Author: Kate Clark

Twitter co-founder Ev Williams to step down from the company’s board Ev Wiliams, a co-founder of Twitter and the social media business’s former chief executive officer, is stepping down from its board of directors effective at the end of the month, according to documents submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, first reported by CNBC. “I’m very lucky to have served on the @Twitter board for 12 years (ever since there was a board),” he wrote. “It’s been overwhelmingly interesting, educational—and, at times, challenging… Thank you, @jack…

Podcasting startup WaitWhat raises .3M as interest in audio content explodes WaitWhat, the digital content production engine behind LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman’s Masters of Scale podcast, has secured a $4.3 million Series A investment led by Cue Ball Capital and Burda Principal Investments. Launched in January 2017, WaitWhat will use the cash to create additional media properties across a variety of mediums, including podcasts. Investors are gravitating toward podcast startups as consumer interest in original audio content skyrockets. Podcasting, though an infantile industry that hit just $314 million in revenue in…

Airbnb hires a global head of transportation Airbnb made it easier for travelers to find a place to crash. Now it wants to make it easier for them to get around. The $31 billion home-sharing giant has hired Fred Reid as its first-ever global head of transportation. Reid served as the founding chief executive officer of Virgin America from 2004 to 2007 after a three-year stint as the president of Delta Airlines. Most recently, Reid was president of the Cora Aircraft Program, a division of Kitty Hawk focused on the development…

Investigation finds e-scooters a cause of 1,500+ accidents An investigation by Consumer Reports may force electric scooter businesses to double back on safety measures. The magazine found electric scooters caused 1,545 injuries in the U.S. since late 2017, according to data collected from 110 hospitals and five public agencies in 47 cities where Bird or Lime, the leading tech-enabled scooter-sharing platforms, operate. The news comes shortly after UCLA published a study finding that 249 people required medical care following scooter accidents, with one-third of that group arriving at the hospital in an ambulance. “These…

Workplace messaging platform Slack has confidentially filed to go public Slack, the provider of workplace communication and collaboration tools, has submitted paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public later this year, the company announced on Monday. This is its first concrete step toward becoming a publicly-listed company, five years after it launched. Headquartered in San Francisco, Slack has raised more than $1 billion in venture capital investment, including a $427 million funding round in August. The round valued the business at $7.1 billion, cementing its position as…