A few weeks ago, I was having lunch with Darrell Jones III, who heads up business development at Clef, at the southern restaurant Pican a few blocks away from the Oakland building that 3,000 Uber workers are slated to move into by 2017. Jones, who is half-black and half-Filipino and grew up partly on the North Side of Chicago, makes a point of being a patron at mostly black-owned businesses in… Read More
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PizzaRat, the lovable scampering rodent that took the Internet by storm last week, now has representation in Hollywood. An entertainment company called Jukin Media bought the rights to the 15-second video that reached over 5 million views on YouTube, a move that surprised many of the rat’s fans who retweeted gifs of the rodent in action. The guy who recorded PizzaRat, comedian Matt… Read More
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Today Oculus gave 1,500 developers at the Oculus Connect 2 conference (as well as those at home via livestream or on Gear VR a chance to watch) a look at how the consumer version of the Oculus Rift will roll out in Q1 2016, how Oculus plans to bring virtual reality to millions through the Samsung Gear VR, and how new platforms and controllers will expand the uses of Oculus Rift from games… Read More
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Amino, a startup that’s built 41 different mobile community apps (so far), is announcing that it has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding. I first wrote about the company a little more than a year ago, when it raised a $1.65 million seed round. Co-founder and CEO Ben Anderson told me that the idea was to reinvent the traditional online forum with a smartphone-optimized experience… Read More
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At the very beginning, there were around a thousand startups. We hand-picked the 25 greatest companies so that they could compete in our incredibly competitive startup competition — the Startup Battlefield. They all presented in front of multiple groups of industry leaders serving as judges. The startups were competing for $50,000 and the highly coveted Disrupt Cup.
After hours of… Read More
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At Disrupt yesterday, one of the most interesting talks was with Golden State Warriors forward Andre Iguodala. Other than being the MVP of the latest NBA Championship series, Iguodala is a businessperson. He’s looking for cool companies to work with, fun projects to work on and the latest in Silicon Valley trends. It sure helps that he’s on the Golden State Warriors, a team… Read More
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St. Augustine of Hippo said “the world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page”—-which is somewhat unfair to people who can’t travel because of financial or physical reasons. Georama wants to help them with its virtual-reality travel platform, which offers live guided tours in high-definition video. The startup, which already has an enterprise… Read More
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Musicians, it’s time to stop hating streaming services, and here’s why. Troy Carter, one of the world’s most powerful artist managers (John Legend, Meghan Trainor, and previously Lady Gaga) just busted some myths with three reasons streaming is the future of music, not the end. Streaming Will Earn Artists A Lot With Enough Users – Royalty payouts from streaming might… Read More
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Qualtrics spent most of its life bootstrapped and trying to be profitable. Then it raised $220 million — and Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith was worried he’d have to move to Silicon Valley. But the company has become a success story coming out of Utah, and the company’s focus on profitability and being a sustainable business from day one has taught Qualtrics’ employees to… Read More
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Hold up your phone, spin around, and Facebook’s newest News Feed videos will spin with you, showing you every angle of a scene. Today, Facebook announced that its News Feed will now support 360-degree videos on Android and web, and they’ll work on iOS within a few months. At launch, publishers including Star Wars, Discovery, GoPro, Uninterrupted With LeBron James, NBC’s… Read More
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