Startups

After acquiring FabKids earlier this year, JustFab announced today the acquisition of another “Fab” brand – The Fab shoes – for an undisclosed amount. The Fab Shoes is a European-based e-commerce shoe club with over 500,000 members in France and Spain. And that fits well with JustFab’s plans. With its newest acquisition, the subscription-based online store from California adds fuel to its European expansion blueprint. It launched operations in Germany and U.K. last year, and this deal provides it a way into Spain and France. “With our success in Germany and the U.K., we were ready to take JustFab into new territories. After getting to know the team at The Fab Shoes, we saw a natural fit for the businesses; it enables JustFab to quickly extend its European reach and gives The Fab Shoes a new way to distribute quality products to customers through our flexible subscription plan,” noted Don Ressler, a cofounder and co-chief executive of JustFab, in a statement. JustFab has quickly grown its European presence to 1.5 million members, and it is adding more than 100,000 new customers every month. The Fab Shoes will take this toll to well over the 2 million customer mark. Its competitors include companies such as H&M and Forever 21. JustFab has raised $109 million in venture capital from Matrix Partners, Technology Crossover Ventures, Rho Capital Partners, and Intelligent Beauty. After accomplishing $100 million in revenue for the year, the e-commerce website is looking at 2013 as “another high-growth year.” “We continue to surpass our goals, month after month,” said Adam Goldenberg, the other cofounder and co-chief executive, Adam of JustFab. “With more than 13 million members in the U.S. and Europe growing at such a fast pace, we are on track to reach $250 million in revenue by the end of this year.” Image Credit: JustFab Filed under: Deals

LoyalBlocks announced today that it had raised $9 million in its first round of funding. The loyalty marketing solutions company plans on using the capital injection to expand U.S. operations and continue developing its platform for small and medium-sized businesses. The company was founded in 2011 by Ido Gaver and Eran Kirshenboim and is headquartered in both New York City and Tel Aviv. LoyalBlocks has two main products that complement one another. The first is their merchant-focused loyalty marketing solution, which enables brick-and-mortar businesses to build an app, set up a base station in their store, and select rewards programs to offer customers. The second product is an app targeted at mobile phone wielding consumers. The base station set up in the business automatically sends rewards to the customer as soon as they walk in the door. The platform also provides for Facebook integration and smart punch cards that clients can access on customers’ mobile phones. As with other services, the smart punch cards are automatically “stamped” as the customer with the LoyalBlocks app installed on their phone walks into the store. “We have taken mobile loyalty to the next level by making it easy for merchants to give their clients more, automatically. From a business perspective, it is an incremental layer of marketing that leverages their day-to-day activities. It is a simple, innovative and effortless way of generating more business and establishing long term customer loyalty,” said Ido Gaver, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, in a press release. General Catalyst Partners led the series A investment round, with participation from Founder Collective and previous investor Gemini Israel Ventures. The company also announced three additions to its board of directors: General Catalyst Partners managing director Adam Valkin, Gemini Israel Ventures managing partner Yossi Sela, and mySupermarket chief executive Allon Bloch. Photo credit: LoyalBlocks Filed under: Business, Deals, Enterprise, Lifestyle, Mobile, New York, Small Biz

