Amazon must be pretty happy after tonight’s primetime Emmy Awards, where its shows “Fleabag” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” dominated the comedy categories. “Fleabag” did particularly well, winning the big award for Comedy Series, as well as additional awards for Lead Actress in a Comedy Series (Phoebe Waller-Bridge, pictured above), Writing for a Comedy Series

It makes lazy people like me work out. That’s the genius of the Peloton bicycle. All you have to do is velcro on the shoes and you’re trapped. You’ve eliminated choice and you will exercise. Through a succession of savvy product design choice I’ll break down here, Peloton removes the friction to getting fit. It’s the

As Facebook prepares to launch its new cryptocurrency Libra in 2020, it’s putting the pieces in place to help it run. In one of the latest developments, it has acquired Servicefriend, a startup that built bots — chat clients for messaging apps based on artificial intelligence — to help customer service teams, TechCrunch has confirmed.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a 35-year-old billionaire who keeps refusing to sit in front of international parliamentarians to answer questions about his ad business’ impact on democracy and human rights around the world, has a new piece of accountability theatre to sell you: An “Oversight Board“. Not of Facebook’s business itself. Though you’d be forgiven

Back in January, Blackstone — the investment firm whose assets under management surpassed a jaw-dropping half a trillion dollars earlier this year — quietly began piecing together a new, growth equity platform called Blackstone Growth, or BXG. Step one was hiring away Jon Korngold from General Atlantic, where he’d spent the previous 18 years, including

Yesterday, software development tool maker Chef found itself in the middle of a firestorm after a Tweet called them out for doing business with DHS/ICE. Eventually it led to an influential open source developer removing a couple of key pieces of software from the project, bringing down some parts of Chef’s commercial business. Chef intends

Twitter’s ongoing, and possibly Sisyphean, effort of policing and removing nefarious content disseminated on its platform is taking another step forward today. The company’s safety team has disclosed the removal of another 10,112 accounts across six countries that were found to be actively spreading misinformation and encouraging unrest in politically sensitive climates. The accounts noted

Thiago Paiva Contributor Thiago Paiva is a fintech entrepreneur, writer and investor. He is the co-founder of Liquia Digital Assets, an investment platform for international investments using blockchain technology. The super apps WeChat and Alipay became an integral part of the Chinese mobile ecosystem, growing to more than 1 billion monthly active users (MAU) and

Arch Rao, the former head of product at Tesla who was behind the company’s Powerwall home energy storage is system, is back with a new company pitching energy management and efficiency for homes. SpanIO is looking to upgrade the electrical fusebox for homes with a digital system that integrates into the existing circuit breaker technology

How brands and marketers can harness the power of new messaging and productivity apps Colin Bendell 7 hours Colin Bendell Contributor Colin is Senior Director of Analytics and Strategy for Cloudinary, the co co-author of High Performance Images, and passionate about data, web performance and user experience. Brands are often left to act like the

The boom in popularity for podcasting has given a new voice to the world of spoken word content that had been largely left for dead with the decline of broadcast radio. Now riding the wave of that growth, a startup called Descript that’s building tools to make the art of creating podcasts — or any

Navin Chaddha Contributor Navin Chaddha leads Mayfield. The firm invests in early-stage consumer and enterprise technology companies and currently has $2.7 billion under management. More posts by this contributor The renaissance of silicon will create industry giants A people-first view of investing in innovation or entrepreneurs who take people for granted will fail We face

Let’s get this out of the way right up front: iPhone 11’s Night Mode is great. It works, it compares extremely well to other low-light cameras and the exposure and color rendition is best in class, period. If that does it for you, you can stop right here. If you want to know more about

Waymo transported 6,266 passengers in self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans in its first month participating in a robotaxi pilot program in California, according to a quarterly report the company filed with the California Public Utilities Commission. In all, the company completed 4,678 passenger trips in July — plus another 12 trips for educational purposes. It’s a

Mitto, a debit card and app designed for “Generation Z” teens, has raised €2 million in seed funding. Backing the round is Spanish bank Banco Sabadell via its innovation and venture arm InnoCells, along with Athos Capital, and Spanish social media influencers “AuronPlay” and “Wismichu”, amongst others. Claiming to plug a gap in existing payment

Julian Shapiro Contributor Julian Shapiro is the founder of BellCurve.com, a growth marketing agency that trains you to become a marketing professional. He also writes at Julian.com. More posts by this contributor How to work with top influencers and avoid ad blockers The secret of content marketing: avoid high bounce rates We’ve aggregated the world’s

In its first half-decade of existence, PopSocket has grown into one of the most popular — and imitated — smartphone accessories on the market. In 2018 alone, the company generated $90 million in profit. Not to bad for a little Colorado-based upstart. So, where does an utterly dominated accessory maker go from here? Beverages, naturally.

