Startups

Delman, a Jakarta-based data management startup, has raised $1.6 million in seed funding. The round was led by Intudo Ventures, with participation from Prasetia Dwidharma Ventures and Qlue Performa Indonesia, and will be used to establish a research and development center and hire software engineers and data scientists. Delman was founded in 2018 by chief

As AI has grown from niche to mission-critical technology, the companies that enable it have multiplied and in many cases prospered. A good example of that success is DefinedCrowd, which has gone from the Disrupt stage to globe-spanning AI toolkit to the Fortune 500 in just a couple of years. The company just raised a

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: What’s the best option

I see far more research articles than I could possibly write up. This column collects the most interesting of those papers and advances, along with notes on why they may prove important in the world of tech and startups. In this edition: a new type of laser emitter that uses metamaterials, robot-trained dogs, a breakthrough

Thriva emerged in 2016 as an at-home blood-testing startup allowing people to check, for instance, cholesterol levels. In the era of a pandemic, however, at-home blood testing is about to become quite a big deal, alongside the general trend toward people proactively taking control of their health. It has secured a £4 million extension to

Steve Case and Clara Sieg of Revolution recently spoke on TechCrunch’s new series, Extra Crunch Live. Throughout the hour-long chat, we touched on numerous subjects, including how diverse founders can take advantage during this downturn and how remote work may lead to growth outside Silicon Valley. The two have a unique vantage point, with Steve

You read that right. The big announcement came yesterday — TechCrunch Disrupt is now fully virtual. What does this mean for Startup Battlefield? More opportunity. The best companies from across the globe, an even bigger launch platform, the eyes of more investors from around the world and press exposure at the biggest conference TechCrunch has

The global pandemic has halted travel, shunted schools online and shut down many cities, but the future of college-town America is an area of deep concern for the startup world. College towns have done exceedingly well with the rise of the knowledge economy and concentrating students and talent in dense social webs. That confluence of

Statespace has today raised a $15 million Series A financing round led by Khosla, with partner Samir Kaul joining the board. Existing investors, such as FirstMark Capital, Lux and Expa, also participated in the round, as well as newcomer June Fund. Statespace launched out of stealth in 2017 with a product called Aim Lab, which

This afternoon, we’re chatting with Steve Case and Clara Sieg of Revolution as part of our new interview series, Extra Crunch Live. Topping our agenda, we will talk about jobs — in Silicon Valley, on the coasts and in the heartland. The technology sector is suffering through a contraction caused by the COVID-19 global health

Run The World, a year-old startup that’s based in Mountain View, Calif., and has small teams both in China and Taiwan, just nabbed $10.8 million in Series A funding co-led by earlier backer Andreessen Horowitz and new backer Founders Fund. It’s easy to understand the firms’ interest in the company, whose platform features every functionality

In the same week that Facebook announced a redoubled effort to make a bigger mark in e-commerce, one of its long-time partners has closed a large round of funding. Ecwid, the startup that sells e-commerce tools directly and via third parties like Square and Wix, letting businesses build e-commerce experiences on their own websites and

SoftBank Corp. and Mapbox, the mapping data company that competes with Google and Here, announced that they have established a joint venture called Mapbox Japan. The JV will provide Mapbox’s mapping platform, including APIs and data services, to developers in Japan. Between June 1 and September 30, Mapbox Japan will also provide up to three

E-book and audiobook subscrition service Scribd has been actively embracing and experimenting with bundling over the past couple years, creating joint offers with The New York Times and with Spotify and Hulu. Today it announced a slightly different take on the idea with Scribd Perks. These perks gives Scribd’s paying subscribers (the service costs $8.99 per

Sphero just announced that it has spun off another company. Once again, the new startup has a decidedly different focus from its parent company’s core of education-focused products. While still a robotics company at its heart, the underwhelmingly named Company Six will create robotic systems designed for first responders and other humans whose work requires

Khatabook, a startup that is helping small businesses in India record financial transactions digitally and accept payments online with an app, has raised $60 million in a new financing round as it looks to gain more ground in the world’s second most populous nation. The new financing round, Series B, was led by Facebook co-founder

