Welcome to my weekly fintech-focused column. I’ll be publishing this every Sunday, so in between posts, be sure to listen to the Equity podcast and hear Alex Wilhelm, Natasha Mascarenhas and me riff on all things startups! And if you want to have this hit your inbox directly once it officially turns into a newsletter
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Perfect pitch, a singer’s ability to produce any given musical note without a reference tone, is a rare phenomenon — only 1-5 people out of every 10,000 have it. While your odds of creating a perfect pitch deck that captures coveted VC interest aren’t quite that dire, they’re not exactly in your favor, either. Venture
Late-stage SaaS startups may be in the most trouble when it comes to changing valuation marks among technology companies, new data indicates. A report from Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) exploring first-quarter software startup trends details that late-stage SaaS valuations in the United States scaled the most rapidly in 2021, closing out the year with the
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. Saying goodbye to Q1 What a week. If you were plugged in to the startup news cycle recently, you’ve been busy. Y Combinator dropped hundreds of new startups
A survey of Y Combinator companies makes it clear that the fintech subsector is far from dead Alex Wilhelm Anna Heim 7 hours Given the recent run of concerned headlines that insurtech companies have generated, you’d be forgiven for anticipating that the startup category would find itself in dire straits. Not a bit of it.
Arena founder Paulo Martins grew up in Brazil playing video games, an industry that thrives on building communities among the players. Later, he came to the U.S., where he was an early employee at Hulu, helping the streaming TV service grow to over 7 million subscribers and $1 billion in revenue. When it came time
TechCrunch Live has an exciting slate of episodes scheduled for April. The speakers come from a variety of disciplines, backgrounds and locations. Like always, each episode features an entrepreneur presenting their early pitch deck along with the investor who funded the company. We want to know how the founder hooked the VC, what makes their
Clubhouse is launching a protected profile setting to allow users to only make their full profile available to people they approve as followers, the company announced on Wednesday. The change is being implemented in response to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine in an effort to keep users protected on the platform. “We’re grateful we’ve become
The European Union’s planned risk-based framework for regulating artificial intelligence includes powers for oversight bodies to order the withdrawal of a commercial AI system or require that an AI model be retrained if it’s deemed high risk, according to an analysis of the proposal by a legal expert. That suggests there’s significant enforcement firepower lurking
Grayscale Investments CEO Michael Sonnenshein discusses the outlook for crypto and its oversight with Kailey Leinz and Guy Johnson on “Bloomberg Markets.”
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here. A fine day to you, and welcome to Daily Crunch for Friday, April 1, 2022! It was a slow news day at TC Towers because we double-checked every PR pitch for April
Startups are once again considering layoffs as a way to control cash consumption and attract new capital. News that Fast, a one-click checkout software provider targeting the e-commerce market, is offering sharp staff cuts to investors in hopes of securing new capital is notable, but a single data point. A public database tracking startup layoffs,
Like most smartphone users in India, I use WhatsApp a lot. But I have never sent anyone a voice message — ever. Turns out, others do. WhatsApp said on Wednesday that users on its gigantic messaging app send an average of 7 billion voice messages every day. Communication by the means of voice notes —
The sidewalks along University Avenue in Palo Alto used to be a great place to do business. For decades, there were several blocks where angels and VC partners camped out at café tables, taking pitches between lattes. The pandemic put a stop to that, however. These days, when you have an opportunity to sell an
Emmy Gengler Contributor Emmy Gengler is the CEO of Softjourn, a global technology services provider with offices in California, Ukraine and Poland. “The calls and texts started early, asking for power supplies and tools for fixing engines,” said Katia Ryzha, who lives and works in Ivano-Frankivsk, a small city in Western Ukraine. Since the war
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Thursday, March 31, 2022! It’s a beautiful day in our neck of the woods, and we have a great lineup of news for you today,
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Welcome to our Friday show! Our regular co-host Natasha was off this time, so Mary Ann and Alex linked arms with our producer Grace to blast our way through the news of the week. As
Meta and Sama, its main subcontractor for content moderation in Africa, are facing a lawsuit in Kenya over alleged unsafe and unfair working conditions, if they fail to meet 12 demands on workplace conditions brought before them. Nzili and Sumbi Advocates, the law firm representing Daniel Motaung, a former Sama employee that was laid-off for
In the pandemic era, when digital storefronts have become a matter of course for retailers, data analytics is proving its worth. Tools that analyze customer data can help better maintain stock, build a supply chain, detect fraud and predict which products might appeal to particular customer segments. Those advantages — as well as their ability
Fashion rental platforms had a tough time during the pandemic as in-person events evaporated and office workers ditched their smarts to collectively slip into comfy loungewear (aka Zoom pants). But as the pandemic recedes (hopefully!) — and with growing focus on the environmental and social costs of fast fashion, the future for clothes rentals is
Last year, Apple proved it could still surprise when it announced a Self Service Repair plan. The offering is still limited, and the company — as ever — recommends users take their products in to get fixed, rather than potentially damaging them further. Even so, it marked a major shift for a company that has
Steve Bartel Contributor Steve Bartel is the CEO of Gem, a talent engagement platform backed by Greylock, Accel and ICONIQ. Over the last several years, an increasing number of companies have pledged to hire a more diverse workforce and begun releasing their diversity numbers annually. The results have been a mixed bag at best. With so
With SaaS becoming the standard for most business software, the security demands on SaaS companies are constantly increasing. Add users who need their data sandboxed from others or kept in a specific geographic region and the workload for development and security teams only increases. Antimatter, which is coming out of stealth today and launching its
TikTok and Snapchat need more parental controls, a letter signed by 44 attorneys general stated. Yesterday, the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) sent a series of concerns to the two social apps, which are commonly used among teens. The attorneys general cited a range of problems they had with the social media apps, including,
Google announced a major update to Google Meet today that includes a number of long-requested features and plenty that you didn’t even know you needed. There is a long list here, but the main additions are likely in-meeting reactions to give immediate, updates to the Meet companion mode, emoji-based feedback, the ability to use Meet
Last year, Visa surprised the European fintech industry as it announced that it would acquire Tink for €1.8 billion ($2.15 billion at the time of the deal). Klarna now wants to compete directly with Tink with a new business unit that has its own brand — Klarna Kosma. Like Tink, Klarna offers an open banking
YouTube TV is catching up to other streaming apps including Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Prime Video and others by finally adding support for picture-in-picture on iOS devices running iOS 15 or higher. First introduced to iPad users with iOS 13 then to iPhone with iOS 14 in 2020, YouTube has been slow to adopt this
Tesla said it’s planning a second stock split in roughly two years, giving a lift to shares that had been trading lower on news Covid-19 is again disrupting operations. Ed Ludlow reports on “Bloomberg The Open.”
‘Every morning starts with a check-in on Slack with all the colleagues’ Rebecca Bellan 8 hours The COVID-19 pandemic taught the world how to work from home, but Russia’s war in Ukraine has taught the employees at Delfast, a Ukrainian e-bike startup, how to work from bomb shelters, while on the move and under threat
More Americans than ever want to escape the rut of a low-paying job, but quitting to pursue a new profession is a risky proposition. Pursuit has raised $10M in funding for a promising and potentially self-sustaining new model for training up new tech workers in which learners only pay they land a real position. The