How do startups actually get their content marketing to work?

[Editor’s note: this is a free example of a series of articles we’re publishing by top experts who have cutting-edge startup advice to offer, over on Extra Crunch. Get in touch at ec_columns@techcrunch.com if you have ideas to share.]  Even the best growth marketers fail to get content marketing to work. Many are unwittingly using tactics from 4 years ago that no longer work today. This post cuts through the noise by sharing real-world data behind some of the biggest SEO successes this year. It studies the content marketing performance of...

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Startups Weekly: Lessons from a failed founder

I sat down with Menlo Ventures partner Shawn Carolan this week to talk about his early investment in Uber. Menlo, if you remember, led Uber’s Series B and has made a hefty sum over the year selling shares in the ride-hailing company. I’ll have more on that later; for now, I want to share some of the insights Carolan had on his experience ditching venture capital to become a founder. Around when Menlo made its first investment in Uber, Carolan began taking a step back from the firm and building Handle, a startup that built tools to help people be...

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Data tells us that investors love a good story

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Pitching your product will kill your fundraising

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Facebook taps Peggy Alford for its board, Reed Hastings and Erskine Bowles to depart

Facebook’s board is undergoing its biggest shakeup in memory. On Friday, the company announced that Peggy Alford would be nominated to join the company’s board of directors. “Peggy is one of those rare people who’s an expert across many different areas — from business management to finance operations to product development,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said of the change. “I know she will have great ideas that help us address both the opportunities and challenges facing our company.” Alford, currently Senior Vice President of Core Markets for...

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Harry Potter, the Platform, and the Future of Niantic

{rss:content:encoded} Harry Potter, the Platform, and the Future of Niantic https://tcrn.ch/2IhpAyY http://bit.ly/2X9E5sm April 12, 2019 at 10:30PM What is Niantic? If they recognize the name, most people would rightly tell you it’s a company that makes mobile games, like Pokémon GO, or Ingress, or Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. But no one at Niantic really seems to box it up as a mobile gaming company. Making these games is a big part of what the company does, yes, but the games are part of a bigger picture: They are a springboard, a place to figure...

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Harry Potter, the Platform, and the Future of Niantic

What is Niantic? If they recognize the name, most people would rightly tell you it’s a company that makes mobile games, like Pokémon GO, or Ingress, or Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. But no one at Niantic really seems to box it up as a mobile gaming company. Making these games is a big part of what the company does, yes, but the games are part of a bigger picture: They are a springboard, a place to figure out the constraints of what they can do with augmented reality today, and to figure out how to build the tech that moves it forward. Niantic wants...

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Trump, FCC unveil plan to accelerate 5G rollout

{rss:content:encoded} Trump, FCC unveil plan to accelerate 5G rollout https://tcrn.ch/2ItRV4A http://bit.ly/2IvOcDp April 12, 2019 at 09:56PM In a press conference today in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, the president laid out a number of initiatives focused on helping accelerate the U.S. role in the 5G race. “This is, to me, the future,” Trump said, opening the press conference flanked by Ajit Pai, Ivanka Trump and a room full of communications representatives in cowboy and hard hats. “It’s all about 5G now,” Trump told the audience. “We were...

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HQ Trivia replaces Quiz Daddy Scott Rogowsky

{rss:content:encoded} HQ Trivia replaces Quiz Daddy Scott Rogowsky https://tcrn.ch/2UfVZHZ https://tcrn.ch/2IefkHR April 12, 2019 at 09:02PM Quiz Khalifa aka Host Malone aka Trap Trebek aka HQ Trivia’s Scott Rogowsky has been pushed out of the live mobile gaming startup. The two split due to disagreements about Rogowsky attempting to take a second full-time job hosting sports streaming service DAZN’s baseball show ChangeUp while moving to only hosting HQ on weekends, TMZ first reported. HQ wanted someone committed to their show. Now HQ co-founder...

