Welcome back to Chain Reaction. Last week, we looked at the near-term future for crypto gaming as VCs zero in on where to place consumer bets. This week, we’re looking at hardware wallets and the endless journey towards feeling safe in the crypto world. To get this in your inbox every Thursday, you can subscribe
admin
Sequoia Capital Partner Jess Lee speaks exclusively with Emily Chang about Arc, a seed-stage catalyst for founders. They also discuss the macroeconomic environment, future valuations, and backing women-led startups.
There’s never been an easy time to be a musician, but for many in and around the industry, the 21st century has presented one calamity after another for those hoping to make a living through music. The turn of the century saw record labels implode at a staggering rate, and it would be some time
Welcome to The Interchange! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and your vote of confidence. If you’re reading this as a post on our site, sign up here so you can receive it directly in the future. Every week, I’ll take a look at the hottest fintech news of the previous
It’s clear that remote and hybrid work are here to stay — the pandemic forever changed the way many companies do business. But it’s introduced roadblocks from an HR perspective. For example, for payroll, businesses with employees in multiple states face barriers to opening the necessary accounts for disbursements. Others — fearful of the consequences
Red Hat announced a new CEO last month when it promoted 16-year veteran Matt Hicks, who’s been on the job for several weeks now. His predecessor, Paul Cormier, stepped down to move into the chairman role. It’s never easy making a transition like this, but Hicks has Cormier, his longtime mentor, to lean on as he
Welcome to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. Young startups often thrill early adopters by offering outstanding customer service with a personal touch. Many Big Tech companies, on the other hand, are
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann got together with Maggie this week for our weekly roundup show, and per usual, there was a lot to talk about, including the fact that there were
Kontempo, a startup offering buy now, pay later (BNPL) and interest-free installment plans to business-to-business (B2B) customers, today announced that it raised a $30 million seed round in a mix of equity ($6.5 million) and debt ($25 million). CEO and co-founder Matthew Meehan tells TechCrunch that the new cash will be used to hire staff,
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. Gumroad’s Sahil Lavingia broke into the venture world as one of the early testers of the rolling fund, an AngelList product that allows investors to raise capital on a subscription-like basis. That
Hello again! Welcome back to Week in Review, the newsletter where we quickly recap the top stories to cross TechCrunch dot-com over the past seven days. Want it in your inbox? Get it here. The most read story this week is kind of a wild one: Bolt Mobility, an on-demand bike/scooter rental company co-founded by
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. Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by
Jan.27 — Tesla Inc. reported a lower-than-expected sixth consecutive quarter of profit, sending its shares sliding in postmarket trading. Bloomberg’s Ed Ludlow breaks down the numbers on “Bloomberg Markets: The Close.”
We don’t need to tell you about the layoffs that are defining the tech landscape right now, concentrated particularly in late-stage companies that are struggling to raise extension rounds and grow into existing valuations. What we do think is important, though, is focusing on a frustrating trend that is emerging between all these headlines: some
Ghost Security, which its founders describe as an “app security” company, today emerged from stealth with $15 million in combined funding from 468 Capital, DNX Ventures, and Munich Re Ventures at a $50 million valuation. CEO Greg Martin said that the capital will go toward expanding the team, building Ghost’s product, and launching pilots with
Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, said on Friday it doesn’t own India-based platform WazirX despite disclosing the acquisition two and a half years ago in a move that has baffled industry players, including the Indian firm. Changpeng Zhao, founder and chief executive of Binance, said in a series of tweets that
Gumroad’s Sahil Lavingia broke into the venture world as one of the early testers of the rolling fund, an AngelList product that allows investors to raise capital on a subscription-like basis. That was in 2020. Fast-forward to 2022 and a lot has changed. One of those changes? The number of pitches from founders looking to
India’s anti-smuggling agency said that phone-vendor Vivo’s local unit had evaded customs duty of over $280 million, roughly a month after the country’s anti-money laundering agency raided the domestic offices of the Chinese company. The finance ministry said on Wednesday that its Directorate of Revenue Intelligence recovered “incriminating evidence indicating wilful misdeclaration in the description
Jason Richelson Contributor Until recently, tech startups traditionally enjoyed relative freedom from financial oversight from the venture capitalists who funded them. As long as these firms could report progress in developing their products and generating some level of earnings from sales and software subscriptions, they could burn through their millions without having to endure close
Databricks, an enterprise software company focused on data and analytics, announced this morning that it has surpassed a $1 billion annual revenue run rate. The Wall Street Journal first reported news of the financial result. The milestone comes after the company raised a mammoth $1.6 billion round last August at a $38 billion valuation. At the
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. Happy Friday, y’all! Start your weekend off right with some delicious podcast morsels from Equity, Found and Chain Reaction. Also, time is ticking away on a $1,300 savings for TechCrunch Disrupt, so
Project Solar doesn’t make solar panels, nor does it employ crews to plop them on roofs, but the startup argues it can shake up the residential solar business by steering clear of sales reps and automating parts of the ordering, design and installation process. Backed by $23 million in fresh Series A funding led by
Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, said on Friday it doesn’t own India-based platform WazirX despite disclosing the acquisition two and a half years ago. Changpeng Zhao, founder and chief executive of Binance, said in a series of tweets that the company has been “trying to conclude the deal for the past
A year ago, Club Feast, a subscription-based service aiming to disrupt the food delivery industry, emerged from stealth with $3.5 million in seed funding and the backing of prominent investors, including General Catalyst and Pika Capital. Co-founders Atallah Atallah, Ghazi Atallah and Chris Miao claimed that, by working with hundreds of restaurants to create low-priced
Sahil Mansuri Contributor My first month with a sales quota was September 2008 — not the best month for a 21-year-old to start his career by cold calling strangers and convincing them to buy a $10,000 piece of software. The economy was in free fall, companies were slashing workforces nationwide and all budgets were frozen.
Most startups don’t have a clean run from their pre-seed round through an IPO when it comes to fundraising. Quickly growing tech companies sometimes pause at certain stages, raising a little extra cash against their prior round’s terms, for example. This becomes especially true when the economy changes for the worse and startups are incentivized
Users on Twitter have been receiving messages purporting to be from “Twitter Support” urging them to act quickly to avoid suspension, often even from users with a blue check. But these are almost certainly scams — here’s what to look out for, and what it would look like if Twitter actually needed to contact you.
Astra CEO Chris Kemp told investors Thursday that the company will be no longer launch payloads with its current lightweight vehicle, Rocket 3, and will instead remanifest all launches on a considerably larger rocket that’s still under development. It’s a big change for the company, which has operated on the hunch that customers are willing
Last month, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the economy is “in a period of transition,” on the grounds that “we have a very strong labor market. When you are creating almost 400,000 jobs a month, that is not a recession.” Today, we learned that the U.S. added 528,000 new jobs last month and the
The number of emoji subscription purchases on the South Korean messaging app KakaoTalk has dropped by a third over the year, parent firm Kakao said in quarterly earnings call Thursday, blaming Google’s new in-app payment policy, which forces apps to use Android-maker’s own billing system. KakaoTalk’s Emoticon Plus subscription service, which costs approximately $3.8 per