Startups

A Canadian startup working at the cutting edge of satellite imaging has raised $4.5 million across a combination of a $2.25 million seed round, and $2.25 million from a combined pre-seed and government funding. Wyvern, which is working specifically on hyperspectral imaging (imaging that captures light across many different wavelengths, including non-visible ones) is also

Cash flow is a major pain point for small businesses in Africa. Long payment cycles, which can take 30-90 days after services or products have been rendered, and little or no capital, of which research says 85% of African small and medium businesses are subject to, are the main culprits of cash flow issues. Many

Early-stage startup founders have just a few ways to recruit and retain employees: Offer a competitive salary Create a role that harnesses their interests/talent Give them a stake in the company. In most cases, equity will not leave employees with substantial wealth. But even the most embittered worker will think twice about walking away from

Korean technology giant LG makes everything from televisions (they announced some new ones at CES), washing machines and fridges, to, well, it’ll probably take less time to list the things they don’t get involved in. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the company has a robust interest in innovation, then, and LG Nova is

Whatever you do, don’t refer to LG’s incubator program LG Nova as a corporate venture capital (CVC) outfit. LG Nova is the pointiest tip of the spear for LG, the company’s experimental playground to work with startups to explore spaces where the corporation has spotted areas ripe for future growth. Backed by a relatively large

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this week’s startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. Among many of the entrepreneur catchphrases out there, the one that annoys me the most is: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” The phrase may be meant to make people with

Shanea Leven Contributor Shanea Leven is co-founder and CEO of CodeSee, a developer platform that helps developers and development teams better understand codebases. “Raising money is catastrophically challenging for female founders, and even harder for Black female founders.” It’s a bold, even damning statement — one I made in a recent discussion speculating what’s to

Singapore-based industrial robotics firm Sesto this week announced a $5.7 million raise, featuring TRIVE, WTI GmbH and SEEDS Capital (Enterprise Singapore’s VC wing). The round follows a similarly sized $4 million Series A, back in 2018. Sesto has had a busy few years since that round — as have many in the industrial robotics category,

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for January 14, 2022! I suppose that this has been the week of Wordle, in that everyone and their dog are tweeting their scores and results.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Friday episode, a run-down of key news headlines, startup funding rounds, and whatever else is popping in the worlds of startups and tech. Happily this week, we did not

A congruence of factors in India — notably, climate change policies, fuel costs and skyrocketing demand for e-commerce — has set up ideal conditions for startups like all-electric commercial vehicle startup EVage. The startup, which has already supplied five EV trucks to Amazon India’s Delivery Service Partner and plans to provide “in the thousands” more

In a tight labor market, so-called vertical labor marketplaces that zoom in on one industry, like nursing or hospitality, are drawing funding. Trusted Health, a healthcare staffing platform, raised $149 million in funding in November, for example. Seasoned, a hiring platform for restaurant workers, closed on nearly $19 million at roughly the same time. Investors

There’s financial technology (fintech) companies out there targeting all sorts of different segments of the population, as well as companies at various stages of growth. A new company recently emerged that is targeting a popular startup niche, wanting to exclusively help early-stage SaaS (software-as-a-service) companies with their financial needs. Coming out of stealth today with

Fintech Farm, a newly launched fintech startup based in the U.K. that creates digital banks in emerging markets, confirmed to TechCrunch today that it has raised $7.4 million in seed funding. The seed round was led by Flyer One Ventures and Solid. TA Ventures, Jiji, u.ventures and AVentures Capital also participated. The company said it

Aleksandra Korczynska Contributor Aleksandra Korczynska, the CMO of GetResponse, guides global SaaS marketing and growth. Driven by data analytics and growth hacking, she has crafted go-to-market strategies for global brands (ex-Uber) and tech startups alike. Sales stand and fall on leads, but attracting prospects and optimally converting them into buyers is an art that many

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic and dive deep. This week Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex came together to talk about the changing nature of

