Oded Hermoni is Managing Partner at Rhodium Venture Partners, and is also co-founder of an Angel group, J-Angels.
___
Original author: Sramana Mitra
79 Hits
Oct
13
Oct
12
Omnyway announced today that it has raised $12.75 million in Series A funding. Previously known as OmnyPay, Omnyway has built technology around what it calls “augmented digital commerce” — basically, helping retailers stay connected to consumers through their mobile phone during the in-store shopping process. Read More
103 Hits
Oct
12
Some employees at Outcome Health, which provides advertising for pharmaceutical companies in screens within doctors’ offices, allegedly misled advertisers by charging them for ad placements on more video screens than the company had installed, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. Read More
74 Hits
Oct
12
More people than ever are listening to podcasts, but as they soon find out, discovering new ones is a cumbersome process that lacks the serendipity users take for granted in other apps. CastBox wants to fix that by becoming “the YouTube of audio.” Read More
79 Hits
Oct
12
Michael DeCesare: The third trend is that a lot of the larger cyber organizations have tried to come out and declared themselves the platform underneath all of the different cyber companies. There’s...
___
Original author: Sramana Mitra
109 Hits
Oct
12
The sharing economy continues to bear fruit. CarHopper, a platform for luxury car rental, has raised a $1.5 million seed round to expand to new markets. CarHopper started as a peer-to-peer platform for luxury car owners to rent their rides to others. But in its infancy, the company realized there was a much bigger opportunity with small, local rental agencies that don’t have a strong… Read More
92 Hits
Oct
12
BuffaloGrid, a London and New Delhi startup that recently picked up backing from LocalGlobe and Kima Ventures, offers something akin to mobile phone charging as a service in remote parts of the world that are either without electricity or where power supply is sporadic. Read More
88 Hits
Oct
12
Token sales, also called ICOs, are the new normal when it comes to early stage cash. Originally envisioned as a way to create new and unique rails for payments, customer interaction, and peer-to-peer networking the token is now both an integral part of most companies and a great way to fund a great (or awful) idea. This year at Disrupt Berlin we’ll be joined by Zoe Adamovicz of… Read More
99 Hits
Oct
12
One night in Larry Guterman’s freshman year, he was at a loud party in a gym — and ended up with what he says was “ferocious” ringing in his ears afterward. But trip after trip to an audiologist, he said, came up without helpful results even though his hearing seemed to be headed south. Then, one day, he said he picked up the iPhone and listened to the speakers.… Read More
107 Hits
Oct
12
If you’re a budding entrepreneur and the VC you’re pitching switches gears and asks you about your exit strategy that’s your cue to get up and leave, says Apple CEO Tim Cook. Read More
109 Hits
Oct
12
Just as pre-teens in the 1990s were warned away from dialing 1-900 numbers, kids now need to learn how to navigate social media responsibly. Kudos, an app for kids aged eight to 13 with around-the-clock moderation, positions itself as a safe introduction to social media that also teaches its young users, some of whom were born before the first iPhone was released, how to be “good… Read More
102 Hits
Oct
12
On October 11, TechCrunch and Facebook hosted Startup Battlefield Africa in Nairobi, Kenya. The Startup Battlefield pitch-off competition featured startups from all over Africa in three categories: Productivity and Utility, Social Good, and Gaming and Entertainment. Top notch investors and founders served as judges to pick the winners in each category as well as an overall winner. We also had… Read More
91 Hits
Oct
11
FastPay has acquired AnchorOps in a deal that brings together two businesses focused on media financing. FastPay’s model revolves around lending money to digital media companies, helping them deal with cashflow issues as they wait to get paid by advertisers. AnchorOps, meanwhile, has built invoicing and payments software for those media companies. In the acquisition announcement, CEO… Read More
106 Hits
Oct
11
Armed with an understanding of machine learning, ROSS Intelligence is going after LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters for ownership of legal research. The startup is announcing an $8.7 million Series A today led by iNovia Capital with participation from Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund, Y Combinator Continuity Fund, Real Ventures, Dentons’ NextLaw Labs and angels. Read More
130 Hits
Oct
11
The phone number is probably one of the most important identifying numbers in your life — it’s how people reach out and get in touch with you outside of Facebook, Google, and whatnot. But the landline phone number, especially for small businesses, has basically gone nowhere in years. That’s where NumberAI and Tasso Roumeliotis’ team come in. The company launched to… Read More
117 Hits
Oct
11
At the very beginning, there were 15 startups coming from all around Africa. After an incredibly fierce competition in Nairobi, Kenya, here are the winners of TechCrunch’s first ever Startup Battlefield Africa. Startups participating in the Startup Battlefield have all been hand-picked to participate in our highly competitive startup competition. They all presented in front of… Read More
142 Hits
Oct
11
MioTech, a financial tech startup with offices in Hong Kong and Shanghai, has raised $7 million in Series A funding to develop artificial intelligence based software for investment managers. The round was led by Horizons Ventures, the private investment arm of Hong Kong business tycoon Li Ka-shing, with participation from returning investor Zhenfund. Read More
110 Hits
Oct
11
October 11, 2017
I was in Atlanta yesterday for Techstars Atlanta Demo Day. Iâll be here again today for Venture Atlanta and then Iâm on to Kansas City for Techstars Kansas City Demo Day.
