Roundup of news and ideas from the world of startups – Week ending 1 July 2018
News you can use
We’ve got to become a start-up nation again,’ says former Cisco CEO –Cisco’s former CEO says that while tax reform has created a friendlier environment for start-ups, regulations need to be pared down in order for the U.S. to stay competitive.John Chambers tells CNBC the rate of start-up creation is not high enough.
Corporate M&A
Meet PillPack, the pharmacy startup Amazon just acquired that’s sent pharmacy stocks into a frenzy – 32-Year-Old Founder Sells His Pharmacy Startup To Amazon. Amazon announced Thursday that it has agreed to acquire startup PillPack. Started by Forbes 30 Under 30 list member TJ Parker, 32, and Elliott Cohen in 2013, PillPack is an online pharmacy that prepackages customers’ medication by dosage and has been seen as potentially rivaling Walgreens or CVS in the future.
Twitter’s user base to shrink with acquisition of anti-abuse startup – Those accounts that have violated Twitter’s anti-spam rules by automatically bulk following high-profile accounts will be terminated. Twitter users should not be surprised if their followers decline in the coming days, considering the microblogging site will initiate a fresh purge of spam accounts on its platform. “We’ll be taking action to challenge a large number of suspected spam accounts globally. Some people may see their follower counts drop. This does not mean they did anything wrong,” Twitter India said in a tweet.
Silicon Valley startup that stores DNA expands with Denver acquisition – Helix, a San Carlos company that stores customers’ genetic data in the cloud, has acquired HumanCode, a Denver startup that sells a DNA test analyzing traits of parents to predict what their baby might look like. The terms of the deal, announced Thursday, were not disclosed. Both companies are privately held. Helix, which has 169 employees, has raised $320 million from venture capital and private equity firms. HumanCode, with 10 employees, raised $3 million.
Startup shut and failed last week
Twitter Shuts down Online Safety Company Smyte after acquiring it – Social media giant, Twitter, announced that it had acquired Smyte, a startup focused on delivering online safety and anti-spam solutions. Interestingly, a day after the acquisition was announced, Twitter shut down the Smyte .
Social sales-leads startup Socedo closing amid Twitter changes; engineering team joins Azuqua – Seattle-based social media sales intelligence firm Socedo is shutting down next month, and its four-person engineering team will join Azuqua, the cloud software integration and automation company, also based in Seattle. The move, announced Tuesday morning, comes after Socedo learned earlier this year that Twitter planned to alter its polices and practices for third-party APIs. Socedo CEO Aseem Badshah said in a recent interview that his company relied on those APIs to help customers extract sales leads and other marketing data from Twitter.
Chicago Kids Lunch Delivery Startup Wise Apple Shuts Down – Wise Apple, the Chicago-based startup that provided a subscription lunch service for kids, has shut down. The startup announced it was closing down its business in a June 22 email to customers, in which the founders Rebecca Sholiton and Nate Cooper said all Wise Apple accounts will be terminated and permanently deleted, and that any outstanding orders will be refunded within two to three business days.