Discord is introducing a new way for creators to make money by offering community members access to paid, subscriber-only content. The new premium membership offering was among the company’s most requested features and would bring a new stream of revenue in-house while giving Discord-based communities the option to streamline the tools they use to grow.
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Champ Suthipongchai Contributor Champ Suthipongchai is a co-founder and general partner at Creative Ventures, a method-driven deep tech VC firm investing in startups that address the impact of increasing labor shortages, rising healthcare costs and the climate crisis. More posts by this contributor Investment in construction automation is essential to rebuilding US infrastructure Whether you
The same day in February 2020 that Credit Karma planned to announce that it had been acquired by Intuit for more than $7 billion, the stock market tanked, spooked by news that a novel virus had the potential to start a pandemic. “I’m up at 5 o’clock in the morning, the Dow is flashing red
Banking is undergoing a huge transformation and how debt collections operations engage customers is becoming a big issue, especially with things like BNPL schemes. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been invested in the last few years digitalizing financial and other services, but debt collections operations remain very manual and archaic resulting in frustration for
In the past decade, numerous mobile lending apps have been launched in Kenya, riding on the growing need for quick loans. However, these startups have been operating in an unregulated environment — until today, when the country’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, approved a new law that gives the country’s monetary authority, the Central Bank of Kenya
Chris Watson Contributor Chris Watson is the director of the International Development Division at Premise and an evangelist for using data to improve the impact of development programs. In 2019, the U.S. Agency for International Development developed the “New Partnerships Initiative” (NPI) to build a “safer, healthier and more prosperous” world for people everywhere. NPI
Finding the right therapist is never an easy task, but it gets even harder when, as a person of color or someone with disabilities, there are few or no people sharing your experience available. Therify hopes to change that with a network of providers from and catering to marginalized populations. “It just makes a ton
Twitter is trying out some changes to the way that users report tweets that they believe might break Twitter’s rules. Like most social media companies, Twitter has long relied on user reporting to flag potentially policy-violating tweets. But in its new imagining of that system those reports would provide the company with a richer picture
The African tech scene woke up today to exciting news about the landmark acquisition of MainOne, one of the region’s most important and pivotal tech companies in the past decade, by Equinix, a U.S. multinational specializing in internet connection data centers. The story of MainOne starts with founder and CEO Funke Opeke moving back to
Ireland’s embattled data protection regulator, the DPC, has announced the submission of a draft decision sent to other EU DPAs Friday in relation to a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) investigation into Instagram’s handling of children’s data that was opened over a year ago. The DPC announced two statutory inquiries into Instagram, back in October
The app economy will again set new records in 2021. According to a review of the global app ecosystem in 2021 by Sensor Tower, released today, first-time app installs grew to 143.6 billion during the year, a half percentage point higher than 2020, but consumer spending in apps is up a much larger 19.7% year-over-year
One of the biggest pain points for any business, but especially SMEs, is managing payroll. A startup that has built payroll automation software to make the process less painful, Pento, has raised $35 million in a Series B round of funding co-led by Tiger Global Management and Avid Ventures. The investment marks Tiger Global’s first
Nearside, the online bank for SMBs formerly called Hatch, announced today it has raised a $58 million Series B, just seven months after announcing its Series A. The latest round was led by Valar Ventures, with participation from Kleiner Perkins; Foundation Capital; Jim Breyer, the founder of Breyer Capital; Creative Artists Agency founder Michael Ovitz;
WhatsApp users can now choose to easily have all new messages they send or receive disappear as the world’s largest instant messaging service broadens its offerings for what an executive described as the next privacy standard. The Facebook-owned service, used by over 2 billion users globally, on Monday rolled out an option that allows users
Clubbi, a Brazilian business-to-business resource for small food retailers, brought in $4.5 million in seed funding to expand across the country. The remote first company started in 2020 as an online commerce resource for neighborhood markets and grocery stores — most that have never shopped online before — to stock up on products they need,
