Over the past week, we took TechCrunch on the road for our Southeast Meetup tour. Of the five cities we visited in seven days, Durham had one of the hungriest entrepreneurial scenes. But the majority of the city is relatively run-down, aside from the lovely American Tobacco Center facility you see in the background. But North Carolina's tech scene is on a mission, and it's not just about cleaning up the city, it's about branching out of the usual life science industry to have a varied portfolio of young companies in the Raleigh-Durham area. I pulled aside Dhruv Patel, who is the program director of CED (what's known by most as the TechStars of the South), and he said that about $7.7 billion has been invested in Raleigh-Durham startups in the past 12 years. He says most of it comes from a huge increase in activity out of angel investors (with a hat tip to the Triangle Startup Factory). He also said that in the past year the state has gotten a lot more interest from out-of-state investors who are willing to turn an ear to the south. read more..
Sunday, 15 July 2012
Ced Program Director-North Carolina-Dhruv Patel
Wednesday, 16 May 2012
Market Researchers-Effectiveness-Removal Tool-Technology
EyeTrackShop, a startup that develops eye-tracking technology for measuring ad effectiveness, has raised $3 million from Northzone.The company says its technology works through a regular webcam, allowing market researchers to gather data quickly and affordably. You can run the test before you spend money on a campaign, or test how well the advertising works once it's live, and how it performed in different formats and sites. Customers include big tech companies such as Google, AOL, and Microsoft, as well as P&G and JCDecaux. read more..
Apple releases security update, Flashback removal tool for Leopard
Apple on Monday released a pair of security updates aimed to help folks who are still running Mac OS X 10.5.8. read more..
Saturday, 7 April 2012
Accelerator Program-Venture Capital-Dave Mcclure-Investments
It's a big day for 500 Startups -- you know, the seed-stage accelerator and capital fund founded by rabble rouser and geek on a plane, Dave McClure. Back in July 2010, McClure filed for the accelerator's first fund, raising $30 million to begin officially investing in startups under the new venture capital fund. Today, we've learned via SEC regulatory filing that round two is officially on the books, and 500 Startups is going bigger for its second round, raising $50 million. McClure and company are also today announcing an expansion of the team, as Paul Singh and Christen O'Brien have been promoted to partners. Singh will continue to lead investments, running the accelerator program, and acting as head Data/Metrics guru, while O'Brien continues on her role as head of business development, leading events and conferences, like Geeks On A Plane, Warm Gun, etc. Bedy Yang and George Kellerman have also joined as venture partners. read more..