This past month has seen several African fintechs such as Flutterwave and Union54 make headlines for compliance checks and fraud issues. Both unlinked events re-emphasize the importance of know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) checks and why regulators enforce strict policies that financial institutions need to be held accountable to while operating across
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Pinterest may be best known for shopping inspiration and design ideas, but the company’s newest product wants to inspire its users to tap into their own creativity. The company has quietly launched a new iOS app called Shuffles for putting together collages using photos, image cutouts and other animated effects. The app is currently in
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. Monday is here, and we are excited to throw ourselves into another week of summertime tech news. Apropos summer — as the VCs stop answering their phones in favor of drinking elderflower
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Last week we said that you needed to pay attention to the public markets, and we weren’t kidding. It was a huge week for earnings — with notes from all over, including the
Discord announced new measures to bring its Android app into parity with its iOS counterpart today. The changes will improve the app’s experience for Android, which has historically lagged behind the iPhone version of Discord. Discord says the app is now “rebuilt from the ground up” using React Native, a developer framework for making apps
If Pinterest is a bellwether of consumer spending, things are not looking up just yet. Still, investors in the social network rallied as Q2 revenue came in roughly in line with expectations and user declines were not as horrible as they thought. That’s not to say Pinterest’s earnings were good. Pinterest missed on earnings and
The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every weekend in your inbox. Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B. Listen up
With July now behind us, we have a full month of trading data from the NFT market to digest. The numbers are mixed. While there are some positive signals from the non-fungible token market that matter, others are decidedly negative. Trading continues, but at what appears to be a far slower pace. For companies in
Today, Disney+ released a new trailer for the Star Wars series “Andor,” while also revealing that the premiere will be postponed to September 21 to accommodate a three-episode premiere. So not only will the series be the longest live-action Disney+ season with 12 episodes, it will also be the first time Disney+ has had a
Priyanka Srinivas Contributor Priyanka Srinivas is the co-founder and CEO of Live Green Co, a Chilean food tech startup that uses artificial intelligence to suggest plant-based alternatives for meat and artificial additives in food. More posts by this contributor Aiming to create a gender-equitable startup landscape? When it rains, it pours. The dampened outlook for
We asked TechCrunch readers to vote for the roundtable sessions they would most like to see at TC Disrupt on October 18–20 in San Francisco, and startup fans from around the world have spoken. Roundtables — some of the most popular sessions at TechCrunch Disrupt — are 30-minute expert-led discussions designed for up to 20
If the world wants to feed 10 billion people in 2050, it’ll need to find a better way to grow food. Today, about half the world’s habitable land is devoted to agriculture, yet even that amount can’t provide everyone with the sort of diet enjoyed by people in developed countries. If everyone wanted to eat
Spotify is updating its app to address a long-standing user complaint with music playback — but it’s asking customers to pay for the fix. The company announced today it will introduce, at last, a separate Play Button and a Shuffle Button at the top of albums playlists to make it easier to play the music
Oui Capital, an Africa-focused VC firm based in Lagos and Massachusetts, announced today that it has completed the first closing of its $30 million second fund, Oui Capital Mentors Fund II, as it seeks to strengthen its presence on the continent. The firm, founded in 2019 by Olu Oyinsan and Francesco Andreoli, launched its debut fund at $10
Bolt Mobility, the Miami-based micromobility startup co-founded by Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt, appears to have vanished without a trace from several of its U.S. markets. In some cases, the departure has been abrupt, leaving cities with abandoned equipment, unanswered calls and emails and lots of questions. Bolt has stopped operating in at least five
The regulatory environment surrounding crypto is shifting stateside as the SEC takes aim at major players in the web3 world, promising to shake up business as usual with aggressive action. This week on Chain Reaction, we sat down with David Nage. Nage is a Principal at Arca overseeing their early stage fund with a primary
This week, investors get earnings reports from tech giants Apple, Meta, Amazon and more. Kailey Leinz reports on “Bloomberg The Open.”
As the fintech venture market goes, so goes the venture market itself. Why? Because fintech investment has historically made up around one-fifth of every venture dollar invested — at least in recent years. And after both fintech investing and venture capital itself went a bit bonkers last year, both are dealing with a new, more conservative
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
It takes a veritable army to make TechCrunch Disrupt — which takes place October 18–20 in San Francisco — the well-oiled experience that savvy startuppers have come to know and love. And we couldn’t do it nearly as well without our incredible volunteers. If you’re looking for a no-budget way to experience Disrupt up close
While cash from Uncle Sam may not be top of mind for startups, SBA loans can provide low-cost capital Rebecca Szkutak 7 hours What’s the difference between a startup and a small business? Semantics, mostly. As many startups find themselves struggling to raise funds from venture capitalists as financing continues to decline this year, the
As I walked the halls of the massive Boston Convention Center this week for AWS re:Inforce, the division’s annual security event, I spoke to a number of vendors, and one theme was clear: Cloud security really is a shared responsibility. That idea has been around for some time, but it particularly hit home this week
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. Bootstrapped startups, or companies that use their own revenue or existing cash flow to fund growth instead of relying on external capital sources, sit in a very separate box than venture-backed startups.
Today, digital world maker Stadium Live Studios, Inc. announced its $10 million Series A funding round to continue its mission of bringing fantasy sports to a younger generation. The Canadian startup was founded in 2020 by Kevin Kim and Paul Xu with the goal of gamifying the sports fandom and building a “digital playground” of
Figuring out the right text prompts to yield the best results with AI systems like OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 has become a science in its own right. Now a startup is looking to let “prompt engineers” cash in with an online marketplace that sells these finely tuned phrases. PromptBase, launched in June, allows users to sell
Welcome back to Chain Reaction. Last week, we looked at Musk holding onto doge. This week, we’re talking about where all of this crypto VC money is possibly gonna go. To get this in your inbox every Thursday, you can subscribe on TechCrunch’s newsletter page. maybe, it’s all a game? A weekly dispatch from the
Hello hello! Welcome back to Week in Review, the newsletter where we do a quick rundown of the most-read TechCrunch stories from the past week. The idea: When you’ve had a busy few days, you should be able to skim Week in Review and still have a good idea of what’s up lately in tech.
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
Bootstrapped startups, or companies that use their own revenue or existing cash flow to fund growth instead of relying on external capital sources, sit in a very separate box than venture-backed startups. By nature of asset class, bootstrapped startups prioritize revenue to keep alive, while venture-backed startups prioritize growth to keep investor buy-in for future
Kompliant, a startup delivering an “AI-driven” business onboarding and risk scoring platform, today announced that it raised $14 million in a seed round led by Level One Fund with contributions from former Visa president John Partridge and Current CEO Stuart Sopp. The funds will be put toward supporting Kompliant’s product development, CEO Edward Katzin told