Monday, August 27, 2012

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Fast Food? Delivery Hero Aims To Deliver [TCTV] Top
Delivery Hero, which competes with JustEat and just raised a $50 million Series D round, is now firmly in the middle of the 'War of the Take-outs' to bring your appetite for fast food and online ordering together. With a network of 22,000 restaurants and operating in 11 countries it is going head-to-head with Just-Eat which operates in 13 countries. We caught up with CEO Fabian Siegel in Berlin to unpack what Delivery Hero is all about.
 
Shutl Preps US Launch For Same Day Delivery After $2M Round Led By UPS Top
Same_day_deliveryIt feels like the zombie-like resurgence of Urban Fetch and Kozmo from the late 90s, but delivering stuff to your house, like right now, is so hot… right now. Thus SF startup PostMates is trying to crack the model locally, while big guys like Amazon Prime and eBay poise to try to hoover it all up nationally. But there's one player that today reveals its hand and has a platform interesting enough to attract the attention of an outfit that understands how to deliver stuff: UPS. Thus, UK-based Shutl, has secured a $2 million investment from the UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund, and existing investors Hummingbird Ventures and GeoPost. It will use the new investment to expand the team, acquire new retail partners, and prepare to launch its service in the US in early 2013.
 
$1.1B Microsoft Patent Deal Done, AOL Buys Back $600M In Stock, Offers Dividend Of $5.15 Per Share [CEO Memo] Top
aollogoHere's a timely story on how other companies not called Apple are also profiting from tech patents. Today AOL announced a share repurchase of $600 million in AOL stock, along with a one-time cash dividend of $5.15 per share, as the final steps in returning all of the proceeds from its $1.1 billion sale of patents to Microsoft. The news was announced to the market, as well as to AOL staffers by Tim Armstrong in an internal memo. [TechCrunch is owned by AOL.]
 
Take-Out Wars Heat Up: Delivery Hero Raises Further $50M To Race Just-Eat To Global Domination Top
Screen Shot 2012-08-27 at 12.09.41Delivery Hero, the online take-out ordering service founded by startup factory Team Europe, has raised a hefty $50 million Series D led by Kite Ventures, a previous backer of the company, while Kreos Capital also joins this latest round. This brings Delivery Hero's total funding to approximately $100m and comes hot on the heels of its biggest rival, Just-Eat, raising an additional $64 million from Vitruvian Partners, Index Ventures, Greylock Partners and Redpoint Ventures, bringing its total funding to a whopping $129.4m. It seems that the war of the take-outs is well and truly underway.
 
What's In A Name? $1M, If You're Called MobileApps.com. And At Least One Big Fish May Bite, Says CEO Top
mobileapps.com shutdown noticeThe market for mobile apps is booming -- but not, it seems, for MobileApps.com, one of the many app aggregating marketplaces that have been set up in the last several years to ride that wave. The Singapore-based site that used to sit at that address has closed down after "failing to find traction," according to a Facebook announcement from its CEO and founder Alvin Koay (via Tech In Asia). And the domain MobileApps.com is now up for sale starting at $1 million. Koay tells TechCrunch that a big company (and I mean big) is currently negotiating with his brokers on a deal. (We can't report the name, lest it impact the negotiations if it really is true. If it is, it's a big coup and has some interesting implications.) Koay says he is selling the domain because the business is pivoting from a consumer concern to one focused on a B2B offering -- specifically around rich media ads, which it will sell under the similarly literally-named RichMediaAds.com, due to launch in a few weeks. "With the shift of focus from B2C to B2B, the consumer-centric domain name does not serve its purpose any more and will be sold," the company said in a statement.
 
VMware Not Cloud Leader — Next Generation Providers Filling Gaps, Creating New Categories Top
manageiq-1VMware will spend this week seeking to convince us that it will take the mantle as the cloud leader. But the reality is something far different as we head into VMworld, the company's annual event. This is a space seeing deep disruption as new categories emerge in the change to more easy to use, commodity type services. The lack of leadership is apparent when you spend some time talking with the team from ManageIQ,which is clearly articulating the unique requirements companies need to consider when integrating their data centers to any number of service providers. Their story is about how they abstract the complex management issues that come with orchestrating cloud infrastructures.
 
