Startups

A few weeks ago, Google briefly made a “Google Now” topics page available on the web and then took it down again. The page showed a list of topics Google believed you were interested in, based on your search history. Now this feature is back, but it’s a bit different from the leaked page. A few days ago, it seems, the company quietly (re-)launched this feature with the latest Google Now update. The leaked page was also visible on the desktop, but it looks like Google has plugged this hole the cards are now only available on Android – and only by going through Google Now‘s research cards. On this page, you can still see many (but not all) of the topics that Google thinks you are interested in. The feature will now pop up at the bottom of Google’s research cards, which often appear after Google realizes that you’ve been researching a certain topic in depth. One of the reasons for this card to pop up, for example, would be when Google detects you are planning a trip. To see this information, Google Now offers a link will appear underneath these cards (“Explore now,” then look for the “More of your topics” links in the top right) that allows you to delve a bit deeper into the topics you recently looked for and to get a different view of your search history. Indeed, besides powering the research cards, they mostly offer you a richer view of your search history. Unlike Google’s search history page, however, this feature shows you an aggregate view of what Google believes you are interested in, not just a list of all of your searches. In my case, for example, Google knew that I was looking for a hotel last weekend and had been looking at hotels in New York a few weeks ago, too. It also knows that I was looking for restaurants in Portland, did some research on web browsers, smartphones and Sim City. For now, this feature is only available on Android, as the Google Now research cards haven’t launched on iOS yet (where they would be available trough the Google Search app). Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a way to just surf to this page without having a research card available through Google Now. Google Now has always been about anticipating your needs and performing searches for you before you. The research cards clearly fit into this pattern and so does the ability to delve a little bit deeper into what Google thinks it knows about you. This, of course, shows you how much Google really knows about you – which is either really cool or creepy, depending on your overall thoughts about Google and privacy. When Google mistakenly leaked the topics page earlier this year, it looked like this would be another step in bringing Google Now to the desktop. Sadly, it looks like that isn’t quite the case and that we’ll still have to wait a bit before Now makes it debut on Chrome for the desktop, but with the new notifications system and a flag to enable Now in Chrome, it’s just a matter of time before Google will launch this feature.

The Department of Homeland Security issued a warning to its employees this week, saying it was alerted to a vendor vulnerability that could have exposed social security numbers. The vendor, which DHS does not disclose in its alert, deals with background check information. It helps the investigation process, and stores personally identifiable information collected during a background check. The vulnerability could have exposed names, social security numbers, dates of birth, and other personally identifiable information that stretches beyond the “username and password” you usually see in breach notifications. This, however, did not involve an actual breach. The department says that it has not found any evidence that a breach took place, simply that the vulnerability existed. The vulnerability affects both DHS employees and anyone who was given DHS clearance. The department is attempting to reach out to anyone it believes could have been affected by the vulnerability, which dates back to July 2009. Once the issue was found, the vendor was ordered to stop all work and fix the security hole immediately. The Department of Homeland Security may take legal action and is “engaged with the vendor’s leadership to pursue all costs incurred mitigating the damages.” DHS suggests that anyone whose information was at risk should contact credit reporting agencies to have their credit reports monitored for suspicious activity. via ThreatPost; DHS image via DonkeyHotey/Flickr Filed under: Security

Peter Thiel’s late-stage venture firm Mithril Capital Management is planning to invest in space exploration and transportation. Several sources close to the matter said Thiel’s firm intends to raise $50 million. Mithril partner Jim O’Neill denied in an email that he is raising a fund, but confirmed that the firm just hired several space industry experts to join the investment team. “We are delighted to have hired two space industry veterans on our investment team to help us examine hard technology companies, including transportation and space,” he said. Sources also said that several million dollars has already been poured into the fund to build vehicles for space exploration. Mithril would not yet confirm where the money will come from, but we will update you when we learn more. Likewise, the extent to which Thiel will be personally involved with managing the fund remains unclear. San Francisco-based Mithril is a growth fund that fits between Thiel’s other investment firms, Founders Fund, which typically focuses on earlier stage investments, and Clarium Capital, a global hedge fund. Founders Fund has invested in SpaceX, a private space transport company. And in a 2011 interview with the New York Times, Thiel said that not enough energy is spent tackling big challenging problems, “like space exploration.” Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports that Thiel is a science fiction junkie obsessed with putting his money behind ideas that would expand human possibility. Thiel is known for making risky investments that most venture capitalists wouldn’t touch — the billionaire has backed a nonprofit, Breakout Labs, in a bid to kickstart scientific innovation. Mithril would be among the first private funds to venture into space exploration — Kentucky Space LLC announced last month the formation of SpaceTango, the first business accelerator for entrepreneurial space ventures. Filed under: Business

