Yanai Oron, General Partner at Vertex Ventures, took us through his firm’s investment focus on deep technology ventures in Israel. The discussion includes an excellent window into how VC firms have...

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According to a Zion Market Research report published last year, the global Applications Programming Interface (API) management market is estimated to grow from $609.32 million in 2016 to $ 3.44...

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CryptoKitties, the virtual collectible kitten game that turned into a viral sensation has raised $12M in funding and will be spun out from Axiom Zen, the Vancouver and San Francisco-based design studio that originally built the game.

The round is being led by Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures, both of which have quickly developed a reputation for backing fast-growing cryptocurrency startups like Coinbase. A bunch of notable angels also participated, including Naval Ravikant (CEO and founder of AngelList), Mark Pincus (founder of Zynga) and Fred Ehrsam (founder of Coinbase) among others.

So what are CryptoKitties? They’re essentially digital collectibles built on top of the Ethereum blockchain. Each one is unique and has certain attributes that make them rare and desirable, almost like a digital beanie baby. And users are spending tons of real money on them, with some of the rarest kitties fetching over $100,000 when the game first launched.

While the startup is being pretty mum on what the future looks like and what they’re planning on using this funding for, it’s almost certain that the long term goal is to expand beyond CryptoKitties and use the same Ethereum ERC-721 collectible standard to create other game experiences, especially ones that can be played by regular people who are unfamiliar with cryptocurrency.

To this note, Fred Wilson of USV quickly outlined the firm’s thesis behind investing in CryptoKitties, saying “we think digital collectibles is one of many amazing things that blockchains enable that literally could not be done before this technology emerged. We also think digital collectibles and all of the games they enable will be one of the first, if not the first, big consumer use cases for blockchain technologies.” 

If you want to find out more about how CryptoKitties works check out our original story here.

Color is looking to add a new test to its line of genetic testing, this time focusing on hereditary factors that may affect a person’s chance for being prone to cardiovascular complications like arrhythmia and cardiomyopathy.

Called the hereditary heart health test, Color’s new test looks to isolate the genes that can be partially responsible for heart-related conditions that may have a hereditary component. Color says the test analyzes 30 genes that contribute to the structure and rhythm of a healthy heart to determine if there may be any hereditary factors that could lead to heart complications down the line. VP of clinical operations Scott Topper acknowledged that hereditary factors certainly aren’t the only factors that might play into cardiovascular complications like arrhythmia, but there has been enough research to show that the potential hereditary genetic components that lead to those conditions is impactful enough to warrant building a test for those markers.

“Some of these conditions are relatively rare, and for most of them we expect the actual incidence to be about 1 in 200,” Topper said. “But what that means is, if we handle 1,000 people this week, we expect 5 of them to be affected by this. For those 5, the consequences of it going undetected, can be as extreme as sudden death. While though they’re rare, they incredibly impactful. It’s not a 100% predictive — For BRCA for example, we know that a woman who has a BRCA mutation has about an 80% chance of getting breast cancer in their lifetime and getting again and again. It’s not 100%, but it’s a profound enough likelihood that many people decide to take action.”

Color looks to target genes that the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics identified as high-impact and actionable. The end product is to see, if there is a mutation in one of those genes, there may be a possibility that the person is at higher risk for cardiovascular problems like cardiomyopathy or arrhythmia. There isn’t full penetrance — just like there isn’t in the BRCA test — so it’s more of a ‘heads up, go get it checked out just in case’ situation.

Color, previously Color Genomics, is one of a few well-funded genetic testing startups that aim to make it easier for consumers to get tested for potential complications down the line where they can take some preventative steps. In the case of this test, the goal is to flag any potential risk and then have them follow up with clinicians to determine if there are any lifestyle changes that need to happen. Consumers take a swab of saliva and send off the test — either for a few hundred bucks, or through a program that some employers are putting in place. Color raised $80 million in a financing round in August last year.

