While cryptocurrencies stole the spotlight in 2017, a clutch of companies were quietly working behind the scenes to slowly bring the financial services establishment to its knees. It may turn out that these startup entrants of the last several years will prove to be the more relevant disruptors. Read More
The founders of PayPal and its employees have produced many highly successful companies over the years. Often referred to as the “PayPal Mafia” because they’ve had such an impact on the startup ecosystem, this serial entrepreneur success story is reminiscent of a similar phenomenon taking place in Latin America. The story starts with another U.S. company, Groupon. Read More
Facebook says that one of its success stories in recent years involves a relatively small group of engineers. Originally it was just one engineer, Vastal Mehta, who serves as Facebook’s director of solutions engineering and now leads a team of more than 100 people that works with advertisers to build the technology and infrastructure needed to run more effective campaigns on Facebook. Read More
From wildfires in California to hurricanes on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, communications are the bedrock of emergency response and management. However, those communications can be challenging when quickly evolving situations cross multiple jurisdictions — a truth painfully learned on 9/11, when more than a dozen agencies found it difficult to relay critical information to the right… Read More
Holy hell, it’s been a year for Amazon. Jeff Bezos’ former-online-bookstore dumped $13.7 billion to buy a bunch of grocery stores, that speaker you talk to in your living room that Amazon makes is really popular and a bunch of server farms Amazon runs generate more than $10 billion in revenue annually. Read More
iFixit has never been particularly fond of Apple’s repair policies. The company’s gadgets regularly rack up poor repairability scores on the site. The site’s taking another jab at the tech giant today, dropping the price of its battery replacement kits to $29 — matching the cost of out-of-warranty battery replacements being offered up as consolation for its iPhone… Read More
OKCupid’s users are angry – very, very angry. Just ahead of the new year, the company made a radical change to its policies, and now requires people to use real names instead of an OKCupid username, as before. The change eliminates one of the biggest differentiators between the dating app and rivals like Tinder and Bumble, which have users log in via Facebook in order to use their… Read More
TrendKite is closing out 2017 with the announcement that it’s raised an additional $11 million in funding. The Austin-based startup says it’s currently analyzing 4.2 million articles every day, and using that analysis to help both brands and agencies to measure the impact of their PR efforts. So it can identify the total audience reached by articles mentioning the company, or… Read More
Pinterest announced today it’s adding former CBS and PepsiCo exec Fred Reynolds to its board of directors. Reynolds’ background includes global financial and strategic planning as well as business analysis, the company notes. He will also serve as Pinterest’s Audit Committee Chair. Prior to joining Pinterest’s board, Reynolds spent 15 years at CBS and… Read More