Alvaro Gutierrez Contributor Alvaro Gutierrez is co-founder and CEO of Barkibu, which uses data to make pet care better, more affordable, and personalized. Alvaro began his career providing acquisition financing for M&A at JP Morgan before co-founding Spanish pet retail giant Kiwoko, which in turn acquired 12 other companies and was eventually sold 5x. When
The special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) boom did not play out as some folks in the technology and business worlds hoped. Despite a wave of optimism through early 2021, private companies that pursued public debuts with the help of blank-check companies have frequently failed to cover themselves in glory in the intervening quarters. Even more,
LinkedIn, now with more than 800 million people listing their professional profiles to build out their careers, is taking its next steps to get them to spend more time on the platform. The company is rolling out a new events platform, where it will be listing, hosting and marketing interactive, virtual live events. It is
Back in 2019, Amazon first announced its Sidewalk network, a new low-bandwidth, long-distance wireless protocol and network for connecting smart devices — and keeping them online when your own WiFi network, for example, goes down, by piggybacking on your neighbor’s network. Since last year, Amazon has been turning its Echo devices into Sidewalk bridges and
Biometrics, and specifically facial recognition, have seen a surge of usage in the last several years, first as a tool to help organizations verify identities digitally against rising waves of fraud and cybercrime; and second as a way to help enable that process even further in our socially-distanced, pandemic-punctuated times. Today, a startup called iProov,
Working from home has been my normal for more than a decade, but it’s getting a bit stale. Time to spice it up — with some of CES 2022’s hottest items, all of which definitely kind of exist. First off let’s upgrade these dinky twin 27-inch Dells I’ve been attempting to work on for the
Consumers worldwide have downloaded Meta’s Oculus app, the mobile companion for Oculus VR devices including the Quest 2, roughly 2 million times globally since Christmas Day, according to new data from third-party app intelligence firms, Apptopia and Sensor Tower. Already, had been some indication that the Quest 2 was a popular holiday gift after the
Namibian business-to-business e-commerce startup JABU confirmed to TechCrunch that it has raised a $3.2 million financing round. The seed round, which was closed last year, welcomed investors such as Afore Capital, Y Combinator, FJ Labs, Quiet Capital, Kli Capital, Pareto Capital and unnamed angels. As a last-mile distribution e-commerce company, JABU joins a list of
French startup PayFit just announced that it closed a new $289 million Series E round (€254 million) before the holidays. Following this round, the startup has reached a post-money valuation of $2.1 billion (€1.82 billion). The company has been building a payroll and HR software-as-a-service platform for small and medium companies. It is operating in
Instagram has started testing private likes on Stories as part of a limited test. The Meta-owned company confirmed that the feature is not broadly available and is currently only visible to a small group of people globally. The company also explained that only the person who has posted the Story can see the total number
Meez, a company creating professional recipe software and a culinary operating system, brought in its first-ever funding round of $6.5 million to continue developing its tools to help chefs manage their recipes. Josh Sharkey, CEO of Meez. Image Credits: Evan Sung CEO Josh Sharkey, a chef himself for most of his career, incorporated the New
Chalk another one up for decentralized enforcement: France’s data protection watchdog has slapped headline-grabbing fines on Facebook and Google for failing to respect local (and pan-EU) cookie consent rules. Today, the CNIL said it’s fined Google €150M (~$170M) and Facebook €60M (~$68M) for breaching French law, following investigations of how they present tracking choices to
As a longtime photographer/videographer/audio nerd, charging all the devices at home is often a chaotic nightmare, and if you’re taking your equipment on the road, it gets worse. It doesn’t speak highly of me as a professional, but I’ve found myself without the right charger, a missing battery or a light that turns out to
Sophie Alcorn Contributor Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Dear Sophie: Will the H-1B lottery
Some of the most high-flying stocks of the pandemic are struggling in the new year and it’s bad news for tech companies of all sizes. TechCrunch noted yesterday that software stocks were having a pretty poor start to the year. That was, it turned out, only the beginning of the damage. Today’s trading took yet
