Joey Noble Contributor A homepage that converts visitors into customers is one of the highest leverage assets a startup can have. Once your website can convert cold traffic, you can spend more time and resources on acquiring new audiences. This post is going to tear down the homepage of Customer.io, a marketing automation platform that
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Podium is back at the fundraising well this year, adding $201 million to its accounts at a $3 billion valuation (post-money). The Utah-based company, which provides software services including communications and payments tools to SMBs, last raised $125 million at a roughly $1.5 billion valuation. That deal was announced in April 2020. Podium CEO Eric
Twitter is updating its web platform to change the way users see new tweets. The social media giant will no longer automatically refresh timelines on the web with new tweets, and users can now decide when they want to load new tweets. Twitter acknowledged that in the past, tweets would often disappear from view mid-read
Mixpanel was a hot startup in 2014 when it nabbed a $65 million Series B on an $865 million valuation, a sizable B round and valuation for those days. Today, seven years after that announcement, the company finally has a C round, a $200 million investment on a $1.05 billion valuation from Bain Capital Tech
UK-based software testing startup Virtuoso has raised a $13.3 million Series A round led by Paladin Capital. The round was joined by Mubadala Capital as well as existing UK investors Crane Venture Partners, Forward Partners, and Downing Ventures. Virtuoso says its SaaS software testing platform, which launched in 2019, uses machine learning and Robotic Process
The latest pair of e-readers from Kobo provide a modest but noticeable upgrade to the display, stylus support, and Bluetooth for listening to audiobooks, but take a step down in build quality from the admirable Forma. But the new capabilities may be worth the upgrade, and the Libra 2 especially makes for an attractive little
Doola, a startup that aims to help global entrepreneurs form a U.S. business, has raised $3 million in seed funding. Doola actually started its life in 2020 as StartPack as a pivot from another startup called Standups. During that pivot process, the team realized that it didn’t want to go through the “complex and time-consuming”
Homebase, a Ho Chi Minh City-based proptech startup that helps people buy homes, announced today it has raised $30 million in equity and debt (the ratio was undisclosed). The company’s business model is similar to Divvy Homes and ZeroDown in the United States and, in fact, Divvy Homes co-founder and former CEO Brian Ma and
The pharmaceutical supply chain across Africa has for decades remained fragmented leading to sourcing and distribution challenges as well as quality concerns; as fake and substandard products flood the market. Yet, these issues facing the supply chain are fixable. Chibuzo Opara and Adham Yehia, being all too familiar with the problems of poor pharmaceutical supply
Cyber security startup Immersive Labs — which recently closed a $75 million Series C funding round giving it a significant war chest — is acquiring US-based cyber startup Snap Labs in an undisclosed deal, although Immersive says it’s a “multi-million dollar figure” and will be a mix of stock and cash. Snap Labs is understood
Kilo, a Vietnam-based B2B e-commerce platform that connects wholesalers with micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), wants to digitize the local retail value chain via technology. “In Vietnam, micro, small and medium enterprises are the backbone of the retail economy — serving 80% of all purchases,” CEO and founder of Kilo Kartick Narayan said. Kilo’s
The commercial real estate brokerage market in South Korea is fragmented, which makes finding a new office for tenants a challenge due to inaccurate listing information, high brokerage fee and complex paperwork. A Seoul-based proptech startup called Rsquare built a data-driven platform to digitize the process, enabling tenants to compare multiple properties and find an office.
