Startups

Nick Costelloe Contributor Nick writes actionable growth marketing insights as head of content at Demand Curve. More posts by this contributor Demand Curve: 10 lies you’ve been told about marketing When people are uncertain, they look to others for behavioral guidance. This is called social proof, which is a physiological effect that influences your decisions

Major gains in online advertising have boosted valuations for adtech startups since the pandemic began, but one insider says investors are missing the party. “Adtech is having a moment,” writes industry veteran Casey Saran. “And while much of the oxygen has been soaked up by large legacy companies hitting the public market, there have been

You’ve probably learned from Reid Hoffman before, either through his inventions, investments or inspirational words. The entrepreneur is the co-founder of LinkedIn, a partner at Greylock and the author of a new book based off of his hit podcast, Masters of Scale.  His storied past makes him chock-full of interesting anecdotes and lessons, which is

Xiaoyun TU Contributor Xiaoyun TU is the global director of demand generation at Brightpearl, a leading retail operating system. She is passionate about setting up innovative strategies to grow sales pipelines using data-driven decisions. Businesses that don’t invest in their future may not have a future to look forward to. Whether you’re investing in your

Americans spend more than 90% of each day indoors on average. However, approximately 82% of American homeowners are more interested in renovating their outdoor living spaces than they were prior to the pandemic, based on a recent survey, Outer co-founder and CEO Jiake Liu told TechCrunch. On top of that, about 54% of homeowners have

CoderSchool, a Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam-based online coding school startup, announced today $2.6 million in pre-Series A funding to scale up its online coding school platform. This round was led by Monk’s Hill Ventures, with participation from returning seed investors Iterative, XA Network and iSeed Ventures. CoderSchool raised a seed round led by TRIVE

Ash Fontana Contributor Ash Fontana, a managing director at Zetta Ventures, is the author of “The AI-First Company: How to Compete and Win with Artificial Intelligence.” More posts by this contributor Growing up in the intelligence era Investors in AI-first technology companies serving the defense industry, such as Palantir, Primer and Anduril, are doing well.

Airbase, a corporate spend management startup, announced this morning that it now supports subsidiaries in different countries for U.S.-based businesses. As more companies lean into remote work, and a great many startups are founding themselves on multiple continents, the new capability could boost Airbase’s effective total addressable market. The product news is interesting, but more

Casey Saran Contributor An ad tech veteran who has logged time at Google and The Rubicon Project (now Magnite), Casey Saran is co-founder and CEO of Spaceback. 2021 has been a good year to be an adtech investor. Valuations are surging, Wall Street is happy and exits are frequent and satisfying. It’s the perfect time to

Canva is now valued at $40 billion following a fresh capital injection of $200 million (USD) in a round led by T. Rowe Price. New and existing investors participated in the round, including Franklin Templeton, Sequoia Capital Global Equities, Bessemer Venture Partners, Greenoaks Capital, Dragoneer Investments, Blackbird, Felicis and AirTree Ventures. This round solidifies Canva

Seems Locus Robotics is striking while the iron is hot. Seven months after raising a sizable $150 million Series E, Tiger Global is investing another $50 million in the Massachusetts firm. The last round made Locus a unicorn, and this one brings the company’s total funding to around $300 million. Locus specializes in warehouse and

Grab a red Sharpie, circle September 20 on your calendar (ooh, how old-school) and get ready to jumpstart your TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 networking experience. Sure, Disrupt’s “official” run is September 21-23, but why wait to meet other movers and shakers in your specific tech category? We’re hosting a series of speed networking sessions to get

Oculii, a software startup that aims to improve the spatial resolution of radar sensors by up to 100-fold, has scored a new investment from General Motors. The new funding, which the two companies say is in the millions, comes just months after Oculii closed a $55 million Series B. Oculii and GM have already been

Cresicor, a consumer packaged goods trade management platform startup, raised $5.6 million in seed funding to further develop its tools for more accurate data and analytics. The company, based remotely, focuses on small to midsize CPG companies, providing them with an automated way to manage their trade promotion, a process co-founder and CEO Alexander Whatley

Sesie Bonsi Contributor Sesie Bonsi is the founder and CEO of Bleu, a financial technology platform focused on enabling touchless payment experiences. Funding for Black entrepreneurs in the U.S. hit nearly $1.8 billion in the first half of 2021 — a fourfold increase from the previous year. But most venture-backed startups are “still overwhelmingly white,

