Startup accelerator Y Combinator announced this morning that it has updated its terms, providing participating companies with more total cash. The group will now invest $500,000 in batch startups. The money comes in two different forms. The first is the well-known Y Combinator equity deal, worth $125,000 for 7% of accelerated startups. The group will
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Meat has been part of the human diet since before we found fire, but it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the production of meat at scale is more of a detriment to the environment and the world than a benefit. Across cultures and geographies, animals have been such a vital part of the food chain that
London-based Kodland, which started out back in 2018 offering in-person courses for children to learn digital skills like computer programming before switching focus to online learning from early 2020, has closed a $9M Series A funding round to scale into more markets. The round is led by Redseed Ventures, with participation from Baring Vostok, Kismet,
The Covid-19 pandemic continues to impact the mobile app ecosystem, according to an annual retrospective released today by app intelligence firm Sensor Tower. In the early days of the pandemic, a number of apps saw rapidly increased usage — like that focused on online shopping, entertainment, business and education, for example. Though much of the
The global pandemic threw a wrench in the plans of restaurants all over the world two years ago when diners stayed home, causing many eateries to shift their business to pickup or delivery. Roberto Cebrián and David Villarreal both had experience working with restaurants in Mexico and recognized that many restaurants were not prepared to
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Monday show, our short ramp into the week. Yes, it’s Monday again. No, you can’t stay in bed. Things are already happening! Welcome to the week! The Equity team is
AskNicely is the latest company attracting capital for its app targeting shift or frontline worker success as more businesses rightly begin to see how valuable these employees are to their bottom line and how technology can ensure these key employees are empowered to help the company grow. Aaron Ward, CEO, AskNicely. Image Credits: AskNicely The
French startup Doctolib held a (virtual) press conference this morning to share some metrics, look back at the company’s recent product launches and give a hint about future investments. Doctolib started as a booking platform for doctors and has expanded to other services for doctors and medical workers in general. With its software-as-a-service strategy, medical
French startup Ankorstore has raised a $283 million Series C funding round (€250 million). Founded in November 2019, it took Ankorstore around two years to reach a post-money valuation of $2 billion (€1.75 billion). The company operates a wholesale marketplace for independent retailers across Europe. Ankorstore lets independent brands sell their products to independent retailers.
FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried joins Emily Chang to give an overview of the crypto market in 2022, and especially Bitcoin after its 60% rise in 2021. Also: his thoughts on potential crypto regulation, increasing institutional crypto adoption, the metaverse, and the intersection of sports and crypto.
Gnawing, burrowing, infecting: The damages caused to agriculture by insect pests like the Japanese beetle (pictured above) exceed $100 billion every year, according to the Agricultural Research Service of the USDA. And along with plant diseases, which the exoskeleton buggers can also transmit, arthropods account for the annual 40% loss of agricultural production worldwide. Enter
Mergers and acquisitions are notoriously tricky to navigate from a leadership and culture perspective. They require a thoughtful approach to working with a new CEO and joining teams as one workforce — a journey familiar to us and recently acquired Auth0. Okta and Auth0 have their share of differences — we’re enterprise-focused, to start, while
Never before has the importance of a smooth-flowing supply chain been as clear as it has been in the COVID-19 pandemic era. For manufacturers in particular, managing intricate supply chains can be particularly challenging. Enter Assent Compliance — a Canadian company focused on supply chain sustainability management. Put more simply, Ottawa-based Assent aims to help
Even to outsiders, the inner workings of startup accelerators has become familiar: pumped up on camaraderie and energy drinks, scrappy founders do product demos onstage before a room full of buzzy journalists and investors. Fast-forward two years into a pandemic and, even a stint with the return of hacker homes, much has changed about the
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. We’re getting back up to full speed this week, so Mary Ann and Alex along with Grace behind the scenes took on our Friday show. Next week Natasha and Chris are back, and
