Some purchases provide near-instant time to value (TTV), like buying an umbrella on a rainy day or hiring a glazier to replace a broken window. Cybersecurity startups, however, often experience long TTV, as enterprise customers often require several sales calls and a bespoke onboarding process. To boost adoption and reduce churn, VC Ross Haleliuk shares … Read more
The collective creativity, ingenuity and technical prowess of the Startup Battlefield 200 presented by Capital Connect by JP Morgan is nothing short of amazing. 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 … Read more
Highnote launched to the public today, allowing musicians, podcasters, and other creators to collaborate on audio files by recording voice notes directly over a track, making timestamped reactions, and creating polls to get opinions. Highnote also announced its pre-seed funding round of $1.7 million. The new platform aims to be a space for musicians, podcasters … Read more
After doing whatever he could to back out of his bid to buy Twitter for $44 billion, Elon Musk proposed to move forward with his initial offer of buying Twitter at $54.20 per share, reports say. Musk proposed this in a letter sent to Twitter, according to Bloomberg’s report. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO was slated … Read more
Disney+ today relaunched as a native app on PlayStation 5 (PS5) consoles, which now supports PS5 capabilities like 4K HDR (High-Dynamic Range) streaming. The company also relaunched Star+, Disney+’s streaming service for Latin American subscribers. PS5 users experienced various issues with the old Disney+ app, which was designed for PS4 compatibility. Subscribers reported crashes, log-in … Read more
Zipline, a drone delivery and logistics company that got its start delivering medical supplies in Africa, has started dropping prescriptions and over-the-counter medications to homes in the Salt Lake City, Utah area. In a partnership with Intermountain Healthcare, a healthcare company that services the Intermountain Region of the United States, Zipline will deploy an initial … Read more
The consortium behind the Matter standard for the Internet of Things have officially approved the long-award standard. The open-source connectivity standard was built around a shared belief that smart home devices should seamlessly integrate with other systems and be secure and reliable. Smart home device makers understand that people will integrate lots of products from … Read more
In our wireless world, wires are still the best way to move electricity from A to B. Wires are almost always cheaper and easier, at least from a technical perspective, but there are instances where wires may not be an ideal solution. For lazy people charging their phones — including yours truly — a wireless … Read more
We’re less than a month away from TechCrunch Disrupt on October 18–20 in San Francisco! Imagine a drumroll, folks, because we’re about to announce the last tranche of investors and thought leaders who will choose which outstanding startup takes the title of Startup Battlefield champion, along with the $100,000 prize and serious bragging rights Improve … Read more
Reddit announced today that it’s bringing on the team from Oterlu, a startup from Gothenburg, Sweden that develops machine learning-powered content moderation tools. The Oterlu team will join Reddit’s Safety team and develop native machine learning moderation models that can quickly and accurately detect harmful content across a range of languages, Reddit says. The Oterlu … Read more
Last fall, Rakesh Mathur stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, waiting for his daughter to come home from a frat party at Stanford. “She walks in at 2:30 with just a big, beaming smile. There’s no apology or anything like that,” Mathur told TechCrunch. “She says, ‘Papa, I met the next Mark … Read more
Rhys Spence Contributor Share on Twitter Rhys Spence is head of research at Brighteye Ventures, a European edtech-focused fund. More posts by this contributor Despite creaky markets, European edtech is showing its resilience European, North American edtech startups see funding triple in 2021 Carla Napoleão Contributor Share on Twitter Carla Napoleão is an edtech analyst … Read more
Macroeconomic factors are placing pressure on companies to improve efficiency, and on employees and their managers to do more with less. Amidst all the challenges and tribulations, workers believe a large portion of their work week is unproductive, with the majority of respondents to a recent (2018) Intuit survey saying that they’d get more done … Read more
Car rental company Sixt said Tuesday it intends to purchase over 100,000 electric vehicles from Chinese automaker BYD for its European fleet between now and 2028. Sixt has initially only committed to buying “several thousand” EVs, the first of which will be delivered this year, the company said in a statement. Sixt said it will … Read more
Google’s anticipated iOS 16 Lock Screen widgets have now begun to arrive. Alongside the launch of Apple’s new mobile operating system, iOS 16, the search giant last month had teased its plans to support the iPhone’s newest feature that allows users to place widgets directly on their phone’s lock screen, offering information and easy access … Read more
