Indoor mapping software startup Meridian , continues to evolve their product strategy with a recent update to their offering . Called Zones , the company’s newest update to their indoor mapping platform — and indoor is the key word here — allows geo-fence style app push notifications to be scheduled, by drawing polygons on location maps. When customers with the accompanying app walk into one of those indoor areas represented by the polygon on the map…Bam! They get a push notification. To be sure, it’s a real marketing opportunity and a concept underserved by the current, mostly GPS-based location awareness model for mobile devices. Differentiators There are several geo-fencing platforms out there — PlaceCast , Digby Localpoint , Wifarer and ShopKick all come to mind — so what is the big deal here? Meridian’s VP of Marketing Jeff Hardison, believes there are several differences in the Meridian approach. First of all, this notification system will work even when the accompanying app is not open nor in active use — essentially working while the app is in background mode — without significant battery drain. Other geo-fence providers might be able to do this via GPS or cell tower triangulation, but not by WiFi sensing, which is how Meridian works Read more »
How A Car Crash Changed Vishal Sikka And The Direction Of SAP
It’s a rare fall rainy day in Palo Alto and SAP Executive Board Member Dr. Vishal Sikka is as sick as a dog. It’s less than a week until SAP Sapphire in Madrid and the community around him are like a worrying family. I had told them that it is okay. I could make the trip another time. But they were insistent I make the trip. Fast forward to May. Read more »
From The Garage To 200 Employees In 3 Years: How Nest Thermostats Were Born
Editor’s note: Derek Andersen is the founder of Startup Grind , a 40-city community bringing the global startup world together while educating, inspiring, and connecting entrepreneurs . I remember when the press first hit about Nest Labs, the guys behind the iPod/iPhone were taking on thermostats everywhere! A collective “huh?” went through the tech industry. It felt like the tech version of the Avengers got together to build an office park, not save the world. After sitting down with Nest co-founder Matt Rogers at Google For Entrepreneurs ‘ office a few weeks ago, I learned the backstory and vision of a company on a mission to build one of the world’s only great hardware/software companies in the world. There are hard workers, there are really hard workers, and then there are the Matt Rogers of the world. If you think you work hard, please read/watch our entire interview then reevaluate. He had a quick start with his first Mac product interactions being at age three. As a child growing up in Gainesville Florida, when asked what he wanted to be someday, Matt would respond “I want to work at Apple.” At 16 he was building robots and entering them into competitions with his classmates. As a sophomore at Carnegie Mellon, he agreed to basically do anything (anything being to help draw bones in CAD for a robotics hand project) to get a chance to work with with the robotics lab. His Junior year he applied via Monster.com, and pestered employees until he got accepted for an internship at Apple. That summer he took on the worst grunt work project imaginable (he rewrote all the software for manufacturing for iPod), and had three months for what he described as a “one year project” — seven days a week, 20-hour days, and “basically not sleeping.” How did it pay off? Read more »
Evernote Has 4 Million Users in China
Evernote hit 1.1 million users just two months after its Chinese launch in July 2012. CEO Phil Libin revealed this week that his company now has 4 million users in China one year after its debut On Tuesday at the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing, Evernote's team in China — which has grown to 17 people — flipped the switch on the Chinese version of its Evernote Business service Libin also discussed China's integral role in Evernote’s strategy of becoming a long-term startup that can survive up against the world’s top web giants. Libin said, within the next decade, more Chinese tech companies will go global Read more... More about China , Apps , Evernote , Tech , and Apps Software Read more »
Basico Gets $500K To Launch Luxury Apparel Basics E-Commerce Brand For Brazil
When it comes to quickly growing markets, it’s hard to beat Brazil, where an emerging middle class is driving strong demand for all kinds of products — particularly in the e-commerce sector. The latest startup primed to take advantage of this boom is Basico , which just raised $500,000 in seed funding led by Initial Capital , the Israeli/Brazilian VC fund headed up by investor (and frequent TechCrunch contributor) Roi Carthy , along with Brazilian angel investor Guilherme Soarez. Basico aims to essentially be Brazil’s answer to Everlane , by being the country’s first online-only premium basic apparel brand. The company, which has a full-time staff of seven, will use the new funding to gear up for its public launch slated for this summer, CEO Alexandre (Bio) Veiga tells me. Basico’s first line of products will include t-shirts, polos, tank tops, and underwear for both men and women. Basico’s apparel will be made in Peru, as that’s where high-end Pima cotton is grown, Veiga says, and t-shirts will cost the equivalent of $25, half the typical retail price for comparable Pima tees sold in Brazil Read more »
