Fundings and Exits

Once seemingly unstoppable, Big Tech is now in reset mode. We’re not talking about Snap’s earnings sending its stock plunging, or Twitter’s lackluster earnings report from earlier this morning. No, we’re talking about Big Tech. The world’s largest tech companies are pulling back in a way that could, perhaps, clear some brush for startups still making

Evan Kipperman Contributor Evan Kipperman is a partner in the emerging companies and venture capital practice at Wiggin and Dana. He helps growth-stage companies, VC firms, family offices and high-net-worth individuals achieve their business goals. Paul Hughes Contributor Paul Hughes is a partner in the emerging companies and venture capital practice at Wiggin and Dana.

The big news of the morning is that Amazon is buying One Medical, a previously venture-backed consumer healthcare company with a technology twist, in an all-cash deal worth $3.9 billion inclusive of debt. The announcement follows recent reporting that One Medical was in play. Seeing One Medical taken off the table, then, is not a

Startup founders and laid-off tech workers know all too well about the funding slowdown of 2022, but the boom times aren’t over for everyone. U.S. venture firms in particular are amassing more cash than ever, and Menlo Ventures is perpetuating the trend. The 46-year-old Bay Area firm, known for its early bets on companies like

Livestream shopping in the United States has a ways to go to catch up with China’s booming $600 billion industry, but Whatnot’s new $260 million Series D round shows that shoppers stateside are increasingly embracing this way of buying and selling items. The new investment was co-led by DST Global and returning investor CapitalG, and

Prerna A Jhunjhunwala and Nikhil Naik, founders of Creative Galileo People who work with kids know how difficult it is to keep them engaged with online learning content. Creative Galileo keeps children hooked by adding in their favorite cartoon characters. The Singapore-based edtech platform announced today that it has raised $7.5 million in Series A

While the pandemic prompted companies to digitize much of the way they do business, not every brand made the pivot successfully. In some cases, it cost them dearly. According to Couchbase, enterprises wasted on average $4.12 million on failed, delayed or scaled-back projects in 2020. The same survey found that over four-fifths of companies —

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex asked: How do founders hold two ideas in their heads:

Increasingly, absent a federal framework, U.S. states are passing privacy and security laws aimed at protecting people’s data. The California Consumer Privacy Act is perhaps the best known, followed by the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, the New York Privacy Act and the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act. While the laws are a step in

The process for retailers and brands to liquidate excess inventory hasn’t changed very much, if at all, and while some retailers were able to build operational infrastructure to service the off-price channels, it continues to be a constant pain point. Brands overproduce more than $500 billion of goods annually, and all of that excess inventory

An investor in Instacart, Capital Group, has repriced its shares in the company, lowering its estimation of the value of the online grocery delivery service. The news follows other, similar repricings by companies like Fidelity, which also own a stake in the decacorn. It’s really not surprising that one more investor agrees Instacart’s 2021 valuation

The pandemic has triggered more demand for online shopping and fueled many smaller retailers to establish their own online offerings. Japanese commerce enabler AnyMind, which helps brands and influencers’ online operations, has closed a ¥5 billion (approximately $36 million) Series D round on the back of that boost to make additional acquisitions in Japan and

HireArt, which TechCrunch previously described as a “resume-killing” jobs marketplace, today announced that it raised $26.25 million in a Series B financing round led by Three Fish Capital with participation from over a “half dozen” angel investors. CEO Nick Sedlet said that the cash will be put toward product development and more than doubling HireArt’s

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Alex and Grace are back to cover the biggest and most interesting technology, startup and markets news. Today was a fun day in that we didn’t start off with just bad news — what a

As venture capital grew around the world, tracking the fintech market was a fine way to understand the general health of the VC world; when venture was getting bigger, so too was fintech fundraising. Worth around a fifth of all venture dollars invested last year, fintech startups raised nearly unfathomable sums of capital but with

Black founders raised 1.3% of last year’s $330 billion worth of U.S. venture investment, totaling just over $4.3 billion. So far this year, Black founders have raised a smaller 1.2% of the $125 billion invested. The past few months have seen private market investors reduce their investment pace as a possible recession looms, but that

