Meet Rise, a new startup working on a calendar app that is specifically designed for team work. Rise helps you see what you have planned, check what you team is doing right now and, more importantly, schedule meetings that are as convenient as possible for the whole team. Currently in private beta, Rise raised $3
Remember the backlash over that impossible-to-understand privacy policy update pushed out by WhatsApp last year? A consumer protection complaint over the messaging platform’s aggressive push to make users accept impenetrable terms changes related to its use of their data continues to rumble on in the European Union — now shifting up a gear into a formal
Today’s cars are dumb where they should be smart, and smart where they should be dumb. Enough already. Make a car that’s pretty much all dumb and watch it sell — because what automakers are giving people is so bad, they’ll pay more to have less of it. Cars now are like budget smartphones with
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for January 28, 2022! It’s nearly blizzard o’clock where I am, so please enjoy the following newsletter as my final missive before hunkering down. In happier
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. We had the full crew aboard today, headed by our superlative production team Grace and Chris, and hosting crew Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex. What did we get into? Well, a host of pretty awesome stuff, even if
Zapp, the instant grocery delivery startup that launched in 2020 in London, has picked up a substantial round of funding to go head-to-head with Getir, GoPuff, Jiffy, Deliveroo and the many others hungry for a share of the on-demand convenience market. It has raised $200 million, a Series B round of funding that Zapp said
As a company grows, the amount of important information employees need to keep track of inevitably grows right along with it. And, as your tech stack gets more complicated, that information ends up split up across more places — buried in Slack threads, tucked into Jira tickets, pushed as files on Dropbox, etc. Dashworks is
The 2020-2021 trading and investing boom lifted a number of companies’ revenue growth, fundraising and narrative strength. Some of the best-known even went public on the back of a global trend that made their businesses shine. Now that shine is fading, and the value of select fintech concerns is in free-fall. The best example of
One of the most popular applications of artificial intelligence to date has been to use it to predict things, using algorithms trained with historical data to determine a future outcome. But popularity doesn’t always mean success: predictive AI leaves out a lot of the nuance, context and cause-and-effect reasoning that goes into an outcome; and
Global smartphone shipments had already begun to shrink ahead of 2020, though two years of a pandemic and the resulting supply chain and chip constraints certainly didn’t help the overall figures. According to a pair of reports from Counterpoint Research and IDC, however, the market finally experienced growth last year for first time since 2017.
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