After seeing big and small competitors collapsing or withdrawing altogether from the race, Groupon still enjoys an undisputed leadership in the deal space. However, with slow growth in North America, and no growth at all in the international markets, the once fastest-growing company in history is having a hard time meeting the growth expectations of public markets. Read More
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The subject of contention is Free Basics, Facebook and Internet.org‘s app that offers free data access but only to a limited section of the Internet. Free Basics is available in roughly 35 countries through Facebook’s partnerships with mobile carriers who see it as a way to persuade people to buy data plans. But Facebook’s control over the technical guidelines for what… Read More
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Gone are the days of the 40-hour work week that kept us at work eight hours a day. I find that most startup founders or business owners in Silicon Valley work 50-60 hours a week. Today, freelancing is becoming the accepted norm of the startup world. As more startups are starting to use the millions of freelancers, it’s driving more and more people to join the freelancer generation. Read More
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On Christmas day, the world was given a gift by Oculus, Samsung, UNINTERRUPTED, and LeBron James during the Warriors and Cavaliers game. The two companies who paired up for Samsung’s Gear VR, a hot ticket item this holiday season, launched a LeBron James experience in VR called “Striving for Greatness” with a fantastically iconic commercial. When the commercial came on,… Read More
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Artificial intelligence is one of the most exciting and transformative opportunities of our time. From my vantage point as a venture investor at Playfair Capital, where I focus on investing and building community around AI, I see this as a great time for investors to help build companies in this space. Read More
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Twitter did not have a lovely 2015. The world-famous social company saw its revenue rise, its usage flatten, and its share price fall. The company failed to change the arc of its own narrative during the year: Strong financial performance, but continued failure to grow its user base, the latter of which the market appears to weight more strongly. It brought in a new CEO to turn things… Read More
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2015 was a big year for video — especially when it came to user-generated video. Now there are services like Periscope and Meerkat, which are enabling users to broadcast the world around them live. We also saw YouTube launch a subscription model. And, according to Bessemer Venture Partners’ Ethan Kurzweil — who led the firm’s investment in Twitch — we’re… Read More
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Less than a year after its last round, Innovid is announcing that it has raised $27.5 million in new funding. The New York City-headquartered company works with more than 220 advertisers, including Best Buy, Procter & Gamble and Walmart, to create, target and measure their video campaigns. Co-founder and CEO Zvika Netter has said that what really sets Innovid apart is “a… Read More
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As Silicon Valley startups continue chasing private valuations, entrepreneurs in the Midwest are following an entirely different approach. Our goal is the same — to build world-class businesses based on innovative technologies that create new wealth — but our approach is entirely different. We are proving that startup success comes from validating a real market need, then building… Read More
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Alibaba will reportedly invest $1.25 billion in Ele.me, a food delivery service based in Shanghai, says financial news site Caixin (link via Google Translate). The deal would Alibaba the startup’s biggest shareholder, with a 27.7 percent stake.