Longtime Googler Nitin Mangtani (manager for a number of products including Google Shopping) has founded a startup of his own, PredictSpring, where he’s working to help brands and retailers get up-to-speed with mobile commerce. To illustrate why PredictSpring is necessary, Mangtani pointed to numbers from comScore showing that while 60 percent of retail browsing happens on mobile… Read More
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Intuit is laying off 249 employees, mostly in the company’s Small Business Group, according to an internal memo from CEO Brad Smith reviewed by TechCrunch. We first heard about the layoffs this morning, and Intuit also confirmed the layoffs to TechCrunch. In June, Intuit laid off 399 employees as part of a company realignment. Last week as part of its quarterly earnings, the company… Read More
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I’ve always been fascinated by how labor markets work. People are the foundation for how things get done. How we organize across and within companies impacts both creativity and efficiency. The first big labor market shift in my lifetime that I can remember was outsourcing. Fueled first by globalization and ignited further by Internet connectivity, arbitrage opportunities in labor… Read More
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Founders Fund, the venture firm co-created by Peter Thiel, is entering yet another surprising area that you don’t commonly see with Silicon Valley VCs. They’re backing a materials sciences company called Modumetal, which is making nanolaminated metals for use in the oil and gas industry. With currently used metals, pipes and equipment can corrode pretty easily, leading to $2.2… Read More
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Los Angeles startup HelloTech is in the final stages of raising $10 million in Series A funding, according to sources with knowledge of the deal. Madrona Venture Group is leading the round. Following a period of private beta testing, HelloTech went live about three months ago. You either call for an appointment or schedule one from the HelloTech website, then one of the company’s techs… Read More
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Tesla’s Model S, a “premium performance” sedan with dual-motor, all-wheel drive, is advertised as having a 265-mile range, according to the company. But Bjørn Nyland, a programmer at the University of Oslo who lovingly calls his two-year-old Tesla “The Millennium Falcon” (he also has a YouTube channel dedicated primarily to his Tesla and their travels together),… Read More
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451 Media Group , the digital media company co-founded by Transformers director Michael Bay, is launching a new publishing division for graphic novels. The company was first announced this spring with a large investment from China’s Guangdong Alpha Animation. In addition to Bay, the company’s founding partners include John and Anthony Gentile (who were involved in creating… Read More
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Analysts at IDC have lowered their projections about how much they expect the smartphone market to grow in 2015. Earlier this year, IDC said shipments would grow at 11.3 percent year-over-year, but today’s report says that figure is being revised to just 10.4 percent growth instead. Both numbers represent a dramatic drop from the 27.5 percent growth the market saw in 2014, the firm… Read More
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Hortonworks, the big data company built on Hadoop, bought early-stage startup Onyara today. The company, which launched at the end of last year, has its roots in the NSA — yes that NSA. The Onyara engineers worked at the NSA for 8 years helping to develop a technology that would later be known as Apache NiFi. The NSA released the technology to the open source community last year as… Read More
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Popular radio service and app TuneIn just launched a new subscription service. For $7.99 per month, TuneIn Premium subscribers get a bunch of new premium content as well as a nifty ad-free feature.