In 2014, more than 40% of U.S. seed- and early-stage venture dollars went to Bay Area startups. But that was a long time ago. In recent years, Bay Area startups have accounted for a smaller percentage of U.S. VC investment, according to “Beyond Silicon Valley,” a new report co-produced by venture firm Revolution and PitchBook.
Month: December 2021
The venture capital market is on a tear, pumping capital into a host of startups around the world. It’s generally considered a great time to raise capital and build a technology-centered, disruptive business. For some, that is. While the venture capital boom of the last few years has helped a great number of founders, the
Meta (formerly Facebook) today is introducing a new “Professional” mode for user profiles, designed to be used by creators looking to monetize their followings on the social network. The new mode, which is initially available to select creators in the U.S., will present creators with additional money-making opportunities and expanded insights that had been previously
During the good number of hours I’ve spent researching and writing about vertical farming in recent months, one key word keeps popping up: proximity. So many of the resources spent on modern farming are devoted to transporting produce long stretches, ramping up carbon footprints in the process. Gotham Greens isn’t vertical farming, exactly, but it
Synthesia, a startup using AI to create synthetic videos, is walking a fine, but thus far prosperous, line between being creepy and being pretty freakin’ cool. Today, it announced the close of a $50 million Series B funding round led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from GV and existing investors Firstmark Capital, LDV Capital, Seedcamp
Just a few weeks after announcing stock and crypto trading, French fintech startup Lydia is announcing that it has raised a $100 million Series C round. With this funding round, the startup has reached a unicorn valuation, which means that it is currently valued at more than $1 billion. Dragoneer and Echo Street are investing
Candela makes an unusual style of watercraft called a hydrofoiling boat, which glides above the sea on fins for a smoother, more efficient ride — doubly unusual, in fact, in that it is electrically propelled. The company has raised $24M to accelerate production of its existing small craft and a larger commercial one, in pursuit
Apple is focused now on building a fully autonomous electric car. This is a Bloomberg scoop. The stock moved higher on the news. Mark Gurman reports on “Bloomberg Technology.”
E-commerce roll-up play Opontia launched in June, raising $20 million in debt and equity to acquire older, small e-commerce brands in the Middle East and Africa. Today, the company confirmed to TechCrunch that it has closed a subsequent round, a $42 million Series A nine months after it was founded. Roll-up plays are generally known
Byju’s has acquired Austria-headquartered GeoGebra, the latest in a series of purchases by the Indian edtech giant this year as it scales its online learning platform across the globe. Neither of the firms disclosed the purchase price, but a source familiar with the matter said the deal size is about $100 million and includes both
Twitter has rolled out the option to listen to a recording of a Space to all users on iOS, Android and the web. This latest move brings the social media giant’s Spaces feature more in line with traditional podcasts, as users can now listen to a conversation after the live broadcast has ended. The new
Founded in 2009, Intellihot has been on a mission to make commercial buildings more efficient, by improving the cost and physical footprint of keeping building H2O nice and toasty. The company just announced it raised $50 million to shake up the $81 billionn global HVAC market, with plans to expand internationally. The round was led
A new company is entering the crowded e-commerce aggregator space to acquire and scale high-performing Latin American brands selling on MercadoLibre, Shopify or Amazon. Quinio, a Mexico-based company, announced today it secured $20 million in a debt-and-equity round that will be used to add more than 30 brands to its portfolio. The company was founded
The gradual return of tourism and travel in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic continues to see a wave of startups raising rounds of funding to meet new opportunities in the market. In the latest development, Easol, which has built event and experiences software that third-party companies can use to market and sell bookings —
A few years ago, at the start of the fintech services boom in Africa, Oliver Blantern got an opportunity to work in the continent offering advisory services to high-growth startups. For slightly over three years his company, Riverhouse Technology, helped the emerging tech firms in talent sourcing and acquisition. The trained lawyer did all this
Better.com CEO Vishal Garg apparently realizes he’s done wrong. (As if the barrage of negative publicity wasn’t enough evidence of that ). Today, a letter to current employees was leaked on Blind by a verified Better employee. In the letter, Garg apologized for the way he (mis)handled the layoffs news last week, writing: “I failed to
The launch sector is getting crowded. Many of the biggest players are building their own rocket engines, but space startup Ursa Major is betting that many new launch providers would rather outsource the engine than build it in-house. Six years after being founded by former SpaceX and Blue Origin propulsion engineer Joe Laurienti, the company
Discord is introducing a new way for creators to make money by offering community members access to paid, subscriber-only content. The new premium membership offering was among the company’s most requested features and would bring a new stream of revenue in-house while giving Discord-based communities the option to streamline the tools they use to grow.
