As Spotify and Pandora both look to achieve dominance in internet music streaming, Pandora founder TIm Westergren said Thursday at Stanford’s campus that he sees the two companies as offering fundamentally different products, even as Spotify looks to compete. Read more »
In looking at the companies valued at more than $100 million, some trends emerge around companies which could be on the road to an IPO. A new report from CB insights details some of the threads and connections in those companies. Read more »
Looking for the latest trend in location-based startups? Companies are increasingly looking to the intersection of location and community with the neighborhood, an ideal place to target people for providing information and news, but also a possible target for specific advertising. Read more »
Uber may have found a way to work with the city of D.C., which approved legislation that will regulate and authorize startups like Uber to operate in the city. The cooperation between the often contentious startup and the government could provide a model for others. Read more »
Looking to find advice for your startup, but struggling with how to make contacts if you’re not located in Silicon Valley? Clarity, the app that connects individuals to give and receive advice, has raised a $1.6 million seed round to advance the conversation. Read more »
Poshmark, the clothing re-sale fashion app that’s competing in a now-crowded sphere, plans to announce Tuesday that it’s raised a $12 million Series B funding round to expand on iPad and Android, as well as increase the size and scale of the company. Read more »
Kleiner Perkins’ Mary Meeker has released an updated 2012 Internet Trends report, looking at areas like wearables, connected devices, education, e-commerce and healthcare as areas for potential growth going forward. Read more »
The Lean Startup has become somewhat of a bible for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, but famed investor Marc Andreessen notes that sometimes founders misappropriate the ideas or don’t apply them correctly, resulting in some common problems he outlined Monday in San Francisco. Read more »
An unlikely startup accelerator has cropped up in San Francisco Monday, aimed at tackling the big problems in journalism and media from a Silicon Valley perspective, where entrepreneurs aim to change how people consume information and aren’t afraid to fail. Read more »
Y Combinator will be scaling back the size and funding for startups this winter, reducing the class size to less than 50, down from 84 funded companies that launched at this summer’s demo day. YC’s Paul Graham said they’re continually tweaking the recipe for success. Read more »
Evernote has raised $85 million in primary and secondary financing, giving the company a “piece of mind” while moving toward an “eventual” IPO, CEO Phil Libin wrote in a blog post Friday. The company has been growing recently and just raised funding in May 2012. Read more »
Launching a startup? Take the advice of Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, who recently sold his startup to Facebook, and take a look at your early obsessions when starting a company — you might have more knowledge there than you think. Here are some of Krieger’s design tips. Read more »
Google has acquired the Canadian-based startup BufferBox, a recent graduate of Y Combinator that puts shipping lockers in retail stores, allowing customers to ship their packages to convenient locations. It shows an interesting move by Google into the shipping space where Amazon dominates. Read more »
PeopleBrowsr, a company that provides marketing analytics based on the full stream of data from Twitter called the firehose, is suing Twitter for access to that stream. While Twitter is closing down who has access to the firehose, it shows where the company is headed. Read more »
Looking for a perfect gift for friends or family this holiday season? The makers of the popular app Postagram, which lets you send postcards of your photos to friends, is launching an app called Sesame that lets you send real-life gift boxes from your iOS device. Read more »
Y Combinator, one of the oldest and most prestigious startup incubators in Silicon Valley, announced a change to its funding structure Monday, taking control of the VC investments made in each of its startup classes, and adding more facetime with local investors. Read more »
Looking to give your friend the perfect birthday gift, or want an easy way to give your kids a gift card for the holidays? Facebook announces Monday that it will be integrating iTunes gift cards and content into its digital gifts platform. Read more »
Looking for the perfect present for the fashion-concious guy in your life? Think about giving a membership to Tie Society, the online men’s fashion startup that lets users rent a certain number of ties per month, with free shipping to try out a variety of styles. Read more »
Facebook is proposing integrating user data with Instagram user data, and abolishing a voting system that allowed users to weigh in on potential changes to the site. The changes bring some privacy concerns for users, but come from Facebook’s desire to monetize and streamline user data. Read more »
If you’re not an Instagram user already, the service will become even harder to miss, with the company launching web badges on Wednesday, small Instagram icons that will link to a user’s profile and can be embedded on web pages across the internet. Read more »
