Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Box looks to woo Wall Street with its positive cash flow story

 Like Box’s last quarterly check-in, the company once again touted that it had free cash flow in the first quarter this year as part of its Q1 earnings report today — a signal that Wall Street may be looking for as a barometer of its future health as a company. Box in the last quarter said it would likely lose between 14 cents and 15 cents per share, though it looks like it came… Read More

The best Meeker 2017 Internet Trends slides and what they mean

 Here are the must-read stats about what’s happening with Internet adoption, smartphones, ads, ecommerce, entertainment, gaming, enterprise healthcare, China, India, and startups. We’ve picked the most important slides from legendary Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker’s massive 355-page 2017 Internet Trends report, deciphered the complex data, and explained why… Read More

Read Mary Meeker’s essential 2017 Internet Trends report

 This is the best way to get up to speed on everything going on in tech. Kleiner Perkins venture partner Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends report is essentially the state of the union for the technology industry. The widely anticipated slide deck compiles the most informative research on what’s getting funded, how Internet adoption is progressing, which interfaces are resonating,… Read More

CoreOS updates its Tectonic container platform with the latest Kubernetes release, etcd as a service

 CoreOS is hosting its user conference in San Francisco today. Unsurprisingly, the company had a few announcements to make at the event. Most of these centered around its Tectonic platform for managing Kubernetes-based container infrastructures. For the most part, these updates are pretty straightforward. Tectonic now uses the latest version of Kubernetes, for example (1.6.4), which the… Read More

Lob tries to maximize snail mail efficiency with another $20M

 You probably still get plenty of snail mail at your home — whether that’s wedding invitations, bills or advertisements for new credit cards. But despite all the efforts to kill that snail mail and get it sent directly to an inbox, there really doesn’t yet seem to be a replacement to that experience of getting home and stepping over those letters from businesses (important… Read More

Concord wants to become the Google Docs of contracts

 Concord wants to be your all-in-one solution for everything related to contracts. The startup just raised a $3.7 million Series A round from Alven Capital, with existing investors Streamlined Ventures, Bruno Deschamps and Thibault Poutrel also participating. Many departments rely on contracts to work with clients, suppliers, legal partners and more. But it’s still a tedious process as… Read More

Salesforce announces $50 million fund to invest in cloud consulting startups

 Salesforce Ventures is announcing a $50 million fund to invest in “cloud consulting” startups. The corporate venture arm is making a special effort to finance companies that are synergistic to the tech giant’s business. The team has a “strong commitment to our consulting partners to make sure that we continue to have the partners that we need to grow Salesforce… Read More

Monday, May 29, 2017

NYU’s Sarah Kaufman talks about the shape of cities to come

 On this week’s episode of Technotopia we talk to Sarah Kaufman, the Assistant Director at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy & Management. Kaufman is working to create new transit opportunities for New Yorkers – and the world – and expects the future to be quite interesting. Her prediction? As we move towards self-driving cars we will see more options for… Read More

Thursday, May 25, 2017

App maker Appian soars 25% on first day as a public company

 It was off to the races for Appian which debuted on the Nasdaq on Thursday, soaring 25% on its first day on the stock market. After pricing shares at $12, the company closed the day above $15, valuing the company at about $900 million. The company helps its enterprise and government customers with app development. “Appian is the easiest way for companies to build their own… Read More

Rackspace acquires TriCore, adds enterprise applications to cloud management mix

Rackspace Rackspace announced today it was purchasing TriCore, giving it an enterprise applications management play to go along with its cloud management services. The announcement comes just one day after the company announced it was bringing a new CEO onboard, make it a busy week for the firm. The companies did not share the terms of the deal, but Rackspace called it the largest acquisition in… Read More

Red Hat to acquire Codenvy as part of its growing container strategy

 Red Hat, which has made its name as the enterprise Linux company, has been making clear in recent years that it sees the cloud and containerization as a significant part of its future. Today, it announced its intent to acquire San Francisco startup Codenvy to continue building on that strategy and give developers access to a cloud-based integrated development environment. The company did… Read More

Meta SaaS raises $1.5 million from Mark Cuban and others

 Meta SaaS is a product that helps you cancel other products. Like Cardlife and Cleanshelf, Meta SaaS looks at all of your software-as-a-service subscriptions and tells you which ones you use and, more important, which ones you don’t. Founded by Arlo Gilbert and Scott Hertel, the product raised $1.5 million in seed from Mark Cuban with participation from Barracuda Networks, Capital… Read More

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Appian prices application software IPO at $12

 Virginia-based Appian is finally braving the public markets, after a long journey as a private company formed in the dot-com boom of 1999. Appian announced Wednesday that they priced their IPO at $12 per share, raising $75 million for the company. This is in-line with the previously proposed price range of $11 to $13. Appian provides app development software for its business and… Read More

