Like FindTheBest, the highly ambitious Versus IO takes a data-centric approach to product comparisons. But it’s also using natural language algorithms and a generic data model, raising interesting possibilities for the future. Read more »
500 Startups announced the 28 companies that will make up its summer incubator batch. The companies will launch in July at demo days in Mountain View, San Francisco, and New York. Read more »
500 Startups has named a new partner and has opened an office in New York, and has plans to add a San Francisco office in the future. Read more »
South by Southwest is almost upon us and for those wondering what to expect, I don’t have hot apps, just a sense of the conference’s evolution as tech itself evolves. Read more »
500 Startups put its own unique spin on the accelerator demo day on Wednesday, debuting 30 companies in its fifth batch of startups. Here were the five that caught my eye. Read more »
Dave McClure’s 500 Startups accelerator program will begin accepting applications for the spring class on Thursday, for the first time opening the entire application process to applicants via AngelList. The application process will stay open until March 1. Read more »
A graduate of Excelerate Labs in Chicago, SpotHero wants to act as a parking spot broker for the big lots as well as offer consumers the cheapest parking rates through its mobile apps. The company’s $2.5 million round was led by Battery Ventures. 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 »
500 Startups releases Wednesday the 32 companies making up its fifth accelerator batch. Selected in October, the group will debut at a demo day in February. Notably, the 32 startups have a large number of international and female founders in the mix. Read more »
As some of Silicon Valley’s investors move toward Latin American to find the next hot startups, international founders still look to the United States for models of entrepreneurship and innovation that can be applied back to their home countries — with or without VC dollars. Read more »
Looking to join the 500 Startups fall accelerator batch? The group has now opened its application process, allowing founders to apply through AngelList, making the process for joining up easier than ever. The applications will be open through Sept. 23. Read more »
With growing investment in health care, the question remains: where are entrepreneurs focusing their efforts, and are they making a difference in the right spaces? Read more »
500 Startups gets its first international accelerator. Dave McClure’s investment group joins with a Mexican accelerator called Mexican VC. Mexico has a growing population of new Internet and mobile hungry consumers, and the country has less of an investing bubble compared to Brazil. Read more »
27 companies made their pitches at the 500 Startups demo day on Tuesday in Mountain View, and it was a diverse bunch of startups that took the stage, emphasizing mobile technology and a large number of shopping-related and kid-oriented apps in their pitches to investors. Read more »
After bootstrapping itself for more than five years, New York City-based Behance, an online destination for creative galleries and portfolios, has finally turned to outside funding, securing a $6.5 million investment from Union Square Ventures and a host of investors including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Read more »
What Billy Beane is to baseball, Dave McClure wants to be technology startups. And like Beane, he is willing to go anywhere in the world to find a slight edge to beat his richer, bigger and fancier rivals on Sand Hill Road. Read more »
Farmeron isn’t your typical software-as-a-service business — it’s based in a small town in Croatia, and its customers are dairy farmers, not tech-savvy startups. Still, founder Matija Kopic’s just raised another $1.4 million to help take its big data services to farms around the world. Read more »
In just about 18 months, Dave McClure’s 500 Startups has made more than 250 investments. And it’s looking to expand even further, with the addition of two venture partners and the promotion of two of its existing team members. Read more »
Get ready for a blockbuster — and almost nuts — year of technology in 2012. Why? Because Facebook is doing the mother of all initial public offerings. And like Netscape and Google before, the Facebook IPO is going to change not only the company but also Silicon Valley. Read more »
In Mountain View, 32 companies from the third class of the 500 Startups Accelerator program showed off what they’ve been working on to investors and press. I sat through all the demos so you didn’t have to, and to tell you who the top startups are. Read more »
A recent post by Andrew Clay Shafer raised doubts about the abilities of growing number of incubators that are imitating the likes of 500 Startups. The key qualities of these incubators are no different than incubators from 1999, as an old Forbes.com piece of mine shows. Read more »
Poop Rewards is a startup that is looking to create an incentive program using cell phone talk minutes and other prizes to convince Indians that don’t have easy access to toilets to use designated public toilets in their area. And it also has an awesome name. Read more »
If there’s one thing that is acting as the pulse behind the growing entrepreneurial spirit in India’s cities, it’s the rise of the Indian middle class. I head off on a 2-week trip to Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore to capture the heart of this movement. Read more »
London-based Seedcamp is already a significant force in early stage investment: but now it’s come out all guns blazing with a series of partnerships across Europe and America that it hopes can secure its reputation as one of the world’s leading incubators. Read more »
Dave McClure’s 500 Startups has nearly doubled the number of participating companies in the second round of its Accelerator program, which runs from May through September. It’s also pretty diverse, with 20 percent of companies having female founders and 30 percent having international founders. Read more »
Dave McClure’s 500 Startups has invested in nearly 100 young companies since being launched last summer. Now it’s looking to help them grow with an incubator program that will give them Silicon Valley work space, design and distribution help and access to its stable of mentors. Read more »
Angel investor Dave McClure has added a roster of mentors and advisors to the team at his recently launched seed fund/incubator 500 Startups, a group that includes Google’s “open advocate” Chris Messina, Josh Elman of Twitter, Slideshare CEO Rashmi Sinha and Hunter Walk of YouTube. Read more »
Many Y Combinator startups from this summer’s class already have money in the bank, and many hit up the same angel investors. I conducted an informal survey of investors at YC’s Demo Day to ask how many of the companies they had already invested in. Read more »
Dave McClure recently stepped out on his own to create 500 Startups, a seed investing incubator. He is partway through raising a $30 million fund, and has wasted no time putting it to work, making multiple new fundings per day in the last week. Read more »
Rapportive this week announced $1 million in funding from a long list of angel and early stage investors including Dave McClure, Paul Buchheit and Jason Calacanis. The startup makes a Gmail plug-in that gives dynamic social web profile data about the people with whom you’re emailing. Read more »
