Startups

Square is different than any other startup that has come before it, and its growing influence and size will inevitably lead to a change in the way entrepreneurs run their companies and venture capitalists invest.

There's no doubt that Square is on the rise, but it is set to accelerate its growth, thanks to a strategic investment from Starbucks that places Square's technology in front of millions of consumers. And thanks to Starbucks, Square's revenue and valuation are set to soar.

Perhaps this is why more pundits are calling Square "Silicon Valley's next great company,&… Read more

A decade after his startup Friendster paved the way for online social networks, Jonathan Abrams is back with a new social project. And as of today, he has some high-profile investors supporting his plan.

Nuzzel, a startup that collects all the most-shared links in your Facebook and Twitter feeds and presents them in a clean, easy-to-read format, raised $1.7 million in seed funding from investors including 500 Startups' Dave McClure, "The Lean Startup" author Eric Ries, Slide's Max Levchin, Andreessen Horowitz's Ronny Conway, and the Founders Den's Zachary Bogue, who is also the husband … Read more

Google Ventures, the search giant's venture-capital arm, is getting more cash to play with.

Google Ventures will now be allowed to invest up to $300 million a year into startups, up from the previous limit of $200 million per year. The boost was reported to Reuters by Google Ventures managing partner Bill Maris, who told the news outlet that the increased cash "puts a lot more wood behind the arrow if we need it."

Google Ventures kicked off in 2009 as a way for the search giant to identify early-stage companies and give them cash to help … Read more

Smartphone batteries may soon last twice as long -- if an MIT spinoff's power amplifier technology lives up to its promise.

The power amplifier is one of the most power-hungry pieces of hardware in a phone. It converts electricity into radio signals and consumes power in two basic modes: standby and output signal for sending out digital data. Such a chip wastes more than 65 percent of its energy, according to a report in the MIT Technology Review, and the only way to make it more efficient is by reducing the power used in standby. … Read more

Kickstarter, the site that lets budding entrepreneurs throw their ideas into the ring and raise money via crowdsourcing, is now available in the U.K.

Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler announced the launch yesterday to the BBC, saying that the U.S.-based service had raised over $340 million for projects. So far, there are about 200 projects specifically designed for U.K. audiences on the site. If the U.S. success is the guide, that number will increase quickly.

Kickstarter launched in 2009 and has grown rapidly in popularity. Over 70,000 projects have been pitched on Kickstarter. One of … Read more

New York. London. Los Angeles. Dublin. Chicago. Berlin. Every one of these cities (and more) have been mentioned as having the potential to become "the next Silicon Valley," a new technology hub that could rival the Bay Area's dominance when it comes to tech.

All of these cities are working hard to compete with Silicon Valley. London just hired a prominent Facebooker to become the CEO of its technology project. Dublin has f.ounders and the Dublin Web Summit. New York has a collection of high-profile tech companies, including Foursquare, Gilt Groupe, Fab, Tumblr and Quirky. Chicago … Read more

Yahoo has acquired its first startup: Stamped, a recommendations engine built by former Google colleagues of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer -- a team Mayer wanted to bring into the fold at Yahoo.

Stamped, which launched as a smartphone app last November, lets users recommend books, movies, restaurants, and other things to friends by giving them a virtual stamp of approval. It uses a Twitter-like social graph that lets users follow recommendations from both friends and celebrities, like chef Mario Batali.

The company had raised about $3 million from a range of investors including Bain Capital Ventures, Google Ventures, and singer … Read more

Few industries are under greater assault by technology than higher education -- and few companies are doing more to upend the way people learn the world over than Udacity, the young Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup that's brought computer science classes online and watched hundreds of thousands of students enroll. For single classes.

The startup is led by Sebastian Thrun, a former Google VP and fellow who led the development of Google's self-driving car and Google Glasses. And those are just some of his accomplishments. It was while he was a professor at Stanford University that he stumbled … Read more

Facebook's stock is on a tear today, poised to post its biggest one day gain since it went public in May. This comes a day after the company's strong third-quarter earnings report and, perhaps more importantly, its upbeat call with analysts in which CEO Mark Zuckerberg said flat out, "I want to dispel this myth that Facebook can't make money on mobile."

While Zuckerberg and his top execs stressed that Facebook is in the early days on this front -- it only started trying to make money from mobile in March -- they did share … Read more