enterprise software sexy, but Slack made it viral. Its growth rate is unheard of. Both Slack’s daily user count and its paid seat count are up 3.5X in just a year. Tons of people have still never heard of it, but with this momentum, they probably will soon. What the growth means for Slack is network effect. Each person who joins makes… Read More
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Those of us who have been around the block a few times have seen multiple attempts to kill email and change the way people communicate in the enterprise. Slack is just the latest, but one that has captured market share and money along the way. Consider that just today, Slack got $200 million in funding on a whopping $3.8 billion valuation. It launched just three years ago and has raised… Read More
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Palaround began its life as one of what’s now many companies attempting to be the “Tinder for finding friends” — a list that now includes Tinder’s dating app rival, Bumble, in fact. But recently, the startup began rolling out a new product focused instead on bringing the Tinder swipe model to private organizations. A pivot from the earlier general purpose… Read More
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Pre-natal genetic testing, VR drones, and fracking nanoparticles were a few of the products featured in Y Combinator’s first Virtual Demo Day. They come from the YC Fellowship, a program designed to let the startup school help idea- or prototype-stage companies, beyond the full-fledged businesses in its main accelerator. The 8-week full-time fellowship mostly offers remote guidance,… Read More
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betaworks doesn’t often launch games, but when they do, it tends to stick. Just take Dots, for example, which ended up spinning out of betaworks as its own game studio. Today, the startup studio is launching its second game in the form of CHKN. Imagine that Minecraft had a baby with a Tamagotchi from the 90s and you’ll have a pretty clear idea of how CHKN works. It’s a… Read More
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Northern California has become a test-bed for electric vehicle charging. And it’s no accident; the region is home to more electric vehicles and EV charging stations than anywhere else in the country. Like other innovative industries, the EV charging models, products and services that prove successful over time will scale around the state, the country and the world. Read More
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Snapchat wasn’t working correctly for many users, with Stories failing to load or snaps not sending. [Update 5:10pm PST – Snapchat appears to be back for most users after several hours on the fritz{
The outage comes just days after Snapchat released its big Chat 2.0 update that brought stickers and other new features, but possibly more traffic than the service could… Read More
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DraftKings and FanDuel, the two largest providers of daily fantasy sports in the U.S., have simultaneously announced that they reached a deal with the NCAA to temporarily suspend college sports on both platforms after this weekend’s March Madness tournament ends. While the contests weren’t necessarily a large portion of each platform (NCAA contests constitute just three percent… Read More
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