Aug
11

Snap confirms that it paid $213 million to buy Zenly and $135 million for Placed (SNAP)

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel.AP Images

Snap Inc. has confirmed the price tags for its acquisitions of Zenly and Placed.

The Snapchat maker paid $213 million in cash for Zenly in May and $135 million for Placed in July, according to documents filed with the SEC on Friday.

TechCrunch reported that Snap had bought France-based Zenly for at least $250 million shortly after the debut of Snap Maps, but Snap hadn't officially confirmed the acquisition or price tag until now. Zenly built a similar app to Snap Maps that let people see where their friends were on a map.

Snap confirmed that it bought Seattle-based Placed in early June, but never confirmed reports that it paid over $200 million for the ad tech startup. It turns out that Snap paid just $135 million in cash for Placed, which helps advertisers track real-world purchases and store visits.

Snap separately disclosed that Placed’s employee equity plan includes 550,038 shares worth roughly $6.6 million in stock options based on Snap’s current share price.

Snap also spent $62 million on acquiring "a component of a business from a social advertising software company" in June and "all outstanding shares of a company that operates a cloud hosted platform for building content online" in March. A company representative declined to name the two mystery buys.

That brings Snap's grand total of cash spent on acquisitions in 2017 to $224 million, up from only $51 million in 2016. The company still has plenty of available cash to continue its shopping spree with roughly $3 billion in available assets as of June 30.

Get the latest Snap stock price here.

Original author: Alex Heath

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Aug
11

Nvidia and AMD have very different views on cryptocurrencies (NVDA, AMD)

Thomson Reuters

Cryptocurrencies are blisteringly hot right now. Bitcoin just crossed the $3,500 mark for the first time and is up 493.38% over the last year.

The meteoric rise of cryptocurrencies has been a boost to several chip makers. Nvidia and AMD are the two largest manufacturers producing graphics processing units that cryptocurrency users take advantage of to speed up the network.

GPUs from both AMD and Nvidia have been sold out in many places as demand for the cards has skyrocketed with the value of bitcoin.

Even though the currencies have provided a boost to both companies, the CEOs running Nvidia and AMD have very different views of how to approach the "miners" hungry for their technology.

On Nvidia's latest earnings call, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang responded to a question about the company's plan to address cryptocurrencies by saying they are "here to stay."

"The market need for it is going to grow, and over time it will become quite large. It is very clear that new currencies will come to market, and it's very clear that the GPU is just fantastic at cryptography," Huang said. "Our strategy is to stay very, very close to the market. We understand its dynamics really well."

Nvidia has released several GPUs dedicated to cryptocurrency mining recently. The chips are optimized for lower power consumption and faster processing speeds for the type of math specific to mining.

This runs contrary to AMD's strategy. AMD's CEO, Lisa Su, said bitcoin and its competing currencies won't be a "long-term growth driver" for the company.

"Relative to cryptocurrency, we have seen some elevated demand," Su said. "But it's important to say we didn't have cryptocurrency in our forecast, and we're not looking at it as a long-term growth driver. But we'll certainly continue to watch the developments around the blockchain technologies as they go forward."

Since Su's comments on July 25, bitcoin saw a surprise "fork" of its software, introducing a new version of the cryptocurrency called bitcoin cash alongside the original bitcoin. The price of a bitcoin is up 38.44%, or about $1,000, to $3556.16 since the split. Gains are even higher if you consider the additional value all users of bitcoin were able to receive from bitcoin cash as a result of the split.

Su says AMD's plans don't extend beyond refilling supply channels to make up for added demand. The company will continue to focus on its core PC gaming market.

AMD is up 7.29% this year, and Nvidia is up 51.69%. 

Markets Insider

Original author: Seth Archer

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Aug
11

Plasticity wants to help chatbots seem less robotic

 Y Combinator backed Plasticity is tackling the problem of getting software systems to better understand text, using deep learning models trained to understand what they’re reading on Wikipedia articles — and offering an API for developers to enhance their own interfaces. Read More

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Aug
11

Should IBM Buy ServiceNow? - Sramana Mitra

A recent report published by MarketsandMarkets expects the IT Service Management (ITSM) market to grow from $4.41 billion in 2016 to $8.78 billion by 2021, which translates to an annualized growth...

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Original author: MitraSramana

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Aug
11

Why exhibit in Startup Alley at Disrupt SF?

