What is this? An ordinary vending machine you say? If that was your guess, you would be wrong, but it would be understandable why you might not notice anything special about it. That’s because, on the outside, this looks just like any other plain-Jane vending machine. No special screens or tap zones or NFC chips or anything like that grace its exterior, yet this machine can accept mobile payments from PayPal or Google Wallet.
Launched publicly last month, Mindsy is a new UK startup that’s building a Netflix-style service for consuming e-learning content, specifically online video courses. Instead of selling individual courses as per sites like Udemy and Skillshare, the company is repackaging some of the same premium video content in a subscription ‘all you can eat’ model, costing $29 per month.
Mindsy also recently raised a small amount of funding: An £80,000 seed round from Mark Pearson of Markco Media and MyVoucherCodes fame.
Toronto-based Kinetic Café, a consulting firm aiming at startups and innovation-focused enterprises, has partnered with Freshii, a health food restaurant chain looking to shake up fast food while keeping meals healthy, to form a new startup accelerator program called Fresh Startups providing mentorship and guidance to companies focusing on food, fitness and health. The program is seeking applicants now for its first round, and will offer a six month program for small groups of companies at a time.
Ya nos estamos acercando al final del verano y recién estrenado el mes de septiembre, vamos a repasar las inversiones más importantes que se han cerrado en el sector de las startups tecnológicas durante los meses de julio y agosto.
audience targeting, has raised a $2 million seed round led by Pitango Venture Capital with the participation of serial entrepreneur and angel investor Eyal Gura. Based in Tel Aviv, Ubimo was founded by the team behind Web widget developer LabPixies, which was acquired by Google for $25 million in 2010. Its executives are CEO Ran Ben-Yair, CTO Oded Poncz, Creative Director Udi Graff and COO Gilad Amitai. Ubimo will use its new funding to scale up its product offerings and grow its sales presence in the U.S.
Drivewyze, which helps commercial trucking companies save time by bypassing weigh stations through a mobile app, just raised $7.5 million in a round led by Emergence Capital Partners and iNovia Capital.
They’ll use the capital for a sales and marketing expansion of their bypass service that should bring their offering nationwide by next year. It works through a mobile app that alerts a subscribing trucker when they are about two miles away from an inspection site. It’s currently available in 16 states, but the company is hoping to get to full national coverage in 2014.
NakedWines.com, the customer-funded online wine retailer, has raised $10 million in a third round of investment from WIV Wein International AG, a German group of direct wine-selling companies and founder shareholder. NakedWines.com will use its new funding to accelerate the company’s expansion into the U.S. and Australia.
