Silicon Valley might should just start an altogether new Y Combinator.  The existing Y Combinator is a privately-owned venture capital firm free to conduct business in its own way.  Y Combinator also exclusively reserves the right to choose the companies it funds.   And yet, there’s two recurring controversies about Y Combinator: perceived prejudice and too much […]

Apportable enables iOS apps to run on Android devices.  Apportable’s platform, along with available conversion services, allow apps to be cross-compiled without extensive changes to the original codebase written in either Objective-C or C++.  And not just simple apps.  Björk, the famous Icelandic musician and actress, recently relied on Apportable to bring the complete Björk Biophilia multimedia […]

Y Combinator Universe published more than a hundred blog posts in 2013.   Topics covered everything from relationship apps for couples to in-memory relational databases.  I wrote about fashion startups and wearable devices.  The acquisition of a dozen companies were mentioned.  And Demo Day for two new batches were detailed, YC W13 and YC S13.  Here’s a […]

Cue has been acquired by Apple, various sources have reported.  Cue was “a free service that helps people make the most of their day.”  The genesis of Cue was Greplin, funded in YC W10 as a personal web search engine that indexes information stored in online services.  In September 2012, Cue co-founder Daniel Gross and Robert Scoble did […]

Embark has been acquired by Apple, reports Jessica Lessin via 9to5Mac.com.  Embark, from YC W12, makes mobile apps that make it easy to get around on mass transit.  Embark currently covers 12 major transit systems across the U.S. and U.K., with apps on iOS and Android.  This is Apple’s first acquisition of a company funded by Y […]

Dropbox for Business is the new name of Dropbox for Teams, announced today on the Dropbox company blog.  Prior to this announcement, Dropbox has clearly been building an arsenal to stake its claim in the highly-profitable market of enterprise software.  Disruptive enterprise solutions have gained a lot of attention in recent months.