As great as the web is, I still haven’t been able to kick my habit for buying fashion and lifestyle magazines off the newsstand. One of the things I love the most about monthly glossies are features like Vanity Fair’s My Stuff and Us Weekly’s What’s In My Bag, in which notable people reveal the exact products that they actually buy and use (celebrity chef David Chang uses Sensodyne toothpaste and wears Levi’s jeans, FYI.) It’s just compelling to find out more about people through their stuff. The folks at New York-based startup Vaunte think so too, and in fact, they think this kind of voyeuristic editorial approach could be the next generation of luxury e-commerce. Vaunte has created a web platform where notable people (think starlets, fashionable executives, designers, and socialites) show off the stuff in their closets — and put things up for sale. Vaunte started off as purely a consignment market that takes 30 percent commission for photographing and shipping seller’s items, but it has since expanded to also sell new versions of the items people show off. Though Vaunte has made a splash in the fashion news space since its November 2012 launch, it has flown under the radar in the tech and business press. But now for the first time, the company is revealing a bit more on the corporate side. TechCrunch sat down this week with Gilt Groupe veteran Leah Park and engineer/entrepreneur Andy Shin, two of Vaunte’s three co-founders — the third, ex Gilt Grouper Christian Leone, was in Los Angeles working on a Vaunte photoshoot — to talk a bit more about what Vaunte is and what’s in its future (video embedded below.) A Vaunte closet profileFirst, some numbers: Vaunte has raised $1.125 million in seed funding from Maveron, Battery Ventures, and fashion and retail mogul Christopher Burch. The company has a staff of nine, but is set to expand as it moves into a 6,000 square foot space in Manhattan that will serve as office space and inventory storage. Based on just word of mouth and a few press mentions, Vaunte has grown to 60,000 members and done more than half a million dollars in transactional revenue since launching in November. The big news going forward is that with the launch of its upcoming mobile app scheduled for this summer, Vaunte is set to open up its platform to let anyone display and sell their clothing and accessories on the site. These users will be charged less of a commission than the higher-profile sellers, since they will be responsible for taking their own photos. There is a significant amount of additional technology that Vaunte’s team had to build to make this app scalable to taking items from the general public — quality control on the photos that are taken and having to verify that luxury items are genuine, for example. It’s an expansion that will put Vaunte in an interesting intersection in the existing e-commerce market — its competitors will now range from Net-a-Porter to The RealReal to Poshmark to Threadflip and more. Personally, I’m excited to see what Vaunte has in store for its future. The first time I opened the site this week, I had one thought: “Uh oh. I am going to spend so much money here.” I’d imagine that I’m not alone. Park and Shin stopped by the TechCrunch TV studio to discuss Vaunte’s vision and give us an early look at the new mobile experience. Check it all out below:

Compared to sizable companies, small to medium sized businesses (SMB) seem to be less concerned with mobile security because they feel too “unimportant” to be attacked. This, of course, is not true. In the first half of 2012, small businesses accounted for 36 percent of all targeted cyber attacks, up from 18 percent at the end of 2011, according to Symantec data. These SMBs are becoming more frequent victims of mobile cyber attacks due to their lack of device defenses and their position as “gateways” to larger firms’ or consumer data. And while many SMBs deem security a major priority, most aren’t taking the proper precautions. Fifty-five percent of small businesses classify security as a major mobile risk, but only 16 percent have a mobility policy in place, according to CompTIA’s Second Annual Trends in Enterprise Mobility report published in April. Many have mobility policies that don’t cover critical security areas like personal device use, transmission and storage of data, and public Wi-Fi accessibility. Even more disconcerting: 37 percent of policies don’t include a protocol for lost devices, even though almost half of businesses identified device loss as their most common mobile security incident. Security breaches can cost thousands or millions of dollars in damage and put a business down for months at a time, but many SMB cyber-crimes are preventable. The IT channel is full of firms that offer ways to create or strengthen preventative and disaster recovery plans for businesses of all sizes. Whether your enterprise mobility policy and solutions are outsourced or managed internally, there are passcode and encryption strategies, software, and monitoring tools that can help prevent damaging data breaches from happening, or lessen the blow of those that do. Here are a few tips for developing a more effective SMB mobility policy: Leave room to grow: For organizations writing their inaugural mobility policy, it’s OK to start small. Include even the most basic protocol for setting device passcodes and downloading third-party apps, but understand that these areas are subject to change and will evolve over time. At first, your policy might mandate all app downloads be approved by an IT manager, but if you build an internal app store in a year or two, that process will need modification. Security and data deserve their own treatment: When writing a mobility policy, it’s easy to use “security” as an umbrella term to include both physical device threats like jailbreaking and data vulnerabilities. Data, however, can be a beast of its own and should be treated as such in a company policy. Data spans across mobile devices, desktops, office networks, and personal networks. To keep information safe outside of a business’s walls, it demands constant monitoring (either internal or outsourced), a Data Loss Prevention platform, and end-user awareness of data safety best practices. Engage your business leaders (not just IT): At smaller firms especially, where IT staff may be limited, it is important to get mobility policy buy-in and guidance from the management team. Understanding that mobile security is a strategic business issue, not just a technology problem, builds the right foundation for a more sound, comprehensive policy. Designate control: One of the biggest decisions for SMBs is whether or not to outsource the mobile management process. Regardless of who holds the keys to device and data maintenance, make sure that they have access to all necessary information and the ability to make updates or quick fixes without disturbing staff productivity. If the proposed security measures can’t coexist seamlessly with your day-to-day operations, then your strategy may need tweaking. As mobile technology continues to evolve, SMBs must be proactive in implementing cohesive processes to combat imminent threats. Prioritizing security and letting go of the misconception that SMBs are immune takes time and effort, but it can help keep an organiza

