More than one smartphone app startup has tried to convince you that by using their app you will miraculously stave off the ravages of age and flab. All I need to do is flip open my phone and real off a few: Gyroscope, MyFitnessPal, Welltory, ActivityTracker, SleepCycle. The list goes on. You name it, there’s
Month: August 2021
On Sunday Square announced it was gobbling up Afterpay in a deal worth $29 billion at the time of announcement. Alex followed up yesterday with more details on why the deal made sense for Square and Afterpay over here, but we wanted to ask some notable VCs what it means for the startup market. For
InstaCarro, a digital marketplace that connects used car sellers to dealers in Brazil, has raised $23 million in a Series B round of funding. Notably, U.S.-based firms co-led the investment, including J Ventures, FJ Labs and Rise Capital. Spain’s All Iron Ventures and Big Sur also participated in the financing, among others. With the latest
WhatsApp said that it would soon let users send disappearing photos and videos and this week the feature will be rolling out to everybody. Anyone using the Facebook-owned messaging app can share a photo or video in “view once” mode, allowing a single viewing before the media in question goes poof. Media shared with “view
Neobanks, other financial startups, and the basic concept of “finance anywhere” are seeing huge gains at the moment, and today one of the key companies building the infrastructure that powers services like these is announcing a major growth round of funding to double down on the opportunity. Rapyd — which provides a range of financial
Stewart Hillhouse Contributor Stewart Hillhouse writes actionable growth marketing insights as senior content lead at Demand Curve. By night, he interviews marketers and creatives on his podcast, Top Of Mind. Before getting into marketing, Stewart was a semi-professional lumberjack. He also writes at stewarthillhouse.com. More posts by this contributor Demand Curve: Questions you need to
British venture capital firm Draper Esprit recently moved its listing from the AIM to the main board in London, the LSE. The investing group also moved its secondary listing from Dublin’s Euronext Growth Market to its larger sister exchange, Euronext Dublin, which makes sense given its long connection to Irish capital. Draper has always felt
You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. After a fittingly fleeting time in the wild, Twitter is banishing its ephemeral stories feature known as Fleets, which debuted in November 2020. Twitter began testing Fleets back in March of last year. The company thought that it might be able to lure people who were
Marvell announced this morning it intends to acquire Innovium for $1.1 billion in an all-stock deal. The startup, which raised over $400 million according to Crunchbase data, makes networking ethernet switches optimized for the cloud. Marvell president and CEO Matt Murphy sees Innovium as a complementary piece to the $10 billion Inphi acquisition last year,
With the pandemic wreaking havoc amongst early years education amid school lockdowns, it’s no wonder edtech startups have piled into the space. But it has also served to highlight the abysmal nature of early years teaching: Some 40 million teachers across the globe are leaving the sector, according to the World Bank. Of the 1.5
Founded in 2017, Arizona-based Aira didn’t waste any time proving out its technology. We’ve written about the company’s wireless charging a few times over the years, including the “FreePower” technology it has baked into Nomad’s charging pads, which brings a more streamlined version of the Apple’s abandoned AirPower. The tech allows for users to charge
If you’re trying to develop fluency in a non-native tongue, language immersion is a crucial part of the learning process. Surrounding yourself with native speakers helps with pronunciation, context building, and most of all, confidence. But what if you’re an eight-year-old kid in Spain learning English and can’t swing a solo trip to the United
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Last week, Natasha and Alex jumped on Twitter Spaces to discuss the tale of two edtech IPOs: Duolingo, the consumer language learning company, and Powerschool, the enterprise K-12 software platform. It was a rare moment in the sun for the
It’s no secret that the technology for easy business-to-business payments has not yet caught up to its peer-to-peer counterparts, but Yaydoo thinks it has the answer. The Mexico City-based B2B software and payments company provides three products, VendorPlace, P-Card and PorCobrar, for managing cash flow, optimizing access to smart liquidity, and connecting small, midsize and
Inequalities between women and men in the workplace have been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic and are likely to persist in the near future, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO). The World Economic Forum estimates globally it will take 267.6 years to close the gender gap in economic participation and opportunity. So it’s even
