I’ve always wanted to make a lot of money, have people pay a lot of attention to me and do a lot of exciting things. I just never knew how. Many of my friends who are founders of their own companies tell me how they exhibited the entrepreneurial spirit as a kid — they sold candy out of their backpacks, had a landscaping business during the summer, etc. They created value and… Read More
http://ift.tt/1NQXKl6 How I Created A $350 Million Software Company Knowing Nothing About Software http://ift.tt/1YFhD97
On Christmas day, the world was given a gift by Oculus, Samsung, UNINTERRUPTED, and LeBron James during the Warriors and Cavaliers game. The two companies who paired up for Samsung’s Gear VR, a hot ticket item this holiday season, launched a LeBron James experience in VR called “Striving for Greatness” with a fantastically iconic commercial. When the commercial came on,… 
Artificial intelligence is one of the most exciting and transformative opportunities of our time. From my vantage point as a venture investor at Playfair Capital, where I focus on investing and building community around AI, I see this as a great time for investors to help build companies in this space. 
Alibaba will reportedly invest $1.25 billion in Ele.me, a food delivery service based in Shanghai, says financial news site Caixin (link via Google Translate). The deal would Alibaba the startup’s biggest shareholder, with a 27.7 percent stake. 
Twitter did not have a lovely 2015. The world-famous social company saw its revenue rise, its usage flatten, and its share price fall. The company failed to change the arc of its own narrative during the year: Strong financial performance, but continued failure to grow its user base, the latter of which the market appears to weight more strongly. It brought in a new CEO to turn things… 
2015 was a big year for video — especially when it came to user-generated video. Now there are services like Periscope and Meerkat, which are enabling users to broadcast the world around them live. We also saw YouTube launch a subscription model. And, according to Bessemer Venture Partners’ Ethan Kurzweil — who led the firm’s investment in Twitch — we’re… 
2015 was an eventful year for the tech industry in Asia. Funding started to flow in India, which is expected to become the world’s second-largest Internet market soon, while many tech companies in China, South Korea, and Southeast Asia also hit key milestones. The following is just a small sample of startups that will do impressive things next year in industries ranging from finance… 
A U.S. Department of Labor report last year stated there were approximately 57,000 PR managers and 208,000 PR specialists in America; conversely, there were only 46,500 journalists. Do the math.That means there are roughly 5.7 PR professionals for every one journalist. That’s like the equivalent to having six crying babies with only one babysitter. 
Less than a year after its last round, Innovid is announcing that it has raised $27.5 million in new funding. The New York City-headquartered company works with more than 220 advertisers, including Best Buy, Procter & Gamble and Walmart, to create, target and measure their video campaigns. Co-founder and CEO Zvika Netter has said that what really sets Innovid apart is “a… 
As Silicon Valley startups continue chasing private valuations, entrepreneurs in the Midwest are following an entirely different approach. Our goal is the same — to build world-class businesses based on innovative technologies that create new wealth — but our approach is entirely different. We are proving that startup success comes from validating a real market need, then building… 
Enterprises over the last decade have devoted large portions of their IT budgets to collecting, securing and analyzing huge volumes of big data. Or at least trying to. But heading into 2016, the increasing complexity of networks, and the sheer number of connected devices that are constantly streaming data over those networks, will create a paradigm shift in how enterprises secure and manage… 
Founded in 2010 as a DIY app and website development platform, Bizness Apps has quietly turned its attention to resellers and digital agencies, becoming one of the largest providers of white-label app development software on the market. In fact, over 500,000 total mobile apps have now been created using the company’s software, and they account for five percent of all apps in the… 
Dinner Lab is laying off around 30 employees from their full-time positions as it shifts to a contract-based model for its events staff, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. Most of those layoffs consisted of on-the-ground events execution staff. The crux of the issue was that these events staffers were being paid as full-time employees, which CEO Brian Bordainick said was not that sustainable… 
Startups can now reach international markets almost immediately at launch. Product/market fit is geographically, industry and company-size agnostic — SaaS makes your product adoption almost instantaneous. Although this early global traction can happen organically at the beginning, the reality is that startups must be strategic about systematically scaling from a local region to any number… 
In the words of Pitbull, “Ask for money, get advice. Ask for advice, get money twice.” When you’re shopping for a VC, you might want to take Pitbull at least a little seriously, because he seems to know what he’s talking about. If you think VCs are just a source of money, you’re sorely mistaken. Most startup founders fail to recognize that the best venture… 
Gojimo, an app that helps U.K. high school students prepare for exams, has picked up a further $1.8 million in funding, bringing total raised by the 2013-founded startup to just over $3 million. 
Airplane ridesharing startup Flytenow today announced that it is shutting down after a court recently upheld the FAA’s power to regulate what does (and does not) constitute a commercial aviation operation. Flytenow wanted to bring together private pilots and those who wanted to fly with them. From the get-go, though, Flytenow and similar startups like Airpooler were going to run into… 
It seems like 2015 was the year of the “emoji.” I mean, a damn emoji was the “word of the year.” This year is ending with a massive bang on the App Store thanks to Kim Kardashian and her…assets. Fire up the App Store on your devices and here’s what you’ll see for the top paid app: The app, KIMOJI, costs $1.99. What do you get? Well, emojis having to… 
Posts