On Thursday, LogicBuy posted a must-read report on smartphones and the often-touted specs that should actually carry very little weight with consumers in the market for a new or refreshed device. “For example,” reads the guest post by Shaun Chatman, “did you know that so-called native apps take up huge allotments of your phone’s memory: why would you want a phone to choose apps for you? Say no to wasted space and skip this spec.” Other specs that phones shouldn’t bother listing include caller ID, SMS capability, and languages. When was the last time a phone existed without the capability to send an SMS? Text messaging has been around for twenty years, and SMS-friendly phones have been on the market for at least 15 years. Chatman shared the following infographic, which is meant to educate readers on which specs they should really pay attention to, and which ones should just be regarded as white noise. Check it out below.

Bloomberg today reports that Google could face a new U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) antitrust probe into its display advertising business. As Bloomberg’s Brian Womack and Sara Forden note, the FCC is looking into whether Google used its strong position in this market to “illegally curb competition.” The investigators, the report also notes, want to see if Google used its display ads business to “push companies to use more of its other services.” We reached out to Google for a statement about this new investigation but Google did not have a comment on the report. As Bloomberg notes, the FCC investigation – assuming it will go forward – will likely focus on whether Google used its dominance in the display ad business to “squeeze out competitors in the display advertising market.” Google’s ad revenue from display ads was about $2.26 billion in 2012 and, according to a report by eMarketer, could hit $3.11 billion this year. According to the same report, Google currently owns about 17.6 percent of the display ad market, followed by Facebook and Yahoo. Google and the FTC are, of course, old acquaintances. The two have sparred pretty regularly over the last few years, and just this January, the FTC settled its latest antitrust probe with Google after a 20-month investigation. Google, at the time, agreed to make some voluntary changes, including how it handles its AdWords campaigns. Google also still faces a similar investigation in Europe, where it recently proposed to settle the European Commission’s investigation into its business practices. A number of other countries, including Canada, are also currently looking into the search giant’s business practices.

Features: Ships with Windows 8 64-bit 13.3-inch display running at 2560 x 1440 (221ppi) 256GB SSD 2GHz Intel Core i7-3537U Processor 8GB of RAM MSRP: $1,999 Pros: An incredibly high-res display for a Windows laptop 2 years of free premium support Respectable battery life Cons: No discrete graphics card Man this thing is expensive Eye Candy Meets Horsepower Toshiba isn’t exactly known for churning out attractive, high-end notebooks, which is why the company’s new Kirabook is such an oddity. It’s a handsome little thing if you’re into very (and I mean very) understated designs, though I imagine at least a few people will think the Kirabook looks downright dull. The Kirabook is wedge-shaped like many of its other ultrabook brethren but it’s thankfully very light on branding (save for a small, chrome-esque Toshiba logo slapped on a corner of the Kirabook’s lid), and a finish that comes as a result of the magnesium alloy chassis is nice enough. Sadly, that magnesium frame doesn’t mean the Kirabook is immune to scratches, something I quickly learned after stowing the thing in a checked bag while flying to Austin. It’s got a respectable spate of ports for an ultraportable too: AC power aside, there are a total of three USB 3.0 ports plus an HDMI out, a headphone jack, and a full-size SD card reader. If anything, the real eye-catcher here is that sumptuous screen. The Kirabook plays home to a 13.3-inch display running at 2,560 x 1,440 (that makes for a pixel density of 221ppi), and Toshiba likes to crow about it being the highest resolution display available on a Windows notebook. Credit where credit is due, that display is one of the Kirabook’s most notable high points: colors are generally vivid and bright, and the panel seems hardy enough to handle even the most frenzied touch inputs. That’s not to say it’s without its shortcomings though. There’s a bit of light leakage around the edge of the display panel and viewing angles aren’t the greatest — looking at the thing dead-on is pleasant enough, but there’s a bit of color distortion to be seen once you start moving around. But there’s one big problem when it comes to the display, and it has nothing to do with the panel itself. I won’t belabor the point too much — by now you’ve probably already made up your mind about Microsoft’s divisive OS — but the biggest disappointment is that Windows 8 and the apps that run on it just aren’t completely tuned for these HiDPI screens yet. Cruising through the touch-friendly start screen is a visual pleasure, as is firing up apps like Internet Explorer, Maps, Vimeo, and Netflix since they all thrive on these sorts of displays. Jumping into the desktop is another world entirely, and it’s full of applications and menus that appear blurry and ill-suited for such a neat display. What a bummer. When it comes to performance, the Kirabook manages to hold its own very nicely. We like running Geekbench around these parts, and on average the Kirabook scored between 7500 and 8000 when it came to running 64-bit benchmarks: very solid numbers, and there wasn’t anything that came up during my day-to-day use that managed to flummox the little guy. That is, except for gaming — the lack of a discrete GPU in a $2000 machine is concerning, and the integrated Intel HD 4000 plus the need to push a crazy number of pixels means that there will be very little Bioshock Infinite running on the Kirabook unless you dramatically crank down the quality. Speaking of day-to-day use, the Kirabook has more than enough juice to get you through the day. I’ve been toting the 2.9 pound notebook around for the better part of a week, and I’ve consistently been able to camp out in coffee shops and keep the Kirabook going for just over six hours. There’s little question that the Kirabook is actually a pretty speedy little bugger, but there is a caveat. The downside to

