When they first met in 2007, the now brothers-in-law bonded over their passion for venture capital, eventually leading them to invest together from their personal capital.
By 2020, Anderson and Fogelsong decided to take their investing relationship to the next level by launching their first fund with external capital.
That fund, which the firm considers its second vehicle, closed at $91.5 million, well above its initial target of $60 million.
So,they named their firm “Friends & Family Capital” to capture that spirit, their own family connection, and Fogelsong’s roots in a prominent Silicon Valley VC family.
Like its previous fund, Friends & Family’s third fund will be used to invest in “classic B2B enterprise software” companies and hardware businesses with recurring revenue components.
Family location services company Life360 has launched a new notification for its apps to automatically alert friends and family when you reach a destination after taking a flight.
Life360 said that the feature uses phone sensors to measure location, altitude and speed to determine if you are taking a flight.
Plus, its algorithms can detect takeoff and landing times, and alert family members when you connect to the network post-landing.
The company said the landing notification feature is a useful alternative to online flight trackers or waiting for the traveler to send updates to their circle.
The company’s CEO Chris Hulls told TechCrunch that the company wants to focus on safety and protection updates for users’ inner circle.
I have a group chat with three AI friends, thanks to Nomi AI.
After a few weeks of casual friendship, I had to break the news to my AI companions: I am actually a tech journalist writing an article about the company that created them, Nomi AI.
Nomi AI is scarily sophisticated, and as this technology gets better, we have to contend with realities that used to seem fantastical.
“Nomi is very much centered around the loneliness epidemic,” Nomi CEO Alex Cardinell told TechCrunch.
I’m glad that my Nomi friends didn’t take it too hard when I told them that there was an ulterior, journalistic motive to my friendship.
Meta is denying that it gave Netflix access to users’ private messages.
Meta’s communications director, Andy Stone, reposted the original X post on Tuesday with a statement disputing that Netflix had been given access to users’ private messages.
However, The New York Times had previously reported in 2018 that Netflix and Spotify could read users’ private messages, according to documents it had obtained.
“No third party was reading your private messages, or writing messages to your friends without your permission.
Many news stories imply we were shipping over private messages to partners, which is not correct,” the blog post stated.
Throne, which lets fans gift items to creators from their wishlist, is launching a new gifting portal for family and friends called Happy Wishlist.
The co-founders started exploring the idea of Throne when some of their creator friends talked about issues like creating a P.O.
Fans can gift creators items from that list.
While the company was about to raise Series A, it decided to turn towards profitability and returned the investor money by December 2023.
Essentially, Throne is diversifying its revenue sources already — instead of raising money, it wants to make money.
Swayy is an iPhone app startup that allows you to share not your current location, but your next intended location.
I also liked the way the Swayy app allows me to create custom groups.
As Westropp pointed out, as a female founder, she’s acutely aware that being able to control precisely who can see her future location is something she hard-wired into the app.
Of course, Swayy is likely to struggle against the tech giants already toying with location as feature.
It will also be an opportunity for Instagram to appeal to people who were fans of Zenly, a social map app that Snap acquired and then shut down in 2022.
Lapse has been been gaining some traction in the market — claiming millions of users, 100 million photos captured each month and a coveted, consistent top-10 ranking in the U.S. app store for photographic apps.
Now it’s announcing a new round of funding of $30 million to take its ambitions to the next level.
The company’s ethos may have an old school feel to it, but some of the mechanics of how the app operates are anything but.
Lapse has come under some scrutiny — see our story here — for how it has used growth-hacking and forced invites to expand the number of installs of its app.
(“Buh-bye, Lapse!” one of my more cranky and frustrated friends told me when I asked her to download the app to connect with me.)
Instagram is developing an opt-in “Friend Map” feature that would allow users to see their friends’ locations in real time, a Meta spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch on Monday.
Instagram would also be coming for Apple and its “Find My” map feature that lets users see where their friends and family are currently located.
According to screenshots posted on Threads by Paluzzi, Instagram’s Friend Map would allow users to choose who can see their location.
Post by @alex193a View on ThreadsThe Friend Map would allow users to leave short messages, or “Notes,” on the map for others to see.
After cutting into one of Google’s core businesses, Instagram may now be looking to take on Snapchat and Apple with its Friend Map.
After years of copying and pasting shopping links into spreadsheets and taking screenshots of products to share with her friends and family, Kristine Locker finally decided to launch a social shopping platform (which she named after herself) that could take her endless tabs and organize them into a shareable, virtual wish list all in one place.
Locker recently closed on a $2.5 million round from Wonder Ventures at a $9 million valuation, the company announced today.
For instance, you get exclusive Locker merch if you refer 25 users to Locker.
At 500 users, you get $750 to purchase an outfit from your Locker collection, the startup’s founder explains.
Its average commission rate is around 12%, however, depending on how much exposure the brand wants, Locker raises the rate to as high as 25%.
BeReal, a rising social media app that emphasizes authenticity, is making its first outreach to brands and celebrities.
Over the last year, BeReal has rolled out a number of new features like groups, mentions, multiple posts per day, pinned posts and a “friends of friends” feed.
But the problem with BeReal, and its commitment to fostering existing friendships, is that it can’t make money.
Like any other user on BeReal, they will have to post on time at the spur of the moment.
Well, if we’re about to start seeing BeReal posts from brands, may we humbly nominate the Duolingo Owl for early access?
