Startups

It may go down in the history books about Silicon Valley: the time that its most prominent bank, a bank founded nearly 40 years earlier, inflicted such grievous injury on itself that it had to be rescued by another bank or else risk going down in flames in a single day. We don’t yet know

It’s not every day that banking news is the big story in the startup world, but here we are. Yesterday the previously crypto-friendly Silvergate Bank announced that it would “wind down operations and voluntarily liquidate” itself. The company’s stock had been under massive pressure in recent months, exacerbated by a note from the bank on

Digital mortgage lender Better.com’s SPAC deal with Aurora Acquisition Corp. recently got a new lease on life, extending its timeframe to close the transaction through the end of Q3 2023. Without the extension the transaction would have had to close by today. Further investigation has turned up an interesting fact in the interim: Even if

A steady stream of new startups pitch their ideas, concepts, products and services on a daily basis to TechCrunch reporters: Startups that claim to predict when employees might want to leave for a new job; that think they can detect depression using someone’s voice; that experiment by using chatbots on patients with depression; that scrape

Thousand Faces, a web3 community-based investment group, hosted its demo day on Wednesday with the top 10 startups from its Female Founder Accelerator program. The demo day coincided with International Women’s Day and featured women-led businesses focused on sustainable development goals (SDGs). The accelerator program’s first cohort accepted 30 startups from a pool of over

The global downturn has impacted every sector, but fintech bore the brunt of it as public-market valuations fell off a cliff last year. However, it appears that even though VCs are proceeding more cautiously than before and taking their time with due diligence, they are still investing. CB Insights recently found that two of the

Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Matt Rogers, the founder and CEO of Mill, a startup that helps its customers turn their food scraps into farm feed. The former founder of Nest talked about what compelled him to jump back into

The economy is a bit better — kind of, maybe, sort of? While things appear to be trending in the right direction, it’s going to be a long road. Besides, if you’re unable to find work, positive macroeconomic trends are cold comfort. One of the nice things about having a platform like TechCrunch is the

Serial entrepreneur and seasoned investor Vinod Khosla has some strong, contrarian advice for the venture capital industry: don’t sit on your founders’ boards. Khosla, who spoke onstage at the Upfront Summit in Los Angeles this week, spoke about the culture of capital. “I’m not a big fan of governance; I think if you engage as

Catch co-founder Kristen Anderson tweeted Monday that the health and retirement benefits company she and co-founder Andrew Ambrosino started six years ago is shuttering. Anderson and Ambrosino created Catch “with a crazy idea that our benefits shouldn’t be tied to traditional employment and a W2 form,” she explained in a Twitter thread and post on

Cannabis startups have to navigate some rough waters: They can’t access federal funds or work with traditional banks, and they have to find customers across a fragmented market while adhering to local laws. But at least on the advertising front, a new Twitter update might signal smooth sailing ahead. Twitter updated its advertising rules to

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 week.

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced take on this week’s startup news and trends by Senior Reporter and Equity co-host Natasha Mascarenhas. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. One of the quieter conversations in venture capital has only grown louder, in my DMs and interviews, over the past few months: The known bias

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 Mary Ann Azevedo, Becca Szkutak and Alex Wilhelm gathered to riff through the week’s biggest startup and venture news. A big thank you to Becca for stepping in while Alex was

Leslie Feinzaig, a venture capitalist, likes that her venture firm, Graham & Walker, sounds like an old, stodgy law firm. But apart from the name, there’s nothing really stodgy about it: Her fund exclusively invests in female- and nonbinary-founded startups. It’s a relatively new name for her firm, which was originally called Female Founders Alliance.

Welcome back to the TechCrunch Podcast, where I’m standing in for Darrell while he’s honeymooning with his lady love. This week, I sat down with Amanda Silberling and Mary Ann Azevedo to talk through some of their interesting stories. You can listen below or subscribe in iTunes or Spotify to get new episodes delivered weekly

Companies already have a wealth of tools at their disposal for headhunting technical talent, but a new startup wants to give recruiters a leg-up by bringing together the worlds of GitHub and LinkedIn to create a database of the most suitable candidates for a specific software development role — and it’s doing so by using

TechCrunch Live took a virtual visit to Boston this week at our special City Spotlight: Boston event. During the special, extended event, influential Boston founders and investors spoke, including Boston Robotics founder Marc Raibert and MassChallenge CEO Cait Brumme. The event started with Greg Dracon, of .406 Ventures, and Matt Caulfield, founder and CEO of

According to a recent report, 92.4% of consumers use reviews when deciding to purchase products. It’s understandable. They want confidence in their purchase choice before buying a product online. A Seoul-based startup called Indent wants to help these shoppers through access to video reviews and product ratings, while also helping to drive sales for e-commerce merchants

It seems like only yesterday that I wrote about Gable’s $12 million Series A, but it was, in fact, two days ago. The company is building an interesting product in the world of remote work, and I was curious how the founders were able to convince investors to part with a big pile of dough.

Shifting investor priorities, more expensive cash and a dearth of the large deals that were so common during the last startup boom could leave many late-stage web3 companies short on cash. And the clock is ticking. People are already memeing that venture capitalists have pivoted from crypto to AI, hunting, as they’re wont to, for

Enterprise project management and team collaboration unicorn monday.com is digging deeper into the Asia-Pacific region with the opening of its new regional headquarters in Sydney. Founded in Israel, monday.com opened its Sydney HQ two and a half years after it first launched in Australia in June 2020. Monday.com recently marked a 76% year-over-year growth in

Sophie Alcorn Contributor Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Dear Sophie: Is there a domestic

Amazon has struck a deal with embattled online mortgage lender Better.com to offer up a new benefit to employees. Better.com is launching Equity Unlocker, a program that allows employees to use their vested equity as collateral for a down payment when trying to buy homes. Amazon employees in Florida, New York and Washington State will

Mammoth, a recently launched Mastodon app that’s trying to make it easier on users who want to join the decentralized social web, has a notable financial backer. The company confirmed that its leading pre-seed investor is Mozilla, a proponent of the open web, which invested in the company’s first general round alongside others, including Long

Remote working options and workplace flexibility can be a bit of a head-scratcher for employees and employers alike, but Gable, which has just raised $12 million in Series A funding following on a $3.25 million round of seed funding, is hoping to make it smoother for everyone. The company provides a one-stop-shop for managing employees’

The question is whether we should care Alex Wilhelm 22 hours Shares of Adobe sold off following last week’s news that the United States government is “getting ready to file suit to block the $20 billion Adobe-Figma deal announced last year on the grounds it is anti-competitive,” though not as sharply as when the company

Welcome back to Inside Startup Battlefield, the TechCrunch podcast where we take you behind the scenes of one of tech’s top startup competitions. There are 180 companies solving crucial problems that didn’t make it to the Disrupt stage, but that doesn’t mean they’re making any less of an impact. In this episode, TechCrunch writers Devin Coldewey

City Spotlight: Boston In order to build a startup culture, a city or region needs some key elements in place – like an innovation engine to drive startup ideas. It needs a couple of successful exits, which in turn drives angel investing as entrepreneurs growing increasingly wealthy look to help new founders building companies reach

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 week.