Rule #1: Donât eat the bugs on the window of the 23rd floor of your hotel.
Iâm being a lot more deliberate about my travel these days. Iâm also being more careful about how I do it. Iâm eating a lot smarter, not drinking at all, and making sure I get at least seven hours of sleep a night. While I hate shaking hands, Iâve given up trying to do fist bumps because I end up with numerous awkward semi-handshake-hand-grab moments. And Iâve stopped staying up late trying to get all my email from the day responded to like I did for 20 years.
I like Atlanta. I havenât been here in a while but itâs pretty awesome to see how the startup community has grown in the past five years. While hot and humid today, itâs different from my norm so itâs an intriguing but easy adventure. While the bugs arenât as big as the ones I grew up with in Dallas, they remind me of my childhood.
I had dinner with my brother Daniel and my cousin Kenny (who lives here) last night at the original Tedâs Montanaâs Grill thatâs on the corner of Luckie Street and Ted Turner Drive. We sat in the booth next to the one Ted frequents. The conversation was intense and wonderful. Something about all that made me smile just now.
Rule #2: Keep a sense of humor through all the absurdity. And, thereâs a lot these days.
Also published on Medium.
Original author: Brad Feld
186 Hits
Oct
10
October 10, 2017
The physical world will be the reference coordinates for the fleets of robot cars of our imagination. Weâre living through the transformation from digital to virtual, and Softbank leading todayâs investment of $164 million in Mapbox accelerates this even faster.
Iâve posted about the massive founder crush my partners and I have on Eric Gundersen, the CEO of Mapbox. When we led Ericâs first financing â a $10 million round and the first capital into the bootstrapped team â we believed mobile location and mapping would be big. Four years later to the week, our vision is dwarfed by the reality that location is at the heart of everything from ride-sharing and autonomous driving, to IoT and AR/VR. We are excited to again participate in this round.
It is no surprise that Eric and Masa both have this bold vision. Both share an exceptional way of dreaming and executing. I remember Eric showing me the maps from his time with the World Bank and UN. There was no AR or autonomous back when he was in Afghanistan, but there was a need for location data and a better mapping platform. In the years since, with massive customer launches like Snapchat and the Weather Channel, the horizontal scale of Mapboxâs platform is now much more obvious.
Knowing Eric and the team, this idealistic passion will not only scale as a company grows, it will set the trajectory for building a product and a company that changes how we experience the world. When I asked Eric a couple years ago about how far he wants to take this he responded:
âIt simply would be a mistake to stop building right now â itâs too early. Weâre going to be inside of everything.â
Weâre long on the team at Mapbox, and itâs obvious to me why Softbank is also enthusiastic. Iâm very loyal to my friends at Softbank and love any opportunity to work with them. Back in 1997, Softbank Technology Ventures (which became Mobius Venture Capital) was the first VC fund I helped raise. Ron Fisher, the Vice Chairman of Softbank, was responsible for watching over us, is one of my favorite people on the planet, and has been an incredible mentor to me.
This team and our world are at a unique moment in time. Itâs is going to be incredible to watch Eric keep building.
Original author: Brad Feld
128 Hits
Oct
09
We’ve covered Forescout for a while. They’re doing something very interesting in the Cyber Security space, quite an important architecture to track devices plugging into an enterprise network. This...
___
Original author: Sramana Mitra
138 Hits
