TechCrunch Startup News

Founded almost a decade ago, Octopus Deploy has grown to serve 25,000 organizations, including Microsoft, NASA, Xero, Disney and Stack Overflow, through bootstrapping. Today the company announced its first outside investment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Zoom launched Zoom Apps and the Marketplace as a place to sell them last year, it was a big signal that the company wanted to be more than just a popular video conferencing application. It wanted to be a platform, which developers could use to build applications on top of Zoom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today Squarespace, a well-known software-and-hosting provider for SMB websites, released its S-1 filing. The company is pursuing a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange, or NYSE. It will trade under the ticker symbol “SQSP.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Level, a startup that aims to give companies a more flexible way to offer benefits to employees, has raised $27 million in a Series A funding round led by Khosla Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Operator Collective and leading angels also participated in the financing, along with previous backers First Round Capital and Homebrew. The […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meet Sunday, a new startup that is going to attract some headlines as it has raised a $24 million seed round at a $140 million post-money valuation. That’s a lot of money for a company that started just a few months ago but that’s because Sunday wants to move quickly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meet Feels, a new French startup that wants to change how dating apps work. According to the company, scrolling through photos and reading descriptions tend to be a boring experience. Feels want to improve profiles so that navigating the app feels more like watching TikTok videos or browsing stories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fintech startup N26 is launching N26 Insurance as it plans to offer insurance products that you can access from the company’s mobile app and website. The first insurance product is a smartphone insurance plan for German customers. But the startup doesn’t plan to stop there. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Banking tech startup Zeta is inching closer to the much sought-after unicorn status as it talks to investors to finalize a new round, sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. SoftBank Vision Fund 2 is in talks to lead a ~$250 million Series D round in the five-year-old startup, the sources said. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

PlexTrac, a Boise, ID-based security service that aims to provide a unified workflow automation platform for red and blue teams, today announced that it has raised a $10 million Series A funding round led by Noro-Moseley Partners and Madrona Venture Group. StageDot0 ventures also participated in this round, which the company plans to use to […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Are you 100% sure that your children are brushing their teeth properly? A New York-based startup called Willo has been working for several years on a device that should transform the tooth-brushing experience for children. Willo isn’t a new toothbrush — electric or not. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Justin Mast has a simple reason for starting his plant retail startup Bloomscape in Detroit. “This is home,” he told me. “This is where I have a really strong network and I knew I’d be able to find a lot of support.” = Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Out the window, a fire is raging — and it’s moving ever closer. Confusion. Fear. A run for the car. Roads open and then suddenly closed by authorities. Traffic jams. A fire break that stalls the flames and then suddenly the flames jump, changing direction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Practically every film production these days needs some kind of visual effects work, but independent creators often lack the cash or expertise to get that top-shelf CG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Corporate catering company Elior has acquired French startup Nestor for an undisclosed amount. Nestor originally started with a simple idea to differentiate itself from food delivery giants, such as Deliveroo, Uber Eats and others. Every day, the startup offered a single menu for lunch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

