Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines! Friday afternoon the Equity team took to a Twitter Space to hit on a topic that we had to cut from our regular end-of-week show, namely crypto earnings and how Wall Street
Salesforce users tend to have a similar complaint in the amount of time it takes to update records, but Weflow aims to conquer this form of “Salesforce fatigue.” The Berlin-based company is developing a tool — still in private beta — that makes it faster to update Salesforce and reduces much of the busy work
Oxygen, a startup that is bringing digital banking services to freelancers and micro- and small-sized businesses, is in talks to raise a new round at a valuation of over $500 million, two sources familiar with the matter told me. The San Francisco-headquartered firm is in advanced stages of talks to raise about $70 million, the
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 Friday show, a roundup of the week’s biggest and most fascinating stories from startups, venture capital and technology. Natasha and Alex along with Grace and Chris had to cut
Mobility 54 Investment SAS, a corporate venture capital subsidiary of Toyota Tsusho Corporation and CFAO group, DOB Equity and InfraCo Africa have invested $3.4 million (€3 million) in electric motorcycle startup Zembo to help it grow its business. Zembo, a French startup with operations in Uganda was founded in 2018 and sells electric motorcycles through
We tend to take the cloud for granted today as a way of delivering and building software, but it wasn’t always the case. Less than a decade ago, in fact, companies like Microsoft sold most of their software in boxes or in large on-prem installations inside customer data centers. Around 2012, as the company began
João Del Valle Contributor João Del Valle is the co-founder and CEO of EBANX, a Brazilian fintech unicorn that serves as the gateway to Latin America through its payments platform for global merchants, tech giants and other large companies from all over the world. If you look under the hood of nearly any large merchant’s
The global venture capital market is increasingly active, but few locales are seeing the sort of investment acceleration that African startups are enjoying this year. New data indicates that African startups have already outraised all known prior years, meaning 2021 is sure to be a record. But, more importantly, the pace at which African startups
Carrie James Contributor Emily Weinstein Contributor We’ve spent the last decade studying the questions that loom large in the current news cycle. What are the implications of social media for teen mental health? What are the benefits of growing up digital? What’s dispiriting or even toxic, and for whom? We’ve talked about these issues with
Back when most commerce took place on the local high street, shoppers who exchanged personally identifiable information with merchants received something in return. Shops kept track of customers’ hat, shoe and dress sizes, along with their birthdays, anniversaries and personal preferences. In return, buyers got a first look at new products and service that anticipated
I have in my hands the Legend of Zelda Game & Watch, the second in Nintendo’s line of whimsical throwback handhelds clearly meant as stocking stuffers for those who already have (or can’t find) a Switch. It does a fine job, and the three old-school Zelda games included are great options for Nintendo-hard adventure that
Nestled in Rivian’s S-1 IPO filings was a note that there the EV company’s “cornerstone investors” had “indicated an interest” in buying up to $5 billion worth of its stock at its IPO price. One of those parties was Amazon, and the American e-commerce giant appears to have pulled the trigger Friday afternoon on its
Priti Choksi, partner at Norwest Venture Partners, has a portfolio that includes Bright, Lumosity, Citcon, UPSIDE Foods and Birdies. But before she ever entered the world of VC, she was an operator at companies like Facebook and Google. She managed business development teams and ran M&A and has vast experience in the world of growing
Husband-and-wife co-founders Daniel and Brenna Stitzel are developing a way for foodies to monetize their culinary creations and closed on a round of $1.5 million in pre-seed funding to officially launch Foody. The investment was led by Serena Ventures, with Goodwater Capital and a group of angel investors joining, including Patreon’s Jack Conte, former Postmates
Facebook announced today that it’s rolling out new shopping features: Shops in Groups, product recommendations and a test of Live Shopping for Creators. Shops in Groups enables admins of Facebook groups to set up an online store on their associated Facebook Page. It’s up to the admins where this money goes — in the case
It’s tough to be a seller when there are so many products out there on marketplaces just waiting to be discovered. Promoted.ai is out to help people find you, securing $2 million in funding to continue developing its tool that matches buyers to sellers in marketplace search. The company was started by two former Pinterest
