Month: January 2022

Mention Me, a platform to generate customer referrals, has raised a $25m Series B round, led by London’s Octopus Ventures. Eight Roads Ventures, the lead investor from the prior round, a $7 million Series A in a 2018, also participated. The London-based startup helps businesses turn referrals into a channel for acquiring customers, while also gathering data
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Gary York Contributor Gary York is the CEO of Help Lightning. He is a serial entrepreneur with four successful software and services exits: three private sales and one IPO. Business leaders are responsible for examining and implementing technologies that are proven, cost-effective and easy to use while also offering long-term solutions that reimagine workflows, speed
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Dublin-based Exergyn replaces refrigerants with solid materials, thus reducing the output of greenhouse gases. The technology could be applicable in data centers. The industrial-grade cleantech company has now raised a $35 million (€30 million) Series A round led by Mercuria, an energy and commodities company, and Lacerta Partners, a family office-backed fund. Also participating was
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I’ve worked at early-stage startups where we relied on our best guesses to shape product pipelines and develop marketing strategies. I have also held jobs at companies where we engaged directly with current and past customers to ask them what they wanted. You can probably guess which approach generated more favorable outcomes. Whether it’s done
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The European Union’s chief privacy and data protection regulator has urged EU policymakers to strengthen proposed ‘transparency’ rules for political ads — calling instead for meaningful limits that would fully ban microtargeting for political purposes. The Commission proposal to regulate political ads, last fall, fell very far short of that — offering what this publication
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French payroll startup PayFit is now valued at $2.1 billion after raising a $289 million Series E round. It’s not France’s only recent unicorn, though: Ankorstore, Qonto, Exotec and Spendesk also joined the club this month. If you add Back Market’s $510 million Series E round valuing the company at $5.7 billion, things are shaping
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Since the Ant Group IPO was canceled by central authorities, China’s government has been on a regulatory tear. You know the broad outlines: After a lengthy period of growth, capital investment and aggressive business practices, China’s central government spent much of 2021 reining in its technology sector. While some of the actions were reasonable from
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Partech Shaker, the innovation division of the Paris-based VC firm Partech, has launched an accelerator program christened Chapter54 to help European startups launch in African markets. The accelerator will take in 10 technology startups annually over the next four years for the Chapter54 program, which will last up to eight months. Application for the inaugural
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A major Senate bill that would prevent tech companies from giving preference to their own products and services just passed a significant hurdle in Congress, bringing it one step closer to becoming law. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted today on the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, moving the prominent antitrust bill toward a vote
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Jamil Wyne Contributor Jamil Wyne is an advisor, investor and author focusing on entrepreneurship, technology and economic development in emerging markets. He has worked with the World Bank, IFC, UN, Clean Energy Venture Group, Schmidt Futures, Ashoka, and other organizations. Abrar Chaudhury Contributor Dr. Abrar Chaudhury is a climate finance research fellow at Oxford Said
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The European Parliament has definitively backed major limits on behavioral advertising during a plenary vote on amendments to the pan-EU Digital Services Act (DSA). The move looks set to crank up pressure on Big Tech business models that rely on pervasive tracking and profiling of users to target ads — with adtech duopoly Facebook and
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TikTok is testing support for paid subscriptions, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Thursday. As first reported by The Information, the popular short-form video app is exploring the option for creators to charge subscriptions for their content. The feature is part of a limited test for the time being and is not broadly available. TikTok
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Berlin-based Cherry Ventures has launched its fourth fund, a €300 million ($340 million) early-stage tech fund. The Cherry IV fund will also feature a dedicated crypto and web3 strategy, building off Cherry’s existing portfolio in the space. Cherry’s portfolio includes unicorns Flink and SellerX, Infarm, as well as AUTO1 Group, FlixBus, flaschenpost, Forto, Xometry and
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