Qwilr 获种子轮融资，可将商业文件转变成更吸引人的网页
Qwilr 是一款工具，目标人群是那些花费数小时制作 PowerPoint 文件，在发送出去之后只想知道究竟有没有人去下载这些文件来看的人。这个平台可以让人们把商业文件轻松转变为网页，反过来也让用户能够使用分析等各种有用工具。
这家位于悉尼的初创公司在种子轮获得了 50 万澳元的投资（约合 39.5 万美元），投资者包括 Sydney Seed Fund 和 Macdoch Ventures。
公司联合创始人马克·唐纳（Mark Tanner）说 Qwilr 是介于 Google Docs 和 Squarespace 之间的产品。Google Docs 的创建和分享都很容易，但要个性化很难。Squarespace 让非开发者也能创建具有吸引力的网页，但如果用户想要创建多个同一类文件，就不得不重复做过多的工作。
“我们最大的用户在他们的账户里存有超过 1000 个文件，但人们不会在每次要做演示文件的时候都打开 Squarespace。人们不需要制作一个全新的网站，但这正是 Qwilr 发挥作用的地方。”曾经是谷歌战略合作伙伴开发经理的唐纳说道。
唐纳和另一名创始人迪伦·巴斯坎（Dylan Baskind）创建 Qwilr 的动机来自巴斯坎此前作为一名自由开发者和设计师所遭遇的一些问题。为了从那些有一整个部门来支持演示文稿创建的大机构中脱颖而出，巴斯坎为自己的演示和提案从头建立了一个网站模板。这帮助他获得了大项目，而巴斯坎决定让那些没有网页开发工具的人也能制作网站。
像其他初创公司一样，Qwilr 面临的挑战是说服企业切换他们早已习惯的工具，尽管这些工具像 PowerPoint 那样繁琐不好用。为了获得用户，唐纳表示 Qwilr 重点是将功能都放入免费版。Qwilr 的模板允许用户上传文字和照片并且集成了谷歌地图、视频和各种云服务。它还有一个很方便的工具可以插入价格。
现在这家初创公司计划利用其种子资金打造产品的高级版本，增加更深层次的分析，添加客户与文档交互的功能，这包括电子签名和购买按钮。
唐纳说：“我们会逐步并且肯定会将网站的更多功能带给管理业务的非技术人员。”
Qwilr Gets Seed Funding To Turn Business Documents Into Attractive Websites
Qwilr is a tool for anyone who has sent out a PowerPoint deck they spent hours creating, only to wonder if anyone is even going to bother downloading it. The platform makes it easy to turn business documents into webpages, which in turn gives users access to analytics and other helpful tools.
The Sydney-based startup has landed AUD $500,000 (about $395,000) in seed funding from investors, including Sydney Seed Fund and Macdoch Ventures.
Co-founder Mark Tanner says Qwilr sits in the space between Google Docs and Squarespace. Google Docs are easy to create and share, but difficult to customize. Squarespace lets non-developers create attractive websites, but is too much work if you need to create the same type of documents, like pitch decks, over and over again.
“Our biggest users have over a thousand documents in their accounts and you wouldn’t go into Squarespace each time you do a pitch or presentation. You wouldn’t just make up a whole new website, but that is what Qwilr is for,” says Tanner, who was formerly a strategic partner development manager at Google.
Tanner and co-founder Dylan Baskind were inspired to create Qwilr by the frustrations Baskind dealt with as a freelance developer and designer. To stand out from big agencies with entire departments dedicated to creating presentations, Baskind built a website template from scratch for his pitches and proposals. They helped him land big jobs, and Baskind decided to make the process accessible for people without web development tools.
Like other enterprise startups, Qwilr faces the challenge of convincing businesses to switch over from tools they are accustomed to, even if those tools are cumbersome and annoying, like PowerPoint. In order to acquire users, Tanner says Qwilr focused on packing features into its free version. Qwilr’s templates let you upload text and photos and integrate Google Maps, videos, and various cloud services. It also has a handy tool for inserting price quotes.
Now the startup plans to use its seed funding to build its premium version by adding deeper analytics and features that allow clients to interact with documents, including e-signatures and buy buttons.
“We’re slowly but surely bringing more features of the web and putting them into hands of non-technical people who run businesses,” says Tanner.
