Vincent Aiello Contributor Spencer Fane attorney and business owner Vincent Aiello helps businesses solve legal problems to secure revenue flow and reduce business risks. Whoever said you can’t have your cake and eat it too should have called their accountants and lawyers first. These professionals often receive inquiries from founders, equity investment firms and venture
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Miguel Fernandez Contributor Miguel Fernandez is CEO and co-founder of Capchase, which provides non-dilutive financing to SaaS and comparable recurring-revenue companies. More posts by this contributor Use alternative financing to fuel VC-level growth without diluting ownership A few years ago, founders only had two options when starting a company — bootstrap yourself or turn to
Kuda, the London-based and Nigerian-operating startup taking on incumbents in the country with a mobile-first and personalized set of banking services, is expanding to the U.K. by offering a remittance product to Nigerians in the diaspora. The digital bank has seen some success since launching in Nigeria in 2019. Kuda claims to have up to
DeviantArt, the Wix-owned artist community, today announced a new protection for creators to disallow art-generating AI systems from being developed using their artwork. An option on the site will allow artists to preclude third parties from scraping their content for AI development purposes, aiming to prevent work from being swept up without artists’ knowledge or
Last year, OpenAI announced the OpenAI Startup Fund, a tranche through which it and its partners, including Microsoft, are investing in early-stage AI companies tackling major problems. Mum’s been the word since on which companies have received infusions from the Fund. But today, the OpenAI Startup Fund revealed that it led a $23.5 million investment
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Tech reporting is a lot of things, but it sure ain’t boring, as the chaos around Twitter, crypto, and layoffs continues. We’re just trying to hang on for dear life to try
Mental health problems — and the tech products which aim at them — come in all shapes and sizes. There are “mental wellness” products like Calm and Headspace. On the more severe side of things there is Cerebral, Betterhelp and, of course, marketplaces for actual, card-carrying therapists. If you have more moderate mental health problems
Syneroid recently raised a $500,000 round of funding to bring something halfway between microchips and dog collars to market. The company is finding some interesting slices of the market, but the deck, overall, leaves a few things to be desired. We learn more from mistakes than from perfection, so I figured it’d be a great
One of the most popular activities at a TechCrunch conference is watching top-notch early-stage founders square off in a pitch competition. Seriously, who doesn’t love a pitch-off? And the Crypto Pitch-off is just one more compelling reason to go to TechCrunch Sessions: Crypto on November 17 in Miami. Let’s take a look at the judges
Twitter’s painstakingly layered infosphere looks to be light-speeding back to chaotic noise under new owner Elon Musk. The billionaire is no fan of meritocratic signals nor, it seems, a friend to genuine information — preferring anyone pay him $8/m to have their account on his microblogging social network badged with a check-mark that looks like
Maybe you’ve heard of Keyo. Perhaps you saw the initial round of press the firm did in 2017 — roughly two years after its founding. Or maybe you saw it pop back in 2020, riding the wave of news around Amazon’s lukewarmly received hand-scanner tech. You may have wondered precisely what’s been going on with
Amagi, which offers cloud broadcast and targeted advertising software to scores of media and entertainment giants, has raised a large new funding round as it looks to expand its tech offerings and invest in an AI-powered personalization stack. General Atlantic led a new round of over $100 million, which included about $20 million in secondary
There are a lot of changes afoot for SpringTime Ventures as it looks to deploy its freshly closed second fund. For one, the Denver-based firm is pivoting away from its original focus on its home state of Colorado, despite being the only local fund in two of the state’s 10 unicorn companies. It’s also now
Crypto is not having a good week, as Bitcoin crashed to under $17,000 — its lowest level in two years. The stock market continues to post declines as layoffs abound. Meanwhile, inflation recently reached a 40-year high. For those looking for a safe place to park their cash and actually earn a decent amount of
Cleantech startup Airly wants to help communities around the world improve air quality with affordable sensors and software that provides actionable insights. Based in London and Krakow, the startup announced today it has raised $5.5 million. The round was led by firstminute capital and Pi Labs, with participation from returning investors like the Sir Richard
When people think about the cloud computing industry, three names come to mind — Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. And yet, smaller cloud companies are still doing well. OVHcloud, a French company that has been around since 1999, is one of them. Of course, cloud computing wasn’t even a thing in 1999.
