Crunch Hype

Spotify this week joined a growing number of tech giants expanding their work from home policies as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to drag on. While not as radical as Twitter’s recent decision to let staff work from home forever, the music streaming service’s move does represent increased openness to the arrangement. As noted by Variety, […]

Netflix said Thursday it will ask customers who have not watched anything on the on-demand video streaming service in a year or more if they wish to maintain their subscription — and will cancel their membership if it does not hear back. The company said it has started to notify customers who have’t watched anything […]

Skyflow, a Mountain View-based privacy API company, announced this morning that it has closed a $7.5 million round of capital it describes as a seed investment. Foundation Capital’s Ashu Garg led the round, with the company touting smaller checks from Jeff Immelt (former GE CEO) and Jonathan Bush (former AthenaHealth CEO). For Skyflow, founded in […]

This afternoon, we’re chatting with Steve Case and Clara Sieg of Revolution as part of our new interview series, Extra Crunch Live. Topping our agenda, we will talk about jobs — in Silicon Valley, on the coasts and in the heartland. The technology sector is suffering through a contraction caused by the COVID-19 global health […]

Can eVTOL vehicles be green? Specifically, can eVTOL vehicles be more energy-efficient than cars?

Facilities management looks to be having a bit of a moment, amid the coronavirus pandemic. VergeSense, a US startup which sells a ‘sensor as a system’ platform targeted at offices — supporting features such as real-time occupant counts and foot-traffic-triggered cleaning notifications — has closed a $9M strategic investment led by Allegion Ventures, a corporate […]

When Apple added the ability to export transactions via spreadsheet to its credit card, Matthew hit up the folks at Copilot, asking whether they planned to support the feature. The answer was essentially “not yet, but soon.” This week, however, it’s finally official. The makers of the personal finance tracking app announced that users can […]

In the same week that Facebook announced a redoubled effort to make a bigger mark in e-commerce, one of its long-time partners has closed a large round of funding. Ecwid, the startup that sells e-commerce tools directly and via third parties like Square and Wix, letting businesses build e-commerce experiences on their own websites and […]

As segments of the country begin the process of reopening, many antsy Americans are no doubt itching to travel during the Memorial Day weekend. With the holiday fast approaching the TSA is outlining new security measures for those flying during the pandemic. Some have already been in place amid limited flight schedules and for the […]

Your first 90 days will ideally set the foundation for a rich and productive partnership between you and your investors.

The winners of the Webby Awards were announced earlier this week, and anyone visiting the Webby website to browse the winning work might have noticed that it’s gotten a fresh look. The awards’ executive director Claire Graves told me that while the existing gallery was already “a source of inspiration for anyone who wants to […]

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. There’s a famous old post going around Twitter this week by entrepreneur and developer David Heinemeier Hansson (@DHH). DHH is a critic of certain elements of the startup world, especially wild valuations. This entry from […]

With the regulations around telehealth changing rapidly amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, an opioid treatment platform with a digital component is finally finding a strong market foothold after facing a mountain of regulatory hurdles. Boulder Care was founded by Stephanie Papes, a former associate at Apple Tree Partners. She first became interested in opioid treatment after […]

Daniel Graf has had a long career in the tech industry. From founding his own startup in the mid-2000s to working at Google, then Twitter, and finally Uber, the tech business has made him extremely wealthy. But after leaving Uber, he wasn’t necessarily interested in working at another business… At least, not until he spent […]

Compared to other tech firms, enterprise companies have held up well during the pandemic. If anything, the problems enterprises were facing prior to the economic downturn have become even more pronounced; if you were thinking about moving to the cloud or just dabbling in it, you’re probably accelerating that motion. If you were trying to […]

The Indianapolis-based venture studio High Alpha has created a new business line called High Alpha Innovations to bring its startup spinup approach to big business. So far the firm has managed to sign on clients like the financial services firm, Silicon Valley Bank, the industrial manufacturer, Cummins, and the security hardware and services company, Allegion. […]

The beauty of podcasting is that anyone can do it. It’s a rare medium that’s nearly as easy to make as it is to consume. And as such, no two people do it exactly the same way. There are a wealth of hardware and software solutions open to potential podcasters, so setups run the gamut […]

CISOs have shifted their roles quickly and dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, but many have had to fight fires they never expected.

