On a recently recorded (and soon-to-be published) episode of the Found podcast, an entrepreneur told my co-host and me that he sees a broad swath of the venture capitalists out there as money managers, more focused on short-term gains and returns than long-term revolutionary technology. Whether you agree or not, it’s hard to ignore the
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Several French ministers have issued a common statement announcing that they have asked the main search engines and mobile app stores operating in France to hide Wish’s website and mobile app altogether. Wish is a popular e-commerce platform that mostly references products from China-based merchants. It doesn’t hold inventory as products are shipped directly from
Architecture and construction have always been, rather quietly, at the bleeding edge of tech and materials trends. It’s no surprise, then, especially at a renowned technical university like ETH Zurich, to find a project utilizing AI and robotics in a new approach to these arts. The automated design and construction they are experimenting with show
TikTok has seen its short-form video feed copied by a host of competitors, from Instagram to Snap to YouTube and even Netflix. Now it looks like you can add Spotify to that list. The company has confirmed it’s currently testing a new feature in its app, Discover, which presents a vertical feed of music videos
Boyd Davis Contributor Boyd Davis is the CEO and co-founder of Compright, a cloud-based compensation planning tool. Previously, Boyd helped organizations deploy solutions that leveraged data and AI. The Great Resignation is among the most significant events in recent U.S. history. We are seeing a post-COVID-19 generation refusing to work under the same conditions as
It’s boom times for startups building with or atop AI functionality: The Exchange explored the rise in venture capital dollars for AI startups last week, noting that investment into the business niche set all-time records in Q4 2020, and then successively in quarters one, two and three in 2021. The Exchange explores startups, markets and
Twitter is updating its iOS app to prevent tweets from disappearing while users are still reading them. The change comes as the social media giant recently updated its web platform to no longer automatically refresh timelines with new tweets. Twitter acknowledged that in the past, tweets would often disappear from view as users were reading
“Buy now, pay later” company Afterpay announced Wednesday that it was going after the $1.5 trillion global subscription payments market by offering to its U.S. customers payment installments for subscriptions, like gym memberships, entertainment subscriptions and online services. The service will launch in both the U.S. and Australia beginning early in 2022 and will be
Convincing meat eaters to adopt a climate-friendly diet might get a little easier thanks to Slovenian startup Juicy Marbles, which has come up with a way to create plant-based whole meat cuts, if that doesn’t sound too oxymoronic. ‘Fancy Plant Meat’ is its pithier pitch for a product that aims to provide a vegan alternative
Fairphone, the Dutch social enterprise dedicated to making consumer electronics (more) sustainable and ethical, including by supporting repairability so that users can hold onto their hardware for longer, has announced public testing of Android 10 for the six-year-old Fairphone 2. Owners of the modular handset that was first released back in 2015, running Android 5,
Last year, fintech API infrastructure players came into the African tech scene, ushering in Plaid-like services to businesses and developers. And the attention on these companies, particularly from venture capitalists, spiralled into this year, with each significant player raising large seed to Series A rounds. OnePipe, a fintech API company with a different play from
Mosaic Foods, a plant-based food company, announced Tuesday $6 million in seed funding as it continues to develop more products. The New York-based company came onto the food scene in 2019, co-founded by Matt Davis and Sam McIntire, with its line of frozen veggie bowls that includes recipes like peanut tofu bowl and butternut squash
Reddit is shutting down Dubsmash, its short-form TikTok-like video platform, on February 22, 2022. The company says after February, Dubsmash will no longer be available for download in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Currently downloaded apps will stop functioning on the same date. The company acquired Dubsmash in December 2020 and had
With capital in abundance, SaaS startups don’t seem to be too worried about how much runway they have remaining. According to OpenView’s annual Financial & Operating Benchmarks report, only 13% of nearly 600 companies surveyed named “burning too much cash” as one of their top three concerns, compared to 30% last year. While 2020 was
Meet Attio, a new CRM for people who are familiar with modern collaboration tools, such as Airtable, Notion and Zapier. The startup wants to create a product that can hold all important information about your customers, suppliers and partners, but that is also flexible so that you can organize, view and manipulate data easily. Attio