来源：techcrunch.cn
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Teleport 推出新工具 Flock，帮助远程办公员工寻找线下会议地点
Teleport 是一家获得了安德森-霍洛维茨投资的创业公司，其创始人是 Skype 的多名早期员工。该公司的理念是，企业员工可以自由搬迁至他们认为最适合的城市或乡村 。
Teleport 已经开发了 一整套工具 ，帮助科技行业工作者计算，在考虑住房成本以及对保证生活质量必需的开支之后，他们最终的净收入是多少。
目前，Teleport 推出了 一款名为 Flock 的新工具 ，瞄准团队分布在全球各地的创业公司。
这款工具的概念并不复杂。
只要输入你团队成员的位置信息，那么该工具将可以计算出最便捷、成本最低的线下会议地点。
Teleport 认为，目前许多创业公司从一开始就拥有分布式的团队。随着硅谷等地住房和办公地产成本的上涨，因此创业者可能不会将整个团队全部安置在这些地区，尤其是当公司员工的关系网、家庭和熟悉的社区位于其他地区时。
以往，类似 WordPress 的公司曾围绕分布式远程团队搭建了整个系统，建立了公司文化，但一些更年轻的公司也在跟随这一趋势。两天前，丹尼·克里奇顿（Danny Crichton）曾 在专栏中介绍过两个项目 ，即 RemoteYear 和 Hacker Paradise，谈论了这样的“数字游牧民族”。
Got A Team Distributed All Over The World? Teleport’s Tool, Flock, Finds You A Meeting Hub
The thesis behind Teleport, a new Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup from a group of early Skype alums, is that workers should be free to migrate to whichever city and country suits them best.
They’ve been slowly building out a suite of tools that help digital workers figure out where they can maximize their take-home pay after accounting for costs like housing and finding amenities that match a person’s preferences for quality of life.
Now they’re aiming at startups with teams distributed across the world with a new tool called Flock.
The concept isn’t very complicated.
Just enter in where all of your team members are based and it will identify the most convenient and affordable place to have a face-to-face meeting.
Teleport is betting that an increasing number of companies are beginning with distributed teams from day one. As the cost of housing and office space in areas like Silicon Valley rises, it may not really make sense for founders to base their entire team here, especially if prospective hires have talent networks, families or communities elsewhere in the world.
While there are older companies like WordPress that have built entire systems and a corporate culture around distributed and remote teams, younger companies are starting to take heed as well.Two days ago, Danny Crichton wrote a column about two programs called RemoteYear and Hacker Paradise, that are catering to this digitally nomadic demographic.
来源：techcrunch.cn
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2015年04月22日
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新兴借贷平台Insikt向企业引入“贷款即服务”业务
借贷市场最近十分之热门，随着 Lending Club 准备进行首次公开募股，这个领域每天都有新进入者。
在新的竞争对手中有一个刚刚募集了1600万美元的公司，它的目的是让企业成为未来的贷款人并提供一个名为“贷款即服务”（LAAS）的平台。它就是Insikt。
这家总部位于旧金山的借贷公司提供的软件可以让企业为他们的消费者提供小额贷款，企业可以信任 Insikt 让它处理实际提供贷款的细节。这些企业覆盖了从零售商和商家到实体银行的不同类型，而他们往往受限于融资的狭小渠道。
最初几个月所有贷款都会存在于Insikt的资产负债表上，资金支持由 Capital One 和 Atalaya Capital Management 等来提供。在每个企业都有了自己的投资组合之后，该企业的投资将全部汇集到一起，作为债券发行给投资者。
这使企业能够将他们的投资多样化，同时让FICO信用分数较低（或是根本没有FICO评分）的消费者可以在企业销售点申请分期付款。
换句话说，Insikt是在打两边牌。该平台让投资者有机会为企业的贷款提供资金，而这又反过来提供了让消费者在销售点可以选择贷款的技术。
Revolution Ventures是 Insikt 1600万美元融资轮里的投资者，资金主要用于该公司的成长壮大，不过一些大型金融公司也向该公司提供了多达7000万美元的负债，为其贷款业务注入活力。
Insikt Introduces Lending As A Service For Brands
The lending space couldn’t be hotter, with folks like Lending Club set to IPO, and new entrants launching every day.
One of these new competitors just raised $16 million to let brands become the lenders of the future, offering a “Lending as a Service” (LaaS) platform. Meet Insikt.
The San Franciscobased lender will provide software that allows brands to offer small loans to their consumers, trusting Insikt to handle the meticulous details of actually providing the loans. These brands can range from retailers and merchants to actual banks, who are often limited to a small window of financing.
All loans are put on Insikt’s balance sheet for the first few months of their existence, powered by capital from Capital One and Atalaya Capital Management, among others. After each brand has its own portfolio, the entirety of that brand’s investments will be pooled together and issued as bonds to investors.
This allows them to diversify where their money is going, while allowing consumers with low FICO scores (or no FICO score at all) to get an installment plan application at the PoS.
In other words, Insikt is playing on both sides. The platform offers investors the opportunity to power loans for brands, which will in turn have technology that provides customers a lending option at PoS.
Revolution Ventures provided the capital for Insikt’s $16 million round of funding, dedicated to power growth for the company, but big financial firms have also provided upwards of $70 million in debt into the company to juice its lending business.
来源：techcrunch.cn
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