Penfold, a startup that offers a full stack pension in a smartphone app, has closed a $8.5 million (£6m) funding round, $4M of which was from a crowdfunding campaign. The company is now approved by the FCA to operate a pension itself rather than relying on third parties, and is aimed at freelancers who rarely
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This may seem like a great time to launch a SaaS startup, but the landscape is crowded with well-designed applications that promise “blazingly fast and delightfully simple” experiences, according to seed-stage investor John Chen of Fika Ventures. Most SaaS startups will fail, but not because of a sour marketing campaign or server downtime. The majority
Here in the U.S. the concept of using driver’s data to decide the cost of auto insurance premiums is not a new one. But in markets like Brazil, the idea is still considered relatively novel. A new startup called Justos claims it will be the first Brazilian insurer to use drivers’ data to reward those
Facebook made a few noteworthy changes to its misinformation policies this week, including the news that the company will now allow claims that Covid was created by humans — a theory that contradicts the previously prevailing assumption that humans picked up the virus naturally from animals. “In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of
Most marketers today know how to send targeted communications to customers, and there are many tools to help, but when it comes to sending personalized in-house messages, there aren’t nearly as many options. Pyn, an early stage startup based in Australia wants to change that, and today it announced an $8 million seed round. Andreesen
TikTok has a month to respond to concerns raised by European consumer protection agencies earlier this year, EU lawmakers said today. The Commission has launched what it described as “a formal dialogue” with the video sharing platform over its commercial practices and policy. Areas of specific concern include hidden marketing, aggressive advertising techniques targeted at
May.19 — Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance Ltd., will step down from his role as chief executive officer. The owner of the popular short-video app TikTok says human resources chief Rubo Liang will become the new CEO. Tom Mackenzie reports on “Bloomberg Markets: Asia.”
On-demand grocery startups like Gorillas are invading Europe right now, but although on-demand-everything is kinda old-hat in the Bay Area, a new startup thinks it might just be able to do something new. Food Rocket says it has raised a $2 million investment round from AltaIR Capital, Baring Vostok fund and the Angelsdeck group of
Another day, another unicorn public offering. Today it’s Acorns, a consumer fintech service that blends saving and investing into a freemium product. It’s a company that TechCrunch has covered extensively since its birth, including through the pandemic’s impact on its business, both good and bad. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every
mmhmm, the communications platform developed by Phil Libin and the All Turtles team, is getting a variety of new features. According to Libin, there are parts of communication today that can not only match what we get in the real world, but exceed it. That’s how this next iteration of mmhmm is meant to deliver.
Meet Café, a new French startup founded by two brothers that wants to help companies switch to a hybrid remote-and-office workplace model. Café isn’t a traditional desk-booking tool. Instead, the company helps you see when people in your team are coming to the office so that you can plan when you should go to the
As startups and venture capital grow in tandem, fundraising has gone from a formal affair on Sand Hill Road to a process that can happen anywhere from Twitter to Zoom. While fundraising may no longer require a trip to California, it might depend on whether you got an invite to a private audio app. And
Fintech and proptech are two sectors that are seeing exploding growth in Latin America, as financial services and real estate are two categories in particular dire need of innovation in a region. Brazil’s QuintoAndar, which has developed a real estate marketplace focused on rentals and sales, has seen impressive growth in recent years. And today,
Box executives have been dealing with activist investor Starboard Value over the last year, along with fighting through the pandemic like the rest of us. Today the company reported earnings for the first quarter of its fiscal 2022. Overall, it was a good quarter for the cloud content management company. The firm reported revenue of
Europe’s lead data protection regulator has opened two investigations into EU institutions’ use of cloud services from U.S. cloud giants, Amazon and Microsoft, under so called Cloud II contracts inked earlier between European bodies, institutions and agencies and AWS and Microsoft. A separate investigation has also been opened into the European Commission’s use of Microsoft
