STARTUPS - itbusinessdirect

Eco-friendly bitcoin competitor Chia, Invented

November 13, 2017 Dianne Jacobs

A bitcoin transaction wastes as much electricity as it takes to power an American home for a week, and legendary coder Bram Cohen wants to fix that. Considering he invented the ubiquitous peer-to-peer file transfer protocol BitTorrent, you should take him seriously. Cohen has just started a new company called Chia Network that will launch a cryptocurrency based on proofs of time and storage rather than bitcoin’s electricity-burning proofs of work. Essentially, Chia will harness cheap and abundant unused storage space on hard drives to verify its blockchain. “The idea…

New startup that helps you scan, send and print yourself

November 9, 2017 Dianne Jacobs

Kat Kinkead and Peter Weijmarshausen met at their old company, Shapeways. Weijmarshausen recently stepped down as CEO and was looking for something cool to do when he and Kinkead realized that the most popular application of 3D scanning and printing was in 3D figurines. These tiny action-figure-like representations were wildly popular print subjects back at Shapeways but they were notoriously difficult to capture and print. Now, thanks to improvements in scanning, color printing, and software, they’re surprisingly easy. Thus Beheld was born. Kinkead, the CEO, has an MFA in industrial…

Flying cars: Future of transportation or an inflated expectation?

November 9, 2017 Dianne Jacobs

It seems like flying-car startups are finally taking over the “140-character” kinds of tech companies we are used to. With EU-based startup Lilium working on an all-electric autonomous flying taxi, garnering a $90 million Series B led by Tencent and supported by a number of well-known VCs (including Atomico), it’s clear that flying cars are transitioning from a fascinating concept to a quite-mature technology and promising investment thesis. But will we see flying cars out in the world? And how will the market environment evolve? The ecosystem is maturing. There are…

Australian Banks avoid Apple Pay, announce their own Beem mobile wallet

November 1, 2017 Dianne Jacobs

Three of Australia’s largest banks have continued to ignore Apple Pay and announced a new joint venture named Beem that is charged with developing a mobile wallet for iOS and Android users. Westpac, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), and the National Australia Bank (NAB) claim that customers will be able to use the app regardless of which bank they use, including organisations outside of the trio, with the end goal to be creating an “industry-wide payment solution”. Westpac chief executive of Consumer Bank George Frazis claimed the app followed…

Nigerian entrepreneur wants Silicon Valley to fund a future where Africa is included.

August 1, 2017September 1, 2017

Iyinoluwa Aboyeji , the cofounder of Flutterwave a payments API that makes it easier for banks and businesses to process payments across Africa, wants to transform how Africans pay by Connecting them to the digital economy. The 26-year-old entrepreneur founded the payments API that allows consumers to pay for things in their local currency; Flutterwave takes care of integrating banks and payment-service providers into its platform so businesses don’t have to take on the expense and burden. American investors just poured $10 million of fresh funding into it. This sizable…

Q&A with Matt Roberts-Davies, M-Changa; Create Innovative Products That Match Local Culture

July 7, 2017 Dianne Jacobs

ITBusiness spoke with Matt Roberts-Davies, the Business Development Manager/Experience Director at M-Changa, a fundraiser management platform that provides cutting edge end-to-end management tools to enhance fundraising success. The session is majorly on the tech trends in Africa and the novelty of the internet of things (IoT). 1. How can you define the technology sector in Kenya? There is a lot of buzz around tech in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city. One of the main reasons for this is the success of M-Pesa, a digital wallet that has reached mass adoption in…

Microsoft to target 1000 nonprofits for technology donations

June 27, 2017September 1, 2017

Non-profits around the globe have limited resources, and often face the choice between investing in IT infrastructure and investing in programmes to support the communities that they serve. Microsoft created the Technology for Good programme to empower every non-profit to achieve more. The tech giant has restated its commitment to empowering them with the needed technology, and finding more creative ways to solve humanity’s greatest challenges to further technology adoption among Non-profits in Nigeria. According to the Guardian, the tech giant helps non-profits do more good with Microsoft’s cloud technology,…

21% of British startups plan to open a European office due to Brexit

February 14, 2017March 3, 2017

The vote to leave the EU left some start ups questioning where their future lies, particularly if they’re confronted with issues around employing foreign staff. Currently, One in every five UK start ups intends to open a European office due to Brexit, according to survey results published Tuesday by Silicon Valley Bank. It found that 21% of UK startups are planning to open up a new office in cities such as Berlin, Paris, and Stockholm, which are all trying to take on London’s Tech City. The survey also found that around…

Cisco buys AppDynamics for $3.7 billion, plots business performance expansion

January 26, 2017January 27, 2017

Cisco will acquire AppDynamics, which monitors application performance and business metrics, in a deal valued at $3.7 billion. The purchase gives Cisco more software heft and broadens its reach in analytics makingthis one of its largest deals of recent years as it searches for growth beyond its core networking business. Cisco’s announcement comes a week after Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co said it would buy cloud startup SimpliVity for $650 million in cash. The software brings a platform that can analyze application performance across Cisco software and gear. AppDynamics launched software…