Startups

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The dream of Polish tech entrepreneurship is almost over

 Poland has worked diligently over the past decade to become an entrepreneurial powerhouse. Once home to businesses focused primarily on app design and outsourcing, social, societal, and economic pressures forced the country’s brightest to start building for themselves. And they did. I’ve covered Polish startups for almost a decade, first on TechCrunch and then on a new blog I… Read More

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Helping students transition from the laboratory to robotics startup

 A student at Monday’s TC Sessions: Robotics event in Cambridge asked me “How do I launch a successful startup?” I explained that I might not be the person at the show best equipped to answer, but I offered some simple advice nonetheless: find a problem that needs solving, address a need that already exists and don’t go offering solutions in search of problems. Oh, and get… Read More

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What it’s like to ship yourself overnight on Cabin’s sleep pod bus

 Last weekend, I traveled from San Francisco to Los Angeles roundtrip on Cabin. When I arrived to the bus pickup location in San Francisco, a smiley attendant greeted me. She then proceeded to check me in and stow away my bag. Upon entering the bus, I saw the social lounge, where people can chit chat and hang out if they don’t want to go to sleep right away. I bypassed that area and… Read More

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Playbuzz unveils a new editor for writing articles chock full of interactive content

Playbuzz Playbuzz helps online publishers make their content more interactive by adding elements like polls and galleries. Until recently, those elements have taken the form of widgets that publishers can embed into their stories, but that’s changing with the launch of Playbuzz’s new Storytelling platform, where writers are creating entire articles, not just one-off widgets. Read More

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Playkey raises $2.8M to fund its US expansion

 Playkey, a game streaming service we saw earlier this year at Disrupt NY, has just closed an additional $2.8 million round of funding from Russia’s Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF). Created at the suggestion of Vladimir Putin in 2013, the IIDF has invested in 293 companies to-date with the objective to strengthen infrastructure for Russian businesses. However, the investment… Read More

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Silent Echo lets you chat with Alexa over Slack

 Want to chat with Alexa via Slack? A new bot called Silent Echo now makes that possible. The idea is that there are times when you want to interact with Amazon’s virtual assistant, Alexa, but you don’t want to do it by voice. For example, if things are too noisy in the room for Alexa to properly hear you, or, alternately, if you need things to be very quiet. The service… Read More

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Dropbox CTO Aditya Agarwal is leaving

 Aditya Agarwal, who came to Dropbox via its acquisition of Cove way back in 2012 and was given the CTO role last year, will be leaving the company. Agarwal held the CTO role for about 9 months and was previously the VP of engineering. Agarwal is leaving the company as it begins to aggressively tout its success as a business. Read More

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The very first question to answer when taking on new investors

 Fundraising is a stressful process. You do all you can to impress prospective investors by honing the story, optimizing key metrics and making your company look as attractive as possible. But before you decide the amount of money you raise and the type of investor you want on board, you must decide the kind of relationship you intend to have with your new partner. Read More

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Uber’s SVP of leadership and strategy says she hasn’t seen any toxicity

 Uber SVP of Leadership and Strategy Frances Frei is optimistic about the future of Uber, despite the allegations of sexual harassment, greyballing and an executive accessing a rider’s medical records. In fact, Frei wears an Uber t-shirt every day and plans to wear one every day until every single one of Uber’s 15,000 employees feels proud about wearing one. Read More

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