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Travel community - Meet locals and travelers [TFT] 4moms Raises $20M To Bring Robotic Baby Products Worldwide It’s safe to say that, aside from some more basic changes, childcare equipment like strollers and playpens haven’t seen much innovation over the years. Advancements in safety have largely been a priority of companies making these products, but has anyone ever stopped to think about what a few high tech additions could do for the stroller market? You might find this an absurd proposition, but one Pittsburgh startup has just raised $20 million to help them keep doing just that. 4moms, the company behind an array of high tech baby products, has just finished a round of fundraising led by Bain Capital Ventures to bring their unique brand of futuristic childcare gadgets worldwide.
CouchSurfing raises $15M to build a human travel network Long before the recent crop of collaborative consumption startups found fame, there was CouchSurfing, originally a non-profit that helped connect travelers to hosts. The feel-good story, however, was threatened last year when it incorporated with a B Corp certification and raised $7.6 million, prompting user fears that CouchSurfing was selling out. But the service has only continued to grow in popularity, adding two million more members in the last year to get to 5 million members. Work For Us Turns Facebook Fan Pages Into A Recruiting Tool Facebook is great for keeping up with friends. And of course brands are using it as marketing tool by creating Fan pages. But it can also be used by companies as a recruiting tool. I’ve written before anecdotally about how Citysearch uses Facebook ads for recruiting by targeting the ads at the hiring manager’s friends.
16-Year-Old Programmer Raises Seed Round From Billionaire Li Ka Shing To ‘Summarize The Web’ Launching today on the App Store is a new application called Summly that, in short, attempts to summarize the Web. The app was formerly known as Trimit (which we covered back in July), before Founder (and 16-year-old programmer) Nick D’Aloisio raised a seed round from billionaire Hong Kong investor Li Ka-shing and his investment vehicle, Horizons Ventures. Horizons encouraged D’Aloisio to change his startup’s name to “Summly Limited”, which he has done, all in tune to what we are hearing is a sum of money that’s over $250K, which the startup will use to ramp up hiring, for development, and creating patents. At the very least, it’s a lot of money for a 16-year-old. Do you remember what you were doing at 16?
Hot Background Location App Highlight Gets Funding As It Plans SXSW Update A new generation of location apps is here, just in time for the world’s best event for using them: the South By Southwest music, film and tech extravaganza starting next week in Austin, Texas. Ahead of it, my favorite of the bunch, Highlight, is announcing that it’s pushing out a new version for the event, and bringing in funding. But before I get into the news, what’s special about Highlight, and competitors like Glancee? Instead of asking you to check in, they simply run in the background, sending notifications to you when interesting people are physically near. For SXSW, these apps can help you sort out the most relevant folks from the crowd.
Visa Europe, Not Square’s Investor Visa Inc, Puts Brakes On iZettle As mPowa Expands To Android A bit of a setback today for mobile payments and specifically iZettle — the startup modelled as a kind of “European Square” for merchants to take card payments on their phones. The company today had to shut off accepting Visa cards in three of the markets where it has been running pilots — Denmark, Finland and Norway — over what appears to be a problem with how it authenticated users on its platform, using an electronic signature instead of a PIN. The problem came to light when users started to receive emails from iZettle with the news (we have one from a reader below) and comes at a time when competition is heating up among point-of-sale mobile payments players, with mPowa, who you might better know as Square’s hand nemesis, now extending its payment services to Android; and Square reportedly getting a $200 million investment on a $3.2 billion valuation. “We don’t have a problem because we’re not chip and sign,” Dan Wagner, CEO of mPowa, told TechCrunch.
Beyond Meat Even the most devout vegans and vegetarians have to admit that today’s meat substitutes are no substitute for the real thing. Some of them are tasty, but none actually have the same taste and texture of a piece of chicken, a burger, or a steak. They’re not fooling anyone. Intel Capital Augments Layar's Reality With A $14 Million Capital Infusion Augmented reality startup Layar has raised roughly $14 million (€10 million) in its second round of funding, which was led by Intel Capital and joined by previous backers Sunstone Capital and Prime Ventures. This brings the total of capital raised by the Dutch company to a healthy $17.4 million. Layar says the new funding will be used primarily to enhance its open mobile AR platform and the promotion thereof to third-party developers and brands in an effort to increase the amount of available augmented reality content ‘Layar layers’.
Leap Motion Overwhelmed By Developer Response It seems like we can expect amazing things from the Leap when it launches next year. Leap Motion reports that it has been flooded with requests for developer units, and an impressive assortment of unique and innovative applications for the motion-sensing device. A few months ago Leap Motion revealed the Leap--a device that lets you interact with a computer using motion and hand gestures. It is similar in function to the Microsoft Kinect, but the precision claimed by Leap Motion makes the Kinect seem like trying to tie your shoes while wearing oven mitts. Leap Motion has received more than 26,000 requests from developers interested in working with the Leap.