On this week’s Ask A VC episode, Index Ventures partner Danny Rimer joined us in the studio. Rimer has been in the venture industry for over 11 years so he had plenty to share on how VC has changed, and the differences in the venture world in Europe and the U.S. Rimer, who has led the firm’s investments in Etsy, Nastygal and many others, also talked to us about the future of e-commerce and how the industry is changing for startups. Check out the video above for more!

Yahoo has officially placed a bid to acquire popular video streaming service Hulu. Rumors came out earlier this month that Yahoo was interested in Hulu after Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer met with members of Hulu’s executive team. Hulu’s current owners — News Corps, Disney, and Comcast — tried to sell the company for around $2 billion in June 2011 after irreconcilable differences over business strategy. No one came close to the asking price and the sale was officially terminated. Instead, the owners decided to focus on growth. A report in AllThingsD today said “a person familiar with the process” revealed that Yahoo submitted an offer this morning. Hulu offers high-quality videos of popular TV and movies. Its revenue increased by more than 65 percent last year to $695 million. It has more than 4 million paying subscribers and had commercials from more than 1,000 advertisers in 2012, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier. The content is free or costs $8 a month for newer programming, and advertisers are willing to pay high prices to run their ads alongside the videos. A report in Bloomberg said that Disney prefers the advertising-focused business model, while News Corp. wants to rely on subscriptions. Now a number of other companies are entering the bidding fray to join the discussion (and rewards). Other bidders include cable TV provider Time Warner Cable, Amazon, Guggenheim Digital Media, and former News Corp. President Peter Chernin, who made a $500 million offer. With this renewed interest from buyers, the real question is how much are they willing to pay? Yahoo recently placed and lost a bid to acquire a $300 million, 75 percent majority stake in Dailymotion, a French video service. This deal fell through after the French Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg decided he didn’t want to see a successful French business sold to an American company. Hulu could be an alternative option for Yahoo, which recently signed an exclusive deal for all Saturday Night Live clips and acquired popular social media site Tumblr for $1.1 billion. Yahoo is clearly eager to scoop up popular content that it can monetize through advertising. With that huge cash deal fresh on the books, does Yahoo have the resources to throw down for Hulu as well? And if so, how much is it willing to spend? Until this all gets settled, I’ll be watching the latest episodes of Modern Family for “research.” Photo Credit: Shutterstock Filed under: Business, Deals, Media