Airbnb is running its own internal university to teach data science

 Tech companies, and increasingly even non-tech companies, are struggling with the fact that there are not enough trained data scientists to fill market demand. Every company has their own strategy for hiring and training, but Airbnb has taken things a step further — running its own university-style program, complete with a custom course-numbering system. Read More

Rackspace appoints a new CEO

 Rackspace today announced that its board has appointed Joe Eazor as its new CEO, effective June 12. Eazor will replace Rackspace president Jeff Cotten, who stepped in as the company’s interim CEO after former CEO Taylor Rhodes left the company about three weeks ago. At the time, Rhodes said he left Rackspace to become “the CEO of a smaller private company.” That company, we… Read More

Tennis star Serena Williams joins SurveyMonkey’s board

 Serena Williams (yes, THAT Serena Williams) has joined the board of consumer survey startup SurveyMonkey, along with Intuit CEO Brad Smith. This is the tennis superstar’s first venture into Silicon Valley and, according to a SurveyMonkey spokesperson, came about at the suggestion of fellow board member and Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. Read More

Report: Microsoft to buy security firm Hexadite for $100M as Cloudyn still in progress

 While we wait to get more news on Microsoft closing a reported acquisition of Cloudyn, another report has emerged of one more enterprise startup that the software giant is buying in Israel. Calacalist reported earlier today that Microsoft is paying $100 million to acquire Hexadite, a cybersecurity company that uses AI to sort through and address smaller network attacks — which can… Read More

Collaboration platform Smartsheet nabs $52M at $800M valuation

 Cloud-based communication and collaboration platforms are the name of the game today in enterprise software, and now one of the still-independent leaders in that space is announcing a significant round at a hefty price to ride the wave of growth. Smartsheet, the Bellevue, Washington-based startup that has built spreadsheet software that lets people set and manage tasks and work across teams… Read More

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Our favorite startups from Alchemist Accelerator batch 15

 Founded as an enterprise alternative to accelerator stalwarts like Y Combinator, Alchemist Accelerator has managed to assemble a solid track record in its five years of operation.  Going into batch 15, 159 companies have graduated from Alchemist, of which 89 have closed institutional rounds and 15 have been acquired. The latest batch of 19 companies surely hopes to push those numbers even higher. Read More

Watch Alchemist Accelerator’s Demo Day right here

TechCrunch is pleased to bring you Alchemist Accelerator‘s demo day. Alchemist is one of those rare programs that focuses on enterprise startups. These aren’t your parents’ enterprise companies. Pitches today will span products that help businesses with crowdfunding, wearables, sustainable farming and managing meetings with the power of AI. Investors and press will hear… Read More

WTF is an ICO?

 A newly famous transaction type we need to understand is called the “Initial Coin Offering.” An ICO is akin to an IPO, but in temporal reverse (sort of). Although confusing, it has recently acquired prominence as a favored way to launch a new cryptocurrency. Read More

Merlon Intelligence raises $7.65 million in seed financing to combat money laundering

 OpenDoor, Oscar Health, Palantir and now Merlon Intelligence. Bradford Cross, founder of the venture capital firm Data Collective is joining the ranks of VCs who have caught the entrepreneurship bug, abandoning a cushy lifestyle for one with considerably more volatility. His latest startup, Merlon Intelligence, services banks, helping them cut down on risk and put a stop to money laundering. Read More

Google’s Unique Reach tells marketers when you’ve seen the same ad a gazillion times

 At Google’s Marketing Next conference in San Francisco, the company announced Unique Reach, a new measurement tool that captures the number of times the same person has seen an ad. Unique Reach can aggregate impressions across devices, campaigns and formats. We have all suffered the pain of seeing the same ad for a BBQ grill we can’t fit in our apartment on our phone, tablet,… Read More

Google launches the Chrome Enterprise Bundle for IT admins

a young sundar pichai Google is making it easier for IT admins to deploy and manage its Chrome browser in their businesses. The new Chrome Enterprise Bundle for gives admins a single installer for the Chrome browser, the Chrome Legacy Browser Support extension for running the occasional ActiveX widget, and a number of administrative policy templates. With the launch of Chrome 58, Google’s browser now… Read More

Google’s huge 4K touchscreen whiteboard is now on sale for $5K

 Google’s Jamboard is not a kitchen app for curating PB&J recipes – it’s a 55-inch digital whiteboard, with pen and touch input, companion iOS and Android apps, an Nvidia Jetson TX1 processor on board and 4K resolution. The behemoth is an enterprise-focused collaboration tool, that comes in three fun colors and has a stand that looks ripped from a Herman Miller catalog, and… Read More

Google Attribution is a free and easy way to evaluate marketing efforts

 At Google’s Marketing Next conference, the company is announcing a new beta for Google Attribution, a free tool for examining the role that different marketing strategies play in customer purchasing decisions. Regardless of device or marketing channel, Google wants Attribution to be a home for evaluating marketing campaigns. By creating a tight loop between strategy, ad spend and… Read More