One of the most basic realities about 3D printed guns is that preventing people from accessing them is going really, really tough. The Department of Homeland Security may finally have figured that out, at least according to a memo obtained by Fox News. Here’s a section of it: “Significant advances in three-dimensional (3D) printing capabilities, availability of free digital 3D printer files for firearms components, and difficulty regulating file sharing may present public safety risks from unqualified gun seekers who obtain or manufacture 3D printed guns. Limiting access may be impossible.” If you’ve been following the 3D printed gun story, then you probably know that the firearms were always meant to be uncontrollable. Because 3D printed guns are digital objects before they are physical ones, controlling them is as tough as preventing people from getting their hands on the latest Daft Punk single. This became particularly clear earlier this month when the State Department’s Office of Defense Trade Compliance ordered Defense Distributed to remove from its website the files for its first 3D printed gun. The problem? The gesture was largely an empty one, as the files had already been downloaded thousands of times. The cat was, as they say, out of the bag — and Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson knew it. “Because the files are all over the Internet, the Pirate Bay has it — to think this can be stopped in any meaningful way is to misunderstand what the future of distributive technologies is about,” 3D printed gun troublemaker Wilson told BetaBeat in the wake of the news. The other component of this is detectability, which is perhaps the bigger concern for the Department of Homeland Security. 3D printed guns are made of out of plastic, which means that they won’t set off metal detectors. While that’s a nightmare scenario for law enforcement, it was also a concern cleverly addressed with Defense Distributed’s Liberator, which features a chunk of metal to appease legislators. All of which means that, yes, Homeland Security is correct in assuming that limiting access to 3D printed firearms will be impossible. The big question now is what the government will do now that it accepts that reality?     Filed under: OffBeat

This sponsored post is produced by Darren Keyes, Director of Business Intelligence at Fuse Powered. For those unfamiliar with the term, ‘cohorting’ refers to creating user segments, or technically, a group of people banded together as a group. You can segment a user base in many different ways. Some of the more obvious cohorts in mobile gaming are based on country, device, or app version. It’s relatively simple to segment your data based on these common cohorts. However, one of the keys to making your apps successful is the ability to segment and analyze your users based on player behavior, rather than by simple demographics. Let’s say you want to know how deep your app is in terms of in-app purchases (IAPs). You could segment your users based on spending behavior. Borrowing from the glitzy world of casinos, most app developers refer to these cohorts as “Whales,” “Dolphins” and “Minnows,” equating to “big,” “medium” and “small” spenders. Analyzing your metrics based on spending cohorts will provide insight on whether spending more increases retention, an indicator relevant to your app’s success. Quite simply, retention means your users are engaged, which means you’re making more money. Spending cohorts are still fairly common and barely fit the definition of “custom cohort.” At Fuse Powered, when we talk about custom cohorts we’re referring to things like segmenting users based on how many days it took them to make a purchase, or what level of game play they are currently on. These are the metrics that pack a powerful punch. For example, it’s good to examine your big spenders, but it’s far more powerful to be able to identify and message your big spenders who haven’t played in 10 days to re-engage them. Win your users back by using a personalized and targeted notification based on specific behaviors. Deeper custom cohorts allow you to dive into meaningful data like knowing the average revenue earned from all players who have made it to a specific point in your game. Having this detailed knowledge may help you build a business case for adding new levels, or steepening the difficulty curve for new players. What if you found out players are getting stuck on a specific level in your game? You could build a cohort for all the players at this level who have played more times than average and send them a hint through a targeted push notification. Or maybe you want to see if players are playing more frequently after making a specific IAP as their first purchase. Having this knowledge could lead you to introduce this IAP earlier in the app experience. The options and power of defining and actioning custom cohorts are endless. All of these questions can be answered and acted on with the custom cohort tools available from mobile app tool providers, like Fuseboxx. The real question becomes, are you taking advantage of these tools and analyzing your users based on their behavior? If not, you are most likely giving your users a sub-optimal experience, and leaving significant money on the table at the same time. Fuseboxx Mobile Publishing Platform provides extensive reporting, actionable analytics, and a powerful toolset. Get it free at www.fusepowered.com Sponsored posts are content that has been produced by a company, which is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. The content of news stories produced by our editorial team is never influenced by advertisers or sponsors in any way. For more information, contact sales@venturebeat.com. Filed under: Enterprise, Games, Mobile