Months after bagging $116 million in an extension of its Series F round, database vendor SingleStore this week announced that it raised an additional $30 million from investors including Prosperity7, the venture arm of Saudi Aramco. The Series F — or “Series F-2,” technically — now stands at $146 million, bringing SingleStore’s total raised to … Read more
Naver buying Poshmark for $17.90 per share is a fascinating deal, featuring elements of cross-border M&A, a sector on its back foot, and stock-market dynamics making some formerly expensive companies perhaps cheaper to pick off than they may ever be again. TechCrunch+ asked yesterday why we weren’t seeing more software M&A in light of depressed … Read more
Embedded banking — used by companies that do not build financial products like credit, payments or deposits from the ground up but want to offer those services to their customers to grow revenues — has been on a big growth tear in the last several years, and today one of the bigger players building finance … Read more
Xiaomi just launched the 12T Pro, a flagship with a 200-megapixel main camera. The company is using Samsung’s HP1 sensor with a base pixel size of 0.64μm and f/1.69 aperture. The sensor, which was launched last year, uses pixel binning in different ways: it can combine 16 pixels to produce a 12.5-megapixel image (2.56μm pixel … Read more
Figuring out what to pay employees is a universal problem. Startups, in particular, struggle with compensation as they are often competing with other startups for talent. For Roger Lee, the issue came up repeatedly when he co-founded 401(k) provider Human Interest, which achieved unicorn status in August of 2021 and today has nearly 700 employees. … Read more
Confluent, the company that built a streaming service on top of the open source Apache Kafka project, has always been about helping companies capture streams of data. First it was on prem, then later in the cloud. By moving the streaming service to the cloud, it was able to abstract away a lot of the … Read more
Businesses can use dozens of separate software tools to manage their day-to-day operations. Carbon6 Technologies estimates that for smaller businesses, like e-commerce marketplace companies, that can be between eight and 15 custom SaaS tools, which can cost anywhere from several thousand dollars to tens of thousands per year. Instead of continuing to buy each business, … Read more
It might be a little early to say ‘look out Cloudflare!’ especially given it’s $20B valuation, but a Slovenian startup thinks the web security giant has missed a trick in the market, as developers become more ignored in favor of large corporate clients. Bunny.net has now raised a $6 million funding round led by Runa … Read more
Ross Haleliuk Contributor Share on Twitter Ross Haleliuk is a venture capitalist and head of product at LimaCharlie.io. More posts by this contributor To bring PLG to cybersecurity, let’s change our hiring habits H1 2022 cybersecurity product-led growth market map The amount of time it takes for a user to realize and experience the value … Read more
As the enterprise device supply chain grows increasingly global and fragmented, it’s becoming more challenging for organizations to secure their hardware and software from suppliers. According to the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity, the EU agency that contributes to the bloc’s cyber policy, 66% of cyberattacks focused on a supplier’s code as of 2021. Combating … Read more
Tines, a no-code automation platform aimed at security teams, today announced that it raised $55 million in an extended Series B round led by Felicis, bringing the startup’s total raised to $96.2 million. CEO Eoin Hinchy says that the new capital, which values Tines at “north of” $300 million, will support the company’s go-to-market and … Read more
Meet Easop, a new software-as-a-service startup that helps companies manage equity incentives for employees across multiple countries. Easop works particularly well with startups that want hire remote workers and offer them equity. If you’re working for a tech startup and you’re in charge of hiring, you know that finding the right candidate can be quite … Read more
Ridgeline is a new VC firm that invests in B2B companies with a specific goal in mind: helping its portfolio companies sell to complex organizations that are hard to crack, but can be great customers if you break into them. The Memphis, Tennessee-based firm was started in 2020 by Ben Walker, Ryan Clinton and Andrew … Read more
Investing app Stash, which last raised $125 million from investors in a Series G round last year, is adding crypto to the set of products it offers its 2 million users. The startup sees itself as different from competitors because of its focus on cultivating customers who are long-term investors rather than encouraging more frequent, … Read more
The European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly to back EU legislation that will standardize mobile chargers on USB Type-C — paving the way for the law to start being applied by the end of 2024. MEPs have been pushing for the e-waste measure for over a decade so today’s massively affirmative plenary vote — of 602 … Read more