(Reuters) – Canada’s Valeant Pharmaceuticals International is nearing a deal to acquire eye care company Bausch & Lomb Holdings Inc from Warburg Pincus LLC for about $9 billion, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday. Valeant shares reached their highest level since 2001 on the news and were up 15 percent at C$88.39 in afternoon trading in Toronto. Last month Valeant tried to acquire generic drugmaker Actavis Inc in an all-stock deal that would have topped $13 billion, according to sources familiar with the matter. The talks broke down, and Actavis ended up with a deal to buy pharmaceutical company Warner Chilcott Plc. “At first glance, it looks like (Valeant CEO) Mike Pearson has pulled yet another rabbit out of his hat,” said Gautam Dhingra, chief executive of High Pointe Capital Management, a small Valeant investor. “We are grateful for his magical acts but keeping a close eye on whether it is possible to keep pulling bigger and bigger rabbits out of the same hat.” The source that spoke to Reuters on Friday requested anonymity because the matter is not public. Valeant could not be immediately reached for comment. Bausch & Lomb and Warburg Pincus declined to comment. Valeant attempted to buy eye drugmaker ISTA Pharmaceuticals in late 2011 in a hostile bid. Bausch & Lomb ended up buying ISTA last March for $500 million. “This deal would not be too surprising given that Valeant has said it wants to do a big, mega deal and there are not that many candidates,” said David Krempa, an analyst at Morningstar. “Still, I would not expect that they are done doing big deals.” The Wall Street Journal, which earlier reported on the talks over Bausch & Lomb, said a deal might come as soon as next week. Montreal-based Valeant has been on the acquisition trail since its 2010 takeover by Biovail Corp, which assumed the Valeant name. It has been pursuing deals with strong cash flow in high-growth areas where big pharmaceutical companies have little presence. The company, known for prescription drugs such as anti-depressant Wellbutrin and over-the-counter remedies such as Cold-FX, has built up its dermatology and anesthetics portfolio in a dozen deals in the past year, most recently for Obagi Medical Products. Bausch & Lomb would bring to Valeant its well-known contact lenses, drugs to treat eye conditions such as glaucoma, and instruments and devices used in eye surgery. If the deal goes through, some analysts wonder if Valeant would spin off or sell Bausch & Lomb’s surgical instruments business. That area would be new to Valeant, and big players including Novartis AG and Abbott Laboratories are already entrenched there. About 17 percent of Bausch & Lomb’s $3 billion in revenues last year came from that business. Valeant has become a stock market darling, jumping about 50 percent so far this year, in large part because of its success in cutting costs at the companies it acquires, particularly in research and development. But Bausch & Lomb is run by a private equity firm, so cost-cutting opportunities may be below average, Dhingra said. Bausch & Lomb filed with U.S. regulators for an initial public offering in March. At the same time, Warburg Pincus was exploring an outright sale of the company, a source told Reuters. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock The post Valeant Near Deal to Acquire Bausch & Lomb: Source appeared first on peHUB.

I knew something good was happening when I saw the rectangles. This week I did something that I hadn’t done for five months and 12 days: I went to Flickr on my laptop, accessed some photos on my hard drive, uploaded them, named them, tagged them, and organized them in a set. The magic of the Internet happened before my eyes, and they joined the other rectangular images on the venerable photo-sharing site. And finally, for the first time in almost half a year, I had something beside square pics on my Flickr photostream. Yahoo announced its massive revamp of the Flickr service with three missing Es, calling the updated site Biggr, Spectaculr, and Wherevr. But really, the update boils down to two massive changes: Dropping freemium and making an old and tired user interface awesome. Since I was just wondering about reupping my Pro account, the first is really significant. Yahoo’s giving each Flickr user a full terabyte of space for images for free, which essentially means you don’t need to be a Pro user anymore. You still can, for an ad-free account, or to add even more space … but I don’t mind a few ads, and I’m only using 0.8 percent of my freely available terabyte anyways. But the best and most important is the incredible new look. There’s varied response to the new look, to say the least, and the official forum thread on the new layout has a staggering 241 pages of user comments: 24,102 in total so far. The vast majority of them are negative, and most of those appear to be from long-time users who liked the site the way it was and are asking Flickr to change it back. Good luck. Flickr as it was was turning into a byway, a leftover, and an also-ran. Which is why most of the pics on my photostream and home page were square: They were exports, shares from Instagram photos. In other words, Flickr was changing from the place where you went to share photos from, to the place where you shared photos to. That may be a small change in the English language, but it’s a massive change in user engagement. And it had huge effects on Flickr’s traffic, which dropped about 40 percent in the last year alone: The new look is gorgeous and photo-centric, giving photos — the raison d’etre of Flickr — center stage. Sure, it’s Pinterest-ic and Tumblr-y. But if you love images and imagery, the new Flickr displays photos immeasurably better that the previous iteration. In a funny modern way, your digital photostream now resembles an old-fashioned photography album, without any cheesy in-your-face design elements attempting to highlight the fact. In addition, the new layout options gave Yahoo the option of displaying images with much more creativity while honoring the photographer’s shot selection — such as Flickr displaying panorama shots across the entire page: I’m sold. Flickr, I’m back. “I think Flickr is awesome again with these new announcements,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said. “Photos make the world go around. Flickr was awesome once. It languished. But now it’s awesome again.” I agree. And so does one of the more famous photographers on Flickr, Thomas Hawk: despite all of the naysayers about the new @flickr, my page has never had more engagement than it has there in the last 3 days. — Thomas Hawk (@thomashawk) May 23, 2013 Image credits: John Koetsier Filed under: Business, Lifestyle, Media, Social

