Fundings and Exits

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Fridaaaaaay. It was a short week, but it still dragged on a little. We’ve got some exciting Twitter Live action coming up on September 13, so mark your calendars! At 8:00 a.m.

I love it when a plan comes together. A few weeks ago, I found a Twitter thread by Sam DeBrule, co-founder and head of marketing of Heyday, who explained how he and his co-founder reduced customer churn by improving their onboarding process. I sent him a DM asking if he’d adapt the thread for a

Creator economy startups are tricky. It can be risky to ask creators to rely on a possibly precarious, pre-seed company to power an important aspect of their business — if you fail, as most startups do, you might inadvertently end up hurting other independent entrepreneurs, which is (hopefully) the last thing a founder wants. But

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Helloooo! Since our last Daily Crunch, our adrenaline-fueled TechCrunch team has added more than 70 stories to the site. We’re picking out some of the best below, but we’ll almost certainly miss

UBS and Wealthfront last week called off a planned deal to sell the robo-adviser startup to the financial giant for $1.4 billion. Instead, UBS invested $69.7 million in the company at a valuation that Wealthfront described as $1.4 billion. In its note discussing the end of the transaction and its latest fundraise, Wealthfront shared some

In recent years, there’s been an explosion in the usage of APIs — the interfaces that software apps use to communicate with each other. When asked to predict API usage in 2022 in a recent survey, 90.5% of developers responding said that they expect to use APIs more or the same as in 2021, while

There’s a large education gap in Vietnam between urban centers, which have access to more resources, and the smaller cities and rural areas where 80% of students live. Edupia, an online learning platform, is bridging that divide with its live classes and private tutoring. The startup announced today it has raised a $14 million Series

Y Combinator said the market downturn was the reason for a smaller summer batch compared to recent cohorts. But does the exclusivity come at the cost of the ecosystem’s most diverse talent? These entrepreneurs are young, hungry, and represent more than 30 countries, including Italy, Israel, and Indonesia. The 240-company cohort is noticeably smaller than

A kiryana owner with one of SnappRetail’s point-of-sale devices The number of global retailers, department stores and supermarkets operating in Pakistan is increasing, which spells convenience for consumers, but trouble for kiryanas, or small general stores. According to a report by the State Bank of Pakistan, general stores’ growth will slow down, especially in urban

Corporations have been dealing with IT operations and security management since the coronavirus pandemic that has changed the way in which people work — remote or hybrid work — and accelerated the market opportunity. Josys, spun off from its parent company Raksul last year, launched its automated management IT devices and SaaS application in September

Lessons from startups that reached the $1B revenue threshold Alex Wilhelm 7 hours Once upon a time, reaching a $1 billion valuation was a Big Deal. But the shine that a so-called unicorn valuation conferred on a startup eroded as more and more private companies reached the threshold — often with less and less to

Backed by investors including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and CDC Group, Cropin is set on digitizing the agricultural industry. Today, the company announced the launch of Cropin Cloud, a cloud platform with integrated apps. Founded in 2010, Cropin’s other products are live in 92 countries, it is partnered with over 250 B2B customers

It’s a long weekend here in the United States, meaning office workers, at least, get a three-day break from the dreaded meeting. We wanted to take this time to offer up an impassioned defense of … email. Hear us out. It’s conventional wisdom that meetings are killers of productivity and morale and happy work environments.

Welcome to The Interchange! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and your vote of confidence. If you’re reading this as a post on our site, sign up here so you can receive it directly in the future. Every week, I’ll take a look at the hottest fintech news of

Welcome to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. In recent weeks, several companies tweaked the free tiers of their products, from Slack and Otter.ai to Google Meet and Heroku. This ties back

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has given lenders until the end of November to implement adequate systems and processes to ensure that new and existing loans comply with its digital loan rules issued last month. The RBI’s move follows several reports highlighting issues of customers facing torture and abuse from agents of digital loan

