Startup news roundup – Week ending 30th March 2019


Roundup of news and ideas from the world of startups – Week ending 30th    March 2019

News you can use

This YC-backed startup preps Chinese students for US data jobs – CareerTu, a New York-based startup launched by Ruiwan Xu, a former marketing manager at Amazon, aims to close that talent gap. Think of it as Codecademy for digital marketing, data analytics, product design and a whole lot of other jobs that ask one to spot patterns from a sea of data that can potentially boost business efficiency. The six-year-old profitable business runs a flourishing community of 160,000 users and 500 recruiting partners that help students land jobs at Amazon, Google, Alibaba and the likes, an achievement that has secured the startup a spot at Y Combinator’s latest batch plus a $150,000 check from the Mountain View-based accelerator.

Penn State Startup Week Set To Connect Students With Entrepreneurs – Penn State Startup Week starts Monday, April 1 and extends through Friday, April 5. In its third year as a university-wide initiative, the weeklong event will connect Penn State students with a variety of resources and alumni that will help to inspire innovation in all fields. Startup Week first started in 2012 through the College of Information Sciences and Technology. The college created the event to celebrate a $400,000 gift from IST grad David Rusenko, the largest gift from a graduate in the college’s history.

Corporate M&A

DocuSign invests $15 million in AI contract discovery startup Seal Software – DocuSign is investing heavily in AI. Literally. The San Francisco provider of electronic signature and digital transaction management services today announced that it’s putting $15 million toward Seal Software, a seal contract discovery and analytics startup that uses machine learning to find and parse contracts, building on an existing partnership between the two companies. It follows DocuSign’s acquisition of intellectual property rights from machine learning startup Appuri in December 2017, and its purchase of text search and document indexing startup SpringCM last September. And it comes after Bay Area-based Seal — which was founded in 2010 by Kevin Gidney and Ulf Zetterberg, and which recently reported growth of more than 85 percent year-on-year — raised $30 million from Toba Capital, bringing its total raised to $43 million.

DocuSign

Why McDonalds acqui-hired $300 million machine learning startup, Dynamic Yield? Mention McDonald’s to someone today, and they’re more likely to think about Big Mac than Big Data. But that could soon change. As the fast-food giant embraced machine learning, with plans to become a tech-innovator in a fittingly super-sized way. McDonald’s stunned a lot of people when it announced its biggest acquisition in 20 years, one that reportedly cost it over $300 million. It plans to acquire Dynamic Yield, a New York based startup that provides retailers with algorithmically driven “decision logic” technology. When you add an item to an online shopping cart, “decision logic” is the tech that nudges you about what other customers bought as well.

Chinese giant Alibaba acquires Israeli artificial reality startup – Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has acquired Israeli startup Infinity Augmented Reality Israel Ltd., a Ramat-Gan based maker of artificial reality technologies, marking the second acquisition for the Chinese firm in Israel. Details of the deal were not disclosed, but TheMarker financial website estimated it at a few million dollars. 25-person team of Ramat-Gan based Infinity Augmented Reality Israel will become part of Alibaba’s R&D center in Israel

Failed Startups

Data from last week. No updates this week.

Drone analytics startup Aria Insights shuts down  – Aria Insights, a drone data analytics company recently announced that it is shuttering operations. The company confirmed the move in a tersely worded statement from Lance VandenBrook, the former CyPhy CEO offered to TechCrunch: Aria Insights has ceased operations effective March 21, 2019.

Atlantic Canada’s First Angle network shuts down – First Angel Network Association (FAN), a not-for-profit focused on Atlantic Canada’s early-stage tech ecosystem since 2005, is shutting down. In an email obtained by BetaKit, sent to its network by Brian Lowe, co-founder and director of FAN, the organization it will shut down its operations, effective March 31. No reasons were given for the closure in the statement, simply stating that “the First Angel Network is concluding its work and we look forward to seeing the next generation of angel investors create new networks to support Atlantic Canada.”

PieShell’s Cheryl Clements

Food crowdfunding site PieShell is shutting down – The news was shared publicly by company CEO and founder Cheryl Clements via an open letter on Linkedin. She published the letter after sending an email earlier this week to notify one of her original investors, Wilson Tsai, of the news.

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