Features: Convertible laptop 13-inch touchscreen Up To 128 GB SSD Intel Core i5 Processor MSRP: $999 Pros: Slim form factor works as a tablet and a laptop Nice design 10-finger multi-touch Cons: Mushy keys Accelerator sensing can be frustrating Underpowered for the price point Twist And Shout Convertibles were all the rage back in the 1950s (thanks to tailfins and the Corvette) and in the early 2000s (thanks to Microsoft and Sony). In the 2000s, however, we saw convertibles in the form of laptops that could twist and turn themselves into tablets. The result, usually, was a not-very-good-laptop folded into a not-very-good tablet. That’s what makes the Yoga special. This 13-inch laptop is as plain as can be – it has just two USB ports and an SD card slot – but becomes much more usable when you realize the various configurations you can bend it into. For example, as a laptop the screen stays straight up and there is a small central Windows button that you can either press or ignore under the screen bezel. You can also fold the laptop in half along one edge, essentially tuning off the keyboard and making the screen one big tablet. Finally, you can fold the Yoga into a tent, allowing you some modicum of control over the laptop via the keyboard or allowing you and another user to view the screen head-on. To be fair, the “folding” features are more of a gimmick than anything else. The vast majority of the time you’ll be using this in either standard laptop mode or tablet mode. However, unlike the Microsoft Surface, you don’t have to worry about the screen flopping over at inopportune moments, which is a huge plus. The Yoga can be rightly termed the perfect Windows 8 machine. Touchscreen access was surprisingly smooth and responsive but it wasn’t mandatory. This is a handsome, cleverly designed laptop that works as both a keyboard-based and touch device. Performance-wise, however, you’re going to take a bit of a hit on this device when compared to similar i5 devices. They Yoga 13 hit a Geekbench score of 4,664, which is low. The i5 MacBook Air, for example, gets about 5,000 other Core i5 laptops can hover at about 8,000 depending on the machine. The laptop lasted for 5 hours of standard use. The Core i5 in this model was enough for most work thrown at it but it’s still considerably underpowered. Other users I talked to mentioned some latency issues with the trackpad although I didn’t experience them during use. That said, I’m loath to ding the laptop on performance simply because Lenovo did something very unique with their laptop and made something that I’d actually carry. The goal of these reviews is to show some of the most unique and usable laptops available now, not the latest and greatest in terms of chipsets and processors. In terms of speeds and feeds the Yoga 13 does not shine. However, when it comes down to usability and class, the Yoga 13 is a real contender. Who is it for? Designers Yes. Photographers, artists, and media types will love the big, bright screen and the unique “bendable” spine makes it easy to share the screen with multiple users or flip it over to show off a snapshot or sketch. While it’s not exactly a Wacom digitizer – you basically get a capacitive touchscreen that will respond to simpler, passive styli – this laptop is definitely something you can get a little work done on. I would worry, however, about the limitations of the i5 processor and the on-board graphics. I wouldn’t recommend, say, rendering video or handling massive RAW files. Think of this as a showcase machine, designed to display your work after it is complete. Founders Yes. The Yoga is almost custom-built for salesmen and business folk. Want to get a point across? Fold this puppy up and treat it like a mini-whiteboard. Want to give a presentation? Lay it out flat like a tablet and swipe through the slides. Finally, when y