Substack didn’t invent the paid newsletter, but the startup’s early success with the model is enticing previous backers to more than double down on the media startup. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday. Last evening, Axios reported that Substack is
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Capitolis, which makes technology for capital markets players such as investment and merchant banks, has closed on a $90 million Series C funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The financing included participation from existing backers Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, S Capital, Spark Capital, SVB Capital, Citi, J.P. Morgan and State Street and brings Capitolis’
Last week the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that the national government’s plan to tax carbon emissions was legal in a decision that could have significant implications for the nation’s climate-focused startup companies. The ruling put an end to roughly two years of legal challenges and could set the stage for a boom in funding and
AI has become a fundamental cornerstone of how tech companies are building tools for salespeople: they are useful for supercharging (and complementing) the abilities of talented humans, or helping them keep themselves significantly more organised; even if in some cases — as with chatbots — they are replacing them altogether. In the latest development, 6sense,
Meet Stockly, a French startup that keeps the inventory of various e-commerce websites in sync. When you see an out-of-stock item on an e-commerce website, chances are you leave that website and try to find the same item on another site. If you operate an e-commerce website, Stockly lets you sell items even when they’re
Finch Capital, the early-stage fintech VC with a presence in London and Amsterdam, is acquiring Wirecard Turkey, a subsidiary of Wirecard, the disgraced fintech out of Germany. The acquisition, for which terms remain undisclosed and is still subject to regulatory approval, sees Finch create a new Ireland-registered entity called Nomu Pay. After facing a huge
Many work teams, especially stores and restaurants, rely on manual spreadsheets to ensure their operations are running smoothly. Based in Singapore, Nimbly develops software that automates more of that process. Its features include digital checklists, inventory management and field audits that can be accessed through a mobile app. The startup announced today it has raised
Michael Proman Contributor More posts by this contributor The future of sports tech: Here’s where investors are placing their bets Cities traditionally have been bustling hubs where people live, work and play. When the pandemic hit, some people fled major metropolitan markets for smaller towns — raising questions about the future validity of cities. It’s
If you develop software for a large enterprise company, chances are you’ve heard of Tricentis. If you don’t develop software for a large enterprise company, chances are you haven’t. The software testing company with a focus on modern cloud and enterprise applications was founded in Austria in 2007 and grew from a small consulting firm
Vienna-based GoStudent, which connects students to tutors on a virtual learning platform, has raised a €70M Series B funding round led by new US investor Coatue. Coatue has been making ‘raids’ into the European startup scene for the past year or so. It was joined by existing investors Left Lane Capital and DN Capital. This
LIVEKINDLY Collective, the shouty parent company behind a family of plant-based food brands, has snagged cash from the global impact investing arm of $103 billion investment firm TPG to close its latest round of funding at $335 million. The company’s fundraising shows that investors still have high hopes for plant-based food brands and that despite
Another proptech is considering raising capital through the public arena. Knock confirmed Monday that it is considering going public, although CEO Sean Black did not specify whether the company would do so via a traditional IPO, SPAC merger or direct listing. “We are considering all of our options,” Black told TechCrunch. “We pioneered the real
During every economic boom, there are startup investors who appear on the scene from new corners. Some churn out; others earn the respect of the old guard over time. Jake Paul would be happy to be in the latter camp. Then again, the 24-year-old didn’t become a YouTube star by being conventional. Little wonder that
A growing number of companies have emerged over the last few years determined to reduce waste in the electric vehicle battery market. Chief among these is recycling firm Redwood Materials, which has quickly expanded since its launch in 2017 by Tesla co-founder JB Straubel to become the largest lithium-ion battery recycler in North America. Now
Cazoo, the UK used-car sales portal that has been on a major fundraising tear in the last year, will be next company to pursue more growth by way of a SPAC: the company today announced that it will list on the NYSE by way of a business combination with AJAX I, a special purpose acquisition
