Startups

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Oakland To Tech: Please Don’t Screw This Up Like Last Time

uber-oakland 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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Meet Jukin Media, The Company That Now Owns Pizza Rat

Screen Shot 2015-09-24 at 3.24.18 PM 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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Amino Raises $6.5M To Build Mobile Communities

amino 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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And The Winner Of TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2015 Is… Agrilyst

IMG_5546 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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Andre Iguodala Says Wearables Can Help Win Championships

Andre Iguodala Golden State Warriors - 09 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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Georama’s Live Virtual Reality Platform Lets You Explore The World From Your Sofa

Georama 360 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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The Truth About Streaming: It Pays Labels A Lot, They Don’t Pay Musicians

Troy 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 Founder Ryan Smith Talks Bootstrapping His Company And Then Raising A Boatload Of Cash

Ryan Smith Qualtrics Bryan Schreier Sequoia Capital - 10 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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Separate.Us Wants To Bring Divorce Online

Separate us - 04 Divorce is painful enough. Separate.us wants to at least make the paperwork easier. Much like TurboTax, Separate.us, which launched today at TechCrunch Disrupt SF, takes complex, confusing forms and translates them into simple questions. Separate.us founder Sandro Tuzzo hopes this tool will help those seeking divorce file on their own and avoid the expensive fees related to hiring lawyers. Read More

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