Julian Shapiro Contributor Julian Shapiro is the founder of BellCurve.com, a growth marketing agency that trains you to become a marketing professional. He also writes at Julian.com. More posts by this contributor The secret of content marketing: avoid high bounce rates How to see another company’s growth tactics and try them yourself We’ve aggregated the

Shares of Cloudflare rose 20% today in its first day of trading on the public market, opening trading at $18 after it priced its IPO at $15 a share yesterday and holding steady through the day. Put another way, the performance of the nine-year-old company — which provides cloud-based network services to enterprises — was relatively

  Disney CEO Bob Iger has resigned from Apple’s Board of Directors, according to a just-published SEC filing. Neither company has given any reason for the departure (the explanatory text of the SEC filing is literally just “On September 10, 2019, Bob Iger resigned from the Board of Directors of Apple Inc.”) — but with

OKCredit, a Bangalore-based startup that enables small merchants to digitize their bookkeeping, has raised $67 million in a new financing round to grow its business in the nation. The Series B financing round for the two-year-old startup was led by Lightspeed and Tiger Global. The new round, which follows the Series A in June, climbs

Felicis Ventures has, in its roughly 13 years of existence, established a reputation in venture circles as a smart early-stage investment firm that’s willing to make bets almost anywhere in the world. Founded by ex-Googler Aydin Senkut, the San Francisco-based firm has also demonstrated a knack for attracting talented investors into the fold, including another

French startup Zyl has raised $1 million (€1 million) in a round led by OneRagtime. The company has developed an app that uses artificial intelligence to find the most interesting photos and videos in your photo library. Now that smartphones have been around for a while, many people have thousands of unsorted photos on their

In light of gig worker protections bill AB5 passing in the California State Senate last night, and amendments to AB5 passing in the Assembly this morning, Uber has made it clear it plans to do whatever it takes to keep its drivers independent contractors. “We will continue to advocate for a compromise agreement,” Uber Chief

Relativity Space, the startup developing manufacturing technologies for entirely 3D printed rockets and space equipment, has signed its latest paying customer, the orbital transportation startup, Momentus. Relativity’s Terran 1 rocket will carry Momentus’ small and medium-sized satellite payloads on its rocket and Momentus will then move those satellites into geosynchronous orbit using its own in-space

The new Apple Watch is even harder to distinguish from its predecessor than the new iPhone. Given the fact that Fitbit’s smartwatches appear more and more Apple-like with every new generation, however, maybe the company’s onto something here. Like the iPhone, Apple hasn’t touched the Watch’s design for a while now, leading one to wonder

Pento, a Danish startup working on a better payroll experience for companies and employees, has raised $2.8 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Point Nine Capital and Seedcamp, with participation from a number of smaller funds and angel investors, including departing Atomico Partner Mattias Ljungman. The company had previously raised $700,000 from the

Xiao Wang Contributor Xiao Wang is CEO at Boundless, a technology startup that has helped thousands of immigrant families apply for marriage green cards and U.S. citizenship while providing affordable access to independent immigration attorneys. More posts by this contributor Why you should naturalize — now, not later This fall, nearly half a million international

Uizard, the Copenhagen-based startup that is using “machine intelligence” to quickly turn app sketches into prototypes, has raised $2.8 million in seed funding. The round is led by Nordic VC firm byFounders, with participation from LDV Capital, av8 Ventures, and New York Venture Partners. A number of individuals are also investing, including Scott Kurnit, Julia

Before he founded the plant-based burger company Impossible Foods, Patrick Brown, who spent 25 years as a biochemistry professor at Stanford, also co-founded a Hayward, Ca.-based food company called Kite Hill that has developed numerous nut milk products that it says are healthier and more sustainable than their dairy counterparts. Investors seem to agree. According to a