Fundings and Exits

Retail investment apps in Southeast Asia attracted a lot of funding last year, and the trend looks set to continue with Vietnam-focused Infina announcing that it has added $4 million to its seed funding. Along with the $2 million it announced in June, this brings the round’s total to $6 million. Investors include Sequoia Capital

Remember Wag? The dog-walking app made huge waves back in 2018 when it raised $300 million from SoftBank’s Vision Fund. Competing with rival Rover, Wag’s service fell out of our minds in the years since its mega-deal. Today, Wag is back in the news thanks to a recently announced SPAC deal that will take the

Rating symptoms on a numerical scale seems easy, but it can be harder than it appears. How much did it hurt when you stubbed your toe? Was it a two out of 10? A four? How often do you wake up at night? Twice, three times? Regularly? Rarely? These imprecise, self-reported scales can be found

Welcome to my new weekly fintech focused column. I’ll be publishing this every Sunday, so in between posts, be sure to listen to the Equity podcast and hear Alex Wilhelm, Natasha Mascarenhas and me riff on all things startups! And if you want to have this hit your inbox directly once it turns into a

Cloud is the big buzzword these days, with people talking about why it’s a smart move for companies, and lots of venture-backed startups developing easy ways for companies to make the shift. Artisanal Ventures, a Bay Area venture capital firm investing in B2B cloud startups, closed on its first fund, the oversubscribed $62 million Artisanal

Hello and happy weekend from the Equity crew! We had a busy week, including a Twitter Space with Natasha and Alex taking to the mics to dig into some tasty public-market news. Naturally our show is more startup-focused than public-market centered. But! We can learn a lot from the world of public companies that have

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.  Hello and welcome to the weekend, my friends! Today we’re sticking to simple fare. The meat and potatoes — pea protein and gluten-free starches?

And why we are pro tech twitter drama Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. We had the full crew aboard today, headed by our killer production team Grace and Chris, and hosting crew Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex. Last week we promised Cute Farming Robots,

In an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2014, then-CEO of Pure Storage, Scott Dietzen, was asked about the possibility of exiting via acquisition. He didn’t pull any punches: “Acquisitions always suck, and suck worse than you think that they are going to suck.” That doesn’t sound like getting acquired is the best thing that could

A diverging insurtech market could injure many companies while others remain unscathed Alex Wilhelm Anna Heim 9 hours There were two markets for insurtech startups in 2021: one welcoming and one dismissive. Private market investors poured capital into promising insurtech startups, while the public markets sent the value of recently public insurtech companies down —

The pandemic trade ended a little while ago. The COVID-induced boom that powered a host of tech companies is also fading quickly. The results are showing up in Big Tech earnings. For startups, it’s bad news — the good times of the last few years appear to be in rapid decline, with many startups holding

Dolby Laboratories today announced that it has acquired Millicast, a WebRTC-based developer platform for building ultra-low-latency video streaming experiences, as it works to build out its developer platform. The promise of Millicast, which was founded in 2018, is that it can deliver content across the globe in broadcast quality and with sub-second latency. The company

Zero Grocery is on a mission to deliver your groceries in two hours and in a way that doesn’t hurt the planet. The plastic-free grocery, home and personal care delivery startup is one of the companies we featured two years ago when discussing venture capital interest in businesses focused on reducing waste. At the time,

In early morning trading today, shares of PayPal are off around 25% following the company’s earnings report yesterday evening. Investors did not like what the company had on offer. TechCrunch focuses on private companies and private markets. But at times, public companies can help us better understand what is going on in larger markets where

Waldo has raised $15 million for its ‘no code’ automated testing tool. Mobile development teams using Waldo can set up tests without writing a line of scripting code. It then seamlessly integrates in your continuous integration (CI) pipeline. Joshua Zelman from Insight Partners is leading today’s Series A round with participation from Matrix Partners and

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 brought on the Most Online™ reporter at TechCrunch, Amanda Silberling

Dana Stalder Contributor Dana Stalder is a partner at Matrix Partners. The former commercial chief (Product, Sales and Marketing) at PayPal, he now leads fintech investing at Matrix Partners, where he also invests in consumer marketplaces and enterprise software. More posts by this contributor Fintechs could see $100 billion of liquidity in 2021 2019 saw

Another vertical farming operation revealed its plans to hit Nasdaq by way of SPAC. This week, Florida-based Kalera announced plans to merge with Agrico Acquisition Corp. in a deal that values the agtech firm at $375 million. The move comes as plenty of excitement swirls around the category, though Kalera, which currently lists on the

Regardless of your perspective on blockchain-centered projects, venture capitalists appear to have made up their minds about the sector: Investments into crypto-themed companies — the web3 space, as its supporters call it — set records in 2021, records that could be beaten in 2022 if early data indicates where capital will flow this year. The

AirTree partners (from l to r): From left to right: James Cameron, John Henderson, Elicia McDonald, Jackie Vullinghs, Craig Blair and Helen Norton More money is flowing into Australia and New Zealand’s startup ecosystems. Sydney-based AirTree Ventures, one of the region’s most prolific VC firms, announced it has raised $700 million AUD (about $493 million

Nathan Beckord Contributor More posts by this contributor How to break into Silicon Valley as an outsider The lightning-fast Series A (that was 3 years in the making) Momentum is the single most important factor that helps startup founders raise capital. In 20+ years of working to connect founders with potential investors, I’ve learned that

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This Monday show actually felt a bit old-school, in that the weekend controversy in tech has spilled over into the working morning, meaning that we need to talk about it. But first, markets:

Welcome to my new weekly fintech-focused column. It’s an incredible time to be a financial technology journalist. Besides the fact that over 20% of all venture dollars last year went into fintech startups, I am particularly excited about the many ways that this technology is helping boost inclusion all over the world. While this pandemic

Meet Rise, a new startup working on a calendar app that is specifically designed for team work. Rise helps you see what you have planned, check what you team is doing right now and, more importantly, schedule meetings that are as convenient as possible for the whole team. Currently in private beta, Rise raised $3

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. We had the full crew aboard today, headed by our superlative production team Grace and Chris, and hosting crew Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex. What did we get into? Well, a host of pretty awesome stuff, even if

The 2020-2021 trading and investing boom lifted a number of companies’ revenue growth, fundraising and narrative strength. Some of the best-known even went public on the back of a global trend that made their businesses shine. Now that shine is fading, and the value of select fintech concerns is in free-fall. The best example of

He Huang Contributor He Huang is a partner at Northern Light Venture Capital supporting early-stage enterprise companies. It’s been a tumultuous few years, but China’s manufacturing industry is now on the rebound. Once an industry characterized by low-end manufacturing and intensive labor, it has transformed into a high-end manufacturing hub aided by technology. Automation and

While some startups are trying to get people to leave spreadsheets behind, Canvas, which is developing a collaborative data exploration tool, is going all in with a spreadsheet-like interface for non-technical teams to access the information they need without bothering data teams. Luke Zapart, who started Canvas in late 2020 with his former Flexport colleagues

The IPO market is flatlining at an awkward moment. While private markets remain heavily risk-on, a key avenue for startup exits – and investor liquidity – is seemingly shut. Our first indication that this was the case was the Justworks IPO delay in the United States, which pulled the plug on its debut close to

New data from Kruze Consulting shows just how much the venture capital fundraising market has changed for startups in the last few quarters. Kruze, which provides accounting, tax and venture capital-related services to private tech companies, has access to hard data regarding startup performance. Healy Jones, vice president of financial planning and analysis at Kruze