TechCrunch Startup News

Often when I attend a conference or a networking event I am surprised by how many people operate at the periphery of the tech industry. Social media gurus, SEO “ninjas,” bloggers, etc. It’s a coterie of tech “club promoters.” The hype men of the industry. “Hack your way to success.” “Meet the right people.” “Become a business superstar.” They’ve found their silver bullet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drew Houston to upload his thoughts at TC Disrupt SF in September Dropbox is a critically important tool for more than 500 million people. The company launched back in 2007 and founder and CEO Drew Houston has spent the last decade growing Dropbox to the behemoth it is today. During that time, Houston has made some tough decisions. A few years ago, Houston decided to move the Dropbox infrastructure off of AWS. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Groupon founder Andrew Mason’s audio tour startup Detour has been sold to Bose. The acquisition, which involves only the software and tour content – not the team – was quietly announced on Detour’s blog a few days ago, followed by an email to customers. Bose, initially, seems like an unlikely acquirer for an app designed to help people discover a city through narrated walking tours. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Etleap is a play on words for a common set of data practices: extract, transform and load. The startup is trying to place these activities in a modern context, automating what they can and in general speeding up what has been a tedious and highly technical practice. Today, they announced a $1.5 million seed round. Investors include First Round Capital, SV Angel, Liquid2, BoxGroup and other unnamed investors. The startup launched five years ago as a Y Combinator company. It spent a good 2. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While most people probably would not think of New York as a hotbed for enterprise startups of any kind, it is actually quite active. When you stop to consider that the world’s biggest banks and financial services companies are located there, it would certainly make sense for security startups to concentrate on such a huge potential market — and it turns out, that’s the case. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Every startup needs a little skill and a little luck. BigID, a NYC-based data governance solution has been blessed with both. The company, which helps customers identify sensitive data in big data stores, launched at just about the same time that the EU announced the GDPR data privacy regulations. Today, the company is having trouble keeping up with the business. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pivotal has kind of a strange role for a company. On one hand its part of the EMC federation companies that Dell acquired in 2016 for a cool $67 billion, but it’s also an independently operated entity within that broader Dell family of companies — and that has to be a fine line to walk. Whatever the challenges, the company went public yesterday and joined VMware as a separately traded company within Dell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Funding Societies co-founders Reynold Wijaya and Kelvin Teo. Funding Societies, a peer-to-peer lending platform in Southeast Asia, said today that it has raised a $25 million Series B led by Softbank Ventures Korea, the Japanese tech conglomerate’s early-stage venture capital unit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices