Startups

The q-commerce belt tightening continues: U.S. category veteran Gopuff, the SoftBank-backed delivery platform juggernaut — which was being valued at $15 billionN as recently as 2020, and had been rumored to be prepping for an IPO at the start of this year (er, nope that didn’t happen!) — is dialling back its ambitions in Europe.

Kate Anthony started in the Lone Star State. It was there, in 2019, that she launched her app Euphoria, seeking to provide information and resources on gender-affirming care. She knew the stakes were going to be high, and as the state passed anti-trans legislation, she and her company were forced to flee. Settling in Denver,

The first major subsidy contract under the U.K. Government’s £5 billion ($5.9 billion) Project Gigabit scheme has officially been awarded, with Wessex Internet securing £6 million ($7 million) to connect remote properties in South West England to high-speed broadband.  In a world that has rapidly embraced remote work over the past couple of years, the

Headquartered in Singapore, proptech startup Propseller is on a mission to make real estate transactions more efficient and data-driven for sellers and buyers alike. Its platform is able to tell users the likelihood of a conversion each step of the way. Today Propseller announced it has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by

For a brief moment earlier in the ongoing pandemic, it appeared that there was a solution for the backlog of richly priced startups that needed to provide their backers with liquidity: SPACs. SPACs, or special purpose acquisition companies, are paper companies taken public with capital attached that then combine with a private entity, effectively bootstrapping

African genomics startup 54gene has laid off 95 employees, or about 30% of its LinkedIn-sourced 290+ employees. A company’s spokesperson confirmed the news after several sources informed TechCrunch of the layoffs last week. Founded in 2019 by Dr. Abasi Ene-Obong, the three-year-old startup seeks to address the gap in the global genomics market where less

Whether you are signing up a huge supplier, hiring an employee or thinking of making an investment, reference calls are absolutely crucial. Before I learned how to do them properly, they were purely factual in nature, “Hey, did Jim work with you from 2011 to 2013? What was his job title?” For a very long

Darpan Munjal Contributor Darpan Munjal is the founder and CEO of Squadhelp. I was ready to put my entrepreneurial hat to rest. I had spent years building what I thought was shaping up to be a fashion e-commerce giant for the Indian marketplace. We’d raised pre-Series A funding of $4 million, led additional rounds and

Weeks after laying off workers, supply chain startup FourKites has raised $30 million as part of an ongoing financing round, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing indicates that FourKites hopes to close the round with $80 million in capital, a substantially smaller amount than the company’s previous round,

Startups looking to make it easier for people to rent apartments on a flexible, shorter-term basis are gaining momentum thanks in part to the rise of remote work. Last week, Dealbook reported that a flexible living startup, Flow, founded by WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann, has locked down $350 million from Andreessen Horowitz. Earlier today, TechCrunch

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, you sparkling souls! Thursday is upon us once again. Have you ever noticed how Thursdays seem to keep coming along with alarming regularity? It feels like roughly once per week, but

Journalists care a lot about tension, drama and signal. Oftentimes that looks like good news, like when small scrappy startups get starter capital to take on the public giant, or well-capitalized late-stage giant, or that moment when you realize healthcare’s disruption is just at its infancy. As of recently, though, we’ve seen startups face a

Web3 doesn’t have the most inclusive reputation, yet so many crypto founders talk about onboarding the next 100 million users into the space. Statistically speaking, the next 100 million can’t possibly be comprised entirely of a homogenous group of white men who spend most of their waking hours coding and/or day trading (no shade, just

The earliest stages of venture investing are the most insulated from macroeconomic conditions. When the public market dislocation started causing a broad venture funding pullback, it appeared seed investing would be safe for a while. Data indicates that that is bearing out as expected. But checking in halfway through the year, some markets are faring

If you want to break even, go APE Neeraj Agrawal Contributor More posts by this contributor T2D3 Software Update: Embracing the Founder to CEO (F2C) Journey Build bridges instead of walls Brandon Gleklen Contributor Brandon Gleklen is a principal at Battery Ventures. He focuses on software investments in companies at all stages of maturity. Jack

