10 Downing Street opens doors to startups

The government looks like it could be taking innovation a bit more seriously. David Cameron hosted a startup pitch in his living room. The doors of No. 10 Downing Street opened up to 10 'high-growth tech companies'. Tech's been at the PM's house before - but this time actual pitching took place. Notable presenters included TransferWise, Digital Shadows and my personal favourite - SwiftKey.

The iWatch could be a mobile payments gamechanger

While the rumours grow around Apple's planned smartwatch, Business Insider are exploring its payments potential. Using info from columnist Tim Bjarin, they expect an NFC-powered wallet system combined with a a mobile-payments infrastructure. The watch might have authentication functionality too.

The top 5 free co-working spaces, as ranked by Wix

Wix, the website building people, just ranked their favourite free co-working spaces. No such thing as a free lunch, eh?

Fellow thrifty Brits will be sad to hear there's nothing mentioned on our island. But making the highlights are Berlin, Barcelona and Jakarta. The top spot goes to Wix's very own co-working space, Wix Lounge.

Getting a sense of startup salaries

A few nosey do-gooders want to know how much start-up employees are earning. Are you in early-stage? Are you eating pot noodles? Do you want the world to know? Get involved in the first UK startup salary survey. Powered by the folks at SeedCamp and a few others.

FundApps inks two deals

FundApps, the cloud-based risk & regulation monitoring startup have signed two deals in a week. One with a global asset manager and the other with a Swiss investment bank.

The big four need startups

Ernst & Young, one of the world's biggest accounting and professional services firms, has told the world they need to collaborate with payments startups to survive in this era of technological change. David Jensen, E&Y's global innovation and digital strategy head, told The Australian that startups have 'less friction and more nimbleness to change the status-quo'

PayPal co-founder to speak about new project

Max Levchin, the brainchild of internet payments powerhouse PayPal, will be taking the stage at TechCrunch's 'Disrupt' conference to speak about his new project Affirm. Affirm calculates consumer credit at the point-of-sale, to smooth out financing problems and giving consumer more options for payment. They've just secured $45 million of equity and debt financing from a few VCs.