Increasingly, conversations about big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence are going hand-in-hand with conversations about privacy and data protection. Now, a startup that is building tools to make it easier for engineers to implement the two simultaneously is announcing a round of growth funding to continue expanding its operations. Gretel AI, which lets engineers
No one’s going to tell you when your startup has reached product-market fit — there are no flashing lights, no siren, no balloons falling from the ceiling. “Especially for first-time founders, assessing product-market fit at a stage where it’s mostly anticipation can be as much art as science,” writes News Editor Darrell Etherington, who interviewed
Medley, the group coaching platform that focuses on both personal and professional development, announced the close of a $3.7 million seed round led by A16Z today Connie Chan and Anne Lee Skates of Andreesen Horowitz led the round, with participation from Aglaé Ventures, Foundation Capital, Ciara Wilson, Jen Rubio, Dara Treseder (Peloton). and Sanyin Siang
Webrazzi, the main tech startup media title in Turkey, has acquired Tech.eu, the long-time tech startup site in Europe. The pooled entity of Webrazzi and Tech.eu will now offer combined editorial, data, and research platforms offering news and market intelligence. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Launched in 2006 by Arda Kutsal, Webrazzi
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone.
Ryan Narod Contributor Ryan Narod leads marketing at Mutiny, a no-code AI platform that helps marketers convert their top-of-funnel demand into revenue, without engineers. Your target customers may discover your website through ads, search, word of mouth or offline channels like direct mail or events, but when they arrive, 99% of them usually skim your
Pets continue to be big business, and Alpha Paw is the latest to draw investor attention. The Austin-based company raised $8 million in Series A funding, led by Nordic Eye, after bootstrapping for the past three years. CEO Ramon van Meer took over the company in 2018 via an acquisition and is working with his
As competition for creator talent heats up, Snap today introduced a series of new tools, programs, and features that will enable creators on its platform to generate revenue. These include the expansion of a Gifting feature to worldwide creators, the expansion of the Creator Marketplace to include Snap Stars (top creators with verified accounts), the
Remember when a Twitter contractor deactivated Donald Trump’s personal account for 11 minutes in 2017? Opal co-founder Stephen Cobbe says that is one example of an instance where certain employees were provided too much access to the inner-workings of the company. His company, based in San Francisco and New York, is working with enterprises to
Four search engine rivals to Google have called on European Union lawmakers to address the tech giant’s continued dominance of the market by setting rules for search engine preference menus, arguing that the tech giant’s ability to set damaging defaults is continuing to limit how easily consumers can switch to a non-Google alternatives. In an
Outsourcing engineering has become more common in recent years, so we’re starting a new initiative to profile the software consultants who startups love to work with the most. Founders and other startup leaders, just fill out this quick survey with a few more details to help us find the right ones. For our first profile,
Dave Mullen Contributor Dave Mullen is an investor at SVB Capital, where he focuses largely on fintech, proptech and insurtech. Dave was previously an investor with Wells Fargo’s principal investment arm and is currently the proptech vertical lead for the EVCA. Venture-backed fintechs raised a record $30.8 billion in the second quarter of this year,
Insurance in Kenya and Africa at large remains a marginal product, with levels of penetration across the continent half the world average as a percentage of GDP, and premiums per capita 11-fold lower than the world average, according to a recent report by McKinsey and Co. (and that’s including the outsized market of South Africa;
Guestio closed on $1.5 million in seed funding for its platform that simplifies the booking process for podcasts. Founder and CEO Travis Chappell said users can go on the platform and book guests for their shows at the click of a button in all kinds of topics and with shows big or small. Chappell is
Cord, a startup that offers a single API to add Slack-like collaboration features to any app, has bagged $17.5 million in Series A funding. The round — which is pegged to fund product development, including by hiring engineers, designers and product managers — was led by European VC Index. Other investors participating include NFX and
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 In growth marketing, signal determines success Early-stage brands should also unlock the power of influencers Having spent time in the trenches with many startups, I’ve
Productfy Inc., a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform that aims to build “DeFi for traditional finance,” has raised $16 million in a Series A round of funding led by CM Ventures. Existing backers Point72 Ventures, 500 Startups and Envestnet | Yodlee also participated in the financing, which brings its total raised since its 2018 inception to nearly
Pinterest is launching a new “Pinterest Havens” mental health support initiative in honor of World Mental Health Day, which is October 10th. In a blog post, the company called the initiative “an online and offline space for community-driven inspiration.” Pinterest notes that it’s essentially creating space on its platform to explore the relationship between mental
Mike McGill Contributor Kevin Jolley Contributor The outlook for managed services providers (MSPs) remains positive, as increasing complexity and security concerns — driven by the work-from-anywhere environment and high-profile hacking incidents — have moved IT management from being a cost center to a core strategic priority for the C-suite. A key driver of the growth
As we get into our dive into Q3 2021 venture capital numbers, one region in particular has our attention: Europe. While venture capital gains in markets like India, Latin America and the larger African startup ecosystem have proved impressive, Europe has posted strong results of its own. A string of recent exits from European startup
Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex were all aboard this week with Grace on the dials, which meant that we had a flat lovely time recording Equity for you. Of course, Equity is TechCrunch’s venture capital focused podcast where we dig into the most critical funding rounds, and natter about the key news items impacting startups. Before we hop into
A number of high-profile investors are chasing to invest in Slice, a fintech startup that is attempting to expand the market for credit cards in India. Tiger Global is in advanced stages of talks to lead a round of over $100 million in the Bangalore-based startup, sources familiar with the matter told me. A number
The founders of Upmesh were building a game on top of Twitch’s API when they realized something about another group of livestreamers. Even though selling through Facebook Live has been gaining popularity in Southeast Asia for years, many vendors are still going through their comments afterward and using pen-and-paper to collect orders. Upmesh was created
Bradley Tusk Contributor More posts by this contributor A California judge just struck down Prop 22: Now what? When regulation presents a (rare) opportunity Let’s be really generous to Facebook and assume that 50% of what Frances Haugen just testified to before Congress was misconstrued in some way. Regardless, Facebook will argue their case (as
Throughout its history as a public company, Box has had a bit of a bumpy ride. The company was founded back in 2005 as a simple consumer file sharing service, but shifted a few years later to focus on enterprise and build a modern content management system for the still-developing cloud and mobile world. Once
Meet Graneet, a French startup that just raised a $2.8 million seed round (€2.4 million) led by Point Nine and Fondamental. Graneet is a vertical software-as-a-service startup focused on the construction industry and the myriad of small and medium companies in this industry specifically. It wants to build the definitive financial management solution so that
Riiid, a South Korea-headquartered AI-powered edtech company, acquired its Japanese distribution partner Langoo to expand its Japan footprint. The acquisition comes after the company’s latest $175 million Series D round from SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 in May. Riiid has said it will continue to fuel its global expansion with the funding. Langoo, Riiid’s partner in
Many of the problems we face today in biology and agriculture have been faced before — but not by humans. Somewhere in nature there is a microscopic creature that accomplishes naturally and efficiently what chemists and bioengineers are struggling to do at all — and Pluton Biosciences claims to have pioneered a way to find
Google announced Thursday that it would no longer allow ads or monetization for content that promotes climate change denialism. The policy change will apply to publishers, advertisers and YouTube creators, who will no longer be able to make money from content that “contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change.” Google
Microsoft announced today that it has acquired Ally.io, a software service that helps companies measure their progress against OKRs or objectives and key results, a common way the management measures both individual and company progress. The two firms did not share the purchase price. Microsoft plans to incorporate Ally into its Viva family of employee