“There is no doubt that over time, people are going to rely less and less on passwords… they just don’t meet the challenge for anything you really want to secure,” said Bill Gates. That was seventeen years ago. Although passwords have lost some of their charm, they have so far survived many attempts to kill
EQT Ventures, an investment firm based in Europe, which has raised over €1.2 billion ($1.4B USD) announced that it has promoted Laura Yao to partner. At the same time, the firm announced it recently hired Anne Raimondi, former SVP of Operations at Zendesk as operating partner. The company is based in Stockholm with offices in
Cazoo is picking up significant capital today by teaming up with a SPAC in the U.S. at a $7 billion valuation, but it’s the end of the line for another big European name in used-car sales. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Berlin-based Frontier Car Group, which builds used-car marketplaces with a focus on emerging
Ajaib, the Indonesian investment app, has added $65 million to its Series A, bringing the round’s new total to $90 million. The extension was led by Ribbit Capital, the fintech investor that also led Robinhood’s $3.4 billion funding last month. Ajaib is Ribbit Capital’s first investment in Southeast Asia. The extension will be used to
Meet Singular, a new VC firm based in Paris that just finished raising its initial fund. The firm was founded by two former Alven partners — Raffi Kamber and Jérémy Uzan. They have some ambitious goals and an interesting investment model that could help them remain involved even during late-stage rounds. Overall, the firm raised
If you browse Instagram, you are probably familiar with the term “link in bio.” Links aren’t allowed in post captions, and users are only allowed one URL in their bios, so many create a simple website with multiple links for their followers. Linktree, one of the most popular “link in bio” services with more than
Procrastinators, last-minute decision makers and overwhelmed entrepreneurs heed this call! Your last chance to save $100 or more and attend both TechCrunch Early Stage 2021 bootcamps expires tonight! You’re dedicated to learning the essentials of building a solid early-stage startup, yes? That’s exactly what you’ll get at TC Early Stage 2021 (Operations & Fundraising: April
This morning, well-known robotic process automation (RPA) unicorn UiPath has filed to go public. The company’s S-1 filing comes after it raised billions of dollars while private, making it amongst the best-funded startups in history. Over the last year, for example, the company’s rapid-fired fundraising included its Series E and Series F rounds of capital, both
Hub, a productivity platform for technical pre-sales, has formally launched with $1 million in seed funding. CEO Freddy Mangum and CTO Karl Gainey founded Hub in 2020. The pair both had experience in technical sales and recognized the challenges of using spreadsheets to manage their business. They researched and surveyed sales engineers at big and
At this point, if you aren’t going public via a direct listing, traditional IPO or SPAC, are you even a growthy business? Every CEO I talk to at a startup that’s doing more than Series B-level revenue tells me that SPACs are circling, hungry for a deal so they won’t have to return collected capital
“Headless commerce” is a phrase that gets thrown around lot (I’ve typed it several times today already), but Vue Storefront CEO Patrick Friday has an especially vivid way of using the concept to illustrate his startup’s place in the broader ecosystem. “Vue Storefront is the bodiless front end,” Friday said. “We are the walking head.” In other
One of the biggest pain points for startups and small businesses is keeping up with back office tasks such as bookkeeping and managing taxes. QuickBooks, it seems, just doesn’t always cut it. Three-time co-founders Waseem Daher, Jeff Arnold, and Jessica McKellar formed Pilot with the mission of affordably providing back office services to startups and
Mayfield partner Navin Chaddha and Poshmark founder and CEO Manish Chandra met all the way back in 2003, well before Poshmark was even a glimmer in his eye. They stayed connected over the years, through Chandra’s sale of his startup Kaboodle to Hearst and after he left. At a breakfast one morning, Chandra told Chaddha
Robotic process automation platform UiPath added its name to the list of companies pursuing public-market offerings this morning with the release of its S-1 filing. The document details a quickly growing software company with sharply improving profitability performance. The company also flipped from cash burn to cash generation on both an operating and free-cash-flow basis
Denmark-based Motosumo has scored a $6M Series A raise led by London’s Magenta Partners, alongside existing investors. The new funding will go on doubling its network of spin class instructors across Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, expanding its tech team and upping its marketing. The 2015-founded fit-tech startup has developed a system for measuring