Paper by FiftyThree is one of the most beautiful digital products on the market today.

The immersive drawing app for tablets has won Apple’s Design Award, a Crunchie, and was most recently honored at Time Inc.’s 10 NYC Startups To Watch party. So how do you build on that kind of success?

Well, according to the founders, Paper is but the first product in a series of creative tools. The team is thinking pretty seriously about what comes next, and it seems as though a stylus is where things are headed.

“The human hand has evolved to use tools,” said co-founder Georg Petchnigg. “You have wrists to do fine-detailed work, so the idea of a stylus is really interesting to us. It’s something that we’re thinking about because we want to deliver the best creation experience on tablets, so a stylus is right at the forefront of that.”

Currently, FiftyThree recommends customers on its website buy a stylus, linking to an Amazon stylus page as well as promoting the Pogo Connect.

But new products aren’t the only concern at FiftyThree. The team is also constantly thinking about how to reach a broader audience. As co-founder Julian Walker put it, “everyone out there is creative.”

That said, the company recently launched a new stream of content called Made With Paper, to help users get inspiration from other works created in the app. This is just a first step in building out more social, community-based features that will not only attract new users but keep loyal ones engaged.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The new Flickr is live.

Smack-dab in the middle of Yahoo-Tumblr aqcuisition day, Yahoo is holding a major press event here in NYC. But announcements coming out of this event aren’t related to Tumblr as much as Flickr, the photo-sharing database and social network acquired by Yahoo in March of 2005 for $35 million.

Today, Flickr gets a huge revamp including a totally new look and feel, focused on three different things. First, there are no more bits of text or blue links, but rather a grid layout of huge pictures in full resolution.

Second, stemming from the updated iOS app recently, which yielded 25 percent more uploads, the company is also announcing a brand new Android experience, catching the Google version of the Flickr app up to the iOS version.

Finally, Flickr looks to get even “biggr.” The company is expanding storage for your photos, by quite a bit. Flickr is offering 1 terabyte of free storage for every Flickr user. Yahoo made it clear that no other Internet company in the world offers a free terabyte of storage. That’s the equivalent of 537,731 photos.

In terms of the UI redesign, the new photostream has a justified format grid layout, complete with a header photo and a Timeline-style profile for users. On the top left, next to the photostream button, you can also click into Favorites and Sets.

But what are photos without sharing? Users have an easy share button to send photos out on any of their favorite social networks, including Tumblr.

Most importantly, Flickr has fiddled with the picture page to give a black background and a fullscreen image for every single photo page. The site has been revamped to give easy-click access to the next photo in the set or photostream, even in full-screen mode.

Adam Cahan, SVP of Mobile and Emerging products at Yahoo, announced that Flickr currently has 89 million users who have shared over 8 billion photos. That’s a lot of pictures.

Mayer explained that most of the changes happening at Yahoo concerns users’ daily habits, which explains why the company has put so much focus on the Yahoo Home Page, Yahoo mail, and the Yahoo weather app. In a number of ways, these products are energized and enhanced by photos.

Yahoo’s, and particularly Marissa Mayer’s, tweaks to its overall service and the Flickr experience has helped build out both platforms, but there are still questions over Flickr’s ability to generate revenue and, perhaps more importantly, compete with photo-sharing behemoth Instagram.

It’s worth noting the timing here: Yahoo just bought out one of the biggest and most popular blogging platforms around, and Flickr is a huge resource for blogs in general. But how will Yahoo integrate the two to build out use of both and make both experiences more seamless?

“We have a nice set of the creator brands,” said Mayer. “Photographers and writers. With that, there is natural set of opportunities that arise between Flickr and Tumblr and we’ll deal with that as it comes.”

Alongside Flickr’s product announcement news, Mayer revealed that the company would be setting up shop at a new NY office in Times Square, in the New York Times building, which will hold all 500 employees based in NY, along with room for expansion to 200 more employees.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

There is no sadder moment than the one where you realize it’s time to upgrade your computer. The load times are too slow, the battery no longer holds a charge, and it’s just too damn heavy. Now, imagine a school with dozens of outdated computers, and think just how bad that moment of realization can really be.

Neverware, a company based out of NY, is aiming to change all that with a turnkey solution that automatically boosts performance of old computers for a low monthly fee. Obviously, demand for this type of service is high, especially in the education industry, which is why Neverware has just closed a $1 million round from investors that include Thrive Capital, Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Collaborative Fund, and Nihal Mehta.

