Why each Libra member’s mutiny hurts Facebook

There’s a strategic cost to the defection of Visa, Stripe, eBay, and more from the Facebook-led cryptocurrency Libra Association. They’re not just names dropping off a list. Each potentially made Libra more useful, ubiquitous, or reputable. Now they could become obstacles to the token’s launch or growth. Fearing regulators’ inquiries not just into their Libra involvement but the rest of their businesses, these companies are pulling out at least for now. None had made precise commitments to integrating Libra into their products, and they’ve said...

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Google’s Pixel 4 briefly went up for preorder on Best Buy Canada

{rss:content:encoded} Google’s Pixel 4 briefly went up for preorder on Best Buy Canada https://ift.tt/2B4fGv6 https://ift.tt/2orY2Pp October 12, 2019 at 09:28PM The Pixel 4 is set to be unveiled at an event on Tuesday. This much we know for sure. We know a bunch more, too, (as outlined in this rumor roundup from yesterday), thanks to both official reveals and unofficial leaks. How much of this was planned is hard to say, but Google seemingly doesn’t mind building up the hype cycle. Earlier today, Best Buy Canada made what may well be the most egregious...

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Startups Weekly: YC grad Revel’s plan to connect women over 50

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy news pertaining to startups and venture capital. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. I’ve been on a bit of a startup profile kick as of late. Last week, I was tired from Disrupt. Before that, I wrote about up and coming telemedicine company Alpha Medical. 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...

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Source: Nike has picked up Russell Wilson’s Tally/TraceMe in a rare acquisition

Nike has long been synonymous with premium sneakers and other sports gear, but now it seems that the company could be extending its brand into another area — digital media — thanks to the rumored acquisition of a Seattle-based startup. TechCrunch has learned from a source that the multibillion-dollar sports giant has acquired TraceMe, which originally built an app to let fans engage with sports stars and other celebrities before later pivoting into a service called Tally, a platform aimed at sports teams, broadcasters and venues to help fans engage...

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Life with the Samsung Galaxy Fold

{rss:content:encoded} Life with the Samsung Galaxy Fold https://ift.tt/317J26r https://ift.tt/2M7AwQr October 11, 2019 at 10:16PM Avoid pressing hard on the screen. Tap lightly to keep it safe. Your Galaxy Fold isn’t water or dust resistant. Don’t allow any liquids or foreign objects to enter it. Don’t attach anything to the main screen, such as a screen protector. So begins your journey. It’s the story of one of the most fascinating product releases in recent memory. It’s also the story of the most polarizing product I’ve ever reviewed…twice. The...

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Brad Feld: what founders need to know about recent changes in VC deal terms

Extra Crunch offers members the opportunity to tune into conference calls led and moderated by the TechCrunch writers you read every day. This week, TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos hopped on the line with prominent investor, entrepreneur, thought leader, and Techstars co-founder Brad Feld to discuss the latest edition of his book “Venture Deals”, his advice to founders and investors, and his take on hot button issues of the day (including dual-class shares, direct listings, and what happened at WeWork). In their conversation, Brad and Connie discuss...

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Instacart shoppers are organizing a nationwide protest

Instacart has long been at odds with its shoppers — the people who go to the grocery store on behalf of customers. From November 3-5, thousands of Instacart shoppers plan to protest with three demands. They want Instacart to change the default tip amount to at least 10%, ditch the service fee and commit to always giving 100% of the tip to the shopper. “We did not arrive at the 10% figure arbitrarily, rather this is what the default tip amount was back when I and many others started working for Instacart,” Vanessa Bain, an Instacart shopper wrote...

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Club Factory raises $100M to expand its lifestyle e-commerce platform in India

Club Factory, a Chinese e-commerce platform that sells fashion and beauty items and electronics accessories, has raised $100 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand its footprints in India. The new financing round — Series D — was led by Qiming Venture Partners Bertelsmann, IDG Capital, and” other Fortune 500 companies from the U.S. and Asia,” the five-year-old Hangzhou-headquartered startup said. Club Factory, which raised $100 million in its previous financing round early last year, has raised about $220 million to date. Club...

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Rahko raises £1.3M seed from Balderton for quantum machine learning tech

There remains a problem with the race to create a quantum computer, which is that experiments in this area can be extremely error-prone. Rahko is a new UK startup that thinks is can address this problem with what’s known as ‘Quantum machine learning’. It’s now raised a £1.3M ($1.6M) in a seed round led by Balderton Capital, a rare move for a VC which normally only comes in at a Series A level. Joining the round is AI Seed and angel investors Charles Songhurst (former Microsoft Head of Corporate Strategy), Tom McInerney (Founder, TGM Ventures),...

