TechCrunch
Incubator AngelPad Plans To Launch A New York Office, Says Its Startups Have Raised $100M Total
Startup incubator AngelPad is looking beyond its current base in San Francisco — founder Thomas Korte just announced that he plans to hold one of his two annual sessions in New York City.
That doesn’t mean AngelPad is going to be working with more companies or hiring more staff. Instead, the New York class is taking the place of one of the two San Francisco sessions, and Korte said that he and partner Carine Magescas will be running both of them.
As for why he’s making the move, Korte noted the growth of NYC’s startup scene, and he said it has an advantage over the San Francisco Bay Area because there’s less competition for engineers. Plus, AngelPad has an extensive network in the city, with Korte estimating that 10 percent of the incubator’s companies are already in New York.
So despite the switch, Korte said he isn’t worried about missing out on great San Francisco companies — if founders want to participate in an incubator, they’re going to be ready to travel to make it happen.
“Between New York and San Francisco, the differences are really shrinking,” he said. “There’s going to be great companies built in the Valley there’s going to be great companies built in New York.”
The exact location of the AngelPad’s New York office hasn’t been determined yet, but Korte plans to start accepting applications in late August or early September.
He also said that he’s calculated all the money raised by startups after they left AngelPad, and the total is $100 million. The biggest rounds include a $12 million Series B for MoPub and a round of the same size for Crittercism. Korte noted that on its own, a lot of funding doesn’t make for a successful company, but he said it’s one of the two quantitative measures that AngelPad uses to track whether its companies are thriving (the other is number of engineers hired).
This seemed like a good time to ask Korte about whether he plans to raise a fund, but he was as coy about it today as he was last month.
“So far, AngelPad has been funded by the partners, and that may or may not change in the future,” he said.
Immigration Reform Passes Senate, House Leadership Calls Bill A “Pipe Dream”
Immigration reform is half-way to its goal: the Senate passed a comprehensive bill this afternoon 68 to 32. The bill is loaded with tech-industry goodies, including more foreign visas, a special visa for startup entrepreneurs, and unlimited space for brainiac inventors and scientists.
However, Republican leaders in the House of Representatives have unspecified issues with the bill and say the Senate version is a “pipe dream.”
“Apparently some haven’t gotten the message: The House is not going to take up and vote on whatever the Senate passes. We’re going to do our own bill — through regular order — and move the legislation that reflects the will of our majority and the will of the American people,” said speaker of the House, John Boehner at a press conference on Capitol Hill.
The House is intent on moving things through an orderly process of debate, revisions, and committee hearings. Currently, the House has broken up immigration reform into several bills, including a high-skill worker bill that CrunchGov is helping to crowdsource (contribute your ideas here).
So, it’s one big step, but not the goal line yet.
Adobe Acquires Conversational Marketing Platform Neolane For $600M In Cash To Bolster Its Marketing Cloud
Adobe today announced that it has acquired Neolane, a conversation marketing company with an annual revenue of just under $60 million, in a transaction that’s worth $600 million in cash. Neolane was founded in 2001 and is currently headquartered in Paris, France, with offices around Europe, North America and Asia. The company’s customers include the likes of Accor Hotels, Alcatel-Lucent, IKEA, Samsung, Sony and Dior.
For Adobe, which is putting quite a few resources into its Marketing Cloud, this acquisition adds a new piece to its feature lineup. Adobe does offer Adobe Social, which provides a number of social media-tracking and analysis tools. Neolane’s feature lineup, however, is far larger and includes tools like handling leads, marketing resource management, high-volume email marketing campaigns and a real-time offer recommendation engine for personalized, one-to-one messages. Neolane, Adobe says, will become the sixth solution in the Marketing Cloud, joining its existing Analytics, Target, Social, Experience Manager and Media Optimizer offerings.
Last year, Neolane raised a $27 million funding round led by Battery Ventures with participation by Auriga Partners and XAnge Private Equity.
“The acquisition of Neolane brings critical cross-channel campaign managementcapabilities to the Adobe Marketing Cloud,” said Brad Rencher, senior vice presidentand general manager of Adobe’s Digital Marketing business in a canned statement today. “Adobe has long been the trusted partner to creative professionals and we are now extending our lead in the digital marketing space with the addition of Neolane. From campaign creation through planning, execution and optimization, Adobe technology is driving the entire marketing process.”