Founder Jonathan Hefter started Neverware back in 2011 and launched in January 2013 with around $600K in seed funding. Since then, the company has been working to evangelize the product to NYC schools, and the response has been great. According to Hefter, Neverware’s latest seed round is somewhat of an emergency raise, considering that the demand from schools is much higher than expected.

Hefter explained that they expected to sign on with between five and seven schools for the first semester, starting in January. However, they’ve blown way past that number and seen around 3x the customer sign-ups. According to Neverware, most of the new seed round will go toward smart engineering hires, as Hefter looks to double the seven-man team with more employees who care about what Neverware is doing.

Neverware works by setting up a Juicebox 100 in the schools. That piece of hardware integrates with the school’s network to bring automation and intelligence to the system. The Neverware virtualization technology then boosts performance to each computer, giving kids the access they need to actually get things done.

Schools pay an adjustable fee per month, per computer, and the Juicebox comes free.

“There is a huge challenge in deploying software on appliances across a wide variety of networks that we do not control,” said Hefter. “In order to be a reliable solution, we engineer an incredible amount of intelligence and automation into our system that allows it to function in many types of network environments that schools might have and recover from a wide range of network-related issues, without any associated downtime. These are engineering challenges that you simply don’t face when you’re running a website on uniform Amazon instances in the cloud.”

For now, Neverware is focused on expanding within the greater New York area, and will eventually expand beyond that into new regions.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Today, thanks to the maturation of the web, digital tech, and smartphones now in seemingly every pocket, startups are finding it easier than ever before to build scalable solutions to finally address the many inefficiencies in our food manufacturing, production and distribution systems.

As interest in food tech balloons, one area in particular appears to already be at the tipping point: Online and mobile food delivery. Over the last few days, we’ve hearing about a merger between two of the largest companies in the space. Rumor has it that “arch rivals” GrubHub and Seamless are in talks which could see them join forces as part of a merger. While our sources tell us that the talks are serious, the terms of the merger are not yet clear and, of course, any potential deal could fall through.

Furthermore, it’s not yet clear what kind of synergies would take place, how management of the new entity would be structured or even what the new business will be called. The two companies would not confirm on the record on any of the above. But as far as the name goes, we’re hoping for Grubless. Or Hubless GrubSeam. But they have a nice ring to them, don’t they?

If these rumors are true, the merger comes at a good time for the arch rivals, who have been seeing mounting competition of late from a laundry list of new startups entering the space, including increasingly popular alternatives like Delivery.com, ChowNow, Munchery (meals from local chefs), Campus Special, eat24 or the bigs of Europe, like Food Hero and Just-Eat. 

If the online food-ordering and delivery market is roughly where daily deals were three-plus years ago, then the deal essentially creates the Groupon of food delivery. Like the daily deals market, food ordering has traditionally had a fairly low barrier to entry, which helps explain why we seem to see a new startup pop up every week.

Plus, the business model isn’t particularly complicated, making it replicable. That being said, innovation and tech adoption have been slow to come to the food industry, and, at scale, this model (taking a slice of transactions) has the potential to be able to generate a lot of cash.

This is just one part of why the “food tech” business has been so hot lately. Just ask venture capitalists who collectively poured $350 million into food startups over the last year. (Compare that to 2008, when it was less than $50 million.) Plus, when you get right down to it: People need to eat. And, as it turns out, people are pretty busy. Uh, and lazy.

Of course, for those who remember the spectacular failure of online food companies like Webvan, Kozmo and HomeRuns, this whole “tech in your kitchen” and online ordering jibber-jabber probably sounds familiar — and not in a good way. But this time it’s different. Research from Cornell University recently found, for example, that over 40 percent of adults in the U.S. have ordered food online, and 10 percent of restaurant orders now originate online — and these numbers continue to head north. GrubHub and Seamless have built successful businesses on this very idea.

Both GrubHub and Seamless have been around for some time: The New York City-based Seamless was founded in 1999, while the Chicago-based GrubHub got its start in 2004. And for the most part, the two companies have catered to two different markets geographically. While both now have fairly expansive coverage, GrubHub has naturally developed a firm foothold in the Midwest, while Seamless focused its early attention on NYC, before moving into cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco. From that perspective, a merger would make sense, allowing the new, consolidated entity to gain penetration into markets where they lacked a major presence.

