Startups

A startup called Our.News is working to make its users smarter consumers of the news. In other words, it’s confronting some big, seemingly intractable problems. For one thing, there’s a tremendous amount of disinformation online — as Our.News founder and CEO Richard Zack put it, “Unfortunately, you have thousands of people all over the world

It’s no secret that it’s hard to make the economics work at drive-share companies. That may explain the success to date of HopSkipDrive, a six-year-old, L.A.-based company that pairs drivers with both families but also, crucially, school districts. Specifically, the now 100-plus person company has deals in place with school districts in 13 markets across

When Fair laid off 40% of its staff in October, CEO Scott Painter promised it wasn’t shuttering leasing services to on-demand fleets. But just a week later, Painter was removed and replaced in the interim with Adam Hieber, a CFA from Fair investor SoftBank. Today, according to two sources, Fair announced at an all-hands meeting

Time to mark September 14-16 on your calendar for the startup extravaganza that is TechCrunch’s Disrupt San Francisco 2020. Registration for our flagship, 10,000-person event is officially open, and pass prices will never be lower. Super early-bird passes are now available and if you reserve your seat today, you can save up to $1,800. There

Drone startup Wingcopter, working with partners Merck and the Frankfurt University of Applied Science, has completed a first flight of a new drone delivery trial designed to show the benefits of using drones instead of trucks or other road faring vehicles for moving small cargo between two physically separate office facilities. This first flight covered

Funko Pops. You’ve probably noticed them at your local GameStop, Hot Topic or spread out all over your co-worker’s desk. These lil’ vinyl figurines and their big ol’ heads have taken over retail shelves in the last few years. You can now find a Funko Pop! (or thirty) for just about every fandom; there are

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Casper, the well-known D2C mattress company, has lowered its IPO price range in a new S-1/A filing made public this morning. The repricing leads to a lower expected valuation for the former startup and a

Following Tier Mobility’s $60 million Series B late last year, the e-scooter rentals startup has been busy bolstering its C-suite. The Berlin-based company is announcing that Moritz Werner has joined as chief commercial officer (CCO), and Roger Hassan has joined as chief operational officer (CCO). Werner will be responsible for revenue related activities across all

Everyone wants to lend to small businesses, as the fintech boom continues to bring constituent players closer together in feature-terms. Thinking broadly, the rising focus on small-business lending amongst B2B fintech and finservices companies feels directionally similar to the rise of consumer-oriented fintech startups adding banking-like features last year. This week, several stories underscored the

Couchbase, the popular NoSQL database, today announced the launch of Couchbase Cloud, a fully managed database-as-a-service (DBaaS) offering for enterprises. Once the service is generally available later this summer, users will be able to spin it up on AWS and Microsoft Azure, with support for Google Cloud coming a bit later this year. This, the

Small business lending is a huge market that has attracted massive attention from VC investors in recent years. Startups like Kabbage have raised more than a billion dollars in venture capital and debt to create lending platforms for businesses, and others in the space like Fundbox for lending and BlueVine for banking are trying to

As Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs cluster around the worldview that artificial intelligence is poised to change how we work, investors are deciding which use cases make the most sense to pump money into right now. One focus has been the relentless communication between companies and customer that takes place at call centers. Call center tech has spawned

This is it, startup fans. It’s your very last chance to scoop up the few remaining tickets to our 3rd Annual Winter Party at Galvanize — the best Silicon Valley startup soiree bar none. If you want to join this fun gathering of 1,000+ likeminded startuppers on February 7, you’d best act quickly. Exhibitor tables have

‘I like to talk about things that I’m learning that I think are applicable to other people’ Greg Epstein 9 hours Greg Epstein Contributor Greg M. Epstein is the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard and MIT, and the author of The New York Times bestselling book “Good Without God.” Described as a “godfather to the [humanist]

When Uber and Lyft went public, it wasn’t the drivers who got rich — it was the executives, investors and some early employees. In an era when it has become clear that tech executives and investors are frequently the only ones who’ll reap rewards for a company’s success, cooperative startups are getting more attention. Depending