Jonathan Martinez Contributor Jonathan Martinez is a former YouTuber, UC Berkeley alum and growth marketing nerd who’s helped scale Uber, Postmates, Chime and various startups. More posts by this contributor 5 common growth marketing mistakes startups make In growth marketing, signal determines success It’s been a crazy year in growth marketing, what with the meteoric
Xage (pronounced Zage) is a startup working to keep critical infrastructure like oil and gas pipelines, water supplies and electrical grids up and running securely. Today, the company announced a $30 million Series B. Piva led the round with participation from Momenta, Valor Equity Partners and OurCrowd, along with existing investors March Capital, City Light
As more and more people are wanting to leave a smaller footprint on the earth, many of us are living in smaller spaces. Daan Tech is a startup we found at CES 2022 that is taking a fresh new look at tech aimed specifically at small households of one or two people. I rarely cover
Some of my favorite childhood memories include being read to, and learning to read myself to get lost in a book. If you’ll forgive me the oldmanyellsatcloud.gif moment: It’s a grievous loss that many children are so comprehensively surrounded by screens that it’s hard to experience this. I was delighted, then, to see Oranoff launch
There’s always fun tech for pet owners at CES, and 2022 is no different. But a handful of gadgets this year are taking care to treat dogs and cats not just as beloved furry friends but as intelligent animals with their own processes, emotions, and even a desire to express themselves. At the most basic
With capital aplenty for startups over the last few years, the balance of power between investors and founders has been tilting toward the latter. This manifests itself in several ways along a startup’s lifecycle, from more favorable early-stage term sheets to founder-friendlier public listing terms. There’s an area that remains untouched, though: The anonymity of
Instagram is making good on the promise it made last month to bring back the chronological feed. In a tweet Wednesday, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced that the platform is rolling out some big changes to the way the core feed experience works, letting users choose between three different feeds. Two new options, Favorites and
Travel, conferences, hotels, they all have something in common: Everything is designed to be used once, and then discarded. Of course, it would be delightful if everyone was able to not use single-use plastics for their cups, razors, toothbrushes and everything else, but unless consumers rebel, that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. It ain’t just
As companies unveil their new smart home devices at the 2022 CES tech show, underway now in Las Vegas, much of the hype involves Matter, an open-source connectivity standard built around a shared belief that smart home devices should seamlessly integrate with other systems and be secure and reliable. If you like devices, you are
Italian startup Filo — better known in Europe for its Tile-like Bluetooth tracking devices — is showing off its shiny new product Tata Pad, a cushion that goes on top of a child seat, and can notify you if you’ve left your pride and joy strapped into the back seat as you saunter into the
After fitting some of its cars with comfy lounge chairs at CES 2020, BMW today unveiled the next step in its in-car entertainment story: a 31-inch 8K smart TV with support for Amazon’s Fire TV service (with a country-specific streaming service for China in the works, too). This new 32:9 “My Mode Theatre” screen for
Google is working with the likes of Intel, Acer and HP to make connecting your phone to your Windows PC through Fast Pair, share files between Android devices and Windows PCs with Nearby Share, set up Bluetooth accessories and sync text messages between the two computing ecosystems. These new capabilities will come to select Windows
James Avery Contributor James Avery is the founder and CEO of Kevel and has over a decade of experience in the ad tech industry. He is also an expert on software engineering and API technology. In January 2020, Google announced plans to eliminate third-party cookies, heralding a massive shake-up for digital advertising and the internet
Brankas, an open banking startup for Southeast Asian markets, is entering the new year with a $20 million Series B. The funding was led by Insignia Ventures Partners, with participation from returning investors Beenext and Integra Partners. Other backers included Visa (Brankas was a member of its 2021 Accelerator Program), AFG Partners and Treasury International,
Ghanaian health tech startup mPharma is building a network of community pharmacies across Africa as it plans to be the go-to primary healthcare service provider for millions of people residing in the region. mPharma plans to grow its community (Mutti) pharmacies across eight markets in Africa to be the first point of care for patients.