TechCrunch
TechCrunch Balkans Is Off To A Roaring Start
Last night in Sofia, Bulgaria was a blast. It was TechCrunch’s first Balkans mini-meetup and we had six great startups pitch to win a spot in Disrupt Berlin’s startup alley. Last night Farmhopping took the gold while Sensika came in second place. However, expect to see a lot more of the other entrants, Imagga,Number Picture,Storpool, and Playground Energy. You can read more about it at Netocratic.com.
Here is the information for the next three events:
Belgrade (2.7) – KC Grad – 8PM to 11PM
Zagreb (3.7) – VIP Club – 8PM to 11PM
Ljubljana (5.7) – LP Bar – 8PM to 11PM
Expect to have some free beer, lots of sunshine, and a great chance to talk about your startup in an informal setting. We’ll also be scouting for Disrupt entrants for Disrupt Europe in October.
If you have a startup to pitch, please submit to Disrupt right now and we’ll talk about your presentation and application when I’m in town. We are still accepting applications for TechCrunch Disrupt Europe and applications to Berlin will be closing shortly. This is a great opportunity to get in front of a TechCrunch staffer before the event.
These will be informal meetups where I’ll talk a little bit about TechCrunch and getting the attention of media outside your own country and we can talk startups, entrepreneurship, and funding all night long.
To RSVP for Belgrade on July 2 click here. Hosted by Netokracija / Netocratic.
To RSVP for Zagreb on July 3 click here. Hosted by Netokracija / Netocratic.
To RSVP for Ljubljana on July 5 click here. Hosted by Netokracija / Netocratic.
Special thanks to our general sponsors HT group and hub:raum – a leading telecom startup accelerator for Central and Eastern Europe. Special thanks to our main sponsor, the .me domain..
Also thank you BlackBerry, Renault, Infobip and Celtra for helping make this happen.
Tech-Powered Financial Planning Platform SigFig Gets $15M In Series B Funding
SigFig, the startup that operates a web platform for tracking and analyzing your personal financial investments, has secured $15 million in a new funding round.
The funding, which serves as SigFig’s Series B, was led by Union Square Ventures and Bain Capital Ventures with the participation of SigFig’s previous backers including DCM. This brings the total investment in SigFig to more than $20 million since it was founded.
SigFig’s co-founder and CEO Mike Sha told me in an interview last week that the money will be put toward growing out SigFig’s reach through additional partnerships — deals inked over the past year with USA Today and Yahoo Finance have been beneficial to the company when it comes to onboarding big groups of users, he said. At the moment, $75 billion in assets are being tracked on SigFig, which just launched its public beta in May 2012.
The new funding will also come in handy for growing SigFig’s staff, which currently has 30 employees. However, massive growth on that front isn’t in the cards — a big part of SigFig’s strategy that makes it different from traditional offerings is that it provides its portfolio analysis through technology, rather than through human financial advisors.
I brought Mike Sha in to the TechCrunch TV studio talk a bit more about SigFig’s growth so far and plans for the months ahead, and you can check it out in the video embedded below:
Flipboard Loses Users' Google Reader Feeds, After Promising Worry-Free Transition
Flipboard users counting on the social magazine to retain their Google Reader subscriptions after the service’s shutdown last night are waking up today to a bit of disappointment. Though Flipboard had promised earlier that those who signed into Google Reader in their Flipboard would be able to continue to enjoy their subscriptions after Reader’s closing, apparently, that’s not the case.
On Twitter, many are tweeting their confusion and unhappiness with the situation, and, as one TechCrunch reader has pointed out, users can no longer take to Flipboard’s GetSatisfaction page to discuss the issue further, as Flipboard’s community page was also shutdown a couple of weeks back. There, the company had only posted a few responses to users’ technical questions and suggestions related to the Reader shutdown, and mainly directed people to company blog posts for more information.
When Google first announced its plans to close Google Reader back in March, Flipboard, like many other services in the news reading business, quickly announced its plans to serve as a new home for abandoned Google Reader users.
“Your Google Reader subscriptions will be safe on Flipboard,” the company’s blog post began before outlining a few key steps for users to take to make sure their feeds remained intact. The set up described was simple – users only needed to establish a Flipboard account, connect their Google Reader account in the settings, and then remain signed in. Flipboard said there was no need for any other actions on the user’s part, and that “your feeds will be saved.”
In June, Flipboard again posted a reminder about the Google Reader shutdown, repeating those same steps.
But a good number of tweets as well as private tips to TechCrunch this morning, indicate that something has gone wrong. Instead of seeing a collection of news feeds in Flipboard, users are merely presented with a message that reads “no content.”
Given that Flipboard had already been serving as a Google Reader client of sorts ahead of the transition, it makes sense that the company would want to continue to serve that audience. It’s unclear at this time what has happened, and whether it’s a temporary bug or a more serious technical miscalculation on Flipboard’s part.
We’ve reached out to Flipboard to find out what the issue is, and the company is now looking into it. We’ll update when we hear back.
According to at least one tipster, his set of folders and feeds was restored as of just a few minutes ago, but it only included feeds that were already in Flipboard’s system. Many of those he had archived in Google Reader were not recognized.
More to come.
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