Taking A Big Hit On Design, Samsung Doubles Down On Chips, Puts $974M Into ASML Top
asml pictureSamsung Electronics has been knocked hard on mobile phone design innovation in the last few days, but in what might be a spectacular display of diversionary tactics, it is also doubling down on another significant part of its business -- chipmaking. Today, the Dutch semiconductor machine maker ASML announced that Samsung would be investing close to $1 billion -- yes, more or less the same amount for which the jury in California held it liable over Apple patent violations on Friday -- towards R&D and an equity stake in the business. In doing so, Samsung will be joining Intel, which took a 10% stake in ASML in July for $2.1 billion.
 
Blur Group Eyes Potential IPO For Its B2B Services Exchange Top
screen-shot-2012-04-17-at-07-54-32Is that the unfamiliar smell of a European tech IPO in the air? Quite possibly, although let's not get too far ahead of ourselves: Blur Group, the London-headquartered B2B Services Exchange, has appointed Singer Capital Markets to advise on its next funding path -- a path that may well include a listing on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange, says the company. That, it goes without saying, would be pretty unusual for a European tech startup and maybe kind of crazy post-Facebook and in the current climate. But then, blur Group is already dong things a little differently, having shunned the more traditional VC model in favour of assembling an all-star group of more than 30 angel investors who have invested just shy of $2 million. Going public is something that "we have been considering, researching and gaining feedback on for a year", says CEO and founder Philip Letts. And that feedback suggests "there may be strong appetite, even in these times, for the right kind of tech company."
 
When Your Seed Round Is A Party, Few People Have Fun Top
Screen Shot 2012-08-27 at 3.03.30 AMSocial proof is the meanest mofo in the Valley. Second tier VCs want to be in the same rounds as first tier VCs and third tier VCs want to get in on the deals offered to 2nd tier VCs. It's all very high school if you think about it. What's worse is that TechCrunch, Twitter and Angelist have made the "who's in with who" more blatant nowadays, and thus our industry is seeing an influx of self-perpetuating celebrity seed rounds. It's easy to name names (Exec, Socialcam, Pair) but harder to begrudge a startup from taking money from the cool kids. I mean, who's going to say no to Andreessen as an investor?
 
Confirmed: IAC Has Bought About.com From The New York Times For $300M In Cash Top
about.com logo 'do more'Update: The news has now been confirmed. The $300 million acquisition price includes About.com, ConsumerSearch.com and CalorieCount.com and the deal will close in the next several weeks. Full release below. Both AllThingsD and Reuters have reported a deal in the works, and we have now confirmed with a source very close to the situation that IAC is buying About.com from the New York Times Company for an all-cash sum in the region of $300 million. TechCrunch has also learned that the news is due to be made official either later tonight or tomorrow morning. The source also confirmed that although Answers.com had also been interested in the information portal, its offer -- reportedly valued at $270 million -- was in debt and equity in Answers.com.
 
Badass LA Fashion Site Nasty Gal Picks Up A Badass $40M From Index Ventures For World Domination Top
nastygal-logo Nasty Gal, a site dedicated to selling "badass", "unapologetically sexy" female fashion, has picked up a cool $40 million Series B round from Index Ventures, just five months after the VCs were the sole backers in its first, $9 million round. The LA-based company -- which had sales of $28 million in 2011, is on track to make $128 million in 2012 says Forbes, and is currently on a growth curve of 10,000% (yep!) -- says it will be using the funds to expand in every way that it can. Investments will be made in technology, operations (including a 500,000 square foot fulfillment center in Louisville, KY and a 50,000 square-foot office space), manufacturing, creative production -- and preparing to go global. Global is not a goal too far for Nasty Gal, which says it already has a customer base of 350,000 people across 60 countries. Already, the company says that 35% of its sales are coming from outside the U.S. It's also not too much of a surprise, given that Index has its roots in Europe and has a strong track record on investments with a global remit.
 
Late Labs: A 'Crowdcoding' Site Where Developers Trade Code For Equity Top
latelabs logoA new startup called Late Labs wants to connect coders with worthwhile side projects, and to reward them for their work with startup equity. The company lays out the problem on its mission page: "For Hustlers, its hard to find Hackers.  For Hackers, side projects lose traction in the design & distribution phrase, and fizzle . . . out."
 
