We’re beyond amazed at the collective creativity, ingenuity and technical prowess of the Startup Battlefield 200. Out of thousands of applications, only 200 early-stage startups made the final cut, and you’ll find all of them — and only them — exhibiting on the TechCrunch Disrupt show floor on October 18-20 in San Francisco. That’s a … Read more
Amazon’s steady march to bring Amazon Go-powered instant checkout stores across the U.S. and U.K. has been well-documented. Far less known is that it has also been making some moves to expand the technology in another very key market for the business: India. TechCrunch has learned that Amazon quietly picked up the founders of a … Read more
General Motors and OneD Battery Sciences are teaming up on a joint research venture into building more efficient batteries for electric vehicles. The partnership will focus on using OneD’s silicon nanotechnology in GM’s Ultium battery cells to extend range, improve performance and cut costs. The automaker said Thursday that OneD’s Sinanode platform, which uses silicon … Read more
Ride-hailing giant Lyft and autonomous vehicle technology company Argo AI are now officially offering public robotaxi service in Austin, Texas. This is the second city in which Lyft and Argo are operating a commercial robotaxi service after Miami, which launched in December. Riders in Austin will have the option of choosing a driverless commute directly … Read more
Last year, Amazon spent over $4.3 million on anti-union consultants alone, to which labor advocates asked, why not just pay that money to workers? Now, Amazon will do just that. Over the next year, Amazon will dedicate nearly $1 billion to increasing the average wages of its warehouse and transportation workers from about $18 to … Read more
Twitter is rolling out its redesigned Spaces tab, which includes podcasts, to Twitter Blue subscribers on Android. The Android launch comes a few weeks after Blue subscribers on iOS got access to podcasts and the redesigned Spaces tab. When Twitter first announced that it was introducing podcasts to its platform, the social network said they would be … Read more
A new letter penned by Senate and House Democrats accuses Amazon of “anticompetitive” practices in its bid to purchase Roomba-maker, iRobot, for $1.7 billion. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is leading the charge to convince the Federal Trade Commission to reject the deal, according to a report from Axios. “Rather than compete in a fair marketplace … Read more
Today, Nielsen announced that Roku plans to enable four-screen measurement across desktop, mobile, connected TV, and traditional TV. This is the first time Roku will use the digital methodology, Nielsen One, the data measurement firm’s cross-media measurement tool, which launches in December. In the age of streaming, it’s becoming more challenging for companies to measure … Read more
Anyone who has followed global news events of late will have noticed the devastating floods that have engulfed pretty much every corner of the world, from the U.S. and Europe, to Africa, Australia, and Asia, where India and Pakistan have been hit by some of their worst floods in recent memory. By pretty much all … Read more
The future of Kenya-based Sky.Garden — an Amazon-style marketplace for third-party merchants to sell electronics, home goods and more — is in the balance after the startup failed to close a round of financing, according to a memo the startup sent out to employees. An insider told TechCrunch that the startup’s co-founder and CEO, Martin Majlund, sent … Read more
As younger consumers are shifting to social apps that focus on video and more personal forms of social networking, a new social app called Studio, launching today, is introducing a group camcorder experience that allows groups of friends to share videos with one another in private albums. These albums, or “studios” as they’re called, are … Read more
Software product marketers typically are charged with creating demos for potential customers. These let people who are interested in the product see how a function inside an application works as a way to whet the appetite of the potential buyer. Arcade, a startup launched by two former Atlassian employees, decided to attack this problem with … Read more
Kevin Varadian Contributor Share on Twitter Kevin Varadian is SVP of sales and general manager at CoachHub. The advent of SaaS and cloud-based software services has all but obliterated the traditional sales model, but not many organizations are actually helping their sales teams adapt to this new world order. Sales training statistics paint a grim picture. … Read more
Product-led growth (PLG) is defined by VC firm OpenView as “a growth model where product usage drives customer acquisition, retention and expansion.” This is a major shift from growth driven by hands-on selling efforts, with broader implications than it may initially seem. A key difference is that the most successful product-led companies only reach out … Read more
TripActions is said to have filed confidentially to go public in the third quarter of next year at a $12 billion valuation. Citing an unnamed source, Business Insider broke the news on Wednesday that the company had filed confidential paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering. Bloomberg’s Katie Roof … Read more
