Germany’s Rocket Internet may have not made its big U.S. push yet, but one of its early plays — parenting subscription service Petitebox — has failed amid logistical problems. Will it make up for that by resurrecting the service under a new name? Read more »
There are plenty of sell-your-picture platforms out there already that give people the chance to become semi-professional photographers. But German startup Photocircle has a twist: it’s encouraging those taking pictures to support social projects in the photogenic places they visit. Read more »
The Berlin startup hopes that a ‘big six figure’ funding round can help it provide a European take on the ‘Airbnb for childcare’ model. But will its emphasis on trust and personal screening mean success — or simply create scaling problems? Read more »
The Samwer Brothers have stopped being furtive about the extent of their many clones, with a new site that lists their full portfolio as part of a wider rebrand. But what can we learn from this dramatic shift? Is Rocket Internet looking to America? Read more »
The money will go into two funds, one of which also aims to raise angel cash. But will it be enough to shore up a promising but funding-starved startup scene? Read more »
Papagei.tv wants to use movies and other video entertainment to help people learn new languages — and it’s doing well out of the gate, with at least €10m to extend its immersive language-training courses and a role as the official language trainer for Germany’s Olympic team. Read more »
Rumors suggest the Samwer brothers are prepping a clone of hot payments startup Stripe to add to their copies of Square and BillMeLater – though it remains to be seen whether this would be a quick-sale ploy or a long-term play. Read more »
Rocket Internet did it before with eBay and Groupon, and now it’s done it again – having founded a very similar service to Care.com, it has now sold that service to the the U.S.-based care-giving firm for equity. Read more »
A newly-launched startup called Foundd is taking the algorithmic approach, while its Berlin neighbour Tweek.tv is going for the social angle. But why has no winner emerged in this space already? Read more »
A new startup is hoping to breathe new life into the MeeGo project let loose by Nokia — just one of a rising number of companies breaking out as the Finnish mobile giant stumbles. That’s what happens when you let 40,000 people go inside two years. Read more »
It’s easy to embed a wide variety of music players on your website, but hard to get them singing from the same hymnsheet. Musicplayr’s trying to fix that with a newly-revamped player it calls ‘eye-candy for the ears’ Read more »
Germany’s notorious clone merchants have sold their stake in furniture operation Fashion For Home, but that still leaves them with good alternatives in the space. Whether they can produce strong players in less traditional e-commerce markets is another question. Read more »
Productivity startup 6Wunderkinder made a big noise on the Berlin scene when it launched, but it’s been quiet for a few months. Now CEO Christian Reber explains why other German startups should follow suit and focus on their product — and why he’s worried about Windows 8. Read more »
The Swedish investor has become a new backer of Billpay, a Samwer brothers operation and PayPal rival that’s talking expansion – but what kind? Read more »
The reasons cited by games factory Wooga when it pulled out of developing mobile browser-based games for Facebook’s platform are not going to be fixed anytime soon – and that fact should be cause for concern in the social network’s quest to conquer mobile. Read more »
Payment startups hoping to conquer Europe will be watching their backs a little more closely today, with the news that the Samwer brothers have just pulled together “double digit funding” for their Square clone. PayLeven (previously known as Zenpay) is a straight-up copy of Square: a […] Read more »
Gidsy CEO Edial Dekker says the experience marketplace is working on a relaunch that will make the service more social and take it to new places — but he warns that whatever happens, he doesn’t want to suffer from Europe’s ‘ego problem.’ Read more »
New messaging platform Moped is essentially a lightweight yet richer alternative to one of Twitter’s secondary features. But even in the increasingly crowded messaging space it might be unique enough to fly on its own. Read more »
Swedish investment group Kinnevik has cut its ties with Groupon, selling up its remaining stake in the daily deals company for $81.5 million — a shareholding that was valued at almost $200 million when the company went public in November. Read more »
Why did one early investor in apparently thriving Berlin startup 6wunderkinder sell up? We’ve solved the mystery: it looks like the German public-private HTGF venture capital firm hit the limits of what it was allowed to do and decided to cash out. Read more »
