Last summer, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Best Buy committed to “do better” when it came to supporting communities of color. As part of the retail giant’s self-proclaimed mission to better address underrepresentation and technology inequities, the company announced today that it is investing up to $10 million in Brown Venture Group. Minnesota-based
Month: August 2021
Dating app maker and Tinder parent, Match Group, said during its Q2 earnings it will bring audio and video chat, including group live video, and other livestreaming technologies to several of the company’s brands over the next 12 to 24 months. The developments will be powered by innovations from Hyperconnect, the social networking company that
Correlated on Wednesday announced it raised $8.3 million in seed funding to launch its product-led growth platform for sales teams. NextView Ventures led the round and was joined by Harrison Metal, Apollo Projects, Attentive co-founders Brian Long and Andrew Jones, Cockroach Labs co-founder Ben Darnell and Atrium’s Pete Kazanjy. The round includes funding raised last
Refurbed, a European marketplace for refurbished electronics which raised a $17 million Series A round of funding last year has now raised a $54 million Series B funding led by Evli Growth Partners and Almaz Capital. They are joined by existing investors such as Speedinvest, Bonsai Partners and All Iron Ventures, as well as a
Ward van Gasteren embraces the “growth hacker” term, despite the fact that some in the profession prefer the term “growth marketing” or simply “growth.” What’s the difference to him? The hacking part should be a distinct effort from ongoing marketing efforts, he says. “Growth hacking is great to kickstart growth, test new opportunities and see
This morning Allocations, a fintech startup building software to help smaller private equity funds form and operate, announced that it has raised a $4 million round at a $100 million valuation. The startup also shared a host of performance metrics, including that it reached a $4.6 million revenue run rate in June, and a $6
Fleets weren’t long for this world, but Twitter’s product teams aren’t slowing down on bringing new stuff to Spaces, the company’s own take on audio rooms. Twitter introduced Spaces in a limited test last year, expanding the Clubhouse copycat feature more broadly to anyone with at least 600 followers in May. Now, Twitter is giving
Statsig is taking the A/B testing applications that drive Facebook’s growth and putting similar functionalities into the hands of any product team so that they, too, can make faster, data-informed decisions on building products customers want. The Seattle-based company on Thursday announced $10.4 million in Series A funding, led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from
Last week, Deliveroo made news when it announced it was preparing to leave the Spanish market. The recently-listed Deliveroo couched its explanation in market terms, noting its market position in Spanish on-demand delivery wasn’t sufficient to warrant continued investment. Left unmentioned: a Spanish legal change requiring companies that previously depended on freelance couriers to hire
For Emily Elyse Miller, founder and CEO of OffLimits, launching during a global pandemic was “interesting to navigate,” but in the end, worked out. “Unfortunately, ‘fun cereal’ is associated with being unhealthy, and I wanted people to have fun with their food again, but in a healthy way,” Miller told TechCrunch. “There are a few
Most of the time when people get loans, it’s for big life purchases such as a house or a car. But not every big purchase is a necessity. Some are more for fun, and the financing options for those types of buys — such as motorcycles and ATVs — are more limited. Today, Octane Lending,
Twitter may have shut down its Stories features known as Fleets, but the Stories format will continue to invade other social platforms. TikTok today confirmed it’s piloting a new feature, TikTok Stories, which will allow it to explore additional ways for its community to bring their creative ideas to life. The company notes the new
One year after raising $16 million, construction technology company Buildots is back to claim another $30 million, this time in Series B funding. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round, with participation from previous investors TLV Partners, Future Energy Ventures and Tidhar Construction Group. This gives the company $46 million in total funding, Roy Danon, co-founder
It’s a little known fact that the carbon footprint of the technology sector is greater than the entire aviation industry (Aalto University and LUT University). At the same time, tech companies (like many others) are generally attracted to carbon offsetting schemes which don’t actually remove carbon from the environment and are often riddled with flaws.
Jun.28 — George Zachary, CRV partner, Mohan Naidu, Oppenheimer managing director, and Bloomberg’s Bard Stone discuss Amazon.com Inc. buying online pharmacy PillPack for $1 billion. They speak with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang on “Bloomberg Technology.”