The last 20 months of living in the midst of Covid-19, with all its unexpected developments, have been a challenge for many organizations when it comes to planning for the future. But that has also presented an opportunity for tech: build tools to make planning and forecasting, even in the midst of a pandemic, easier
Mimica, which (perhaps oddly enough) automates Robotic Process Automation, has raised a $6 million Series A funding from Khosla Ventures. The company will use the funds to establish a sales team in the US and build out its product. Previous Seed investors included the UK’s Entrepreneur First accelerator and the Episode 1 VC. Mimica’s first
Joe Hellerstein Contributor Joe Hellerstein is co-founder and chief strategy officer of Trifacta and the Jim Gray Chair of Computer Science at UC Berkeley. In February 2010, The Economist published a report called “Data, data everywhere.” Little did we know then just how simple the data landscape actually was. That is, comparatively speaking, when you
Daniel Cossío Contributor Latin American farms and fields produce a lot of food, but 47 million people still remain hungry. The region accounts for about a quarter of global exports in agricultural and fisheries products, including fruits and vegetables, salmon, maize, sugar and coffee. The agricultural sector is crucial for Latin American livelihoods, contributing to
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines! Friday afternoon the Equity team took to a Twitter Space to hit on a topic that we had to cut from our regular end-of-week show, namely crypto earnings and how Wall Street
Salesforce users tend to have a similar complaint in the amount of time it takes to update records, but Weflow aims to conquer this form of “Salesforce fatigue.” The Berlin-based company is developing a tool — still in private beta — that makes it faster to update Salesforce and reduces much of the busy work
Oxygen, a startup that is bringing digital banking services to freelancers and micro- and small-sized businesses, is in talks to raise a new round at a valuation of over $500 million, two sources familiar with the matter told me. The San Francisco-headquartered firm is in advanced stages of talks to raise about $70 million, the
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 Friday show, a roundup of the week’s biggest and most fascinating stories from startups, venture capital and technology. Natasha and Alex along with Grace and Chris had to cut
Mobility 54 Investment SAS, a corporate venture capital subsidiary of Toyota Tsusho Corporation and CFAO group, DOB Equity and InfraCo Africa have invested $3.4 million (€3 million) in electric motorcycle startup Zembo to help it grow its business. Zembo, a French startup with operations in Uganda was founded in 2018 and sells electric motorcycles through
We tend to take the cloud for granted today as a way of delivering and building software, but it wasn’t always the case. Less than a decade ago, in fact, companies like Microsoft sold most of their software in boxes or in large on-prem installations inside customer data centers. Around 2012, as the company began
João Del Valle Contributor João Del Valle is the co-founder and CEO of EBANX, a Brazilian fintech unicorn that serves as the gateway to Latin America through its payments platform for global merchants, tech giants and other large companies from all over the world. If you look under the hood of nearly any large merchant’s
The global venture capital market is increasingly active, but few locales are seeing the sort of investment acceleration that African startups are enjoying this year. New data indicates that African startups have already outraised all known prior years, meaning 2021 is sure to be a record. But, more importantly, the pace at which African startups
Carrie James Contributor Emily Weinstein Contributor We’ve spent the last decade studying the questions that loom large in the current news cycle. What are the implications of social media for teen mental health? What are the benefits of growing up digital? What’s dispiriting or even toxic, and for whom? We’ve talked about these issues with
Back when most commerce took place on the local high street, shoppers who exchanged personally identifiable information with merchants received something in return. Shops kept track of customers’ hat, shoe and dress sizes, along with their birthdays, anniversaries and personal preferences. In return, buyers got a first look at new products and service that anticipated
I have in my hands the Legend of Zelda Game & Watch, the second in Nintendo’s line of whimsical throwback handhelds clearly meant as stocking stuffers for those who already have (or can’t find) a Switch. It does a fine job, and the three old-school Zelda games included are great options for Nintendo-hard adventure that
Nestled in Rivian’s S-1 IPO filings was a note that there the EV company’s “cornerstone investors” had “indicated an interest” in buying up to $5 billion worth of its stock at its IPO price. One of those parties was Amazon, and the American e-commerce giant appears to have pulled the trigger Friday afternoon on its
Priti Choksi, partner at Norwest Venture Partners, has a portfolio that includes Bright, Lumosity, Citcon, UPSIDE Foods and Birdies. But before she ever entered the world of VC, she was an operator at companies like Facebook and Google. She managed business development teams and ran M&A and has vast experience in the world of growing
Husband-and-wife co-founders Daniel and Brenna Stitzel are developing a way for foodies to monetize their culinary creations and closed on a round of $1.5 million in pre-seed funding to officially launch Foody. The investment was led by Serena Ventures, with Goodwater Capital and a group of angel investors joining, including Patreon’s Jack Conte, former Postmates