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Friday, February 14, 2014
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Attorney marketplace UpCounsel has spent the last several months helping startups and other small businesses get affordable legal help. But for the most part, that help has mainly been focused on short-term projects that don’t require a ton of assistance over a longer period of time.


The startup hopes to change that, with a new service that will connect technology companies in San Francisco with an outside general counsel to replace the legal help they’d usually get from a traditional law firm. Those firms can charge up to $800 per hour to work with a partner, but UpCounsel believes that by setting companies up with attorneys on its platform, it can drastically reduce that cost over time.


The Outside General Counsels it connects startups with are former senior associates and partners from large firms, who have previously served in the general counsel role of technology companies. Only difference is that now they’re working virtually through the UpCounsel platform.


To make sure that the general counsels are a good fit, UpCounsel does interviews with interested companies to determine what their needs are, and then tries to pair them up with attorneys who understand their business and have the correct skill sets to support them. Attorneys get a company profile and dossier to review only if they are selected by the company to possibly represent them.


More than just making the connection between startups and the outside general counsel, UpCounsel also handles all admin and support for them as well. That includes billing, but also means helping them to find paralegals as well.


As part of the program, UpCounsel is also opening up not just to attorneys, but to professionals who have served as paralegals to support them. Again, since it doesn’t have all the overhead of the big firms, paralegals can be billed at about a third of what the big firms charge for their hourly work.


In addition to the lower cost, UpCounsel believes that its outside general counsels will generally be more responsive to legal requests than the folks who work at more traditional firms that are loaded up on case work. CEO Matt Faustman tells me that in its early trial, some startups have used the program to complement their existing firms, for when they need more immediate help.


But the platform is also seeing some startups move completely to adopt its outside general counsels, with about 10 totally jumping ship from some big firms you’ve probably heard of.


Now that it’s launched, we’ll see how well the program actually works. In the meantime, UpCounsel has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from folks that include Homebrew, Bobby Yazdani, SV Angel, Collaborative Fund, Haroon Mokhtarzada, and other angels.





9:54 AM

Attorney marketplace UpCounsel has spent the last several months helping startups and other small businesses get affordable legal help . Bu...

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9:39 AM

Didn’t get a ticket to the Crunchies before they sold out? Miss the live stream? Don’t sweat it — we brought the whole thing back to you in...

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Watch out, Atlanta and New Orleans. TechCrunch is coming to town and we have lined up a stellar list of companies to pitch at each city’s meetup.


We’re rolling into your fine cities next week. The Atlanta Meetup is on Tuesday, Feb. 18 and New Orleans is Thursday, Feb. 20. Along with the meet-and-greet networking found at these meetups, there will be a 60 second pitch-off battle. The full list of companies can be found below.


For the pitch-off, we will have 3-5 judges, including TechCrunch writers and local VCs, who will decide on the winners. First place will receive a table in Startup Alley at the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt NY; second place will receive two tickets to TechCrunch Disrupt NY; and third place will receive one ticket.


Are you a funded startup? Local employer? A company looking for a few good code ninjas? Consider emailing Sponsors@techcrunch.com to help support the event. If you’d like to exhibit, please pop over to Eventbrite and help out below. The goal is to make this a great event for everyone and we can’t do that without your help. Bootstrapping and can’t afford a table? Let John or myself know. Matt@techcrunch.com or john@techcrunch.com.


General admission tickets are only $5 thanks to our amazing sponsors. Age 21 and older only, please. See you there!


Atlanta



New Orleans



Benefit

BitLock


Atlanta tickets


New Orleans tickets






9:09 AM

Watch out, Atlanta and New Orleans . TechCrunch is coming to town and we have lined up a stellar list of companies to pitch at each city’s ...

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UrbanSitter, an online service for parents and sitters to connect, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by DBL Investors with participation from Match Group, a division of IAC and newly launched VC firm Aspect Ventures, as well as existing investors Canaan Partners, First Round Capital, Menlo Ventures and Rustic Canyon Partners.


UrbanSitter harnesses the power of social recommendations in a space where a friend’s recommendation is critical—child care. UrbanSitter leverages Facebook Connect so parents can view sitters that their friends already know, trust and recommend. You sign up on the site, and connect your Facebook account, and can view sitters known through friends or affiliations—including schools, sports teams and parent groups.


Parents can view each sitter’s reviews, skills and certifications, experience, educational background, response time and the number of repeat families. Parents can also see profile pictures and video of sitters and availability, hourly rates and typical response times are also outlined. The bonus of using UrbanSitter is that it manages all the payments on both ends of the transaction.


