There’s financial technology (fintech) companies out there targeting all sorts of different segments of the population, as well as companies at various stages of growth. A new company recently emerged that is targeting a popular startup niche, wanting to exclusively help early-stage SaaS (software-as-a-service) companies with their financial needs. Coming out of stealth today with
Y Combinator’s newly announced plan to invest more capital into startups that take part in its accelerator program is more controversial than many first assumed. By raising its so-called “standard deal” to include an additional $375,000, the U.S. program and investing group with hundreds of companies in each of its accelerator classes may have materially
Retailers often build their own “orchestration” platforms for payment processing and routing, but these can be complex to maintain. Spreedly and modo play in this space, and, last year, new startup Gr4vy launched in the US to do this in an even more fleet-of-foot manner, it claimed. It raised in a $11.1M Series A last
The success of Roblox and other user-created gaming experiences like Overwolf have democratized the concept of making games and have taken it into the mainstream. Now, a startup founded by veterans from Unity, Microsoft and EA that is building a new platform for creators to build immersive games, and related communities around like-minded people, is
Perhaps 2022 will be the year consumer health tracking moves beyond the wrist. We’ve seen Oura’s rise over the past few years and a CES that brought with it a couple of ring fitness trackers. Following Google’s addition to vital and sleep tracking on the Nest Home, Sengled is adding the feature to a smart
Krafton, the developer behind PlayUnknown’s Battlegrounds,” and the maker of PUBG MOBILE, last year’s No. 6 top-grossing mobile game on a global basis, is suing the app stores and a rival game maker, Garena, over copyright infringement involving Garena Online’s Free Fire games. The lawsuit alleges Garena’s games copy numerous aspects of its own, including
Fintech Farm, a newly launched fintech startup based in the U.K. that creates digital banks in emerging markets, confirmed to TechCrunch today that it has raised $7.4 million in seed funding. The seed round was led by Flyer One Ventures and Solid. TA Ventures, Jiji, u.ventures and AVentures Capital also participated. The company said it
SeekOut, which aims to help enterprises hire from a more diverse talent pool, announced it has raised $115 million in a Series C round of funding led by Tiger Global Management. The financing values the Seattle-based startup at over $1.2 billion and brings its total raised to $189 million since its 2017 inception. It follows
A group of more than 80 prominent fact checking organizations around the world is pressing YouTube to take action against Covid misinformation, which still prevails on the platform now two years into the pandemic. “As an international network of fact-checking organizations, we monitor how lies spread online — and every day, we see that YouTube
MycoWorks, a company making a fungal-based biomaterial that can replace leather, brought in a fresh round of funding — $125 million in Series C financing — to fund a production plant for scaling the manufacture of its flagship product Reishi. CEO Matt Scullin says what his company is doing in terms of fabrics is different
A decision by Austria’s data protection watchdog upholding a complaint against a website related to its use of Google Analytics does not bode well for use of US cloud services in Europe. The decision raises a big red flag over routine use of tools that require transferring Europeans’ personal data to the US for processing
Aleksandra Korczynska Contributor Aleksandra Korczynska, the CMO of GetResponse, guides global SaaS marketing and growth. Driven by data analytics and growth hacking, she has crafted go-to-market strategies for global brands (ex-Uber) and tech startups alike. Sales stand and fall on leads, but attracting prospects and optimally converting them into buyers is an art that many
Justworks, a venture-backed software startup focused on the HR market for small and medium-sized businesses, announced earlier today that it would delay its IPO. In a statement to TechCrunch, Justworks said that it “decided to delay its IPO due to market conditions at this time.” An IPO delay is just that, a public debut pushed
The Nigerian government has lifted the suspension of Twitter operations more than six months after it first declared a crackdown on the social media giant in the country. Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, the director-general of Nigeria’s tech agency, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), made this announcement via a statement today. He was put in charge,
Eureka, a Tel Aviv-based startup that provides enterprises with tools to manage security risks across their various data stores, today announced that it has raised an $8 million seed round led by YL Ventures. The company was founded by Liat Hayun (CEO), a former VP of Product Management at Palo Alto Networks, and Asaf Weiss
