The 13 European tech startups that are most likely to be worth $1 billion next | ||
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Roughly three European tech companies a year have been sold or floated on the stock exchange, or otherwise valued by investors, at $1 billion or more since 2000, according to data from British investment bank GP Bullhound. But since April 2014, Europe has added 13 companies to its list of "unicorns." (Three firms — London-based online fashion retailer Boohoo.com, Spanish online travel company Edreams, and British mobile money firm Monitise — dropped off.) The continent now boasts forty $1 billion dollar-plus companies. GP Bullhound's report also sets out which tech firms we're likely to see reach billion-dollar valuations next. Foodpanda: restaurant delivery in Asia, Africa and Europe Founded: 2012. Funding to date: $310 million. Founders: Ralf Wenzel and Ben Bauer. HQ: Berlin. Foodpanda lets people place orders and local restaurants online or using its mobile app. The company has partnered with 60,000 restaurants across five continents. It is known as Foodpanda in Asia and Europe, and Hellofood in Africa and the Middle East. Hello Fresh: home-cooked meals delivered to your door Founded: 2012. Founders: Dominik Richter. HQ: Berlin. Funding to date: $193.5 million. Hello Fresh delivers customised boxes of fruit, vegetables and other ingredients to help people cook more fresh food. Huddle: cloud storage for big businesses Founded: 2006 Founders: Andy McLoughlin and Alistair Mitchell. HQ: London. Funding to date: $89.2 million. Huddle lets large agencies to share, save, and collaborate on documents online, and control who has access to them. Rather than competing with consumer-focused DrobBox, the company faces competition from legacy enterprise software such as Microsoft SharePoint, which companies have often been using for years. See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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Something that looks like an anti-Apple PR stunt may be backfiring (AAPL) | ||
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It looks like an anti-Apple marketing stunt by Samsung has backfired spectacularly, BGR reports. The stunt in question riffs on Apple's recent keynote speech at the WWDC conference, when CEO Tim Cook showed off a list of demands for Apple products sent by a baseball player. On Monday, Cleveland pitcher Tevor Bauer tweeted a remarkably similar list of demands — except almost every product on it was a Samsung one. Bauer had apparently got his hands on the ball that was the first hit for Francisco Lindor, and his team is demanding a Galaxy Note Pro, a Gear S smart watch, and a Samsung touchscreen laptop if Lindor wants to get it back. The ransom note subsequently went viral, with more than 750 retweets. But something's not quite right. Here's the original tweet: Notice anything weird about it?
No? Look closer... | ||
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We don't yet have confirmation that Samsung was behind this (Business Insider has reached out to the company for comment), but it makes sense. After all, the company is known for 
The 13 European tech startups that are most likely to be worth $1 billion next | ||
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Roughly three European tech companies a year have been sold or floated on the stock exchange, or otherwise valued by investors, at $1 billion or more since 2000, according to data from British investment bank GP Bullhound. But since April 2014, Europe has added 13 companies to its list of "unicorns." (Three firms — London-based online fashion retailer Boohoo.com, Spanish online travel company Edreams, and British mobile money firm Monitise — dropped off.) The continent now boasts forty $1 billion dollar-plus companies. GP Bullhound's report also sets out which tech firms we're likely to see reach billion-dollar valuations next. Foodpanda: restaurant delivery in Asia, Africa and Europe Founded: 2012. Funding to date: $310 million. Founders: Ralf Wenzel and Ben Bauer. HQ: Berlin. Foodpanda lets people place orders and local restaurants online or using its mobile app. The company has partnered with 60,000 restaurants across five continents. It is known as Foodpanda in Asia and Europe, and Hellofood in Africa and the Middle East. Hello Fresh: home-cooked meals delivered to your door Founded: 2012. Founders: Dominik Richter. HQ: Berlin. Funding to date: $193.5 million. Hello Fresh delivers customised boxes of fruit, vegetables and other ingredients to help people cook more fresh food. Huddle: cloud storage for big businesses Founded: 2006 Founders: Andy McLoughlin and Alistair Mitchell. HQ: London. Funding to date: $89.2 million. Huddle lets large agencies to share, save, and collaborate on documents online, and control who has access to them. Rather than competing with consumer-focused DrobBox, the company faces competition from legacy enterprise software such as Microsoft SharePoint, which companies have often been using for years. See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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Make-up, cruises and mini-golf: KISS on monetising their brand | ||
