2014

Lending startups are en vogue this year, with LendingClub and OnDeck planting the flag for the industry in public markets (and offering healthy returns to investors). But there’s a crop…

Xiaomi, the fast-growing Chinese hardware company best known for its low-cost smartphones, confirmed today that has raised $1.1 billion in new funding at a valuation of $45 billion. In a…

China has made it increasingly difficult to use Google services, including Gmail, this year. Now Gmail users are blocked from a workaround that allowed them to access their emails through…

 Yet the news cruised by with analysis focused simply on what Facebook’s new keyword post search does today. Yes, any post by you or any of your friends can now…

For a time I believed that microconsoles might change the face of the games industry, but they haven’t really worked out. Thoughts on why.

If you have had trouble using Twitter or third-party apps over the past couple of hours, fear not—the microblogging service is on it.

After years of questions about how it will make revenue, Pinterest’s roadmap to monetization is becoming more clear. The company announced today that its Promoted Pins program, which it made…

You probably already know ‘Big Data’ is top of mind heading into 2015. How could you not? You are hearing about it constantly from vendors and journalists alike (guilty as…

Sony has revealed that The Interview has earned $15 million in consumer spending via rentals and purchases across online platforms in its first four days of online availability. A source…

Most startup founders don’t think of themselves as master negotiators and struggle to come up with the right things to say in crucial moments. These moments are the perfect time…

As we’re coming up on the next Consumer Electronics Show, I got an update from one of the companies that participated in TechCrunch’s Hardware Battlefield at the last CES —…

If you didn’t catch ‘The Interview’ when Sony began offering it for rental or purchase online earlier this week, and aren’t one of the many who have reportedly torrented it,…

Dear Danny, I am a young founder currently finishing a fundraising process and have multiple term sheets at absurd valuations with no expectation of offering board seats. I am trying…

Editor’s note: Yoav Leitersdorf and Ofer Schreiber are partners at YL Ventures, which invests early in cybersecurity, cloud computing, big data and Software-as-a-Service software companies. This year we witnessed a series of…

Remember how not too long ago the future of search — at least according to the big search engines — was social search? Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find any…

Price strategy is emerging as a critical path for companies to increase their competitive advantage, and bottom line. Many companies have spent years achieving gains through cost cutting, outsourcing, process…

Succeeding as a modern, high-tech marketer means adapting to accelerating changes in technology—whether that’s leveraging Facebook’s newest features, segmenting customers with even more granularity, or finding a new platform for…

Lest you held any lingering hope in your heart of hearts that Aereo would somehow rise from the grave, let them be gone. The courts have just given the greenlight…

Crowdfunding is enabling new fashion startups to fight against the industry norm of manufacturing in Asia by bringing production closer to home thanks to lower minimum orders, willing local manufacturers…

From Xbox Live being down on Christmas to the worst tech stocks of the year, here are the top stories from 12/20-12/26. 1. Gamers who received new consoles for Christmas found themselves unable…

The technology sector had a rough year in Washington. In the face of growing political spending, increasing economic might and stumbling government agencies, tech got nearly nothing it wanted in 2014.…

North Korea blamed the U.S. and called President Obama a “monkey” today when the country’s Internet and mobile network went down for the third time this week. However, it’s still…

In an essay posted on his website, Paul Graham, the co-founder and former head of YCombinator, loudly called for an increase in skilled immigration. Writing with an intensity that is…

Following through on threats of a Christmas hack, a Twitter account claiming affiliation with Anonymous released a list of what it says are usernames and passwords for 13,000 accounts on…

Following an incident in which one of its drivers allegedly raped a female passenger in New Delhi, ride-hailing company Uber has announced additional safety measures it is taking in India.…

Walmart has teamed up with the gift card exchange website CardCash to launch a new Walmart-branded site where consumers can exchange their unwanted gift cards – many of which were…

Next year will be big for healthcare. We felt small tremors in 2014 of the seismic changes underway. In 2015, I predict five changes to the core of the US…

When I leave my home, I check that I have three things: keys, wallet, phone. How long will it be until the first two are obsolete? My wallet has only…

Smartphones are changing us, at least according to researchers at the Institute of Neuroinformatics of the University of Zurich. It seems that as we moved from phones with buttons -…

When I first heard about the Bitcoin Bowl, I assumed it was a joke, or maybe a weird startup publicity stunt. It turns out that yes, the Bitcoin Bowl is…