Having a great idea for an app or game is one thing, but scaling it to become a successful business is quite another. A new fintech startup called Sanlo aims to help. The company, which is today announcing an oversubscribed $3.5 million seed round, offers small to medium-sized game and app companies access to tools
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Do you and your early-stage startup have what it takes to be a modern-day gladiator and compete in Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021? You won’t know unless you apply, and time is running out. You have only 48 hours left to throw your helmet into the ring. If you want to compete for glory,
Scooter unicorn Bird is going public, per an agreement to merge with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. After rumors and reports circulated for months about an imminent deal, it has finally arrived. First, a quick overview of the agreement and the players involved: Bird is merging with Switchback II at an implied valuation
As competition with tech giants heats up, TikTok is rolling out a series of new features to help keep its short-form video app ahead of rivals. The company today announced the launch of a new Green Screen Duet feature, which combines two of TikTok’s most popular editing tools to allow creators to use another video
AWS announced today that it’s releasing a tool called AWS SaaS Boost as open source distributed under the Apache 2.0 license. The tool, which was first announced at the AWS:re:Invent conference last year, is designed to help companies transform their on-prem software into cloud-based Software as a Service In the charter for the software, the
Video sharing social network TikTok has removed more than 500,000 accounts in Italy following an intervention by the country’s data protection watchdog earlier this year ordering it to recheck the age of all Italian users and block access to any under the age of 13. Between February 9 and April 21 more than 12.5M Italian
The GasBuddy mobile app, which typically helps consumers find the cheapest gas nearby, has now become the No. 1 app on the U.S. App Store for the first time ever, due to the fuel shortages in the U.S. that followed the cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline. Americans, fearful that gas would become unavailable, began panic-buying
Atomized, an early stage startup that wants to create a modern tool to help developers deploy infrastructure faster, announced the first step of its funding journey today, a $500,000 pre-seed round from Zing Capital, Y Combinator and several unnamed angels. Company co-founder and CEO Nik Kotov says developers are spending over 20% of their time
This morning Stampli, a software platform that optimizes corporate invoice management, announced a $50 million Series C financing round, led by Insight Partners with participation from Signal Fire and Nextworld Capital. The company launched in 2015 with the goal of simplifying the process of invoice management. Why is that needed? Services and software are purchased
Cisco announced this morning that it intends to acquire Indianapolis-based startup Socio, which helps plan hybrid in-person and virtual events. The two companies did not share the purchase price. Socio provides a missing hybrid event management component for the company to add to its Webex platform. The goal appears to be to combine this with
The UK government has published its long-trailed (child) ‘safety-focused’ plan to regulate online content and speech. The Online Safety Bill has been in the works for years — during which time a prior plan to require age verification for accessing online porn in the UK, also with the goal of protecting kids from being exposed
Ken Harlan Contributor Ken Harlan is the founder and CEO of MobileFuse, a U.S.-based. in-app advertising and DOOH platform that serves leading organizations across retail, food and beverage, restaurant, tourism, government, and healthcare. The digital media industry often talks about how much influence, dominance and power entities like Google and Facebook have. Generally, the focus
Charity Dean has been in the national spotlight lately because she was among a group of doctors, scientists and tech entrepreneurs who sounded the pandemic alarm early last year and who are featured in a new book by Michael Lewis about the U.S. response, called The Premonition. It’s no wonder the press — and, seemingly
Sorry for all the SPAC coverage today, but a host of richly valued private companies that have an ocean of venture capital funds under their belt are going public. We have to pay attention. Earlier today, TechCrunch covered the brand-new Better.com SPAC deal that will take the digital mortgage provider public. But it was hardly
Brian Ryan Contributor Brian Ryan is vice president of Innovation at National Grid Partners, the innovation and investment arm of multinational energy company National Grid. As vice president of Innovation at National Grid Partners, I’m responsible for developing initiatives that not only benefit National Grid’s current business but also have the potential to become stand-alone
Sam Richard Contributor Sam Richard is senior director of growth at OpenView. With more than 200,000 customers, a market cap of nearly $56 billion, and the recent acquisition of Segment for $3.2 billion, Twilio is a SaaS behemoth. It’s hard to imagine companies like Twilio as anything but a giant. But everybody starts out small, and
Quix, a platform for Python developers working on streaming data, has secured a £2.3 Million ($3.2M)Seed funding round led by Project A Ventures in Germany, with participation from London’s Passion Capital and angel investors. The Quix Portal is also providing developers with a free subscription to a real-time data engineering platform. Quix attracted angel investors
Snowman, the small studio behind award-winning iOS games Alto’s Adventure, Alto’s Odyssey, Skate City, and others, is spinning out a new company, Pok Pok, that will focus on educational children’s entertainment. Later this month, Pok Pok will debut its first title, Pok Pok Playroom, aimed at inspiring creative thinking through play for the preschool crowd.
