Raphael Mukomilow Contributor Raphael Mukomilow is partner and head of growth at Picus Capital. His focus is later-stage and growth investments. Pierre Bourdon Contributor Pierre Bourdon is an investor at Picus Capital. After the challenging year that was 2022, one might think that the coming months are not looking great for VCs or founders. But,
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David Magerman Contributor The global economic and political turmoil of the past year has had a meaningful impact on corporate innovation in the technology industry and beyond. The worldwide battle with COVID, the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the economic fallout of the COVID lockdowns and supply chain disruptions have together created a painful combination of a
You probably haven’t heard of Brane Audio yet, but trust me on this one: You will. One of my highlights at CES in Las Vegas today was listening to the company’s debut speaker, the Brane X, side-by-side with some other well-known speaker brands. The company’s founder has a background from high-precision magnetics, and after exiting
After surpassing 1.02 billion total hours viewed in the third week of its debut, Netflix’s “Wednesday” has been renewed for a second season, the company announced today. The series originally premiered in November with eight episodes. It’s centered around the popular “Addams Family” character, Wednesday Addams (played by Jenna Ortega), as she begins her first
HealthAtom is aiming to be the go-to cloud-based operations system for small and midsize healthcare companies across Latin America (LatAm). Although the company has been around since 2012, this is the first time it has announced fresh capital, in the amount of $10 million. HealthAtom’s medilink and dentalink software suites let clinics create schedules, manage
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. We’ve made it to Friday! If you are looking for a good podcast episode, I highly recommend today’s Equity where Natasha M, Mary Ann and Becca talk about CES, NYE, SBF and
From the desk of ‘I’m not sure this is a good idea’ at CES in Las Vegas, comes 444. The early-stage startup is planning to combine pepper spray with some electronics so a potential attack victim’s friends can be notified when they’ve had to deploy the defence spray to get themselves out of a bind.
In November, Netflix unveiled its long-anticipated ad-supported tier which offers customers in select markets, including the U.S., the ability to offset the cost of a Netflix subscription by allowing their viewing to be interrupted with ad breaks. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Netflix President of Worldwide Advertising, Jeremi Gorman, offered some initial
It’s impossible to plan for everything that can go wrong while building a startup. A definitive founder’s guide would have to include chapters like, “So you’ve hired the wrong person,” or, “Five ways to tell if an investor is lying to you.” A definitive guide would have to include chapters like, “So you’ve hired the
Market headwinds continue to dog startups chasing venture backing. That’s the top-level finding of a new PitchBook report that looked at VC trends toward the end of 2022, specifically Q4, including investments made at the seed, late-stage and nearing-the-exit levels. First, the good news: “On an annual basis, angel- and seed-stage deal activity remained relatively
AR tech sounds pretty cool, but nobody wants to be a glasshole. Today at CES, we checked out Lumus‘ bid to make AR glasses a little bit less cringe. The company creates a series of glasses that look, well, more or less like glasses, and are compatible with prescription lenses, too. The new glasses are
Verizon last month introduced a new subscription service aggregator, +Play, into open beta, allowing its customers to purchase and manage subscriptions to over 20 services, including Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, ESPN+, discovery+, AMC+, NFL+, NBA League Pass and NBA TV. But while the initial version of the service is expected to launch in the
Bloomberg’s Sonali Basak and Bloomberg Technology’s Emily Chang discuss the Super Bowl 2022 phenomenon: crypto ads and crypto bets.
Apartment living can be a lonely life, but OneRoof is here to change that. The company offers a hyperlocal social network app meant to connect people in the same residential building around common interests like hobbies and to even organize around a common goal. The pre-revenue company has grown up a lot since we profiled
Indian fintech KreditBee has raised an additional $100 million in a funding round, it said, as the lender looks to scale its business in the South Asian market. The new cash infusion is part of the larger Series D funding, which KreditBee said has now closed at $200 million. The new funding, led by Advent
At CES, the company launches battery backup, a lawnmower, a portable A/C and a portable fridge Haje Jan Kamps 21 hours Today at its special launch event, home backup power giant EcoFlow launched a flurry of new products, including a ‘Whole-home Backup Power Solution.’ The company also launched a battery-powered fridge and a portable battery-powered
Roku reached a new milestone in 2022, the company announced today, surpassing 70 million active accounts globally, an increase of nearly 10 million users year over year. The company had 60.1 million accounts in Q4 2021 and 65.4 million in Q3 2022. Roku also reported a 19% year over year jump in global streaming hours.