(Reuters) – Google Inc is in talks to buy Waze, an Israeli mapping start-up that has held discussions with several large technology companies, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday. Google’s discussions with Waze, which one of the sources told Reuters remained fluid and could change in tenor at any time, come amid reports Facebook is willing to pay $1 billion for the crowd-sourced service, which relies on information provided by its 47 million members to craft its mobile-oriented maps. By buying Waze, the Internet search giant would prevent the company from falling into the hands of Facebook, which is delving deeper into mobile technology as it tries to grow its user base. Mapping services are among the five most-used applications on smartphones and are crucial to engaging and retaining mobile users. The key advantage of owning, rather than licensing, a mapping service is that it allows for the product to be tailored and personalized for users. “Whoever holds the mapping data is going to be a hot commodity,” said Brian Proffitt, author of several books on mobile technology and an adjunct instructor of management in the University of Notre Dame. “As larger vendors acquire mapping data, businesses and consumers will discover that it’s more difficult to gain free access and correct errors.” Waze’s real-time traffic information, generated continuously from data on users’ smartphones about traveling speed and direction, is considered a particularly valuable asset that poses a threat to the search giant’s existing offering, Google Maps. “Sometimes the best offense is defense,” said a third source close to the situation, explaining Google’s motivation to acquire Waze. Still, Marcus Thielking, co-founder of rival mapping service, skobbler, said Facebook could easily develop a real-time traffic service similar to Waze’s, thanks to its massive social network of more than one billion users. As a result, he said, it would be “shortsighted” for Google to acquire Waze strictly to keep it away from Facebook. “I can’t really see much sense in a Google acquisition, especially not at a price that’s close to what we’re talking about,” said Thielking. Indeed, deals are heating up in the tech-startup space. This week, Yahoo Inc announced a $1.1 billion acquisition of widely used blogging service Tumblr, in one of the largest purchases this year of an Internet company. Due diligence between Waze and Facebook had been under way and a term sheet signed after six months of discussions, Israeli business daily Calcalist reported this month. But talks stalled over Facebook’s demand that the Waze team, working in Israel, relocate to California, the publication reported days later. Last year, Apple Inc began offering its own maps, in competition with Google’s more widely used application. There had been media reports earlier this year that Apple was in talks to acquire Waze, but both companies declined to comment on Friday. Google also declined to comment. MAPPING CONUNDRUM Waze has enjoyed years of spectacular growth. About 12 percent of its users hail from the United States, and it also has high penetration in Italy and Brazil. Its user base has skyrocketed to 47.5 million now, from about 7 million in 2011. Four-year-old Waze was the brainchild of Ehud Shabtai, a software engineer with a degree in philosophy and computer science from Tel Aviv University, who hit upon the idea when he realized commercially available GPS software could not reflect real-time conditions speedily enough, or provide certain useful data – such as speed traps. According to Waze’s website, Shabtai teamed up with entrepreneurs Uri Levine and Amir Shinar to found Waze in 2008. It has raised $67 million in funding to date from firms including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Blue Run Ventures, Hong Kong media and