Writ large, the companies, while having some fundamental differences, do seem to have a lot of synergies on paper — at least “nominally,” depending on who you ask — likely why they’ve increasingly become rivals over the years. Bboth are of fairly comparable size, as GrubHub has more than 18,000 restaurant partners across more than 500 cities, while Seamless has over 12,000 restaurants and serves nearly 5,000 businesses and more than 2 million users. As of February, Reuters reported that Seamless was on track to generate more than $100 million in revenue this year as it expands into new cities and focuses more aggressively on mobile.

The company reportedly generated $85 million in revenue last year, growing its consumer business by 60 percent year-over-year and “will soon be processing $1 billion worth of food orders a year,” Seamless CEO Jonathan Zabusky told Reuters at the time. For the majority of its history, the company focused primarily on New York, but launched a major expansion effort last year, bringing its service to 10 new cities. According to the report, Seamless saw its transaction volume quadruple in Los Angeles during 2012, with transactions tripling in San Francisco.

Another interesting point to note: GrubHub was reported to be considering an IPO last fall. The company denied the rumors at the time, and if this merger is true, then they’ve been given the proper perspective. Certainly, it would seem that this wouldn’t take a potential IPO off the table, instead, likely making an opening price that much higher.

The IPO rumors for GrubHub came at a time when the company was reportedly doing about $60 million in revenue (this was in 2012) — a little less than half that of Seamless. Furthermore, Crain’s reported in December that GrubHub’s revenue has been doubling every year and, as the company reported $30 million in revenue in 2011, that revenue estimate would make sense and put the company on the path to crossing $100 million well before the end of this year.

That is all to say that, although the terms of the potential deal are unclear, these are two sizable businesses that are growing relatively fast, so any potential valuation has got to be fairly high. After all: The two companies were fairly comparably capitalized and staffed, with GrubHub growing to over 250 employees and Seamless over 300, while GrubHub raised about $84 million from a mix of venture and growth equity firms (including Benchmark) and Seamless raised $51 million, $50 million of which came from private equity firm Spectrum Equity.

While both companies have made a couple of acquisitions, this would be the second big M&A deal for Seamless, as the company was acquired by food services giant, ARAMARK, in 2006. Five years later, Spectrum bought a minority stake in Seamless from ARAMARK, and about a year later, the food services company spun-off its remaining interest in Seamless to its shareholders. Free from its corporate ownership, Seamless proceeded to go out and buy MenuPages for $15 million, showing up GrubHub, which MenuPages had initially targeted as its acquirer. When GrubHub and MenuPages couldn’t agree to a deal, and it seems that GrubHub was instead in the process of buying Dotmenu/Allmenus, Seamless swooped in — according to BetaBeat.

So, as you can see, the companies have a long history of jostling. While GrubHub had been out acquiring restaurant partners fast and furiously, Seamless stagnated a bit under ARAMARK, but since becoming an independent company (again) and with a new board/investors, the company seems to have been compounding its growth. Together, that growth could be exponentially higher.

Finally, if this deal is in fact a go, it’s worth looking at this quote from GrubHub co-founder and CEO Matt Maloney from back in 2011. In it, he shares his opinion on GrubHub’s top competitor, a little company called Seamless. He told BetaBeat:

I typically don’t talk this much about Seamless because we don’t view them as incredibly strong competition for what we’re doing … Seamless fundamentally is a corporate catering business. They were founded years and years and years ago to do just that. And they’re still best in the business for corporate. They recently got into the consumer and residential pick-up and delivery. And they do it well in New York, but they really have zero business anywhere else. We don’t even consider them competition anywhere other than Manhattan specifically.

So, there you go. A match potentially made in heaven, and one that’s sure to shake up online and mobile food ordering if it happens.

Find Seamless at home here and GrubHub here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Elena Fesenko grew up in the fashion industry. Her mother worked as a buyer for Bloomingdale’s, and she herself spent time both as a fashion design student and model. Now Fesenko has translated her experience and passion for fashion into MIKA, a new startup which showcases complete outfits featuring a mix of high-end and contemporary apparel and accessories. Shoppers can buy these looks in whole or in part, sometimes even getting exclusive access to items which aren’t yet available in stores, but are rather pulled from designers’ showrooms directly.

