Crunch Hype

With the evident need for solutions to ensure high data quality in the Big Data era, the space has received a lot of attention — especially during the past year.

Renovating a home is an exciting, yet often fraught-filled, endeavor. One startup that aims to help make the process simpler, cheaper and less stressful by helping people manage the home renovation process has raised $6 million to help it grow even faster. Builders VC led the round, which included participation from Celtic, Newfund and Wish co-founder Danny […]

A decade ago, Rimac Automobili was one-person startup in a garage. Today, the EV and technology company founded by Mate Rimac employs more than 1,000 people, has partnerships with Porsche and Hyundai Motor Group and is on track to launch its 1,914 hp, all-electric C_Two hypercar this year. If that weren’t enough, Rimac also launched […]

Well, that was fast. Just a few months after raising its seed round, Unfolded.ai announced today that it is being acquired by Foursquare. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The startup had raised a total of about $6 million when we last checked in with them. The company, founded by a group of ex-Uber […]

I am not a smart man. Earlier today I tweeted about $ASS, a cryptocurrency named after a dog. In this case, Australian Shepherds. And after doing that obviously stupid thing, my Twitter feed became chock-full of ass-related imagery, memes, and $ASS coin stans breathing on me. It’s all very annoying as I run Tweetdeck on […]

So, true story. Over the weekend I was talking to someone about restaurant robotics. It’s a concept people often have trouble visualizing — and understandably so. Among other things, there’s really no commonly accepted form factor in a category that sometimes is literally a robot arm flipping hamburgers. My short response was, “they’re large kiosks […]

Each month in Robinhood's Q1 2021 produced more PFOF revenues than its entire year-ago quarter in aggregate.

Google has explored storefronts for a while now. Here’s a pop-up in Manhattan’s SoHo district that we took a trip to some four+ years back. But the company’s own branded retail experience has been fairly limited — unsurprising, given that it has always been a software company first. This summer, however, the company is joining […]

Alongside news that Twitter is relaunching its account verification system to the public, the company previewed a slate of changes that will soon come to Twitter profiles. In addition to your name, photo, banner, bio and other features available today, the new Twitter profile will include an “About” tab that appears to the left of […]

The coveted blue badge may soon be within your reach. Twitter announced today it will begin rolling out its new verification application system, which allows public figures and other accounts of high public interest to distinguish themselves with a checkmark that indicates they are who they say they are — like a government official, journalist, […]

Firefly Aerospace may be developing rockets of its own, but it’s also simultaneously building Blue Ghost, its first lunar lander. Blue Ghost will hop a ride with a rocket from a different launch company — SpaceX — in 2023, the companies announced today. While Firefly Aerospace is in the process of developing its own launch […]

Spotify is further expanding into audiobooks — but not in the way you may think. The company today announced a new partnership with audiobooks platform Storytel, which will allow existing Storytel subscribers to connect their account through Spotify to access their audiobooks within Spotify’s app. The partnership is the first notable example of what’s possible […]

Local news has been battered over the past two decades. The rise of the internet shredded some of the long-held monopolies of newspapers and local TV stations on news and classified ads, while social networks like Facebook, Nextdoor, and Citizen have increasingly pulled in reader attention for neighborhood updates. Newspapers have closed, journalists have been […]

Don’t let an imagined future state of regret drive a decision to launch or fund a new venture. Trends present real opportunities, but founders and investors should engage with caution.

Workrise, which has built a workforce management platform for the skilled trades, announced today that it has raised $300 million in a Series E round led by UK-based Baillie Gifford that values the company at $2.9 billion. New investor Franklin Templeton joined existing backers including Founders Fund, Bedrock Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Moore Strategic Ventures, […]

Trees, those deciduous entities you can occasionally see outdoors when not locked down or strapped down at a desktop ruminating on a video call, have long been the inspiration for fresh new ideas. Stories abound of how founders built companies while walking the foothills in Silicon Valley or around parks in San Francisco, and yet, […]

Ford Motor Company and Seoul, South Korea-based SK Innovation signed a memorandum of understanding to establish a joint venture to domestically manufacture batteries for electric vehicles, the two companies said Thursday. The new venture, dubbed BlueOvalSK, will produce around 60 GWh annually starting mid-decade. The MOU is the latest sign that Ford intends to vertically develop […]

