As I interviewed founders about the most valuable learning resources that allowed them to grow into the leaders they are today, I realized that many leaned heavily on carefully-crafted approaches to asking questions.
Democratized access to startups yields more opportunity for investors to find ventures that align with their values while diversifying their profiles can provide tremendous results.
More Spotify podcasts could soon become TV shows or movies thanks to a new, multi-year partnership announced today between the streaming music provider and film and television production company, Chernin Entertainment. The agreement will allow Chernin to identify and adapt film and TV shows from Spotify’s library of over 250 original podcast series, totaling thousands […]
Greenlight Financial Technology, the fintech company that pitches parents on kid-friendly bank accounts, has raised $215 million in a new round of funding. The round gives the Atlanta-based startup a $1.2 billion valuation thanks to backing from Canapi Ventures, TTV Capital, BOND, DST Global, Goodwater Capital and Fin VC. It’s a huge win for the […]
Roli is cool startup that makes fascinating music products. The Seaboard led the way, with a clever take on the keyboard that allowed players to bend notes like guitar strings. Blocks were even more fascinating — the modular light pads offered innovative control for electronic music makers. As a music fan with no discernible skills […]
During the week’s news cycle one particular bit of reporting slipped under our radar: Root Insurance is tipped by Reuters to be prepping an IPO that could value the neo-insurance provider at around $6 billion. Coming after two 2020 insurtech IPOs, Root’s steps toward the public markets are not surprising. But they are good news […]
With the employment market remaining sluggish as the world continues to struggle with Covid-19, a company that has built its popular businesses largely around recruitment is launching a redesign that pushes engagement in other ways as it waits for the job economy to pick up. LinkedIn, the Microsoft-owned site now with 706 million registered users, […]
Cryptocurrency meets carbon trading. That’s the pitch from Nori, a new Seattle-based startup, that just raised $4 million in funding from cryptocurrency focused investors including Placeholder, North Island Ventures, Tenacious Ventures, and a big, privately held agriculture multinational that the company declined to disclose. Founded by Paul Gambill, a former Deloitte Technology employee who left […]
Bangalore-based Rephrase.ai has an ambitious vision for reshaping how movies and videos are made. CEO Ashray Malhotra laid it out for me yesterday, saying that his co-founder Nisheeth Lahoti “came up with this concept — he wants to build an engine that can take any script as input and create a professional movie,” no filming […]
Climate change is on everyone’s minds these days, what with the outer Bay Area on fire, orange skies above San Francisco, and a hurricane season that is bearing down on the East Coast with alacrity (and that’s just the United States in the past two weeks). A major — and growing — source of those […]
Whitebox, a startup that manages e-commerce logistics and fulfillment for a variety for brands, has raised $18 million in Series B funding. While discussing the new funding, CEO Marcus Startzel repeated a point he made after Whitebox raised its $5 million Series A last year — that the startup is differentiated by combining tools for […]
Bowery Farming has added to its executive team as it expands its retail footprint to 650 stores, the company said. From three indoor farms in Kearny, N.J. and Nottingham, Md., the New York-based company is pitching a smattering of leafy greens and herbs. Irving Fain, Bowery’s chief executive and founder declined to disclose the company’s […]
With the US presidential election now 40 days away, all eyes are focused on how online conversations, in conjunction with other hallmarks of online life like viral videos, news clips, and misleading ads, will be used, and often abused, to influence people’s decisions. But political discourse, of course, is just one of the ways that […]
Airship is announcing that it has acquired mobile commerce startup ReplyBuy. The startup (which was a finalist at TechCrunch’s 1st and Future competition in 2016) works with customers like entertainment venues and professional and college sports teams to send messages and sell tickets to fans via SMS. It raised $4 million in funding from Sand […]
Sometimes raising venture capital can be as simple as talking to your existing investor and having them wire over another check. When we last caught up with Petal in January 2019, the startup was hot off its $30 million Series B round and was accelerating its mission to take on the world of credit cards. […]
There’s still no clear path back to any sense of ‘business-as-usual’ as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, but United Airlines is embarking on a new pilot project to see if easy access to COVID-19 testing immediately prior to a flight can help ease freedom of mobility. The airline will offer COVID-19 tests (either rapid tests at […]
ShareChat, an Indian social network that focuses entirely on serving users in non-English languages, said on Thursday it has raised $40 million from a clutch of investors after the Indian startup added tens of millions of new users in recent months. The five-year-old Bangalore-based startup said Dr. Pawan Munjal, chief executive and chairman of giant […]
Within3, a collaboration and communication service for the biotech and pharma industries, has raised over $100 million in new financing, the company said. The investment came from Insight Partners with participation from Silversmith Capital Partners. Most of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies already use the Lakewood, Ohio-based company’s service to publish clinical studies, host advisory […]
Switzerland-based machine learning code review startup DeepCode — which bills itself as ‘Grammarly for coders’ — has been acquired by Snyk, a post-unicorn valuation cybersecurity startup which is focused on helping developers secure their code. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed. But the ‘big code’ parsing startup had only raised around $5.2M […]
YouTube has been relatively quiet about its strategy to battle the flow of misinformation leading into the 2020 U.S. election, but the platform has a few new measures in store. The video sharing site will begin attaching a box with vetted facts about mail-in voting on any videos that discuss the topic. The new mail-in […]