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Paris (AFP) - Downloading may be eviscerating the music industry, but rock legends KISS say they are pioneers in monetising their image -- from a limo service, cruises, and even lunch with "Lord Simmons". The US band recognises it has escaped the worst impact of the availability of cheap music online thanks to the fact that its glory years were in the 1970s and 1980s, when the Internet was in its infancy. Now, while exploring other ways to profit from its huge following, the band is also standing up for new, unknown talent struggling to win financial backing from music companies. "It doesn't hurt us, it only hurts new bands, and that's the sad part," said Gene Simmons, the 65-year-old bass guitarist and co-lead singer, his face streaked with demon-like paint. "Where's the next Beatles? Where's the next Stones? Where's the next Elvis? Where's Prince? Where's anybody?" he asked. Eric Singer, KISS's 57-year-old drummer, whose make-up was done in his trademark cat face, said: "The mentality of young kids, they just think it's OK, it's common to go 'Oh, I'll just go online and get the music.' They don't realise you're supposed to pay for it." He added that "rock 'n' roll's not dying because of the bands or fans not buying it -- it's because there's not a business to support it." Singer boasted that KISS had pioneered the exploitation of its brand, blazing a path that many other top artists now follow in a bid to prop up sagging record sales. "There's no doubt almost everything you see in a live rock or pop setting performance stagewise and all that, merchandise and everything... at the forefront was KISS." "If you're in Las Vegas, go and play golf at our golf course.... If you want to hop into a limo, hop into our limo service: KISS Limos.... (and) we're doing the KISS Kruise," Simmons said. The cruise sails from Miami to Jamaica later this year on board the Norwegian Pearl, "the central hub for all KISS maniacs worldwide", according to the Kiss Kruise website. "What's more rock 'n' roll than mini-golf?" the website for the band's Las Vegas branded mini-golf course observes blithely. Singer added that a lunch with "Lord Simmons" was also available, for a price. - 'Utter idols' - The pair spoke to AFP just before performing at a Paris concert midway through a worldwide tour. The tour is celebrating the band's 40 years of performing, but the songs that drew the biggest welcome at the Paris concert were standards from its early years. People in the venue, the 6,000-place Zenith in northeast Paris, cheered loudly when "I was Made for Lovin' You" and "Rock and Roll All Nite" wrapped up a show that featured the band's signature stage pyrotechnics and over-the-top posing. One of their revenue-spinning activities could be seen backstage before the concert: around 100 people lining up to get individual photos with the band as part of a VIP package costing 1,000 euros ($1,100) each. "They are our utter idols. This is a boyhood dream," said one French fan, an 18-year-old student named Lucas Chaplin. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Greece's own central bank is warning the country will painfully crash out of the EU without a bailout | ||
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Greece's arm of the European Central Bank, the Bank of Greece (BoG), just released an explosive warning about what will happen if a deal isn't reached on Greece's bailout. The central bank thinks Greece could face a "painful" default, an exit of the euro, an eventual exit of the European Union and soaring inflation. The document, part of the Bank's regular monetary policy report, will almost certainly add to Greece's political firestorm. Yannis Stournaras, the governor of the BoG, was previously finance minister under New Democracy, the current government's primary centre-right opponents. What's more, the Bank says some €30 billion ($33.82 billion, £21.48 billion) left the commercial banking system between October 2014 and April 2015, with confidence in the solvency of the financial system dwindling. Greece is in talks with its international creditors over the last portion of the country's bailout funds, arranged under the previous government. Accessing the €7.2 billion (£5.18 billion, $8.10 billion) package will give Greece the cash it needs to make the most immediate debt payments. Without it, all hell will break