Lyft may have worked out a deal; goTenna unveiled [Startup Roundup]

Who’s getting money?

Rap Genius is now just Genius, and it cut a deal for a $40 million equity investment on an undisclosed valuation (rumored at $400 million), according to Business Insider. We have another post coming on this investment because news from the Williamsburg crowdsourcing innovator is never simple.

Who’s making moves?

Peer-to-peer transportation service, Lyft, still isn’t live in New York City, but the service, which has stated its intention to focus on Brooklyn and Queens at launch, is said to have hashed out a deal with the state, according to Metro. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his allies are said to be using their money to wreck yellow cabs as we know them in New York, according to The New York Post.

Rentah launched one week ago. The site is a peer-to-peer platform for everything: Services. Homes. Stuff. Its about page shows a team of eleven. When we met the Rentah team for the first time at NY Tech Day, they told us the company was working from Greenpoint.

goTenna has gone live, as Technical.ly Brooklyn reported. Backed and touted heavily by Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, the hardware company allows you to text and share other sorts of data without cell towers. Basically, you carry a tiny tower with you. Preorder a pair now for half-price, $149.99. It’s not cheap, but sure to be useful to certain kinds of users. We’ll be curious to see if it has the capacity to create a mesh network, which could dramatically increase its range. It got some buzz at The New York Business Journal, GizMag, Crain’s and Wired.

Red Antler, the creative agency with a focus on early stage companies, has opened up a coworking space within its offices at 20 Jay St., with prices per desk ranging from $500-$575 per month.

Brooklyn Quarterly has released its third issue, Cities. We covered the digital first literary journal’s launch of its collaborative blog last year.

Who’s getting buzz?

The New York Times picked The Oakley Surf Report as one of its apps for the beach. The app was apparently built here in Dumbo, by Small Planet Digital, according to this blog post. We covered a post they did a while back on the true cost of making an app.