Crunch Report | Blue Apron IPO Has A Rocky Start
Today’s Stories
Blue Apron IPO off to a rough start
Microsoft confirms Cloudyn acquisition, sources say price is between $50M and $70M
Instagram implements an AI system to fight mean and harassing comments
Uber crosses the 5 billion trip milestone amid ongoing issues
A brief history of the iPhone
Credits
Written and Hosted by: Anthony Ha
Filmed by: Matthew Mauro
Edited by: Joe… Read More Continue reading Crunch Report | Blue Apron IPO Has A Rocky Start
While Optimizely has bought other startups before, co-founder and CEO Dan Siroker said today is the first time it’s acquiring a startup built on Optimizely’s developer platform — namely, Experiment Engine. Experiment Engine describes itself as “the most comprehensive, easy-to-use conversion optimization platform,” which might make it sound similar to… 
Lucid is announcing that it has raised a $60 million round led by North Bridge Growth Equity. It’s the company’s first outside funding since raising a relatively tiny $2.8 million back in 2011. Founder and CEO Patrick Comer said that in the years between, he deliberately wanted Lucid to “run really, really lean and pour every dollar into growth of product.” Now,… 
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman announced today that he’s joined the board of directors at Microsoft. This follows Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn last year. When the deal closed, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said the company’s day-to-day operations would “essentially remain unchanged,” but he also noted a number of areas (like integrating… 
Pypestream is announcing that it has raised $15 million in Series A funding. When the startup launched more than a year ago, founder and CEO Richard Smullen was pitching text messaging as the best way for customers to communicate with businesses — specifically, through the Pypestream app, where businesses can create their own accounts with a variety of different “pypes”… 
Layer, the messaging platform that won TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield back in 2013, is making two big announcement today: It’s raised $15 million in Series B funding, and it’s acquiring another startup, Cola. Layer makes it easy for businesses to add messaging capabilities to their iOS, Android and web products — customers include Trunk Club, Staples and Udacity.… 
Statsbot is giving companies a new way to look at their data — in their chatrooms on Slack.
Swiftype started out helping publishers like TechCrunch offer better site search, but it’s been expanding into other areas like customer support and e-commerce. Now it’s making its biggest leap yet, with the launch of an enterprise search product. Basically, Swiftype is offering large and small businesses a place where they can search all their documents and files across a variety… 
Conductor is launching a new mobile app that co-founder and CEO Seth Besmertnik described as a way to get quick access to “the voice of the customer.” The New York-based company started with a focus on search engine optimization before broadening to offer a broader range of marketing tools. Now, Besmertnik said, “The core of what we do is understand your customers and… 
Anyone who’s tried to watch a popular show like Game of Thrones online has probably had moments where everything pauses and you’re stuck watching a spinning wheel or blinking dots as the streaming service struggles to handle viewer demand. Peer5, one of the startups in the current class at incubator Y Combinator, is working to solve this problem — in fact, it’s…