Startups

We’ve been dropping into the Australian startup scene increasingly over the years as the ecosystem has been building at an increasingly faster pace, most notably at our own TechCrunch Battlefield Australia in 2017. Further evidence that the scene is growing has come recently in the shape of the Pause Fest conference in Melbourne. This event

During the days when Snapchat’s popularity was booming, investors thought the company would become the anchor for a new Los Angeles technology scene. Snapchat, they hoped, would spin-off entrepreneurs and angel investors who would reinvest in the local ecosystem and create new companies that would in turn foster more wealth, establishing LA as a hub

Six months ago or thereabouts, a group of engineers and developers with backgrounds from the National Security Agency, Google and Amazon Web Services had an idea. Data is valuable for helping developers and engineers to build new features and better innovate. But that data is often highly sensitive and out of reach, kept under lock

LinkedIn has cornered the market when it comes to putting your own professional profile online and using it to network for jobs, industry connections and professional development. But when it comes to looking at a chart of the people, and specifically the leadership teams, who make up organizations more holistically, the Microsoft-owned network comes up

Over the past 12 months, Maven, the benefits provider focused on women’s health and family planning, has expanded its customer base to include more than 100 companies, and grown its telehealth services to include 1,700 providers across 20 specialties — for services like shipping breast milk, finding a doula and egg freezing, fertility treatments, surrogacy

BluBracket, a new security startup from the folks who brought you Vera, came out of stealth today and announced a $6.5 million seed investment. Unusual Ventures led the round with participation by Point72 Ventures, SignalFire and Firebolt Ventures. The company was launched by Ajay Aurora and Prakash Linga, who until last year were CEO and

Robotic process automation — the ability to automate certain repetitive software-based tasks to free up people to focus on work that computers cannot do — has become a major growth area in the world of IT. Today, a startup called Aisera that is coming out of stealth has taken this idea and supercharged it by

Video editing startup InVideo has new funding and a new product. The San Francisco-headquartered company bills itself as the easiest way for anyone to create professional-quality videos, using a drag-and-drop interface, along with a library of templates and stock photos and videos. The resulting videos can then be optimized for Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other

Despite the rapid growth of e-commerce in India, Southeast Asia and other emerging markets, the vast majority of retail transactions there still happen offline in small stores that also serve as neighborhood hubs. The central role these stores play in their communities led GGV Capital to develop what the firm refers to as its mom-and-pop

Will Robbins Contributor Voodoo Games is one of the most interesting startups alive today. In mid-2018, it had 150 million MAUs and raised $200 million from Goldman Sachs, yet I’ve never heard anyone mention the company. That might be normal for an obscure enterprise SaaS play, but Voodoo is consumer-facing through and through. Quantitative success

Americans are saddled with $1.2 trillion in auto loans, according to data collected by the Federal Reserve. And while that debt can be refinanced, even U.S. car owners who know it’s an option face a complicated task. MotoRefi, a new fintech startup that was born out of QED Investors in 2017, says it has developed

Budget-lodging startup Oyo reported a loss of $335 million on $951 million revenue globally for the financial year ending March 31, 2019, and pledged to cut down on its spending as the India-headquartered firm grows cautious about its aggressive expansion. The six-year-old startup’s growing revenue, up from $211 million in financial year ending March 31,

Too often, people are asked to give away their insights and time for free. Jen Horonjeff, founder and CEO of healthcare startup Savvy, knows this first hand and is trying to change that by applying a cooperative model to her business. As an infant, Horonjeff was diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis. Since then, she has

With so many new investors, the old seed fundraise playbook needs a rewrite Danny Crichton 8 hours Seed fundraising is rarely easy, but it certainly used to be a lot less complicated than it is today. In a simpler world, a seed investor (or maybe two) would lead a round, which meant that they would

In case you haven’t heard, VCs are loving on workplace software as of late, and productivity tools that help teams collaborate seem to be a particular frothy area of investment. A smattering of top VC firms and angels, including General Catalyst, First Round Capital, Bloomberg Beta, Biz Stone and Ellen Pao, are throwing their confidence