YouTube announced Wednesday that it will show a new section called “Personal Stories” in search results starting this week when users enter health-related queries. The company said when people search for videos of certain health conditions on YouTube, it will show a panel featuring videos from people who are diagnosed with those disorders. The company … Read more
The major hype around NFTs may have died down a bit since the crypto subsector took off last year, but that isn’t stopping startups from building and raising capital in the space. Minteo, a Latin American-based NFT marketplace, is betting on the digital asset sector going big in the region after it raised $4.3 million … Read more
The rise in software supply chain attacks, like the SolarWinds hack, prompted last year’s executive order from the Biden Administration requiring vendors to provide a software bill of materials (SBOM). SBOMs can help security teams understand if a newly disclosed vulnerability impacts them — in theory. But industry experts caution that they aren’t always comprehensive … Read more
Software-as-a-service dev platform Airplane today closed a $32 million Series B funding round led by Thrive Capital with participation from Benchmark, bringing the startup’s total raised to $40.5 million. Ravi Parikh says that the new funds will be put toward growing Airplane’s 19-person team while expanding its product to new markets. Airplane was founded in … Read more
Detectify, a security platform that employs ethical hackers to conduct attacks designed to highlight vulnerabilities in corporate systems, today announced that it raised $10 million in follow-on funding led by Insight Partners. CEO Richard Carlsson says that the new cash, which brings Detectify’s total raised to $42 million, will be put toward product development and … Read more
Martin Kõiva was at Pipedrive, leading the company’s customer support organization, when he says he came to the realization that the best way to prevent bad customer interactions is to analyze previous ones, give agents regular check-ins and not rely too strictly on customer feedback. But Kõiva was hampered in his efforts to implement these … Read more
In a bid for the TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels crowd, Adobe today announced updates to Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements — its lightweight photo and video editing software bundle — that focus on improving the audio track selection and adding artistic effects to videos. Photoshop Elements 2023 and Premiere Elements 2023 also add … Read more
Aiven, which provides fully-managed and hosted services for major open source projects including Kafka, Cassandra, and Grafana, has announced its first ever acquisition — the Finnish company has snapped up Kafkawize, a self-service open source data governance tool for Apache Kafka. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition comes amid a renewed focus … Read more
Away from the premium smartphone feature-utility hyperbole swirling around dynamic islands, mobile devices remain much of a muchness. But ethical mobile brand Fairphone has always done innovation differently — applying attention to supply chain conditions and novel modularity to support repairability and lifespan longevity, with a dual mission to make consumer electronics more ethical and … Read more
The digital ads market is robust, with Statista predicting that worldwide spend will reach nearly $900 billion by 2026. But fake and fraudulent ad traffic remains a major problem in the space. Global losses from ad fraud totaled $35 billion in 2020 alone. And beyond the wasted spend, invalid traffic can inflate metrics, leading brands … Read more
Block, the company behind Square and Cash App, now supports Apple’s Tap to Pay for iPhone feature for merchants. Existing Square users or new businesses wanting to use Square can now use their iPhones to receive payments while using the fintech company’s financial management software. The Jack Dorsey-led company said that merchants can open the … Read more
Meta is facing a fresh call to pay reparations to the Rohingya people for Facebook’s role in inciting ethnic violence in Myanmar. A new report by Amnesty International — providing what it calls a “first-of-its kind, in-depth human rights analysis” of the role played by Meta (aka Facebook) in the atrocities perpetrated against the Rohingya … Read more
Recruitment and onboarding for deskless and hourly workers has always been a challenge, and one that startups have taken on in recent years. These employees are often always in demand due to traditionally high turnover rates, and yet, many still rely on paperwork and videos. Desmond Lim, Workstream co-founder and CEO. Image Credits: Workstream Workstream … Read more
Last week, a startup called Un1feed launched an Instagram client called The OG App, which promised an ad-free and suggestion-free home feed along with features like creating custom feeds like Twitter lists. The app raked up almost 10,000 downloads in a few days, but Apple removed the app from the App Store for violating its … Read more
So-called ‘stakeholder capitalism’ has not had the most illustrious of histories. Yes, there have been ‘Walmart Associates’ who were able to own stock in the company, or ‘John Lewis Associates’ (in the UK), but it’s hardly made the average person well off. At least they got something? In tech startups, however, tech founders are helped … Read more