Fly Or Die: Samsung Galaxy S4
Haven’t quite gotten your fill of the Galaxy S4? We haven’t, either. First came the announcement , then the obligatory berating posts about the crazy launch event, followed by the review , which brings us to this fateful judgement day. Will the Galaxy S4 fly or die? The answer is clear, and still multi-layered. There’s no doubt that the Galaxy S4 — packed to the max with the best specs in town — will sell more than its predecessor, the Galaxy S III. Not only does it have a 5-inch 1080p display, a speedy little quad-core Snapdragon 600 CPU, 2GB of RAM, and a 13-megapixel camera, but it has a whole bevy of new software features that are sure to delight and surprise. But what does the GS4 tells us about Samsung’s greater strategy Read more »
Backed Or Whacked: Bridging Worlds Without Words
Editor’s note: Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research and blogs at Techspressive . Each column will look at crowdfunded products that have either met or missed their funding goals. Follow him on Twitter @rossrubin . One of the hottest areas of tech right now is the Internet of Things, wherein everyday objects communicate with each other. As doorknobs and clothing learn to communicate, we can only hope that they will protect their language better than the humans who have seen English reduced to abbreviated gibberish in the face of texting and Twitter. If Kickstarter campaigns are any indication, though, objects have a lot to say without speaking at all. Whacked: Lively Read more »
Audience Development Startup LinkSmart Raises $5 Million From Foundry And Costanoa
A little less than a year ago, a little company called LinkSmart launched to help publishers use text links to get their readers reading more. Now it has raised $5 million in Series B funding to take its technology for growing audiences and make it more widely available. The financing was led by Foundry Group and Costanoa Venture Partners, which was recently founded by former Sutter Hill Ventures managing director Greg Sands . LinkSmart was founded by former DailyCandy CEO Pete Sheinbaum, to help publishers grow audiences through in-text links. While web content creators have spent the last several years shoe-horning in all sorts of banners and sidebars and widgets, the actual text of most web pages is where audiences are usually most engaged. With that in mind, LinkSmart wants to give publishers the tools to better take advantage of that engagement, by providing a smarter way to analyze and link between content that they’ve created. There are three main aspects to its technology: analytics, to show publishers which pages could use more links and which they should link to; management tools to redirect links; and even technology to automatically add links to stories if publishers choose to use it. Read more »
Readying For An IPO, Peer-To-Peer Lending Marketplace Lending Club Raises $125M From Google And Others At $1.6B Valuation
Peer-to-peer lending platform Lending Club is announcing a huge new investor today: Google. Google and existing investor Foundation Capital have put $125 million in Lending Club, which was valued at $1.55 billion in the round. As part of this investment Google will take an observer seat on the Lending Club Board alongside existing Board members including Kleiner Perkins’ Mary Meeker, ex-chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley John Mack and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. The investment by Google came as part of a secondary transaction whereby new and existing investors acquired shares from existing investors. Last year, Lending Club raised $17.5 million from Kleiner Perkins, bringing its total outside investment to just under $100 million. Because this is a secondary round, there is no new money being raised, as Google and Foundation are buying out existing early investors Read more »
Angel Investor, Spotify Fixer Shakil Khan Launches Coindesk, A Bitcoin Resource
Shakil Khan, an angel investor and advisor to Spotify, just launched Coindesk , a Bitcoin resource and news site, amid a boatload of hype and VC interest in the crypto-currency. Khan says Coindesk was a project he conceived of about four weeks ago, around when Bitcoin was surging to an all-time high. It’s now trading at around $124.38, or about half as much as it was trading at a few weeks ago. “I was just sitting there and I literally had five e-mails that day from very seasoned entrepreneurs, asking me — what do you know about Bitcoin?” said Khan, who has invested in the space. He was part of a roughly half-million dollar round in Bitpay , which is trying to make it dead simple for merchants to incorporate Bitcoin as a payments method. “There’s a lack of transparent information Read more »