You don’t need to be a scientist to understand the impacts of factory farming: if you’ve been near a North Carolina hog waste lagoon or driven past the enormous cattle feedlot in Coalinga, CA, the smell travels for miles. In exchange for affordability and convenience, consumers, regulators and meat producers have learned to live with
Twig, a London-based fintech targeting Gen Z and younger Millennial consumers with an e-money account that gives them instant cash-outs on fashion and electronics they want to sell, has closed a $35 million Series A round of funding. The investment is led by UK-based fintech specialist, Fasanara Capital, with additional backing from a number of
French startup Back Market has raised another mega round of funding. In May, the company raised a $335 million Series D round. Today, the company is announcing a $510 million Series E round, which values the company at $5.7 billion. If you’re not familiar with Back Market, the company operates a marketplace of refurbished electronics
A new social app, Locket, popped to the top of the App Store charts in recent days thanks to its clever premise to put live photos from friends in a widget on your iOS homescreen. In other words, it turns Apple’s widget system — typically used to showcase information like news, weather, inspirational quotes or
AmazeVR, a virtual reality concert platform that enables users to experience their favorite artists’ VR concerts through content generation tools, announced today it has secured $15 million, which was oversubscribed within three weeks. Partners Investment and Murex Partners co-led the new funding, with participation from Smilegate Investment, Quantum Ventures Korea, ABC Partners, Everrich Group, GS
Kleiner Perkins, one of Silicon Valley’s legacy venture capital firms, is kicking off 2022 right by celebrating five decades in business and $1.8 billion in funds raised for two new funds — KP20 and Select2. KP20 is an $800 million venture fund focused on early-stage investments in enterprise, consumer, hardtech, fintech and healthcare companies, while
Every company has to decide what to pay their employees and track that compensation in some way, often in spreadsheets and across disparate payroll, finance and HR systems. Companies also need to ensure that they are paying people with comparable experience a similar amount for the same job. Assemble, an early-stage startup, wants to bring
“Deskless” workers have become a big focus for tech companies looking for new opportunities in the B2B market, and today a startup targeting this segment with e-learning tools is announcing a round of funding to fuel its own growth. EduMe, a London startup that provides online corporate training and education in the form of “microlearning”
Foxtrot is changing the way we think about convenience stores, and just picked up $100 million in new Series C funding to expand its brick-and-mortar footprint to 50 new retail locations in the next two years. We last looked in on Chicago-based Foxtrot in early 2020, just before the world was shook by the global
Indonesia-based eFishery announced today that it has raised what it claims is the largest round of funding by an aquaculture tech startup in the world. The company, which provides feeding devices, software and financing for fish and shrimp farmers, got a $90 million Series C co-led by Temasek, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Sequoia Capital
French startup Qonto has raised a $552 million Series D funding round (€486 million). Following this investment, the startup has reached a valuation of $5 billion (€4.4 billion). This is one of the largest rounds in the French tech ecosystem. Qonto is a challenger bank focused on business bank accounts. The startup focuses primarily on
Economies of scale are an essential cornerstone for on-demand companies, and to that end one of the hopefuls in the space has raised a big round to grow its business. Bolt — the startup and app of the same name that operates on-demand ride hailing, shared cars and scooters; and restaurant and grocery delivery —
For fifty-four years, big and small hardware manufacturers that hoped to reach their target audiences rolled out new products at the Consumer Electronics Show. The first CES event in June 1967 drew 17,500 attendees, where many in the crowd were absolutely dazzled by GE’s new 24-pound color television. In the intervening decades, the conference grew
Despite facing numerous antitrust lawsuits and tighter regulations in certain markets, Apple today reported new figures indicating record App Store growth in 2021. The company in a press release said it has now paid out more than $260 billion to app developers since the App Store first launched in 2008, a number that’s up from
Palantir COO Shyam Sankar joins Emily Chang to discuss their latest announcement: a more than $25 million deal with Hyundai Heavy to build a new big data platform. Also, his take on the supply chain crunch, the chip shortage, and the future of EVs.
