Startups

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here. It’s April 27, 2022, and here’s a thing we didn’t see coming: May. What the hell happened to this month, this year? As the summer equinox draws closer, the weather warms up

Setting up a stack of data tools is a difficult exercise for any startup to undertake, involving picking and choosing among a wide variety of tools and approaches. Mozart Data’s founders have a background in data wrangling and have built a platform of tools that makes the decisions for you, while leaving room for flexibility

Shared micromobility company Voi is deploying e-scooters in Oslo, Norway with Drover AI’s computer vision tech that can identify whether a scooter is on the pavement, road or cycle lane in order to help prevent sidewalk riding. As the micromobility industry consolidates around a few key players and cities become more discerning about which operators

Leslie Feinzaig Contributor More posts by this contributor Three ways VC firms can construct sustainably diverse portfolios If you follow mainstream tech media, you could be forgiven for thinking that venture capital is a founders’ market today after two years of record round sizes and outcomes. There is some truth to this: VC had its

Cannabis companies face unprecedented headwinds. Yet these companies are building businesses in a tough market plagued by myriad challenges, from banking prohibitions to ever-changing regulations. One such startup, Lucid Green, has a solution to a growing labeling problem, and raised a $10 million Series A led by Gron Ventures with participation from Gotham Green Partners.

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here. The day is April 25, 2022. We spent most of the day keeping a close eye on Elon, but it seems (pending details and regulatory foibles), the deed is done. The sparky-space-sausage

When we talk about early-stage startups, we tend to focus on the internals – and understandably so. It’s easiest to home in on the things you can control: developing products, building a team, finding the right investors. All are important and foundational to developing a startup, of course. But as much as we’d like to

The fishing market globally was worth $253 billion in 2021, and despite the controversy that swirls around the industry, that figure continues to grow. Today a startup that has built a platform to make the business of fishing more efficient — and thus the process overall more traceable and less prone to waste — is

It’s typical on TechCrunch Live for founders to talk about fundraising while flipping through their last pitch deck. But Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz didn’t have a pitch deck to share. That’s because Deel raised a total of $629 million without one. Rather, Andreessen Horowitz partner Anish Acharya pitched Deel to let a16z lead the company’s

The venture capital market is slowing down, which means early-stage founders are chasing a smaller pool of money. According to Carta, the number of seed deals funded between Q4 2021 and Q1 2022 fell 41%, and dollar volume followed suit, dropping from $2.62 billion to $1.81 billion, a 31% decline. In this environment, teams that

When people think of NFTs, the first use case most of them likely think of is visual art. From Beeple’s $69 million sale of a digital collage at Christie’s to the Bored Apes Yacht Club collection, visual art has seemed to be most prominent use case for NFTs due to close similarities with traditional fine

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here. It’s Earth Day, also known as April 22, 2022, and we are beyond grateful that the sun sets on another week. We love our TechCrunch Live events, but we realize we don’t

William Wilson Contributor William Wilson is a partner in Goodwin’s technology group and intellectual property practice. His practice focuses on technology transactions, including counseling, structuring and negotiating deals across industries with a particular focus on the fintech, healthcare and technology sectors. Last year saw investors throwing record amounts of dollars into startups, but recent geopolitical

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here. On this fine day of April 21, 2022, we celebrate a shiny new podcast from our crypto team: Chain Reaction. Q: Why is the podcast so loud? A: Because it’s immutable. This

Luke Hutchison didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do as a graduate of West Point — only that he wanted to serve his country, graduating as he did two years after the 9/11 attack in New York. Certainly, he never imagined launching a private event management platform for restaurants and venues, but that’s what

TechCrunch Startup Battlefield is expanding. The tech ecosystem has grown exponentially in size and possibility since the early days of Startup Battlefield and it’s time that we grow along with it. That’s why we’re proud to announce TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200, a new era of our exciting startup community competition. Showcasing global founders This October,

Front’s cap table reads like an honor role of investors. CEO and co-founder Mathilde Collin raised funds from numerous Silicon Valley firms and individual investors. On April 27 she’s speaking on TechCrunch Live to share her strategy that allowed her company to raise funds from less traditional VCs. One of those VCs is also speaking

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here. Happy 20th of April, 2022, which has no particular significance and we are not making any jokes. It’s been a strange news day, but never fear, we have some great stories for

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: I didn’t win the

Everstage founders Vivek Suriyamoorthy and Siva Rajamani For sales reps, commission plans are often complicated and lack transparency, leading to accounting errors and frustration. Everstage, a sales commission platform, solves that, letting sales rep see exactly how much they earned. It also has features to estimate how much commissions they can potentially make from their

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to this 109th day of 2022 – April 19 – which celebrates, among other things, National Garlic Day (nice try, Big Allium) and Bicycle Day, the anniversary of the

Demostack, a San Francisco, California-based startup creating a “demo experience” platform for software-as-a-service (SaaS) sales teams, today announced that it raised $34 million in a Series B round led by Tiger Global Management with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Amiti Ventures, GTMfund, Operator Collective, and StepStone. CEO Jonathan Friedman says that the proceeds will be

Only 21% of the 12 million registered vehicles on Nigerian roads have genuine motor insurance, as the rest either have fake certificates (owners are mostly unaware) or are not covered at all. This report also states that a number of car owners holding genuine insurance policies also fail to renew them when they expire, a

CoinDCX has doubled its valuation to $2.15 billion (post-money) in eight months following a fresh $135 million funding, it said today, as the Indian cryptocurrency exchange looks to aggressively expand its product offerings and talent base, including some to double down on compliances in the world’s second largest internet market. Steadview and existing backer Pantera

If 2020 and 2021 were the years of the SPAC, 2022 is shaping up to be the year of the reprimand. Nearly all of the electric vehicle manufacturers that took a shortcut to an IPO by merging with a special purpose acquisition company over the last two years are being investigated by the Securities and

Zambian card issuing fintech Union54 has raised $12 million in a seed extension round led by Tiger Global. Other participating investors in this financing include existing ones such as Vibe VC and new investors Earl Grey Capital and Packy Mccormick’s Not Boring Capital. It’s been only six months since Union54, whose API allows African software

Sequoia Capital India, one of the most prolific and successful investors in India and Southeast Asia, addressed the fraudulent practices allegations levelled against some of its portfolio startups and pledged to take proactive steps to do more to drive increased compliance. In a blog post published Sunday afternoon, the storied venture fund said it’s still a “work-in-progress”

I have been thinking a lot about silos, or the lack thereof, within startupland. There’s sometimes an artificial wall that is put up between companies at different stages of growth, when in reality, everyone is in the same room, clinking glasses and tripping over the same rug. Let me be more precise. As the late-stage

Throughout the web3 world, companies, protocols and projects alike are pushing to onboard a billion users — what they see as the tipping point for cryptocurrency use to grow exponentially. But that number is only possible — obviously — through increased adoption. That means major players in the space must make improvements regarding ease and

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here. Welcome to the Daily Crunch for Friday, April 15, 2022, where we are continuing to stick our heads in the sand regarding the war in Ukraine and the Earth slowly roasting itself