Startups

Politician turned venture capitalist Bradley Tusk recently spoke at a TechCrunch Live event on how startups should approach regulation. Dibbs CEO and co-founder Evan Vandenberg joined Tusk in the conversation. The event is embedded below, and it’s free to watch. Throughout the talk, the two guests expressed their firm stance on the power of utilizing

Natalie Gordon founded Babylist in 2011, and today it’s a leading marketplace for baby gift registries. But it didn’t take off at first. It took several years for Gordon to spin the startup into its current trajectory and several more for users to follow. This is normal! And we’re excited to have Jesse Draper join

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. “There’s more dry powder powder than ever before.” “There’s never been a better time to start a startup.” “Discipline is the new scale.” (OK, OK,

Omar Khalil Contributor Omar Khalil is a partner at Santé Ventures, where he focuses primarily on biotechnology and medical technology companies. The unprecedented explosion of investment in life sciences over the past decade has resulted in incredible new therapies for patients, strong financial returns for companies and an overall increase in translational research, which is

The latest Crunchbase data shows that Latin American-founded companies in the United States raised $250 million out of the $39.85 billion allocated in venture funds in the U.S. this Q3 — or about 0.63%.1 The Q3 sum is a sharp decrease from the $2.3 billion the cohort raised in Q3 last year and a dramatic

It’s been a strange couple of months at African genomics startup 54gene. In August, it sacked 95 employees, mostly contract staff (in labs and sales departments) hired to work in 54gene’s COVID business line launched in 2020. In September, co-founder and VP of Engineering Ogochukwu Francis Osifo left the company. And this week, founder and

Skidattl wants to use augmented reality to get people to engage with the real world. It’s a story we’ve heard before from AR companies, particularly as they pit themselves against the potentially isolating effects of virtual reality. But rather than chasing metaversal Pokémon creatures on the street, Skidattl aims to use AR “beacons” to show

Perhaps sitting perched somewhere in sunny Miami, Florida, is a founder wondering the best ways to fundraise for a company when situated outside a traditional tech hub like the Bay Area. They need not worry. Last week, Mike Asem from M25, Elizabeth Yin of Hustle Fund and Accel’s Rich Wong answered that question at TechCrunch

Healthcare benefits are great, but navigating them often isn’t. HealthJoy wants to make the experience more seamless for employees, while helping HR departments reduce the number of underutilized benefits. The Chicago-based company announced today it has raised $60 million in Series D funding, led by Valspring Capital with participation from Endeavor Vision and CIBC Innovation

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. Wednesday, and we’re excited to bring you another round of our esteemed Daily Crunch newsletter. There’s a wide variety of morsels, nuggets, and other bite-sized delights, so let’s go! — Christine and

“There’s a big wave of innovation in managing cloud costs,” Team8 co-founder and managing partner Liran Grinberg told TechCrunch as part of our latest cloud investor survey. Having noticed tailwinds for the wave of B2B startups that offer cloud cost-optimization solutions, and cloud management more broadly, we were curious to know where VCs thought the

The widespread adoption of flexible work has increased the challenge of managing access to physical, commercial buildings, given the dynamic nature of hybrid workspaces. With today’s staffers coming and going to the office on unpredictable timetables, it can be tough to keep track of which have access to rooms and office resources. In a recent

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. Overheard at a VC/startup conference recently: Product market fit is like a product going around from weirdly shaped customer group to weirdly shaped customer group, like that old kid’s book “Are you

Today after the bell, Alphabet and Microsoft will report their calendar third-quarter financial results. Given the breadth of industries that each of these companies touch, their performance will provide us with rich data concerning different areas of the technology landscape. The fun will continue tomorrow when Meta reports its own results. And later this week,

Sequoia India is in advanced stages of deliberations to invest over $50 million in K12 Techno Services, a startup that offers a range of services to education institutions and also runs its own chain of schools, doubling down on a firm that it first backed over a decade ago, two sources familiar with the matter

Last week at TechCrunch’s annual Disrupt event, this editor sat down with VCs from two firms that have come to look similar in ways over the last five or so years. One of those VCs was Niko Bonatsos, a managing partner at General Catalyst (GC), a 22-year-old firm that began as an early-stage venture outfit

The third quarter was far from favorable for Chinese startups looking to raise money. Data shows that for upstart tech companies in the country, Q3 2022 was the worst time to raise venture capital since Q1 2020, with far less capital invested than either the rest of 2020 and 2021, or for most of 2018

Access to funding and lack of support systems are some of the greatest challenges faced by startup founders in sub-Saharan Africa. And while venture capital and founder support programs within the continent are growing, a lot still remains to be done to meet the financing, technology and social capital needs of the especially marginalized groups

Valuations have been top of mind for the entire venture industry this year as many VCs try to navigate their overvalued portfolios and founders scramble to conserve cash and grow into their lofty valuations. So one might have predicted that valuations would fall off a cliff this year. But that hasn’t happened because venture investing

Maro has developed a platform that helps families and schools navigate tough conversations about mental health. The company, which exhibited as part of the Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt, launched its first product, Maro Parents, in 2020. Now, the company is gearing up to launch Maro for Schools next week to help schools screen students

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. Should early-stage founders ignore the never-ending debate on server infrastructure? Up to a point, yes: Investors we talked to are giving entrepreneurs their blessing

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. As far as weeks go, this one was as disruptive as they come. TechCrunch Disrupt 2022 has officially come to a close after an iconic

Champ Suthipongchai Contributor Champ Suthipongchai is founder and GP at Creative Ventures, a deep tech firm that invests in early-stage companies. If you’re hiring for your startup, you need to understand one thing: This is arguably one of the worst times to be looking for talent. While inflation continues to skyrocket and the Fed pumps

Sathya Elumalai was finding it hard to manage his mother’s health after she was diagnosed with four chronic conditions. Rather than guess her health status for the day, he decided to co-found Aidar Health to get that information directly and reliably. In founding Aidar, Elumalai also created and launched MouthLab, a device it claims tracks

Cloud cost optimization startups have become ubiquitous, and they’ve found a friendly ear among enterprise clients looking to cut costs amid the downturn. But should younger startups similarly scrutinize their cloud spend? According to several cloud investors, startups should prioritize building over optimization — unless it’s going to save them a big chunk of money.

BeReal, the photo-sharing app, has been a huge hit with Gen Z and beyond. Now with other big social apps rushing to clone some of its no-frills ethos, it’s put together a war chest to work on its next chapter. TechCrunch has learned that the startup closed a round of $60 million earlier this year.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2022 — the first in-person Disrupt in three years — is in the books. And as always, we end it by crowning the winner of Startup Battlefield. It began with 20: As seasoned TechCrunch readers will know, startups participating in the Startup Battlefield were handpicked to compete in the event. During the first

When Parker Conrad founded Rippling in 2016, the HR company initially focused on the process of onboarding employees. It has since evolved  to manage all aspects of employee data, from payroll and benefits, to the apps employees use, to a device management platform that enables Rippling’s customers to retrieve, wipe clean and store employee computers

The construction materials market is fragmented, according to GlobalFair CEO Shaily Garg, because it involves layers of both supply chain and logistics complexities. In a 2021 survey for the National Association of Home Builders and Wells Fargo, the vast majority of builders said that the time it takes to obtain materials — and the cost

During the last two days, 20 startups pitched their companies as part of TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield at Disrupt 2022. These 20 companies were selected as the best of the brand-new Startup Battlefield 200 and competed for a chance to take home Battlefield Cup and $100,000. TechCrunch editors and expert judges winnowed them down to the