StarLeaf takes $40M to keep growing its videoconferencing as a service business
Author: Natasha Lomas / Source: TechCrunch UK teleconference company StarLeaf, which sells cloud-based video and conferencing services to businesses, has taken on its first external capital close to a decade after first being founded, back in 2008. The $40...
U.K. Engineers Have Developed a Prosthetic Hand That Can ‘See’
Author: Angela Moscaritolo / Source: Entrepreneur Biomedical engineers at Newcastle University in the U.K. have developed a prosthetic hand with an incredible new skill: the ability to "see." The bionic hand is fitted with a camera that "instantaneously...
How to Spy on Your Competitors to Outrank Them on Google
Author: Jason Parks / Source: Entrepreneur Want to hear something crazy? In 30 minutes, I can look at your competitor’s website along with your website and deploy a strategy for you to achieve a better search engine ranking than them on Google. No joke! I’ve...
Media Prima buys Rev Asia for $24M to create Malaysia’s largest digital media platform
Author: Jon Russell / Source: TechCrunch The U.S. isn’t the only market where media companies are consolidating to offer an advertising platform to rival Facebook and Google. While AOL (which owns TechCrunch) is in the process of acquiring Yahoo, over in...
The 21st Century Demand for Creative Entrepreneurship, and How to Take Advantage
Author: Toby Nwazor / Source: Entrepreneur The definition for "business" in past centuries and for several years into this one might be summed up as “providing goods and services to satisfy human needs and desires.” But, today, this basic concept alone won't...
Prepared food distribution service Power Supply rebrands as Territory and raises $6.7 million
Author: Jonathan Shieber / Source: TechCrunch If you thought the world didn’t need another prepared food distribution and delivery service, apparently you’d be wrong, as the newly minted startup Territory has managed to pull in $6.7 million for its healthier...
Grammarly raises $110 million for a better spell check
Author: Katie Roof / Source: TechCrunch Some people really need help with grammar. By the way, “a lot” is two words. “Your” and “you’re” are not the same thing. Grammarly has been quietly building a freemium grammar checker to help students, writers and...
Pandora will consider buyout before selling $150M in preferred stock to KKR
Author: Josh Constine / Source: TechCrunch Pandora will undertake a “strategic review” of whether it will sell itself to an acquirer. If not, it’s agreed to take a cash infusion to maintain “a strong balance sheet” as it struggles to shift from radio to the...
ESPN Co-Founder Explains How to Take Your Startup From Local to Global
Author: Kieron Johnson / Source: Entrepreneur Interstate 84 is a highway across the state of Connecticut that Bill and Scott Rasmussen will never forget. For it was there - - in the hot, sticky confines of a car in a traffic jam -- that an irritable...
8 Master Tips on How to Get Paid for Public Speaking
Author: Carol Roth / Source: Entrepreneur One of the top questions I get from entrepreneurs, experts and other professionals is “How do you go about actually getting paid for public speaking?” I turned to some of my well-respected colleagues who speak at...
Dell Technologies Capital emerges from stealth, announces over 70 investments
Author: John Mannes / Source: TechCrunch Most venture capital funds that have 27 exits under their belt are not in stealth. In fact, most venture capital firms today don’t even know what 27 exits looks like. But Dell Ventures, in stealth until today, has...
Will Entrepreneurship Make You Rich? A Realistic Perspective.
Author: Jayson DeMers / Source: Entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is a manifestation of the American dream. Anyone, with the right idea and enough hard work can become successful, the saying goes. And, indeed, we constantly see images of multi-billionaires, like...
Music royalty collector Kobalt nabs $75M led by Hearst Entertainment at $775M valuation
Author: Ingrid Lunden / Source: TechCrunch As music streaming continues to grow in ubiquity, a company that’s built a platform to collect royalties on music played across billions of streams is cashing in on the opportunity. Kobalt, the European startup that...
SiFive raises $8.5 million for licensable custom microprocessors
Author: Dean Takahashi / Source: VentureBeat SiFive is pioneering a new model in the semiconductor business and to do so has raised $8.5 million in a second round of funding, led by Spark Capital. San Francisco-based SiFive is on a mission to democratize...
Chinese e-taxi giant Didi goes bilingual with English-language app and real-time translations
Author: Paul Sawers / Source: VentureBeat Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing (“Didi”) has announced a new bilingual service as it looks to ramp up its appeal to international travelers. The company, which merged with Uber’s Chinese operations in a $30...
Open Source database developer MariaDB picks up $27M from the EIB
Author: Ingrid Lunden / Source: TechCrunch As open source database architecture continues to grow in popularity, one of the bigger developers in the area has picked up some funding to target the opportunity. MariaDB Corporation, the company that develops...
How chatbots transform how we work
Author: Rick Nucci / Source: VentureBeat Last year I talked about how Browser Extensions are changing the way we work. The ability to reduce the number of places we need to go during our work day can directly improve company performance metrics and help...
VRobot lets you wreck a big city in virtual reality
Author: Dean Takahashi / Source: VentureBeat Wrecking big cities in virtual reality is officially a thing. The latest developers to take their turn at the genre is Luden.io, a team of VR developers at Nival Interactive. VRobot lets you play as a giant robot...