 Hey startups! Disrupt San Francisco (September 18-20) is just a few weeks away and registration is open for startups looking to showcase their product or company to thousands of people on the Disrupt floor. Read More

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Aug
11

SoundCloud saved by emergency funding as CEO steps aside

 SoundCloud has just closed the necessary funding round to keep the struggling music service afloat. CEO Alex Ljung will step aside though remain chairman as former Vimeo CEO Kerry Trainor replaces him. Mike Weissman will become COO as SoundCloud co-founder and CTO Eric Wahlforss stays as chief product officer. Read More

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Aug
11

Sleeperbot is the best place to host your fantasy football league this season

 Sleeperbot, which has raised about $2M in seed funding from Birchmere VC and Expa, and boasts hundreds of thousands of users, calls itself Slack for sports.It’s essentially an app (and website) that lets sports fans have conversations around different subjects they’re passionate about. These discussions happen in channels – some of which are created by the company and are… Read More

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Aug
11

Bootstrapping from the UK to Over $10 Million: Roger Hale, Co-Founder of Linguamatics (Part 5) - Sramana Mitra

Sramana Mitra: What is the geographical spread of your business? How have you gone about approaching the geographical expansion? Roger Hale: It is predominantly US. Something like 70% of our sales is...

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Original author: Sramana Mitra

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Aug
11

August 24 – 364th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs - Sramana Mitra

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 364th FREE online 1Mby1M mentoring roundtable on Thursday, August 24, 2017, 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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Original author: Maureen Kelly

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Aug
11

Equity podcast: Benchmark sues Kalanick, and what’s next for IPOs after Snap and Blue Apron’s very bad day

 Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s weekly venture-themed podcast where we dive into the numbers behind the noise.Forget the summer lull, friends. This week was chock full of news that broke right up until the very last minute. Matthew Lynley was off this week, but Katie Roof and myself were incredibly lucky to have Kate Mitchell, co-founder and partner at Scale Venture… Read More

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Aug
11

Popular writing app Ulysses switches to subscription model

 Ulysses is one of the most popular apps for writers. It lets you write, edit, organize, sync and export all your writing in a single, unified interface. That’s why it’s interesting to see that it is switching to a subscription-only business model. I’ve already written about Ulysses a few times. It’s a rock-solid, well-designed writing app for iOS and macOS. It relies… Read More

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Aug
11

Curve co-founder joins challenger bank Monzo as COO

 In an example of more revolving doors in London’s heated fintech space, TechCrunch has learned that Curve co-founder Tom Foster-Carter is joining Monzo. As of Monday, he takes up the role of COO at the digital-only challenger bank, with some aspects subject to regulatory approval. Read More

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Aug
11

WeWork acquires Israeli startup Unomy to boost its enterprise sales efforts

 Global co-working behemoth WeWork is best known for providing flexible office rentals to startups and other small businesses, but enterprise clients are becoming an increasingly large portion of its business. With that in mind, WeWork has acquired Israeli startup Unomy to help its team sell enterprise clients on the idea of opening offices in its workspaces around the world. Read More

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Aug
10

Roundtable Recap: August 10 – What Angels Are Looking For At Propel(x) - Sramana Mitra

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Swati Chaturvedi, Co-founder and CEO at Propel(x), an online platform where entrepreneurs are connected to angels. Swati and I discussed some of the...

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Original author: Sramana Mitra

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Aug
10

LaterPay brings its media payment technology to the US

 LaterPay is offering media companies a business model that goes beyond subscriptions and ads. LaterPay is trying to help monetize “the vast space” between subscriptions and ads, allowing publishers to charge for their content on an à la carte basis. That can meaning charging per article or video, or asking users to buy a pass to their site for a limited period of time. Read More

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Aug
10

Tetra raises a $1.5M seed round to bring deep learning to voice transcription

 There are a million and one services for voice transcription on the market. But even with just one job to do, I’ve never seen a service that can handle the long tail of vocabulary used in the real world. This is particularly challenging if you’re a startup trying to sell your service to enterprises that rely on accurate transcription for their operations. Read More

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Aug
10

Peru is on a bid to catch up with its innovative Latin American neighbors

 For the past decade the Peruvian economy has been one of the fastest moving in the region — but it’s apparent Peru’s technology ecosystem is still in its infancy. Economically driven by mining, Peru invests just 0.08 percent of its GDP in innovation. By comparison, Chile invests 0.37 percent. Yet Peru refuses to be left behind. Read More

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Aug
10

276th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Pallav Nadhani, FusionCharts - Sramana Mitra

Pallav Nadhani, CEO and Cofounder at FusionCharts, is someone I have known for a long time, and he will always have a special place in my heart as a young entrepreneur from Calcutta, where I was born...

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Original author: Sramana Mitra

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Aug
10

337th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Nevin Shetty, Blueprint Registry - Sramana Mitra

Nevin Shetty, CEO of Blueprint Registry, did TechStars last year, and we discuss some strategies for getting into YCombinator and TechStars, the two high quality seed fund accelerators that are worth...

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Original author: Sramana Mitra

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Aug
10

344th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Girish Rowjee, Greytip Software - Sramana Mitra

Girish Rowjee, Co-Founder and CEO of Greytip Software, discusses his long journey selling HR and Payroll software to the Indian SMEs. Greytip is one of the two successful SaaS companies in India who...

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Original author: Sramana Mitra

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