The idea of starting your own business can be overwhelming — often to the point of paralysis. Here’s the thing: You’re not alone. Here’s the other thing: It doesn’t have to be that way. If that drive to be your own boss won’t let you sleep at night, then TechCrunch Early Stage is an absolute must-attend
He Huang Contributor He Huang is a partner at Northern Light Venture Capital supporting early-stage enterprise companies. It’s been a tumultuous few years, but China’s manufacturing industry is now on the rebound. Once an industry characterized by low-end manufacturing and intensive labor, it has transformed into a high-end manufacturing hub aided by technology. Automation and
South Korean internet conglomerate Naver Group continues to ride the hottest internet trends targeting young users. It has been the name behind messaging giant Line and popular selfie app Snow. And now, it’s charging into the metaverse, the red hot concept that makes Roblox, Epic Games and other gaming giants the talk of the town.
Four months after a seed round, Ascend is back with its first big boost to enable the company to expand its “buy now, pay later” commercial insurance tool that combines financing, collections and payables. Today, the company announced $30 million in Series A funding along with $250 million in lending to finance insurance premium loans
I could spend hours discussing early-stage startup operations and community-based marketing, but deal flow is my blind spot. But when investment banking firm UBS picked up financial robot-advisor Wealthfront for $1.4 billion in an all-cash deal this week, I noticed. “At those prices, the company’s exit price is a win in that it represents a
Bolt, the Estonian mobility tech company that recently closed a huge round, is planning to onboard an additional 200,000 drivers in Africa this year, as it kicks-off expansion to more cities within its existing markets while keeping up with the growing demand for e-hailing services across the continent. Bolt’s Africa regional director, Paddy Partridge, told
Zigbang, a South Korean proptech startup that provides real estate transactions service, announced on Thursday that it will acquire Samsung SDS’ home internet of things (IoT) unit to make a foray into the smart home industry. Samsung SDS sold the smart home IoT division, which is the only B2C business Samsung SDS has, in order to focus
While some startups are trying to get people to leave spreadsheets behind, Canvas, which is developing a collaborative data exploration tool, is going all in with a spreadsheet-like interface for non-technical teams to access the information they need without bothering data teams. Luke Zapart, who started Canvas in late 2020 with his former Flexport colleagues
Although default end-to-end encryption won’t fully arrive on Facebook Messenger until sometime in 2023, the company says today its feature offering end-to-end encrypted group chats and calls in Messenger is now fully rolled out. In addition, Messenger is adding another security feature with the launch of screenshot notifications in end-to-end encrypted chats, similar to rival
When you go to events, conferences and trade shows and it works out well in terms of driving tons of leads and opportunities, it is a good experience. However, when the events don’t work out so well, that can be risky in terms of wasting time and money. Two former Shutterstock execs, Alex Reynolds and
The EU has cleared Meta/Facebook’s acquisition of CRM maker, Kustomer — accepting a set of commitments from the tech giant to allay competition concerns linked to the fact it also owns a suite of popular messaging apps frequently used by small businesses for customer outreach (aka Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp). The Commission said Meta
The rise of remote instruction left many parents freshly aware of (and annoyed by) the shortcomings of Zoom school, but for Letha McLaren, COVID-19 brought an epiphany: the importance of a headset. McLaren’s son, who deals with executive dysfunction, was better able to focus through the screen because he used a headset that blocked out
The IPO market is flatlining at an awkward moment. While private markets remain heavily risk-on, a key avenue for startup exits – and investor liquidity – is seemingly shut. Our first indication that this was the case was the Justworks IPO delay in the United States, which pulled the plug on its debut close to
In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, TikTok launched a portal on its Discover page this morning, intended to educate users about the historic catastrophe, as well as the ongoing threat of antisemitism. The platform also hosted a similar portal last year. When users navigate to the Discover page on the TikTok mobile app, they
Lisbon VC Indico Capital Partners is launching a climate tech fund – dubbed the Indico Blue Fund. The €50 million VC and growth equity fund will target ‘Blue Economy’ (technology to assist the oceans) startups and SMEs operating out of Portugal. So far €36 million has been raised with the €50 million target expected later