Similar to how people use OpenTable for dinner reservations, parents can search for sitter availability by date and time and then book jobs (or interviews) real-time. After the job completed, parents can pay online and add reviews, ratings and Facebook Likes to sitter profiles. You can also search for sitters by various filters such as part-time, full-time etc.


UrbanSitter is available in dozen U.S. cities, and also offers mobile apps to allow parents to book sitters on the go.


To me, the power of UrbanSitter is taking the offline action of finding a babysitter through friends and recommendations, and bringing that online. Competitor Care.com, which has a more broader goal of finding caregivers for kids, and seniors and more, just went public at a valuation of well over $500 million so there is clearly a large opportunity here.





7:54 AM

UrbanSitter , an online service for parents and sitters to connect, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by DBL Investors with par...

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Gina & Ryan Photography | www.GinaAndRyan.com

Lover.ly, the Pinterest for wedding planning, has been dominating the categorization and aggregation of awesome wedding content. Brides who visit the site are instantly able to search by vendor, color pattern, product type, theme, and most anything else. Except weddings.


Today, on the company’s second anniversary, all that changes. Lover.ly users can now upload photos of their wedding in a set, which is searchable. This way, users who see a dress they love can click through to see the entire wedding, as well as all the vendors that worked on that wedding from photographer to cake maker and back again.


“We’re taking what has traditionally been an offline, one-to-one experience and bringing it online,” said founder Kellee Khalil. “Brides are always calling up their friends and asking which vendor they used for the dress or the venue, and it ends up being a lot of work to track down all that information. With Real Weddings, users can share everything about their wedding with a single link.”


To deal with quality control, Lover.ly will let all brides upload their photos to a specific URL, but only approved photos and weddings will be made searchable.


The Real Weddings platform will launch with more than 4,800 real weddings right from the get-go.


Lover.ly has an e-commerce platform for brands that want to get in on the action, with a cost-per-click business model. That same platform will be tied in to the Real Weddings.


Lover.ly has been growing steadily since it’s launch on Valentines Day two years ago. The company has seen over 100,000 iPhone app downloads, 50 million images viewed each month, and have grown to show off over 2,500 brands and 250,000 SKUs. For some perspective, Lover.ly launched its ecommerce platform with only four brand partners, and has now become the largest online wedding shop in the world.


Also, Happy Valentine’s Day.





7:09 AM

Lover.ly , the Pinterest for wedding planning, has been dominating the categorization and aggregation of awesome wedding content. Brides who...

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A new Kickstarter project aims to make your GoPro filmography easier to handle, with a case designed to hold the GoPro in such a way that you have a full view of the screen of your iPhone 5s or 5, so that you can monitor all the action while you shoot one-handed.


There are no shortage of iPhone cases that offer double-duty performance with some other task, be it acting as a wallet, or opening beers, or propping up your iPhone itself, but the GoPhone might have just the right feature mix for the action hero in your life. It features a hump at one end that’s designed to allow you to slide in your GoPro’s quick release buckle, giving you full access to the screen at any orientation.


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The iPhone still connects to the GoPro in the traditional manner – wirelessly, using the camera’ s inbuilt Wi-Fi connectivity, but now a shooter can watch the action as they film while operating as a follow cam, which is particularly useful if you’re trying to capture your buddy showing off at the skatepark or on the bike track.


It’ll come in multiple colors when it ships, and offers not only live video while shooting, but also a quick and easy way to review footage just shot without having to put down one mount and pick up your phone. Australian project creators Andrew Dorn and Carson Tully have aimed for an economy of design here, and they’ve also spent months testing it in real-world situations at the skatepark. Tully is an industrial designer and illustrator, and Dorn works in the film industry and previously created an iPhone app called ‘Ramped Slow Mo.’


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The GoPhone case is seeking $15,000 AUD ($13,538 U.S.) in funding over the next 60 days, with backers at the $40 level securing a pre-order. If all goes according to plan, the accessory should ship this September.





6:39 AM

A new Kickstarter project aims to make your GoPro filmography easier to handle, with a case designed to hold the GoPro in such a way that y...

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I have a date tonight. And it’s with Frank Underwood. The entire second season of the Emmy award winning series is now available for your enjoyment on Netflix.


The broad strokes are well known. House of Cards is an amazing TV show only available on Netflix, proving that with the right amount of cash, quality TV shows can be made and distributed outside traditional channels. Starring Kevin Spacey. Robin Wright and Kate Mara, House of Cards focuses on the delicate politics of Washington D.C and, well, the house of cards that is America’s government.


Watch the show. Just remember, it is not healthy to binge. Take plenty of breaks.





5:54 AM

I have a date tonight. And it’s with Frank Underwood. The entire second season of the Emmy award winning series is now available for your e...

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