Powerpoint may still dominate the landscape for presentations in many people’s minds, but some might say that legacy status also makes Microsoft’s software ripe for disruption. Now, a startup out of Berlin called Pitch has just picked up a substantial Series B of $85 million to take it on with what it believes is a […]

Maven, a startup that helps professionals teach cohort-based classes, has raised $20 million in a Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The round places A16z general partner Andrew Chen on Maven’s board – and is his latest lead check in a creator-focused company, similarly pouring millions into recent rounds for Clubhouse and Substack. The […]

HP today announced a series of ambitious goals aimed at driving “a more diverse, equitable and inclusive” tech industry. The tech giant, of course, is not the first company to have made strong claims about its intentions around diversity. As former TC reporter Megan Rose Dickey reported extensively, diversity and inclusion as an idea has […]

If you’ve ever been self-employed you know what a pain it is to keep up with the hassles of running a business. From bookkeeping to invoicing to paying taxes — it’s one big headache. Freelancers and self-employed people often turn to a number of different solutions to try and address different aspects of running their […]

Pour one out for Internet Explorer, the long-enduring internet browser that’s been the butt of countless jokes about its speed, reliability, and probably most notable of all, security, which will retire next year after more than 25 years of service. Microsoft said it will pull the plug on the browser’s life support in June 2022, […]

When Privacy.com was founded in 2014, the company’s focus was to let anyone generate virtual and disposable payment card numbers for free. The goal was to allow those users to keep users’ actual credit card numbers safe while allowing the option to cut off companies from their bank accounts. In an age of near-constant data […]

TikTok today is introducing a feature that will allow creators to deal with online abuse in an easier way. The company is launching new tools that will allow creators to bulk delete comments and block users, instead of having to moderate comments one-by-one. The update may be somewhat controversial, as it allows creators to curate […]

GPS is one of those science fiction technologies whose use is effortless for the end user and endlessly challenging for the engineers who design it. It’s now at the heart of modern life: everything from Amazon package deliveries to our cars and trucks to our walks through national parks are centered around a pin on […]

Life is complicated and so — increasingly — is work-life. That’s the premise underpinning Polywork, a new professional social network founded by Lystable/Kalo founder, Peter Johnson. It’s announcing a $3.5 million seed round today, led by by Caffeinated Capital’s Ray Tonsing (who it notes was the first investor in Clubhouse, Airtable and Brex), with participation […]

Holoride, the Audi spinoff that’s creating an in-vehicle XR passenger entertainment experience, is deploying blockchain technology and NFTs as the next stage in its preparation for a 2022 market launch. The company, which closed a $12 million Series A in April, announced it would be integrating Elrond blockchain into its tech stack to bring transparency […]

In the last few months, we’ve seen an explosion in funding for consumer banking startups in Latin America, all eager to reinvent traditional banking in the region. However, the business banking space seems like it’s also undergoing some changes. Today, Chile-based Kredito announced a $4 million pre-seed round. The company focuses on generating loans for […]

Salespeople have more tools than ever these days to help them with their work, whether they are tools to source new leads, keep those leads interested or informed about what’s being sold, to track how the sales process is going, to manage those relationships once they are secured, or accounting tools to manage how and […]

Consumers are moving into investing to complement — or in some cases, offset — less good returns from things like traditional savings accounts with low interest rates or pensions, and today one of the bigger “neo-brokers” in Europe helping to open up that opportunity is announcing a monster round of funding to fuel its growth. […]

Digital payments are going mainstream around the world. By the end of 2020, there were more than 300 mobile money providers with over 100,000 active users, according to a report published by GSMA, an industry association for mobile network operators. Altogether, over 300 million mobile money accounts were active every month around the world. Mobile […]

We live in a world where companies have to send out ‘gifts’ to individuals. Chocolate bars. Bottles of wine. You name it. Companies are gifting it. But right now, that operation is buried in a marketing department on a spreadsheet, as is mostly pretty disorganized. A handful of startups realized it could be done better […]

