TikTok has developed a bad reputation for hosting dangerous viral “challenges” on its app, which at their worst, have led to serious injury or death — as in the case of the blackout challenge that prompted Italian regulators to take action against the social network this year to remove underage users. More recently, the app
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Slack has always differentiated itself as a communications tool by its ability to run applications inside of Slack and avoid dreaded context switching. At the Frontiers Conference today, the company is announcing a twist on app integrations with new building blocks — components that developers can build and string together into pre-packaged kinds of workflows.
The cloud may be the direction that much of enterprise IT is moving today, but it still remains a major source of security issues, with some 98% of all enterprises in a recent survey reporting that they have contended with a cloud-related security breach in the last 18 months. Today, a startup called Laminar is
Sky Mavis Co-Founder Jef Zirlin joins Emily Chang to discuss the rise of their Axie Infinity game and the play-to-earn model, a growing trend that’s helped the tech-focused game studio reach a $3 billion dollar valuation. Also: the future of crypto in gaming and work, and what’s next for Sky Mavis. ——– Like this video?
Jonathan Martinez Contributor Jonathan Martinez is a former YouTuber, UC Berkeley alum and growth marketing nerd who’s helped scale Uber, Postmates, Chime and various startups. More posts by this contributor 5 common growth marketing mistakes startups make In growth marketing, signal determines success You’ve launched a few paid acquisition channels and are now starting to
Singapore-based Deskimo, the on-demand app that lets people find co-working spaces and pay by the minute, announced today it has raised a $3 million seed round. It is also soft launching in Jakarta, bringing its total markets to three, along with Singapore and Hong Kong. Participants in the round included Y Combinator (Deskimo was part
Nader Al-Naji, a crypto entrepreneur who today lives in L.A., has been on a roller coaster in recent years — and he doesn’t pretend otherwise. In 2018, roughly 16 months after raising $140 million from investors for a cryptocurrency startup that aimed to develop a stablecoin, Al-Naji and his Princeton classmates returned $130 million when
Luxury Presence, a startup selling marketing software to real estate brokerages, announced today it has raised $25.9 million for its Series B round. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round alongside fellow existing investors Toba Capital and Switch Ventures. Dallas Mavericks basketball player Dirk Nowitzki also participated in the round along with other angel investors, making
Funding for European startups is at a record-high so far for this year, with €73.7 billion raised in the first three quarters, and the full year on track for more than 8,000 deals, according to research from PitchBook. To keep up with the pace, London firm Balderton is today announcing its latest fund, a $600
Cognixion, a startup designing an intuitive brain-monitoring headset and interface for people with physical disabilities, has raised a $12M A round to pursue its accessibility ambitions. Armed with this funding, it should be able to complete the long list of requirements necessary for any medical or assistive device to be made widely available. The company,
Gift-giving is not always easy, but Goody wants to make it as easy as sending a text. The Miami-based company launched in December 2020 with a curated list of gifts from robes to cookies to succulents to spa treatments. You can choose a gift without having to know what size is needed, and the recipient
Rahul Vohra Contributor Rahul Vohra is the founder and CEO of email app Superhuman. In the first half of 2021, global venture funding shattered the previous six-month record — set in the second half of 2020 — by more than $100 billion. The market was flooded with new startups, and one after another made headlines
Facily, a São Paulo-based social commerce marketplace, has quietly raised over $366 million in funding across four different rounds over the last year. Most recently, Facily closed on a $250 million Series D that was led by DX Ventures and Berlin-based Delivery Hero, with Citius as co-anchor investor. That investment values the startup at $850
If it seems like everyone is listening to the same podcasts, that’s probably not a coincidence. Audio-based entertainment and social media is more popular than ever right now, but the medium is still plagued by discovery issues. While hit podcasts soar in popularity, expand their media empires and secure major brand deals, it’s difficult for
No-code continues to permeate the many layers of enterprise IT, where traditionally non-technical workers have had to rely on technical experts to get things done, and startups building these tools are raising a lot of money as they see a surge of business. In the latest development, EasySend — a Tel Aviv startup that has