loose, according to the BoG. Here's the most important passage (emphasis ours): Failure to reach an agreement would, on the contrary, mark the beginning of a painful course that would lead initially to a Greek default and ultimately to the country's exit from the euro area and – most likely – from the European Union. A manageable debt crisis, as the one that we are currently addressing with the help of our partners, would snowball into an uncontrollable crisis, with great risks for the banking system and financial stability. An exit from the euro would only compound the already adverse environment, as the ensuing acute exchange rate crisis would send inflation soaring. The whole document is pretty damning. Here's another snippet on the consequences of Grexit (again emphasis ours): All this would imply deep recession, a dramatic decline in income levels, an exponential rise in unemployment and a collapse of all that the Greek economy has achieved over the years of its EU, and especially its euro area, membership. From its position as a core member of Europe, Greece would see itself relegated to the rank of a poor country in the European South. The BoG is also pretty stark about its own inability to forecast what comes next, given the uncertainty of the situation. It's unusual to read a central bank admit that "it is not possible at present to make any safe projections about the future course of the economy." Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Russia does not want arms race with US: Putin aide | ||
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Moscow (AFP) - Russia does not want to enter a costly new arms race with the United States, a top Kremlin aide said Wednesday, after Moscow said it was boosting its nuclear arsenal. "We are against any arms race because it naturally weakens our economic capabilities. And in principle we are against it," Yury Ushakov, the foreign policy aide to President Vladimir Putin, told a briefing. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Escaped lion from flooded Georgia zoo kills man | ||
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Tbilisi (AFP) - A lion that escaped from a zoo in the Georgian capital Tbilisi during the weekend's freak floods killed a man in the city centre on Wednesday, interior ministry spokeswoman said. "A lion from the Tbilisi zoo killed a man" near the central square, the interior ministry spokeswoman told AFP. "Police special forces were deployed and are hunting down the animal," she said. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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The best time of the morning to drink coffee if you have a 9-to-5 job | ||
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Mmm, coffee. It tastes warm and delicious in the morning, but is there a correct time to get your first sip? JOE.ie resurfaced an interview from Gastropod, in which neuroscience PHd candidate Steven Miller says the best time to drink coffee is after 9:30 a.m. Miller studies the effects of various drugs on the brain, known as chronopharmacology, at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Maryland. He explained to Gastropod that the stress hormone cortisol, which regulates our energy, peaks between 8 and 9 in the morning for people who work a 9-to-5 job and have a regular sleep schedule. The natural boost in energy our body receives during this hour means we don't need extra help from caffeine. Our cortisol levels will begin sliding after 9:30 a.m. — so you'll want that added jolt. Gastropod warns: "[Miller's] recommendation doesn’t hold true for everyone: anyone whose sleep schedule is not regular or who works evening or night shifts will have a different cortisol production rhythm." You can listen to the entire interview and get more great breakfast facts on the episode of Gastropod here. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Something that looks like an anti-Apple PR stunt may be backfiring (AAPL) | ||
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It looks like an anti-Apple marketing stunt by Samsung has backfired spectacularly, BGR reports. The stunt in question riffs on Apple's recent keynote speech at the WWDC conference, when CEO Tim Cook showed off a list of demands for Apple products sent by a baseball player. On Monday, Cleveland pitcher Tevor Bauer tweeted a remarkably similar list of demands — except almost every product on it was a Samsung one. Bauer had apparently got his hands on the ball that was the first hit for Francisco Lindor, and his team is demanding a Galaxy Note Pro, a Gear S smart watch, and a Samsung touchscreen laptop if Lindor wants to get it back. The ransom note subsequently went viral, with more than 750 retweets. But something's not quite right. Here's the original tweet: Notice anything weird about it?
