Startups

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. We thought that last week was a lot. It was, but this week was somehow more. More chaotic, rapid-fire change at a number of massive tech companies kept us on our toes. So,

If you had to sum up the 2022 venture capital market in one word, that word could be contradictions. Venture funds have record dry powder — deployable capital on hand — and yet funding continues to steadily decline. There is seemingly more talk of backing women and people of color in the industry than ever,

According to layoffs.fyi, more than 23,000 tech workers have been laid off so far this month. For comparison, the site tracked 12,463 layoffs in October. Facebook’s parent company Meta announced the first major job cuts in its history this week, eliminating 11,000 jobs. Like Twitter, Stripe, Brex, Lyft, Netflix and other tech firms based in

Vincent Aiello Contributor Spencer Fane attorney and business owner Vincent Aiello helps businesses solve legal problems to secure revenue flow and reduce business risks. Whoever said you can’t have your cake and eat it too should have called their accountants and lawyers first. These professionals often receive inquiries from founders, equity investment firms and venture

Last year, OpenAI announced the OpenAI Startup Fund, a tranche through which it and its partners, including Microsoft, are investing in early-stage AI companies tackling major problems. Mum’s been the word since on which companies have received infusions from the Fund. But today, the OpenAI Startup Fund revealed that it led a $23.5 million investment

Syneroid recently raised a $500,000 round of funding to bring something halfway between microchips and dog collars to market. The company is finding some interesting slices of the market, but the deck, overall, leaves a few things to be desired. We learn more from mistakes than from perfection, so I figured it’d be a great

There are a lot of changes afoot for SpringTime Ventures as it looks to deploy its freshly closed second fund. For one, the Denver-based firm is pivoting away from its original focus on its home state of Colorado, despite being the only local fund in two of the state’s 10 unicorn companies. It’s also now

We’re packing our bags and getting pumped about flying to Miami for TC Sessions: Crypto on November 17.  What about you? Don’t miss your chance to rub elbows with the kings and queens of blockchain, cryptocurrency, DeFi, NFT and web3 — the current rulers and the up-and-coming contenders for the crown. Buy your pass today

Kabam, the gaming company that has developed mobile games in partnership with entertainment brands including Disney, Marvel and Universal, has laid off about 7% — around 35 people — of its workforce, TechCrunch has learned from sources and confirmed with the company over email. The Vancouver-based company informed the affected employees about the move earlier

Celonis has made a big impact since it launched in 2011, raising $2.4 billion along the way. Its most recent investment, a $1 billion raise in August, was on a $13.2 billion post-money valuation, the kind of money you haven’t been seeing in 2022. The company has primarily made its reputation by using software for

Day One Ventures, a venture firm launched in 2018 with a pitch to combine venture capital acumen with marketing and communications support, has launched a program aimed explicitly at those impacted by tech layoffs this year. The program, titled “Funded Not Fired,” will write $100,000 checks into 20 startup teams by the end of the

Years ago, there was a price war between public clouds. Back in 2014, to pick one example, Amazon’s AWS cut its prices in response to Google’s recently launched competing service. Since those heady days, the cloud infrastructure market has matured and changed. Sure, AWS is still top dog, with Microsoft and Google working to both

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. Hello, dear crunchers! We hope you’ve had a peaceful weekend and that you were able to stay clear of social media for a few days. LOL Who are we kidding? We’ve all

Siri, show me fintech companies, founded in the last two years, that haven’t raised over the past year but have grown headcount by 100% in the same time frame; and can it be founded by Stanford alumni whose Twitter traction has grown by at least 50% in the last six months? This is Harmonic’s vision;

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: How can students work

Want to start a DAO? It’s not that hard. Want to join a DAO? It’s even easier, but there are several steps to get connected. Some of those steps are daunting. That’s why Alex Taub started Upstream, which attempts to make starting and onboarding for a DAO much easier. Tune in to the next TechCrunch

Education options during and after incarceration have never been particularly extensive, despite the best intentions of educators. Emerge Career is working on changing that, and its early success in putting formerly incarcerated folks to work is attracting investment from both VCs and government programs. It was only August when Emerge first appeared as it came

Stability AI, the venture-backed startup behind the text-to-image AI system Stable Diffusion, is funding a wide-ranging effort to apply AI to the frontiers of biotech. Called OpenBioML, the endeavor’s first projects will focus on machine learning-based approaches to DNA sequencing, protein folding and computational biochemistry. The company’s founders describe OpenBioML as an “open research laboratory”

We’re encouraged to think of pitch meetings as a trial by fire: If an entrepreneur can negotiate deadly traps and slay the doubt monsters that bedevil tech investors, they’ll be rewarded with a golden SAFE note at the end of their quest. Particularly for first-timers, the pitch has become an existential drama, which can lead

Benjamin Döpfner has been building companies since he was a teenager.  One of his more recent ventures was based in Berlin, and at the time of its founding in 2019, Germany actually had negative interest rates — meaning that the company was paying back 50 basis points, or half a percent for each euro that

Over the last six months, I’ve written up 25 Pitch Deck Teardowns — the popular series of articles where I review a pitch deck in detail, celebrating the wins and gently (and sometimes not-so-gently) suggesting improvements. We’ve seen 74-slide decks (yes, really), decks that are riddled with spelling mistakes and bogged down by hideous design

How to compete without losing your mind — and your runway Mary Ann Azevedo 8 hours Competing in an increasingly crowded space can be nerve-wracking. Competing in an increasingly crowded space amid a challenging fundraising environment is even more nerve-wracking. We all know that cash is not nearly as readily available in 2022 as it

Meet Fintecture, a French startup that wants to upgrade B2B payments. While many payment companies have focused on B2C payments with Stripe leading the way, B2B payments haven’t changed much over the years. “In the U.S., there are still a lot of paper checks. In Europe, it’s mostly transfers and manual reconciliation,” Fintecture co-founder and

The venture capital industry is built on signals. Lead investors help close rounds, pro rata rights show promise of a company, and the partner title gives validity to folks within firms looking to close deals. Revere, a new bet being built by former AngelList executive Eric Woo and family office operator Chris Shen, is playing

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: How can early-stage startups

Microsoft has backed Wemade, a popular video game developer that has made aggressive bets on blockchain in recent years, the latest sign of tech giants’ showing growing interest in web3. South Korea’s Wemade said in a press release that it has raised $46 million from Microsoft, Shinhan Asset Management and Kiwoom Securities. In a regulatory

Earlier today, The Exchange dug into changing investor sentiment regarding growth and profitability. A new report looking at cloud and software companies from Battery Ventures ran the math on how investors are rewarding faster growth from less unprofitable companies — dare we say, profitable companies? — with the data indicating that, at least for now,

What’s better: growing quickly or making lots of money? The answer, in startup terms, is both. But because there is a natural tension between growth (which usually comes with incremental costs, often in advance of new revenues) and profitability (allowing revenue to further extend its coverage of operating costs), most startups lean more on the

Everybody wants to talk about software supply chain risks these days, whether that’s security teams, developers or government officials. It’s no surprise then, that VCs, despite the current economic climate, continue to fund startups in this space, too. One of the newest members in this club is Arnica, a startup that takes a somewhat broader

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. Last week was a hell of a week in startup news, and Henry wrote a particularly good summary of everything that went down, including Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase, Meta’s troubles, and a