Lucas Matney
Writer
The Latest from Lucas Matney
Week in Review: Pet startups will be the death of Silicon Valley
Hey everyone. Thank you for welcoming me into your inboxes yet again. I’m in Berlin. where TechCrunch just pulled off another great Disrupt event — we’ve got a lot of great Europe-fo
Gmelius wants to fit all of your startup’s software needs right into Gmail
Few spaces are hotter right now than enterprise SaaS and tools that streamline communications in the workplace have been some of the more popular investments for savvy VCs. The workplace email inbox i
Teooh’s avatar social platform aims to beat the odds
The success stories of failed gaming startups that went onto strip elements of their infrastructure and pivot into wider markets like Slack has led plenty of game developers to “platformize̶
Teooh’s avatar social platform aims to beat the odds
The success stories of failed gaming startups that went onto strip elements of their infrastructure and pivot into wider markets like Slack has led plenty of game developers to “platformize̶
Nyxo is building an app-based, sleep-coaching program
Few areas of health tech appear as untapped as the technology around how we sleep. Far too many people spend much of their waking hours obsessed with how to maximize their hours in bed. Nyxo is buildi
Facebook sells off Oculus Medium to Adobe
Facebook is selling Oculus Medium — a 3D virtual reality sculpting tool for creatives — to Adobe. The team was an expensive effort for Oculus and its sale signifies a broader rethinking wi
Gift Guide: VR gear you won’t feel stupid for buying
There have been holiday gift guides for VR for the past five years or so and for most of that time, buying a VR headset was generally a bad call.
Report: Magic Leap’s early device sales aren’t looking good
Magic Leap just announced that they’re in the midst of closing a Series E round of funding, but it sounds like they’re going to have to clinch that investment with some pretty troubling sa
Why Notion is staying small as its valuation gets bigger
COO Akshay Kothari says the startup has "never felt like if we had more money we could grow faster."
Week in Review: Apple’s rebirth as a content company has a forgettable debut
Hey everyone. Thank you for welcoming me into you inboxes yet again. Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. After dodging your inboxes for a couple weeks as I ventured off to China for a TechCrunc
Facebook buys VR studio behind Beat Saber
Virtual reality doesn’t have many hit games yet, but Facebook is buying the studio behind one of the platform’s biggest titles. Facebook announced today that it will be buying Beat Games,
Cocoon’s social app for close friends gets VC backing to chase Path’s dream
You may have heard the pitch before, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram aren’t homes for your real friends anymore because they’re too big, too commercial and too influencer-y, the result is
In wake of Sprint/T-Mobile deal, Ryan Reynolds has an announcement
In other news, Deadpool actor Ryan Reynolds has invested an undisclosed amount in a company selling prepaid phone plans called Mint Mobile. It all sounds like a weird sponsored Instagram post, but a s
Work collaboration startup Notion cozies up to Silicon Valley’s top accelerators
Startups building work software for other startups have been a huge focus of investment in Silicon Valley as eager VCs hope to grab a piece of the next Slack. Notion Labs, a profitable work tools star
And the winner of Hardware Battlefield at TechCrunch Shenzhen 2019 is… Okra
We started the competition with 10 hardware startups vying to take home the Disrupt Hardware Battlefield cup at TechCrunch Shenzhen 2019. They all pitched their hearts out to our team of judges who de
Week in Review: Airbnb is just the beginning
Hey everyone. Thank you for welcoming me into you inbox yet again. I got some awesome responses to the #DeleteLinkedIn newsletter last week, a few dozen emails (some of them angry) and plenty of tweet
Week in Review: #DeleteLinkedIn
Hey everyone. Thank you for welcoming me into you inbox yet again. Last week, I talked about SoftBank’s big embarrassment and how it could impact venture capital. If you’re reading this on
8th Wall’s new Cloud Editor helps customers quickly build mobile AR experiences
The world of phone-based AR has involved a lot of promises, but the future that’s developed has so far been more iterative and less platform shift-y. For startups exclusively focused on mobile A
Apple beats on Q4 earnings after strong quarter for wearables, services
Apple’s iPhone sales still make up over half of its quarterly revenues, but they are slowly shrinking in importance as other divisions in the company pick up speed. Apple’s stock remained
Choco raises $33.5M to bring restaurants and suppliers a modern ingredient ordering platform
Sourcing ingredients in the restaurant industry is a dirty process that still relies heavily on voicemails and fax orders. More tech-forward solutions have been pushed, but getting restaurants and sup