While last year’s WhatsApp outage is still sending shivers down the spine of its 2 billion users, the same is also true for the millions of businesses now using it to connect with their customers. As we now know, messaging across all platforms is a new area from which many startups are emerging. One of
Around the same time Apple was touting its sizable App Store revenue growth this week, developer and noted App Store critic Kosta Eleftheriou brought to light what appeared to be yet another App Store scammer hiding in plain sight. On Twitter, Eleftheriou documented the earnings for a music syncing app called AmpMe, which claims to
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic and dive deep. This week Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex came together to talk about the changing nature of
Venture capitalists went hard in 2021. Data collected from a number of sources indicates that last year set venture capital records around the world. From dollars invested to deal volume, sectors and geographies posted their strongest performance and excelled on essentially every continent. Today’s startup boom, from a venture capital perspective, is a wide-ranging and
API transformation company Jitterbit today announced that it has acquired PrimeApps, a Turkey-based low-code application development service. Jitterbit plans to combine its API platform with PrimeApps to build an end-to-end platform that will make it easier for non-technical users to build business apps, something that — almost by default — includes integrating different data sources.
It’s now 2022 and there are many, many apps out there that allow you to do cardio or build muscle by taking classes inside smartphone apps. We are all familiar with the success of platforms like Peloton (IPO’d), but there are of course new upstarts such as FiiT (raised £9M) or Fitplan (raised $9.9M). Plus
Consumer spending on mobile apps reached $170 billion in 2021, according to App Annie’s newly released “State of Mobile 2022″ report, out today, which offers a comprehensive look at the app economy across iOS, Google Play and third-party Android app stores in China. That figure is up 19% year-over-year, which is down just one percentage
The sign of a true entrepreneur is someone who can look around and go “wait a minute, there must be a better way.” That approach worked well for Outlines‘ founders, who are tackling the unsexy but pretty serious recycling issue of shower curtain liners. The company just closed a $1 million pre-seed lead by Social Impact
It’s painful to watch SPAC deals collapse post-combination. You can viscerally feel dreams melting away to disappointment as founders, employees and investors still holding shares in the newly public entities watch their wealth dwindle. The mess is not sector-specific. Media? Not a good SPAC target. Insurtech? Nope. 3D printing? Not looking good. E-scooters? Nerp. Hardware
Africa’s appetite for cloud computing software continues to increase as connectivity and bandwidth opportunities push boundaries. Per reports, the continent’s cloud computing industry coupled with the Middle East is expected to grow to $31.4 billion in 2016 from $14.2 billion last year. SeamlessHR, a Nigeria-based company that wants to help African businesses “leverage the continent’s
French startup Doctolib is expected to close the acquisition of Tanker today based on regulatory filings. Doctolib is a French unicorn that develops a software-as-a-service product to help doctors and medical workers with admin tasks. In particular, Doctolib acts as a booking platform that connects doctors with patients. 300,000 health professionals pay for the service
Apple has submitted its compliance plans to allow developers to use third-party payment options in South Korea at a reduced service fee, the Korea Communication Commission (KCC) said on Tuesday. KCC also said it would discuss with Apple to iron out further details, including service fee structures and the exact date when the payment option
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 11, 2022! Today we have new venture funds, spyware news, Brex raising (again), and more. We’re back to 100% of last year’s startup and
A year after the FTC blocked Harry’s from getting acquired by Edgewell Personal Care, the direct-to-consumer razor startup raised $155 million in Series E financing to give it a $1.7 billion valuation. Now, months later, Harry’s filed paperwork indicating that it has raised another nine-figure cash tranche. SEC filings show that Harry’s has raised $139.9
IBM announced this morning that it has acquired Australian startup Envizi to add to its package of ESG (environmental, sustainability and governance) offerings to help measure environmental impact up and down the supply chain. The companies did not share the terms of the acquisition, but with Envizi Big Blue gets a platform for measuring, managing