Ann Miura-Ko Contributor Ann Miura-Ko is a co-founding partner at Floodgate, a seed-stage VC firm. A repeat member of the Forbes Midas List and the New York Times Top 20 Venture Capitalists Worldwide, she earned a PhD in math modeling of cybersecurity at Stanford University. More posts by this contributor You need a minimum viable

Greg Epstein Contributor Greg M. Epstein is the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard and MIT, and the author of The New York Times bestselling book “Good Without God.” Described as a “godfather to the [humanist] movement” by The New York Times Magazine in recognition of his efforts to build inclusive, inspiring and ethical communities for the

Everybody’s talking about revenues after WeWork, but maybe you still don’t need to have all the right numbers in place to achieve a strong IPO? That’s the initial takeaway Alex Wilhelm has after One Medical’s successful debut this week. One might think it looks like a tech-enabled unicorn, that doesn’t generate the recurring revenue and

Ann Miura-Ko Contributor Ann Miura-Ko is a co-founding partner at Floodgate, a seed-stage VC firm. A repeat member of the Forbes Midas List and the New York Times Top 20 Venture Capitalists Worldwide, she earned a PhD in math modeling of cybersecurity at Stanford University. More posts by this contributor You need a minimum viable

Legacy, a male fertility startup, has just raised a fresh, $3.5 million in funding from Bill Maris’s San Diego-based venture firm, Section 32, along with Y Combinator and Bain Capital Ventures, which led a $1.5 million seed round for the Boston startup last year. We talked earlier today with Legacy’s founder and CEO Khaled Kteily

Kyle Lomeli Contributor Kyle Lomeli is the CTO and a founding engineer at CarGurus.com. Online commerce accounted for nearly $518 billion in revenue in the United States alone last year. The growing number of online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay will command 40% of the global retail market in 2020. As the number of digital

Moda Operandi, an online marketplace that specialises in right-off-the-runway luxury fashion, accessories and home decor, is today announcing a high-priced event of its own: it’s raised $100 million, a mix of equity and debt that it will use to invest in its platform and technology as well as to continue growing business overall, which was

In 1998, the startup company Illumina launched a revolution in the life sciences industry by developing technology to slash the costs of identifying and mapping genetic material. Now, a little over 20 years later, Mammoth Biosciences is hoping to do the same thing for gene editing tools. The company, co-founded by Jennifer Doudna, who did some

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. As One Medical looks to become the first venture-backed company to price its IPO in 2020 this afternoon and Casper aims to price its own shares next Wednesday, the market is gearing up for a

Codility, a platform that helps tech recruiters and hiring managers asses candidates through online coding tests, today announced that it has raised a $22 million Series A round led by Oxx and Kennet Partners. This marks the first time Codility has raised any funding, after ten years as a bootstrapped company. Clearly, though, despite having

At the FAA’s 23rd Annual Commercial Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington, DC on Wednesday, a panel dedicated to the topic of trends in VC around space startups touched on public vs. private funding, the right kinds of space companies that should even be considering venture funding, and, perhaps most notably, the big L: Liquidity.

Drone delivery may not make a lot of sense for food or parcel delivery yet, but for hospitals it could be a lifesaver. A new test program is being inaugurated at UC San Diego’s Jacobs Medical Center, where Matternet drones operated by UPS will fly blood samples and other items to and from other nearby

French startup Bankin’ has introduced Bridge Pay this week, an API that lets you initiate payments using bank transfers from your app. Think about it as a sort of Stripe, but for bank transfers. The API currently covers 12 major French banks, which represent around 90% of retail bank accounts in France. Bankin’ is both

Jeff Bezos’ phone was hacked. And if the richest person in the world is vulnerable, chances are good that your startup could get hacked, too. The good news is that, as a tiny company, you’re not a big target. But as soon as you hire your first employee, it’s time to think about adopting basic

The team behind Product Hunt is launching a new social network called YourStack, a platform aiming to connect people that are passionate about products and help them discover what things their friends love. “It’s super simple, you just search through and create a stack of products you love.” Product Hunt founder Ryan Hoover tells TechCrunch.