Over the course of the last few years, Firewalla‘s combined firewall and router devices have made a name for themselves as the go-to hardware security tools for many enthusiasts and small businesses. Today, the company started shipping its newest device, the Firewalla Purple, a diminutive gigabit firewall and router that is currently retailing for $319.
Last November, Apple announced the launch of Self Service Repair — a surprising addition for a company that has notoriously lacked such capabilities. Those changes didn’t happen in a vacuum, of course. The president and Congress have both been pushing to open the so-called right to repair. There are plenty of reasons for this, from
Regardless of your perspective on blockchain-centered projects, venture capitalists appear to have made up their minds about the sector: Investments into crypto-themed companies — the web3 space, as its supporters call it — set records in 2021, records that could be beaten in 2022 if early data indicates where capital will flow this year. The
The shipping business in Africa has for years been inefficient and costly due to the traditional ways of managing operations – traditional in the sense that a shipper has to physically look for a transporter, sometimes through a middle-man, and often, once goods are delivered, the trucks almost always make the return trip empty. For
Netlify, the well-funded company that, in many ways, started the Jamstack movement, today announced that it has acquired Quirrel, an open-source service for managing and executing serverless functions. Founded by Simon Knott, who is also the maintainer of the popular Blitz.js React framework, Quirrel never raised any outside funding before the acquisition, which quietly happened
Earlybird, best known as the Berlin-based VC which has backed a myriad of German and European startups such as Soundcloud and N26, is today expanding its reach in Europe with the creation of a team and adjunct fund based out of Paris, France. The timing is decent. According to most annual European surveys, France regularly
The use of tracking cookies is winding down, and Apple’s anti-tracking privacy update has impacted mobile apps’ advertising revenues. But these changes have only prompted the adtech industry to get more creative with its solutions. The latest example comes from Pandora parent company, SiriusXM, which this week rolled out a new way to identify and
The demand for software engineers is expected to grow by 22% between 2020 and 2030, according to a report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This figure is larger than the 4% average for other careers. One would be out of touch with reality to say they haven’t noticed this phenomenon in Lagos, Africa’s startup
AirTree partners (from l to r): From left to right: James Cameron, John Henderson, Elicia McDonald, Jackie Vullinghs, Craig Blair and Helen Norton More money is flowing into Australia and New Zealand’s startup ecosystems. Sydney-based AirTree Ventures, one of the region’s most prolific VC firms, announced it has raised $700 million AUD (about $493 million
Private equity firms Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital have finally found a suitable match for Tibco: the firms will buy Citrix for $16.5 billion. The deal, which represents a roughly 30% premium on Citrix’s value, aims to combine the two companies to create a legacy enterprise tech powerhouse. But will the combination produce
GWI, a UK-based tech company — formerly GlobalWebIndex — that’s built up a SaaS business which disrupts traditional offline market research methods with a global network of data contributors, mobile surveys and a self-serve platform for surfacing rich consumer insights to customers that include tech giants like Google, has closed a $180 million Series B
Apple Inc.’s earnings Thursday now carry the burden of trying to turn the tide for technology stocks after the Federal Reserve’s signal of faster rate hikes made investors skittish. Will Power of Baird has a preview on “Bloomberg Surveillance.”
In the crypto ecosystem, wallets are perhaps the most critical user touchpoint serving as a gateway to exchanges and smart contracts. This positions the startups building popular wallet apps closest to the firehose of consumer crypto opportunities, while also leaving them to take charge in tackling many of web3’s unsolved problems including steep onboarding challenges
Nathan Beckord Contributor More posts by this contributor How to break into Silicon Valley as an outsider The lightning-fast Series A (that was 3 years in the making) Momentum is the single most important factor that helps startup founders raise capital. In 20+ years of working to connect founders with potential investors, I’ve learned that
Meta is bringing its 3D avatars to Instagram and is also rolling out updated avatars to Facebook and Messenger, the company announced on Monday. Users in the United States, Canada and Mexico can now show up as their virtual selves in stickers, feed posts, Facebook profile pictures and more. Today’s update adds Cochlear implants and
Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Monday, January 31! We’re putting a bow on the first month of the year today, but that doesn’t mean we’re looking back. Not at all. First, news is popping off like firecrackers. And, we’re looking ahead because we’re doing a lot of really fun live podcasting this year.
