The well-known tech startup routine of coming up with an idea, raising money from VCs in increasing rounds as valuations continue to rise, and then eventually going public or getting acquired has been around for as long as the myth of Silicon Valley itself. But the evolution of MailChimp — a notable, bootstrapped outlier out […]

Luckin Coffee is the most energizing IPO in recent memory, and not just because it sells caffeine. Most venture-backed startups can take a decade to reach the public markets. Luckin cut that time down to about 18 months. Founder Jenny Qian Zhiya opened a trial coffee shop in Beijing, with a focus on rapid coffee […]

A new feature rolling out to Uber drivers offers a semi-customized look at their “journey” with the company. On the face of its, the video is similar to sort offered up by Facebook on the occasion of anniversaries. Here, it pairs a driver’s stats with jaunty music and animation, highlighting how long they’ve been driving […]

Facebook has been repeatedly (and rightly) hammered for its treatment of the content moderators who ensure the site doesn’t end up becoming a river of images, videos and articles embodying the worst of humanity. Those workers, and the hundreds (if not thousands) of other contractors Facebook employs to cook  food, provide security, and transportation for […]

Spotify has launched a more slimmed-down version of its streaming music app in India, only months after its public debut in the country. The Android-only app, Spotify Lite is only 11 MB in size compared with 30 MB for the main app — a change that’s common to apps targeting emerging markets where bandwidth and […]

Slack this morning disclosed estimated preliminary financial results for the first quarter of 2019 ahead of a direct listing planned for June 20. Citing an addition of paid customers, the workplace messaging service posted revenues of about $134 million, up 66 percent from $81 million in the first quarter of 2018. Losses from operations increased […]

We may be poised on the precipice of a new era of spaceflight, but leaping prematurely off it would be a costly mistake — which is why the delays and failures of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, the new spacecraft that will likely be soonest to take humans to space, are a matter for concern but not […]

A report by The Wall Street Journal last week revealed a secretive U.S. military weapon designed explicitly to reduce civilian casualties in targeted strikes. Unlike a traditional hellfire missile dispatched from an aerial drone, the missile variant packs no payload, no explosive. The catch? It drops 100 pounds of metal on a target, shredding them […]

It’s only been a few months since Adobe launched its Commerce Cloud, based on its $1.6 billion acquisition of Magento. Today, at its Imagine 2019 conference, the company announced a number of updates to Magento that focus on expanding the platform’s reach for the small- and mid-size businesses that use the service. When Adobe acquired […]

Here’s a big Apple TV update. Not THE big Apple TV update. The whole Apple TV+ thing is still forthcoming, but this major update to the app should go a ways toward setting the stage for its arrival in the fall. The new version of the app arrives today across a slew of different platforms, […]