Marjorie Radlo-Zandi Contributor Marjorie Radlo-Zandi is an entrepreneur, board member, mentor to startups and angel investor who shows early-stage businesses how to build and successfully scale their businesses. More posts by this contributor Does your startup have enough runway? 5 factors to consider Be an entrepreneur who leads with transparency As an entrepreneur, you’ll find
Month: July 2022
The UK government has tabled an amendment to the Online Safety Bill that could put it on a collision course with end-to-end encryption. It’s proposing to give the incoming Internet regulator, Ofcom, new powers to force messaging platforms and other types of online services to implement content-scanning technologies, even if their platform is strongly encrypted
Nothing, the consumer tech company started by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei and known for its aggressive marketing, unveils a non-fungible token project called Black Dot. Its fans are skeptical. Black Dot is a video clip featuring a rotating, transparent cube with a black dot bouncing off the walls inside and making a crispy, metallic sound.
During the most recent Y Combinator startup batch, Peakflo stood out to TechCrunch. The company’s simple pitch — Bill.com for Southeast Asia — fit neatly into the broader narrative of the world increasingly digitizing its workflows and the generally hot market we’d seen for fintech companies. At the time, we noted that “there are huge
South Korean AI chip developer Rebellions has raised a $22.8 million (30 million KRW) extension to its Series A financing from a strategic investor KT, one of the largest telecom companies in South Korea. Last month, TechCrunch reported on Rebellions closing on $50 million in funding that valued the company at an estimated $283 million. At
Creating and grading tests is one of the most time-consuming tasks teachers need to deal with. In Vietnam, a startup called Azota wants to help with an online software platform that not only helps educators develop and proctor tests, but also automatically grades them using information from Vietnamese teaching materials. The company announced today it
My work in early-stage startups focused on operations, so I used Wikipedia to find the formula for calculating a company’s post-money valuation: PMV = N x P N = number of shares the company has post-investment P = price per share at which the investment was made So, if a company offers a round with
Automotive e-commerce company Autochek has expanded to three new African countries after acquiring CoinAfrique, a classified ad marketplace, nearly two months after the Nigerian startup acquired Moroccan auto marketplace KIFAL Auto, marking its foray into North Africa. Autochek said it will tap CoinAfrique’s regional customer base in Francophone Africa to accelerate its car financing services.
Amazon tried but then ultimately stepped away from building its own cost-intensive Grubhub and DoorDash competitor in the U.S. back in 2019. Now three years on, it’s taking a different approach to tackling the space to build in one more sweetener to encourage more sign-ups to its Prime subscription service. Today, the e-commerce giant and
Over the weekend, Tesla showed off its latest gadget: a solar trailer, featuring extendable panels, a satellite internet terminal and even a lick of matte-black paint. Tesla may have designed the trailer to add some range to electric vehicles—or, to advertise Starlink’s new $25-per-month “portability” feature, which SpaceX announced in May. Whatever it’s for, you
Loft, a Brazilian proptech unicorn, has laid off about 380 employees, or 12% of its workforce, the company announced today. The layoff marks the company’s second round of cuts this year so far. In April, Bloomberg Linea had reported that Loft had cut 159 jobs. That would mean that Loft has let go of nearly 540
Voyantis, a startup developing tools to estimate a customer’s lifetime value, today emerged from stealth with $19 million in seed funding from Target Global, Square Peg, Schusterman Family Investments, Kaedan Capital and Operator Partners. CEO Ido Wiesenberg tells TechCrunch that the funds will be used to expand Voyantis’ product offering and support more use cases
Jordan Kretchmer founded Rapid Robotics with the mission of simplifying robotics for manufacturing by providing out-of-the-box automation solutions. Founded in 2019, the company quickly gained the attention of top VCs, including Bee Partners, which led Rapid Robotics’ seed round and participated in each of the following rounds. Hear Rapid Robotics’ pitch and learn why robotic
Rhode Island leaped ahead in the race to 100% renewable power last week as Governor Dan McKee signed a bill that would mandate the state reach the target by 2033, the most aggressive state target so far. Only Oregon comes close, and it’s shooting for 2040. In some respects, Rhode Island has it easy. With
