Gig economy stalwart TaskRabbit is contemplating a sale

 One of the earliest and most prominent startups of the so-called “sharing economy” or “gig economy” is evaluating the possibility of selling itself. As reported by Recode, freelance work marketplace TaskRabbit acknowledged that it is contemplating a sale after receiving inbound interest from a possible strategic buyer. Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

Spotify Premium Director Robert Lamvik leaves company for meditation app Headspace

 Meditation app Headspace recently brought on Robert Lamvik, Spotify’s now-former director of its premium service, and Dr. Megan Jones Bell, former chief science officer at mental health startup Lantern. Their respective roles at Headspace are head of growth and chief science officer — two new roles at the company. “We’ve always had team of scientists, but as we go into… Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

The hoverbikes are coming

 Autonomous passenger drones might be coming to Dubai this summer, but in Russia I had the chance to check out this startup which literally wants to build a hoverbike. Emerging from the Skolkovo “startups and science park” just outside of Moscow, human-carrying drone maker Hoversurf has created a sing-seat hoverbike which looks awesome, but does rather make you fear… Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

Stripe’s Patrick Collison says no to an IPO any time soon

 You can imagine that Stripe CEO Patrick Collison is asked a lot about whether his San Francisco-based payments company plans to go pubic any time soon. Last year, the seven-year-old company raised $150 million in a deal co-led by General Catalyst Partners and CapitalG that valued the startup at $9.2 billion, almost double the valuation it was assigned in 2015. Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

Adidas’ latest 3D-printed shoe puts mass production within sight

 Adidas unveiled their latest 3D-printed shoe last night, the Futurecraft 4D. The shoe is a huge improvement on their last 3D-printed runners, which were more of a concept than an actual product. The new version is better suited for mass production – Adidas plans on selling 5,000 pairs this upcoming fall, which will scale up to more than 100,000 pairs by the end of 2018. While the… Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

Google denies labor department’s claim that gender-based pay inequities are “systemic” at the company

 Happy belated Equal Pay Day! The U.S. Department of Labor testified in court today that pay inequities at Google are “systemic,” The Guardian reports. Earlier this month, Google said it had closed the gender pay gap globally. “We found systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce,” Department of Labor Regional Director… Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

OpenAI sets benchmark for sentiment analysis using an efficient mLSTM

 The researchers over at OpenAI were able to use a recurrent mLSTM character-level model trained on Amazon reviews to identify the sentiment of blocks of text. And perhaps more interestingly, the team was able to generate new text with customizable sentiment. Neither LSTMs nor sentiment analysis are new, but combining them in a way that reportedly breaks records for sentiment analysis accuracy… Read More


Source: Tech Crunch

Smartphone repairing startup Save gets picked up by Remade Group

 The last time I wrote about Save, the French startup had just raised $16.7 million to prove that you could scale smartphone repair services. It’s been a roller coaster ride since then as the company had to claim insolvency. After this process, Remade Group is picking up Save’s business and employees.
While the startup managed to grow quite rapidly, it was hard to keep up with the pace. Read More


Source: Tech Crunch