Startups

Yousuf Khan Contributor Yousuf Khan is a partner at Ridge Ventures. Prior to joining Ridge, he was the first CIO of Automation Anywhere, CIO and vice president of Customer Success at cloud-based AI platform Moveworks, as well as CIO of Pure Storage, Qualys and Hult International Business School. More posts by this contributor Develop a

Fast-growing fintech Brex has raised $300 million in funding that propels it to decacorn status, just six months after it was valued at $7.4 billion, according to people familiar with the deal. The sources, who wished to remain anonymous since the deal is not yet public (although a term sheet has been signed), said corporate

So Plaid now calls itself a payments company. It was only a matter of time, really. Earlier today, the data and connectivity startup announced a new payments partner ecosystem that will extend its existing payments infrastructure and make ACH bank transfers a more attractive alternative to credit card transactions. But the big winners here are

Running out of inventory not only means you are missing out on sales of popular items, but you may also have to wait awhile to get those items back in stock. New York-based Toolio has built cloud-based merchandising and inventory planning software to enable retailers to optimize their merchandise planning and make better and faster

The edtech boom has focused primarily on students, but teachers are learners, too. Doyobi, a Singapore-based professional development platform, wants to give educators new, more engaging ways of teaching STEM subjects. The startup announced today it has raised $2.8 million in pre-Series A funding led by Monk’s Hill Ventures. The round included Tresmonos Capital, Novus

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: Marriage-based green card versus

Hash, a payment infrastructure fintech, announced today that it has raised $40 million in a Series C funding round co-led by QED Investors and Kaszek. The raise comes just six months after the Brazilian startup raised $15 million in Series B financing led by Alexandria, Virginia-based QED, and brings its total raised to nearly $59

There’s plenty of frustration in the world of startups over when a digital asset does and does not constitute a security in the eyes of the Securities & Exchange Commission. Where many see regulatory murkiness, the five-year-old, New York-based investing platform Republic sees opportunity. Indeed, while many outfits grapple with whether to distance themselves from

Vieje Piauwasdy Contributor Vieje Piauwasdy is the director of equity strategy at Secfi, an equity planning platform for startup executives and employees. Buried deep in President Joe Biden’s 2021 tax plan are new amendments to the United States’ Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) program, which, if passed, will directly impact early-stage startup employees, founders and

Fintech startup Revolut wants to foster usage in the U.S. with better free accounts. Like in other markets, Revolut offers both free and paid accounts in the U.S. When you pay for a subscription fee, you get higher fair usage caps and more features, such as insurance coverage and different card designs. With today’s change,

Aiven, a Finnish startup that helps companies combine various open source technologies with public cloud infrastructure resources, announced a $60 million investment on a $2 billion valuation today. The news follows a $100 million investment in March at an $800 million valuation, a hefty increase in such a short time. World Innovation Labs and IVP

How to iterate on product has always been one of the top concerns at startups. But while they previously had to rely solely on customer feedback and instincts, they now also have a trove of data to balance. This dynamic creates new opportunities but also requires a new kind of arbitrage. We discussed this new

Tim Parilla Contributor More posts by this contributor How to make sure your legal team is M&A ready A recent Corporate Counsel article highlighted a growing trend: More senior legal leaders are migrating to startups to take on general counsel roles. For some, it’s an attempt to find a better work-life balance (whoops!), while others

We can’t check out every investing outfit’s demo day. But one event that we try to catch every year is that of Pear, which is held annually each fall and features (blessedly) just a dozen or so very nascent startups. Pear, a seed-stage venture firm founded in 2013, has an impressive track record when it

Ximena Aleman Contributor Ximena Aleman is co-founder and chief business development officer at Prometeo, an open banking platform that serves Latin America. More posts by this contributor Startup fundraising is the most tangible gender gap. How can we overcome it? Fintech regulations in Latin America could fuel growth or freeze out startups We are only

Ivan Baidin Contributor Ivan Baidin is head of Travelpayouts, a global integrated affiliate program focused exclusively on travel offers. During the pandemic, we realized that we were swamped with work and overloaded with information. So we came up with an idea to fix that. At Travelpayouts, we plan a strategy for a year, then each