Tier Mobility, the German micromobility giant that recently acquired Spin from Ford, is laying off 16% of staff, or 180 people, according to a LinkedIn post by CEO Lawrence Leuschner and an open letter from the executive that has been viewed by TechCrunch. “Ultimately, we have to respond to the current economic and funding climate,

Lest there be any doubt some startups are riding high even amid the macroeconomic uncertainty, process mining software vendor Celonis today announced that it secured a whopping $1 billion in additional capital at a $13 billion post-money valuation, a mix of equity ($400 million) and debt (a five-year $600 million credit line). Technically an extension

Dubai-based Zywa, a neobank for Gen Z, plans to fuel its growth in the United Arabs Emirates (U.A.E), and to kick-start its expansion to Saudi Arabia and Egypt after raising $3 million seed funding at over $30 million (110 million AED) valuation. The new funding follows the $1 million pre-seed backing it secured in February

Maju Kuruvilla Contributor Maju Kuruvilla is the CEO of Bolt. Prior to Bolt, Maju was the VP and GM for Amazon’s Global Logistics, managing its business unit spanning business, product, engineering and operations. What is the biggest and most obvious problem facing e-commerce retailers? Checkout. By that, I mean customers who find their way to

For early-stage startups looking to hire new talent, it’s not enough to make one-off decisions about pay as each new employee comes on board. Constructing a coherent philosophy around compensation is crucial for a company to stay consistent in the long term and provide transparency to employees — essentially, coming up with the “why” and

“Venture capital” is semantically equivalent to “dangerous money,” which is part of its mystique. Essentially, VC is a high-stakes extreme sport in which top players can accumulate startling amounts of wealth and power. And sometimes, a massive pile of investor cash burns so brightly, it gets picked up on satellites. But where does all 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 week, Natasha was joined by TC+ reporter Rebecca Szkutak to wade through the news of the week. It was frantic, it was full, and forgettable it was not! Here’s what we got

Analysts estimate that the market for “delaying human death” could be worth $610 billion by 2025. But that doesn’t sit well with Christian Angermayer, who co-founded Cambrian BioPharma and Rejuveneron, and whose family office Apeiron Investment Group has a special interest in expanding longevity. “This is a nonsensical, imaginary number that is almost entirely made up

The hearing loss market has long been dominated by a handful of legacy players with little incentive to innovate due to outdated regulations and social stigma. But a new ruling from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration could revolutionize the market by driving competition, giving startups a greater chance at success in this sector. On

All major social networks including Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat have their own take on how collaborations should work. But most of these features have constraints like time limits and the number of creators included in a clip. A new app called Along wants to remove all these restrictions to allow infinite-length collaboration videos with multiple

Last year, Triller triumphantly announced that it would pay out a total of $14 million in cash and equity to Black creators in 2022. It seemed like a smart move, helping the lesser-known short-form video app to compete with TikTok by uplifting underrepresented talent. But The Washington Post recently reported that most of these creators

When VCs overlook the U.S. Midwest, it’s not just Chicago they are missing out on. Over time, many cities across the Midwest have been building out bona fide startup ecosystems, as M25’s annual ranking of Midwest startup hubs makes clear. Each year, the Chicago-based VC firm puts together a list of the Midwest’s most active

Multi-asset social investment network and Robinhood competitor eToro has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Gatsby — a fintech startup which also aimed to go head to head against Robinhood — for $50 million in a cash and common stock deal. Israel-based eToro told TechCrunch this week that it just received approval from FINRA, the

American Airlines will buy up to 20 jets from Boom Supersonic, an aircraft maker that aims to commercialize supersonic, and super-fast, flight. Boom’s Overture four-engine jets promise speeds of up to Mach 1.7 over water, which is twice the speed of today’s fastest commercial aircraft — meaning the jet can fly from Miami to London

As regulation and platform policies make it more difficult to track people across the internet, it has forced companies to rethink how to understand and get to know their customers. If they can’t stalk them surreptitiously, how can they gain a full understanding of their needs and wants? The answer may lie in building or