Latest VatorNews stories

• PayPal invests in gifting solution Loop Commerce

  by Faith Merino, December 10, 2013

  Loop Commerce closes the "loop" with gifting, and PayPal likes what it sees

  So for those of us who have picky tastes—and for the people who are socially obligated to buy us gifts this holiday season—there’s Loop Commerce, a SaaS solution that allows gift recipients to effectively return a gift before it’s even given. Now, fresh off its $7 million Series A round, the company is announcing that PayPal has contributed an undisclosed amount to its Series

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• Apple working on curved iPhones?

  by Faith Merino, December 10, 2013

  Apple is also reportedly working on pressure-sensitive sensors and larger screens

  Bloomberg’s sources say that the curved iPhone would differ in that the glass would curve downward at the edges. So it sounds like it will be more convex than concave, which sounds…awkward to hold. The touchscreens would also feature more sensitive sensors that will be able to detect varying degrees of pressure. Sensors that can distinguish between heavy and light touches may also be incorporated

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• How to spend the next four years of your life

  by Steve Blank, December 10, 2013

  Three things to consider in addition to the numbers

  You need to decide what your personal goal is and how it matches what you think this business can grow into. And you and your cofounders need to have that discussion to make sure that all the co-founders’ interests are aligned – before you make any decision to start the company. If one of you are happy making $500K/year and the other has visions of selling the company to Roche for a billion

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• Hour of code

  by Fred Wilson, December 10, 2013

  As part of CE Ed Week, encourage your child or a student to spend one hour coding

  And last but not least, in NYC, Chancellor Wolcott announced a $1mm program to train over 100 teachers in the code.org curriculcum. This program is a partnership betweenCSNYC, Code.org, NYC EDC, and NYC DOE, all of which participated in the funding. If you want to help support this effort, we are raising money for CSNYC so that we can fund more programs like this in NYC. Our crowdrise fundraising page

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• Top female VCs talk about the future of venture capital

  by Bambi Francisco Roizen, December 9, 2013

  Rebecca Lynn, Sharon Wienbar, Maha Ibrahim, and Katherine Barr share insights

  There's a polarization in the sizes of funds. There are big, billion-dollar funds and smaller-niche funds under $400 million. Firms are also starting to focus on verticals vs being broad. It's also more expensive to scale a company in the growth stages. While it's cheaper to start a company, growth-stage companies will keep pouring more money into their firms to grow the top line because 30% y/y growth

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• Healthloop bags $10M for patient follow-up platform

  The round marks the first investment from new early-stage fund Canvas Venture Fund

  Getting in to see a doctor can be a trial in and of itself. The average wait time to see a specialist is 20.5 days. And then if you have follow-up questions later, you might find yourself playing a game ...
  By Faith Merino
  

• Report estimates Amazon Prime has topped 16M members

  That's up from 10M in March

  Amazon keeps notoriously mum on its numbers, but that hasn’t stopped other research firms and analysts from doing some good old fashioned back-of-the-envelope math. Now, a new report from Consumer ...
  By Faith Merino
  

• 2013: a look back at the year in acquisitions

  A list of the most popular tech companies, how many start ups they bought and their strategies

  Looking back on the past 12 months, there was a lot that happened. We said goodbye to some old friends, saw the rise of a big new player in the social media world, while watching another achieve its dream ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• How does LinkedIn make money?

  Unlike other social networks, LinkedIn has a diverse revenue stream not dependent on advertising

  When I compared LinkedIn to Facebook in the past, I talkeded about it in terms of how much money each one makes, how many users each one has and who they appeal to. And don't get me wrong, all of that ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• Funding roundup - week ending 12/6/13

  EducationSuperHighway, Glassdoor, Sketchfab, Hoxton Ventures, DreamHost, Shareable Ink

  MOVE Guides, which provides a software-as-a-service platform to help employees relocate, raised $1.8 million in seed funding from Notion Capital and New Enterprise Associates. A number of individuals also ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• 23andMe complies with FDA, rebrands testing kits

  23andMe will continue giving customers ancestry reports and raw genetic data, but no health analysis

  Following orders by the FDA that it cease selling its product last week, genetic testing company 23andMe has done the only thing it could do: it has rebranded and cut out the offending part of the results. ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• Drones are on the horizon, but what's the human toll?

  Will drones wipe out or create jobs?

  It’s shaping up to be a big week for robotics in the news. In a tactical move that can only have been made with Cyber Monday in mind, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed in a 60 Minutes interview that ...
  By Faith Merino
  

• Spotify set to launch limited free streaming on mobile

  Until now, non-paying users only had access to the Pandora-like Spotify Radio

  While the best that a lot of other streaming players can do is create stations with music that is kind of like what you actually wanted to listen to, Spotify was where I went to find something specific. ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• Twitter launches global retargeted ads product

  Tailored audiences will use cookies to display promoted tweets to users who have visited a website

  You know how sometimes you visit a website and then go onto a site like Facebook and you see an ad for that website you just visited? You know how that is kind of creepy and you feel vaguely unsettled, ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• Twitter finally adds a woman to its board of directors

  Company hopes that the appointment of ex-Pearson CEO Marjorie Scardino will shed its boys club image

  There has been a long running controversy over the perception, and probable reality, of institutionalized sexism at Twitter, due to a lack of women in high ranking positions. And now the company has finally, ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• AmazonFresh coming to SF December 10?

  Signs are pointing to an expansion of Amazon's grocery delivery service to the Bay Area

  Is AmazonFresh coming to San Francisco? All signs point to yes, based on several recent truck sitings as well as a job posting. Now AllThingsD is reporting that sources have confirmed that AmazonFresh ...
  By Faith Merino
  

• Splash SF Oct 2013 Finalist - PandaDoc

  Check out PandaDoc's presentation at Splash SF Oct 2013

  Among the judges were Rob Coneybeer, (Shasta Ventures), Tony Conrad (True Ventures), Jenny Fielding, (BBC Worldwide), Howard Hartenbaum (August Capital), Charles Hudson (SoftTech VC), Jed Katz, (Javelin ...
  By Kristin Karaoglu
  

• Tony Hsieh leads $800k round in Swapbox

  An Amazon Locker for all your online retail purchases

  Are lockers for rent a big deal? Apparently, Tony Hsieh of Zappos thinks so. He and another entrepreneur, Trevor Blackwell, best known for creating humanoid robots, have led an $800,000 round in Swapbox, ...
  By Bambi Francisco Roizen
  

• China Mobile gets 4G license and signs deal with Apple

  After months of rumors, China Mobile is now officially selling the iPhone to its 759M subscribers

  It’s official: Apple and China Mobile are besties now. China Mobile, China’s largest mobile carrier and one of the last major global carriers to hold out on the iPhone, has signed a deal to ...
  By Faith Merino
  

• Big data analysis company Trifacta raises $12 million

  Trifacta helps its customers get the most out of their data by making it visual and useful

  There are a lot of big data companies out there now, who are able to take more and more information than ever before and give it to their customers. But that doesn't solve the next part of the equation: ...
  By Steven Loeb
  
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