“Putting together outfits for work or for different occasions is hard - usually, no woman dresses head to toe in one designer,” explains Ukraine-born Fesenko, who runs MIKA alongside co-founder (and husband) Sani Sanilevich. “So I had this idea to put together all the designers in one look, and to create a website,” she says.

On MIKA, which officially launches on May 14th with looks that will be swapped out every 24 hours plus support for international shipping, shoppers will be presented with what Fesenko describes as a “visually stunning shopping experience.” What that means is that instead of static images, a short, looping almost “GIF-like” video plays which shows a model in action, wearing the look in question.

Behind-the-scenes videos from the shoot, and interviews with the stylist – often a guest stylist from the industry, like a well-known fashion blogger for example – will also accompany the various looks.

To date, the company has worked with super model Bar Rafaeli (who also has equity in the company), photographers Adrian Nina and Fadil Barisha, and bloggers from Fashion Indie and Above the Law. Thirty more bloggers are lined up to work on the new site going live later this month, as well as some celebs and models which MIKA is not yet permitted to name.

Though it’s still in a beta testing period of sorts, thanks to Fesenko’s connections, MIKA has already established relationships with 120 designers, including Cynthia Rowley, Anna Sui, Vince, Norma Kamali, Elie Tahari, Yigal Azrouel, DL1961, Kara Ross, Sigerson Morrison, and Tracy Reese, who have agreed to offer their items for use on the site.

Fesenko explains the designers were happy to work with MIKA, because so much online fashion is offered at discounts, as with excess inventory. “We offer the items at full price,” she says, “and we shoot them in amazing editorial with the best models, and the top photographers in the industry.” Because of this setup, some of the designers have even offered some of their items to MIKA which will have them for sale before they arrive in stores.

In the last month, the company sold over 40 complete looks and over 150 single items, despite not having marketed the site – word got out through those in the industry who heard about what MIKA was up to. Some items even sold out. “We have a few thousand users, but we didn’t expect to have sales since we were focusing on different things, like acquiring designers and building our website,” says Fesenko. (The screenshots show the upcoming website, which is an update from the one that’s live today). MIKA sees a 60 percent margin on the items it sells, and offers free shipping or hand-delivery to NYC-based users.

The company closed on $500,000 in seed funding in June 2012, which included investment from the founders, friends and family, Plug & Play (Saeed Amidi), Ronnie Stern and Allen Peters. In February, MIKA closed a Series A of $1.2 million from Hillsven Capital (Bobby Lent), and Plug & Play.

The updated version of MIKA will launch on Tuesday, May 14th, but you can visit the current site here to register and shop.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Everlane has built a really unique business that uses technology to provide luxury quality apparel at much lower prices than traditional high-end designer brands. But with that success has also come copycats — particularly abroad, where Everlane has not yet expanded its business (at the moment the company is operating only in the United States and Canada.)

So when we had the chance to talk to Everlane founder and CEO Michael Preysman backstage at Disrupt NYC this past week, we asked him how he plans to keep an edge as other companies look to find success with the same business model. Our exchange on this topic begins at 4:30 in the video embedded below this post, and Preysman has some strong opinions on the subject, saying:

“The problem with copycats is that honestly, they have no soul. It sounds silly to say that, but when you don’t have soul and you don’t have a reason for why you’re doing the things you’re doing, you’re always one step behind, and you never really connect with the consumer. And one thing we talked about on the panel [onstage] is people are looking for a connection with the brand, and they’re looking for trust.

There’s a brand out there in Turkey that launched called Mavelane which is actually, I think ‘mave’ must mean ‘ever’ in Turkish, and it’s literally a complete replica of our site. I mean, the code, everything — they stripped out all the front end code. But the problem is they’re always going to be one step behind, and they don’t actually have the reason for being that we have.

So, I don’t know that we worry so much about competitors. Because at the end of the day, I think our biggest competitor is ourselves.”

We also talked about why Everlane is so focused on bringing transparency to the clothing production process, how stripping out the third-party retail part of the supply chain has saved the company so much money, what’s next on the horizon for Everlane, and more.

Check it all out in the video embedded below.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Andreessen Horowitz partner Chris Dixon has been a big part of the New York City scene for years — and finance has long been a dominant industry in the city. So when talking about the ascent of Bitcoin onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC Dixon directly addressed corruption in Wall Street, we thought it’d be interesting to follow up and hear more.

