Crunch Hype

We’ve all heard the adage, less is more. But when it comes to learning all the complex ins and outs of building and launching a successful startup, more is definitely the way to go. Enter not one, but two bootcamp experiences for the early-stage crowd: TC Early Stage: Operations and Fundraising on April 1-2 and TC […]

The pandemic has clearly had an impact on the way we work, and this is especially true for salespeople. Salesforce introduced a number updates to Sales Cloud this morning including Salesforce Meetings, a smart overlay for Zoom meetings that gives information and advice to the sales team as they interact with potential customers in online […]

Covering YC Demo Day yesterday was good fun, but I missed a few items while watching several hundred startup pitches. A few years ago, these stories might have been the biggest news of the week. But with the venture capital market red-lining its engines while public markets remain sympathetic to growing, unprofitable companies, there’s lots […]

Plaid, the fintech giant, has announced the inaugural cohort of startups in its new accelerator program, FinRise. The equity-free and capital-free program has chosen five early-stage fintech startups out of 100 applications to join its cohort, working on issues central to the financial services industry such as simplifying payments and access to credit. The accelerator, […]

Leveraging networks of “experts” online started out as a very manual online business. But it’s rapidly becoming more efficient as machine learning is applied to the whole business model. Indeed, in the UK alone $60bn is spent a year on using outside expertise. Large players in this space include GLG, Third Bridge, Guidepoint, and AlphaSights. […]

Breega, a VC firm based in Paris, has announced the final closing of its third fund. The firm has managed to raise $130 million (€110 million). This is Breega’s third fund and is officially called Breega Capital Venture 3. The firm’s previous fund launched in 2015 with €45 million ($53 million at today’s exchange rate). […]

Poshmark has come a long way over the last decade. Launched in 2011, the social fashion marketplace has raised upwards of $150 million, and has now listed on the public markets. It’s valued at $3.5 billion. But well before all the success, Mayfield’s Navin Chaddha saw the potential, leading the Series A for the company. […]

Ketch, a startup aiming to help businesses navigate the increasingly complex world of online privacy regulation and data compliance, is announcing that it has raised $23 million in Series A funding. The company is also officially coming out of stealth. I actually wrote about Ketch’s free PrivacyGrader tool last year, but now it’s revealing the […]

As Coinbase is about to go public in the U.S., another cryptocurrency company is having a blockbuster first quarter of 2021. Blockchain.com, the company behind a popular cryptocurrency wallet, an exchange, a block explorer and more, has raised a $300 million Series C round. If you’ve been paying attention, you may remember that I wrote […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. For this week’s deep dive, the Equity team brought on Gumroad CEO Sahil Lavingia and Hustle Fund General Partner Elizabeth Yin to talk about equity crowdfunding. It’s been about a week since the SEC increased the equity […]

Last year, former Glossier executives Henry Davis and Bryan Mahoney unveiled a new e-commerce startup called Arfa. Today, they’re announcing a new vision for the company, along with a new name, new funding and an acquisition. The name first: Moving forward, the New York startup will be known as Chord, which Davis (Chord’s chairman and […]

You might expect that a startup that makes community building software would be thriving during a pandemic when it’s so difficult for us to be together. And Bevy, a company whose product powers community sites like Salesforce Trailblazers and Google Developers announced it has raised a $40 million Series C this morning, at least partly […]

Early this month Google quietly began trials of ‘Privacy Sandbox’: Its planned replacement adtech for tracking cookies, as it works toward phasing out support for third party cookies in the Chrome browser — testing a system to reconfigure the dominant web architecture by replacing individual ad targeting with ads that target groups of users (aka […]

Aspiration, the financial services business for socially conscious consumers, is back with another environmentally friendly offering for its customers — this time, it’s a credit card. The Los Angeles-based company, which has raised roughly $250 million from investors including the celebrities Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Downey Jr.’s Footprint Coalition, and Orlando Bloom and more traditional institutional […]

Lidar companies across the planet are going SPAC, but Baraja isn’t in a hurry to go public. The Australian lidar maker has raised a $31M B round to continue the deployment and development of its “unique and ingenious” imaging system, with participation beyond the usual VC suspects. Baraja’s lidar uses what the company calls SpectrumScan, […]

Pacaso, a less-than-one-year-old startup that is out to give more people a chance at second home ownership, announced Wednesday that it has received $75 million in growth funding at a $1 billion valuation. Greycroft and Global Founders Capital co-led the $75 million in equity financing, which is notable for a few reasons. For one, the […]