Twitter has been working on Spaces Recordings, a feature that will let hosts share tweets with audio recordings of past Spaces. Now, when hosts share the recordings, they’re able to see how many listeners joined live, as well as how many people replayed the recording after the fact. we’ve been working on Spaces Recordings and
Line is a regular staple at CES, showing off its high-end milled-aluminium docking stations. This year, the company is back in Las Vegas with an accessory aimed squarely at the gamers among us. Line Frzr is a thermoelectric active cooling device that pre-cools the air before it goes into your gaming laptop. Traditional laptop cooling
Sowmyanarayan Raghunathan Contributor Sowmyanarayan Raghunathan is the VP of Engineering at Talentica Software and an NIT Surat alumnus. He has helped over 50 early and growth-stage startups fulfill their engineering needs and stay ahead of the curve in the last 17 years. In 1992, Ward Cunningham coined the metaphor “technical debt” to highlight how businesses
Update: Tech stocks have given up all gains since this post went up, with both the Nasdaq and the basket of software stocks we track in the red. From a slightly later perspective, concern about near full-employment and resulting rising interest rates appears to have won the in-market sentiment battle. The relationship between economic news
The conservative social media platform Parler has raised $20 million in funding, according to an SEC filing that was signed and submitted on January 6, the anniversary of last year’s domestic attack on the Capitol. The app, which claims to have 16 million-plus registered users, describes its mission as one focusing on protecting “against the authoritarian
IBM could be looking to sell the Watson Health division for a mere $1 billion, according to an Axios report. The question is why is IBM running away from the healthcare vertical just as it seems to be heating up, and for such a low price? Just last month, Oracle spent $28 billion to buy
Mosquitos kill more people than any other creature in the world, and there’s no shortage of potential tech solutions. One such solution comes from Bzigo, which markets a device that finds mosquitos in your home, points at them with a laser and can notify you on your phone when a mozzy is buzzing about. Walking
Miguel Fernandez Contributor Miguel Fernandez is CEO and co-founder of Capchase. He is passionate about changing working capital dynamics to make it the main source of cash for tech companies. Launching a business is hard enough, but scaling it to a successful and lucrative exit is even more difficult. Securing early-stage venture financing is usually
Data privacy is top of mind for online sellers, and for good reason: Regulators in China, Europe and North America are taking an interest, and iOS 14.5 allowed many consumers to disable data tracking, with negative consequences for companies that relied on Facebook’s granular ad targeting. Bearing those factors and others in mind, Ben Parr,
Meta, formerly Facebook, is tinkering around with how it tells users about their privacy options. The company has switched up where this information lives and how it’s explained a number of times over the years and now appears to be centralizing some privacy FAQs and controls in one place across its family of apps. The
In December 2014 I wrote a post titled Finding the elusive big wisdom in big data. We have made big advances since then in storing, processing and generally handling large volumes of data in a digital context, but humans still have trouble when it comes to reliably finding relevant nuggets that can improve business outcomes.
Long gone are the days when CES actually stood for “Consumer Electronics Show” — the CTA has seen to that in its various small print. I recommend you check out our recent best of CES 2012 story for a look back on the days when things like smartphones took center stage at the event. Mobile
As 2021 wound down, The Exchange wanted to dig into what might happen if the startup music stopped playing. So we got veteran venture capitalist Matt Murphy on the phone to talk it over. Murphy started his career at Sun Microsystems back in the mid-90s, joining venture shop Kleiner Perkins in 1999, where he stayed
This morning private-market powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz announced that it has closed $9 billion in new capital for its venture capital, growth-stage, and biotech-focused vehicles. The firm, better known by the moniker a16z, also raised a $2.2 billion crypto-focused fund last year. The collection of fundraises by the firm highlight the rising size of private-market investing
Founder Alán Jaime Misrahi grew up devoted to soccer, eventually playing in Mexico’s third division. While he didn’t necessarily make it to the “big leagues” playing the sport, his new company Draftea aims to win over the 350 million sports fans in Latin America, Jaime Misrahi told TechCrunch in an interview. Draftea, which calls itself