The edtech boom has focused primarily on students, but teachers are learners, too. Doyobi, a Singapore-based professional development platform, wants to give educators new, more engaging ways of teaching STEM subjects. The startup announced today it has raised $2.8 million in pre-Series A funding led by Monk’s Hill Ventures. The round included Tresmonos Capital, Novus
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If you’ve been working in the French tech ecosystem, you may remember a startup called AppGratis. The app discovery and promotion startup basically had to stop operating overnight following a long and nasty fight with Apple. From the team that brought you AppGratis, Batch is a customer engagement platform that has been operating under the
Facebook has been steadily rolling out updates to Facebook Groups aimed at giving admins better ways to manage and moderate their online communities. Recently, this has included a combination of product releases — like access to automated moderation aids and alerts about heated debates — as well as new policies aimed at keeping Groups in
Enterprise engagement company Countable raised $12 million in Series A funding so that brands can more easily engage with customers, even in a way that shows a brand’s values and stance on issues. Existing investor Canaan Partners led the round and was joined by Ulysses Management and Global Catalyst Partners. In total, the company has
360Learning has raised a $200 million funding round from Sumeru, SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 and Silver Lake Waterman. And this time, the name of the startup describes quite well what it does. 360Learning lets you learn from your peers with an easy-to-use platform that lets you create and share courses with your peers. Existing investors
Spotify this morning announced a new partnership with e-commerce platform provider Shopify that will allow artists on its service to connect their Spotify profiles with their Shopify stores, allowing them to market their merchandise directly to fans through the Spotify app. After connecting their Spotify for Artists accounts with their Shopify online store, artists will
Sophie Alcorn Contributor Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Dear Sophie: Marriage-based green card versus
Online education company Udemy this morning set an initial IPO price range for its upcoming debut. The San Francisco-based edtech unicorn — backed by Learn Capital, Insight Partners and Norwest, among others — expects to price its IPO between $27 and $29 per share. The company could be valued at more than $4 billion at
Washington D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine has added Mark Zuckerberg to a lawsuit against Facebook over consumer privacy violations related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. “Our continuing investigation revealed that he was personally involved in decisions related to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook’s failure to protect user data,” Racine said of the decision to name Zuckerberg
When Twilio bought Segment last year for a hefty $3.2 billion, you knew it was going to put it to work. Today at the company’s Signal customer conference, it announced a new omni-channel marketing tool built on top of Segment called Twilio Engage. Segment CEO Peter Reinhardt says the new tool is designed to take
Facebook — or whatever name the tech giant picks for a reportedly looming rebrand of its data-mining empire as it seeks to teleport its business into the metaverse to escape the unending cavalcade of toxic publicity its execs generate — has a new ‘bad behavior’ badge to sport: It’s just been fined nearly $70 million
Apple has unveiled some new MacBook Pro models at a virtual conference today. And the company is timing the release of the next major release of macOS with the new laptop. Mac users will be able to update to macOS Monterey on Monday, October 25. This new major release of macOS will be available for
Following moves by major tech platforms to better protect minors using their platforms, Snapchat is preparing to introduce its own set of “family engagement” tools in the coming months. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel teased the planned offering during an interview at the WSJ Tech Live conference this week, where he explained that the new product
Hash, a payment infrastructure fintech, announced today that it has raised $40 million in a Series C funding round co-led by QED Investors and Kaszek. The raise comes just six months after the Brazilian startup raised $15 million in Series B financing led by Alexandria, Virginia-based QED, and brings its total raised to nearly $59
Aging is inevitable, but Modern Age wants to help you do it in a way that is healthier. Melissa Earner, former vice president at Amazon and COO at Glossier, is behind the company, which is announcing $27 million in Series A funding led by Oak HC/FT. Longevity has a personal component for her: As she