Less than a year after raising $25M led by Microsoft for its take on building API marketplaces, RapidAPI has rapidly followed that up with another infusion of capital as it reaches 20,000 APIs tracked, integrated, and used across its marketplace by millions of developers. Today the startup is announcing that it raised another $25 million […]

Real estate is one of those classic industries we always talk about in Silicon Valley: multi-trillion dollars in scale in terms of assets and transaction volume, but still relying on good ole’ pen and paper to get anything actually done. A huge number of companies have launched to digitize all aspects of real estate, from […]

Facebook this morning announced a new feature for Messenger designed to cut down on malicious parties looking to scam users. The company scans accounts for suspicious activity, leveraging machine learning to pick up anomalies like accounts sending a large number of requests in a short time span or numerous message requests to users under 18. […]

When former Bill Clinton speechwriter and political wunderkind Andrei Cherny launched Aspiration four years ago, the upstart fintech startup was one of Los Angeles’ early entrants into a financial services market dominated by players from Europe and the financial capital of the U.S. in New York City. Fast forward four years and the big New […]

Chief, the social network dedicated exclusively to women in professional leadership positions, announced today that it has $15 million in funding from its existing investors, including General Catalyst, Inspired Capital, GGV Capital, Primary Venture Partners, Flybridge Capital and BoxGroup. The startup is a highly-vetted network of women who are leaders in their business, either managing […]

As we move deeper into the pandemic, it’s clear that the way we conduct business is changing, maybe forever. That means that business has to change too — and fast. But if you’ve never conducted business digitally or only nominally, how do you suddenly transform on the fly? Salesforce Commerce Cloud CEO Mike Micucci says […]

Couchbase. the Santa Clara-based company behind the eponymous NoSQL cloud database service, today announced that it has raised a $105 million all-equity Series G round “to expand product development and global go-to-market capabilities.” The oversubscribed round was led by GPI Capital, with participation from existing investors Accel, Sorenson Capital, North Bridge Venture Partners, Glynn Capital, […]

Sheltering-in-place and working from home curing COVID-19 has driven many of us to reorganize and de-clutter our living environments, and today one of the startups that is capitalizing on that trend is announcing a large round of funding to continue its growth. MakeSpace, an on-demand storage company that makes it easy to order, store and […]

“I’ve got a really high attention to detail, which might sound great, but it’s possibly a curse because I can’t help but spot problems with everything around me,” says Peter Ramsey . He’s the founder of Built for Mars, a U.K.-based UX advisory, and he has spent the last three months documenting and analyzing the […]

How long are investors going to ignore the growing consumer appetite for responsible and impactful businesses?

Amazon is joining India’s online food delivery market just as top local players Swiggy and Zomato reduce their workforce to steer through the coronavirus pandemic. The e-commerce giant, which has invested more than $6.5 billion in India, today launched its food delivery service, called Amazon Food, in select parts of Bangalore. The company had originally […]

Facebook has rolled out a new safety feature in India that will enable users to easily lock their account so that people they are not friends with on the platform cannot view their posts and zoom into and download their profile picture and cover photo. The feature is especially aimed at women to give them […]

Automattic, the open source force behind WordPress .com, WooCommerce, Longreads, Simplenote and Tumblr, has made a $4.6M strategic investment into New Vector — the creators of an open, decentralized communications standard called Matrix. They also develop a Slack rival (Riot) which runs on Matrix. The investment by Automattic, which is at a higher valuation than the […]

SoftBank Corp. and Mapbox, the mapping data company that competes with Google and Here, announced that they have established a joint venture called Mapbox Japan. The JV will provide Mapbox’s mapping platform, including APIs and data services, to developers in Japan. Between June 1 and September 30, Mapbox Japan will also provide up to three […]

Founder Collective, a seed-stage fund formed 11 years ago in Cambridge, Ma., has closed its newest fund with $85 million. Earlier today, we talked with the firm’s general partners — Eric Paley, David Frankel, Micah Rosenbloom — to learn more about it. Among our first questions: whether the three are themselves the largest investors in […]

SXSW may be cancelled, but the commodification and commingling of multinational corporations and youth and street culture is assured to be alive and well in the COVID-19 era thanks to events like TRANSFER, the new virtual festival from NTWRK — GenZ’s answer to the Home Shopping Network. The FootLocker, Live Nation, and Main Street Advisors-backed […]