Pinterest is launching “30 Days of Pinspiration” on Tuesday, courting brands and media celebrities as it promotes holiday-themed boards. The move shows growth by Pinterest in areas that could turn to monetization, and the growing up of an emerging social platform. Read more »
Peek, the San Francisco-based travel site that gives users a curated list of options in individual cities, is expanding its “Perfect Day” feature on Tuesday, allowing anyone — not just celebrities like Jack Dorsey and Tory Burch — give their opinions on the best way to spend time. Read more »
A study paid for by Twitter and released Tuesday, first noted by CNBC, supports the idea that the company’s success in promoted tweets and in-stream advertising is convincing shoppers to make more purchases. The news fits with Twitter’s goal to prove itself as a viable advertising platform. Read more »
Legendary Silicon Valley investment firm Kleiner Perkins is announcing a Design Fellows program Tuesday, giving current design students the opportunity to spend a summer in Silicon Valley working on design-related projects with noted tech firms, marrying the importance of design and tech. Read more »
Why does one person’s timeline look totally different from another person’s, even if they share many of the same friends and like the same brands? Facebook responded to recent criticism over the surfacing of posts, saying it tries to reduce the number of posts users dislike. Read more »
With an update to its technology that emphasizes shared social connections and the importance of locations, Banjo attempts to keep users in the loop and let them know what’s happening to their friends around the world, aggregating and organizing social material. Read more »
By launching a Pinterest for business set of options and features on Wednesday, Pinterest is paving the way for a relationship with companies and brands, mimicking Facebook’s courting of companies and potentially threatening startups who provide business analytics for Pinterest. Read more »
It’s a nice problem to have when your app hits unexpected success, but for the founders of Draw Chat, it’s time to unload their tech as they move on to new ventures. Draw Chat and the underlying technology will be up for bidding beginning Wednesday. Read more »
Looking for a new way to search for apartments in San Francisco? It’s worth checking out Lovely, a relatively new site that’s rolling out a mobile app Wednesday and is showing just how antiquated Craigslist really is when it comes to searching and narrowing real estate options. Read more »
Airbnb has rolled out a new neighborhood feature, allowing users to search by location within large cities before booking, giving them greater insight into local areas as the hip travel site grows in popularity. They’re also partnering with local coffee shops to give travelers wifi. Read more »
Looking for vacations that actually work for your kids? Check out MiniTime, the site that lets travelers search for hotel and activity information based on the ages of their children and the specific amenities those vacation options offer. Read more »
Looking to book a hotel, and want to know what the local neighborhood is like, or what amenities it offers? Hipmunk is rolling out a new hotel booking format on Tuesday, attempting to give users more flexibility around their bookings and tailoring the experience more closely. Read more »
In an effort to keep people engaged and answering questions on Quora, the company is rolling out a new feature Monday that allows users to ask questions of Quora power answerers who happen to be online at the time. Read more »
New Context, the subsidiary of Digital Garage and acquirer of design and development firms, is rebranding as Neo on Monday, moving out of its M&A phase and into a new stage of growth, looking to acquire companies and become the best in lean software development. Read more »
Toy Talk, the stealth startup coming from former Pixar CTO Oren Jacob, has raised a $12 million Series A bringing its total so far to $16 million. Toy Talk, launching in 2013, has released a teaser video for its product, which has artificial intelligence for kids. Read more »
Priceline announced Thursday that it has acquired Kayak at $40 a share, putting the travel search site at a $1.8 billion valuation. Kayak recently went public in July 2012 after delaying its IPO since 2010, waiting for the markets to improve. Read more »
Google has expanded the size of Google Ventures’s annual fund from $200 million to $300 million annually, which will allow the firm to expand the scope of its deals and increase its presence as a major venture capital firm since its founding in 2009. Read more »
Looking to collect images for gift ideas for a person, or want to put together inspiration for a secret project? Pinterest is debuting “secret boards” on Thursday, allowing users to pin photos to boards that are either completely private or shared with just a few individuals. Read more »
Struggling to stay on top, or think you have it all figured out? Either way, Yammer founder David Sacks thinks you should fundraise as much as you possibly can, since you never know what you can use the money for. And it doesn’t hurt for staying ahead. Read more »
It might be a marketing tactic, but it’s certainly a refreshing one: Buffer, the app best known for scheduling your tweets and Facebook status updates, candidly explains how they’ve been profitable so far and why they aren’t necessarily looking for more fundraising right now. Read more »