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HQ Trivia replaces Quiz Daddy Scott Rogowsky

Quiz Khalifa aka Host Malone aka Trap Trebek aka HQ Trivia’s Scott Rogowsky has been pushed out of the live mobile gaming startup. The two split due to disagreements about Rogowsky attempting to take a second full-time job hosting sports streaming service DAZN’s baseball show ChangeUp while moving to only hosting HQ on weekends, TMZ first reported. HQ wanted someone committed to their show. Now HQ co-founder and CEO Rus Yusupov confirms to TechCrunch that Rogowsky will no longer host HQ Trivia. He tells me that the company ran a SurveyMonkey...

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Juul launches a pilot program that tracks how Juul devices get in the hands of minors

Juul Labs is today launching a pilot for its new Track & Trace program, which is meant to use data to identify exactly how Juul devices wind up in the hands of minors. Juul vaporizers all have a serial number down at the bottom, by the Juul logo. However, it wasn’t until recently that Juul had the capability to track those serial numbers through every step of the process, from manufacture to distribution to retail to sale. With Track & Trace, Juul is calling upon parents, teachers and law enforcement officials to come to the Juul Report...

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Bird will launch electric scooters in 50+ European cities

Bird is gearing up to launch in more than 50 additional cities throughout Europe this spring. Bird began its expansion into Europe less than one year ago. Today, Bird operates its scooters in Paris, Brussels, Vienna, Zurich and other European cities. This launch will increase its European fleet size more than ten-fold. “World class brands and companies have the perfect formula of economics and the ability to grow and scale,” Bird CEO Travis VanderZanden said in a statement. “As we expand Bird’s global footprint, we will demonstrate unmatched innovation,...

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Uber has already made billions from its exits in China, Russia and Southeast Asia

Uber’s exits from China, Russia and Southeast Asia were billed as failures, but the ridesharing giant has already made billions on paper from those moves, according to its IPO filing. Uber released its much-anticipated S-1 on Thursday and reporters and analysts are frantically digging into a treasure trove of previously unreleased details. A number of sections on Uber’s global divestitures begin to paint a clear picture of the strategy that Uber employed when leaving China, Russia and Southeast Asia in recent years. In each case, Uber decided to...

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Listen to us talk about ‘undercorns,’ IPOs and what going public is really about

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Kate and Alex were here yesterday to dig into the Uber IPO filing; for today’s episode, we put that aside and discussed everything else that happened this week. Lucky for us, for the second half of our Thursday podcast-a-thon, the excellent Phil Libin joined us. He was the perfect guest for an IPO-heavy week. You may know Libin as a co-founder of Evernote, or part of General Catalyst, a venture shop. What’s...

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Password manager Dashlane closes on $30M, adds former Spotify CMO to board

Dashlane, a popular password manager and all-round identity management solution, has raised another $30 million in funding, the company announced today. The funding – this time a round of debt financing from Hercules Capital – follows prior investment from FirstMark Capital, Rho Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, TransUnion and Silicon Valley Bank. The company is also expanding its board with the addition of Seth Farbman, a former CMO for Spotify and Gap. Farbman spent nearly four years at Spotify as its Chief Marketing Officer, exiting that...

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LumApps raises $24M Series B for its ‘social intranet’

LumApps, the “social intranet” for the enterprise, has closed $24 million in Series B funding. The round is led by previous backer IdInvest, and will be used to scale LumApps’ global sales and marketing and accelerate product development. Founded in Paris in 2012 — and now also with offices in London, Tokyo, San Francisco and New York — LumApps has developed a social web-styled intranet for enterprises to let company employees better connect and collaborate. The solution integrates with both G Suite, Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft SharePoint,...

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The chat feature may soon return to Facebook’s mobile app

{rss:content:encoded} The chat feature may soon return to Facebook’s mobile app https://tcrn.ch/2IfBvxp http://bit.ly/2IvFpBM April 12, 2019 at 01:26PM Facebook upset millions upon millions of users five years ago when it removed chat from its core mobile app and forced them to download Messenger to communicate privately with friends. Now it looks like it might be able to restore the option inside the Facebook app. That’s according to a discovery from researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who discovered an unreleased feature that brings limited chat features...

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