Sramana Mitra: You were doing Tech Stars in Austin? Ryan Farley: Yes. We were with 10 other companies that were all just incredible. It was something that we hadn’t seen before within entrepreneurial...
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It’s time to put an end to these dumb automatic customer support calls that ask you to press 1, then press 4, then press 2, then say “yes”… CallDesk is working on a virtual agent for customer support calls. Think something like Siri for customer calls. Point Nine Capital and EQT Ventures are investing in today’s funding round of $2.5 million (€2.1 million). There… Read More
September 27, 2017
This is worth the full ten minutes. Sit back, relax, and be amazed.
Also published on Medium.
Eden, the office management and tech support platform, has today closed $10 million in Series A funding led by Spectrum 28, with participation from Fifth Wall Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Y Combinator Continuity Fund, Canvas Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Eniac Ventures and other existing investors. Eden started out as a tech support service for both businesses and consumers. The… Read More
Don’t expect the ARKit app rush to end any time soon. MojiLala, the betaworks-backed marketplace for emojis and emoticons, is today launching their second app. Meet Surreal, a marketplace that lets users buy virtual objects. The app opens up to an outward-facing camera and lets users choose animated virtual objects, which they can place in a photo or video. Right now, Surreal only… Read More
XO Group has acquired Veri, a startup that allows users to automatically share photos of weddings and other important events.XO Group’s flagship property is The Knot, which has been used by 25 million couples to plan their weddings. So Veri seems like a pretty natural fit — the digital media company says it paid $3.5 million in cash for the startup.Both CEO Michael Steib and… Read More
There’s a lot of talk about employees wanting much more flexible work schedules, and a lot of that is thanks to the emergence of companies like Lyft and Uber that allow people to work on their own schedules. But that ability still doesn’t exist for the rest of the world, especially when it comes to hourly jobs with rigid schedules. But that doesn’t mean that employees… Read More
Today, yet another subscription service joins the pack. Sofia Vergara and Renata Black’s EBY underwear enterprise has just gone live, letting users sign up to receive three pairs of new underwear every three months. But EBY is much more than your average subscription service. Just as Warby Parker and Lemonade built a layer of social good right into their businesses, EBY is also using… Read More
Fintech startup Revolut is trying so many things at once that it’s hard to keep track of everything. This time, the company is partnering with Simplesurance to launch a new insurance product. You can now insure your cell phone for £1 per week/£42 per year, which represents $1.35 per week/$56.50 per year. Most telecom companies already provide cell phone insurance options. But they tend… Read More
Startup funding may seem like a cut-and-dry affair. Money goes into a startup in exchange for shares in the startup. Easy enough, right?Not so much. There are plenty of complex terms, clauses, provisions and other conditions written into investment agreements. So in this series, we’re exploring how some of the most common funding terms affect the fundraising process. Read More
Managed by Q, the platform that helps office managers handle day-to-day operations, has made its first acquisition, picking up Y Combinator graduates Hivy for an undisclosed amount.Managed By Q lets office managers book cleanings, handy work, IT help, and order office supplies thanks to a partnership with Staples. MBQ has raised upwards of $72 million and now serves New York, Chicago, San… Read More
One of the big promises with iOS 11 is ARKit. This new framework makes it much easier to look at virtual objects in the real world using augmented reality. Sketchfab has been building the biggest 3D model sharing platform, a sort of YouTube for 3D models. That’s why today’s iOS update turns Sketchfab into a thorough augmented reality app. This implementation isn’t perfect… Read More
While many folks think of Yelp as a place to find a great place to eat, the company has been quietly infiltrating other categories. Home Services — stuff like plumbing, movers, mechanics, etc. — seem to be a booming business for Yelp, now representing 20 percent of the company’s overall revenue. So it only makes sense that Yelp has been tailoring features specifically for the… Read More
Plume Labs wants to be the definitive startup when it comes to air pollution. The company has built an app, an API and now an air quality tracker. The Flow is a tiny Bluetooth device you pair with your smartphone to learn more about the air you’re currently breathing. It works both inside and outside and could be particularly useful if you live in a polluted city. It tracks… Read More
September 26, 2017
In response to my post Book: Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape several people asked me for the feminist literature reading list that Amy had put together for me.
Following are the other ten books that Iâm working my way through this fall.
Sexual Politics by Kate Millet
Sisterhood is Forever by Robin Morgan
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
Ainât I a Woman by bell hooks
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer
In Search of Our Motherâs Gardens by Alice Walker
A Room of Oneâs Own by Virginia Woolf
Beyond God the Father by Mary Daly
If there are any that youâd like to add to my reading list, please leave them in the comments.
Also published on Medium.
French startup Eligo Bioscience just raised $20 million to develop next-gen biotherapeutics. Khosla Ventures is leading the round. This is also Khosla Ventures’ first investment in a French startup. Existing investor Seventure Partners is also participating, and the startup received a $2 million grant from the Worldwide Innovation Challenge. Eligo Bioscience has been working on a new way… Read More
ProsperWorks, a service that offers a set of Google-centric CRM tools, today announced that it has raised a $53 million Series C round led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from GV (the fund you probably still remember as Google Ventures). This new round brings the company’s total funding to $87 million, which, in ProsperWorks’ own words, makes t the “#1 funded… Read More
NBC Universal is taking a major step forward in making TV advertising work more like digital.
