Most big accelerators tend to dedicate some of their resources to dauntingly hard science problems and the companies taking them on… but for SOSV’s IndieBio, it’s the primary focus. Last time we checked in with IndieBio, their companies were working on everything from lozenges to treat gum disease, to vertical farms for the sustainable production
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Vareto, a startup aiming to help companies conduct more forward-looking financial planning and analysis, is coming out of stealth today with $24 million in total funding. GV (formerly Google Ventures) led its $20 million Series A this year, and Menlo Ventures led its $4.2 million seed financing in the summer of 2020. Menlo also put
Nigeria President Muhammadu Buhari announced on Friday that the ban on Twitter would be lifted, but only if the social media giant met certain conditions. The president disclosed this during his televised broadcast to Nigerians on the country’s 61st Independence Day anniversary. He acknowledged the fact that Twitter is used to disseminate information. Still, he
Some big brands spend millions of dollars on marketing each year and may only drive thousands of dollars in sales as a result. At the same time, influencers are steering thousands, or even millions, of their followers to certain brands. ProductWind aims to connect brands with influencers in one click. The company is building a
Audio social network Clubhouse, video sharing platform Vimeo and anti-ad fraud startup DoubleVerify are among a clutch of tech companies and organzations preparing to sign up to a beefed-up version of the European Union’s Code of Practice on Online Disinformation, the Commission said today. Back in May the EU’s executive said it would be strengthening
Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex were all aboard this week under the guidance of Chris and Grace, meaning that we were running full-strength for our roundup of this super busy week. Before we hop into the topics, you can follow the show on Twitter — all the cool kids do! — and keep in mind that on Mondays Equity provides a short kickoff
The capital market for startups has perhaps never been more attractive than it is today. Not only are venture capitalists raising more capital than ever, but new methods of financing startup activity are maturing. The result is a capital market that is increasingly competitive for startup attention, and business, which may lead to better prices
TikTok this week presented its new plan to ramp up advertiser investment in its video platform with the expansion of e-commerce, a new promise of “brand safety,” and the launch of several new and interactive ad formats, ranging from clickable stickers to choose-your-own-adventure ads to “super likes” and more. The additions, the company says, will
Before Gene Berdichevsky became the co-founder and CEO of battery chemistry company Sila Nano, he was the seventh employee at Tesla Motors. As principal engineer on the Roadster battery, Berdichevsky was one of the first people crazy enough to experiment with shoving a lithium-ion battery pack into a combustion engine vehicle. The result? The Roadster
Orchest co-founder and CEO Rick Lamers calls himself, his co-founder Yannick Perrenet and his team “a bunch of data nerds” that love making data tools. In this case the company is building an open source integrated development environment tool for data scientists so they can develop, iterate and deploy data pipelines without having to rely
The future of office work, post-COVID-19, is driving plenty of startup activity. Not just around core business needs like comms (Zoom, Slack et al) — but entrepreneurs are also competing to come up with the perfect tool to recreate the social serendipity of office life in order to make dispersed workers feel a bit more
Twitter really can’t go a day without releasing new products. But if you’re running an account for a business or a public figure, its latest addition might capture your interest. Soon, businesses and creators will be able to opt into “professional accounts,” giving them additional tools to distinguish their profile, quickly promote content through ads,
Brian Walsh Contributor Brian Walsh is the head of WIND Ventures, the venture capital arm of COPEC, a leading energy company in Central and South America and the U.S. WIND Ventures provides mobility, energy and retail startups and scaleups with access to Latin America. More posts by this contributor Latin American startup deals see major
Oyo is ready to explore the public markets. The eight-year-old Indian budget hotel giant has filed the paperworks with the local market regulator for an initial public offering, in which it is seeking to raise about $1.16 billion. The Gurgaon-headquartered startup — which offers an operating system of sorts to help hoteliers accept digital bookings, payments,
Last night, Facebook published two annotated slide decks in an attempt to contextualize the documents that The Wall Street Journal published this month, which reported evidence that the company is aware of its negative impact on teen mental health. These documents were released in anticipation of today’s Senate hearing on the mental health harms of