If Gutenberg were alive today, he’d be a very busy angel investor. With book sales booming during the COVID-19 lockdowns last year, the humble written word has suddenly drawn the limelight from VCs and founders. We’ve seen a whole cavalcade of new products and fundings, including algorithmic recommendation engine BingeBooks, book club startups like Literati

The desire to achieve something as simple as keeping shared electric scooters off sidewalks has driven the development of some advanced technology in the micromobility industry. Once the province of geofencing, scooter companies are so eager to get a leg up on the competition that they’re now implementing technology similar to advanced driver assistance systems

Quizlet, a flashcard tool turned artificial intelligence-powered tutoring platform, is planning an initial public offering nearly a year after it was valued at $1 billion. According to people familiar with the matter, Quizlet is considerably far along in the process to go public. A recent job filing shows that it is hiring for senior roles

China’s first data privacy laws go into effect on November 1, 2021. Will your company be in compliance? Modeled after the EU’s GDPR, the new regulations “[introduce] perhaps the most stringent set of requirements and protections for data privacy in the world,” writes Scott W. Pink, special counsel in O’Melveny’s Data Security & Privacy practice.

Anubhav Jain Contributor Anubhav Jain is co-founder and CEO of Rupifi, India’s first embedded lending fintech. He has more than a decade of experience in credit risk, analytics, customer management and portfolio development. Both as a term and as a financial product, “buy now, pay later” has become mainstream in the past few years. BNPL

Denis Kalinin Contributor Denis Kalinin works at venture fund Runa Capital as Asia Business development manager, devoted to connecting the Western and Asian VC worlds and bringing long-term value to both. China is becoming a superpower in the tech industry. According to Straits Times, China is the only place in the world where it takes

Marc Ellenbogen Contributor As General Counsel of Foursquare, Marc Ellenbogen is responsible for guidance regarding litigation risks, corporate initiatives, risk management, equity, employment, regulatory and all other legal and compliance matters. As a parent of teenagers, I’m used to having tough, sometimes even awkward, conversations about topics that are complex but important. Most parents will

We like to buy things online ranging from e-commerce stores to subscription-based sites. However, no one enjoys the hassle when you have to always re-log into different sites and stores. I mean, shopping can be a whole lot more fun if a fast logging and checkout system existed across all your favorite online stores. In

Snyk, the Boston-based late-stage startup that is trying to help developers deliver more secure code, announced another mega-round today. This one was for $530 million, with $300 million in new money and $230 million in secondary funding, the latter of which is to help employees and early investors cash in some of their stock options.

Buy now, pay later is growing globally — with various companies expanding to, and in, different parts of the world, such as Africa, Latin America and Asia. Here in the U.S., Affirm and Klarna are big players, and Square recently announced plans to acquire Afterpay, which also is eyeing growth here. Traditional buy now, pay

David Friend Contributor David Friend is a serial entrepreneur, six-time founder, and the current co-founder and CEO of cloud storage company, Wasabi Technologies. More posts by this contributor Brand power vs. product power The herd sours on unprofitable unicorns again The U.S. produces more new startups and unicorns each year than any other country in

Artem Milinchuk Contributor Artem Milinchuk is the founder and CEO of FarmTogether, a fintech platform channeling funding into natural assets, starting with U.S. farmland. Farmland as an asset class has proven itself to be a stable investment decade after decade. Farmland’s negative correlation with the Dow Jones Industrial Average sits at an eye-popping -43% for

The travel industry was one of the hardest hit by the pandemic, and startup Headout was no exception. A marketplace that let tourists make same-day bookings for tours, events and activities, the app expanded around the world after launching in 2015. Then COVID-19 hit. But business is growing again thanks to rebounds in domestic travel and

In Nigeria, there are more than 40 million micro-businesses underserved in some form or another regarding banking services. Although some of these businesses have registered bank accounts, gaps exist in how banks use the data available to serve the needs of each business. With banks, presenting a series of transactions as statements is all these businesses

Sindhya Valloppillil Contributor Sindhya Valloppillil is the founder and CEO of Skin Dossier, a venture partner at Next Gen Ventures, a freelance writer and formerly a beauty industry executive and marketing professor. More posts by this contributor It may not be as glamorous as D2C, but beauty tech is big money We have been raised