A surge in online shopping this holiday season left stores breaking promises to deliver packages by Christmas, suggesting that retailers and shipping companies still haven't fully figured out consumers' buying patterns in the Internet era.
A surge in online shopping this holiday season left stores breaking promises to deliver packages by Christmas, suggesting that retailers and shipping companies still haven't fully figured out consumers' buying patterns in the Internet era. Shelly Banjo reports.
Providence, R.I.-based Teespring, a Y Combinator-backed startup that allows anyone to outsource the production and distribution costs involved with selling their own custom T-shirts, has raised $20 million in new funding in a round entirely led by Andreessen Horowitz. The funding, which closed around a month ago, will also see the firm’s Lars Dalgaard joining Teespring’s board.
Many entrepreneurs, and the venture investors who back them, seek to build billion-dollar companies.
Why do investors seem to care about “billion dollar exits”? Historically, top venture funds have driven returns from their ownership in just a few companies in a given fund of many companies. Plus, traditional venture funds have grown in size, requiring larger “exits” to deliver acceptable returns. For example – to return just the initial capital of a $400 million venture fund, that might mean needing to own 20 percent of two different $1 billion companies, or 20 percent of a $2 billion company when the company is acquired or goes public.
Zendesk has built itself into a popular vendor of software that handles all of the customer-service inquiries a company receives. And it looks like Zendesk is about to slide into the next logical phase of its growth: going public later this year.
The company has tapped Goldman Sachs to lead its initial public offering (IPO) and asked Morgan Stanley to take care of underwriting for the move, the Wall Street Journalreported earlier today.
A Zendesk spokesman declined to confirm the report or provide detail about a possible IPO later in 2014.
Ed-tech giant Blackboard has acquired MyEdu to help students get the most out of their college experience, and maybe even (dare to dream), land a job after graduation.
“Completion rates aren’t as high as they could – or should – be,” Blackboard’s CEO Jay Bhatt told VentureBeat. “Nearly half of all students who earn degrees are either unemployed or underemployed once they graduate. It is clear that we need stronger connections between schools, students and the workforce. Students need to be better equipped to graduate on time and secure a job.”
It’s rare for me to hear a panel discussion on digital health and not hear the same conversation repeated and reiterated over and over again. In a discussion between health IT company CEOs at the JP Morgan Healthcare conference, some of the most interesting points raised were the ones the healthcare industry is struggling with the most. Of course, there were a lot of sound bites too. Here are five of the most interesting digital health insights.
Des chercheurs de l'Institut des Techniques Energétiques (INTE) de l'Université Polytechnique de Catalogne (UPC), de l'Université de Auckland en Nouvelle Zélande et de celle de King Abdullah d' Arabie Saoudite, ont mis au point un nouveau catalyseur pour produire, de l'hydrogène à partir d'eau et du soleil.
Le professeur Moti Herskowitz a dévoilé le 13 novembre dernier, à l'occasion du Bloomberg Fuel Choices Summit, un procédé industriel pour produire une alternative verte au pétrole brut. Utilisant des technologies matures, ce procédé pourrait être déployé rapidement et être commercialisé d'ici 5 à 10 ans.
Venga, a DC-based startup, has raised $1 million in Series A financing to help restaurants create profiles of their customers by whipping reservation data, point-of-sale, and other basic information into a soufflé of delicious CRM.
Militello Capital led the round and a number of major restaurant groups and angels also invested. Think Food Group, Bill and Pat Anton, and Cornell’s Big Red Ventures were also on the menu.
