TechCrunch

 Interface design collaboration tool Figma is launching its Multiplayer feature, which allows designers to collaborate in real time on the same projects. Read More

 Slowly but surely, Amazon is incorporating Alexa functionality into its numerous existing hardware lines. A few weeks ago, the company announced an update that would bring its friendly voice assistant to its TV streaming hardware solutions, the set top Fire TV and its smaller dongle-based brethren, the Fire TV Stick. A newly announced version of the latter will now ship with that… Read More

 Techstars has selected the first class for its New York-based internet of things accelerator. It’s the first program that Techstars has done with a consortium of industry partners instead of just linking up with a single, large corporate partner. For the accelerator, the first class is the culmination of a year of work putting the pieces together for the new initiative. One of the big… Read More

 Former smartphone giant Blackberry has said it will no longer manufacture its own devices. Instead it intends to outsource hardware making to development partners, although the core focus of its business is firmly on software services at this point. Read More

 Setting its sights on a public offering within the next year, Druva, which sells software so businesses can manage all of the information they’re forced by law to hold onto, has raised $51 million. In the old days, data management and protection was an analog affair — or existed on big server farms inside a corporate firewall. Now, like everything else, forecasts are more&#8230… Read More

 Tink Labs offers a free-to-use smartphone for hotel guests that lets them enjoy free services, and gives hotels a powerful channel to engage their guests. Read More

 We’ve given you an extra week, but your time to save £400 on Disrupt London tickets is ending soon. You have until this Friday, September 30 to secure extra early-bird tickets to Disrupt London 2016 for just £800 each, or £700 each when you buy more than one. Read More

 Google looks to have launched its Play Music store in India today. Read More

 Uber acquired self-driving lorry startup Otto this summer in a deal worth up to $680 million and it plans to put the company to work next year. Read More

DJI releases its new drone, the Mavic Pro, Nissan builds a line-waiting chair that automatically moves you in line, the Department of Labor sues Palantir Technologies, Cogenra and Khosla Ventures are suing SolarCity, and Elon Musk gave a keynote speech about becoming a multi-planetary species. All this on Crunch Report. Read More

 “The table stakes for [venture capitalists] has never been higher,” says Judith Elsea,  co-founder of the fund-of-funds Weathergage Capital, in our latest interview. With the rise of stronger and stronger operational models, like Andreessen Horowitz, the value add VCs must provide has increased significantly. So in this world of heightened competition for LP money, what do LPs… Read More

 Tyra Banks rang the closing bell at the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center in San Francisco this afternoon. The supermodel turned entrepreneur and startup investor was there to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the launch of Tyra Beauty. Tyra Beauty is both “beauty business and badassery,” Banks quipped in a video chat with TechCrunch. It’s a “cosmetics experience, not… Read More

 Elon Musk has a plan to colonize Mars, but he’s not rushing it. In a conference call following the SpaceX CEO’s presentation today at the International Astronautical Conference, Musk noted that the project is still essentially a hobby at the company, drawing only a fraction of its efforts. Read More

 At a company event today in San Francisco, Samsung President & Chief Strategy Officer Young Sohn detailed that the company is actively pursuing both smartphone-focused VR headsets and standalone solutions. The decision to market and ship a dedicated all-in-one device would rely largely on where the VR market goes in the upcoming months and years, he says, and whether the clunky headsets… Read More

 Be honest: Have you ever spent an entire day working at a coffee shop, despite only buying a single cup of coffee? I’ve definitely been guilty of this, and I’ve also been to coffee shops that try to fight back by removing outlets, turning off their Wi-Fi or outlawing laptops on certain tables. A startup called GoGoGuest is taking a different approach that could help coffee shops… Read More

 “It is still incredibly important for startups to get their products in front of customers in stores,” explains Highway1 head Brady Forrest. “Startups traditionally face hurdles to entering brick and mortar retail, and that is why PCH is working with Best Buy to innovate in-store retail with things like direct to store shipping, which drastically reduces inventory cost for… Read More

 Tinder is introducing a new premium feature called Tinder Boost. The feature will let users pay to have their profiles displayed first to other users on the app in the same locale for 30 minutes. According to the announcement, it’s all about saving users’ time and making sure that the Tinder experience is maximized during the time that they’re actually using the app. From… Read More

 If you had to crown an “App of the Summer,” Pokémon Go would undoubtedly be at the top of the list. The app became a household name within days of its July launch and was the most downloaded iOS app in a first week — ever. Pokémon built one of the most resilient brands in recent memory, and provided a playbook for other brands looking to catapult their intellectual… Read More

 LendUp was supposed to be different than the payday loan sharks that rip off the poor when they need emergency cash. But in its early days, LendUp charged customers illegal fees, miscalculated interest rates, falsely advertised loans nationwide that weren’t available there and misled people that borrowing from LendUp would boost their credit score. Now LendUp will have to pay $6.3… Read More

 The Global Vehicle Trust has revealed its OX prototype, a truck that can be flat-packed into itself for transportation anywhere in the world. When it arrives at its destination, the OX can be unpacked and assembled by a trained team of three professionals in about 12 hours. (Insert your own favorite IKEA joke here.) The GVT was founded five years ago by British businessman and… Read More