But it could lead to more balance later this year Ron Miller 8 hours As bad economic news piles up seemingly on a daily basis, we don’t know what the future holds except that change is on the way. Although we are seeing layoffs and hiring freezes at some companies, it doesn’t necessarily mean the
Time is a flat circle, and all that was once old is new again. For example, back in the venture days of yore, inside rounds were considered a poor market signal; if a startup could not attract a new lead investor for its next round, what did that say about the company? Last year, that
Founders have gotten the memo that the ground is shifting under their feet right now. What to do about it is the question. Already, teams are making plans to scale back their spending to preserve capital. They’re making painful staff cuts toward that same end — or else instituting hiring freezes. But they should also
Unless you live near a port, you probably don’t think much of the tens of thousands of container ships tearing through the seas, hauling some 1.8 billion metric tons of stuff each year. Yet these vessels run on some of the dirtiest fuel there is, spewing more greenhouse gases than airplanes do in the process.
As with many skilled professions these days, there is a gap between demand and supply when it comes to IT pros. As more people turn to Apple devices at work, whether computers, phones or tablets, the need for people who can service and manage these devices has increased. While we may find ourselves in an
CleverTap, a retention marketing platform which has raised $76.6M to date, is to fully acquire Bulgarian-originated but San Francisco-based Leanplum, a customer engagement platform which has raised $131.2M, for an undisclosed amount. The news was broken by South Eastern European startup news site The Recursive. Sunil Thomas, CleverTap Cofounder and Executive Chairman said: “Like many
Walker Drewett founded NuBrakes in May 2019. According to Mike Ghaffary, GP at Canvas Ventures, Drewett is building a high-growth business powered by a marketplace model, which is why Ghaffary led the company’s Series A. The product is simple: On-demand vehicle brake repair services. Join this episode to hear how Drewett raised capital and built
The technological advances we’ve made over the last few thousand years are stunning, but the construction industry still relies on centuries-old technology. Configuring a robot to mix cement is easy, but delivering a CementTron 3000 to a job site, training employees on its use, and keeping it maintained are not the kinds of disruptions builders
TikTok announced today that it’s launching a new ad product called “Branded Mission” that will allow creators to connect with brands and possibly receive rewards for videos. With the new ad product, advertisers can crowdsource content from creators and turn top-performing videos into ads. Advertisers can launch branded campaigns and encourage creators to take part
Everstream Analytics, a supply chain insights and risk analytics startup, today announced that it raised $24 million in a Series A round led by Morgan Stanley Investment Management with participation from Columbia Capital, StepStone Group and DHL. CEO Julie Gerdeman said that the new money would be used to “propel technology innovation” and “further global
The next bottleneck in lithium-ion battery supplies isn’t cobalt, even though China has a stranglehold on the market, and it’s not nickel, either, despite nickel prices nearly doubling in the past five months. Cobalt can be partially replaced with nickel, nickel can be partially replaced with manganese, and both can be completely replaced with iron
In 2017, we noted that smartphone screen sizes had settled into a sweet spot between five and six inches. In hindsight, that may well have been wishful thinking. A brief respite aside, it seems that phones have only continued to embiggen, driven by a continued spec war and panel manufacturers like Samsung. Heck, even Steve
Welcome to Online Day at TC Sessions: Mobility 2022! Opportunity knocks just as loud online as it does IRL, but this knock can be heard around the world. You’ll find everything listed in the event agenda, but here’s a quick rundown of what’s in store. Plan your day to reap optimal opportunities! But first: If
Ghosting a $44B date Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. The whole team was back together this week, which was pretty darn good as there was a lot to get through. Alex Wilhelm, Natasha Mascarenhas and Mary Ann Azevedo were on the
After years of stolen memes and uncredited dance trends, TikTok today is introducing a new feature that it says will be the first iteration of its creator crediting tools that allow creators to directly tag and credit others using a new button during the publishing process. This button lets creators credit all sorts of inspiration