CorrActions, a noninvasive neuroscience startup that uses sensor data to evaluate a user’s cognitive state due to drowsiness, alcohol, fatigue and other issues, today announced that it has raised a $2.7 million seed round. Early-stage fund VentureIsrael, seed fund Operator Partners and the Israeli Innovation Authority are backing the company, which is based out of
Boston-based Filtered.ai has raised a $7 million round to accelerate its hiring cadence, and built out the go-to-market model for its its engineering and developer-focused hiring service, it recently announced. TechCrunch caught up with the company to discuss not only why it decided to leave bootstrapping behind, but also to dig into how its service
On Wednesday evening, Twitter announced that Spaces — its Clubhouse competitor — will start rolling out for use on the web. Earlier this month, Twitter Spaces became available for any user with more than 600 followers on the iOS or Android apps, and around the same time, Clubhouse finally released its long-awaited Android app. Still,
Breinify is a startup working to apply data science to personalization, and do it in a way that makes it accessible to non-technical marketing employees to build more meaningful customer experiences. Today the company announced a funding round totalling $11 million. The investment was led by Gutbrain Ventures and PBJ Capital with participation from Streamlined
Orbiit, a startup that automates the interactions within an online community, has raised a $2.7 million round led by Bread and Butter Ventures with participation from new investors High Alpha Capital, LAUNCHub Ventures and Company Ventures. Existing investors Founders Fund, which led Orbiit’s $1M pre-seed round, Acceleprise and other angels also participated. The capital will
RevenueCat, a startup offering a series of tools for developers of subscription-based apps, has raised $40 million in Series B funding, valuing its business at $300 million, post-money. Founded by developers who understood the difficulties in scaling a subscription app first-hand, RevenueCat’s software development kit (SDK) solution gives companies the tools they need to build
French startup Agicap has raised a new $100 million funding round led by Greenoaks. With today’s funding round, the company has reached a valuation of more than $500 million (€415 million). Agicap is building a service that lets you track your cash flow in real time, build reports and get forecasts. In addition to Greenoaks,
Wayflyer, a revenue-based financing platform for e-commerce merchants, has raised $76 million in a Series A funding round led by Left Lane Capital. “Partners” of DST Global, QED Investors, Speedinvest and Zinal Growth — the family office of Guillaume Pousaz (founder of Checkout.com) — also put money in the round. The raise comes just after
Ben Pring Contributor For societies with long histories of protecting children with laws and regulations, isn’t it surprising that nothing is being done to similarly shield them from the various and proven dangers of social media? We need to institute the same kinds of age limits and protections for technology and web use as we’ve
Another day, another mobility SPAC deal. This time, it’s Tritium, a Brisbane-based developer and producer of direct current fast EV chargers that is taking the SPAC path to the public market in a deal valuing the company at $1.2 billion. Tritium said Wednesday it will be heading to the Nasdaq via a merger with special
Uptycs, a Boston-area startup that uses data to help understand and prevent security attacks, announced a $50 million Series C today, 11 months after announcing a $30 million Series B. Norwest Venture Partners led the round with participation from Sapphire Ventures and ServiceNow Ventures. Company co-founder and CEO Ganesh Pai says that he was still
Can an app improve your romantic relationships? The founders behind Paired, a “relationship care” app for couples, believe it can. And since launching in October, with $1M to kick things off, they’ve convinced 5,000+ coupled-up others to try their custom blend of partner quizzes, “relationship satisfaction” tracking, and audio tips from experts — to try
In just a few short years, Vise has gone from launching on the Disrupt Battlefield stage to unicorn. Co-founders Samir Vasavada and Runik Mehrotra met Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire at an afterparty at the event, and Maguire ended up leading a seed and Series A round while Sequoia led the Series B. Last week, Vise raised
Drug discovery is a large and growing field, encompassing both ambitious startups and billion-dollar Big Pharma incumbents. Engine Biosciences is one of the former, a Singaporean outfit with an expert founding crew and a different approach to the business of finding new therapeutics, and it just raised $43 million to keep growing. Digital drug discovery
Facebook has long been working on raising WhatsApp’s profile as a channel for businesses to interact with (and sell to) their customers. Today, a startup that has built a suite of tools for retailers and others to build and run those services over WhatsApp and other messaging platforms is announcing growth funding to address that