Pagos, a payment intelligence infrastructure startup founded by former Braintree and PayPal execs, has raised $10 million in seed funding. Started earlier this year, the remote-first Pagos is building a data “platform” and API-driven micro-services that it says can integrate with any payment stack. The end goal is to drive better performance and “optimization” of

The successful commercial launches of Blue Origin, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic have officially ushered in a new era of space tourism. But unlike these companies, which are planning on taking people to space using rockets or spaceplanes, two-year-old startup Space Perspective is taking a different tack. Instead of going to space on a rocket, which

When flying cargo from one part of the world to another, you typically need a pilot for two parts: The take-off and the landing. As so elegantly outlined in the 1980 Jim Abrahams movie !Airplane — the rest of the time, you’re pretty much on instruments. Reliable Robotics is aiming to solve that pesky needing-to-have-a-pilot-in-the-plane

Tom Zick Contributor Tom Zick is a researcher in AI ethics at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, where she is also a J.D. candidate. She holds a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and was previously a fellow at Bloomberg Beta and the City of Boston. Founders tend to think responsible

There is an imbalance between demand and supply of general insurance due to the tedious workflow and processes that insurance intermediaries and insurance companies face.  Singaporean insurtech company Surer, which automates the workflow and processes via a cloud-based platform, helps insurance intermediaries get rapid access to insurance quotations and insurers to distribute their products more efficiently.

Billy Libby Contributor Billy Libby is the CEO and co-founder of Upper90, a $1.5 billion hybrid fund that provides founder-friendly credit and equity to top disruptors in e-commerce and fintech. More capital is flooding into growth equity at earlier stages, and it’s happening faster than ever before. But even with the rampant enthusiasm for pouring

It’s no longer Hot Summer anything, sadly, as the seasons change. But perhaps we’re in for Warm IPO Autumn. Rent the Runway, NerdWallet and other companies are setting us up for a busy second half of October. But this week will see the debut of a company worth a multiple of those other venture-backed former

CarDekho, an Indian search and e-commerce platform for new and used cars, has become the latest startup in the world’s second-largest market to reach the unicorn status. The 14-year-old startup said on Wednesday it has raised $250 million — $200 million in equity and $50 million in debt — in its Series E financing round.

Vertical farms usually look up. Aerofarms, Plenty, Gotham Greens — these companies are trying to revolutionize agriculture by looking toward the sky, with tall warehouses full of growing equipment extending upward. But Philippe Labrie is looking down. Labrie is the CEO and founder of the pre-seed startup GreenForges, an underground farming company founded in 2019

ResQ, which does end-to-end equipment repairs for over 4,000 restaurant groups — from Taco Bell to Tim Hortons — has raised a $39 million Series A co-led by Tiger Global and Canvas Ventures. The capital, which includes investments from Homebrew, Inovia Capital and Golden Ventures, comes just months after the startup announced its $7.5 million

Fount, a robo-advisor startup in South Korea, has raised a $33.4 million Series C round to beef up its machine learning-based platform development and hire staff.   The latest round was led by Hana Financial Investment, along with Nice Investment. Returning backers Smilegate Investment, KT Investment, Shinhan Capital and Korea Development Bank also participated. The

Marnix Broer Contributor Marnix Broer is the co-founder and CEO of StuDocu. Have you ever sat in a shared college dorm kitchen space with your roommate and decided to start a business? I should be clear here: We didn’t really decide to start a business; it was more of a project to create a tool

Mono, an African startup that helps connect consumers’ bank accounts to financial applications, has raised a $15 million Series A round, the company confirmed to TechCrunch today. The round, led by Tiger Global — the VC firm’s third major investment in Africa this year after Flutterwave and FairMoney — also had participation from new investors

Ariel Katz Contributor Ariel Katz is the co-founder and CEO of H1. More posts by this contributor The health data transparency movement is birthing a new generation of startups The epic fall from grace of Elizabeth Holmes holds lessons for everybody from CEOs to investors, commercial partners, the media — social or otherwise — and