Romeen Sheth Contributor Romeen Sheth is president of Metasys, a workforce-management firm based in Atlanta. Steve Schlafman Contributor Steve Schlafman is founder, coach and angel investor at High Output, a boutique leadership-development company based in NYC. Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO by Ben Horowitz is one of the most commonly cited management think pieces of the last
This afternoon Airbnb, a well-known private company that connects travelers with places to stay, announced that it was laying off around a quarter of its workforce. The company cited revenue declines and a need to curtail costs in a memo that TechCrunch viewed. In the note, written by Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky, the
Twitter announced today it’s introducing a new layout for replies that will use lines and indentations to make it easier to understand who you’re replying to and how the conversation is flowing. The company will also test putting engagement actions — including likes, Retweet and reply icons — behind an extra tap to make replies
M&A activity has generally slowed down in the weeks since the novel coronavirus took a grip on the world, but there have been some pockets of activity in the tech industry when the price is right or when the divestment/acquisition just makes sense. The world of messaging brings us the latest development in that theme: SAP,
Like other accelerators, Techstars, a network of more than 40 corporate and geographically targeted startup bootcamps, has had to bring its marquee demo day events online. Over the last two weeks of April, industry-focused accelerators working with startups building businesses around mobility technologies (broadly) and the future of the home joined programs in Abu Dhabi,
Peanut, an app that began as a tool for finding new mom friends, has evolved into a social network now used by 1.6 million women to discuss a range of topics, from pregnancy and parenthood to marriage and menopause, and everything in between. On the heels of significant growth in online networking fueled by the
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 a PPP loan
Treasury Prime, a startup that built software tooling to help banks automate and accelerate routine tasks, announced today that it has closed a $9 million Series A. The new capital was sourced from Amias Gerety of QED, Jason Lemkin of SaaStr, and Hans Morris of NYCA Partners. The capital event is yet another funding round
Facebook is expanding its Community Help hub to better serve local communities amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The hub has already seen significant usage by those requesting food, supplies and information about local resources, as well as use by volunteers and groups willing to lend a hand. Now, Facebook is adding more features to the hub
Sleuth, an early stage startup from three former Atlassian employees, wants to bring some much-needed order to the continuous delivery process. Today, the company announced it has raised a $3 million seed round. CRV led the round with participation from angel investors from New Relic, Atlassian and LaunchDarkly. “Sleuth is a deployment tracker built to
At the start of the year, it looked like Europe would be in a for the ‘Summer E-Scooters / E-Bike Wars’ as both regional startups and US-backed unicorns vied for the pockets of city commuters. Consolidation came when German startup Circ was taken over by US competitor Bird at the start of the year. Still
Xiaomi today launched a new e-commerce service in India that allows people in the nation to easily browse and order its handsets and other products from nearby physical retail stores as the Chinese giant rushes to kickstart its sales in its biggest overseas market. Dubbed Mi Commerce, the service allows people to locate nearby stores
French startup Back Market has raised a new $120 million funding round from Goldman Sachs, Aglaé Ventures and Eurazeo Growth. The company operates a marketplace for refurbished smartphones and electronics devices. Back Market doesn’t refurbish devices in house. Instead, it partners with certified sellers and let them list their items on the site. The startup
Fintech startup N26 now has a proper funding war chest to face the economic downturn. The Berlin-based startup has extended its Series D round with another $100 million of funding at the same valuation of $3.5 billion. In total, N26 has raised $570 million as part of its Series D round. N26’s Series D seems
Glance, which serves media content, news, and casual games on the lock screen of Android -powered smartphones, has amassed 100 million daily active users, it said today. The subsidiary of ad-firm InMobi Group reached the milestone in 21 months in what appears to be the shortest duration for any popular internet service to gain their
At its Think Digital conference, IBM and Red Hat today announced a number of new services that all center around 5G edge and AI. The fact that the company is focusing on these two areas doesn’t come as a surprise, given that both edge and AI are two of the fastest-growing businesses in enterprise computing.