So in our chat backstage, Dixon talked a bit more about how he sees the tech industry impacting the “company town” feeling of Wall Street dominating New York — and how tech is shifting the energy of the city back from a place that takes things, to a place that makes things. We also talked about Andreessen Horowitz is investing beyond software and into the hardware space, Dixon’s very popular personal blog, and more.

Check it all out in the video above.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Transit trade groups pulled out the race card and managed to block smartphone taxi “e-hailing” a day after they were cleared to pilot in New York City. Associate Justice Helen E. Freedman issued an emergency injunction against smartphone taxi app companies Hailo and Uber, after hearing arguments from the several car service groups alleging that smartphones permit drivers to discriminate against passengers based on race, name, age and location.

“We’re disappointed that there is a further delay in implementing the e-hail pilot program. It’s unfortunate that taxi riders will not be able to continue to test this innovative tool for hailing taxis,” wrote Senior Counsel in NYC Law Department, Michelle Goldberg-Cahn, in a statement.

On May 1st, hand waving-averse New Yorkers were supposed to be able to summon and track taxis from their mobile phones, though they weren’t allowed to pay through the application and the pilot was only available in certain parts of the city and call taxis within a certain radius of the passenger.

This latest legal injunction is just the low point in a roller coaster between smartphone car service apps, who have been cleared and blocked over and over again, as taxi groups fight tech startups for control over the lucrative transportation industry.

It is wholly ironic that taxi organizations allege that smartphone applications are a threat to equality. For years, news organizations have replicated the abject racism that occurs between people of color and drivers.

“At night they will slow down to pick me up and realize that I’m a person of color then suddenly flip the switch; they’re out of service and will drive on. And I’ve seen it as far as they will go to the next block and pick someone else up within clear sight,” said Briscoe Savoy, a resident of Brooklyn who participated in an ABC experiment.

Indeed, one black D.C. resident defended Uber against regulators back when the state had threatened to raise prices on the smartphone black car service. “That’s why I’m dismayed by the proposed regulations that could potentially put Uber out of business,” wrote Clinton Yates, for the Washington Post. “It would be a step backward for those of us who are willing to pay more money for a respectable transaction rather than take our chances on the street and be degraded in the process.”

The injunction is part of an ongoing court battle. We will update readers as the story unfolds.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

David Tisch has made quite the name for himself as an investor based in NYC. Most notably, Tisch spent years at TechStars as the Managing Director, and has since left to co-found another investment fund called BoxGroup.

We sat the man down backstage at Disrupt today to chat out his thoughts on the NY tech scene, trends he’s excited about and his transition to BoxGroup.

“If you ask anyone whether they’re bored with what’s on their phone, it will always be a unanimous yes,” said Tisch. For him, he sees streams like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are the best forms of entertainment for the average Joe taking a glance at his phone. But there’s room for more, according to Tisch.

In terms of BoxGroup, Tisch seems to enjoy finally being accelerator agnostic, and doesn’t mind companies that never go through an accelerator at all. But how do you get Tisch’s attention?

“Be yourself,” he said. “If you’re trying too hard, but it comes off genuine, that’s ok. If you’re passive and antisocial and awkward, that’s fine. Just be yourself.”

In his perspective, there’s no model to follow because entrepreneurship is about creating your own story. If you try to copy someone else’s story, it won’t ever work out.

If you’re interested in David’s feelings towards the NY tech scene, the engineering talent pool, and the future of entertainment on mobile, be sure to watch the full interview above.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Kevin Ryan has had a lot of variety in his career so far, with a front-row seat building companies including DoubleClick, Gilt Groupe, 10gen, and Business Insider. And recently it’s been reported that he could add another very interesting facet to his resume by running for mayor of New York City.

So when we had the opportunity to talk with Ryan backstage at the Disrupt NYC 2013 show, we asked him about the rumors and whether a leap from business to politics is in his future. While it sounds like he might not be keen to take the seat vacated by Michael Bloomberg in the very near future, he had some great insights on why it could be a very good thing if the next leader at City Hall is someone from the tech world. We also talked about how he keeps balance while running companies in such divergent spaces, from fashion to programming tools and beyond.

Check it all out in the video above.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch