Startups

For a single year, it appeared that the venture gambit was going to work out: hundreds of startups hoped to be worth billions on paper and exit in good order. Sadly for investors and founders alike, that year — 2021, as I am sure you’ve guessed — turned out to be more of an outlier

Adopting Internet of Things (IoT) tech for the office isn’t easy — especially at enterprise scale. Companies have IoT device administration to worry about, and also building out the infrastructure necessary to keep those devices connected and operational. To make it easier, five former co-workers — Pasi Leipälä, Teemu Vaattovaara, Jyrki Okkonen, Ville Ylläsjarvi and

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. As Twitter continues its absolutely farcical march toward its own demise, we are grabbing the popcorn to watch the fire blaze. In other news: Happy Monday, folks! — Christine and Haje The

Grant Easterbrook Contributor Grant Easterbrook is a fintech consultant based in Amsterdam. He also co-founded Dream Forward, which was acquired in 2020. More posts by this contributor A decade of fintech failures: 4 innovations that didn’t live up to the hype Preparing for fintech’s second decade: 4 moves your firm must make now This article

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 the previous

“Usually the best way to figure out if your crazy idea is any good is simply to try it. So that’s what we did,” Marc Randolph, Netflix’s co-founder and original CEO, That crazy idea was to send a CD through the mail to learn whether the concept of a mail-order DVD subscription service was practical.

Startup experts! Today’s the last day that you can apply to lead a session at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 in September. The time has come to stop procrastinating and Get. It. Done! Today’s your last chance to apply to speak at TechCrunch 2023 Why should you drop everything to get that application in by 11:59 p.m.

Companies collectively spent $61 billion on cloud infrastructure in Q4 2022, and there’s more growth to come. Yet, businesses are poorly protected from losses caused by cloud downtime. “Cloud service providers typically offer service level agreements (SLAs) that outline their commitments to service availability and performance,” AV8 general partner Amir Kabir told TechCrunch+. But while

Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This week we recorded at Early Stage, TechCrunch’s event for founders who are building startups from the ground up. Sadly, our dear friend Natasha Mascarenhas took ill, and we had to lean on

HUSSLUP, currently an invite-only beta, is a job search and networking app for creative professionals in the media and entertainment industry to connect with studios and production companies looking to hire talent. Today, the company announced a web version of its mobile app. It will roll out widely next week. Much like LinkedIn, HUSSLUP allows

Every so often, a new startup crosses your radar and reminds you how exciting hardware can be. It’s a relative rarity in consumer electronics, a category dominated by corporations like Samsung, Apple and Sony, which are (perhaps understandably) somewhat risk averse. Melbourne-based Nura was one such company. I distinctly remember the startup paying a visit

Our Call for Content period ends tomorrow, April 21, so if you’re a startup expert — of any stripe — and want a shot at leading a session at TechCrunch Disrupt on September 19–21, you need to apply right here and right now! Beat the deadline and apply to speak at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 Your

Interested in tech, Zheng Wei left his career as a chartered accountant to teach himself how to code. But it was his experience as an accountant that led to his interest in the blockchain and how it can be used to verify documents. “What intrigued me was the capability of the technology to allow for

For many, ChatGPT and the generative AI hype train signals the arrival of artificial intelligence into the mainstream. But while there’s little question of a seismic sea change these past six months in terms of public awareness, the growing demand for AI could be outpacing the infrastructure required to power the myriad use cases that

The concept of taking existing properties and repurposing them is not a new one. After all, Airbnb is a high-profile example of people turning vacation homes, for example, into revenue generators when they’re not using them. The end result is that travelers have far more options today than they used to when choosing where to

Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Trevor Martin the co-founder and CEO of Mammoth Biosciences, a startup that uses CRISPR to diagnose and find treatments for genetic diseases. Trevor talked about what it is like to build a company surrounding novel

Global fintech funding totaled $15 billion in the first quarter of this year, growing 55% from the fourth quarter, according to CB Insights’ latest State of Fintech report.  While this generally may seem like a win, it’s important to note a few things. First, 2020 and 2021 were unique years where investment in fintech broke

E-commerce had a moment during the global pandemic, but not only have things chilled since then, it’s gotten downright competitive as the economy cooled in the past year, according to Jordan Gal, co-founder and CEO of Rally. “Founders in this space used to speak of optimism, but that has turned into realism, and people are

Hello and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Our Monday show covers the latest in tech news from the weekend and what’s making headlines early in the week. Today we are talking about space, birds and startups! Here’s what we got

The doors to TechCrunch Early Stage (Boston Edition) open in just three days, and we cannot wait to meet and greet you! If you haven’t booked your pass yet, hurry! We’re running low on tickets. Seriously, this is a genuine ah-oooh-ga situation. Buy a $449 Founder pass now, while you still can. Student passes cost

Back when Silicon Valley Bank was still pitching a package of financial moves to its customers, it noted in a presentation to its own investors that “elevated client cash burn” was “pressuring [its] balance of fund flows.” The previously central bank to Silicon Valley told the stock market that while it had anticipated a “modest,

Sam Chaudhary takes his time. The founder of ClassDojo, an edtech consumer app that focuses on student classrooms, spent eight years building the company before introducing a formal revenue model. All while raising over tens of millions in venture capital from elite Silicon Valley investors and eyeing a big mission: become the brand families can

I often hear founders say they are raising money to increase their runway by 18 to 24 months. In a sense, that is accurate, but only from the startup’s point of view. However, that’s not what an investor is looking for. Your company surviving for another year and a half is not the goal of

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced take on this week’s startup news and trends by Senior reporter Natasha Mascarenhas.  After a Tahoe-based tech conference, Sheel Mohnot, the fintech investor behind Better Tomorrow Ventures, is beatboxing in his head — all day, every day. And while it may feel like an uncommon takeaway from an event

Emerging managers have been on the same rollercoaster as startups for the last few years. Funding to these young firms swelled in 2021 as venture was hot overall, but in line with the broader market, fundraising has slowed to a trickle since the beginning of 2022. The trend continued into 2023. New data from PitchBook

Oleksandr Yaroshenko Contributor Oleksandr Yaroshenko is head of investor relations at Headway, an edtech startup with operations in Ukraine, the UK, Poland, and Cyprus. Investors wish they could forecast the future and decrease the uncertainty regarding how a business will grow. Subscribers’ retention on the annual plan is directly related to the product value. However,

A robotic taxi drove me home a few nights ago, and it was just fine. As it carried me through Golden Gate Park at a steady 23 miles per hour (slowing down to 6 mph for every speed bump), I felt like a packet of information being delivered across a network. Since our last robotics

Zoom today announced plans to acquire Workvivo, a six-year-old Irish startup focused on improving companies’ internal communications and culture. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. While many enterprise communication tools — such as Zoom — specialize in real-time communication, Workvivo is very much about the asynchronous. The platform is less about project-specific collaboration than it

Things could’ve been worse, I guess. Companies with all female-founding teams raised about $800 million, or 2.1%, out of the estimated $37 billion invested in U.S. startups in Q1 2023, according to PitchBook. In dollar terms, that is a 53% year-over-year decline from the $1.7 billion all-female founding teams raised in Q1 2022. The decline

Elevate, a consumer benefits administration platform, today announced that it raised $28 million in a funding round led by Anthemis with participation from Fin Capital Norwest Venture Partners, Greycroft, Bowery Capital, and Firebolt Ventures. The new cash, which brings Elevate’s total raised to $43 million, will be put toward product development, hiring and customer acquisition,