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
Meet Solvo, a new mobile app that wants to make it easier to invest in cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency-related financial products. The two founders Ayelen Denovitzer and Shailendra Sason met while they were working for Revolut, in the crypto team more specifically. Earlier this year, Solvo raised a $3.5 million seed round from Index Ventures with … Read more
Doccla, a Sweden founded but London-headquartered health tech startup that sells a remote patient monitoring platform to hospitals to run so-called ‘virtual wards’, has closed a £15 million (~$17M) Series A funding round a year after raising a $3.3M seed. The Series A is led by US VC General Catalyst, with participation from funds managed … Read more
French startup Pigment has raised a new round of funding less than a year after raising a $73 million Series B round. If you’re not familiar with Pigment, the company develops a business planning and forecasting platform. For small companies that are growing up, it can replace Microsoft Excel as it’s more secure and more … Read more
Tesla has appointed Airbnb co-founder and billionaire Joe Gebbia to its board of directors, according to a securities filing. Gebbia, a designer who co-founded Airbnb, officially joined the board September 25 as an independent director. His appointment comes a few months after leaving day-to-day operations at Airbnb. He is now an advisor to the short-term rental … Read more
Una Brands, an e-commerce aggregator focused on brands in the Asia-Pacific region, announced the first close of its Series B round at $30 million today. The funding was led by White Star Capital and Alpha JWC Ventures. Headquartered in Singapore, Una Brands has a presence in Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, China and the United … Read more
Rocket launch company Astra will no longer send the remaining NASA TROPICS payloads to space, but instead will launch other “comparable” scientific missions for the agency, the company announced Wednesday. The change to the launch agreement comes a little over three months after Astra’s first TROPICS launch ended in failure after the upper stage shut … Read more
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. With almost a hundred new stories on the site since the last Daily Crunch, we’re having a hard time picking the cream of the crop, but that’s what we dooooo. It’s been … Read more
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
Florida’s Space Coast continues to make preparations for the extremely powerful and slow-moving Hurricane Ian, with officials rolling rockets back to the safety of hangars and delaying launches until the storm passes. The massive storm made landfall near Fort Myers Wednesday afternoon, coming in at just a few miles per hour shy of the Category … Read more
Digital mortgage lender Better.com continues to lay off staff, and seemingly in as callous a way as possible. Indeed, whereas most companies try to avoid repeated layoffs, the outfit — which gained notoriety by laying off about 900 employees over Zoom on December 1, 2021 — has since been laying off smaller groups very systematically, … Read more
After a weeks-long suspension, Pornhub’s account has been permanently removed from Instagram. Instagram told TechCrunch that Pornhub has repeatedly violated community guidelines, prompting the account’s removal. Meanwhile, Pornhub declared in an open letter to Meta and Instagram that Instagram’s enforcement of these platform rules are “opaque, discriminatory and hypocritical.” Addressed to four Meta executives, including … Read more
Porsche plans to go public on Thursday at a $73 billion valuation, catapulting the company to become the world’s fourth-most valuable automaker and netting billions of dollars for parent company Volkswagen to advance its drive toward electric vehicles. The initial public offering for Porsche AG on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange values the brand at $79 … Read more