The latter part of that, employers getting into issuing these tests for their employees, is going to be increasingly important for Color. Catching diseases early helps reduce the overall cost to employers before more problems occur. While Color has largely focused on the cancer space with tests for detecting genes that are associated with higher risk of breast cancer, it started branching into tests for potential cardiovascular problems like Familial Hypercholesterolemia. That test, launched in August last year, costs $249 for a direct purchase for a consumer.

To be sure, the average customer is giving up their genetic data in order to get tested for these potential hereditary conditions, a password that you’ll (probably) never be able to change. As more and more of these tests become available, there’s a good chance it’ll attract a new segment of customers — those that are looking to head off complications based on what’s happened to family members, or even those who are just curious about whether or not they have risk. Topper said many at Color come from a tech-native background from companies like Google, Twitter, and Dropbox, and it’s something that’s perpetually top-of-mind. (Though, to be sure, it’s a very tall order.)

“We’ve put a good deal of effort on the back-end informatics side to make sure our systems are very developed and robust,” Topper said. “It’s not something that comes easy, I think a lot of health companies back into this and realize after the fact that there’s a substantial computer engineering aspect to being able to do this responsibly”

There is still a lot of activity in this space, including at the actual financing level. 23andMe, another genetic testing startup, raised $250 million in new financing last year. And as the research matures, it’s always possible that other companies may want to branch into a similar area — finding spots that might represent some risk for heart conditions. Topper said the company still expects to continue to look for examples where the condition affects a lot of people and that some portion is driven by genetics, and that a lot of players in the space is generally going to be a good thing simply because it will help further the progress on that front.

“We are living in good times for genetics, primarily because of a number of really important consensus-driven efforts around looking at the clinical validity and clinical utility of genetic information,” he said. “None of this happens in a silo. Being able to both move the field forward in terms of making information available and gleaning knowledge, as well as being a good citizen in a space that’s moving quickly, are both very important to us. I feel like there’s a cultural change in terms of where genetics fits into our society. As long as other companies are doing it responsibly, it’s also good.”

While it sometimes feels like everyone has a podcast nowadays, the truth is that most Americans still don’t listen to podcasts regularly. The Y Combinator-backed team behind The Podcast App is planning to change that.

And yes, that’s the app’s real name. Co-founder and CEO Martín Siniawski argued that most existing podcast apps were built years ago, “when it was a really different medium.” They’re designed for people who already understand what a podcast is, already know which podcasts they’re looking for and already understand what it means to subscribe.

In contrast, Siniawski said The Podcast App is designed to be “extremely fast, extremely easy and extremely reliable and stable.”

How easy? Well, the website boasts that it’s “so simple even your grandma could use it.”

“We’ve invested heavily on making sure that we can onboard people and take them step-by-step in a way that doesn’t overwhelm them,” Siniawski said.

So when you first open up the app, you’re asked to identify your interests, and then you get a list of podcast recommendations. Once you’re looking at a specific podcast, you can browse all episodes or just the “Best Of” (curated based on The Podcast App’s engagement data), then hit buttons to favorite the show and download individual episodes.

Beyond making the app easy to understand, Siniawski said he’s also focused on helping people find the right podcast for them. Creating good app-wide and podcast-specific search features helps, and so do the Best Of lists, but he said that’s just the beginning.

For one thing, there’s more to be done in search, like indexing the full content of the episodes, not just the titles and descriptions. For another, Siniawski is hoping to take more of a Netflix-style approach to “leverage more and more of that data to provide recommendations.”

The Podcast App has built up a library of 30 million episodes, and includes most of the big names in podcasting. (It also includes TechCrunch podcasts like Original Content and CTRL+T. Just saying.) In the future, Siniawski said he’s hoping to work with podcasters to develop original programming, and to incorporate more types of advertising and paid subscriptions (the startup currently limits its own monetization to display ads that run in the app).

Oh, and if you’re wondering how Siniawski was able to get such a straightforward (and search-friendly) app name, the answer is simple: No one claimed it first.

“Enjoy a light, social high,” says the funky bottle of California Dreamin’ cannabis -infused sparkling pomegranate juice. Launching today at Y Combinator Demo Day, California Dreamin’ is serving up an alcohol alternative that still gets you lit, but without the same hangover or health issues.