WhatsApp’s planned policy changes aren’t sailing smoothly in India, the instant messaging service’s biggest market by users. Indian antitrust body, Competition Commission of India, on Wednesday ordered (PDF) an investigation into WhatsApp’s privacy policy changes, alleging that Facebook-owned service contravened competition law provisions through “exploitative and exclusionary” conduct in “garb of policy update.” WhatsApp didn’t immediately […]

SpaceX has added yet more Starlink satellites to its existing constellation on orbit, with a successful delivery of 60 spacecraft this morning from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The mission used a Falcon 9 with a flight-prove booster that served on five previous launches, and a cargo fairing cover made up of two re-used halves from […]

Denmark-based Motosumo has scored a $6M Series A raise led by London’s Magenta Partners, alongside existing investors. The new funding will go on doubling its network of spin class instructors across Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, expanding its tech team and upping its marketing. The 2015-founded fit-tech startup has developed a system for measuring […]

Tesla made headlines earlier this year when it took out significant holdings in bitcoin, acquiring a roughly $1.5 billion stake at then-prices in early February. At the time, it also noted in an SEC filing disclosing the transaction that it could also eventually accept the cryptocurrency as payment from customers for its vehicles. Now, Elon […]

As the Ubers of the world continue to scale, a smaller on-demand transportation startup has raised some funding in Germany, underscoring the opportunities that remain for startups in the space targeting specific service niches. Blacklane — the Berlin startup that provides on-demand black-car chauffeur services in Berlin, London, Dubai, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Singapore […]

Canadian travel startup Hopper has raised a $170 million Series F round, led by Capital One. The U.S. banks and credit card company is also coming on board as a strategic partner, to launch Capital One Travel, which is the first instantiation of Hopper’s new B2B platform, Hopper Cloud. This is Hopper’s second raise in […]

Dream Sports, the parent firm of fantasy sports app Dream11, has secured $400 million in a new financing round as the Mumbai-headquartered firm builds what it calls an “end-to-end sports tech company” in the cricket-loving nation, which is also the world’s second largest internet market. The secondary fundraise was led by TCV, D1 Capital Partners […]

Neighbor, which operates a self-storage marketplace, announced Wednesday that it has raised $53 million in a Series B round of funding. Fifth Wall led the financing, which notably also included participation from returning backer Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and new investors DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and StockX CEO Scott Cutler. Xu and Cutler will join former […]

On the heels of Jumio announcing a $150 million injection this week to continue building out its AI-based ID verification and anti-money laundering platform, another startup in the space is levelling up. Feedzai, which provides banks, others in the financial sector, and any company managing payments online with AI tools to spot and fight fraud […]

Nigeria remains a largely cash-dominated country. There are over 100 million adult Nigerians, of which more than half have little or no access to financial services. Today, Bankly, a Nigerian fintech startup digitizing cash for the unbanked, announced that it has closed a $2 million seed round. Founded by Tomilola Adejana and Fredrick Adams in […]

KitaBeli, an Indonesian social commerce app for group buying, announced today it has raised a $10 million Series A. The round was led by Go Ventures, whose cornerstone investor is Gojek, with participation from returning investors AC Ventures and East Ventures. KitaBeli currently focuses on selling fresh produce and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) in areas […]

Lime is rolling out several new features, including the ability to rent electric scooters without downloading the app, in an effort to attract more riders. The micromobility company announced Wednesday a series of product features that aims to remove barriers to entry for new users, while increasing accessibility to its vehicles. The new features include […]

Public App, a location-based social network that connects individuals to people in their vicinity, has raised $41 million in a new round, just six months after securing $35 million as the hyper-local Indian startup looks to expand its presence in the world’s second largest internet market. A91 Partners led the new round in Public App, […]

You may have seen an article over at Axios today about the rebrand of many of the Verizon Media products under a new Yahoo+ banner. I would like to congratulate all of the teams that have worked hard to build a cohesive brand identity and a new plan for a bunch of great properties with […]

We've reached the end of Y Combinator's biggest Demo Day, which saw more than 300 companies pitching back-to-back over eight hours.