E-book and audiobook subscription service Scribd has been actively embracing and experimenting with bundling over the past couple of years, creating joint offers with The New York Times and with Spotify and Hulu. Today it announced a slightly different take on the idea with Scribd Perks. These perks give Scribd’s paying subscribers (the service costs […]

Hims & Hers, the startup focused on providing access to elective treatments for things like hair loss, skin care and erectile disfunction and online telemedicine services, is expanding its services to include a Spanish language option, the company said. After Mexico, the U.S. has the second-largest Spanish speaking population in the world, with an estimated […]

In a new letter to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, a group of Democrats in the Senate urge regulators to “closely monitor the negotiations” between Uber and Grubhub and to initiate an antitrust investigation if a rumored deal between the two companies comes to pass. In a letter signed by […]

It’s been a rough couple months for BuzzFeed (and media in general), but the company is still releasing fun new features. Today’s addition offers a new, more social take on the quizzes that the site is known for. Instead of taking a quiz on your own and then sharing the results on social media (or […]

Virgin Orbit has been preparing for this moment for years, but it’s now officially ready to launch its small satellite delivery vehicle to orbit for the first time. This key demonstration mission, taking off from Mojave Air and Space Port in California, will replicate the actual operational launch experience that Virgin Orbit hopes to provide […]

Tesla has officially dismissed a lawsuit filed earlier this month against Alameda County that sought to force the reopening of its factory in Fremont, Calif. The dismissal, which was granted Wednesday, closes the loop on a battle between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and county health and law enforcement officials. The lawsuit, filed May 9 hours […]

WarnerMedia announced today that director Zack Snyder’s version of “Justice League” will be released on HBO Max in 2021. Snyder is the only credited director on the 2017 superhero film, but he left the film during post-production, after his daughter’s suicide, with “Avengers” director Joss Whedon stepping in to write and shoot new material. The resulting […]

This week Alexia Bonatsos of Dream Machine and Niko Bonatsos of General Catalyst swung by Extra Crunch Live to discuss where they are investing today and what the future might look like. As expected, these seed and early-stage venture capitalists had a lot to say about their current investing cadence and what interests them in […]

In week two of a16z’s Crypto Startup School, three company-builders provide real-world advice on using the qualities of crypto to create new business models and networks.

Palantir, the data analytics company co-founded by Peter Thiel, is already an active tech player in the scrum for federal contracts, but it’s playing a new and increasingly prominent role in providing the government with software tools to address the COVID-19 crisis. This month, the Department of Veterans Affairs awarded a new $5 million contract […]

Autonomous aviation startup Xwing locked in a $10 million funding round before COVID-19 hit. Now the San Francisco-based startup is using the capital to hire talent and scale the development of its software stack as it aims for commercial operations later this year — pending FAA approvals. The company announced Wednesday its Series A funding […]

What do people tend to get wrong about remote work? And how can companies make it work better for them? While just about every tech company on the planet has become remote over the last few weeks, GitLab has been at this a while — since pretty much day one of its existence back in […]

Today GoPro entered the cutthroat business of personal lighting. This is the GoPro Zeus Mini; it looks like a rad little light, though it’s a curious product from an action camera company. The waterproof Zeus Mini costs $69.99 and ships with a magnetic spring clip. GoPro says the light is also compatible with all of […]

More than five years after starting the company, Monzo co-founder Tom Blomfield is stepping down as CEO of the U.K. challenger bank to take up the newly created role of president. Current U.S. CEO, TS Anil, will become the new “Monzo UK Bank CEO,” subject to regulatory approval, and for now will hold both U.K. […]

Conversa Health, the automated chat technology for healthcare updates, is pitching a modified version of its service specifically to monitor for symptoms of COVID-19. The company’s personalized automated chat asks about employees’ potential exposure to the novel coronavirus and then asks about potential symptoms. Once employees complete the survey they are either cleared to go […]

Apple has released iOS 13.5, which includes support for the Exposure Notification API that it co-created with Google to support public health authorities in their contact-tracing efforts to combat COVID-19. The API requires third-party apps developed by public health authorities for use, and none have yet been released, but iOS device users already have access […]