Panaseer, which takes a data science approach to cybersecurity, has raised $26.5 million in a Series B funding led by AllegisCyber Capital. Existing investors, including Evolution Equity Partners, Notion Capital, AlbionVC, Cisco Investments and Paladin Capital Group, as well as new investor, National Grid Partners also participated. Panaseer has now raised $43m to date. Panaseer’s
SaaS-maker Birdie has closed an $11.5 million Series A round of funding led by Index Ventures. Existing investor Kamet Ventures also participated. The UK-based caretech startup has raised a total of $22.9M since being founded back in 2017 (a 2018 raise that was called a Series A at the time is now being classed as
Seeing someone mention their pronouns in their Instagram bio has become commonplace — so much so that the app now has a dedicated location where users can put pronouns without taking up that valuable profile space. The company announced the new feature on Twitter, saying that it is only available in a few countries just
For Subaru diehards holding out for an electric vehicle, the wait is almost over. The Japanese automaker just announced new details about its first ever EV, which is set to hit the streets in 2022. Subaru will call its first EV the Solterra, a fitting name for a brand synonymous with outdoor adventures and you
Jamf, the enterprise Apple device management company, announced that it was acquiring Wandera, a zero trust security startup, for $400 million at the market close today. Today’s purchase is the largest in the company’s history. Jamf provides IT at large organizations with a set of management services for Apple devices. It is the leader in
While much of the world eagerly watches to see if the vaccination rollout helps curb and eventually stamp out Covid-19, one of the companies that has been helping to manage the spread of the virus is announcing a big round of funding on the heels for strong demand for its technology. Huma, which combines data
The tabletop gaming industry has exploded over the last few years as millions discovered or rediscovered its joys, but it too is evolving — and The Last Gameboard hopes to be the venue for that evolution. The digital tabletop platform has progressed from crowdfunding to $4M A round, and having partnered with some of the
YouTube is giving its TikTok competitor, YouTube Shorts, an injection of cash to help it better compete with rivals. The company today introduced the YouTube Shorts Fund, a $100 million fund that will pay YouTube Shorts creators for their most viewed and most engaging content over the course of 2021 and 2022. Creators can’t apply
Better.com, a venture-backed digital mortgage lender, announced this morning that it will combine with a SPAC, taking itself public in the second half of 2021. The unicorn’s news comes as the American IPO market is showing signs of fresh life after a modest April. The Better.com deal comes just over a month after it sold
Israeli security startup Cycode, which specializes in helping enterprises secure their DevOps pipelines and prevent code tampering, today announced that it has raised a $20 million Series A funding round led by Insight Partners. Seed investor YL Ventures also participated in this round, which brings the total funding in the company to $24.6 million. Cycode’s
On the heels of its expanded partnership with Facebook, Spotify this morning announced new sharing features that broaden the way Spotify content, including both music and podcasts, can be shared across social media. As part of this, Spotify’s Canvas feature, which adds a looping, visual art experience to songs, is being improved. Spotify will also
Sweden’s Exeger, which for over a decade has been developing flexible solar cell technology (called Powerfoyle) that it touts as efficient enough to power gadgets solely with light, has taken in another tranche of funding to expand its manufacturing capabilities by opening a second factory in the country. The $38 million raise is comprised of