Each bottle contains 10 milligrams of THC — an industry-standard dose of the psychoactive chemical in marijuana. The company only uses sativa, the more energizing, euphoric type of pot, compared to the more body-relaxing indica variety. That’s compared to some competing marijuana beverages with as much as 100mg — enough that a single sip will get you high and a bottle will lay out all but the hardiest stoners. “We want it to be a light, head high feel,” says Seven Cities Beverage Company aka California Dreamin’ co-founder Amy Ludlum. “We don’t want to give anyone couch lock. We want it to be social.”

Meanwhile, the taste marries fruity sweetness with a hint of earthy plant life complexity that will titillate long-time cannabis fans. Bottles come in other flavors, like tangerine, grapefruit and cranberry apple, and will retail for about $8 to $10 each. Cases are rolling out to recreational dispensaries in San Francisco, like The Barbary Coast, over the next week.

California Dreamin’ has succeeded in creating a beverage with the light-hearted brand, logical dosage and agreeable taste to be something you can drink casually and socially, not just when you want to get ridiculously high. That makes it a better alternative or complement to drinking alcohol. It’s certainly not for everyone. Paranoia, anxiety and post-high grogginess are all common side-effects of sativa, and you shouldn’t drive while blazed. But there are plenty of people who want an option to unwind that doesn’t involve a literal poison, or smoking a burning plant that can hurt your lungs.

The only problem is that California and other states with legal recreational marijuana ban the sale of anything cannabis related anywhere that serves alcohol. That means you aren’t likely to see California Dreamin’ in a bar any time soon, but you could throw a pretty fun backyard barbecue. But with 1 million medical marijuana users out of 28 million California adults, and with over half of the voting population supporting cannabis legalization, there’s plenty of room to build a brand in this space.

Inebriation is America’s true national pastime. You could see it as people just seeking an escape from daily troubles, but it’s also a way to shift our thinking to get a new perspective on the world. Considering how much we pay for entertainment that’s merely stimulus we filter through our perception, $10 to pleasantly alter that perception is not a half-baked idea.

British startup Made.com says that “a new tier 1 global institutional investor” has made an important investment commitment in the furniture company. This mysterious investor is willing to lead a new $56 million round (£40 million) with existing investors Partech Ventures, Level Equity and Eight Roads Ventures also participating.

It sounds like the funding round isn’t finished just yet, so Made.com could end up raising more than that.

More interestingly, the company has shared some details about its balance sheet. In 2017, the company has been profitable in the U.K., France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. And if you take into account the entire company in all countries where it operates, Made.com is currently cashflow positive.

In 2017, the company has generated a net revenue of $178 million (£127 million), which represents a 40 percent increase compared to 2016. So it sounds like Made.com is on the right path to profitability.

And that’s why the company also announced that Adrian Evans is joining the company as CFO. He previously worked at Yoox Net-A-Porter. This release sounds like Made.com is now optimizing the company for a potential IPO.

The company sells quality furniture at an affordable price. Made.com wants to disrupt high-end furniture stores by controlling everything from manufacturing to the e-commerce platform. This way, the company doesn’t have to pay as many middle players and can offer cheaper prices.

As e-commerce is also becoming the norm, it fosters competition with furniture giants, such as IKEA. Going to Made.com’s website is as easy as going to IKEA’s website after all.

Earlier this month, two former Google staffers quietly launched a new app that’s designed to help users overcome technology’s uncanny valley and develop a more healthy relationship with the ubiquitous electronic assistant that “lives” in our pockets.

Called Maslo, the new app (and the company behind it), in the words of its founders, was built to develop a “personified AI technology that interacts with empathy and playfulness.”

At its core, the first iteration of Maslo is a daily check-in tool that encourages and develops mindfulness, according to founders Ross Ingram and Cristina Poindexter.

Once downloaded, Maslo is a voice-activated journaling tool with a basic status update feature that encourages users to log an emoji representation of their emotional state at a particular moment and spend a minute talking to the app about what’s going on.