A company from the creator of Ello and Kidrobot is announcing a new $20 million funding round to build out an imagined virtual world populated with deranged-yet-cute cartoon influencers. Superplastic‘s investors include Google Ventures, Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Craft Ventures, Galaxy Digital, Mantis VC/The Chainsmokers, Kakao, LINE Friends and individual investors like Cyan Bannister, Jared
It’s hard to build a publishing empire, and it’s just as easy to lose one. Newspaper magnates were mostly replaced by broadcast moguls, first radio and then TV and cable, and now of course, they are all fighting against the social media tycoons and streaming impresarios who want to capture our attention. Each generation of
Building usable models to run AI algorithms requires not just adequate data to train systems, but also the right hardware subsequently to run them. But because the theoretical and practical are often not the same thing, there is often a gap between what data scientists may hope to do and what they practically do. Today,
Apple has backpedaled on years of questionable design choices with its MacBook Pros, unceremoniously retiring the universally disliked Touch Bar and adding back the ports and Magsafe users have missed. But in a show of perverse solidarity with the iPhone, the company has added a big, ugly notch front and center on the “best notebook
Many companies collect data from all of their users, but they don’t know what is good or bad data until it is collected and analyzed. Now in this increasingly mobile-first world, we use our phones for everything from apps to ordering to food to connecting with our cars. Though these same companies have accelerated their
There’s plenty of frustration in the world of startups over when a digital asset does and does not constitute a security in the eyes of the Securities & Exchange Commission. Where many see regulatory murkiness, the five-year-old, New York-based investing platform Republic sees opportunity. Indeed, while many outfits grapple with whether to distance themselves from
There are many in the world of AI who worry about its implications. One of those people is Navrina Singh, a former product manager for Qualcomm, then Microsoft, who saw firsthand at Microsoft how a Twitter bot it developed in 2016 as an experiment in “conversational understanding,” was, to quote The Verge, “taught to be
The former Head of the Facebook app, who reported directly to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Fidji Simo, defended the social network at the start of an interview at the WSJ Tech Live event this afternoon. The exec was there to discuss her new role as Instacart CEO and her vision for the future of food delivery,
Having a great idea isn’t enough when you’re starting a startup. You have to execute well on that idea by making the right decisions at the right time. In particular, you have to pick the right tech stack for your product. Without a good technical foundation, you can end up accumulating a lot of technical
Berlin-based on-demand grocery delivery and dark store operator Gorillas has grabbed “close to” $1 billion in Series C funds, in the latest sign of the searing investor interest driving activity in urban food shopping apps across the continent and beyond. The round is being led by another food-focused on-demand delivery startup — German’s Delivery Hero
Google is set to announce new Pixel phones today. The company is holding an event at 10 AM PT (1 PM in New York, 6 PM in London, 7 PM in Paris). And you’ll be able to watch the event right here as the company is streaming it live. [embedded content] Google already said that
With Android 12, the world’s most-used mobile operating system continues its steady march of carving out its unique selling points and finding differentiators from Apple’s iOS. Available for Pixel 3 and beyond, the new OS beefs up some of the strengths in the operating system, while adding some new features along the way. When everyone
Vieje Piauwasdy Contributor Vieje Piauwasdy is the director of equity strategy at Secfi, an equity planning platform for startup executives and employees. Buried deep in President Joe Biden’s 2021 tax plan are new amendments to the United States’ Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) program, which, if passed, will directly impact early-stage startup employees, founders and
BluePallet, an online marketplace connecting manufacturers with the chemical industry, announced today that it has raised $5 million in a funding round led by Vinmar Ventures, a subsidiary of petrochemical manufacturer Vinmar International. The startup also announced today that it has become the first industrial commerce platform to “officially” operate on Alibaba.com. This means that
Instagram today announced a number of new features that will roll out this week across both the Instagram Feed and its TikTok competitor, Reels. The creator-focused additions will allow users to collaborate with one another, raise funds, and make better use of music on Reels, among other things. The company will also make its Instagram