Karen Peacock Contributor Understanding the health of your business starts with customer focus: Are you providing breakthrough value to your customers? Is it value that’s so far above and beyond other solutions that it’s worth a prospective customer’s time and effort to switch to you? Is it value that’s so clearly and increasingly a step
Startup accelerator Y Combinator announced this morning that it has updated its terms, providing participating companies with more total cash. The group will now invest $500,000 in batch startups. The money comes in two different forms. The first is the well-known Y Combinator equity deal, worth $125,000 for 7% of accelerated startups. The group will
Meat has been part of the human diet since before we found fire, but it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the production of meat at scale is more of a detriment to the environment and the world than a benefit. Across cultures and geographies, animals have been such a vital part of the food chain that
London-based Kodland, which started out back in 2018 offering in-person courses for children to learn digital skills like computer programming before switching focus to online learning from early 2020, has closed a $9M Series A funding round to scale into more markets. The round is led by Redseed Ventures, with participation from Baring Vostok, Kismet,
The Covid-19 pandemic continues to impact the mobile app ecosystem, according to an annual retrospective released today by app intelligence firm Sensor Tower. In the early days of the pandemic, a number of apps saw rapidly increased usage — like that focused on online shopping, entertainment, business and education, for example. Though much of the
The global pandemic threw a wrench in the plans of restaurants all over the world two years ago when diners stayed home, causing many eateries to shift their business to pickup or delivery. Roberto Cebrián and David Villarreal both had experience working with restaurants in Mexico and recognized that many restaurants were not prepared 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 Monday show, our short ramp into the week. Yes, it’s Monday again. No, you can’t stay in bed. Things are already happening! Welcome to the week! The Equity team is
AskNicely is the latest company attracting capital for its app targeting shift or frontline worker success as more businesses rightly begin to see how valuable these employees are to their bottom line and how technology can ensure these key employees are empowered to help the company grow. Aaron Ward, CEO, AskNicely. Image Credits: AskNicely The
French startup Doctolib held a (virtual) press conference this morning to share some metrics, look back at the company’s recent product launches and give a hint about future investments. Doctolib started as a booking platform for doctors and has expanded to other services for doctors and medical workers in general. With its software-as-a-service strategy, medical
French startup Ankorstore has raised a $283 million Series C funding round (€250 million). Founded in November 2019, it took Ankorstore around two years to reach a post-money valuation of $2 billion (€1.75 billion). The company operates a wholesale marketplace for independent retailers across Europe. Ankorstore lets independent brands sell their products to independent retailers.
FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried joins Emily Chang to give an overview of the crypto market in 2022, and especially Bitcoin after its 60% rise in 2021. Also: his thoughts on potential crypto regulation, increasing institutional crypto adoption, the metaverse, and the intersection of sports and crypto.
Gnawing, burrowing, infecting: The damages caused to agriculture by insect pests like the Japanese beetle (pictured above) exceed $100 billion every year, according to the Agricultural Research Service of the USDA. And along with plant diseases, which the exoskeleton buggers can also transmit, arthropods account for the annual 40% loss of agricultural production worldwide. Enter
Mergers and acquisitions are notoriously tricky to navigate from a leadership and culture perspective. They require a thoughtful approach to working with a new CEO and joining teams as one workforce — a journey familiar to us and recently acquired Auth0. Okta and Auth0 have their share of differences — we’re enterprise-focused, to start, while
Never before has the importance of a smooth-flowing supply chain been as clear as it has been in the COVID-19 pandemic era. For manufacturers in particular, managing intricate supply chains can be particularly challenging. Enter Assent Compliance — a Canadian company focused on supply chain sustainability management. Put more simply, Ottawa-based Assent aims to help
Even to outsiders, the inner workings of startup accelerators has become familiar: pumped up on camaraderie and energy drinks, scrappy founders do product demos onstage before a room full of buzzy journalists and investors. Fast-forward two years into a pandemic and, even a stint with the return of hacker homes, much has changed about the