It’s been a 12-year journey for Purely Elizabeth founder Elizabeth Stein, and based on her plans for the company’s next phase, she is just getting started. Stein, who began her career as a holistic nutrition counselor, started the company in 2009 after going back to school and learning about superfood ingredients and food as medicine,
Month: January 2022
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This Monday show actually felt a bit old-school, in that the weekend controversy in tech has spilled over into the working morning, meaning that we need to talk about it. But first, markets:
Deepnote, a startup that is building a data science platform on top of Jupyter-compatible notebooks, today announced that it has raised a $20 million Series A round co-led by Index Ventures and Accel, both of which also participated in its 2020 seed round. Existing investors Y Combinator and Credo Ventures also participated in this round.
Our behavior at restaurants and venues has changed massively in the last two years because of the pandemic, but many of us have realized the huge advantages of being able to order via phones from the table, or even pay, instead of the usual ‘credit card dance’. French startup Sunday, which didn’t even exist in
A new Pinterest feature will allow consumers to see what furniture or other home décor items will look like in their own home, using augmented reality (AR). Similar technology has already been put into place by major retailers, like Amazon, IKEA or Wayfair, as well as others in the home design space, like Houzz. In
The Egyptian social e-commerce market will be worth over $14.8 billion by 2024. The opportunity in the market can be attributed to the growth in online social sellers in the country, over 1.25 million them, helping little-known brands sell and distribute their goods via different networks. Brimore–a market leader in the country and, to an
French startup Pennylane has raised a $57 million Series B round (€50 million) from existing investors, such as Sequoia Capital, Global Founders Capital and Partech. The startup wants to replace legacy accounting solutions in France — and in Europe. If you’re an accountant, you might be familiar with tools like Cegid and Sage. Essentially, Pennylane
Joby Aviation is seeking permission for a series of high-profile air taxi flights over San Francisco Bay, according to documents filed with the FCC and obtained by TechCrunch. The tests of the startup’s second-generation pre-production prototype, called the S4, would be the first in full view of the public and the first in an urban
Elise King Contributor Elise King is program director of Human Ventures’ entrepreneur-in-residence program and is a member of the firm’s investment team. At Human Ventures, we have a fund for pre-seed and seed-stage investments, a venture studio and an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) program. Through this work, we’ve discovered a lot about how different founders
Welcome to my new weekly fintech-focused column. It’s an incredible time to be a financial technology journalist. Besides the fact that over 20% of all venture dollars last year went into fintech startups, I am particularly excited about the many ways that this technology is helping boost inclusion all over the world. While this pandemic
Jason Wenk Contributor Fintech founders that set out to solve big problems for consumers almost always begin with the best intentions — they want to help people. But they often miss that mark by a country mile, which spurs questions about how effective other fintech founders can be at helping consumers. Trust me, when you
Last year we covered how early blockchain startup Propy planned to use the technology to smooth real-world real estate sales by introducing the concept of smart contracts. It went on to actually sell an apartment as an NFT, using the NFT to effectively rubber stamps the legal process. However, that apart was in Ukraine. Today
Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this week’s startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. The market is down. The party is over. And Peloton of X startups aren’t too happy right now. As tech stocks take a hit, the big question on my mind is how
Meet Rise, a new startup working on a calendar app that is specifically designed for team work. Rise helps you see what you have planned, check what you team is doing right now and, more importantly, schedule meetings that are as convenient as possible for the whole team. Currently in private beta, Rise raised $3
Remember the backlash over that impossible-to-understand privacy policy update pushed out by WhatsApp last year? A consumer protection complaint over the messaging platform’s aggressive push to make users accept impenetrable terms changes related to its use of their data continues to rumble on in the European Union — now shifting up a gear into a formal
Today’s cars are dumb where they should be smart, and smart where they should be dumb. Enough already. Make a car that’s pretty much all dumb and watch it sell — because what automakers are giving people is so bad, they’ll pay more to have less of it. Cars now are like budget smartphones with
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for January 28, 2022! It’s nearly blizzard o’clock where I am, so please enjoy the following newsletter as my final missive before hunkering down. In happier
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. We had the full crew aboard today, headed by our superlative production team Grace and Chris, and hosting crew Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex. What did we get into? Well, a host of pretty awesome stuff, even if
Zapp, the instant grocery delivery startup that launched in 2020 in London, has picked up a substantial round of funding to go head-to-head with Getir, GoPuff, Jiffy, Deliveroo and the many others hungry for a share of the on-demand convenience market. It has raised $200 million, a Series B round of funding that Zapp said
As a company grows, the amount of important information employees need to keep track of inevitably grows right along with it. And, as your tech stack gets more complicated, that information ends up split up across more places — buried in Slack threads, tucked into Jira tickets, pushed as files on Dropbox, etc. Dashworks is
The 2020-2021 trading and investing boom lifted a number of companies’ revenue growth, fundraising and narrative strength. Some of the best-known even went public on the back of a global trend that made their businesses shine. Now that shine is fading, and the value of select fintech concerns is in free-fall. The best example of
One of the most popular applications of artificial intelligence to date has been to use it to predict things, using algorithms trained with historical data to determine a future outcome. But popularity doesn’t always mean success: predictive AI leaves out a lot of the nuance, context and cause-and-effect reasoning that goes into an outcome; and
Global smartphone shipments had already begun to shrink ahead of 2020, though two years of a pandemic and the resulting supply chain and chip constraints certainly didn’t help the overall figures. According to a pair of reports from Counterpoint Research and IDC, however, the market finally experienced growth last year for first time since 2017.
The idea of starting your own business can be overwhelming — often to the point of paralysis. Here’s the thing: You’re not alone. Here’s the other thing: It doesn’t have to be that way. If that drive to be your own boss won’t let you sleep at night, then TechCrunch Early Stage is an absolute must-attend
He Huang Contributor He Huang is a partner at Northern Light Venture Capital supporting early-stage enterprise companies. It’s been a tumultuous few years, but China’s manufacturing industry is now on the rebound. Once an industry characterized by low-end manufacturing and intensive labor, it has transformed into a high-end manufacturing hub aided by technology. Automation and
South Korean internet conglomerate Naver Group continues to ride the hottest internet trends targeting young users. It has been the name behind messaging giant Line and popular selfie app Snow. And now, it’s charging into the metaverse, the red hot concept that makes Roblox, Epic Games and other gaming giants the talk of the town.
Four months after a seed round, Ascend is back with its first big boost to enable the company to expand its “buy now, pay later” commercial insurance tool that combines financing, collections and payables. Today, the company announced $30 million in Series A funding along with $250 million in lending to finance insurance premium loans
I could spend hours discussing early-stage startup operations and community-based marketing, but deal flow is my blind spot. But when investment banking firm UBS picked up financial robot-advisor Wealthfront for $1.4 billion in an all-cash deal this week, I noticed. “At those prices, the company’s exit price is a win in that it represents a
Bolt, the Estonian mobility tech company that recently closed a huge round, is planning to onboard an additional 200,000 drivers in Africa this year, as it kicks-off expansion to more cities within its existing markets while keeping up with the growing demand for e-hailing services across the continent. Bolt’s Africa regional director, Paddy Partridge, told
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