HBO Max will cease new original programming in parts of Europe and the company will also shut down Cinemax’s TV Everywhere platform, Cinemax Go as its parent company Warner Bros. Discovery moves through a restructuring. As reported by Variety on Monday, HBO Max originals like Hungarian drama “The Informant,” Swedish comedy “Lust,” and “Kamikaze” from
The burgeoning low-code and no-code movement is showing little sign of waning, with numerous startups continuing to raise sizable sums to help the less-technical workforce develop and deploy software with ease. Arguably one of the most notable examples of this trend is Airtable, a 10-year-old business that recently attained a whopping $11 billion valuation for a
Glance, a subsidiary of adtech giant InMobi Group, is planning to launch its lock screen platform on Android smartphones in the U.S. within two months, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The startup is engaging with wireless carriers in the U.S. for partnerships and is gearing up to launch on several smartphone models
Research shows that more than half of Americans can’t read very well. Their reading skill is below a sixth-grade level. As a startup founder, that is an important statistic. It is something you have to pay attention to. Especially if you are creating a company for regular folks. In a world of apps and websites,
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Alex and Grace are back to cover the biggest, boldest and baddest technology news. We are back on Tuesday, as the United States was off yesterday. So a day late, but hopefully not a dollar
This week on the TechCrunch Podcast our host, Managing Editor Darrell Etherington talks with TC’s Amanda Silberling about VidCon and the creator economy coming of age. He also speaks to Aria Alamalhodaei about NASA and Rocket Lab launching a scouting mission for a future orbital Moon base. And as always, you’ll get a rundown of
Take a few minutes right now to score two-for-one passes to TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco on October 18-20. This holiday flash-sale won’t last forever. In fact, it ends today, July 5, at precisely 11:59 pm (PT). The sale applies to every pass level — General Admission, Investor and Student / Non-Profit. Buy a two-for-one
The U.K. government is pushing to make “foreign interference” such as disinformation a priority offence under its proposed Online Safety Bill, forcing technology firms to remove contravening content shared by foreign state actors. The move follows recent legislation announced by the U.K. that is designed to deter foreign state actors seeking to “undermine U.K. interests,”
Google has stopped providing updates to popular messaging app KakaoTalk in South Korea, according to a local report, after Kakao continued using an external payment link in its Android app, against Google’s new in-app payments policy. Google’s new policy requires developers selling digital goods and services to use Google’s first-party billing system, but Kakao has
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Quantum computing has been making quantum leaps of progress in the last several years — going from theoretical concept to multiple testing environments, to help organizations prep for a time when quantum computers, and their unparalleled processing power, become a scaled reality. Now, UK-based Oxford Quantum Circuits is announcing £38 million ($47 million) in funding
Live in India, Singapore-based MarketWolf has plans to introduce stock trading to first-time investors in more markets. The platform announced today it has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Singaporean venture capital firm Jungle Ventures and Mumbai-based Dream Capital. Returning investors 9Unicorns, iSeed, Crescent and Riverwalk also participated. This brings MarketWolf’s total
Remember Meizu, the once-promising competitor to Xiaomi? The Alibaba-backed Chinese smartphone maker is making a comeback — in a way — as it gets acquired by the founder of Geely, China’s largest private automaker and Volvo’s parent comapny. China’s smartphone industry is notoriously competitive. Founded in 2003, Meizu has been making affordable, trendy Android-based smartphones
YC-backed climate tech startup, Pina Earth, has closed a $2.5 million seed round of funding a year after being founded and a few months since it presented at the accelerator’s Winter 2022 Demo Day in March. The seed is led by Franco-German VC XAnge, with participation from London-based VC firm Nordstar, as well as a
Despite the economic downturn and perilous position many startups find themselves in, some industries are seeing continued momentum in terms of inwards investments — one of those is climate tech. In 2021 alone, some $40 billion was invested across more than 600 deals, a trend that is seemingly continuing into 2022 with significant capital plowed
Indian fitness platform, Ultrahuman, is expanding its wearable portfolio by launching a smart ring to boost its ability to provide tech loving ‘biohackers’ — and, it hopes, health-concerned Boomers — with more insightful metabolic insights. Sensors embedded in the forthcoming Ultrahuman Ring include temperature, heart rate and movement monitors, which enable the device to track