Startup accelerator Y Combinator announced today that it has moved its demo day online, citing a “growing concern over COVID-19,” or coronavirus. The demo day has historically drawn crowds of Silicon Valley elite, journalists and both national and international venture capitalists to watch more than 100 startups come out to the world. “While we won’t
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Stocks are set to fall further today, likely forcing shares in SaaS and cloud companies down yet again. After two wild trading weeks, the high-flying tech category is off over 9% from recent highs before
Twitter’s CEO defends himself from activist investors, Google takes additional coronavirus precautions and a fizzy drink maker raises $30 million. Here’s your Daily Crunch for March 6, 2020. 1. Twitter CEO’s weak argument why investors shouldn’t fire him Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey spoke yesterday at a Morgan Stanley conference, where he delivered remarks (also shared
SaaStr, the venture firm which puts on the largest conference for SaaS companies, postponed its SaaStr Annual 2020 conference today amid concerns from local and national officials around large gatherings in light of the Covid-19 virus. The event was scheduled to take place next week. On March 5th, Santa Clara County issued updated guidelines that
The European Commission announced yesterday it’s reached a data-sharing agreement with vacation rental platforms Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia Group and Tripadvisor — trumpeting the arrangement as a “landmark agreement” which will allow the EU’s statistical office to publish data on short-stay accommodations offered via these platforms across the bloc. It said it wants to encourage “balanced”
Short-form video service Quibi is announcing its full launch lineup today — exactly once month before launch. True to its name (which stands for “quick bites”), Quibi will focus on short videos that you can watch on your phone. Its content will include “movies in chapters” (longer, scripted stories broken into chapters that are between
Emma, the personal finance management app that bills itself as your best “financial friend,” has raised $2.5 million in seed funding. Connect Ventures led the round, with participation from Ithaca Investments, Tiny.vc and existing investor, Aglaé Ventures. The fintech previously raised $700,000 in angel funding in June 2018. Launched in the U.K. in early 2018
Reddit, a discussion website and home to thousands of communities, announced this week a new partnership with mental health service Crisis Text Line. The company offers a mental health text line offering live, 24/7 support for people in crisis, including those considering suicide or engaging in self-harm. With this partnership, Reddit users will be able
Founded in 2005, Etsy was born before cloud infrastructure was even a thing. As the company expanded, it managed all of its operations in the same way startups did in those days — using private data centers. But a couple of years ago, the online marketplace for crafts and vintage items decided to modernize and
Convert Group, a startup based in Athens that offers a SaaS to help FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) brands understand how they are performing across e-commerce, has raised €1.2 million in seed funding. The investment comes from Uni.fund, which is backed by the EquiFund investment platform (an initiative created by cooperation between the Hellenic Republic and
ChatableApps, a U.K. startup commercialising the work of auditory neural signal processing researcher Dr Andy Simpson, has quietly picked up seed backing from Mark Cuban. The company has built a smartphone app that provides hearing assistance by removing background noise in near real-time. Alongside Simpson, the company’s co-founders are Brendan O’Driscoll, Aidan Sliney and George
Spindrift, maker of fizzy soda and sparkling water, has raised $29.8 million in a funding round, per an SEC filing. The Charlestown, Mass. company was founded by Bill Creelman and has raised $70 million in known venture capital funding to date, per Crunchbase data. The company did not immediately respond to request for comment. Previous
The priorities of venture capitalists don’t always align with those of startup founders and their workers. That’s why we’ve started to see more conversation and activity around cooperatives and the idea of Exiting to Community, spearheaded by Nathan Schneider, a professor of media studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Where startups can hit a
Twitter tries out its own version of the popular Stories format, a court orders Otto’s founder to pay a big fine to Google and electric skateboard company Boosted makes cuts. Here’s your Daily Crunch for March 5, 2020. 1. Twitter starts testing its own version of Stories, called ‘Fleets,’ which disappear after 24 hours Twitter
Nvidia today announced that it has acquired SwiftStack, a software-centric data storage and management platform that supports public cloud, on-premises and edge deployments. The company’s recent launches focused on improving its support for AI, high-performance computing and accelerated computing workloads, which is surely what Nvidia is most interested in here. “Building AI supercomputers is exciting