VC Transparency Is The New Black Top
green -1When Instagram was bought by Facebook earlier this spring for $1 billion, one question lingering on everyone's minds was how much VC firm Andreessen Horowitz made on the deal. The firm had made an early investment in the photo sharing startup but then bet against it after Instagram's pivot by later by supporting a rival. A few days after the Facebook-Instagram acquisition was announced, the firm's partner Ben Horowitz took to his blog to not only reveal the back story of the investment in Instagram, but also how much the firm had made off the deal under the terms of the acquisition—$78 million off of a $250,000 investment
 
AT&T Vacation Blackout Further Affirms Next iPhone's September 21 Launch Date Top
att-iphone4We've received yet another bit of evidence confirming the next iPhone's September 21 launch. According to an AT&T sales rep, AT&T staff has been given a vacation blackout from September 21 to September 30, just like Verizon employees. Our source also mentioned that blue carrier employees are undergoing training for an "iconic release." Sounds like the next-gen iPhone to me.
 
Hip San Francisco Coffee Shop Bans Instagram Top
Four Barrel Bans InstagramSan Francisco's Four Barrel Coffee made a stir last week when it posted a sign of rules including "not talking about annoying hipster topics". Ever the fans of self-reference, its bohemian customers wouldn't stop snapping camera phone pics of the sign so Four Barrel had to update it with a new rule: "No posting this on Instagram, you hipster." And that's not Four Barrel's only bone to pick with laptop-toting techies.
 
How Free Apps Can Make More Money Than Paid Apps Top
Screen Shot 2012-08-26 at 10.30.11 AMEditor's note: John Manoogian III is co-founder and CTO at 140 Proof, a venture-backed startup for targeted Twitter advertising. While building apps for Apple and Android app stores can be highly lucrative ventures for developers, one of the hardest decisions an app developer has to make is how to get the app to pay for itself. Often the "monetization strategy" — shorthand for "how will this app make money?" — is left for last. It's hard enough to get discovered by consumers among the millions of already existing apps, not to mention convince people to buy it. People increasingly prefer free, ad-supported apps for their tablets and smartphones, yet many developers still aren't sure how to tackle the free vs. paid issue. Deciding when to charge for your app, and when to try an ad-supported model, is one of the hardest decisions developers must make.
 
Where Have The Users Gone? Top
Where are the users?Editor's Note: Nir Eyal writes about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business at NirAndFar.com. He is the author of the forthcoming book "Hooked: How to Drive Engagement by Creating User Habits".

Step 1: Build an app. Step 2: Get users hooked to it. Step 3: Profit. It sounds simple and, given our umbilical ties to cell phones, social media, and email inboxes, it may even sound plausible. Recently, tech entrepreneurs and investors have started to look to psychology for ways to strike it rich by altering user behavior. Perhaps you've read essays on how to create habit-forming technology and figured you'd give it a shot?

 
The Next Battle for Internet Freedom Could Be Over 3D Printing Top
290px-ORDbot_quantumEither we allow for the ambiguity that freedom and unregulated 3D printing will bring, or we enforce far-reaching laws that may decrease liberty without changing results. For those who appreciate the internet because of its democratizing effects and freedom, I believe the choice is clear. We should decide now that we will oppose any law that attempts to undermine freedom on the internet, no matter the consequences.
 
5 Design Tricks Facebook Uses To Affect Your Privacy Decisions Top
old-vs-new-permissions-designDo you know how many apps access your personal information on Facebook? Check your Facebook apps permissions and get ready for a surprise. In fact, Facebook keeps "improving" their design so that more of us will add apps on Facebook without realizing we're granting those apps (and their creators) access to our personal information. After all, this access to our information and identity is the currency Facebook is trading in and what is driving its stock up or down. It should be no surprise that in the new App Center Facebook made another leap forward in their efforts to get you to expose your personal info without realizing you're doing so. #1: The Single Button Trick In the old design Facebook used two buttons - "Allow" and "Don't Allow" - which automatically led you to make a decision. In the new App Center Facebook chose to use a single button. No confirmation, no decisions to make. One click and, boom, your done! Your information was passed on to the app developers and you never even notice it.
 
SAP Holding Startup Forums To Develop Ecosystem For HANA — The Company's First Ever Platform Play Top
saplogoSAP is doing a series of startup forums that signal a significant change in the company. It's a move unlike any we see from the likes of HP, Oracle or IBM. SAP is making a play as a platform company. It is building a developer community and backing it up with a special $155 million fund specifically meant to help build an ecosystem for HANA --- the company' s real-time analysis technology and new crown jewel.
 

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