Month: May 2017

Uber’s head of finance is out Uber’s head of finance, Gautam Gupta, has left the company, the Wall Street Journal reports. His departure comes as Uber has reported losses of $708 million. In Q1, Uber’s revenue was $3.4 billion, an 18% increase from its last quarter. Uber suffered losses of $708 million, not including employee stock compensation “other items,” the WSJ reports. In the three months prior, Uber’s losses were $991 million. On hand, Uber has $7.2 billion in cash, according to the report. This means that in addition to…

Senators ask FBI to look into FCC’s cyberattack claims The FCC claimed earlier this month that the comment system by which people can weigh in on the proposal to kill net neutrality had been on the receiving end of a distributed denial-of-service attack. Today, a group of Senators asked that the FBI look into it. Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) penned a letter to FBI Director Andrew McCabe suggesting the matter was too troubling to let alone. “Any cyberattack…

How should startups work with city governments? Shaun AbrahamsonContributor Shaun Abrahamson is a managing partner at Urban Us Ventures and serves on the Investment Committee at URBAN-X. If you want to re-imagine cities, you’ll likely work with city government. Sometimes this means city governments will your customer, but far more often founders will encounter an unfamiliar relationship that includes policy, regulations and enforcement. There are great resources to guide founders through all aspects of customer discovery, but there aren’t yet great frameworks for thinking about city governments. Or so we…

Amazon begins offering refunds for unauthorized in-app purchases Were you one of the many parents surprised to find hundreds of dollars’ worth of Smurfberries charged to your card a few years back? Amazon’s lax in-app purchasing standards let kids all over the country buy coins and crystals to their hearts’ content, something the FTC frowned on. News that refunds would be available soon broke in April, and the time has come at last. Eligible customers should automatically receive an email from Amazon, or you can check here. If you think…

Revenue, I choose you! The Pokémon Company’s profits jump by 2,500 percent It’s been a banner year for The Pokémon Company: Pokémon GO was a global phenomenon and the latest full-on Pokégame for the 3DS sold very well indeed. One would expect the company to be doing well financially — perhaps even doubling or tripling last year’s profits. Well, apparently it quinvigintupled them, which is to say multiplied by 25 times. (I had to look it up.) The news comes courtesy of TechCrunch (CrunchGear, technically) alum Serkan Toto, who noticed…

Silk Road founder loses his appeal, will serve a life sentence for online crimes On Wednesday, an appellate court shot down Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht’s effort to avoid spending the rest of his life behind bars. Two years ago, Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison for his role in running the dark web exchange, best known as a once-thriving online marketplace for drug transactions. Ulbricht was sentenced in 2015 after a court found that he operated Silk Road under the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts.” Among other lines of…