Covering a red carpet isn’t usually a skill in the repertoire of tech journalists, but it’s also not every day that you get to see Vin Diesel and Kevin Durant on the same stage as Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan and Sergey Brin. If the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is nerd prom, the Breakthrough Prize Ceremony is …
Read More »Foodstantly is transforming how people shop for food in Nigeria
Uchay Ariolu, the founder of Foodstantly, has been working in the food industry for most of his life. His father was in the industry, and Ariolu himself began investing in the meat industry before he went to college. After school, Ariolu founded the fast food chain Roastables, which grew to five …
Read More »Ruvento raises new seed fund to invest in hardware across Singapore, China and the U.S.
Today, Ruvento is announcing a new $25 million seed fund for hardware startups in need of capital from Singapore, China and the U.S. The fund, managed by Slava Solonitsyn and Alex Toh, will write 70 percent of its checks between $100k and $500k. The rest of the capital will be reserved for follow-on investments of up …
Read More »Airbnb’s plan to compromise with cities as regulatory challenges pile up
Airbnb looks to be making a key strategy change with regards to its global lobbying efforts. After a failed lawsuit that made the company little progress in the state of New York, Airbnb is rallying behind an age-old political tool — the compromise. Any good negotiation comes with table strategy. In Airbnb’s case, …
Read More »Scanadu to shut down support for its Scout device per FDA regulation and customers are mad
Medical startup Scanadu informed customers today it will no longer support its Scout device starting May 15, 2017. The reason? Though Scanadu has been working with the Food and Drug Administration to get full approval for this and other devices, it seems Scout didn’t make the cut. Scanadu came out of …
Read More »Suiteness raises $5M to expand their hotel suite booking platform
Suiteness, a YC company that makes it easy to book hotel suites for groups, has raised $5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Bullpen Capital Global Founders Capital, with participation from HVF (Max Levchin’s personal fund), YC’s Continuity Fund, Kima Ventures and Altair Capital. The company will …
Read More »Trump hails Uber’s Kalanick and rockets SpaceX’s Musk to positions on Strategic and Policy Forum
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum has picked up two of the highest-flying and hardest-driving executives in the tech industry with the addition of Uber Technologies’ Travis Kalanick and SpaceX’s Elon Musk. Announced today, the two appointees join a board headed by private equity titan Stephen Schwarzman, who …
Read More »ASO (App Store Optimization) Is The New SEO, And Here’s A Tool To Do It
What’s the hardest thing about building a successful mobile app? If you answered “building a mobile app,” you’re wrong. It’s getting your app found. With over 600,000+ iOS applications, and now some 450,000 on Android, the real challenge for developers is having their app surfaced higher than hundreds of other competitors in …
Read More »Five Big Changes In The iOS 6 App Store (And What Developers Should Do)
Some developers are complaining that since the introduction of the Chomp-inspired App Store redesign in iOS 6, sales have noticeably dropped. Others say the changes are good for indie developers. Is the new iOS App Store a step forward or step back for mobile app developers, users, and the app …
Read More »SearchMan Gives Developers At-A-Glance Info About Their Apps’ “Discoverability” With New Search Visibility Scores
The 500 Startups-backed app analytics firm SearchMan is debuting a new tool for mobile developers looking to quickly get a sense of how discoverable their application is inside App Store Search. This metric is more important than ever, following the changes to the iOS 6 App Store in September which have impacted developer rankings …
Read More »