Amid a deluge of new creator platforms, a startup called Fireside is launching today with what it believes will be a compelling proposition for professional creators in need of a more robust set of tools for content creation, distribution, measurement, and monetization. The service, which offers a platform for live and interactive shows, had been
Month: October 2021
Apr.26 — Deren Baker, Jumpshot chief executive officer, discusses Amazon.com Inc.’s plans to spend $800 million in the current quarter to reduce delivery times for top customers to one day from two. He speaks with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang and Brad Stone on “Bloomberg Technology.”
It’s that time again! Today is the 28th Demo Day for Alchemist, an accelerator that primarily focuses on enterprise companies — or those that sell to other companies, primarily, rather than directly to consumers. This latest cohort comes in at 23 companies. Like the last few Alchemist batches, this one was entirely virtual — a
Appsmith, which provides open source software that helps companies quickly build internal applications, announced an $8 million Series A round of funding this morning. Unlike some upstart tech companies that we have seen in the internal application market, Appsmith doesn’t sport a no- or low-code approach. Instead, Appsmith targets traditional developers with its service, which
Snapchat is rolling out a new ‘Run for Office’ in-app tool to encourage young adults to run for local office. The company says the new Run for Office tool is designed to help younger users engage with democracy in an easy way. The goal of the tool is to tackle common barriers that young people
Sure, an insurance infrastructure startup, announced today that it has closed on $100 million in Series C funding at a $550 million valuation. New York-based Declaration Partners and European growth investor Kinnevik co-led the financing, which also included participation from WndrCo and existing backers W. R. Berkley and Menlo Ventures. The round brings the Santa
Both Anchor and Descript have made their names as being among the most significant Podcast creation platforms of recent times, but hoving into the rear-view mirror recently has been Podcastle, an all-in-one platform that can cover off recording, production and publishing, all on the one platform. It’s now raised $7 million in an early-stage funding
Instagram head Adam Mosseri recently said was “no longer a photo-sharing app,” noting the company was prioritizing a shift into video amid significant competition from TikTok and YouTube. Today, Instagram is taking another step towards its larger goal of making video a more central part of the Instagram experience with news that it will now
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Founders seeking to raise their first round of capital may feel overwhelmed by the prospect. There is definitely plenty of capital out there, but there are also a lot of startups clamoring for it. To help new entrepreneurs figure out this dilemma, we invited three investors to speak at a panel titled, “How to Raise
Global users are experiencing outages on Facebook, including all social networks the company owns, which include Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. When navigating to these websites, a server error will appear — Instagram shows a “5xx server error,” which indicates that this is an issue with Facebook’s servers. Users are also unable to send messages or
As DevOps SaaS platform Esper continues to build out the category and the number of connected devices grows, the company took on another round of funding to stay ahead of demand. Just five months after announcing a $30 million Series B round, the company is back with an even bigger capital infusion — $60 million
Book sales during the pandemic went up, and it seems the amount we are reading did, too. And Inkitt, the startup that operates a free, popular platform of the same name for anyone to write and publish stories — stories that Inkitt then analyses using data science to determine which of them to take
A pair of new e-readers from Kobo iterate on the company’s high-end options, adding Bluetooth audiobook and stylus support to the now familiar asymmetrical design of its larger devices. The Sage and Libra 2 also gain a new charging cover so you only have to plug the device in every few months rather than every
Netflix is today officially launching a new feature for its Android users that will make it easier to find something to watch when you can’t make a decision. The feature, called “Play Something,” is a shuffle mode option that will play another movie or show Netflix believes you may like, based on your interests and
In a world where fintech is so hot right now, and investors are being swept up by their excitement for the space, Chime has managed to ride the wave to near perfection. The company has raised upwards of $2.6 billion, including a fresh $750 million just this year. The startup, playing in the fee-free banking
Informatica filed to go public late last week, some six years after it was taken private by two private equity teams for $5.3 billion. The data-focused company used its passage through the private markets to execute a move to the cloud, work that came to a head in early 2021, when Informatica announced its dive
Facebook’s stock took a dive Monday as the site suffered one of its worst outages of the past decade with services across its entire suite of products going offline while the tech company struggled to even bring its own internal services back online. The stock ended the day down nearly 5%, with Facebook shedding tens
Infrastructure as code (IaC) has been gaining wider adoption among DevOps teams in recent years, but the complexities of data center configuration and management continue to create problems — and opportunities. We surveyed top investors in IaC startups to find out more. Overall, they see a lot of room for growth given all of the
The European Parliament’s lead and shadow rapporteur for a major reboot of the bloc’s digital rulebook have called for an investigation following the Facebook whistleblower leaks. One of the MEPs has also called for incoming EU rules to directly tackle business models that favor “disinformation and violence over factual content”. In a joint statement, the
Pioneered by Snapchat and cloned by Instagram, the “Stories” feature has become a staple for modern-day mobile apps from Google search to Pinterest to streaming apps and more. And while the addition doesn’t work for everyone — LinkedIn and Twitter recently shuttered their Stories features, for example — there’s enough demand for Stories out there
Jun.22 — Miller Tabak Chief Market Strategist Matt Maley and Valkyrie CEO Leah Wald discuss the volatility surrounding cryptocurrencies with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang on “Bloomberg Technology.”
Image Credits: Wasp It seems that a lot of startups are trying to help developers reduce the complexity involved in coding an app. Last week we covered the seed round for RunX, a company that helps developers code back-end cloud resources more quickly. Today, Y Combinator Winter 2021 graduate Wasp announced a $1.5 million seed
Stable, an insurtech aiming to help minimize a businesses’ risk due to volatile commodity prices, today announced it has raised $46.5 million in a Series A round of funding led by Greycroft. Notion Capital, Anthemis, Continental Grain and existing backers Syngenta and Ascot also participated in the financing, which brings the Chicago-based startup’s total raised
Jane Mosbacher Morris started her career in the U.S. Department of State helping women fight terrorism. Now she is helping them find fairly paid work. She recognized that for women to drive change they needed access to resources, so she started studying agriculture and other sectors and become interested in the strategic investment in supply
Jared Spataro has been with Microsoft for more than 15 years now, and he has been part of the transition from an on-prem software company to a SaaS business. Today his official title is corporate vp in charge of the company’s biggest SaaS product, Office 365. Spataro is going to join us on October 27th
Berlin-based climate tech startup, ‘Made of Air‘, has closed a €5 million (~$5.8M) seed funding round, led by Norwegian sustainability-focused family fund, TD Veen. Also participating are Patrick Pichette (former CFO of Google & chairman of the Board of Twitter), EQT Group, Thomas Von Koch (CEO & cofounder of EQT Group), Tuesday Capital, the co-founders
It’s said that you should measure what you value, and for founders, nothing is more valuable than growth. Growth provides revenues, venture capital, prestige and scale — ultimately driving the success of every business. Yet, measuring growth is complex and challenging — and it’s only getting tougher. Changes to attribution in iOS 14 and further
The Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, with geography that makes it vulnerable to typhoons, floods, volcanos, earthquakes and droughts. While working in IT, Felix Ayque began compiling cyclone reports and sending them as email alerts to communities. His work evolved into environmental intelligence platform Komunidad, which collects data from
If you’re diagnosed with lazy eye — otherwise known as amblyopia — as a child, there are only a few options at your disposal. You can wear an eye patch, you can take eye drops or you can wear corrective lenses. Or, in the future (pending FDA clearance), you could watch TV. That’s the central