There isn’t much hope that 2023’s fundraising environment will be better for startups than last year’s. It seems likely that it will get worse before it gets better — even at the earliest stages, which have largely been insulated thus far. But for burgeoning companies capable of building business models that reflect current conditions and
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, I hope it is a great Thursday for you so far. For me, it’s the little things that get me excited and today it is Delta Air Lines’ announcement that SkyMiles
Toyota has been taking a beating in the press these days. The new Prius, arguably the company’s standard bearer, has been damned with faint praise. One review called it “the best CD player in a download world.” Beyond that, the company has been called out for lobbying against California’s right to set emissions standards and
It’s the first official day of CES and our team has already located dozens of the coolest new gadgets, features, and weird concept cars that probably will never see the light of day. Halo (not Amazon’s Halo) has a wearable for babies that tracks heart rate, rollover, skin temperature, and movement. 10,000 steps a day
The COVID-19 pandemic brought video production to its knees, but the show must go on, and necessity is the mother of invention. Studiobox leapt into the breech, creating an interview studio in a box. For the interviewee, a rugged case shows up, delivered by a friendly FedEx delivery person. They open it, plug it in,
Tesla shares hit a session low. Investors seem to be worried that CEO Elon Musk has too much on his plate. Ed Ludlow reports on “Bloomberg Markets: The Close.” Like this video? Subscribe to Bloomberg Technology on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrM7B7SL_g1edFOnmj-SDKg Watch the latest full episodes of “Bloomberg Technology” with Emily Chang here: Get the latest in
Jonathan Martinez Contributor Jonathan Martinez is a former YouTuber, UC Berkeley alum and growth marketing nerd who’s helped scale Uber, Postmates, Chime and various startups. More posts by this contributor Growth hacking is really just growth testing Why growth activation matters Without customers, there can be no business. So how can you drive new customers
Venture capitalists are in the business of predicting the next big thing, even if they get burned in the process. While everyone piled onto crypto in 2021 — and many remain bullish about its future despite multiple failures this year — 2022 saw the rise of generative AI. But as is the case with any
Today at CES 2023, a great-big tech conference in Vegas, Mercedes-Benz announced its answer to range anxiety and the great electric-vehicle charger shortage. Following the likes of Tesla and GM, the German automaker shared a plan to develop a 10,000-charger network by 2030, starting with the U.S. and Canada, and later expanding into China, Europe
A rare privacy penalty for Apple: France’s data protection watchdog, the CNIL, has announced it imposed a sanction of €8 million (~$8.5M) on the iPhone maker for not obtaining local mobile users’ consent prior to placing (and/or reading) ad identifiers on their devices in breach of local data protection law. The sanction decision was issued on
Come on in, the water is lovely. You wouldn’t have thought there was space for more players in the busy soup that’s the crowded sous-vide market, but Typhur begs to differ, thank you very much. At CES in Las Vegas, the company released an exquisitely designed $99 temperature sensor and announced its flagship product, the
Disney+ is going to add support for enhanced IMAX signature sound by DTS to select Marvel films and more in 2023. The streaming service has been offering movies in an IMAX Enhanced format for more than a year now, and plans to expand the experience even further with this upcoming addition. Disney Streaming, in partnership
Profet AI, a Taiwanese startup that makes auto machine learning software for manufacturers, announced today it has raised $5.6 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Darwin Ventures. Returning investors Hive Ventures, AUO and SVTI also participated, along with Harbinger VC and Jensen Capital Management. Founded in 2018, Profet AI’s customers include