Americans apply for more than 250 million new financial products each year, but the majority of those applications are completed on paper or over the phone. A startup called Original Tech wants to change that by providing white-label software to improve loan applications completed online. Read More
You don’t have to be rich or T-Pain to be “on a boat.” You can rent one plus a captain for the day from Boatsetter. And now it’s got boats in more than 300 locations around the U.S. since it just acquired rival maritime marketplace Boatbound. Read More
You’ve probably had the experience of going to a website and seeing a lot of content that’s not really relevant. For the most part, a lot of this is organized in a way that’s either pre-defined or based on a limited number of signals that aims to sort of personalize the experience for a normal user. But as time goes on and the competition for eyeballs continues to heat up,… Read More
This isn’t a game of bingo, the company called Blockchain is maintaining the world’s most popular bitcoin wallet. And starting today, Blockchain users will also be able to create Ethereum wallets and hold ethers. Blockchain isn’t a centralized exchange like Coinbase or Kraken. It is simply a wallet so that you can safely story all your cryptocurrencies. Compared to many… Read More
Releaf is a new B2B marketplace that wants to help African businesses prosper by helping them find partners they can trust. The startup, which is currently taking part in Y Combinator, has signed up about 1,000 businesses since its public launch in Nigeria on August 3. Read More
Coup is launching its second city for its electronic scooter-sharing service. You can now find hundreds of Coup scooters in Paris. The company is going to compete with Cityscoot, a similar service that has been around for a while. While the city’s bike-sharing service has been around for a decade in Paris, scooter-sharing is something new. Coup has acquired around 600 electronic… Read More
Part of YC’s Summer ’17 class, Fat Lama wants to be a rental marketplace for anything. Launched late last year in London, the startup has gained early traction among professionals needing short-term rentals of creative gear – like drones, cameras or DJ equipment. But the platform is also filled with weirder goods – like a tuxedo, camper van or popcorn machine. Items… Read More
August 17, 2017
Iâve had an emotionally challenging morning so far. I woke up too early and was deeply agitated. I tried to get rolling, couldnât, and went back to bed. But I wasnât able to fall asleep and my brain kept cycling on all the political chaos and societal hatred that is going on. Iâve tried to compartmentalize it but it broke through again the last couple of days after Charlottesville.
I got up and realized the Internet was down. I decided to just go running. Two minutes in, Brooks came up lame and I walked him back home. I started again with Cooper but my left knee was a little twingey so I decided to bail and take a few rest days. The Internet was still down.
Amy and I then spent time at breakfast talking about how to reconcile the intolerable. I felt a little better and was helped by Fred Wilsonâs post If You Lie Down With Dogs, You Come Up With Fleas and Mark Susterâs post Finding My Tribe â The Upside of the Downcast Year.
Iâm off to grind through a massive backlog of email today. I leave you with a beautiful video of the eclipse from 2015.
Also published on Medium.
Bay Area startup Ripcord just scored a $40 million Series B, following its successful launch earlier this year. By all accounts, the company has apparently hit the ground running with its decidedly unsexy goal of using robots to digitize paper records for large corporations and organizations. According to CEO Alex Fielding, Ripcord already has a number of Fortune 100 companies on board,… Read More
John is an AI industry veteran, and has both exciting new trends to share, as well as cautionary guidance to offer. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to Vast and yourself. John...
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According to Grant Thornton India, the Indian fashion retail industry has evolved rapidly over the past decade propelled by investments to the tune of $13 billion flowing into the sector. Of this,...
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Codacy, a startup based in Lisbon, Portugal that offers what it calls an “automated code review platform,” has raised $5.1 million in Series A funding. EQT Ventures led the round, with participation from existing investors Faber, Caixa Capital, Join Capital, and Seedcamp. Read More
Nathan is a true animal lover, and has built a wonderful niche e-commerce company with the mission of helping elephants. Beautiful story. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your...
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Digi.me and Personal, two companies that broadly play in the personal data space by offering apps to securely store and share various data about yourself, are announcing a merger. Terms of deal remain undisclosed. Read More
The past week has been a tough one for lovers of freedom. Slippery slopes have been slid down and a side of the human mind that once remained in shadow has reared its head. Charlottesville is just the first step down a dark road.In real life, on the public square, our support of freedom of speech and public assembly – a freedom that has long helped hater and lover alike – is in… Read More
Welcome back to the TechCrunch Podcast, where we take a deeper dive into the hottest topics coming down tech’s pike. In this episode, Founders Fund partner Cyan Banister and Super Ventures managing partner Matt Miesnieks joined TechCrunch editor-in-chief Matthew Panzarino to talk the past, present and future of augmented reality. Read More
August 16, 2017
I read Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grantâs book Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy a few weeks ago. Itâs a must read for every human on this planet.
Some of you know that Iâm a huge fan of Adam Grant. His book Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success is a key inspiration for the #GiveFirst moment, my own personal philosophy, and my upcoming book #GiveFirst: A New Philosophy for Business which should be out in 2018.
Iâm also a huge fan of Sheryl Sandberg. I donât know Sheryl well, but we hung out a few times 15 years ago and both Amy and I thought she was awesome. Itâs been awesome to watch what sheâs achieved â first at Google, and now at Facebook.
Itâs even more remarkable to read the clarity with which she has processed the sudden loss of her beloved husband Dave Goldberg. I met Dave a few times in the last 1990s when he was running LAUNCH Media (we were investors via SOFTBANK) but didnât stay in touch after Yahoo! acquired LAUNCH. However, many of my Bay Area friends were close to Dave and viewed him reverently.
Amy and I have lost several close friends in the past three months to cancer and suicide. Another friend was recently diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. We are getting older and death is becoming a more visible part of our life experience.
Exploring how to process mortality is hard. I talked to a friend on my way home last night who is struggling with this. While these conversations are hard, I learn a little with each one.
Recently, Iâve been referring friends to Atul Gawandeâs amazing book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End which is the best book Iâve read so far this year. I also send them to Paul Kalanithiâs book When Breath Becomes Air, which was one of the best books Iâve ever read. I know âbestâ is a weak qualifier, so just know that they are both in the same league as Norman Cousinsâ classic Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration which had a profound impact on me in my mid-20s.
I just added Sheryl and Adamâs book to this league. Life and death are complicated. If you, like me, are constantly exploring it and trying to understand it, and yourself, better, I encourage you to read Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy. Sheryl and Adam â thank you for writing it.
Also published on Medium.
Paul Nelson: GDPR is a privacy and data protection regulation by the European Union. Companies are really scrambling to pull this off. If I were going to start a new company, that’s exactly where I...
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According to a recent report, the Brazilian e-Commerce segment grew 7.4% last year to $13.4 billion. The market is projected to grow to $15.1 billion this year. The growth in the industry is driven...
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Paul Nelson: Right now, we’re seeing an explosion of chatbots. We’re getting a lot of customers who are coming to us asking for semantic search. They want to do semantic search so that I can type in...
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