This is a guest post by Aaron Perlut. In spite of being home to some of America’s most successful companies, as varied as Anheuser-Busch, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Purina and Energizer, St. Louis has never been perceived as a bastion of progressivism. The question as to “why” has no easy answer. Maybe it’s the old-line manufacturing heritage, a culture of Midwestern conservatism, or perhaps even the vast amount of trust fund dollars controlled by families who seemingly invested more into charitable causes (how dare they?) rather than into new technologies. Regardless, for many years the perception from outside of St. Louis was of a nice, conservative Midwest town, possibly waiting for a rebirth of the industrial revolution. But over the past two-plus years the region’s business and entrepreneurial ecosystem has begun to drastically evolve and flourish. On several fronts, St. Louis is very much becoming a tech town. “St. Louis is seeing an incredible amount of early-stage tech activity right now, which is leading to a strong funnel of great deals,” said Gabe Lozano, CEO of LockerDome, whose company recently closed a $6 million Series A financing round. “Without question, we will be globally recognized as a top 10 city in technology within 10 years.” There’s the unexpected, such as the big data pioneers Appistry, which has pulled in nearly $40 million from private investors; digital media-based upstarts ranging from Lozano’s LockerDome to CrowdSource.com, which recently closed on a $12.5 million Series A from Highland Capital Partners; to later-stage tech companies like Answers.com, which is valued in the nine-figure range. And then the not so unexpected, like the biosciences and ag-tech principally headquartered on the CORTEX and BRDG Park incubator campuses. “The collective energy and momentum surrounding innovation and entrepreneurship in St. Louis right now is pretty palpable,” said Chad Stiening, who’s early-stage life sciences company Kypha has raised more than $3 million in private capital since moving to St. Louis is 2011. “We’re seeing the human, intellectual, physical and financial capital all reaching critical mass and it’s creating an ecosystem that’s essential to be competitive in the marketplace,” he added. Indeed, the number of St. Louis-based technology jobs posted on Dice.com jumped 25 percent over the past year, with average salaries rising 13 percent — besting the likes of Austin, Charlotte and Phoenix. And that was before Boeing announced it is moving 600 tech jobs to St. Louis over the next three years. In addition, there are now more Ph.D. plant scientists in greater St. Louis than anywhere else in the world, according the Danforth Plant Science Center. While much of the activity has flowed from the robust talent pools coming from Monsanto, the Danforth Center, Washington University Medical Center, and others — the reality is that easy access to capital is breeding a deeper degree of innovation. “Entrepreneurs follow opportunity,” said St. Louis native and Square founder Jim McKelvey in explaining why so many companies with St. Louis DNA have left town previously. “We now see that trend reversing. Entrepreneurs are moving here, and well they should.  I know two successful firms that would be dead now if they hadn’t come to St. Louis.” Venture capital and angel activity, of course, is an essential and growing component. There are organizations like Cultivation Capital, in which McKelvely is a partner, or Arch Angels, Billiken Angels and upstart iSELECT Fund; the State of Missouri is leveraging its Missouri Technology Corporation (MTC) to lure out-of-state start-ups, and there are unique incubator programs like Arch Grants and Capital Innovators. Change is afoot, and just as there was no easy answer as to “why” the region has not in recent years been considered a progressive business environment, there’s no easy answer as to why there’s been dramatic shift in St. Louis’ “Progressivism DNA

Traditional point-of-sale systems (POS) are another kind of POS, and today yet another startup received venture capital funding to improve them. Erply provides POS system and inventory management software for commercial retail and e-commerce businesses. Today the company announced raising $2.15 million in its second round of funding, according to a report in TechCrunch. The iPad app and cloud-based platform provide a centralized place to manage multiple areas of a retail business, including POS, inventory, payroll, accounting, and multi channel e-commerce in an integrated system. Businesses can easily add new locations into the system and the retail CRM feature tracks customers and captures their data. There are also sales and marketing campaign tools. Erply can handle data across physical shops, online stores and warehouses, and provides real-time dashboards of activity. The software is integrated with other platforms including accounting programs like QuickBooks and web-shops like Magento, Amazon, eBay, and Google. Old school POS systems are difficult to manage, not connected to the Internet and expensive, not to mention cumbersome. Retailers used to deal with printers, cash registers, barcode, scanners, physical receipts, inventory software etc… and none of these systems were connected. Over the past few years, a crop of startups has given the POS industry a mobile, cloud-based overhaul. The most well-known of these startups is Square which pioneered a small piece of hardware known as a dongle that is accompanied by a suite of software called Square Register. However retailers that have existing POS systems may not want to throw them out the window, and Erply’s technology helps them bring together the convenience and connectedness of cloud-based systems, with all the features and support they need. The company has 100,000 small to medium business (SMB) customers and 120,000 users, and its client base is growing by around 20 percent each month. Customers include Elizabeth Arden, BMW and The Athlete’s Foot and the company is making a push to support Fortune 500 companies and gain traction in the enterprise space. Erply has offices in New York, London, Australia, Denmark, and Tallinn, Estonia. Previous investor Redpoint Ventures led this round of financing to fuel growth and international expansion, and take on bigger players like Square and PayPal, other startups like GoPago and Vend. Index Ventures and Dave McClure also participated in this round. It has raised $2 million in 2010 and this brings its total capital raises to $4.2 million. Photo Credit: Shutterstock Filed under: Business, Deals, Entrepreneur