Startups
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HelloFresh is launching a wine club, taking a page from the Blue Apron playbook
As competition among them heats up, meal kit startups are expanding their repertoire, including by selling their dinner kits at groceries and adding new products to their catalogs. Today, early meal kit player HelloFresh announced the availability of wines on their site beginning May 17th. Read More
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SoFi plans to apply for a bank charter in the next month
With an eye on providing banking services later this year, online lending startup SoFi is planning to apply for an industrial bank charter in the next month, according to CEO Mike Cagney. If approved, it would become the first company to receive a new industrial loan company (ILC) charter in a decade. Read More
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Pinguin is a public chat room for nerd(ier people)
Pinguin is a new app that lets you chat with people based on your interests. Really into startups? They got a room for you. Like you some programming? Right this way, sir. Like food? They got a room for you. The team, Josh Purvis, Devon Woodruff, Vijay Kumar, and Bryan O’Reilly built the app from he ground up with the needs of the online set in mind. There are a few of these apps… Read More
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Cockroach Labs announces $27M Series B and enterprise tier for its reliable database
“A database that replicates itself and is meant to survive” — that was the connection that Cockroach Labs CEO Spencer Kimball made between the startup’s memorable name and its value proposition. Despite entering a crowded market, Cockroach has been able to gain the favor of some of the best known VCs in tech. Today’s $27 million Series B is being led by… Read More
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Ceres Imaging raises $5 million to pinpoint crop stress for farmers
Oakland, Calif.-based Ceres Imaging has raised $5 million in a Series A investment led by Romulus Capital. The startup uses cameras, sensors and software to pinpoint crop stress in the field for farmers, so that they can apply herbicides, pesticides and irrigation just where it’s needed. Ceres, like several other startups, started out with the notion to build a drone just for… Read More
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Startups, you must raise this much to join the 1%
Joining the exclusive club of one-percenters is hard, and, by definition, nearly every company fails to gain entry. For founders and investors alike, the heartening thing is that, in most cases, even a small seed and Series A round puts your company in the top half of startups founded in or after 2003. And there’s one good thing about being middle of the pack — you have plenty… Read More
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Volans-i shows off its long-range delivery drones in Texas
Whether flying food or medication to customers’ doors, drones for delivery have arrived. Businesses as far-ranging as UPS, Domino’s, Amazon and the hospital group Ticino EOC are testing drones. Still, most drones built for delivery only fly for a short time and distance. Now, a startup called Volans-i has developed long-range drones for business to business, express deliveries. Read More
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Social music startup Smule raises $54M for Asian expansion
Smule, maker of Sing! Karaoke and other social music apps, announced yesterday that it has raised $54 million in a round led by Chinese company Tencent. Adams Street Partners, Bessemer Ventures, Floodgate, Franklin Templeton and Shasta Ventures also participated in the funding. Reuters reported that the round valued the company at $604 million, setting up Smule to expand in Asia and potentially… Read More
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Free streaming service Tubi TV grabs $20 million in new funding
San Francisco-based Tubi TV has raised an additional $20 million for its advertising-supported streaming service for TV and movies. Investors in the round are betting on the fact that the next big streaming competitor won’t be a direct rival to Netflix and others with a subscription-based business model, but rather a free service that offers a wide variety of titles for free viewing. Read More
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Pinterest adds visual search guides to its Lens and a new CTO
Pinterest today is adding a new feature to its Lens — its live camera search — that will help pick apart what’s in the image and make it easier to search specific parts of that image. In addition, Pinterest’s head of discovery engineering Vanja Josifovski is being bumped up to the CTO role. Read More
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