Zyl raises $1.1 million to resurface old memories from your photos
French startup Zyl has raised $1 million (€1 million) in a round led by OneRagtime. The company has developed an app that uses artificial intelligence to find the most interesting photos and videos in your photo library. Now that smartphones have been around for a...
Airship acquires A/B testing company Apptimize
Airship announced today that it has acquired Apptimize, an A/B testing company whose customers include Glassdoor, HotelTonight and The Wall Street Journal. Formerly known as Urban Airship, the more concisely-named Airship has built a platform for companies to manage their customer communication across SMS, push notifications,...
Sequoia leads $40M investment in mobile messaging startup Attentive
Attentive, a startup helping retailers personalize their mobile messages, is announcing that it has raised $40 million in Series B funding. The startup was founded by Brian Long and Andrew Jones, who sold their previous startup TapCommerce to Twitter. When they announced Attentive’s $13 million...
What lower Netflix pricing tells us about competing in India
At a conference in New Delhi early last year, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings was confronted with a question that his company has been asked many times over the years. Would he consider lowering the subscription cost in India? It’s a tactic that most Silicon Valley...
Blackstone is acquiring mobile ad company Vungle
Private equity firm Blackstone just announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire mobile advertising company Vungle. The companies aren’t disclosing the financial terms, but as part of the transaction, Vungle has also reached a settlement with founder Zain Jaffer, who filed a wrongful...
AppLovin acquires SafeDK to improve brand safety
Mobile marketing company AppLovin is announcing that it has acquired SafeDK. While AppLovin started out as a mobile ad business, it now bills itself as “a comprehensive mobile gaming platform,” offering tools for game developers around user acquisition, monetization, analytics and (through Lion Studios, launched...
Calm raises $27M to McConaughey you to sleep
Meditation app unicorn Calm wants you to doze off to the dulcet tones of actor Matthew McConaughey’s southern drawl or writer Stephen Fry’s English accent. Calm’s Sleep Stories feature that launched last year is a hit, with more than 150 million listens from its 2...
300M-user meme site Imgur raises $20M from Coil to pay creators
Meme creators have never gotten their fair share. Remixed and reshared across the web, their jokes prop up social networks like Instagram and Twitter that pay back none of their ad revenue to artists and comedians. But 300 million monthly user meme and storytelling app...
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