Growth equity firm Catalyst Investors has closed its third fund to the tune of $213 million, its largest to date. The company plans to maintain its current strategy of investing in e”high-growth, lower middle-market cloud computing, wireless infrastructure, and digital media companies.” [Source Catalyst]
The media giant tapped Demand Media’s Joanne Bradford and former Los Angeles Times CEO Jeffrey Johnson to help the flailing San Francisco Chronicle. Johnson will be the newspaper’s publisher, while Bradford will be the president. [Source: AllThingsD]
The company announced today that users can surface personal photos from Google+ plus accounts just by searching through the main Google search homepage. A user has to be logged in for it to work, and they can search through friends’ photos too. [Source: Google]
“We certainly have taken quite a bit of criticism over the years. But it is worth noting that for the first several years, the funding from Tesla was entirely private. In fact, I provided most of that initial funding.”
— Tesla CEO Elon Musk, on the company's repayment of its US loan
Intel has a lot riding on the upcoming release of its new chip line. To add to the excitement, the company released some details about its power consumption, including that it draws 50% less power than the current Core processor line members on “active” workloads. [Source: The Wall Street Journal]
SimpleRelevance, a company that gathers customer data to send more personalized mass emails, has raised $1 million. Funding was led by Hyde Park Angels and Hyde Park Venture Partners. [Source: VentureBeat]
Yahoo appears to be tinkering with a new search results page. For some users, when logged in and using Firefox, they are directed to a new results page that looks markedly different than the old one. [Source: Search Engine Land]
iOS music app maker Smule reportedly made $12.6 million in revenue in 2012. It is also supposedly on track to make $20 million this year. [Source: GigaOm]
Facebook today highlighted its developer platform, in celebration of the six year anniversary of being open to independent developers. The company threw around some numbers about third-party apps, such as: more than 500 million users use third-party apps through Facebook as well as those users sharing 1 billion stories a day. [Source: CNET]
San Francisco-based startup Lambda Labs is going to release a facial recognition API for Google Glass apps. The API will be available within a week, according to the company. [Source: TechCrunch]
Despite the videogame industry struggling recently with declining sales, GameStop today raised its full-year earnings forecast. This is based on a potential boost from new gaming consoles like the XBox One. [Source: Reuters]
Apple has announced that it is going to kick off its Worldwide Developers Conference with its keynote on June 10. [Source: CNET]
File-sharing company Box has acquired the technology behind the French app Folders. According to Box, the acquisition is part of a bold plan to make a product “that doesn’t suck”. [Source: VentureBeat]
Ben Ling, who was Badoo’s COO and an ex-Googler, has joined Khosla Ventures. In addition to Badoo and Google, Ling has also worked at Facebook. [Source: TechCrunch]
Google today debuted new Chrome notifications for its beta channel release. According to The Verge, they are capable of displaying formatted text and images. [Source: The Verge]
Even though Bing wasn’t talked about much at Microsoft’s XBox One reveal, it became apparent that the product as a back-end service is gaining some real traction. For the new services Microsoft is offering, Bing will help power them, such providing all the relevant data for XBox’s new voice search. [Source: CNET]
Israeli startup Imonomy has raised a $400,000 seed round. The company creates a software that analyzes webpages and automatically inserts copyright-free images. [Source: TechCrunch]
Today marks e-commerce company ChannelAdvisor’s first day of trading as a public company. As a result, the company’s stocks rose today almost 40%. [Source: VentureBeat]
“People think [bitcoin is] a potential alternative to dollars, but it’s more an alternative to gold.”
Jawbone has hired Mindy Mount, a top corporate VP at Microsoft, as its new president. This comes after a few other upgrades in the company’s management and board, including the addition of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. [Source: AllThingsD]
HTC has sold around 5 million units of its flagship HTC One smartphone since its launch, an unnamed exec told the Wall Street Journal. This is despite supply constraints that have nagged at the device since its inception — HTC expects to better meet demand once those issues have been worked out.
[Source: Wall Street Journal]
Microsoft will be bringing its Kinect product, a motion-sensing peripheral currently used by the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, to Windows products next year, the company has announced. Microsoft is expected to reveal more about the change during its BUILD conference in June.
[Source: Microsoft]
Lyft has raised a $60 million Series C from Andreessen Horowitz (whose founding partner, Marc Andreessen, is a personal investor in PandoDaily). The funding will be used to kickstarter Lyft’s global expansion; the company’s COO told AllThingsD that they can “scale globally in the next 12 months.” We’ll see.
[Source: AllThingsD]
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Minbox: The way file-sharing should work
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Yahoo buys Tumblr and Mayer “promises not to screw it up” like past deals
Forget armchair activism, new app Buycott helps people shop with a conscience
PopExpert raises $2 million for its video teaching marketplace
The race to a “smart” television is over. Xbox won
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The importance of grit, rules, and discipline
In Oklahoma’s time of crisis, Sparkrelief is working to unify relief efforts
Memo to this year’s YC class: It’s damn hard to build an enterprise company
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Finally, a Lumia-like device unbound by Windows Phone
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Swipely raises another $12m from tiny Rhode Island
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ServiceMax’s SaaS platform could make training technicians and replacing software a thing of the past
Reid Hoffman and Joi Ito’s H2 comes out of stealth
Forty more tickets on sale for our John Doerr PandoMonthly! (And a new venue…)
Too small to fail: The partnership-driven nature of fintech startups
Jaron Lanier: Information doesn’t want to be free, and ads are screwed
Data, heart, virality, and leadership: Five tips for today’s entrepreneurial journey
YouTube network Fullscreen adds NBCUniversal and HBO veteran Tim Mohn as new SVP of Engineering
Totsy burns through $34 million, lays off its 83 employees, selling assets
Why people are ignoring Windows 8′s new interface and using the “traditional” desktop instead
Eat Club hits the road to feed hungry office workers
A new iOS game looks to kickstart neuroscience education
Bill Gross’ UberMedia launches UberAds, using social and location data to better target on mobile
Skyhigh Networks raises $20M to control unauthorized cloud programs used in the enterprise
“If you’re building specifically for mobile, you’re in the past”
Scanadu asks Indiegogo users to test its “tricorder,” but don’t call it a pre-order