No? Look closer... | ||
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The 10 things in advertising you need to know today (FB, TWTR, GOOG, YHOO) | ||
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Good morning! Here's everything you need to know in the world of advertising today. 1. Meet Facebook's most important exec outside the US. Nicola Mendelsohn spoke to Business Insider about global differences in the way people from different regions use Facebook, ad blocking, teen use of Facebook, and gender equality in the workplace. 2. Adblock Plus wants businesses to install its ad blocking service at a company-wide level. The ad blocker says it has received requests from more than 300 businesses and organizations for the ability to roll out a large scale deployment of Adblock Plus across entire IT systems. 3. Google has released an incredibly uplifting ad about a transgender man's transition. It promotes the Google My Business service. 4. A judge just ruled Monster Energy must pay the Beastie Boys $668,000 in legal fees in addition to last year's $1.7 million verdict. Last June a court ruled Monster used five Beastie Boys songs in a marketing video without authorization from the band. 5. Spotify made a tiny change to its logo. Most people won't even notice it. 6. Brits are still watching more porn than YouTube. Porn takes up 5% of UK consumers' total video viewing time, while YouTube takes up just 3.5%, according to new analysis from TV marketing body Thinkbox. 7. Twitter is following Facebook by making videos automatically play in the feed. It is also introducing a new 100% video viewability standard, meaning advertisers will only pay if a video is 100% in view on the user's device, and has been watched for at least 3 seconds. 8. Marissa Mayer has a new way to describe Yahoo. "We may not be the biggest technology company, but we're the biggest technology company that understands media. We may not be the biggest media company, but we're the biggest media company that gets tech." 9. Snapchat's CEO Evan Spiegel created a random lo-fi video to explain why the app is so hot. He breaks down the app's confusing layout, and how the app helps people express themselves. 10. There's an ugly truth behind Sony's surprising new pay-per-channel TV plan. It looks like costs are going to add up pretty quickly. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 5 clever iPhone tricks only power users know about  | ||
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Greece will likely exit euro, EU without bailout deal: central bank | ||
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Athens (AFP) - The Greek central bank warned Wednesday that if Athens fails to reach a bailout deal with its international creditors it would lead to a default and the country's likely exit from the eurozone and the EU. "Failure to reach an agreement would... mark the beginning of a painful course that would lead initially to a Greek default and ultimately to the country's exit from the euro area and -– most likely -– from the European Union." Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Swiss prosecutors probe 53 'suspicious' transactions in FIFA case | ||
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Bern (Switzerland) (AFP) - Swiss prosecutors are investigating 53 "suspicious" banking relations as part of its inquiry into FIFA and bids for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids, the attorney general said Wednesday. Attorney general Michael Lauber said the cases had been reported under Switzerland's anti-money laundering alert mechanism and that the inquiry would be very complex.
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Adblock Plus wants your boss to stop you seeing ads on your computer at work | ||
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Adblock Plus, one of the most popular tools people use to block ads online, has announced a new feature that would allow companies' IT and network administrators to deploy ad blocking at a company-wide level. In a blog post, Adblock Plus outlines the benefits of ad blocking to companies as: "[cutting] down on distracting, [saving] bandwidth and [keeping] networks safe from threats like 'malvertising'." IT administrators wanting to deploy Adblock Plus on their company's computers previously would have had to install the browser extension one-by-one on each computer. But Adblock Plus says its new version 1.9 update for Chrome, Opera, and Safari will allow for "large scale deployments." Adblock Plus does allow some ads through its net. Publishers and digital advertising companies can work with Adblock Plus for their ads to be whitelisted and appear on an "acceptable ads" list – this includes "static ads" that are "preferably text only" and don't obscure a page's content. If the publisher or ad seller is small — like a WordPress blog with two ads, for example — Adblock Plus won't charge them to go through this process. But bigger companies pay Adblock Plus huge fees to get their ads unblocked. PageFair, a company that works with publishers to measure the cost of ad blocking, estimated earlier this month that Google lost out on $6.6 billion in global revenue to ad blockers last year. An Adblock Plus spokesman told Business Insider there have been "about 300 requests" from IT professionals for system-wide deployment of its service. Those include all sorts of organizations including companies, colleges, schools, K-12 school districts, and local governments. US universities Notre Dame and Lehigh, and companies including Seven Energy International and Compnology have already trialed rolling out Adblock Plus across their systems, according to Adblock Plus' website. However, two IT network administrators Business Insider spoke to said they would not be interested in deploying Adblock Plus across their systems. One IT consultant, who has previously worked for a global investment bank, a global leisure company, and a government regulator, said ad blocking is not something that has ever come up in conversation at the companies he has worked at. He told Business Insider: "If this came up in a CAB [change advisory board] meeting, the first question that would be asked is: What's the business case? And the business case would need to be really good to consider freeware that would need rigorous testing that would probably involve thousands of [dollars] of man hours. And for a decent-sized business, I think you would only see a relatively insignificant decrease in bandwidth use." Another network administrator who works at a large school told Business Insider that many business and institutions already have systems in place. "Personally, I wouldn't be keen on installing an add-on. I'd rather do it at the web filter level [all of our PCs connect to the internet through a web filter.] As it happens, our web filter — one that is popular amongst schools — already inspects ads and blocks if they are inappropriate. I'm not convinced any network manager worth his salt would be interested in installing some add-on like that, to be honest," the source told Business Insider. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 6 scientifically proven features men find attractive in women  | ||
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