Airbnb wants to sort out your entire travel itinerary way beyond home rental November 17, 2016 Airbnb wants to arrange your entire trip for you, not just find you a place to stay. The startup has set out ambitious plans to expand beyond simply being a holiday home rental platform, to turn itself into the go-to app for people's entire holidays with the addition of local trips, meetups, restaurant bookings and more. [...]
Sports software company Zwift secures bumper investment from London private equity house November 17, 2016 A software company promising to turn indoor sport on its head announced a $27m (£22m) investment from a London-based private equity house. Zwift, which currently focuses on creating an outdoor virtual reality for indoor cycling, said the cash boost would give them the "powder" to take the business to the next level. Gaming private equity specialist Novator Partners provided the [...]
E-cigarette innovation is stalling, a leading doctor has warned November 17, 2016 Innovation in electronic cigarettes will stall unless a bridging approach to new product regulations is made. New variants of e-cigarettes and next generation products risk being tied up in development, said James Murphy, head of reduced risk substantiation at British American Tobacco. Murphy gave a keynote speech today at the Next Generation Nicotine Delivery conference in [...]
1 to Watch: snap40 to accelerate growth after securing one of the largest seed funding rounds ever in Scotland November 17, 2016 | City Talk Edinburgh-based health technology start-up snap40 recently received £2m in seed funding from investment firm Par Equity. Innovative healthtech snap40 catch deteriorating health sooner by automatically detecting the warning signs. They have developed a single wearable health monitor that’s worn on the upper arm and which continuously monitors patient health across many different indicators – things [...]
Near-miss: A drone came within 20m of a passenger plane as it flew over the Shard this summer November 17, 2016 A drone almost collided with a passenger plane carrying 165 people as it passed over the Shard in July. A report from the UK Airprox Board, which records near-misses in the air, said the Airbus A320 was en route to Heathrow Airport on 17 July when its crew spotted a black drone out of their [...]
Weaker sterling gives Johnson Matthey a £27m profit bump November 17, 2016 Johnson Matthey is one of the companies that has welcomed post-Brexit currency volatility – the sustainable tech and chemicals firm today revealed that the weakened pound gave its profit a £27m bump in the six months to 30 September. The figures Sales were up five per cent to £1.68bn in the first half, from £1.6bn last [...]
Will Snapchat’s IPO go the Twitter way or the Facebook way? November 17, 2016 Reports of a potential (but secret) IPO by Snapchat yesterday brought out the usual round of dot com bubble comparisons. It’s hardly surprising: if the rumours are true, the social messaging app could be valued at as much as $25bn, making it the third-largest IPO ever, after Alibaba and Facebook. This, from a company built [...]
Hold off on criticising Snapchat’s $25bn IPO – it may be a Facebook, rather than a Twitter November 17, 2016 Reports of a potential (but secret) IPO by Snapchat yesterday brought out the usual round of dot com bubble comparisons. It’s hardly surprising: if the rumours are true, the social messaging app could be valued at as much as $25bn (£20bn), making it the third-largest IPO ever, after Alibaba and Facebook. This, from a company [...]
Two thirds of business leaders think technology will create more value in the future than people November 17, 2016 Feeling a little undervalued and overlooked at work? Well, look away now. Some new research from Korn Ferry is unlikely to make you feel much better. A study of 800 global business leaders found that over two thirds think technology will create greater value in the future than people will. Ouch. And 44 per cent [...]
Global fintech venture capital soars to $15.2bn as UK market swings back into action post-Brexit vote November 16, 2016 Global fintech venture capital soared in the first three quarters of the year, as the UK market perks up again post-Brexit vote. Worldwide VC investment in the first three quarters of the year was up by 27 per cent year-on-year, with 839 deals completed in the first nine months of the year, with a combined [...]