The sign of a true entrepreneur is someone who can look around and go “wait a minute, there must be a better way.” That approach worked well for Outlines‘ founders, who are tackling the unsexy but pretty serious recycling issue of shower curtain liners. The company just closed a $1 million pre-seed lead by Social Impact

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for January 11, 2022! Today we have new venture funds, spyware news, Brex raising (again), and more. We’re back to 100% of last year’s startup and

AmazeVR, a virtual reality concert platform that enables users to experience their favorite artists’ VR concerts through content generation tools, announced today it has secured $15 million, which was oversubscribed within three weeks.  Partners Investment and Murex Partners co-led the new funding, with participation from Smilegate Investment, Quantum Ventures Korea, ABC Partners, Everrich Group, GS

Indonesia-based eFishery announced today that it has raised what it claims is the largest round of funding by an aquaculture tech startup in the world. The company, which provides feeding devices, software and financing for fish and shrimp farmers, got a $90 million Series C co-led by Temasek, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Sequoia Capital

Karen Peacock Contributor Understanding the health of your business starts with customer focus: Are you providing breakthrough value to your customers? Is it value that’s so far above and beyond other solutions that it’s worth a prospective customer’s time and effort to switch to you? Is it value that’s so clearly and increasingly a step

The global pandemic threw a wrench in the plans of restaurants all over the world two years ago when diners stayed home, causing many eateries to shift their business to pickup or delivery. Roberto Cebrián and David Villarreal both had experience working with restaurants in Mexico and recognized that many restaurants were not prepared to

Gnawing, burrowing, infecting: The damages caused to agriculture by insect pests like the Japanese beetle (pictured above) exceed $100 billion every year, according to the Agricultural Research Service of the USDA. And along with plant diseases, which the exoskeleton buggers can also transmit, arthropods account for the annual 40% loss of agricultural production worldwide. Enter

Mergers and acquisitions are notoriously tricky to navigate from a leadership and culture perspective. They require a thoughtful approach to working with a new CEO and joining teams as one workforce — a journey familiar to us and recently acquired Auth0. Okta and Auth0 have their share of differences — we’re enterprise-focused, to start, while

Even to outsiders, the inner workings of startup accelerators has become familiar: pumped up on camaraderie and energy drinks, scrappy founders do product demos onstage before a room full of buzzy journalists and investors. Fast-forward two years into a pandemic and, even a stint with the return of hacker homes, much has changed about the

Sowmyanarayan Raghunathan Contributor Sowmyanarayan Raghunathan is the VP of Engineering at Talentica Software and an NIT Surat alumnus. He has helped over 50 early and growth-stage startups fulfill their engineering needs and stay ahead of the curve in the last 17 years. In 1992, Ward Cunningham coined the metaphor “technical debt” to highlight how businesses

Miguel Fernandez Contributor Miguel Fernandez is CEO and co-founder of Capchase. He is passionate about changing working capital dynamics to make it the main source of cash for tech companies. Launching a business is hard enough, but scaling it to a successful and lucrative exit is even more difficult. Securing early-stage venture financing is usually

As 2021 wound down, The Exchange wanted to dig into what might happen if the startup music stopped playing. So we got veteran venture capitalist Matt Murphy on the phone to talk it over. Murphy started his career at Sun Microsystems back in the mid-90s, joining venture shop Kleiner Perkins in 1999, where he stayed

Age-tech startups at this year’s CES demonstrated the potential breadth of the sector. If tech can help an older person live more comfortably, it can also help out a lot of other people. After all, the usefulness of things like mobility aids, health monitoring platforms and long-term financial planning aren’t limited to the elderly. Yesterday,

Rebecca Lynn Contributor More posts by this contributor Startups And The Un-Banking Of America Marketing makes or breaks a company. When I am asked what is the No. 1 thing that I would do to help a company scale massively, it is focusing on marketing. Period. I learned long ago that the best product doesn’t