Kunal Lunawat Contributor Kunal Lunawat is the co-founder and managing partner of Agya Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on proptech, travel, hospitality and the future of the built world. Though 2021 is far from over, it’s already witnessed a record level of venture capital activity in the technology sector. With larger round sizes announced
The global venture capital bet on neobanks is massive. London-based Starling Bank has raised more than $900 million, per Crunchbase. The same data source indicates that Chime has raised $1.5 billion. Monzo has raised nearly $650 million. And the list goes on: E-commerce-focused neobank Juni raised $21.5 million last month. Novo, an SMB-focused neobank, raised
Ever considerate of its users, Facebook has determined that its privacy settings needed a bit of a shuffle to keep things clear and easy to find. To that end they’ve taken the “privacy settings” settings and scattered them mischievously among the other categories. “We’ve redesigned our entire settings menu on mobile devices from top to
In spite of the pandemic, New York City remains the center of commerce and business, and over the last decade a robust startup community has developed there. Work-Bench, the NYC VC firm that concentrates on early stage enterprise seed investments, announced its $100 million Fund 3 this morning. The company started back in 2013 when
Florida-based HackerU, which creates cybersecurity and other digital skills programs, is acquiring Cybint, a SaaS-based cyber education company. TechCrunch sources understand this to be a $50 million acquisition, though both companies declined to comment on the price. HackerU provided digital workforce training to students, post-graduate professionals and the community in the U.S., Europe and Asia
Michael Kleinman Contributor The future of technology is determined by a handful of venture capitalists. The world’s 10 leading venture capital firms have, together, invested over $150 billion in technology startups. The venture capitalists who run these firms decide which startups today will develop the new platforms and technologies that will shape our lives tomorrow.
Less than six months after raising $55 million in a Series C round of funding, SMB 401(k) provider Human Interest today announced it has raised $200 million in a round that propels it to unicorn status. The Rise Fund, TPG’s global impact investing platform, led the round and was joined by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
Facebook shut down accounts belonging to two academic researchers late Tuesday, cutting off their ability to study political ads and misinformation on the world’s biggest social network. The company accused the academics of engaging in “unauthorized scraping” and compromising user privacy on the platform, claims that Facebook’s many critics are slamming as a thin pretense
General Motors said Wednesday it is adding two new zero-emissions vehicles to its commercial portfolio as it looks to expand its first-to-last-mile business arm, BrightDrop. The first vehicle will be a battery electric cargo van under the Chevrolet brand that will likely be similar to the popular Chevy Express van. The second will be a
Eshwar Belani Contributor Two decades after businesses first started deploying AI solutions, one can argue that they’ve made little progress in achieving significant gains in efficiency and profitability relative to the hype that drove initial expectations. On the surface, recent data supports AI skeptics. Almost 90% of data science projects never make it to production;
The Cameo app, where celebrities send video messages to paying fans, has taken off globally. But now the concept is set to come to the Middle East and South Asia. Tech startup YELA has secured $2 million in investment to support its launch, and will — similar to Cameo — offer users the opportunity to
Elroy Air has raised a $40 million Series A, including financing from Lockheed Martin’s venture capital arm, to ramp up the build, testing and validation of its inaugural autonomous cargo drone. The funding round saw participation from Marlinspike Capital and Prosperity7, as well as existing investors Catapult Ventures, DiamondStream Partners, Side X Side Management, Shield
Loship, the Vietnamese on-demand e-commerce platform that started as a reviews app, announced today it has raised $12 million in pre-Series C funding, bringing its valuation to $100 million. The round was co-led by BAce Capital, an Ant Group-backed venture firm, and the direct investment unit of Sun Hung Kai & Co Limited. Founded in
Kuaishou Technology, a Chinese firm perceived as a ByteDance rival by many, said on Wednesday it will shut down its controversial short video app Zynn later this month. The app was only available in the U.S. The firm, which last month said it had amassed 1 billion monthly active users, didn’t offer an explanation for
Even with all the years of work that have been put into improving how screen-based interfaces work, our experiences with websites, mobile apps, and any other interactive service you might use still often come up short: we can’t find what we want, we’re bombarded with exactly what we don’t need, or the flow is just