Month: August 2021

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Our beloved Danny was back, joining Natasha and Alex and Grace and Chris to chat through yet another incredibly busy week. As a window into our process, every week we tell one another that the next week we’ll cut the show down to
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Manish Maheshwari, the head of Twitter India, has taken a new role at the company and is relocating to the U.S., the latest in a series of developments for the American social giant after a tense stand off with New Delhi this year. Maheshwari is moving on from the high-profile position, a role he assumed
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Houston-based ThirdAI, a company building tools to speed up deep learning technology without the need for specialized hardware like graphics processing units, brought in $6 million in seed funding. Neotribe Ventures, Cervin Ventures and Firebolt Ventures co-led the investment, which will be used to hire additional employees and invest in computing resources, Anshumali Shrivastava, Third
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Food delivery apps offer convenience for customers, but a host of headaches for restaurants, like commissions as high as 40% and very few tools to build customer loyalty. Based in Singapore, Tablevibe wants to help restaurants reduce their reliance on third-party delivery apps and help them get more direct orders and returning customers. The startup
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Earlier this year, Reddit raised $250 million, bringing the 16-year-old site up to around $800 million in total funding. Today, it announced plans for an even more massive windfall, with a Series F led by Fidelity. The company confirmed with TechCrunch that it has raised $410 million thus far, with plans to raise up to
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Scott Lenet Contributor More posts by this contributor Is there a creed in venture capital? “Darth Ventures” and the efficacy of Sith management techniques I’m frequently asked by journalists whether I think venture capital valuations are too high in the current environment. Because the average venture capital fund returns only 1.3x committed capital over the
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Several users from Zambia have taken to Twitter informing the general public that WhatsApp has been restricted in the country amidst ongoing general elections today. The president and parliamentary elections culminate in a face-off between current President Edgar Lungu and opposition Hakainde Hichilema. Internet monitoring organization Netblocks further corroborated these reports, adding that multiple internet
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Mobile field service startup Youreka Labs Inc. raised an $8 million Series A round of funding co-led by Boulder Ventures and Grotech Ventures, with participation from Salesforce Ventures. The Maryland-based company also officially announced its CEO — Bill Karpovich joined to lead the company after previously holding executive roles with General Motors and IBM Cloud
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With the pandemic digitizing every aspect of our lives, the Creator Economy has taken off like never before, with some estimates saying it’s now a $100Bn+ market. And yet, managing your professional life as a model, actor, writer or designer remains a mish-mash of emails, manual booking processes, and dreaded PDFs. Creatives face late payments,
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Aforza, developing cloud and mobile apps for consumer goods companies, announced a $22 million Series A round led by DN Capital. The London-based company’s technology is built on the Salesforce and Google Cloud platforms so that consumer goods companies can digitally transform product distribution and customer engagement to combat issues like unprofitable promotions and declining
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AppWorks, the Taipei-based venture capital firm focused on Taiwan and Southeast Asia, announced today it has closed its oversubscribed third fund, raising $150 million. AppWorks Fund III’s limited partners include Taiwan Mobile, Axiom Asia Private Capital, Fubon Life, TransGlobe Life, Hongtai Group, Wistron, Cathay Pacific, Phison Electronics and Taiwan’s National Development Fund. Many of these
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Twitter has locked the account of Indian National Congress, the South Asian nation’s largest opposition party, for violating its rules days after the American social network temporarily suspended profiles of several of the party’s senior leaders. The Indian National Congress wrote about the Twitter episode on Facebook Thursday. “When our leaders were put in jails,
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Sophie Alcorn Contributor Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Dear Sophie: Which immigration options allow
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Sydney, Australia-based Fable Food is the latest plant-based food startup to announce funding. The company, which uses mushrooms in its meat alternatives, has raised $6.5 million AUD (about $4.8 million USD) in a seed round led by Blackbird Ventures, the Australian venture capital firm whose portfolio also includes Canva, Culture Amp and SafetyCulture. Other participants
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Small and medium-sized construction businesses in Europe and the US tend not to be run on digital platforms, leaving a $1.6 trillion industry relatively untouched. publicly-listed Procore (NYSE: PCOR) is the go-to platform for large general contractors, but newer startups are going for this SMB construction market such as Sitemax, Sitemate, Fieldlens and Fieldwire. Now,
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