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Polte raises $12.5 million to track devices using LTE signal

Polte has raised another $12.5 million. The company is building a service that leverages 4G (and potentially 5G) signal to track things around for commercial and industrial use cases. The main advantage of that is that using cellular signal uses a lot less battery than acquiring GPS location and transmitting it over cellular. Today’s funding round is an extension of the company’s Series A round. In 2017, Polte raised $6 million — and the company is raising another $12.5 million this year. Polte isn’t disclosing the list of investors. The startup...

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Uber to acquire grocery delivery startup Cornershop

Uber will acquire Cornershop, a grocery delivery startup that began life serving the Latin American market and recently shifted to offer service in Toronto, its first North American city. Uber announced on Friday that it expects that its acquisition of a majority ownership stake in Cornershop in early 2020, once it receives all the necessary regulatory sign-off. Cornershop was founded in 2015 by Oskar Hjertonsson, Daniel Undurraga and Juan Pablo, and it’s headquartered in Chile. The company will continue to operate under that leadership in its...

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Apester unveils a new Story Strip format for online publishers

{rss:content:encoded} Apester unveils a new Story Strip format for online publishers https://ift.tt/2OHxHr5 https://ift.tt/2MAssXo October 11, 2019 at 03:43PM Apester, which helps digital publishers add interactivity to their content, is rolling out a new format called the Story Strip. CEO and co-founder Moti Cohem told me that the Story Strip is modeled on the Story format popularized by Snapchat and Instagram — a format that he praised for being one of the few content types that’s truly “tailored to the mobile experience,” offering a fast, interactive...

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Apester unveils a new Story Strip format for online publishers

Apester, which helps digital publishers add interactivity to their content, is rolling out a new format called the Story Strip. CEO and co-founder Moti Cohem told me that the Story Strip is modeled on the Story format popularized by Snapchat and Instagram — a format that he praised for being one of the few content types that’s truly “tailored to the mobile experience,” offering a fast, interactive experience for readers. Cohen said that by bringing the format out of “the social walled gardens” and allowing publishers to embed Story Strips into...

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IAC outlines its plans for a Match Group spinoff

Digital media holding company IAC has taken the next step toward spinning off Match Group, with a proposal outlining what that process would look like. Match Group (which owns Tinder, PlentOfFish, OkCupid, Hinge and of course Match itself) is already a publicly-traded company, but IAC remains the majority owner. With the spinoff, IAC says it should distribute its Match Group shares to IAC stockholders, “resulting in two independent public companies.” “Today IAC proposed an important first step in the separation of Match Group from IAC,” said IAC...

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IAC outlines its plans for a Match Group spinoff

{rss:content:encoded} IAC outlines its plans for a Match Group spinoff https://ift.tt/2M9Ztep https://ift.tt/2M5tJXI October 11, 2019 at 03:01PM Digital media holding company IAC has taken the next step toward spinning off Match Group, with a proposal outlining what that process would look like. Match Group (which owns Tinder, PlentOfFish, OkCupid, Hinge and of course Match itself) is already a publicly-traded company, but IAC remains the majority owner. With the spinoff, IAC says it should distribute its Match Group shares to IAC stockholders,...

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Trump gets on Twitch

The reelection campaign will be livestreamed. US president Donald Trump has joined Amazon-owned livestreaming platform Twitch. Twitch is best known as a social video streaming platform for gamers but does host other content, including politics. The verified DonaldTrump Twitch account, spotted earlier by Reuters, has just one video in the recent broadcast section so far: A livestream of a Trump rally which took place in Minneapolis yesterday evening. Alongside the saved video of this broadcast is a growing selection of user generated clips culled...

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Descartes Labs snaps up $20M more for its AI-based geospatial imagery analytics platform

Satellite imagery holds a wealth of information that could be useful for industries, science and humanitarian causes, but one big and persistent challenge with it has been a lack of effective ways to tap that disparate data for specific ends. That’s created a demand for better analytics, and now, one of the startups that has been building solutions to do just that is announcing a round of funding as it gears up for expansion. Descartes Labs, a geospatial imagery analytics startup out of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is today announcing that it has closed...

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Final day to save up to €600 on passes to Disrupt Berlin 2019

Tick tock it’s now o’clock, startuppers. The last few hours of super early bird savings on passes to Disrupt Berlin 2019 are slipping away faster than grains of sand through an hourglass. The bird bites the dust and prices go up as of 11:59 p.m. (CEST) tonight, 11 October. Buy your passes to Disrupt Berlin now and, depending on which pass you choose, you can save up to €600. Who wants to pay more than necessary? What’s high on your Disrupt must-see list? Maybe it’s the Hackathon where up to 500 participants will compete in sponsored challenges...

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