In “Macbeth,” Shakespeare described sleep as the “chief nourisher in life’s feast.” But like his titular character, many adults aren’t sleeping well. Revery wants to help with an app that combines cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for insomnia with mobile gaming concepts. Founded in 2021, Revery is currently in beta stealth mode and plans to launch
Pam Kreuger Contributor Pam Kreuger is the founder and CEO of Wealthramp.com, a free online service that matches consumers with qualified, fee-only financial advisers, and the creator and host of the investor-education television series “MoneyTrack.” John Chapman Contributor John Chapman is a certified financial planner professional with WorthPointe Financial Planners in Newport Beach, California, and
Shares of Square are up this morning after the company announced its second-quarter earnings and that it will buy Afterpay, an Australian buy now, pay later (BNPL) player in a $29 billion deal. As TechCrunch reported this morning, Afterpay shareholders will receive 0.375 shares of Square in exchange for their existing equity. Shares of Afterpay
It’s often said in baseball that a prospect has a high ceiling, reflecting the tremendous potential of a young player with plenty of room to get better. The same could be said for the cloud infrastructure market, which just keeps growing with little sign of slowing down any time soon. The market hit $42 billion
With the rise of Open Banking, Psd2 Regulation, InsurTech, and the whole, general Fintech boom, tech investors have realized that there is an increasing place for dedicated funds which double down on this ongoing movement. When you look at the rise of banking-as-a-service offerings, payments platforms, insurtech, asset management, and infrastructure providers, you realize that
João Graça Contributor João Graça is CTO and co-founder of Unbabel, an AI-powered language operations platform that enables any agent to communicate in any language. The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology predicts that U.S. companies will spend upward of $100 billion on AI R&D per year by 2025. Much of this spending
MGA Thermal co-founders Erich Kisi and Alex Post MGA Thermal wants to help utility companies transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources with shoebox-sized thermal energy storage blocks. The company says a stack of 1,000 blocks is about the size of a small car and can store enough energy to power 27 homes for
Jeff Sternberg Contributor Jeff Sternberg is a technical director in the Office of the CTO (OCTO) at Google Cloud, a team of technologists and industry experts that help Google Cloud’s customers solve challenging problems and disrupt their industries. Environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors should be key considerations for CTOs and technology leaders scaling next
Over the last couple of years, Robotic Process Automation or RPA has been red hot with tons of investor activity and M&A from companies like SAP, IBM and ServiceNow. UIPath had a major IPO in April and has a market cap over $30 billion. I wondered when Salesforce would get involved and today the company
Swiss alternative protein company Planted has raised its second CHF 17M (about $18.5M at present) round of the year, a “pre-B” fundraise that will help it continue its growth and debut new products. A U.S. launch is in the cards eventually but for now Planted’s exclusively European customers will be able to give its new
Google just dumped a whole bunch of news about its upcoming Pixel 6 smartphone. Maybe the company was looking to get out in front of August 11’s big Samsung event — or perhaps it’s just hoping to keep people interested in the months leading up to a big fall announcement (and beat additional leaks to
Nektar.ai founders Aravind Ravi Sulekha and Abhijeet Vijayvergiya Organizing information about prospective deals is a challenging task for B2B sales teams, since salespeople usually rely on multiple tools (email, Zoom, WhatsApp, etc) to talk with buyer committees. It becomes even more unwieldy when sales teams work remotely. Nektar.ai is a B2B sales productivity startup that
Pet pharmacy Mixlab has developed a digital platform enabling veterinarians to prescribe medications and have them delivered — sometimes on the same day — to pet parents. The New York-based company raised a $20 million Series A in a round of funding led by Sonoma Brands and including Global Founders Capital, Monogram Capital, Lakehouse Ventures
Jul.30 — MicroStrategy Inc. Chief Executive Officer Michael Saylor says his firm is being patient with Bitcoin. He talks to Emily Chang about his investment strategy on “Bloomberg Technology.”
Realm, which aims to help homeowners maximize the value of their property with its data platform, has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by GGV Capital. Existing backers Primary Venture Partners, Lerer Hippeau and Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures also participated in the round, bringing the New York-based startup’s total raised to $15 million.