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The Florida bill proposes fines up to $250,000 per day for companies which violate the rules. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2R9GYvo

Tech companies in Silicon Valley, the geography, have had an incredible year. But one indicator points to longer-term changes. The internal rate of return (IRR) for companies in other startup hub cities has been even better. A big new analysis by AngelList showed aggregate IRR of 19.4% per year on syndicated deals elsewhere versus 17.5% locally. A separate measure, of total value of paid-in investment, revealed 1.67x returns for other hubs versus 1.60x in the main Silicon Valley and Bay Area tech cities. The data is based on a sample of 2,500 companies that have used AngelList to syndicate deals from 2013 through 2020. Which is just one snapshot, but a relevant one given how hard it can be to produce accurate early-stage startup market analysis at this scale. I believe we’ll see more and more data confirming the trends in the coming years, especially as more of the startup world acclimates to remote-first and distributed offices. You can increasingly do a startup from anywhere and ma

TechCrunch recently caught up with recent Y Combinator graduate Uiflow , a startup that is building a no-code enterprise app creation service. If you are thinking  wait, don’t a number of companies already do that? , the answer is yes. But what Quickbase , Smartsheet and others are working on isn’t quite the same thing, at least from the startup’s perspective. Uiflow, a Bay Area-based concern that has been alive for far less than a year, has built an app creation tool that works with whatever backend a large company currently employs, and helps its development team build apps collaboratively. As the startup explained in a public posting , customer developers can import Figma files while their engineers can use existing UI libraries, and product managers can quickly vet an app’s logic. The service is akin to a “cross between Unity and Figma,” Uiflow says . Here’s what its own user interface looks like, per a screenshot the company provided to TechCrunch after an interview: Per Y

Platforms like Shopify, Stripe and WordPress have done a lot to make essential business-building tools — like running storefronts, accepting payments and building websites — accessible to businesses with even the most modest budgets. But some very key aspects of setting up a company remain expensive, time-consuming affairs that can be cost-prohibitive for small businesses — but that, if ignored, can result in the failure of a business before it even really gets started. Trademark registration is one such concern, and Toronto-based startup Heirlume just raised $1.7 million CAD (~$1.38 million) to address the problem with a machine-powered trademark registration platform that turns the process into a self-serve affair that won’t break the budget. Its AI-based trademark search will flag if terms might run afoul of existing trademarks in the U.S. and Canada, even when official government trademark search tools, and even top-tier legal firms, might not. Heirlume’s core focus is on leveli

Zoë Roth, 21, will use the money from the sale of a 2005 image of her to pay her student loan. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/3vwd7Mv

Last call, founders. Today is your last chance to save $100 on a pass to TC Early Stage 2021: Marketing & Fundraising . Our last founder bootcamp event of the year takes place July 8-9, and it’s time to call on Saint Expeditus — the patron saint of procrastinators and programmers alike. He’ll help you kick procrastination to the curb, save some cash and gain access to a bevy of top-tier investors, famous founders, marketing magicians, financial wizards and other startup savants. And they all want to help you build a better startup. But you need to buy your pass by 11:59 p.m. (PT) today, April 30 . This TC Early Stage experience goes deep on fundraising and marketing fundamentals. On day one, you’ll choose from a range of presentations and breakout sessions — all interactive, with plenty of time for Q&As. Plus video on demand, available after the event ends, means you don’t have to worry about schedule conflicts. Speakers at Early Stage bring a wealth of experience, couple

Football clubs, players and sporting bodies begin a four-day boycott of social media platforms to tackle abuse and discrimination. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/3t5ynav

Using malicious software gangs encrypt an organisation's data and then demand money to restore it. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/3xEDTnZ

Blade, the French startup behind cloud gaming service Shadow , has been acquired by Octave Klaba’s fund following a commercial court order. Klaba is better known as the founder of OVHcloud , a French cloud hosting company. He’s acquiring Blade (and Shadow) through his investment fund Jezby Ventures — not OVHcloud. Shadow is a cloud computing service for gamers. People can pay a monthly subscription fee and gain access to a gaming PC in a data center. You can connect to this PC from your computer, a smartphone, a tablet or a smart TV. You can see a video stream of what’s happening on the screen and your actions are relayed to the server. Unlike Google Stadia, Amazon Luna or even Nvidia GeForce Now, you can install whatever you want on your server. You get a full Windows 10 instance so it supports anything from Steam to Photoshop and Excel. While the French startup has raised over $100 million across multiple funding rounds, the company couldn’t keep up with pre-orders, didn’t genera

TC Early Stage is back in July and we have a fantastic lineup in store that’s laser-focused on marketing and fundraising. That includes, but is not limited to, Sequoia’s Mike Vernal, whose portfolio companies include Citizen, PicsArt, Whisper, Threads, Houseparty and more. Vernal will be leading a discussion on tempo and product-market fit. The chat stems from Vernal’s experience as an investor, sharing the lesser-known keys to success to not only secure early investment, but to use it to secure a later-stage investment. In essence, tempo is everything. At the earliest stage, investors are looking more at the team than the product, knowing that the likelihood of the product changing and evolving is high. That means that the ability to adapt — including the systems in place to collect feedback and willingness to continue iterating — are incredibly important factors. Vernal will not only stress the importance of tempo and product iteration (and how it relates to fundraising success)