Stock options can hold a lot of potential reward for employees when their company is doing well, but not every person will have the funds to fully exercise — that is, buy up — the options they have available to them. Enter EquityBee, a marketplace for employees to connect with capital from a network of
“Every form of digital communications has its unique benefits, and delivering high quality at scale requires both extensive technical capabilities and deep subject matter expertise“, comments Oscar Werner, Sinch CEO, in a statement. “Together with Pathwire, we will be able to offer a best-of-breed product set, across messaging, voice and email, that empowers businesses and
If you are looking for a growth marketing playbook, stop reading now, because you won’t get one from Tuff. The agency’s founder Ellen Jantsch makes it clear: There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to growth. The team at Tuff knows their stuff — and it’s precisely why they are not selling “magic” or any kind
Blockchain cybersecurity startup OpenZeppelin this morning announced a $23 million investment in Forta, a security service aimed at smart contracts. Andreessen Horowitz led the round, which OpenZeppelin CEO and co-founder Demian Brener described as 3x oversubscribed. The investment also attracted capital from Coinbase Ventures, True Ventures and Blockchain Capital, among others. Per Brener, OpenZeppelin will
The NFT space has had quite the year, and while it can be difficult to separate the billions of dollars in crypto speculation from the potential infrastructure shifts, plenty of mainstream tech companies are dipping their toes into the space and signaling future interest. This time it’s TikTok’s turn. The fast-growing social media platform, which
Dutch social enterprise Fairphone has announced its first 5G smartphone, the Fairphone 4. The ‘greentech’ mobile maker differentiates from almost the entire smartphone industry through a promise of sustainability via repairable modularity. It combines this with a big push around socially responsibility and ethical electronics — touting fairly sourced materials and better conditions for workers
Loop Health aims to be the “Oscar Health of India” and targets the country’s health insurance gap with its approach to primary care and insurance. The Pune-based company is also the latest startup to raise funding in this area, bringing in $12 million in Series A funding in a round co-led by Elevation Capital and
A U.K. law firm is bringing a class-action style claim over a patient health data scandal that dates back to 2015 and involves the Google-owned AI company DeepMind, after it was quietly passed medical information on more than a million patients by an NHS Trust as part of an app development project. Law firm Mishcon
Amazon today introduced Amazon Glow, a new, interactive device aimed at families that allows kids to interact with family members and other remote loved ones over video calls. While something of a competitor to Facebook’s line of Portal devices, which are also largely aimed at connecting families over video, Amazon Glow differentiates itself by providing
French startup Voodoo has made a significant acquisition in the casual mobile gaming market. The company is acquiring Beach Bum, a game studio based in Israel and specialized in tabletop and card games. It’s hard to get a clear number for this acquisition as Voodoo is offering both cash and shares and there are some
The larger a coding project gets, and the more people become involved, the harder it becomes to get a big picture view of how the entire project fits together, and this is especially true for distributed teams. Today, CodeSee, an early stage startup that wants to help development teams understand the entire code base, released
Ola Electric announced this morning that it closed a $200 million round at a $3 billion valuation. The EV company’s parent, Ola, is best known as an Indian ride-hailing platform. Ola itself has raised more than $4.5 billion to date, per Crunchbase data, while Ola Electric is now over the $500 million fundraising mark, if
After a decade of a handful of dominant social media companies trading what are essentially publishing tools in exchange for serving us all an endless deluge of ads, the winds of change are finally blowing — in a few different directions at once. Content creators (arguably either a special echelon of influencers or anyone who
In 2019, Rivian showed up at the Overland Expo West in Flagstaff, Arizona with a prototype of what is now known as the camp kitchen. Now, with production ready 2022 Rivian R1T electric pickup trucks coming off the assembly line, the final version of the kitchen is ready for prime time. The automaker has made
Silicon Valley-based venture capital (VC) firm Benhamou Global Ventures, known as BGV, closed its fourth fund with $110 million to support global enterprise companies. The new fund is 60% larger than its third fund and will be invested similarly, in seed and Series A startups focused on what general partner Anik Bose said the firm