Author: pekandesigns

For a long, long time, renewable energy proponents have considered advancements in battery technology to be the Holy Grail of the industry. Advancements in energy storage has been among the hardest to achieve economically, thanks to the incredibly tricky chemistry that’s involved in storing power. Now, one company that’s launching from Y Combinator believes it […]

Twitter is testing a new way to filter unwanted messages from your Direct Message inbox. Today, Twitter allows users to set their Direct Message inbox as being open to receiving messages from anyone, but this can invite a lot of unwanted messages, including abuse. While one solution is to adjust your settings so only those […]

Cedric Dussud, Michael Nason, Ahmed Elsamadisi and Matthew Star (pictured above, in order) spent the summer sharing a house in San Francisco, cooking meals together and building Narrator, a startup with ambitions of becoming a universal data model fit for any company. Narrator is one of more than 100 startups graduating next week from Y […]

Dozens of Android adware apps disguised as photo-editing apps and games have been caught serving ads that would take over users’ screens as part of a fraudulent money-making scheme. Security firm Trend Micro said it found 85 individual apps downloaded more than eight million times from Google Play — all of which have since been […]

Good on Motorola for keeping it interesting. At the end of the day, I’m not sure how large a market there is for a budget “action camera” phone, but in a world of samey electronics, at least the Lenovo-owned brand continues to shade in interesting corners. Honestly, I’m surprised more phones didn’t attempt to position […]

Tyler Elliston & Kevin Barry Contributor Tyler Elliston is the founder of Right Side Up, a collective of growth marketers that primarily helps early to mid-stage companies scale. Kevin Barry is the co-founder of Right Percent, a B2B-only performance marketing agency that develops tailored acquisition strategies for early to mid-stage companies. Over the years, we’ve […]

YouTube is making a change to its copyright enforcement policies around music used in videos, which may result in an increased number of blocked videos in the shorter term — but overall, a healthier ecosystem in the long term. Going forward, copyright owners will no longer be able to monetize creator videos with very short […]

Shiru, a new company that’s launching from the latest batch of Y Combinator-backed startups, is joining the ranks of the businesses angling for a spot at the vanguard of the new food technology revolution. The company was founded by Jasmin Hume, the former director of food chemistry at Just (the company formerly known as Hampton […]

We love a good how-to, especially one that saves early-stage startup founders money and positions them for mad success. We’re talking about how to apply to be a TC Top Pick and exhibit at Disrupt Berlin 2019 — for free. Our TC Top Picks program is what we call a pre-Disrupt competition. If you’re a […]

Transsion Future Hub, a subsidiary of Chinese mobile-phone and device maker Transsion, is teaming up with Kenya’s Wapi Capital to source and fund early-stage African fintech startups. Headquartered in Shenzhen, Transsion is a top-seller of smartphones in Africa that recently confirmed its imminent IPO. In 2019 it opened and financed Future Hub, an incubator and […]