TechCrunch

Black founders need to own their resiliency and leverage the power that has resulted from their unique experiences.

Tackling the learning curve that comes with building a startup is not for the faint of heart. So many questions, so little time to search out reliable, actionable advice. Enter TechCrunch Early Stage 2021 — two distinct, virtual bootcamps designed specifically for early-stage founders and open to entrepreneurs and startup enthusiasts. Budget-friendly tips: TC Early Stage […]

While companies have embraced the offerings of software-as-a-service companies with growing vigor, getting those new offerings to work in a seamless way from the outset isn’t so easy, with some business customers feeling forgotten as soon as the digital ink dries. Enter Onboard, a 10-month-old startup that aims to help SaaS businesses delight those new […]

The creator movement has exploded in the last few years as platforms ranging from Substack to Clubhouse have made it easier than ever to reach an audience of willing readers and listeners. Yet the key to building sustainable creator businesses is the economics of these enterprises themselves. Get enough subscribers, and what often starts as […]

After working as a general manager for Uber in Nevada, Jason Radisson realized the need for a way to connect blue-collar workers to companies looking to employ them. So in late 2018, the idea for Shift One — a marketplace aimed at pairing workers and employers — was born. The startup is focused on last-mile […]

Knoq (formerly known as Polis) was a startup that recruited representatives to go door-to-door in their neighborhoods, talking up client products and services. So for obvious reasons, it faced challenges in 2020. “We stopped knocking on doors in February, and this summer, we were trying to figure out what the path forward was,” founder and […]

Metropolis is a new Los Angeles-based startup that’s looking to compete with BMW-owned ParkMobile for a slice of the automated parking lot management market. Upgrading parking with a computer vision-based system that recognizes cars as they enter and leave garages has been Metropolis’ mission since founder and chief executive Alex Israel first formed the business […]

One of the new space startups with the loftiest near-term goals has raised $130 million in a Series B round that demonstrates investor confidence in the scope of its ambitions: Axiom Space, which has been tapped by NASA to add privately developed space station modules to the ISS, announced the new funding led by C5 […]

This morning Citadel ID announced a combined $3.5 million raise for its income and employment verification service. The startup provides an API to customer companies, allowing them to rapidly verify details of consumer employment. The capital came from a blend of venture firms and angels. On the firm side, Abstract and Soma VC were in […]

A new breed of startups is acquiring and growing small but promising third-party merchants, and building out their own economies of scale. And while there are a number of such startups based in the U.S. and Europe, none had emerged in the Latin American market. Until now. Valoreo, a Mexico City-based acquirer of e-commerce businesses, […]

The hodl-crew are having quite the moment as bitcoin passed the $50,000 mark earlier today for the first time. Data pegs the peak at just over $50,500. The price of bitcoin, the world’s best-known cryptocurrency, has historically proven a reasonable proxy for consumer interest in the cryptocurrency space, and for trading activity amongst blockchain-based assets. […]

Pex, a startup aiming to give rightsholders more control over how their content is used and reused online, has raised $57 million in new funding. The round comes from existing investors including Susa Ventures and Illuminate Ventures, as well as Tencent, Tencent Music Entertainment, the CueBall Group, NexGen Ventures Partners, Amaranthine and others. Founded in […]

Founded in late-2014, Salt Lake City-based Zencastr has become a kind of lifeline for many podcasters, as the pandemic pushed formerly in-person podcasts online. The startup is hardly a household name, but the company says it’s used by around 6% of all podcasts, based on an estimated 800,000 to 1.2 million active shows in the […]

Titan, a startup that is building a retail investment management platform aimed at millennials, has closed on $12.5 million in a Series A round led by VC heavyweight General Catalyst. A bevy of other investors put money in the round, including Sound Ventures (actor Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s VC firm), Scribble VC, Y Combinator, […]

Shared electric moped startup Revel will start offering monthly electric bike subscriptions in New York, the second new business venture the company has announced in the past several weeks. Revel said Tuesday it was expanding its product line — which until the end of January consisted only of shared mopeds — to include monthly subscriptions […]

SpaceX has launched yet another batch of Starlink satellites – a full complement of 60, the standard size for its current Falcon 9-based Starlink missions. This brings SpaceX’s total to just around 1,000 in active on orbit, taking into account the handful that were experimental or have been de-orbited to date. This follows SpaceX’s opening […]

Vikrum Aiyer, the now-former vice president of global public policy and strategic communications at Postmates, penned a memo to his former colleagues and other stakeholders in the gig economy outlining what he thinks needs to happen next in the industry. In his letter, Aiyer says “it would be a mistake for us to think that […]

The Israeli startup Redefine Meat, which has developed a manufacturing process to make plant-based proteins that more closely resemble choice cuts of beef than the current crop of hamburger-adjacent offerings, has gotten a big vote of confidence from the investment arm of one of Asia’s premier food brands.  The company has raised $29 million in […]

Indian conglomerate Tata Group has reached an agreement to acquire a majority stake in grocery delivery startup BigBasket, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The salt-to-software giant is buying over 60% stake in BigBasket, valuing the Indian startup between $1.8 billion to $2 billion, the source said, requesting anonymity as the deal is still […]

TikTok is facing a fresh round of regulatory complaints in Europe where consumer protection groups have filed a series of coordinated complaints alleging multiple breaches of EU law. The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) has lodged a complaint against the video sharing site with the European Commission and the bloc’s network of consumer protection authorities, while […]