Twitter’s deal with SoundCloud to embed audio in tweets isn’t just a deal that gives the Berlin music startup a ton of exposure: it’s a signal that while Twitter may carry a threat for media companies, it could be a serious alternative to Facebook. Read more »
Berlin startup Readmill’s iPad-based social reading app has got plenty of attention. Now it’s getting a significant update that will make it simpler and easier to use for everyone — including making it more useful for independent publishers to hook themselves in to. Read more »
The company behind German Facebook clone StudiVZ has changed its name to Poolworks and decided to focus on its social network for school-age kids, IDPool. It seems there’s simply no point competing with Mark Zuckerberg’s juggernaut any more. Read more »
Just months after Germany’s notorious Samwer brothers courted controversy by cloning design sales site Fab.com, they are about to close their copycat site, Bamarang, down — folding it into its more successful stablemate, WestWing. Read more »
You might think Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann, the man at the very top of T-Mobile, enjoyed life in a big corporation. On the contrary, he says: big companies are slow and need partners who can be nimble on their behalf… just as long as they’re not too disruptive. Read more »
One of the world’s leading credit agencies is courting controversy with an experimental program that will use data from Facebook and other social networks to inform its ratings decisions. And the biggest surprise? It’s happening in privacy-mad Germany. Read more »
German e-reading service txtr hopes to take on Amazon and Apple by becoming the biggest provider of third party reading apps — and a deal with four major American publishers and a New York office could be the latest steps in that journey. Read more »
After some serious beta testing, Facebook file transfer app Pipe is now ready for action. It allows users to send each other files to each other through the social network — and we have 5,000 invitations to get in early. Read more »
Eric Wahlforss, the co-founder of sound-sharing platform SoundCloud tells GigaOM where the company is going — including a new mobile-friendly version and the potential for TV integration — and explains what it’s like being an impromptu ambassador for the Berlin startup scene. Read more »
Online food ordering service Delivery Hero claims to be number one in five countries, with 84 percent growth in the first quarter of this year alone. Its next target? Overhauling its main rival, European market leader Just-Eat. Read more »
What use are hundreds of shortcuts if you don’t know them? Berlin’s Veodin has come up with a free tool called KeyRocket, which trains users in the way of the shortcut with more relevance and less irritation than Microsoft’s hated old Office assistant. Read more »
Berlin’s attempt to become one of the world’s premier cities for startup culture is taking a serious blow, with a new airport months behind schedule and a ‘crazy’ compulsory pension contributions scheme that has nascent companies warning that it could prove too much. Read more »
The fact that Germany’s Rocket Internet is launching another clone should come as a surprise to no-one. But even with their copycat reputation, cutting and pasting code for their new Nigerian online store seems more than little bit lazy. Read more »
Konstantin Guericke, a co-founder of LinkedIn, has become a Silicon Valley-based venture partner for the Berlin firm Earlybird, giving its investments a direct link to Californian capital and business networks. Is this a turning point for German startups? Read more »
Up to €300,000 in seed funding and a pro mentor to boot? Sounds great – but it seems the equity demands for Deutsche Telekom’s new Berlin-based ‘incubator’ hub:raum are pretty fuzzy indeed. Read more »
The Berlin clone factory rakes in the cash, but from whom? We take an initial look at the the sources of Rocket’s fuel. Read more »
The Berlin-based IMDB rival Moviepilot, which is already working with film studios to give them better understanding of their projects’ fanbase, has secured funding to put a sales team in LA Read more »
Hot on the heels of Telefonica’s Wayra accelerator, Deutsche Telekom has opened up a rival incubator in the German capital Read more »
It’s fun pitching cities like Berlin against the Valley, but it’s an artifical contest that makes little sense these days. Two investors believe it’s time to ditch the territorial debate and start building European startups that cross borders. Read more »
Squadmail’s idea of shared, mail-server-level folders is simple, but it may be the ideal way of moving on from inefficient tools like forwards and CCs Read more »