The idea, the founders say, is to have Maslo evolve and personalize as users interact with it. You can see what the company’s blobby AI looks like below.

Ingram, who was a former Sphero employee working on projects like the BB-8 before he joined Google, has thought deeply about how technology intersects with the human psyche and how people create bonds with the technologies they use.

“We started building robots in 2010 and in the 2012 to 2013 time frame we wondered what this would look like if we added some personality to this — and some kind of relationship,” says Ingram. “Whenever we launched these robots out into the world… people had this desire to connect on a deeper level… people wanted to share aspects of themselves with the robot.”

Meanwhile, his co-founder noticed the same behaviors from people who were interacting with the Google assistants in their early days.

“A  lot of these interactions were non-utility queries,” says Poindexter, a Yale-educated sociologist, who worked on Google’s soon-to-be-announced assistants in the Pixel phone and Google Home in 2016 when she and Ingram first met. 

“There was this need to go in and help people on a deeper level… I have a background in sociology and I look at it from a users’ perspective of what do people need,” Poindexter says. “A lot of these interactions [with the assistant] were mulling things over and needing a place to express them… and Google can’t deliver on that and from a brand perspective Google didn’t want to.”

That’s perfectly clear from Google’s latest commercial.

By contrast, Maslo wants to be a space where people can more comfortably address the emotional aspects of user’s lives.

“It’s the way we define an assistant versus a companion… assistants help things get done in the external world and companions are going to help us get things done in our internal world,” says Ingram. 

“There are going to be different classes of machines that interact and relate to humans on different levels,” Poindexter adds. “We are seeing thousands of people using machines for assistant-based things… we know that where this is going we’re going to start talking more to whatever you want to call them — assistants or companions — and Alexa won’t help you figure out if you need help.”

With Ingram’s experience in design and hardware, the two came to the conclusion (as they relate in a blog post about Maslo’s early days), that technology “can help us become more human, and less robotic.”

Ingram left Google in December of 2016 and Poindexter followed in February. The two moved down to Los Angeles and began collaborating on the project that would eventually become Maslo.

Over the long-term, the two founders think of Maslo as a gateway to interacting with other services that a user may need — and one that is completely focused on security. Other tools can help with therapy, self-improvement, education or entertainment, and Maslo wants to be the funnel that prompts users to take advantage of those services when necessary.

Importantly, in this era of increased privacy protection, the two have built Maslo so that most of the user information that Maslo collects stays on a user’s device rather than on servers that the company hosts. “Privacy and trust is the most critical to us,” says Ingram. “We’ve designed the architecture in a way that does keep a lot of the sensitive information on the phone. We do have to upload some things to the cloud in a secure way to continue to develop Maslow’s back end and machine learning… [But] we don’t have access to the actual voice note… we are able to interpret whatever is shared using our algorithms.”

Meanwhile transformative powers of technology and the ways in which it can provide a positive influence in people’s lives isn’t just rhetorical hyperbole for Ingram — he’s experienced it himself.

At 16 years old, Ingram, who grew up in a small town in rural Colorado, faced three felony charges and expulsion from his high school for stealing a computer. Always interested in technology, Ingram came from a working class family that didn’t have enough money for him to indulge in his favorite pastime.

The brush with the law could have landed him in jail, but Ingram was sent to a diversion program to keep kids out of prison; while there, the young developer decided to pursue a career in computer science. He enrolled in Denver’s Metropolitan Community College, and while attending class managed to talk his way into a job with Sphero.

Ingram met the Sphero founders when they were just a collection of Boulder-based Android developers going through the Techstars program. When the company raised its first round, Sphero hired Ingram as its seventh employee and his career was off to the races.

“Going through that experience… helped me develop my sense of identity and figure out where I wanted to go in life,” Ingram says. “That’s very much what we’re focused on with Maslo today. Maslo is a reference to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and developing the tools you need to have that sense of self.”

Several studies (including this one from the University of Iowa) discuss the positive effects of journaling on mental health and addressing trauma. And Poindexter said that’s where Maslo wants to begin.

