Instagram is bringing back a chronological feed, according to statements made by Instagram head Adam Mosseri during his testimony today before a Senate panel over the harms to young people using the app. Mosseri was asked if he believed consumers should be able to use the Instagram app without “being manipulated by algorithms,” and the
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Ikigai, a startup based on research out of MIT, wants to make it simple to build workflows with humans involved. Whereas traditional robotic process automation (RPA) is about building bots for repetitive tasks, this company wants to make it easier to build workflows where humans have to make a decision as part of the process.
HURR — a “RentTheRunway” style UK fashion rental marketplace – has raised $5.4M in a seed funding round led by European VC firm, Octopus Ventures. Also participating was Ascension and D4 Ventures, among others. HURR launched in 2019 and has a hybrid business model combining peer-to-peer fashion rentals, direct partnerships with fashion outlets, and a
Scott Lenet Contributor More posts by this contributor 3 lies VCs tell ourselves about startup valuations Is there a creed in venture capital? Venture capitalists frequently say that valuing startups is “more art than science.” If that’s true, then it’s absurdist art, because most seed-stage businesses have no value. In fact, seed-stage startups — companies
Nuvocargo, a logistics startup out to help simplify the challenges of cross-border trade, has raised $20.5 million in a round led by Tiger Global Management. The round valued the New York-based startup at $180 million, more than double the $70 million it was valued at when it raised $12 million in April. The company says it
Meta (formerly Facebook) today is introducing a number of Facebook Live updates that will allow creators to engage with fans during their live broadcasts, including new features like Polls, support for four-person co-broadcasting via the “Live With” feature, new commenting features, a new post format, support for adding links to broadcasts and “Live in Stories,”
Detroit became the center of America’s automobile industry largely for logistical reasons: its midwestern location, high population density and proximity to raw materials were just a few factors that assured investors it was an optimal spot for building an industrial hub. Silicon Valley’s tech ecosystem, on the other hand, was initially seeded by military research
Spain’s government has agreed on the details of a draft startup law — passing the baton to the parliament to debate and potentially amend the plan ahead of a vote to turn it into actual law. The Council of Ministers announced adoption of the draft text today which it said contains important measures to cut
Software consultant Andrew Drach’s two companies Callentis and Solwey demonstrate his entrepreneurial skills, but his clients also value his educational background, as we learned through TechCrunch’s survey to identify the best software consultants for startups. Telling us why her company picked Solwey, eDiscovery Assistant’s Kelly Twigger cited “Andrew’s Ph.D. and analytical background related to data,”
Amid a hectic year, the continent’s VC momentum appears set to continue in 2022 Alex Wilhelm 8 hours Europe, long viewed as a relative backwater to the U.S. startup market, has been on a tear in recent quarters and years. Akin to many startup markets around the world, Europe has seen its venture capital totals
Wisdom, a social audio app that’s focused on surfacing “life advice” and broadening access to mentorship — and whose iOS app launched we covered back in October — has nabbed $2 million in seed funding off the back of early traction. The seed is led by First Round Capital, with participation from a number of
Freddy Jose Mangum Contributor Freddy Jose Mangum is CEO and co-founder of Hub, provider of a unified presales productivity platform. Today’s high-growth technology companies rely on millions of presales professionals, also known as sales engineers and solution consultants, to explain the value of technologies to buyers and customers. Ultimately, the contributions of these trusted technical
Roger Gothmann Contributor Roger Gothmann, Ph.D., is co-founder and CEO at Taxdoo, an automated platform for financial compliance in e-commerce. Electronic interfaces, platforms and marketplaces form a key layer in the digital infrastructure behind e-commerce, serving as gatekeepers between consumers and producers of digital content or digitally sold products. These gatekeepers offer third-party companies access
Blockstream CSO Samson Mow talks with Bloomberg’s Caroline Hyde about his involvement with El Salvador’s plans to construct a “Bitcoin City” and issue the world’s first sovereign Bitcoin bonds. He joins “Bloomberg Technology” from the Conchagua volcano in El Salvador – the energy of which will be used to power the “Bitcoin City.”