It was in 2017 that I covered the emergence and first funding of Learnerbly, a SaaS marketplace for professional development. Quite a lot has happened since then, not the least of which was the COVID-19 pandemic, which has meant pretty much meant all kinds of learning had to transition to virtual, including inside corporates. The
Hello and welcome back to Max Q! There was a TON of space news this week so I won’t ramble too much, other than to remind you that many of the people mentioned below will be at TC Sessions: Space on the 14th and 15th! That includes Peter Beck, CEO of Rocket Lab, Nanoracks’ Jeffrey Manber, and
Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC) announced in a recent filing that it has received questions from the United States government regarding its anticipated combination with Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG). TechCrunch covered the SPAC’s planned combination with the company associated with former U.S. President Donald Trump here. We were broadly skeptical of the deal,
Less than a year ago, WildWorks, the makers of the kid’s virtual world game Animal Jam, launched its next big effort with a game aimed at Gen Z teens, called Feral. But in recent days, the company has angered many of its core users with news that it’s reusing Feral’s technology platform and many of
U.S. securities regulators have opened a probe into Tesla over allegations from a whistleblower that the company did not disclose to shareholders fire risks from its solar panel systems. The allegations were made by Steven Henkes, a former Tesla employee, who filed his complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission back in 2019, Reuters
Pinterest is further investing in creator tools and video with today’s news it’s acquired the video creation and editing app, Vochi, for an undisclosed sum. The company will be bringing in both the IP at Vochi and its forty-person team, including its founders, to expand Pinterest’s set of video creation tools and to help its
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Despite the advanced week, news is still coming in in hot and heavy, so strap in for today’s busy episode: I would normally say that it’s a holiday week, so let’s relax, but
Here in the United States, we’re counting down to the Nubank and HashiCorp IPOs that should touch down in mere days. But those are not the only technology offerings to keep eyes on at the moment. SenseTime, a Chinese AI company, is also listing this week, providing a new window into the value of the
Facebook Gaming might not be a hot streaming destination like Twitch or YouTube Gaming, but the social network is steadily adding interactive features to build its appeal. Facebook is trying out a new layer of interactivity the company is calling “play with streamer” that lets viewers hop into game streams with their favorite streaming personalities.
Plastic containers are ending up in landfills and oceans all over the world as more countries stop accepting our recycled goods. This is adding up: The average American uses and throws away 110 pounds of single-use plastic every year, yet only 8% of plastic is recycled in the United States. You might think that all
In a landmark court decision against Uber, the UK High Court has ruled that its business model is unlawful. The decision — which reboots the application of London’s regulations around private hire vehicle contracts — has huge ramifications for how ride-hailing platforms like Uber can operate in the UK capital and how much UK tax
Berlin-based smartphone-as-a-service provider, Everphone, has topped up with $65 million in a Series C equity raise in addition to taking $135M in debt financing — for a total raise of $200M. The latest tranche of funding is led by German private equity investor, Cadence Growth Capital (CGC), which is now Everphone’s biggest shareholder. Deutsche Telekom,
TikTok has launched a new app for its seller community taking advantage of its suite of TikTok Shopping features, but the app is only available in Indonesia at present. TikTok Seller, as the app is called, allows TikTok’s seller community to run all aspects of their TikTok shop from their mobile device, from initially registering
Startups digitizing B2B e-commerce and retail in Africa continue to grab the headlines after the pandemic paved the way for widespread offline retail and commerce disruption. TradeDepot, a Nigeria- and U.S.-based company that connects consumer goods brands to thousands of retailers and help out with distribution, has raised $110 million in new equity and debt
Stacked, a web-based platform that provides passive investment tools for retail investors interested in crypto, just announced it raised a $35 million Series A co-led by Alameda Research, a crypto trading firm owned by FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Bybit and BitDAO partner Mirana Ventures co-led the round alongside Alameda. Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, DRW Venture