“In the beginning there needs to be some sort of joy in the exercise,” she says. “We really want to reflect back to people what they’re saying… [Maslo] holds up a mirror… it’s a sounding board and doesn’t necessarily give you the answers but shows you what you might already know.”

Over time, the two co-founders expect that the application will evolve to become more personalized as users develop a relationship with the AI they’re talking to. “The way that Maslo looks and the way Maslo animates and talks will be something that happens down the road,” says Ingram. “Being able to build this sense of companionship between machine and the user so that it is this safe space to access is very important.”

HQ Trivia was removed from the App Store following a controversial ending to a $25K game on Sunday night, according to Business Insider.

HQ has introduced a new high-stakes version of the game where one winner takes home a larger prize. However, on Sunday night, no one won the $25K.

The company posted on its Twitter account that moderators kick players who break the company’s TOS.

HQ would not be specific about what rules were broken, but BI reports that Twitter users had suggested it was due to jailbroken iPhones, which could be running software that gives users a leg up in the trivia competition.

For those who missed the game last night, two players remained for the final question. One was removed due to breaking the TOS, and the remaining player missed the last question, resulting in no winner.

Cheating seems to be a growing problem with HQ Trivia. There are countless guides online about how to cheat, including obvious methods like using voice dictation and a second device to Google search each question. The time limit makes that more difficult, but not impossible.

But as HQ grows its prize pot — the original prize was $1000 — cheating on the platform, and the methods by which people cheat, is only bound to intensify.

Even more bizarre, the app was seemingly removed from the App Store following the game. It has since re-appeared on the App Store.

HQ says that last night’s game and HQ’s removal from the App Store are unrelated events. A spokesperson from the company confirmed Mashable’s report that the app was removed because of a clerical error. Long story short, someone at HQ forgot to update the expired credit card info in the developer portal of the App Store.

App analytics firm Apptopia confirmed that HQ Trivia was removed from the App Store briefly, and that it has been falling in ranking for the past 30 to 60 days.

We reached out to Apple and haven’t heard back. We will report back as soon as we know more.

Desktop Metal has had no issues raising interest (or funding) in the manufacturing world. The metal 3D printing company announced today that it’s score another $65 million in backing, bringing its total to $277 million. This latest round was led by Ford, and also includes addition money from previous backer, Future Fund. 

Ford’s interest in company that 3D prints metal is pretty clear, of course, and the automotive giant is taking things a step further by adding its Chief Technology Officer Ken Washington to Desktop Metal’s Board of Directors.

The tech isn’t quite ready to start printing out cars on Ford’s production line just yet, but the companies told CNBC that they’re working toward that seeming inevitability. Desktop Metal already produces a printer built specifically for factory production.

Slated for release in 2019, the company’s Production system is a push to make its technology scalable on the production line. The core of Desktop Metal’s tech binds powders into polymers and cook them in a furnace. The company claims its tech is 100-times faster and 20-times cheaper than existing 3D printing technologies.

Ford joins an already impressive roster of names that have invested in the startup, including Google Ventures (GV), GE Ventures, New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Lowe’s. BMW iVentures, has also seen the potential in tech — the automotive giant’s VC wing invested in Desktop Metal this time last year, with an eye toward the future, stating that the company “is shaping the way cars will be imagined, designed and manufactured.”

It’s time to welcome another startup to the clear-teeth-aligner market. Meet ArchForm, a Y Combinator-backed teeth-aligner software startup that lets orthodontists create, design and 3D print aligners within their own offices. The idea is to provide orthodontists with a way to better compete against some direct-to-consumer teeth-aligner startups and cut down on the cost of Invisalign.

The cost of braces and invisible aligners — those clear, mouthguard-like pieces of plastic — varies, but treatments can range from $4,685 to $6,500 for adolescents, and adult treatments can cost up to $7,135, according to a 2013 American Dental Association survey. Last year, the orthodontics market saw $11 billion in revenue, according to market research company IBISWorld.