With more than 1,200 employees distributed across over 65 countries and a valuation of nearly $3 billion, GitLab is one of the world’s most successful fully remote startups. Describing it as a textbook example of a remote company would be redundant, because the company actually wrote a textbook about it. I recently had a chance

The cannabis market was in the midst of a correction when the COVID-19 crisis hit and could emerge stronger than ever. After a breakthrough period of growth, cannabis startups entered 2020 with depressed values and an uncertain future. Now, with millions sheltering in place, many companies are seeing unprecedented demand and growth opportunities as many

Users are reporting that trading platform Robinhood is down on a day that’s seen stock markets soar. Robinhood’s status page says all systems are “operational,” but users on Twitter said they could not access the service. Robinhood did not immediately comment when reached. Some users said Etrade was also experiencing problems. A spokesperson for Etrade

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Today we’re digging into SoftBank’s latest earnings slides. Not only do they contain a wealth of updates and other useful information, but some of them are gosh-darn-freaking hilarious. We all deserve a bit of levity

Julian Shapiro Contributor Julian Shapiro is the founder of BellCurve.com, a growth marketing team that trains startups in advanced growth, helps hire senior growth marketers and finds vetted growth agencies. He also writes at Julian.com. More posts by this contributor Use accelerated retargeting to increase conversions Break-even ads can generate free brand awareness We’ve aggregated

Ashwin Ramasamy Contributor Ashwin Ramasamy is the co-founder of PipeCandy, an online merchant graph company that discovers and analyzes business and consumer perception metrics about D2C brands and e-commerce companies. More posts by this contributor D2C companies deliver customer delight and simplicity The different playbooks of D2C brands E-commerce is taking off faster than ever.

Editor’s note: Get this weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7am PT), just subscribe here. Commercial real estate, the traditional heart of most cities, may have lost its reason to exist in the last few months. The world is about to find out what the situation

Chris and Alex Naoumidis came to hypnotherapy through dresses. As The New York Times reported last year, the two brothers initially started their careers as startup entrepreneurs with a peer-to-peer dress-sharing app for women. The Australian natives were overcome with doubt about their ability to succeed in startupland; when apps didn’t work, their father suggested

Anthony Zhang Contributor Anthony is co-founder and CEO of Vinovest, a platform for investing in fine wine. He has previously founded and sold two companies (EnvoyNow & Know Your VC), and is also a Thiel Fellow. The way we invest is changing. Technology makes investing easy and more accessible than ever. Meanwhile, Millennials and Gen

By March 16, founder Janine Yancey was tired of playing the waiting game. After watching the stock market take yet another unprecedented nosedive due to coronavirus, she called up a potential investor. “If this isn’t going to happen, let’s call it now,” Yancey said, referring to the close of her Series A round, the first

Taking care of your emotional wellbeing is as important as physical health, but in Asia, the topic is often stigmatized. Intellect, a Singapore-based startup, wants to make the idea of mental health more approachable with an app that offers self-guided exercises based on cognitive behavorial therapy techniques. The company develops consumer and enterprise versions of

Ettitude, the Los Angeles-based, direct-to-consumer startup making sustainable bedding and sleepwear from bamboo fibers, has raised a sustainably sized round that should keep the company going even in the face of an economic recession. Co-founded by the Melbourne, Australia native Phoebe Yu and serial entrepreneur Kat Dey, ettitude sells high-end bamboo bedding made using a

“In general, the consumer has proven to be more resilient than I would have thought,” said Kirsten Green, founder of Forerunner Ventures, which has investments in breakout D2C stars like Glossier, Hims and Bonobos. She joined us for an Extra Crunch Live conversation to help us better understand buying habits in the COVID-19 era. With

San Mateo-based startup Xona Space Systems has raised a $1 million “pre-seed” round led by 1517, and including participation from Seraphim Capital, Trucks Venture Capital and Stellar Solutions. The company is focused on developing a Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) satellite service that it believes can supersede Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), providing big benefits