Day: October 2, 2018

Google has acquired a small startup building tools for businesses looking to automate their customer service or sales workflows. Onward and some of its key employees including co-founders Rémi Cossart and Pramod Thammaiah as well as CTO Aaron Podolny will be joining Google. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. The startup gives businesses an AI-powered chat solution […]

Not even Techstars NYC can avoid the end of summer, where 10 startups are wrapping up their participation in the accelerator’s summer program. This also marks the end of Alex Iskold’s tenure as managing director of the program. He’s certainly going out with a varied groups of startups — these entrepreneurs are working on everything […]

Apple is about to release the public beta version of iOS 12.1. And before everybody freaks out, the company announced that this update will feature new emojis — best feature update ever. In other words, Apple is releasing its own take on Unicode 11.0 emojis. Other devices and major services will soon all support the […]

People procrastinate about buying insurance because it’s such a boring and complicated chore to compare policies. But Cover combines plans from 45 insurance companies into a single marketplace so it’s easy to find the best one for your car, home, rental, business, personal property, pets, jewelry and more. Now Cover is building powerful onboarding tricks […]

We’ve finalized the Vancouver micro meetup for this Thursday. We’ll be holding it at Hootsuite HQ on 5, East 8th Ave at 7pm on October 4. Extra special thanks to the folks at Hootsuite for helping out. You must RSVP here so we know how many are attending. If you’d like to pitch please fill […]

E-cigarette maker Juul recently received a surprise visit from the Food and Drug Administration, CNBC first reported. Last week, the FDA seized thousands of documents from the startup’s headquarters, TechCrunch has confirmed. The unannounced inspection of the startup’s headquarters on Friday was part of the FDA’s efforts to seek documentation related to Juul’s sales and […]

Walmart is expanding further into apparel with today’s announcement of its plans to acquire the digitally native, women’s plus-size clothing brand ELOQUII for an undisclosed amount. The all-cash deal includes ELOQUII CEO Mariah Chase, her executive team and its 100 employees, who will continue to be based in Long Island City, NY and Columbus, OH. […]

Remember Prepd? The “lunchbox you won’t be ashamed to carry” raised over $1 million on Kickstarter in 2016, and now it is returning with an iPhone 5c-esque sequel that is both cheaper and more colorful. Prepd, in case you missed it, isn’t some kind of IOT, smart, next-gen lunchbox. Rather, it’s an unashamedly premium take on the […]

Uber has brought on Nikki Krishnamurthy, Expedia’s former chief people officer, as one of its own. Krishnamurthy is coming on board as chief people officer to replace Liane Hornsey, who resigned in July following a racial discrimination investigation. According to Reuters, a group of Uber employees of color alleged Hornsey discriminated against Bernard Coleman, Uber’s global […]

One of the the overlooked tidbits in amongst the flurry of Note 9 news was Samsung’s plan to offer an S Pen SDK for developers. The company made good on its promise today, issuing a full break down of the different functionality over here. Of course, all of this is made possible by the fact […]