Remote and hybrid working are the order of the day, and now a startup called AnyDesk that helps enable that to be pulled off smoothly — regardless of the architecture of a company’s network, or where a person happens to be working — is announcing a round of $70 million to fuel its growth. The
Audio processing startup Mimi promises to make a personalized hearing profile for you, meaning that you can hear well without having to crank the volume up too loudly. This both helps prevent hearing loss, and it helps people who’ve already suffered some hearing loss to be able to hear their content better without having to
Runway, a startup that emerged from the challenges that faced Rent the Runway’s first iOS team, is now exiting beta and launching its service that simplifies the mobile app release cycle — or, as the team describes it, offers “air traffic control” for mobile releases. The company has additionally raised a $2 million round of
Pistil Data, a cannabis market intelligence platform, has closed a $6.5 million seed round led by Snoop Dogg’s Casa Verde. The funding round included participation from JW Partners and other entrepreneurs. Pistil Data makes market intelligence accessible to cannabis brands and organizes billions of data points to provide customized sales opportunities for cannabis brands. The
Justt, a Tel Aviv-based chargeback mitigation startup, is emerging out of stealth today with $70 million in total funding. Founded in February 2020 by Roenen Ben-Ami and Ofir Tahor, Justt says it fully automates chargeback disputes on behalf of online merchants. The startup recently raised $50 million a Series B round of funding led by
This week, a handful of academic researcher teams will gain access to a new tool from Facebook designed to aggregate near-universal real-time data on the world’s biggest social network. When it comes to who gets access to Facebook data and how, the company now known as Meta is still feeling reverberations from 2018’s Cambridge Analytica
Four months after securing a $5.25 million seed round, Mexican buy now, pay later startup Aplazo is back with an even bigger round to expand adoption of the payment plan approach across that country. Angel Peña and Alex Wieland co-founded the company in 2020. Prior to Aplazo, Peña lived in New York and worked at
French startup Lifen has raised a $58 million (€50 million) funding round. The startup has been working on digital infrastructure for the healthcare industry, starting with medical reports. 600 healthcare facilities are using the product to send and receive medical documents. And each customer is using Lifen intensively as it represents 2 million medical documents
Lemonade CEO Daniel Schreiber joins Caroline Hyde to discuss the insurtech company’s positive third-quarter earnings and its foray into the car insurance business. ——– Like this video? Subscribe to Bloomberg Technology on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrM7B7SL_g1edFOnmj-SDKg Watch the latest full episodes of “Bloomberg Technology” with Emily Chang here: Get the latest in tech from Silicon Valley and
Hello and welcome back to Max Q! I know I said this last week, but TC Sessions: Space is right around the corner and we’d love for you to join. You can find a sneak peek of the agenda at the bottom of this post. Send tips, comments and reactions to aria.techcrunch@gmail.com. Don’t forget to
Coding education platform co-founders Tung Nguyen and Ha Nguyen Vietnam’s digital economy is one of the fastest growing in the world, but the country is facing a growing shortage of IT workers. Many kids want to study coding, but school curriculums are limited, said Tung Nguyen, the co-founder of MindX, an online/offline education platform that
A brand new social media platform focusing on social responsibility today announced it snagged $1.2 million to change the face of fundraising from a Gen Z perspective. Wishly is aimed at the curious Venn-diagram intersection of consumer brands, philanthropists and nonprofit organizations. The hope is to leverage the power of social media for social good.
Monograph, a startup providing a cloud-based platform for architecture and design professionals to manage their projects, announced today that it has raised $20 million in its Series B funding round. New investor Tiger Global led the round, with participation from Tishman Speyer and existing investors Index Ventures and Homebrew Ventures. The round brings Monograph’s total
Entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) often struggle to deal with several siloed functions, such as company secretary, bookkeeping, banking, tax, payroll, employment services, insurance and more. French entrepreneurs Julien Labruyere and Adrien Barthel founded Sleek in 2017 to help entrepreneurs incorporate and operate businesses in Singapore and Hong Kong. The startup built a
Tobii is bringing its eye-tracking tech to the iPad with TD Pilot, a case meant to turn Apple’s tablet into a powerful all-in-one tool for people with physical impairments. Equipped with TD Pilot, users can launch and use apps, type quickly, and speak with a synthetic voice using nothing but their gaze. iPadOS 15 brought