Champ Suthipongchai Contributor Champ Suthipongchai is a co-founder and general partner at Creative Ventures, a method-driven deep tech VC firm investing in startups that address the impact of increasing labor shortages, rising healthcare costs and the climate crisis. More posts by this contributor Investment in construction automation is essential to rebuilding US infrastructure Whether you
The same day in February 2020 that Credit Karma planned to announce that it had been acquired by Intuit for more than $7 billion, the stock market tanked, spooked by news that a novel virus had the potential to start a pandemic. “I’m up at 5 o’clock in the morning, the Dow is flashing red
Banking is undergoing a huge transformation and how debt collections operations engage customers is becoming a big issue, especially with things like BNPL schemes. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been invested in the last few years digitalizing financial and other services, but debt collections operations remain very manual and archaic resulting in frustration for
In the past decade, numerous mobile lending apps have been launched in Kenya, riding on the growing need for quick loans. However, these startups have been operating in an unregulated environment — until today, when the country’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, approved a new law that gives the country’s monetary authority, the Central Bank of Kenya
Chris Watson Contributor Chris Watson is the director of the International Development Division at Premise and an evangelist for using data to improve the impact of development programs. In 2019, the U.S. Agency for International Development developed the “New Partnerships Initiative” (NPI) to build a “safer, healthier and more prosperous” world for people everywhere. NPI
Finding the right therapist is never an easy task, but it gets even harder when, as a person of color or someone with disabilities, there are few or no people sharing your experience available. Therify hopes to change that with a network of providers from and catering to marginalized populations. “It just makes a ton
Twitter is trying out some changes to the way that users report tweets that they believe might break Twitter’s rules. Like most social media companies, Twitter has long relied on user reporting to flag potentially policy-violating tweets. But in its new imagining of that system those reports would provide the company with a richer picture
The African tech scene woke up today to exciting news about the landmark acquisition of MainOne, one of the region’s most important and pivotal tech companies in the past decade, by Equinix, a U.S. multinational specializing in internet connection data centers. The story of MainOne starts with founder and CEO Funke Opeke moving back to
Ireland’s embattled data protection regulator, the DPC, has announced the submission of a draft decision sent to other EU DPAs Friday in relation to a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) investigation into Instagram’s handling of children’s data that was opened over a year ago. The DPC announced two statutory inquiries into Instagram, back in October
The app economy will again set new records in 2021. According to a review of the global app ecosystem in 2021 by Sensor Tower, released today, first-time app installs grew to 143.6 billion during the year, a half percentage point higher than 2020, but consumer spending in apps is up a much larger 19.7% year-over-year
One of the biggest pain points for any business, but especially SMEs, is managing payroll. A startup that has built payroll automation software to make the process less painful, Pento, has raised $35 million in a Series B round of funding co-led by Tiger Global Management and Avid Ventures. The investment marks Tiger Global’s first
Nearside, the online bank for SMBs formerly called Hatch, announced today it has raised a $58 million Series B, just seven months after announcing its Series A. The latest round was led by Valar Ventures, with participation from Kleiner Perkins; Foundation Capital; Jim Breyer, the founder of Breyer Capital; Creative Artists Agency founder Michael Ovitz;
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