Zeitgold has raised a Series B round of $29.2 million (€27 million). Overall, the company has raised more than $54 million (€50 million). The company is building a software platform for small companies to automate bookkeeping as much as possible. Vintage Investment Partners is leading today’s round with existing investors Battery Ventures, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures,
The economic effects of COVID-19 could delay Africa’s next big IPO — that of Nigerian fintech unicorn Interswitch. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time the Lagos-based payments company’s plans for going public were postponed; the tech world has been anticipating Interswitch’s stock market debut since 2016. For the continent’s innovation ecosystem, there’s a
API-powered startups are having a good year, with Plaid’s mega-exit to Visa still fresh in mind. And digital video-powered startups are also having a good year, as the world stays home more than before and work shifts to a more remote-friendly landscape. What about a company that does both? Well, they’d probably raise money and
Tumblr is making a change to how it deals with hate speech on its blogging platform. The company announced today it will also remove the reblogs (repostings) from any blogs that were suspended for violating its policies around hate speech. Already, the company says it’s identified nearly 1,000 blogs that were banned for blatant violations
Jason Shen Contributor Jason Shen is a three-time startup founder and the CEO of Midgame, a gaming technology company backed by Techstars and Betaworks. More posts by this contributor Cultivating adaptability is a pandemic coping skill During this period of shelter-in-place, people have had to seek out new forms of entertainment and social interaction. Many
The UK’s data protection watchdog confirmed today the government still hasn’t given it sight of a key legal document attached to the coronavirus contacts tracing app which is being developed by the NHSX, the digital transformation branch of the country’s National Health Service . Under UK and EU law, a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA)
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. A few weeks back we dug into the boom that savings and investing apps and services were enjoying. Companies like Acorns, M1 Finance, Robinhood and others were seeing rapid growth in their assets under management
Good morning and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a jumpstart for your week. Equity had a busy last few days, so to help you catch up: Friday’s episode was a lot of fun (Duolingo, Figma, OMERS, and aquafaba), and we also dropped an Equity Shot on Saturday, digging into the first major technology earnings week.
You can now debunk thousands of coronavirus-related hoaxes with a few texts on WhatsApp . Poynter Institute, a nonprofit organization that supports journalism, today launched a bot on the Facebook -owned service that will allow people across the globe to debunk over 4,000 hoaxes surrounding the pandemic such as whether the infection originated in a
Oxwash, a UK-based laundry startup that’s aiming to disrupt traditional but environmentally costly washing and dry-cleaning processes by using ozone to sterilize fabrics at lower temperatures, along with electric cargo bikes for hyper local pick ups and deliveries, has bagged a £1.4 million (~$1.7M) seed. Backers in the funding round include TrueSight Ventures, Biz Stone
Ransomware is getting sneakier and smarter. The latest example comes from ExecuPharm, a little-known but major outsourced pharmaceutical company that confirmed it was hit by a new type of ransomware last month. The incursion not only encrypted the company’s network and files, hackers also exfiltrated vast amounts of data from the network. The company was
Icebreaker claims to be Finland’s most active pre-seed VC. The firm, which also invests in Estonia and Sweden, has backed 38 companies in the last three years out of its first fund, with a 65% success rate so far for companies that have been able to raise follow-on funding. Two weeks ago, Icebreaker announced the
Back in January, Georgia Tech professor David Joyner got a cryptic email from a student based in Wuhan, China. “I’m under quarantine, but my internet access is okay so I have more time to spend on classwork, I wanted to let you know,” the message read. Unsure why Wuhan would be under quarantine, Joyner did
Gaming platforms have earned serious clout with investors in recent years. Add in the VC excitement surrounding collaboration tools and it’s no surprised there’s interest in backing another gaming chat app. Guilded is creating a chat platform designed for competitive gaming and esports that focuses heavily on keeping gamers organized and connected with their teams.