Instant grocery delivery continues to be a very frothy market, but today comes news of a major funding round for one player in it that investors believe will still be standing after the hype has died down. Flink, the Berlin-based startup that sells food and other essentials at supermarket prices and aims to deliver them
Grocery delivery startup Tiggy is a new player in the Canadian quick commerce space, announcing Friday $6.35 million in seed funding to get its dark stores up-and-running to accommodate 15-minute deliveries. E-commerce sales are a $29 billion market in Canada, but food delivery is still nascent. Eugene Bisovka and Razmik Sukyasov co-founded Vancouver-based Tiggy in
Tinder is partnering with Spotify to launch a new “Music Mode” feature where users will hear a 30-second looped preview of a potential matches’ chosen song while checking out their profile. Users who link their Spotify accounts and add a chosen song, called an “Anthem,” to their Tinder profiles will be able to enter Music
Fresh from its time in Y Combinator, SaaS startup Anakin raised $2 million to continue developing its software enabling e-commerce companies to see live pricing data on their competitors. Mohit Prateek and Rashmi Bala started the company last September and officially launched in March to help e-commerce stores and brands increase their revenue using pricing,
Earnr is a new finance and tax service aimed at the UK creator economy and people doing ‘side-hustle’ businesses. It’s now secured £650,000 to launch an app aimed at ‘solopreneurs’. The round was led by 7percent Ventures, and was joined by Antler and FJ Labs. The startup deals with the financial and tax admin side
Tim Berners-Lee’s startup, Inrupt, has raised about $30 million in its Series A financing round, a source familiar with the matter said. Forte Ventures led Inrupt’s new round, the two said Thursday, but both declined to disclose the size of the deal. The round saw participation from “all existing investors,” including Akamai Technologies and Glasswing
Robust Intelligence, an AI startup that helps businesses stress test their AI models and prevent them from failing, today announced that it has raised a $30 million Series B funding round led by Tiger Global. Previous investor Sequoia, which led the company’s Series A round, as well as Harpoon Venture Capital and Engineering Capital also
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has rolled out “Year in Review” features for both Facebook and Instagram. On Facebook, users can share their personalized “Year Together” card, which highlights the friends, feelings, places and people that mattered most to them in 2021. The new in-feed experience reflects on people’s year on the platform and curates
Airplane on Thursday launched runbooks, a developer tool for automating internal workflows, in private beta and on Product Hunt. Runbooks enables engineers to compose tasks and built-in integrations, like SQL, REST APIs and Slack, into workflows that run JavaScript code, can feed that into a SQL database or combine data from Stripe and be accessible
EU lawmakers have formally proposed legislation for the gig economy they hope will improve conditions for platform workers across the bloc — including by establishing a framework to tackle the problem of bogus self-employment. The Commission’s overarching goal is to a create a level playing field between traditional businesses and gig platforms, as well as
While most of the market is focused on building and selling 5G infrastructure, an important piece that is overlooked is the application development on 5G networks, according to Vivek Ladsariya, general partner at SineWave Ventures. That’s what makes him excited to support a company like Shabodi. “Application developers have always wanted to abstract away network
As I wrote earlier this year, Deed‘s mission is a clearcut one: take the employee giving/charity/volunteer program that many big companies have, and make it better. Give it a proper home — one with a modern UI, built-in community management tools, and that hooks into your workflow (read: Slack) so as to not be forgotten.
First Resonance makes software for making hardware. The company’s Ion platform provides an all-in-one option for anyone who has to manage manufacturing lines, supply chains, engineering and design, among other things. Now, with $14M in new funding, the company aims to scale up its presence and make a full-court press on the hardware makers of
Jonathan Metrick Contributor Jonathan Metrick is the chief growth officer at Sagard & Portage Ventures, where he helps build some of the world’s leading fintech companies. More posts by this contributor Use cohort analysis to drive smarter startup growth Simon Lejeune Contributor Simon Lejeune leads user acquisition at Wealthsimple, the largest fintech in Canada. The
Peter Gajdoš Contributor Peter Gajdoš is a partner at Fifth Wall, where he co-leads the Climate Technology Investment team. When I started getting involved in clean tech 1.0 financing back in 2005, “climate change” was some future event. Hurricane Katrina had just happened, and many experts viewed it primarily as a failure of the government
A new report from early-stage venture capital firm Work-Bench confirmed what you probably already know: Startups with women founders are getting a mere sliver of the overall funding pie. What’s more, the percentages are far worse in the enterprise, where Work-Bench tends to invest. The numbers, which were based on Work-Bench research along with data from