Startups Weekly: The mad dash to the public markets

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about the differences between raising cash from angels and traditional venture capitalists. Before that, I summarized DoorDash’s acquisition of Caviar. Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets. If you don’t subscribe to Startups Weekly yet, you can do that here. It’s...

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Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ review

{rss:content:encoded} Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ review https://ift.tt/30bjXb9 https://ift.tt/31HVaf1 August 17, 2019 at 12:46AM It’s true, you’ve got the Galaxy Note to thank for your big phone. When the device hit the scene at IFA 2011, large screens were still a punchline. That same year, Steve Jobs famously joked about phones with screens larger than four inches, telling a crowd of reporters, “nobody’s going to buy that.” In 2019, the average screen size hovers around 5.5 inches. That’s a touch larger than the original Note’s 5.3 inches — a size...

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ClearBrain launches analytics tools focused on connecting cause and effect

Businesses need to understand cause-and-effect: If someone did X and it increased sales, or they did Y and it hurt sales. That’s why many of them turn to analytics — but Bilal Mahmood, co-founder and CEO of ClearBrain, said existing analytics platforms can’t answer that question accurately. “Every analytics platform today is still based on a fundamental correlation model,” Mahmood said. It’s the classic correlation-versus-causation problem — you can use the data to suggest that an action and a result are related, but you can’t draw a direct cause-and-effect...

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Lumineye helps first responders identify people through walls

Any first responder knows that situational awareness is key. In domestic violence disputes, hostage rescue or human trafficking situations, first responders often need help determining where humans are behind closed doors. That’s why Megan Lacy, Corbin Hennen and Rob Kleffner developed Lumineye, a 3D-printed radar device that uses signal analysis software to differentiate moving and breathing humans from other objects, through walls. Lumineye uses pulse radar technology that works like echolocation (how bats and dolphins communicate). It sends...

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How ‘ghost work’ in Silicon Valley pressures the workforce, with Mary Gray

The phrase “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” was originally meant sarcastically. It’s not actually physically possible to do — especially while wearing Allbirds and having just fallen off a Bird scooter in downtown San Francisco, but I should get to my point. This week, Ken Cuccinelli, the acting Director of the United States Citizenship and Immigrant Services Office, repeatedly referred to the notion of bootstraps in announcing shifts in immigration policy, even going so far as to change the words to Emma Lazarus’s famous poem “The New...

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Slack co-founder Cal Henderson and Spark Capital’s Megan Quinn are coming to Disrupt SF

If there was one company at the top of everyone’s mind this year, it was Slack. The now-ubiquitous workplace messaging tool began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in June after taking an unusual route to the public markets known as a direct listing. Slack bypassed the typical IPO process in favor of putting its current stock on to the NYSE without doing an additional raise or bringing on underwriter banking partners. Slack co-founder and chief technology officer Cal Henderson and Slack investor and Spark Capital general partner Megan Quinn...

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SmileDirectClub files to go public amidst concerns from dental associations

SmileDirectClub, the at-home teeth-straightening service, is on its way to becoming a public company. SmileDirectClub is seeking to raise up to $100 million in its IPO, according to its S-1 filed today. The number of shares and price range for the offering have yet to be determined. Prior to this, SmileDirectClub reached a $3.2 billion valuation following a $380 million funding round last October. Investors from Clayton, Dubilier & Rice led the round, which featured participation from Kleiner Perkins and Spark Capital. This funding came on...

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Showcase your startup in Startup Alley at Disrupt SF 2019

What’s the lifeblood of any early-stage startup? Money and media coverage. Opportunities to acquire both abound at Disrupt San Francisco 2019, our flagship tech conference that takes place on October 2-4. It’s all about networking and making the right connections to make your startup dreams come true, and there’s no better networking mecca than Startup Alley. Buy a Startup Alley Exhibitor Package and plant your early-stage startup in the path of more than 10,000 attendees, including leading technologists, investors, 400 accredited media outlets...

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Y Combinator-backed Holy Grail is using machine learning to build better batteries

For a long, long time, renewable energy proponents have considered advancements in battery technology to be the Holy Grail of the industry. Advancements in energy storage has been among the hardest to achieve economically, thanks to the incredibly tricky chemistry that’s involved in storing power. Now, one company that’s launching from Y Combinator believes it has found the key to making batteries better. The company is called Holy Grail and it’s launching in the accelerator’s latest cohort. With an executive team that initially included Nuno Pereira,...

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Why startups ads are taking over the subway

If you’re a New Yorker, one of the easiest ways to keep up-to-date on the latest consumer products — furniture, beauty products, mobile apps, you name it — is to hop on the subway. Even before you board, you may find yourself walking through a station filled with colorful startup ads. And once you’re actually on the train, you may find yourself surrounded by even more of those of ads. It felt very different when I first moved to New York in 2013, back when the only companies that seemed to buy subway ads were local colleges, law firms and sketchy-sounding...

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YC-backed Lokal wants to bring local news, classifieds to 900 million Indians in their regional languages

{rss:content:encoded} YC-backed Lokal wants to bring local news, classifieds to 900 million Indians in their regional languages https://ift.tt/31FSwGL https://ift.tt/2KDcmg3 August 16, 2019 at 06:11PM Each month millions of Indians are coming online for the first time, making India the last great growth market for internet companies worldwide. But winning them presents its own challenges. These users, most of whom live in small cities and villages in India, can’t speak English. Their interests and needs are different from those of their counterparts...

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Protein replacement startups are coming for food additives as Shiru launches from Y Combinator

Shiru, a new company that’s launching from the latest batch of Y Combinator-backed startups, is joining the ranks of the businesses angling for a spot at the vanguard of the new food technology revolution. The company was founded by Jasmin Hume, the former director of food chemistry at Just (the company formerly known as Hampton Creek) and takes its name from a homophone of the Chinese shi rou (which Hume has roughly translated to an examination of meat). At Just, Hume was working with a team that was fractionating plants to look at their physical...

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Twitter to test a new filter for spam and abuse in the Direct Message inbox

Twitter is testing a new way to filter unwanted messages from your Direct Message inbox. Today, Twitter allows users to set their Direct Message inbox as being open to receiving messages from anyone, but this can invite a lot of unwanted messages, including abuse. While one solution is to adjust your settings so only those you follow can send your private messages, that doesn’t work for everyone. Some people — like reporters, for example — want to have an open inbox in order to have private conversations and receive tips. This new experiment will...

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