Roku announced today that the home screen menu will now include a new “Sports” tab that gives sports fans instant access to sports events, upcoming events and on-demand sports-related content. The feature on the Roku Home Screen has already begun to roll out to some users and will be gradually added to all Roku devices
We’re packing our bags and getting pumped about flying to Miami for TC Sessions: Crypto on November 17. What about you? Don’t miss your chance to rub elbows with the kings and queens of blockchain, cryptocurrency, DeFi, NFT and web3 — the current rulers and the up-and-coming contenders for the crown. Buy your pass today
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Whooo-weee interesting times for crypto land, as Bitcoin crashes down to under $17,000 for the first time in a while. Wild, given that the cryptocurrency was trading at $65,000 or so a
California voters shot down a plan to make electric vehicles more affordable for some residents, dealing a blow to Lyft and the EV industry alike. Proposition 30 would have taxed residents making more than $2 million a year to subsidize electric cars and public charging stations as well as funded wildfire prevention programs. Even with
Startups might be in a funding midwinter, but the ray of sun shining on some VCs speaks of a different trend. EQT Ventures, the venture fund arm of Sweden’s investment giant EQT making early-stage bets on startups primarily in Europe, has closed its latest fund and filled its coffers with €1 billion (and $1.1 billion
When the pandemic slammed into our shores a couple of years ago, many of us were shoo-ed inside, doomed to endless Zoom meetings. At the time, Canon released a beta of its EOS Webcam Utility, and then seemed to pretty much forget about it. Until today. In a ‘geez, Canon, this would have been helpful
Kabam, the gaming company that has developed mobile games in partnership with entertainment brands including Disney, Marvel and Universal, has laid off about 7% — around 35 people — of its workforce, TechCrunch has learned from sources and confirmed with the company over email. The Vancouver-based company informed the affected employees about the move earlier
Twitter’s new CEO and owner Elon Musk is rattling the cage at his social network and ruffling a lot of feathers both inside and outside of the company. But while some in the tech world describe that kind of chaos as a garbage fire, others see it as something very different: an opportunity. Years-old federated
Meet Plain, a new startup that wants to reinvent support tools. While the customer support space is a competitive industry with big tech companies like Intercom and Zendesk, Plain believes it has a different approach as it focuses on API integrations to make your company’s product and your support platform work hand in hand. Plain
Peacock announced that on November 30, its Premium Plus subscribers will get 24/7 access to their local NBC station in all of NBC’s 210 markets, including live TV programming like local news, sports, weather and entertainment. Subscribers will soon be able to livestream popular programs like “The TODAY Show,” “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon”
Celonis has made a big impact since it launched in 2011, raising $2.4 billion along the way. Its most recent investment, a $1 billion raise in August, was on a $13.2 billion post-money valuation, the kind of money you haven’t been seeing in 2022. The company has primarily made its reputation by using software for
Equals, a New York-based startup ambitiously aiming to challenge Excel’s dominance with a supercharged spreadsheet, today announced that it raised $16 million in a Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from Craft Ventures, Box Group, Worklife and Combine. Co-founded by Ben McRedmond and Bobby Pinero, two former Intercom employees, Equals
Californians seem to be voting against a proposal on the midterm election ballot that would tax the wealthiest Californians to help pay for electric vehicle tax incentives and EV charging infrastructure in the state. With about 53% of the state’s votes counted, Proposition 30 was losing 57.3% to 42.7%, according to California’s Secretary of State. California
We knew it was happening, but U.K.-based online furniture and home accessories retailer Made.com has officially entered administration, confirming previous reports with the appointment yesterday of PricewaterhouseCoopers as administrators. While Made.com had revealed that it was in discussions with potential buyers, nothing materialized in time and the company ceased taking new orders in late October,