BHub announced Tuesday that it took in a new round of capital just three months after receiving $4.4 million in pre-seed investment to offer full back-office SaaS for small and medium businesses in Latin America. Monashees and Valor Capital Group are doubling down on their investment in the company by leading an inside round of
As advertising and marketing become increasingly automated and thus commoditized, design has emerged as a savior to help brands stand out. And today, a startup that’s helping companies connect with a wider range of designers and other creatives to meet that demand is announcing a round of funding to fuel its business growth. Superside, which
Whym, a conversational commerce startup founded by former Snap employees, wants to make it easier for consumers to shop online via their mobile devices. Instead of filling out long checkout forms and entering in payment card details by hand, Whym’s solution offers a single-tap checkout experience where customers can pay via Apple Pay or Google
Hello and welcome back to Max Q! Happy December everyone. We’re officially nearing the end of the year, and what a year it’s been. Despite the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, I think it’s pretty safe to say that this has been a watershed 365 days for the space industry. I can’t wait to
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. It finally happened, ladies and gentleman and our non-binary friends. The Holiday News Slowdown has arrived. Late, I might add, but still here at last. But that did not stop Grace and Alex
Manish Maheshwari, the former head of Twitter India who recently moved to San Francisco to work at a different division within the company, is leaving the firm to launch an edtech startup, according to nine people familiar with the matter. Maheshwari and Twitter didn’t respond to a request for comment two weeks ago. Sources requested
Seamus Donoghue Contributor Climate change is the issue of our time. From policymakers to the individual, every one of us has a responsibility to do our part to ensure that sustainability and green practices are implemented throughout society. Indeed, governments across the world, from the U.S. to China, are increasingly taking a proactive stance on
As more enterprises sign on to the trend of digital transformation and bringing more of their legacy work into the modern era of work, a company called SnapLogic, which has built a platform to integrate those apps and data, and to automate some of the activities that use them, has raised a big round of
Unique, a video calls platform that uses AI to teach sales teams how to improve their pitches, has closed a $6 million Seed round from a bunch of Angel investors. These include Phillip Stauffer, U.S based founder and general partner of Fyrfly Venture Partners, and Daniel Gutenberg. Unique uses AI to analyse customer conversations. The
A women-led startup called Honeycomb is launching its private social app for families, backed by $4 million in seed funding led by Peter Boyce at Stellation Capital. Now out of private beta, the app offers families a way to curate and share their favorite moments and memories via their smartphone as an alternative to using
Bitwise Asset Management Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan joins Emily Chang to talk about Bitcoin’s big Saturday plunge and why he thinks Ethereum was the “asset of the year” in 2021. Hougan also makes his crypto predictions for 2022.
“Our Notus algorithm identified you as the most impactful journalist for our audience.” As a slight narcissist — as all writers are — I saw this line in a cold email and had two immediate thoughts: first, is the founder just saying this because they want me to write about their funding round, and second,
News that the SenseTime IPO is on hold leaves the stock market with just one major tech listing on the horizon: Samsara’s public debut, which is currently anticipated to price Tuesday and trade Wednesday. That makes it the perfect moment to sit back and chat through a few of the year’s biggest offerings and how
Instagram has rolled out a new “Reels Visual Replies” feature that lets users reply to comments on posts with Reels. Now, when users choose to reply to a comment, they’ll see a new option that allows them to select the Reels button to create a video reply. The social media giant notes that the video
Harry’s Labs, the in-house incubator started by razor brand Harry’s Inc., announced Monday it agreed to acquire Lumē, the direct-to-consumer brand created to help control all-over body odor. Harry’s created the innovation group in 2018 that has backed or launched several consumer product companies, including cat products startup Cat Person, body care line Flamingo and
StudyFree — which connects students with international educational opportunities via a community-driven B2C SaaS model — has raised a $3 million seed investment round led by I2BF Global Ventures, TMT Investments, and TechStars. Also participating was PandaDoc CEO Mikita Mikado and Google’s ex-director of product Andrey Doronichev. StudyFree has now received a total of $3.6
Indonesia-based insurtech startup Fuse announced today it has secured $25 million of Series B extension round as it plans to enter more countries including Thailand and Vietnam in Southeast Asia. The startup has closed three funding rounds of Series B within the past six months, bringing the company’s total raised to over $70 million. The
Steven R. Rogers Contributor Steven R. Rodgers is executive vice president and general counsel of Intel Corporation, where he serves on the senior executive team and oversees the company’s legal, government and trade groups. The U.S. patent system, which should fuel invention, is increasingly being abused to hinder innovation. It desperately needs reform, and there’s
As consumers think more about what they are putting in their bodies, they are also thinking about what they are feeding their pets. Driven by the global pandemic and everyone being at home with their pets, sales topped $100 billion in 2020 in this sector. Austin-based Maev, developing human-grade raw dog food, is poised to
The Twitter account of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was “briefly compromised” on Sunday, his office said. Modi’s account — whose handle is @narendramodi — tweeted after the midnight that India had officially adopted bitcoin as a legal tender, prompting suspicions about a hack because of the timing of the announcement and also as New
Looks like Better.com CEO Vishal Garg’s behavior is catching up to him. This morning, employees were notified via email by the Better board of directors that Garg would be taking time off effective immediately after the “very regrettable events over the last week.” The move came, according to an employee who wished not to be
The 2021 IPO cycle is winding down this week as HashiCorp and Nubank priced their public debuts and listed. Happily for startup fans and the venture classes, both IPOs went well. Samsara’s IPO will come next week if current calendars hold up, but that’s pretty much it for the year. We made it to the
Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, is testifying before the Senate today about the impact of Instagram on teens’ mental health. His first appearance before the Senate, this is just one of several hearings that have taken place ever since whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked documents from Facebook — now Meta — showing that the company knew
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is facing the prospect of imminent extradition to the US after the UK High Court granted an appeal by the US government against an earlier (January) refusal by a UK judge to extradite him on mental health grounds. A final decision on whether or not to grant the extradition will be
E-commerce in Africa is growing fast and its potential remains enormous as more people get connected to the internet. Across sub-Saharan Africa 303 million people, about 28% of the population, are connected to the mobile internet, according to the 2021 GSMA mobile economy report, and this number is expected to rise to 40% in three
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Friends, we’re almost there: the end of the year that felt like a decade. This week, Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex put aside their 2021 fatigue and talked through a week full of news – and
Instagram is bringing back a chronological feed, according to statements made by Instagram head Adam Mosseri during his testimony today before a Senate panel over the harms to young people using the app. Mosseri was asked if he believed consumers should be able to use the Instagram app without “being manipulated by algorithms,” and the
Ikigai, a startup based on research out of MIT, wants to make it simple to build workflows with humans involved. Whereas traditional robotic process automation (RPA) is about building bots for repetitive tasks, this company wants to make it easier to build workflows where humans have to make a decision as part of the process.
HURR — a “RentTheRunway” style UK fashion rental marketplace – has raised $5.4M in a seed funding round led by European VC firm, Octopus Ventures. Also participating was Ascension and D4 Ventures, among others. HURR launched in 2019 and has a hybrid business model combining peer-to-peer fashion rentals, direct partnerships with fashion outlets, and a
Scott Lenet Contributor More posts by this contributor 3 lies VCs tell ourselves about startup valuations Is there a creed in venture capital? Venture capitalists frequently say that valuing startups is “more art than science.” If that’s true, then it’s absurdist art, because most seed-stage businesses have no value. In fact, seed-stage startups — companies