We are continuing to see fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on the tech industry, with one of the latest developments coming out from France. Sigfox — a high-profile IoT startup that had raised over $300 million in venture funding and had ambitions to build a global communications network using a new approach
Rhys Spence Contributor Rhys Spence is head of research at Brighteye Ventures, a European edtech-focused fund, where he works with portfolio companies to help address priorities, with a focus on internationalization and HR. More posts by this contributor The unbundling of professional learning and entrepreneurship education What we can learn from edtech startups’ expansion efforts
bloss is a UK startup that connects would-be or existing parents to pre-vetted parenting experts. It has now raised £1million in a pre-seed round led by Antler, the early-stage VC and is also backed by angels including Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Narry Singh, footballer Andriy Shevchenko and British-Jamaican entrepreneur, Alexandra Chong. The funds will be used
New data from Kruze Consulting shows just how much the venture capital fundraising market has changed for startups in the last few quarters. Kruze, which provides accounting, tax and venture capital-related services to private tech companies, has access to hard data regarding startup performance. Healy Jones, vice president of financial planning and analysis at Kruze
A growing number of U.S. consumers are getting scammed on social media according to a new report by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which revealed that consumers lost $770 million to social media scams in 2021 — a figure that accounted for about one-fourth of all fraud losses for the year. That number has also
Sidharth Kakkar knows all about the pain of relying on a giant spreadsheet. While building his previous company, Freckle Education, it got to the point where the master spreadsheet full of data that everyone was using would not load anymore or would crash the computer. His company eventually was bought, but that pain point stuck
With post-pandemic burnout on the rise, the shift to remote working, and the ‘Great Resignation’ now passing into the lexicon, companies are struggling to hold onto talent. Culture platforms like Culture Amp and Glint were built for a different era, offering insights and reports to HR, but many are less tailored to 2022. And employee
Applying to colleges is one of the hardest parts of high school, especially for students who want to study abroad. Cialfo wants to make the process easier, with a platform that includes school research, communication tools for counselors and students, and Direct Apply, which helps international students find and apply to hundreds of programs with
Berlin-based Mayd, a startup that’s building an on-demand medicine delivery platform in Europe, has fast followed a chunky seed raise last fall — with a €30 million (~$34M) Series A funding round led by US investor Lightspeed Venture Partners. Previous investors Target Global, 468 Capital and Earlybird Venture Capital also chipped into the Series A.
Reddit is testing a feature that would allow its users to set any NFT they own as their profile picture — not only its own Ethereum-based NFTs, called “CryptoSnoos,” released in limited quantities last year. A similar feature allowing users to set their NFTs as profile pictures recently launched on Twitter, where the photos themselves
South Korea’s electric vehicle battery maker LG Energy Solution made a successful market debut on Thursday. The market capitalization of LG Energy stood at $98.3 billion (118 trillion KRW) at the close of trading on local stock exchanges, making it the country’s second valuable firm after Samsung Electronics. The firm’s stock price opened at 597,000
The creative community has been a ripe target for startups building tools and services to serve their interests and needs as they transition from their traditionally offline practices into a digital present and future. In one of the latest developments, Domestika — a popular site that creates and sells online video tutorials and courses covering
Gaming has been one of the most popular entertainment categories in the last two years of pandemic living. Now, a gaming startup that’s building a new kind of platform that it thinks will be a — wait for it — game changer in the category is announcing some funding as to ride that wave of
Banking giant UBS announced earlier today that it will purchase venture-backed robo-advisor Wealthfront in an all-cash transaction worth $1.4 billion. Wealthfront, which raised just north of $200 million while private, per Crunchbase data, is one of a few wealth management services that grew on the back of offering automatic investing tools to consumers. Betterment ($435
Black Sheep Foods, a food tech company making plant-based heritage breed meats and wild game, took in $5.25 million in seed funding as it continues developing its patent-pending flavor compounds. Sunny Kumar, co-founder, told TechCrunch that where some plant-based meats fall short is relying on the taste to be generated by the mouth. Rather, his