Author Archives: Josh Constine

Facebook Messenger will get desktop apps, co-watching, emoji status

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To win chat, Facebook Messenger must be as accessible as SMS, yet more entertaining than Snapchat. Today, Messenger pushes on both fronts with a series of announcements at Facebook’s F8 conference, including that it will launch Mac and PC desktop apps, a faster and smaller mobile app, simultaneous video co-watching and a revamped Friends tab, […] Continue reading Facebook Messenger will get desktop apps, co-watching, emoji status→

Torch takes $10M to teach empathy to executives

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When everyone always tells you ‘yes’, you can become a monster. Leaders especially need honest feedback to grow. “If you look at rich people like Donald Trump and you neglect them, you get more Donald Trumps” says Torch co-founder and CEO Cameron Yarbrough about our gruff president. His app wants to make executive coaching (a […] Continue reading Torch takes $10M to teach empathy to executives→

Rippling raises $45M at $270M to be the biz app identity layer

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Parker Conrad’s last startup Zenefits drowned in busy work. Now with Rippling, he wants to boil that ocean. Instead of trying to nail one thing then expand, “very counter to conventional wisdom, we took on something that’s a lot broader and more ambitious.” That meant spending 2 years with 40 engineers working in stealth to […] Continue reading Rippling raises $45M at $270M to be the biz app identity layer→

Proxy raises $13.6M to unlock anything with Bluetooth identity

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You know how kings used to have trumpeters heralding their arrival wherever they went? Proxy wants to do that with Bluetooth. The startup lets you instantly unlock office doors and reserve meeting rooms using Bluetooth Low Energy signal. You never even have to pull out your phone or open an app. But Proxy is gearing […] Continue reading Proxy raises $13.6M to unlock anything with Bluetooth identity→

Goodly replaces lame office perks with student loan repayment

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There are better employee perks than a ping-pong table. 70 percent of Americans graduate college with student loan debt. That’s 45 million people who owe $1.6 trillion. So when employers use Goodly to offer $100 per month in student loan payback for a $6 fee, talent sticks around. The startup found 86 percent of employees said […] Continue reading Goodly replaces lame office perks with student loan repayment→

The top 10 startups from Y Combinator W19 Demo Day 1

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Electric vehicle chargers, heads up displays for soldiers, and the Costco of weed were some of our favorites from presitigious startup accelerator Y Combinator’s Winter 2019 Demo Day 1. If you want to take the pulse of Silicon Valley, YC is the place to be. But with over 200 startups presenting across 2 stages and 2 […] Continue reading The top 10 startups from Y Combinator W19 Demo Day 1→

Slack off. Send videos instead with $11M-funded Loom

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many emails can you replace with a video? As offices fragment into remote teams, work becomes more visual, and social media makes us more comfortable on camera, it’s time for collaboration to go beyond text. That’s the idea behind Loom, a fast-rising startup that equips enterprises […] Continue reading Slack off. Send videos instead with $11M-funded Loom→

Anchorage emerges with $17M from a16z for ‘omnimetric’ crypto security

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I’m not allowed to tell you exactly how Anchorage keeps rich institutions from being robbed of their cryptocurrency, but the off-the-record demo was damn impressive. Judging by the $17 million Series A this security startup raised last year led by Andreessen Horowitz and joined by Khosla Ventures, Max Levchin, Elad Gil, Mark McCombe of Blackrock, and […] Continue reading Anchorage emerges with $17M from a16z for ‘omnimetric’ crypto security→

At cobotics startup Formant, ex-Googlers team up humans & machines

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Our distinct skillsets and shortcomings mean people and robots will join forces for the next few decades. Robots are tireless, efficient, and reliable, but in a millisecond through intuition and situational awareness, humans can make decisions machine can’t. Until workplace robots are truly autonomous and don’t require any human thinking, we’ll need software to supervise them […] Continue reading At cobotics startup Formant, ex-Googlers team up humans & machines→

They scaled YouTube. Now they’ll shard everyone with PlanetScale

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When the former CTOs of YouTube, Facebook, and Dropbox seed fund a database startup, you know there’s something special going on under the hood. Jiten Vaidya and Sugu Sougoumarane saved YouTube from a scalability nightmare by inventing and open sourcing Vitess, a brilliant relational data storage system. But in the decade since working there, the pair […] Continue reading They scaled YouTube. Now they’ll shard everyone with PlanetScale→