MyBagCheck is a clever system that ensures you’ll be able to spend those extra few hours in a foreign city without having to lug around 50 pounds of Samsonite. The founder, Micah B. Lewis, created the app to allow people who have bags to get those bags picked up and stored during the day, something every traveler would love. The app is self-funded and Lewis spent $60,000 of his own money… Read More

 Airbnb is rolling out a few new additions to their home-booking system, including new tiers that are aimed at higher-end customers, called Airbnb Plus and Beyond by Airbnb. The new Airbnb Plus tier has homes that are verified for “quality and comfort.” The luxury tier, called Beyond by Airbnb, is built around whole trips including hospitality, custom experience and, of course… Read More

 What if instead of blasting cargo into space on a rocket, we could fling it into space using a catapult? That’s the big, possibly crazy, possibly genius idea behind SpinLaunch. TechCrunch has learned from three sources that SpinLaunch is raising a massive $30 million Series A to develop its catapult technology. And we’ve scored an interview with the founder after four years in stealth. Read More

 If you’ve tried to deal with a bot before you can speak to a human customer service rep, you know how frustrating that process can sometimes be. Sure, there are basic tasks that can free up a human rep to handle the more difficult matters, but it can be exasperating when there is no easy way to talk to a person. Agent IQ, a startup that has developed customer service bots, acknowledges… Read More

 Max Rhodes was walking around that weird little parklet in Hayes Valley in San Francisco after taking a break from a five-year stint at Square to figure out what he wanted to do next — and he kept seeing Square registers everywhere. It made him think about the connections between the average product maker and those retailers. That’s what prompted him to start Indigo Fair. Read More

 Coinbase has some serious competition. Today, Robinhood starts rolling out its no-commission cryptocurrency trading feature in California, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana and New Hampshire. Users there can buy and sell Bitcoin and Ethereum with no extra fees, and everyone can track those and 14 other coins in its sleek app. Read More

 “We didn’t want to create another app thirsty for attention” writes Product Hunt CEO Ryan Hoover. So instead of a constant stream of fresh stories and alerts, Product Hunt today is releasing what’s essentially a tech industry newsletter in iOS and Android form. Sip distills the day’s big headlines into a set of Twitter Moments-esque slideshows delivered via… Read More

 Few problems are as much of a headache for the modern corporate worker as buying things on the company’s dime. Companies are loathe to hand out credit cards to everyone in the building, but they also want their employees to do your job without having to fill out six forms in triplicate to requisition a pencil. They also want to control spending and track who bought that $2,000 bottle… Read More

 Feature Labs, a startup with roots in research begun at MIT, officially launched today with a set of tools to help data scientists build machine learning algorithms more quickly. Co-founder and CEO Max Kanter says the company has developed a way to automate “feature engineering,” which is often a time consuming and manual process for data scientists. “Feature Labs helps… Read More

 Broadcasting app Anchor, which helps anyone record and share audio, is relaunching its app today with a new focus on serving the larger podcaster community. While in the past, Anchor was carving out a niche for itself in the short-form, social audio space, the new version – Anchor 3.0 – aims to be everything you need to record, edit, host, publish, and distribute a podcast of… Read More

 The third time is a charm, Tel Aviv. After holding a Meetup + Pitch-off the last two years in Israel, TechCrunch is returning on 7 June 2018 for a day-long conference. As much fun as networking on a roof facing the Mediterranean Sea is, we’re ready to dig deeper into the tech that is coming out of Israel, focusing on mobility. The mobility industry is ripe for disruption. It is gaining… Read More

 Tinyclues, the French startup that offers an intelligent campaign marketing solution that uses AI to help push the right products to the right customers, has closed $18 million in Series B investment. Leading the round is EQT Ventures, with participation from existing backers Alven, Elaia Partners, and ISAI. Read More

 ParkBee, a Netherlands-founded startup that lets private car parks monetize underutilized spaces by making them bookable to the public, has picked up €5 million in new funding Read More

Sramana Mitra: Definitely, we encourage the philosophy of bootstrap first and raise money later. We have nothing against raising money but bootstrapping first is really critical to preserve...

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Entrepreneurs are invited to the 387th FREE online 1Mby1M mentoring roundtable on Thursday, February 22, 2018, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/9:30 p.m. India IST. If you are a serious entrepreneur,...

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This conversation highlights Gamification in online learning. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to Jumpstart Games. David Lord: I’m the CEO of Jumpstart...

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Since its public listing in 2016, BlackLine (NASDAQ: BL) has shown impressive performance and proven to be a sustainable Billion Dollar Unicorn. In its most recent results, it acheived non GAAP...

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Sramana Mitra: Let’s do the Entrepreneurs Journeys story. When did you step out of your Google affiliation and start this company? Janine Yancey: In 2004 or 2005. I was still practicing law through...

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Last week, I was on a panel at the Silicon Valley Directors’ Exchange (SVDX) on Robotics and AI: How will Boards Embrace Tomorrow’s Technologies? One of the issues we discussed was what...

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Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Naren Gupts was recorded in October 2014.  Naren...

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