Social networks are in for a rude copyright awakening. A new European Union law called Article 17 essentially eradicates safe harbor and requires that they’ve made their “best effort” to get licenses from rights holders for all content on their platform. If a user uploads a video with a popular song in the background, tech
Another afternoon, another round of funding for a mobile banking app. This time, it’s Empower Finance, a San Francisco-based company that’s headed up by former Sequoia Capital partner Warren Hogarth and which just closed on $20 million in Series A funding from Icon Ventures and Defy Ventures. David Velez, who is the founder and CEO
Kinnos, a New York-based startup, was founded six years ago, but what the five-person company produces is suddenly top of mind — and a new round of funding reflects as much. To wit, Kinnos, which makes additives that cause disinfectants to turn blue long enough to ensure a surface has actually been covered, just closed
The Chinese government has been removing criticism of its coronavirus response from apps like Weibo, the local equivalent of Twitter. But before it can, that content is being saved, decentralized, and highlighted thanks to Arweave’s permaweb. Today it’s announcing another $8.3 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, and Coinbase Ventures. Arweave has
Last year, Twitter expanded its rules around hate speech to include dehumanizing speech against religious groups. Today, Twitter says it’s expanding its rule to also include language that dehumanizes people on the basis of their age, disability, or disease. The latter, of course, is a timely addition given that the spread of the novel coronavirus
One of the more interesting and useful applications of artificial intelligence technology has been in the world of biotechnology and medicine, where now more than 220 startups (not to mention universities and bigger pharma companies) are using AI to accelerate drug discovery by using it to play out the many permutations resulting from drug and
When Ada Health was founded nine years ago, hardly anyone was talking about combining artificial intelligence and physician care — outside of a handful of futurists. But the chatbot boom gave way to a powerful combination of AI-augmented health care which others, like Babylon Health in 2013 and KRY in 2015, also capitalized on. The
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey might not spend six months a year in Africa, claims the real product development is under the hood, and gives an excuse for deleting Vine before it could become TikTok. Today he tweeted, via Twitter’s investor relations account, a multi-pronged defense of his leadership and the company’s progress. The proclamations come
An Indonesian startup called Newman’s is using telemedicine to help Indonesian patients get care for stigmatized health issues. Part of Y Combinator’s winter 2020 batch, the startup launched last month with prescription hair loss treatments and plans to expand into other verticals, including erectile dysfunction and smoking cessation. Newman’s was founded by Elsen Wiraatmadja, Alfred
Twitter is testing its own version of Stories. The company announced today it will begin to trial a new sharing format called “Fleets,” starting in Brazil, which will let users post ephemeral content to its social network for the first time. Unlike Tweets, Twitter’s new Fleets can’t receive Likes, Replies or Retweets. And they’ll disappear
Netlify, the startup that wants to kill the web server and change the way developers build websites, announced a $53 million Series C today. EQT Ventures Fund led the round with contributions from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins and newcomer Preston-Werner Ventures. Under the terms of the deal Laura Yao, deal partner and
Cathay Pacific has been issued with a £500,000 penalty by the UK’s data watchdog for security lapses which exposed the personal details of some 9.4 million customers globally — 111,578 of whom were from the UK. The penalty, which is the maximum fine possible under relevant UK law, was announced today by the Information Commissioner’s
mParticle, which helps companies like Spotify, Paypal and Starbucks umanage their customer data, is announcing that it has raised $45 million in Series D funding. Co-founder and CEO Michael Katz told me that the company has benefited from broader shifts — like new privacy regulation and the shift away from cookie-based browser tracking — that
Boosted, the startup behind the Boosted Boards and, more recently, the Boosted Rev electric scooter, has laid off “a significant portion” of its team, the company announced today. The company is now actively seeking a buyer. Boosted attributes the layoffs to the costs of developing, producing and maintaining electric vehicles and the “unplanned challenge with
At Facebook’s 2019 F8 developer conference, the company announced plans to introduce desktop apps for its popular communications app Messenger. Now, less than a year later, the Messenger Mac App is beginning to roll out. Though not yet available in the U.S., Messenger for Mac has popped up in the Mac App Store in several