Google Looking For Groups To Provide The Next Hikers To Don Trekker Street View Backpack
Google is trying hard to build out its Street View-style imagery of locales off the beaten path with its Trekker program. The Trekker, a roughly 40-pound backpack that has a camera-ridden sphere poking out over its wearer’s head, captures 360-degree fields of view which are then used to build interactive, first-person views of remote places like the Grand Canyon. Google is now looking for applicants to help it continue to expand its Trekker efforts.
The application is open to non-profits, tourism boards, government agencies, academic or research organizations or other groups interested in helping the search giant document the world. The applications will be reviewed over the next few months, and agencies selected will become part of Google’s pilot program, which is open to organizations around the world.
I got the chance to wear one of the Trekker packs at Google I/O this year, and to discuss the program with the tech’s co-creator, Steve Silverman. At the time, Silverman said that Google would be building out its Trekker program in the coming months, and it’s looking at outside partners to help with that, including the inaugural partner for this expansion, the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau. It makes sense that Google would turn to the people who know the terrain best to help them chart and capture Trekker Street View scenery, rather than trying to do it all themselves.
If they’re looking for anyone to help negotiate the wilds of Toronto’s dense urban jungle, sign me up, but this is more likely a job for those occupying greener spaces.
New Relic Teams With Microsoft To Offer Performance Monitoring On Windows Azure
New Relic and Microsoft will offer performance anaytics to gain insight into the performance of native apps and websites running on Windows Azure.
The new performance package allows New Relic customers to:
- Use a new optimized New Relic .NET agent designed for Windows Azure Web Site services.
- Analytics for the performance of applications deployed on the Windows Azure Web Sites.
- Support for iOS and Android mobile apps.
- End-to-end visibility, from the individual mobile device to Windows Azure Mobile Services backend services.
- Data from app users and sessions to see what users are experiencing.
- Monitoring of HTTP app errors and performance problems, which can be as bad or worse than crashes.
- Views of performance data by geography, carrier, device type and app versions to prioritize, isolate and solve problems with the app in question.
- Monitoring of external services.
New Relic already provides app performance for the Windows Azure services and solutions. These include Windows Azure Virtual Machines, Windows Azure Cloud Services, Web and Worker Role Instances. They also offer integration with Windows Azure SQL Database, which is available as a plugin to send data to the New Relic Platform.
The news follows New Relic’s announcement last week about opening its platform for developers to build their own performance services for apps they have deployed.
Rolocule's Motion Tennis App Turns The Apple TV And iPhone Into A Legitimate Gaming System
Just in time for Wimbledon, Rolocule Games is releasing a new tennis game today. It’s not Rolocule’s first foray into virtual racquet sports, but it is the first that turns your iPhone into the controller and Apple TV into a gaming console.
The Motion Tennis app, which costs $7.99, uses the iPhone’s gyroscope, magnetometer, and accelerometer to track the phone’s motion, so players can slice and slam shots across the court. All you need is an Apple TV and an iPhone: hook the two up, open the app, and you’re playing tennis.
Rolocule is selling rolomotion — its name for the technology that powers Motion Tennis — on a few points, one being that it eliminates the necessity for a console system and lets people play on any Apple TV, anywhere. Rolocule will eventually be releasing Motion Badminton and Squash as well, and they’re working on a shooting game unofficially called “Die Zombies Die!”
While Rolocule has only stepped into immediate competition with games like Wii Tennis today, it’s easy to see the implications of developing good console-free gaming. It’s a huge market to cut into, and rolomotion games are light, portable, and relatively cheap, excluding the $99 Apple TV.
Rolocule raised an angel round in India last year with Mumbai Angels and Blume Ventures, though Gupta would not disclose how much they raised. He said that they might be looking to raise again, especially if they want to become leaders in this technology. I wouldn’t put it past them.
It’s also a look into iPhone games that don’t involve tilting or swiping across the screen, which founder Rohit Gupta said has limited the creative breadth of games. That may be true, but it would seem that the first move for rolomotion would be to replicate every console game possible. Creativity can come after total game domination.
Oh, and you might want to invest in one of those iPhone cases with an elastic strap on the back. You know, so you don’t end up ruining your TV and your phone.
[Image from Rolocule]
No comments:
Post a Comment