Personal blog of Yzmir Ramirez

 Let’s face it. Some tech conferences have lost their way. While TechCrunch Disrupt remains a firmly curated, media-driven, event, with hundreds of journalists attending, a couple of other conferences have really gone for scale. A minimum of 15,000 people, thousands of companies, echoing halls — and a lot of investors (and journalists) turning their badges around so they don’t… Read More

 Twist Bioscience, a startup making and using synthetic DNA to store digital data, just struck a contract with Microsoft and the University of Washington to encode vast amounts of information on synthetic genes. Big data means business and the company able to gather a lot of it is very valuable to investors and stockholders. But that data needs to be stored somewhere and can cost a lot for… Read More

 Pre-natal genetic testing, VR drones, and fracking nanoparticles were a few of the products featured in Y Combinator’s first Virtual Demo Day. They come from the YC Fellowship, a program designed to let the startup school help idea- or prototype-stage companies, beyond the full-fledged businesses in its main accelerator. The 8-week full-time fellowship mostly offers remote guidance,… Read More

 Supersonic planes, food harvesting robots and instant HIV diagnosis were some of the ideas that wowed us on Demo Day 2 for Y Combinator’s Winter 2016 batch. We queried investors and TechCrunch’s writers to come up with our top 8 picks from all 59 startups that presented. Check out our coverage of the 60 YC startups from Tuesday, plus our 7 favorites. Additional reporting by Megan… Read More

 “Food, housing, healthcare, transportation. Life essentials made better and more affordable.” These are the types of startups that partner Paul Buchheit said were demoing today at Y Combinator’s Winter 2016 Demo Day 2. Yesterday, we covered the first 60 startups from the batch, and picked our 7 favorites. Plus, check out our picks for the top 8 startups from these 59.… Read More

 How much gluten, genetically modified organisms and other allergens are in that cereal you ate this morning? Not many people know what is in their food right now, but genomic data startup Clear Labs hopes to index all the packaged fare in the world so we do. The startup uses technology related to sequencing human genomes in clinical trials but applies it to food products. And it’s… Read More

 The Europas Conference & Awards for European Tech Startups, on June 16 in London, is an annual celebration of Europe’s brightest tech companies. From a small bar in central London in 2009, it’s become a fixture of the European scene, with its highly curated daytime speakers and audience, which combines the key startup players in Europe, as well as the hottest newcomers,… Read More