“If I was running Clearbanc by myself, it probably would have gone off the cliff eight times at this point,” says Clearbanc co-founder Andrew D’Souza.  “If I were running the company by myself, it would be half its size,” adds Michele Romanow, Clearbanc’s other co-founder. In addition to starting the $420 million-backed fintech company together, D’Souza

​Tamatem, the leading mobile games publisher in the Arabic speaking market, has raised $3.5 million in additional funding — essentially an extension of the startup’s earlier Series A. The round was led by existing investor ​Wamda Capital, with participation from Modern Electronics Company (a subsidiary of AlFaisaliah Group) and North Base Media. Tamatem says the

Simsim, a social commerce startup in India, said on Friday it has raised $16 million in seven months of its existence as it attempts to replicate the offline retail experience in the digital world with help from influencers. The Gurgaon-based startup said it raised $16 million across seed, Series A and Series B financing rounds

When Google announced that it was acquiring data analytics startup Looker for $2.6 billion, it was a big deal on a couple of levels. It was a lot of money and it represented the first large deal under the leadership of Thomas Kurian. Today, the company announced that deal has officially closed and Looker is

Intuition Robotics, the company best known for its ElliQ robot, a digital home companion for the elderly, today announced that it has raised a $36 million Series B round co-led by SPARX Group and OurCrowd. Toyota AI Ventures, Sompo Holdings, iRobot, Union Tech Ventures, Happiness Capital, Samsung Next, Capital Point and Bloomberg Beta also participated

Matteo Franceschetti, CEO of Eight Sleep, would prefer that you don’t call his startup a mattress company. Eight Sleep does sell mattresses, albeit smart ones packed with sensors and temperature regulation controls. The company has raised north of $70 million from backers including Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures. A great deal of this funding surrounds

Greg Mitchell Contributor Funding of Latin American startups has doubled each year over the past two years. And while most of this capital has been directed toward Brazil and Mexico, this surge is starting to have an effect on startups in the region’s smaller markets. The increased availability of capital for later rounds is creating

Europe has emerged as a key region for hatching and scaling fintech companies, and today one of the bigger hopefuls is announcing a large round of funding, from a mix of strategic investors, to keep growing its business. Fenergo, a startup from Dublin that builds solutions for banks and other financial management companies to help

Spaceflight Industries, owner of both Spaceflight, Inc. and BlackSky, is selling the Spaceflight, Inc. portion of its business to Japanese industrial megacorporation Mitsui & Co, and Yamasa both of which will co-own the company in a 50/50 joint venture after its closing. The deal will see Spaceflight continue to operate as an independent business based

There was a lot of moving and shaking in the cybersecurity unicorn world in 2019. It was a year that saw two of the biggest exits in cybersecurity history: CrowdStrike went public valued at $3.35 billion and Cloudflare rocketed 20% in its first day on the stock market. Clearly, the cybersecurity market is booming. Recent

MoEngage, a San Francisco and Bangalore-based startup that helps firms better understand their customers and improve their engagement, has raised $25 million in a new financing round as it looks to grow its network in Asian markets. The new financing round, Series C, was led by Eight Roads Ventures . F-Prime Capital, Matrix Partners India,

U.S. femtech startup CurieMD is offering menopause diagnosis and treatment prescription via a telehealth platform — beginning in California, where it launched late last year. Founder Dr Leslie Meserve says the goal is to widen access to treatment and support services for mid-life women, spying a business opportunity in offering an auxiliary digital service targeting

Just a couple days after mobile analytics and marketing company Localytics was acquired by Upland Software, two of its founders are announcing their new startup, Demand Sage. CEO Raj Aggarwal and CTO Henry Cipolla previously co-founded and served in the same roles at Localytics, and they founded Demand Sage with Chief Product Officer Randy Dailey

An interview with Julie Samuels, founding executive director of Tech:NYC Scott Bade 10 hours Scott Bade Contributor Scott Bade is a former speechwriter for Mike Bloomberg and co-author of “More Human: Designing a World Where People Come First.” More posts by this contributor The tech of giving back: an interview with Salesforce’s Chief Philanthropy Officer

In a little less than three months, TechCrunch will bring its Early Stage event to SF for the very first time. Early Stage is meant to bring together more than 50 experts across startup core competencies, from funding to marketing to operation. Today, I’m pleased to announce another four experts being added to the agenda.