Mobiz, a South African startup integrating hyper-personalization into mobile marketing, has raised a pre-Series A round of $ 4 million from HAVAÍC, Futuregrowth, Launch Africa, Allan Gray E-Squared Ventures, CapaciTech and Endeavor’s Harvest Fund. The investment comes as the startup is ramping up efforts to expand into the U.S. and double down on marketing, sales and
Kyle Poyar Contributor More posts by this contributor Freemium isn’t a trend — it’s the future of SaaS How to overcome the challenges of switching to usage-based pricing It’s not just your imagination — usage-based pricing (UBP) is seemingly everywhere in 2021. SaaS companies have been ditching traditional subscription pricing in favor of usage-based models
As more of the world shifts to doing everything from their smartphones, the ability to build better iOS and Android apps has to move with it. Bitrise aims to be the go-to company closing the gap between that mobile demand and a company’s ability to get apps out faster while also balancing all of the
As the world quickly transitions into a global village thanks to the rapid penetration of internet networks, it is easy for some people to be left behind owing to the remoteness of their locations. In most parts of Zanzibar, an autonomous island in East Africa, for example, services by terrestrial cable and satellite networks are
Robert Falck used to work at a Russian trucking factory by day, and by night, he built a nightclub guest list startup. He also collects old books, and once guessed that Chinese author Gao Xingjian would win the Nobel Prize in literature. He grew up on a farm, but has degrees in finance, economics and
Startup culture is informal, which is why some workers end up with job titles like “customer delight manager” or “product whisperer.” That might work inside mature companies, but early-stage founders who are presenting themselves to investors must be more specific. In an interview with Natasha Mascarenhas, B2B stealth startup founder Akshaya Dinesh recounted the time
In what looks like bad news for adtech giants like Facebook and Google, MEPs in the European Parliament have voted for tougher restrictions on how Internet users’ data can be combined for ad targeting purposes — backing a series of amendments to draft legislation that’s set to apply to the most powerful platforms on the
Looking for the soundtrack from your favorite Netflix show? Now, it will be easier to find thanks to an expanded partnership between Netflix and Spotify. The streaming music service today introduced a new “Netflix Hub” on its app, which will offer a centralized place for finding the official soundtracks, playlists, and podcasts for top shows
The venture arm of Volvo Cars, an automaker long synonymous with safety, has invested in an optics and imaging startup developing technology that can be integrated into a car’s windshield or windows to deliver images to drivers and passengers. Volvo Cars Tech Fund invested $2 million into optics and imaging developer Spectralics, funds it will
What is a startup? It’s a question so picked over at this point that it feels like the only answer is it depends. That’s fair. In the past, we might have said that once a private-market company earns a $1 billion valuation, it is no longer a startup. But with venture capitalists and crossover investors
Ira Belsky Contributor Ira Belsky is the co-founder and co-CEO at Artlist. You’ve likely heard of the “creator economy” already — it’s no longer a new concept, although some people are more acquainted with what it entails than others. But the creator economy needs creators. It says so right there on the label. Essentially, what
StepZen stepped onto the scene at the end of last year with an $8 million seed round and a vision for unifying APIs. Today that vision came into clearer focus as the company announced two new free GraphQL tools to help simplify API management. StepZen CEO and co-founder Anant Jhingran sees the graph as part
Less than six months after raising a $157 million Series D round, AI-powered transcription and captioning platform Verbit announced today it has closed $250 million in a Series E round that values the company at $2 billion. The latest funding brings its total raised to over $550 million. The new capital was led by Third Point
Earlier this month, Netflix’s new gaming service became globally available across both iOS and Android with a debut lineup that included two “Stranger Things”-themed games and a few more casual gaming titles. In the days since its launch, Netflix has expanded its lineup with two more games, including another casual game “Bowling Ballers,” and now,
If you’ve followed corporate card and spend management startups in the U.S., you might be familiar with Brex and Ramp. Payhawk is also offering an all-in-one financial management solution for businesses, but with a focus on European customers. And the company just raised a $112 million Series B round at a $570 million valuation. Greenoaks