My phone buzzes as I get a text from a friend who’s a partner at a VC firm. It’s a screenshot of a Venmo notification that just came in. “My 2 cents on why you should invest in my company,” reads the message she received, along with a $0.02 transfer. I tracked down and emailed

Nate Tepper first went to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), an international program dedicated to helping people recover from alcoholism with a 12-step program, in the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic. He didn’t show his face or share his story, but says that being in the presence of vulnerability was immensely impactful. Following the recommended level of

Ryan Falvey Contributor More posts by this contributor Is fintech’s Series A market hot, or just overhyped? Fintech’s $138 billion opportunity This past year has seen a wholesale shift in how the market feels about fintech. A year ago, nearly every investor had a fintech thesis, companies were racing to go public and investors at

Venture capital data thus far in the third quarter indicates that investment into blockchain-focused startups is on pace to contract dramatically compared to recent quarters and the heady 2021 period. Data from Crunchbase and PitchBook indicate that after totaling around $10 billion in some recent quarters, the total dollar value of web3 investments could more

Hard tech is hard, but when there are major breakthroughs, that can come with outsize returns and enormous opportunities. Cantos just closed its third fund to invest in science-forward companies at the pre-seed and seed stages to ‘improve billions of lives and saving the planet.’ “I have a bachelor’s in international relations. I’m not technical

Laura Spiekerman Contributor Laura Spiekerman is the co-founder and chief revenue officer of Alloy, an identity-decisioning platform for banks and fintech companies. We’ve all seen the headlines: Fintech is struggling. Since last year, valuations are down 70%-80%, deal activity is down 67% and layoffs have plagued many former industry favorites. But fintech is resilient. Innovation continues

There is no data to show how little venture funding goes to trans founders. All that exists is a report from Backstage Capital saying 1% of all venture funds went to founders openly identifying as LGBTQ+. (According to a recent Gallup poll, 7.1% of Americans identify as LGBT+.) That’s a staggeringly low amount of funding,

Two weeks ago, longtime venture capitalist Chris Olsen, a general partner and cofounder of Drive Capital in Columbus, Ohio, settled into his seat for a portfolio company’s board meeting. It turned out to be a maddening exercise. “Two of the board members didn’t show up, and the company had a resolution on the agenda to

The process of sending and receiving payments in a $1.5 trillion B2B payments market in sub-Saharan Africa is one where merchants commonly use manual invoices and inefficient processes that burden merchants and make them struggle with their businesses. Duplo, a B2B payments startup that solves these issues by enabling African enterprises to collect payments from

Rachel Parrinello Contributor Rachel Parrinello is a principal in The Alexander Group’s San Francisco office and is a leader in sales compensation, media sales and technology practices. John Stamos Contributor John Stamos, a principal in The Alexander Group’s Chicago office, has extensive experience leading large-scale sales transformation engagements, enterprise program build-outs and global compensation redesign

Women-led mobile gaming startup Robin Games raised funding around the idea of carving out a new niche in the market of “lifestyle gaming.” The idea, the company explained at the time of its 2020 public debut, was to create a fantasy gaming experience that’s more sophisticated and stylish — something more in line with the

Ben Boissevain Contributor Ben Boissevain is the founder of Ascento Capital, a boutique investment bank that provides advisory services for M&A, capital raises and valuations to technology companies in the U.S. and internationally. More posts by this contributor Mark-to-market to arrive at a realistic valuation and improve your fundraising odds How to prepare for M&A,

Glints, one of Southeast Asia’s largest talent development and recruitment platforms, announced today it has raised $50 million in an oversubscribed Series D. The round was co-led by DCM Ventures, Lavender Hill Capital and returning investor PERSOL Holdings. This brings Glints’ total raised so far to $80 million. As part of the investment, Lavender Hill

Fresh regulations are often met with skepticism from startup founders, but digital lenders in Kenya largely seem to be upbeat about the new Digital Credit Providers law, saying it will bring order to the sector. The chairman of the Digital Lenders Association of Kenya, Kevin Mutiso, sounded optimistic about the impending new regulatory environment, saying