Airwallex, the fintech company for cross-border businesses, announced today it has added $100 million more to its Series D round, bumping its valuation up to $2.6 billion. The extension was led by Greenoaks, with participation from Grok Ventures and returning investors Skip Capital and ANZi Ventures. Co-founder and chief executive officer Jack Zhang told TechCrunch […]

Y Combinator is slowly growing its stake in education companies, as the sector balloons with newfound demand from remote learners. In its latest batch, the famed accelerator had its highest number of edtech startups yet: 14 companies from around the world, working on everything from teacher monetization to homework apps to ways to train software […]

OnePlus unveils new hardware, Apple updates its educational offerings and Facebook reveals plans for its next developer conference. This is your Daily Crunch for March 23, 2021. The big story: OnePlus announces its first smartwatch The Chinese smartphone maker announced the OnePlus Watch today, a $159 smartwatch with a minimalist design and a new operating […]

If you don't have time to skim through 300+ startups, we've aggregated some of the companies that really managed to catch our eye. This is part one of two, covering our favorites from the companies that launched in the first half of the day.

Last week a select group of 20 employees and guests gathered at an event space on the San Francisco Bay, and, while looking out at the Bay Bridge, dined on a selection of choice elk sausages, Wagyu meatloaf and lamb burgers — all of which were grown from a petri dish. The dinner was a […]

Facebook is building a Clubhouse rival, The New York Times reported in February. But what that product will look like or how it will work have been questions that have remained unanswered. However, new screenshots of a Facebook audio product, still under development, show what appears to be a live audio broadcast experience that’s more […]

When Amazon announced last month that Jeff Bezos was moving into the executive chairman role, and AWS CEO Andy Jassy would be taking over the entire Amazon operation, speculation began about who would replace Jassy. People considered a number of internal candidates viable, such as Peter DeSantis, vice president of global infrastructure at AWS and […]

Today Bloomberg reported, and Axios confirmed that Robinhood has filed privately to go public. The well-financed Robinhood is an American fintech company that provides zero-cost trading services to consumers. Private IPO filings have become common in recent quarters, making Robinhood’s decision to file behind closed doors before showing its numbers to the public unsurprising. That […]

TuSimple, the self-driving truck company that is backed by a diverse consortium of strategic investors, including Volkswagen AG’s heavy-truck business The Traton Group, Navistar, Goodyear, and freight company U.S. Xpress, filed Tuesday for an initial public offering. TuSimple is taking the traditional path to going public, a departure from the recent trend — particularly among […]

Digital advertising company Kargo is launching a new product and new business unit called Fabrik. Founder and CEO Harry Kargman explained that Fabrik is a content management system designed for publishers’ modern needs and integrated with Kargo’s advertising technology. Kargman suggested that he sees this as part of Kargo’s broader mission of “saving publishing.” That might […]

UX expert Peter Ramsey and TechCrunch reporter Steve O'Hear discuss some of Clubhouse's UX challenges as it continues to onboard new users at pace while it strives to create enough stickiness to keep them active.

April showers bring May flowers, but in the case of Extra Crunch Live, those showers will come in the form of actionable insights and advice from some of the top minds in tech. We have an incredible line up of folks joining us on the show, which breaks down how successful founders got their early […]

Twitter today is announcing what the company calls a “strategic acquihire” of the API integration platform Reshuffle. The startup’s commercial technology, which allows developers to build workflows and connect systems using any API, will be wound down as a result of Twitter’s deal. However, Reshuffle’s entire team of seven, including co-founders Amir Shevat and Avner […]

Verification goes beyond the "blue checkmark," and the urgency to implement verification is bigger than just stopping the spread of questionable content. It can also help companies ensure they’re staying on the right side of the law.

Social media executives will be answering to Congress directly for their role in January’s deadly attacks on the U.S. Capitol this week. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Google’s Sundar Pichai will all appear virtually before a joint House committee Thursday at 12 p.m. Eastern Time. The hearing, held by the House’s Subcommittee on […]

In what looks like both an endorsement of its Premier Access streaming strategy and a tacit acknowledgement that theatrical moviegoing won’t be returning to normal anytime soon, Disney just announced that its movies “Black Widow” and “Cruella” will be coming to Disney+ at the same time that they’re released in theaters. That means Disney+ subscribers […]

As exciting as the entire Perseverance mission to Mars is, one of the events most looked forward to by us Earthlings must be the first flight of Ingenuity. After conducting numerous checks and double-checks, the Perseverance team has set April 8 as the date on which they hope to attempt the first controlled powered flight […]

Y Combinator’s latest batch — W21 — features 350 startups from 41 nations. Fifty percent of the firms, the highest percentage to date, in the new batch are based outside of the United States. India is the second-largest demographic represented in the new batch. The world’s second-largest internet market has delivered 43 startups in the […]

In 2020, investors became laser-focused on sections of the pitch deck that address monetization and business viability — signs that founders need to present better-defined businesses to succeed.