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How Crunchbase Data Compares To Other Industry Sources
Now that the CrunchBase team has spent some quality time improving our data sets, we thought it’d be interesting to see how our free database of companies stacks up against other industry sources on a key measure of the startup ecosystem: quarterly venture funding totals.
Here’s a quick breakdown.
Crunchbase data shows that 2,674 venture deals were completed in the first half 0f 2013, with a total of $17,629,528,289 in venture capital invested. These figures are higher than for similar databases including CB Insights, Dow Jones VentureSource, PitchBook and PWC MoneyTree. Why? We suspect it’s because we have more early stage deals in there, given that the difference between total money raised is proportionally smaller than the number of deals listed.
Starting now, we’ll be regularly comparing CrunchBase data to other industry sources over on the CrunchBase blog. We’ll display information on how many deals are done, how much capital is invested, in what regions and categories this capital is invested, what types of rounds receive how many deals and dollars, and more. We’ll also make the source data available for download if you want to take a look for yourself.
And, when this data shows interesting trends, like U.S. venture capital investments doubling in a quarter, how much the average “successful” startup raised, or the largest seed and angel fundings of the last month, we’ll write about it here on TechCrunch.
You can check out a spreadsheet comparing data across these sources for the first half of 2013 on Crunchbase.
Graphs via Crunchbase’s Eddy Kim.
Researchers Create “Near-Exhaustive,” Ultra-Realistic Cloth Simulation
Cloth is hard to simulate yet it’s important in gaming, scientific analysis, and CGI. That’s why scientists at Berkely and Carnegie Mellon have spent six months exhaustively exploring all of the possible configurations of a single cloth robe on a cute little animated figure, thereby reducing error and creating some of the nicest simulated cloth you’ll see today. They report on their findings in a paper that will be released at SIGGRAPH today.
“The criticism of data-driven techniques has always been that you can’t pre-compute everything,” said Adrien Treuille, associate professor of computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon. “Well, that may have been true 10 years ago, but that’s not the way the world is anymore.”
The cloth you see above is made of 29,000 vertices and rendered at 60 frames per second. It flows and moves just like real cloth and because all possible motions are rendered and taken into account using a sort of graph of all possible vertex positions. Why is this important? Because it allows for online simulations of clothing on a human body, it can make games far cooler than they are now, and you can use the technology to see how materials will perform in various configurations, different weather patterns, and the like. In short, it gives virtual robots real clothes.
Can we expect to see this technology in games any time soon? Not on current consoles.
70 MB requirement is likely too large to be practical for games targeting modern console systems (for example, the Xbox 360 has only 512 MB of RAM), we believe its cost is modest in the context of today’s modern PCs (and the coming generation of gaming consoles) which currently have multiple GBs of memory. Furthermore, we have not fully explored that gamut of cloth basis or secondary graph compression strategies and so both better compression, as well as run-time solutions that stream regions of the secondary graph (leaving only the basis representation in core), are likely possible.
It’s quite cute to see how these little figures move inside robes and “casual” clothing and I’d say we’re just a little past the uncanny valley, at least when it comes to clothing. With a few more months of rendering I wonder what they could do with floppy bellies and arm fat?
Warsaw's TC Meetup Shows How Far Central Europe Has Come In The Startup World
When I first started visiting Central Europe about seven years ago, the response was dismal. The first meetup we held in Warsaw, for example, consisted of five dudes who thought I was selling Amway. Now, however, folks like Open Reaktor, Aula Polska, and Bitspiration are bringing together some of the coolest startups I’ve ever seen, and I’m pleased to introduce you to a pair of great companies. Two weeks ago we held another great startup event in Warsaw and the resulting pitch-off was pretty amazing.
Let’s talk about the winners. First there’s Allerad. Founded by Jakub Musiałek, this company aims to employ radiologists who then bid on X-Ray readings online and perform them faster and more efficiently than the current mash of services and service providers doctors currently use.
The runner-up is OLVTeam, a unique video-based learning platform for creatives. It’s not a new idea, but it’s well implemented and quite clever.
Other standouts include the code review system CodeBrag, sleep monitor IntelClinic, and some dude with two Rolexes. In short, it was a lot of fun and the scene is growing every year — a great sign in the middle of post-recession Europe.
Hardware Giant Flextronics Is Launching Lab IX, An Accelerator That Gives $500K To Each Hardware Startup
If innovations in 3D printing, and platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, are making it easier than ever for hardware startups to conceive and prototype new gadgets, then Flextronics, the China-based manufacturer that works with Apple and many others on smartphones and more, is putting its hat in the ring to tap into hardware startups another way. It is launching a new accelerator, Lab IX, based out of Milpitas (where the company also has an R&D center), which will award $500,000 to each selected company to grow their ideas.