As is commonly the case, datasets used inside companies almost always come from diverse sources and in different, unstructured formats. Connecting them up can lead to a be a very large headache. But if it can be done, there are all sorts of benefits, especially in finance, such as fraud detection, KYC/AML checks etc. This
It’s been a 12-year journey for Purely Elizabeth founder Elizabeth Stein, and based on her plans for the company’s next phase, she is just getting started. Stein, who began her career as a holistic nutrition counselor, started the company in 2009 after going back to school and learning about superfood ingredients and food as medicine,
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This Monday show actually felt a bit old-school, in that the weekend controversy in tech has spilled over into the working morning, meaning that we need to talk about it. But first, markets:
Deepnote, a startup that is building a data science platform on top of Jupyter-compatible notebooks, today announced that it has raised a $20 million Series A round co-led by Index Ventures and Accel, both of which also participated in its 2020 seed round. Existing investors Y Combinator and Credo Ventures also participated in this round.
Our behavior at restaurants and venues has changed massively in the last two years because of the pandemic, but many of us have realized the huge advantages of being able to order via phones from the table, or even pay, instead of the usual ‘credit card dance’. French startup Sunday, which didn’t even exist in
A new Pinterest feature will allow consumers to see what furniture or other home décor items will look like in their own home, using augmented reality (AR). Similar technology has already been put into place by major retailers, like Amazon, IKEA or Wayfair, as well as others in the home design space, like Houzz. In
The Egyptian social e-commerce market will be worth over $14.8 billion by 2024. The opportunity in the market can be attributed to the growth in online social sellers in the country, over 1.25 million them, helping little-known brands sell and distribute their goods via different networks. Brimore–a market leader in the country and, to an
French startup Pennylane has raised a $57 million Series B round (€50 million) from existing investors, such as Sequoia Capital, Global Founders Capital and Partech. The startup wants to replace legacy accounting solutions in France — and in Europe. If you’re an accountant, you might be familiar with tools like Cegid and Sage. Essentially, Pennylane
Joby Aviation is seeking permission for a series of high-profile air taxi flights over San Francisco Bay, according to documents filed with the FCC and obtained by TechCrunch. The tests of the startup’s second-generation pre-production prototype, called the S4, would be the first in full view of the public and the first in an urban
Elise King Contributor Elise King is program director of Human Ventures’ entrepreneur-in-residence program and is a member of the firm’s investment team. At Human Ventures, we have a fund for pre-seed and seed-stage investments, a venture studio and an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) program. Through this work, we’ve discovered a lot about how different founders
Welcome to my new weekly fintech-focused column. It’s an incredible time to be a financial technology journalist. Besides the fact that over 20% of all venture dollars last year went into fintech startups, I am particularly excited about the many ways that this technology is helping boost inclusion all over the world. While this pandemic
Jason Wenk Contributor Fintech founders that set out to solve big problems for consumers almost always begin with the best intentions — they want to help people. But they often miss that mark by a country mile, which spurs questions about how effective other fintech founders can be at helping consumers. Trust me, when you
Last year we covered how early blockchain startup Propy planned to use the technology to smooth real-world real estate sales by introducing the concept of smart contracts. It went on to actually sell an apartment as an NFT, using the NFT to effectively rubber stamps the legal process. However, that apart was in Ukraine. Today
Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this week’s startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. The market is down. The party is over. And Peloton of X startups aren’t too happy right now. As tech stocks take a hit, the big question on my mind is how