Galley Solutions, a food data company providing food operators with technology to make more profitable decisions around their culinary operations, raised $14.2 million in Series A funding. Ian Christopher, COO, started the company with his brother-in-law, Benji Koltai, CEO, in 2017. The food enterprise resource planning tool came out of Koltai’s previous work at Sprig,
Technology turned out to be a boon for pets during the pandemic. Without ready access to vets, pet owners turned to mobile apps to keep track on their pet’s health, often via educational content, and in some cases that was linked to insurance providers. The behavior has lit up the VC world as startups roll
TechCrunch is excited to announce Swyft Cities won the TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility 2022 pitch-off and is fast-tracked into the Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt in October. Beyond Aero is runner-up. The Mountain View-based company is committed to improving transportation through the use of autonomous, lightweight, fixed-cable vehicles. The company says that its solution offers a
How much difference a year makes. In April 2021, TechCrunch published a venture capitalist’s take that “the era of the European insurtech IPO will soon be upon us.” At the time, the perspective made some sense. After all, just last June, this column explored the rapid-fire fundraising in the insurance technology startup market, declaring that
Twitter has announced that it’s rolling out Super Follows-only Spaces. Creators who offer Super Follows subscriptions can now host Spaces exclusively for their subscribers. The social media giant says this new option will give creators a way to “offer an extra layer of conversation to their biggest supporters.” Subscribers globally on iOS and Android will
ChargeLab, a Toronto-based startup that builds software to operate and optimize electric vehicle charging equipment for fleets and commercial customers, has raised a $15 million Series A round. The round was led by King River Capital and notably includes participation from strategic investor ABB E-Mobility, a spinoff of technology company ABB that focuses on electric
Reflecting the growing investor interest in HR technology startups, Fetcher, the talent acquisition platform formerly known as Scout, today closed a $27 million Series B funding round led by Tola Capital with participation from G20 Ventures, KFund and Accomplice. The new money — $7 million in debt and $20 million in equity — brings the
If meme stocks can be a thing, what’s to stop audio meme sharing from going viral!? Hoping to storm the ear-bending arena of social audio and win friends amid the gamer/creator crowd is Voicy — a Netherlands-based startup that’s building a platform for user-generated audio snippets (typically a few seconds long), offering tools to create
Thursday May 19, 2022, and it’s the last day of our in-person Mobility event. Tomorrow we take the journey to the mean streets of the world wide web, and you can still join us virtually! — Haje and Christine The TechCrunch Top 3 Tl;dr: We know you don’t have 32 minutes to read Meta global
Historically, the relationship between landlords and tenants can be a contentious one. At the same time, the experiences of managing a property, and renting one, are not always smooth. Belong, a startup that aims to address both these issues while giving renters a way to save toward home ownership, has just raised $50 million in
Snapchat is preparing to introduce a new parental control feature dubbed “Family Center,” which will allow parents to see who their teen is friends with on the app as well as who they’ve been messaging with over the past seven days, and more. Snap’s CEO Evan Spiegel first teased the planned offering during an interview
Jiajun Zhu, co-founder and CEO of autonomous robot company Nuro, joined TechCrunch onstage during TC Sessions: Mobility on Wednesday to discuss how the startup aims to revolutionize commercial autonomous delivery. The company is most well-known for its cute self-driving delivery vehicles, which operate on roads, not sidewalks, and are purpose-built to carry pizzas and packages
The IPO window has all but closed for technology companies in the wake of a massive downturn in the market, but an opening still remains for some, in the form of SPACs. Near — a data intelligence company that has amassed 1.6 billion anonymized user profiles attached to 70 million locations in 44 countries —
In the developed world, almost anyone can get financing for, say, a car lease. But in an emerging economy like South Africa, the only people who own cars or can even get a car lease are the people who already have something to collateralize, or a payslip to work off. As a result, small businesses,
WhatsApp is continuing its push into the business market with today’s news it’s launching the WhatsApp Cloud API to all businesses worldwide. Introduced into beta testing last November, the new developer tool is a cloud-based version of the WhatsApp Business API — WhatsApp’s first revenue-generating enterprise product — but hosted on parent company Meta’s infrastructure.