The focus will be on finding startups that are less than three years old, have less than $5 million in funding: “early stage disruptive companies incorporating hardware and software innovation.”
The idea is to bring Flextronics closer to new business. Perhaps it is in some way also to compete against upstarts like PCH International, which has launched its own incubator called Highway1 and doing more innovative design itself. It also helps the company continue to raise its profile in the U.S., where it is increasingly doing work for companies like Apple as part of a bigger wave of U.S. domestic manufacturing.
“We are excited to offer Lab IX services to help growing technology companies take their products to market and the next level,” said Mike McNamara, CEO of Flextronics, in a statement. “We believe that engaging with game-changing companies at an early stage will not only benefit Flextronics, but will provide those companies with the ability to leverage a wealth of experience in hardware design, manufacturing and logistics from all of the Flextronics business units and specialized partners in an unprecedented scale.”
“Hardware is hard,” the company notes in its brochure detailing the new program. In addition to a capital injection, Lab IX will also provide access to Lab IX and Flextronics’ engineers and designers, including IDEO, access to manufacturing and protyping equipment — some $30 million in the R&D center alone. Those who look like they may be progressing to the next stage of their development get access to Flextronics’ network of factories for manufacturing, procurement network and marketing network — effectively hitting the jackpot by leveraging Flextronics’ scale.
We’re reaching out to the company to get more details on how many startups are going to be accepted into the program, and when the cut-off is for applications — or whether this is a rolling deadline. We’re hopefully speaking to Lior Susan, who heads up the Lab IX program later, and will update the post as we learn more.
Verizon Reveals The $99 Motorola Droid Mini, $199 Droid Ultra, And The $299 Droid Maxx
As if we didn’t already have enough Motorola phones to wait for, Verizon showed off a trio of new Motorola DROID smartphones at a (surprisingly cozy) event in New York City.
The flagship of the three is the DROID Ultra, which Motorola’s Rick Osterloh refers to as the thinnest 4G LTE smartphone out there with its and 7.18mm thick chassis. Motorola’s fascination with Kevlar is still in effect on the device’s rear (though the finish is glossy as opposed to matte like it usually is), and a 5-inch 720p display occupies most of the space on the device’s front.
Motorola is continuing the Maxx line of power-conscious devices — it’s functionally the same phone as the Ultra except it’s a little fatter at 8.5mm, a features a sealed battery capable of up to 48 hours of continued usage. Last (and certainly not least) is the DROID Mini, a slightly smaller take on the Ultra formula that’s eschews that giant 5-inch screen for a more manageable 4.3-inch screen.
Putting industrial design aside though, perhaps the most interesting thing tucked away inside these new DROIDs is what Motorola calls its X8 mobile computing system — it’s a eight-core system that encompasses the dual-core CPU and uses additional cores to allocate computing power to graphics processing, language processing, and the like. The X8 system also enables touchless control for the device so users can make phone calls and ask for directions hands-free, and active display, which lights up just a portion of the screen to display notifications . Sound familiar? It should — those features were also prominently highlighted in a leaked Rogers demo video for the Moto X.
If those monikers seem to be missing a little something, you’d be right — that RAZR label that graced the nearly all the Motorola devices released on Verizon in the past year is gone. It’s DROID all the way now, and I have to wonder if Motorola is retiring one of its most famous mobile brands because it’s looking to reinvent itself with another release later this summer. Speaking of the summer, all three devices will officially go on sale on August 20: the Mini, Ultra, and Maxx will cost $99, $199, and $299 respectively with a 2-year contract.
We’re still waiting on confirmation from Motorola and Verizon on specs, but the representatives on have said they’re just not talking about them today. That is, for lack of a better term, pretty damned stupid. Overall Motorola is being very cagey about the hardware details, and about specifics around the X8 and its origins (though it seems to be based on a Qualcomm MSM8960 Pro), which is an odd way to launch a product.
This is a developing story, please refresh for updates.
With Launch Of Lemon Network, Wallet App Maker Lemon Prepares To Take On PayPal, Google, Venmo & Others
Lemon, the makers of the mobile wallet by the same name, is today releasing a new mobile payment tool whose goal is to allow the app’s users to make purchases from Lemon Network merchants without having to continually re-enter their credit card information. This is an attempt to solve a major pain point on mobile, where many retailers and other merchants have been slow to transition their websites to responsive, mobile-optimized experiences that work well on small screens or provide well-built mobile apps.
However, merchant participation in this newly announced “Lemon Network” has to be enabled through the integration of a software development kit (SDK) within a merchant’s own application, meaning the success of this product is entirely dependent on merchant adoption at this time.