Cervest – a startup with a platform that claims to quantify climate risk across multiple decades and threats down to the asset level – has raised a $30 million Series A round led by Draper Esprit. Previous investors Astanor Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital (Chris Sacca), and Future Positive Capital also participated in the round, and were […]

Buzzy US startup Pipe — which claims to be the “Nasdaq for revenue” — has just raised $250 million at a $2 billion valuation? The secret for the hype? It gives SaaS companies a way to get their revenue upfront, by “pairing them with investors on a marketplace that pays a discounted rate for the […]

White Star Capital, better known as a VC which, in its time, has backed the likes of Digg, launchrock, Meero, Summly, and Tier, among others, is moving into the hot world of crypto and blockchain with a new $50M Digital Asset Fund. The special-vehicle fund will specialize in investing in crypto-networks and blockchain-enabled businesses and […]

Car ownership has become pricey and untenable in many towns and cities in Europe: between congestion charges to reduce emissions, parking fees, and traffic, many consumers opt instead to use public transportation, two wheels, cabs or their own legs to get around. To add to that mix for longer journeys, today a startup that’s building […]

The real estate market in South Korea is very fragmented, which means people often have to work with dozens of brokers before they find a new home. Founded in 2020 by a former WeWork executive, Dongnae wants to create a centralized base for brokers, serving as a multiple listing system (MLS). Since its first seed […]

Zhang Yiming, the storied co-founder of ByteDance, is stepping down from his role as the CEO and passing the torch to Liang Rubo, another co-founder of the TikTok parent and one of the world’s most valuable internet juggernauts. In an internal letter to employees, 38-year-old age Zhang said he is making the transition to spend […]

The power of a pickup truck is not all about torque, horsepower, towing and hauling. Ford’s newest electric F-150 Lightning, which was unveiled Wednesday, is trying to change the meaning of truck power with a system that can provide energy to a customer’s home in the event of an outage. Ford isn’t alone in its […]

The Ford F-150, the profitable cornerstone of the U.S. automaker’s business, now has an all-electric sibling. Ford unveiled Wednesday the F-150 Lightning, an all-electric pickup truck that is a critical piece of the company’s $22 billion investment into electrification. The vehicle is one of a trifecta of Ford EV debuts and launches in the past year. […]

Founded in 2014, Great Deals is an e-commerce enabler that helps brands like Abbot, L’Oréal and Unilever build their online retail operations in the Philippines. The startup announced today that it has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Fast Group, one of the Philippines’ biggest logistics firms, with support from CVC Capital […]

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"I would also count myself as a serial entrepreneur because I've been doing this for more than 20 years."

Electric aviation company Wisk Aero filed a motion for a preliminary injunction Wednesday in its ongoing lawsuit with rival electric air travel startup Archer Aviation. The injunction could put a serious wrench in Archer’s operations should the courts approve it. Wisk has asked the court to immediately prohibit Archer from using 52 trade secrets that […]

Our startup has several employees on work visas or employment authorization. Many have been waiting for quite a while for the government to tell them their applications have been received. Why?

An FDA pathway that’s greased the gears for COVID-19 vaccines and drugs has paved the way for something else: a new take on electroencephalography (EEG), the established brain-monitoring technique in which metallic electrodes are placed on the scalp to measure the brain’s electrical activity. On May 17, DC-based startup iCE Neurosystems announced a version of […]

How are mom-and-pop self-storage facilities meant to keep up with the tech offered by the massive, ever-growing chains? That’s a key part of the idea behind OpenUnit, a team I first wrote about in August of last year. You bring the storage units, they bring the website, payment processing and backend tools you need to […]

Approaching institutions to raise capital for your venture capital or private equity fund is relatively transparent, but what if you’re targeting family offices and high-net-worth individuals?

Tapping the tiny screen of the Apple Watch with precision has a certain level of fundamental difficulty, but for some people with disabilities it’s genuinely impossible. Apple has remedied this with a new mode called “Assistive Touch” that detects hand gestures to control a cursor and navigate that way. The feature was announced as part […]

You may not be familiar with the term “dark patterns” but the manipulative design phenomenon is ubiquitous in the apps and services we use every day. Dark patterns nudge consumers to make choices that enrich companies, usually at their own expense. That can look like misleading wording that leads someone to sign their personal data […]