Joey Noble Contributor Your startup’s homepage should accomplish two things well: (1) Clearly explain exactly what you offer and (2) Convert visitors into active prospects. If visitors leave confused or your website isn’t able to convert, allocate the resources to fix it before worrying about marketing. When building your startup’s website, start by getting inspiration
Food and beverage startup The Naked Market bagged $27.5 million of Series A investment, led by Integrated Capital, to continue developing its line of healthier food brands. The company was founded in 2019 by Harrison Fugman, Alex Kost and Tim Marbach, who created a “fast fail” method to develop new foods that includes an end-to-end
Vimeo, the B2B video platform that spun out from IAC earlier this year, has made a pair of acquisitions aimed at building out the suite of features and tools it offers to businesses to create and run their own video strategies. The company has picked up short-form AI-based video creation platform Wibbitz; and Wirewax, which
Flexbase is turning construction financing on its head with a new credit card — the industry’s first, according to the founders — that offers up to 60 days interest-free financing. The company, which develops automated payments tools for contractors and the construction industry, was started by Zaid Rahman and Hadi Solh to target small- and
Google has won an appeal against a class action-style privacy litigation at the UK Supreme Court — avoiding what could have been up to £3BN in damages had it lost the case. The long-running litigation was brought by veteran consumer rights campaigner, Richard Lloyd, who, since 2017, has been pursing a collective lawsuit, alleging Google
Instagram really wants you to post Reels — they’ll even pay you up to $10,000 for one, if you’re lucky. As TikTok surpasses the 1 billion monthly active users mark, competitor platforms like YouTube Shorts, Snapchat Spotlight and Instagram Reels are incentivizing users to post their short-form content on their apps instead. YouTube established a
Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady said he’s been driving a Tesla for four years because he made a conscious choice to lead a more sustainable lifestyle. And yes, he’s a Tesla fan, too. Brady stars in an ad campaign for Hertz that just went public today on the Nasdaq. He spoke to Bloomberg’s Erik Schatzker. ——– Like this
Lorna Mitchell Contributor Lorna Mitchell is head of Developer Relations at Aiven, a software company that combines the best open source technologies with cloud infrastructure. With World Mental Health Day just behind us, I thought about how the tech industry can be a difficult place to stay mentally well. Working remotely, especially under unprecedented circumstances,
With record venture capital totals, record numbers of startups worth $1 billion or more, and eye-watering revenue multiples available for private and public technology companies alike, you could be forgiven for having concern that we’re heading for a dot-com-style correction. The believers are not convinced. And for good reason, it turns out. The Exchange explores
Instagram added two features to Reels yesterday: text-to-speech and voice effects. These features are popular already on TikTok, but now, creators can use them on Instagram too. This marks yet another effort from Instagram to keep up with TikTok when it comes to short-form video, as Instagram offers big reels bonuses to incentivize creators, Text-to-speech
When you live in a home, something always breaks. And it can be difficult to know who to call and if you can afford the repairs. That’s where Puls Technologies come in. Now armed with $15 million in fresh capital led by Hanaco Venture Capital, the Livermore, California-based company, which offers on-demand home repair services
Business education is, let’s face it, finding it hard to keep up with a $3 trillion global tech startup economy that’s booming right now. High-growth companies are time-starved and so are their executives, but the courses they are offered are long, often boring, and varying in quality. Ideally, business education should be more on-demand, targeted,
When Panic first launched pre-orders of its adorable little retro-inspired handheld gaming device, Playdate, it expected the first 20,000 units to ship by the end of 2021 — just in time, they hoped, for the holidays. That first batch sold out in under 20 minutes. Sadly, due to last-minute battery component issues, even those first
In an effort to expand beyond music, Spotify has been investing hundreds of millions to build out its podcasts business. Now the company has set its sights on another form of audio, with today’s acquisition of digital audiobook distributor Findaway. Spotify declined to share the financial terms of the deal, which is expected to close