The consumer-facing Lemon Wallet, for those unfamiliar, is a tool that holds a digital copy (and photo) of everything in your actual wallet for easy access on the go, including not only payment cards, but loyalty cards, insurance cards and IDs. Consumers who need their credit-card info while shopping on their mobile can quickly copy and paste that info from the Lemon app to elsewhere. It’s also handy for when you left a given card or your wallet at home, or just don’t feel like digging through your bag for your physical wallet. Some cards are even “smart” and can provide Lemon users with balance updates and special offers.
But so far, the wallet has stopped short of providing an actual “wallet” experience in the sense of being tied directly to transactions. This is the problem Lemon’s new payments tool attacks. Now when consumers are shopping within a Lemon-powered mobile app, they can tap on the photo or name of their preferred payment card in order to complete the checkout.
The Lemon Network payment functionality is designed to compete with other mobile checkout experiences like PayPal, Google Wallet and Braintree-owned Venmo, which also just introduced a service that similarly allows users to store their credit card data in Braintree’s network for easy, one-touch payments on mobile.
But if the battle for mobile payments will include both Venmo and Lemon in terms of the competition among startups, then it’s worth noting that shots here have been fired. Lemon recently hired Jenna Wyer for its Chief Sales Officer position. She was previously part of the founding team of Braintree Payments. Wyer, employee No. 3 at Braintree, was tasked with acquiring merchants and had worked with businesses like Airbnb, LivingSocial, Hotel Tonight and Uber, to name a few. Now she has changed teams.
Lemon’s wallet is used by millions of consumers, the company says, but it declines to give specific numbers. As of a couple of months ago, CEO Wences Casares says Lemon was capturing 1,000 new cards per hour.
Additional details about the Lemon Network are here.
Enterprise Social Network Platform Hall Raises $5.5M In Series A Funding
Enterprise social networking service Hall has raised $5.5 million in Series A funding, bringing the AngelPad startup’s funds to about $6.4 million. The series was led by Felicis Ventures, Signia Venture Parters and angel investor Eric Hahn, and joined by existing investor PivotNorth Capital.
Founded in 2010, Hall provides a platform for businesses to communicate from any online device. It also aims to deliver real-time communication across different companies, so users can contact co-workers, employers, clients and friends all in one place.
CEO Brett Hellman says new funding will help expand the Hall team, which currently consists of six people. Hellman tells me Hall is working on a new version for mobile apps, and more people are needed to keep up with the company’s growth. The company launched apps for iOS and Android in February, and since then has grown to serve more than 20,000 businesses and 100,000 users. While Hall is still in beta testing, some notable users include Capital One, Razorfish, Sapient and Oracle.
Hall’s freemium model includes a basic version for companies, and adding administration control, data exporting and other managing features costs $5 a month per user for a Business Plan. The Enterprise Plan adds single sign-on and active directory groups for $15 a month per user.
“We’re iMessages for businesses,” Hellman tells me. “Short-form messaging? No one’s brought that to businesses yet. So that’s what we’re 100 percent focused on doing.”
Between established competitors such as Yammer, Jive and Chatter, as well as startups like Batterii and NationalField, there are a lot of companies trying to provide the best business network. Glancing at the competition, the key to success is centered around user engagement. Signia Venture Partners investor Zaw Thet says he believes this is where Hall will excel. After switching from Yammer to Hall, Thet tells me his emails decreased by at least 50 percent, moving most communication to short, quick messages on Hall. TechCrunch previously reported that Hall’s users are engaged in the service for at least three hours a day.
Another useful feature that might put Hall ahead of some competitors is the ability to communicate with people outside the company. While many services are focused on streamlining collaboration within a business, Hall wants to make it easy for outside participants to come in or out of company messaging.
YouTube Launches Embeddable Off-Site Subscribe Buttons To Boost Channel Subscriptions
Over the last few years, YouTube slowly started putting a larger emphasis on channels — especially channel subscriptions — but until now, the only way to subscribe to a channel was on YouTube itself. Today, however, YouTube is changing this with the launch of a set of embeddable subscribe buttons that video creators can put on their websites. These buttons are now available for free and paid YouTube channels.
YouTube obviously hopes that these buttons will get more users to subscribe to channels in general. Chances are, the company also hopes that this will boost subscription rates for paid channels, which have been off to a slow start.
Making one of these buttons just takes a few seconds. All you have to do is insert your channel’s name here, copy and past the code into your website and you’re good to go. You can choose between very basic buttons and those that feature both your channel’s name and logo (with a white or dark background).
Here is what the larger button looks like for our TechCrunch channel on YouTube (feel free to subscribe):
YouTube does set a few rules for how you can use one of these buttons, though. You can’t “offer or promote prizes or rewards of any kind in exchange for clicking on a YouTube Subscribe button,” for example. As Google told me, this is meant to discourage channel owners from artificially inflating their numbers on YouTube.
In addition, YouTube stipulates that the buttons must be fully and clearly visible and that you can’t use them to “track any data about a user related to the user’s actions or browsing activity.”
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