Merchants building businesses on giant marketplaces often have to think inside the marketplace’s box, but Medusa, a one-year-old e-commerce startup from Denmark, is going after e-commerce platforms, like Shopify and WooCommerce, with its open source alternative aimed at the JavaScript developer community. Co-founders Sebastian Rindom, Oliver Juhl and Nicklas Gellner started the company a year

While credit cards are ubiquitous in the U.S., they are far less so across Latin America, where people — especially lower-income members of the population — have historically relied on cash for payments. But the market in LatAm has shifted in recent years, and with increased digital adoption, more people are opening their minds to

No merchant likes a bad customer review and Okendo, a customer marketing platform, announced $26 million in Series A funding today to continue developing its customer review tools for e-commerce brands. Base10 Partners led the funding round and was joined by Craft Ventures and existing investor Index Ventures. It gives the company $33.5 million in

You might think given the chatter in the startup world that venture capitalists are short on funds — after all, we’re hearing about young tech companies finding themselves marooned between stages, hitting up investors with smaller capital pools than prior backers and turning to equity crowdfunding to keep their cash balances healthy. And yet new data

Hivery, a startup that bills itself as an “optimization platform” for retailers, today announced that it raised $30 million in a Series B round led by Tiger Global, the embattled private equity firm, with participation from Blackbird Ventures, AS1 Growth Partners and OneVentures. CEO Jason Hosking told TechCrunch via email that the proceeds will fuel

The founders of New Zealand-based Carepatron, a healthcare platform used by providers and patients, say they are passionate about solo practitioners and small health teams. With that in mind, they built Carepatron, which helps reduce the amount of administrative work that practices need to perform and also automatically reminds patients about appointments to reduce no-shows.

The web3 bandwagon really took off in 2021 and 2022 as entrepreneurs and investors both sought to make their mark in the nascent industry. But Latin America stood out thanks to its comparatively high crypto adoption: According to Kim Grauer, head of research at Chainalysis, Latin America has consistently captured between 8% and 10% of

Shota Horii, his twin brother Yuta Horii and Jun Taketani co-founded SmartBank in 2019 after selling their previous startup Fablic, a Japanese online secondhand marketplace, to Rakuten in 2016. While operating Fablic, the trio found that many users still used cash to pay and manage their day-to-day finance. The founders wanted to address the issue in the consumer finance industry

As the global venture capital market slows, it’s also evolving. In the second quarter of 2022, global venture totals dipped, but inside of that slowdown is a shift away from the super-late-stage deals that helped push the value of VC deal-making to all-time highs last year. And we’re seeing regional differences that could indicate that

As the market swoons, venture capital firms continue to announce new funds. TechCrunch reporters covered five of these more in-depth Tuesday, as you will see below. Meanwhile, I corresponded with three firms about their funds and any concerns that limited partners had brought up during the fundraising stage. Haris Khurshid, general partner at Chalo Ventures,

C2 Ventures doesn’t invest in crypto, Web 3 or consumer companies, and it stays away from Silicon Valley startups. Instead, the New York City-based venture firm focuses on disruption in legacy industries. For example, one of its portfolio companies is a robotics startup that cleans commercial bathrooms. The firm announced today it has closed its

Mental health startup Intellect’s ambitious goal is to be available across the Asia-Pacific, but ensure localized, culturally-competent care in each of the many markets it serves. Today it announced it has added $10 million to its war chest in a Series A extension led by Tiger Global, bringing the round’s total to $20 million. The

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Alex and Grace are back to cover the biggest, boldest and baddest technology news. After some holiday weeks, we are back on an actual Monday! What a treat. Here’s what we got into: Equity

DEUNA, a Silicon Valley-based one-click checkout commerce startup, is officially joining Latin America’s nearly $100 billion e-commerce sector with $30 million in Series A funding after largely staying under the radar since being founded in late 2020. Co-founders Roberto Enrique Kafati Santos and Jose Maria Serrano started the company after a career at McKinsey leading