The media giant will soon start selling ads that will appear in nearly all of its top national shows â from "This is Us" to "Sunday Night Football" to "Mr. Robot" â using the same kind of automated software that advertisers use to buy ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. And NBCU is confident that in doing so, it will prove that its ads are more effective than ads on the biggest platforms in social media.
NBCU has signed on Target as its first partner in this endeavor. The retailer will buy ads on multiple NBCU networks, from SyFy to E! to the NBC broadcast network, using its own proprietary customer data.
But Target won't have to call any NBCU sales executives. Just like many advertisers do via social media platforms, Target and its media buying agency Essence will be able to plug directly into NBCU's ad inventory supply via an API (or application programming interface).
For example, Target would theoretically be able to tap into its consumer data to find digital profiles of its active back-to-school shoppers from its e-commerce site and email newsletters and deliver ads during NBCU shows that reach a large number of those potential shoppers.
To facilitate this kind of automated dealmaking, NBCU has tapped 4C, an advertising technology company that helps advertisers buy ads on Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram.
TVÂ ads work better
On that note, NBCU isn't just trying to emulate its digital rivals' selling options. By making its ad inventory available in the same way Facebook's is, it's hoping to make it clear to brands that TV ads work better â and advertisers are better off keeping their budgets on TV.
"Each client and agency will transact directly," said Mike Rosen, NBCU's executive vice president, portfolio sales, and strategy. Rosen predicted that in the near future, TV show ratings will matter less than how individual shows perform for individual advertisers.Â
Nearly all of NBCU's ad inventory will be available, with the exception of ads in future marquee events like the Super Bowl, Olympics, and World Cup, Rosen said.
NBCU has been an early leader in pushing TV to adapt some of the web's ad tactics, such as a more automated buying process and more targeting precision using data. Last year the company announced that some linear TV ads would be available through some exclusive programmatic deals.Â
Still, with those partnerships, NBCU's sales team still had to manually implement each transaction. This time around, it will happen automatically.
Michael Bologna, president of the advanced TV ad firm one2one Media said that NBCU's move could have a big impact on the TV industry's adoption of programmatic ad selling, assuming enough advertisers and agencies are ready to operate this way, and whether others follow suit.
Industry standard?
"It's a step forward no doubt," he said. "The question is whether other networks adopt the same ad tech and processes, or if everybody does this their own way. That could become convoluted." In other words, NBCU risks becoming its own walled garden if other big TV companies go their own way.Â
NBCU and many of the other top broadcast TV players have been unified in their desire to take shots at Google and Facebook of late, particularly given each of the tech platforms' recent public struggles (Facebook with self-inflicted metrics errors and Google battle with ads ending up next to hate videos on YouTube).
To be sure, TV is still far from the web's promise of delivering individual ads for each and every consumer. You may visit Yahoo.com and see and ad for sneakers you've recently been shopping for while your friend logging at the same time may see an ad based on his recent vacation searches.
But in the case of NBCU's new initiative, the whole country will still see the same ads. The hope is that the right ads will be delivered during shows that reach a much more interested set of viewers.
" We are so confident that when it is evaluated, this w ill allow advertisers to see the true value proposition [of TV ads on NBCU properties]," said Rosen. " Weâre actually incredibly confident that ours will be more effective."
Business Insider spoke with John Bradshaw, anthrozoologist and author of The Animals Among Us, about the differences in personalities between dog owners and cat owners.Â
Mr Bradshaw said; "People refer to themselves as dog people or cat people and I think that the temptation is to think that means that thatâs the kind of pet that they have but when people have studied this, they found that actually there isnât really any great relationship between them."
"I think what some people mean when they say theyâre a dog person is it means they are masculine and decisive whereas when people say theyâre a cat person maybe theyâre more independent and perhaps a bit more feminine. So theyâre not necessarily talking about the animals themselves, theyâre talking about the way they project their own personalities on the ideal cat or the ideal dog."
"There is a small difference in personality between the average personality between dog owners and cat owners but itâs comparatively small."
"Cat owners are supposed to be a little bit more neurotic than dog owners are, for example."
"But there is an enormous amount of overlap and I think thatâs really the key point, is that the choice of animal is much more to do with a lifestyle choice than a personality thing, that any kind of person can bond with either species. It just may be easier for somebody who lives in the country to have a dog or somebody who lives in the city to have a cat."
You can find out more about Dr John Bradshaw's book here.
Produced and filmed by Jasper Pickering. Research by Fraser Moore.Â
China has largely blocked messaging service WhatsApp throughout the country, The New York Times reports.
The move comes just weeks before the start of the Communist Party's gathering next month, where the new party leader â and, by extension, the country's ruler â will be announced.
The Chinese government had already disrupted video calls and file sharing throughout the summer, as the encryption method used for both relies on fairly standard data transfer protocols.
Text messages, however, use the tougher end-to-end encryption â where not even Facebook can see the content of the messages that pass through its servers â which suggests that the government may have found a way to target the more heavily encrypted protocols with specialised software aimed at interfering with WhatsApp messages.
Chinese users, in turn, are moving towards WeChat, the app developed by Chinese software giant Tencent. The platform now has over 963 million users, and virtually works almost as an operating system itself (as Chinese users take advantage of its many features, like money transfer, beyond simple messaging).
The big difference between WeChat and WhatsApp, however, is that WeChat can (and is) easily monitored by the country's censors. Earlier this month, WeChat sent a notification to all its users, to remind them that the service complies with official requests for information.
Facebook's main platform, as well as the image-sharing service Instagram, remain unavailable in China.