ArchForm is trying to tap into the growing accessibility of the 3D printer market to enable orthodontists to 3D print their own clear aligners in-office. Orthodontists currently pay about $1,700 per patient to Invisalign, the company says. So in order to make money, orthodontists sometimes charge patients upwards of $7,000. ArchForm charges orthodontists just $50 per patient.

“I was inspired to start the company because I worked in my father’s orthodontic office,” ArchForm founder Andrew Martz told TechCrunch in an email. “I saw that 3D printers had advanced far enough to make these devices in dental offices, and knew from experience that easy-to-use software to virtually move the teeth was the missing piece to allow every orthodontist to 3D print their own aligners.”

In the last couple of years, a number of teeth-aligner startups have emerged. The pack includes the likes of SmileDirectClub, Uniform Teeth, Candid and Orthly. None of the startups are exactly the same, but all aim to reduce the cost of clear aligners, as well as the number of visits to the orthodontist — with some even cutting out the in-person orthodontist visit altogether. ArchForm takes a different approach by enabling local orthodontists to simply enhance their existing businesses.

“We believe that orthodontists do a better job of treating most patients when they can physically be there to treat them,” Martz said. “To make clear aligners work, raised buttons/attachments are placed on teeth as a way for the aligner to grip the teeth and make them fully straight. Tele-dentistry companies don’t have these — which are a very fundamental part of orthodontic treatment.”

In ArchForm’s current customer base, 75 percent of orthodontists who sign up to use the software already have 3D printers.

“If they don’t already have one, the rest are looking into buying a 3D printer, because they only cost $3350 and Invisalign costs $1750/patient,” Martz said.

For the orthodontists who would rather not invest in their own 3D printer, they can send the design to orthodontic laboratories that are equipped with 3D printers and powered by ArchForm’s software.

Pinterest is looking to continue to increase its portfolio of ads, though sometimes that can take a little while to see the light of day — and that includes a new-ish tool called Shopping Ads that’s slowly getting opened to more marketers and advertisers.

Getting new ad formats is important for a smaller company looking to build out an advertising business, as it has to show potential advertisers it can offer an array of tools to play with as they experiment with that service. The company said today that it’s expanding those shopping ad tools to hundreds of additional advertisers after launching a pilot program last year as it looks to continue to ramp up that tool. Pinterest has to be able to convince marketers that it should be a mainstay advertising purchase alongside Facebook and Google, which are able to routinely show returns in value for their advertising spend.

Shopping ads automatically create promoted pins from an existing product feed for a retailer. That means it’s basically one less thing for retailers to worry about as they add more and more content to the service. Most of Pinterest’s content online is business content as users share products they might be interested in one day buying or already own. As Pinterest gets more and more data on this, they’ll have a better handle on what ads work best, and hope that businesses will hand off the process in full to something more automated.

Pinterest hopes to capture that routine user behavior of planning what they want to do next, whether that’s an outfit to wear that day or some kind of major event or purchase down the line. Getting a hold of those users in the moment they might be interested in a new product is key to the company’s pitch to advertisers. You can more or less consider this a continued test as the company starts to slowly give the tool to the advertisers it works with before it becomes generally available. If it works, it could probably end up down the line in the hands of all advertisers, which could help for small- to medium-sized businesses without a lot of experience build out their early marketing campaigns.

For entrepreneurs interested to meet and chat with Sramana Mitra in person, please join us for our weekly informal group meetups. If you are living in the San Francisco Bay Area or are just in town...

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Entrepreneurs are invited to the 391st FREE online 1Mby1M mentoring roundtable on Thursday, March 22, 2018, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/8:30 p.m. India IST. If you are a serious entrepreneur, register...

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Sramana Mitra: Explain the Zomato business model that you think is going to scale. Rehan Yar Khan: Zomato occupies premium mindshare when it comes to food. From that, you can develop several...

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Sramana Mitra: What is the typical round size? Ron Heinz: We typically put in between $3 million and $6 million. Our ownership structures tend to be between 15% to 25%. Our average check size upfront...

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It has been over a year since the San Mateo-based spend management firm Coupa (Nasdaq: COUP) went public. The stock has done well so far, and was recently trading at life high levels. The recently...

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