French startup Vybe has raised a $2.9 million funding round (€2.4 million) to build a challenger bank for teens. The company is currently testing its product with a soft launch. Users get a Mastercard payment card paired with an e-wallet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Realworld has a big vision — founder and CEO Genevieve Ryan Bellaire told me her goal is “simplifying adulthood.” And the New York startup has raised $3.4 million in seed funding to make it happen. Apparently that’s something Ballaire struggled with herself in her early twenties. Despite being a lawyer with an MBA, she said […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This morning, Ramp, which provides corporate cards and spend management software, announced that it has closed $115 million across two investments, the latter of which valued the company at $1.6 billion. The Information first reported that Ramp was raising new capital. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Chris McGarry, who previously led music integration at Facebook’s Oculus, is taking a new approach to bringing music into the virtual world with his startup Authentic Artists. McGarry pointed to virtual celebrities like Lil Miquela and virtual concerts like Travis Scott’s giant event in Fortnite as setting the stage for Authentic Artists. In a sense, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Plaid, a unicorn that helps connect consumers’ bank accounts to financial applications, has raised a $425 million Series D, it announced this morning. TechCrunch understands that the new capital infusion, led by Altimeter Capital, values the company at around $13.4 billion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Machine learning (ML) models are only as good as the data you feed them. That’s true during training, but also once a model is put in production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hipmunk’s founders are building a successor to their now-defunct flight search service. The startup was acquired by SAP-owned travel and expense platform Concur in 2016, and its CEO Adam Goldstein departed in 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Over the course of their careers, Alex Bovee and Paul Querna realized that while the use of SaaS apps and cloud infrastructure was exploding, the process to give employees permission to use them was not keeping up. The pair led Zero Trust strategies and products at Okta, and could see the problem firsthand. For the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Woody Sears has long been interested in storytelling. After spending several years in sales after nabbing an MBA from Pepperdine — and following the debut in 2007 of the first iPhone — he founded a storytelling app called Zuuka that built up a library of narrated and illustrated kids’ books for the iPhone and iPad. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cross-border payments startup dLocal has raised $150 million at a $5 billion valuation, less than seven months after securing $200 million at a $1.2 billion valuation. This means that the five-year-old Uruguayan company has effectively quadrupled its valuation in a matter of months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While several tech companies are opting to delay their IPOs in the face of less-than-enthusiastic market demand for their shares, real estate tech company Compass forged ahead and went public today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

mmhmm, the software that allows folks to personalize their appearance on video chat, has today announced that its introducing usage-based enterprise accounts. In a conversation with TechCrunch, founder and CEO Phil Libin said this is a natural evolution, remarking that mmhmm has had hundreds of registrations from users all at the same company. “It was […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meet Leeway, a French startup that is building an end-to-end software-as-a-service solution for your contracts. Leeway lets you centralize all your contracts in a single repository, go through multiple negotiation steps and trigger a DocuSign event for the signature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As companies embrace the use of data, hiring more data scientists, a roadblock persists around sharing that data. It requires too much copying and pasting and manual work. Hex, a new startup, wants to change that by providing a way to dispense data across the company in a streamlined and elegant way. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Otrium has raised a $120 million round just a year after raising its $26 million Series B round. BOND and returning investor Index Ventures are leading the round. Existing investor Eight Roads Ventures is also participating. The concept behind Otrium is quite simple. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the biggest pain points for startups and small businesses is keeping up with back office tasks such as bookkeeping and managing taxes. QuickBooks, it seems, just doesn’t always cut it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Another proptech is considering raising capital through the public arena. Knock confirmed Monday that it is considering going public, although CEO Sean Black did not specify whether the company would do so via a traditional IPO, SPAC merger or direct listing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This morning Bunch announced that it has closed a total of $4.4 million in seed capital, including a new $1 million infusion this week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meet Singular, a new VC firm based in Paris that just finished raising its initial fund. The firm was founded by two former Alven partners — Raffi Kamber and Jérémy Uzan. They have some ambitious goals and an interesting investment model that could help them remain involved even during late-stage rounds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While new headless commerce platforms are emerging all the time, Swell CEO Eric Ingram told me that it remains “really hard to do something new in e-commerce.” Specifically, he told me that most headless platforms (which offer back-end infrastructure separate from the front-end shopping experience) allow businesses to build a faster shopping experience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Design and marketing consultancy R/GA is expanding its Venture Studios program with the launch of a new Coalition Venture Studio focused specifically on supporting Black-led and Black-owned startups. The initiative is led by R/GA Entrepreneur in Residence Davyeon Ross, a Black entrepreneur who founded sports analytics company ShotTracker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This morning CoScreen, a startup that helps teams share screens and collaborate in real-time, formally launched its product to market. It also disclosed that it has raised $4.6 million to date. Unusual Ventures led its Seed round. Till Pieper, CoScreen’s co-founder and CEO told TechCrunch in an interview that it raised the bulk of its […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pie Insurance, a startup offering workers’ compensation insurance to small businesses, announced this morning that it has closed on $118 million in a Series C round of funding. Allianz X — investment arm of German financial services giant Allianz — and Acrew Capital co-led the round. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You might expect that a startup that makes community building software would be thriving during a pandemic when it’s so difficult for us to be together. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Neighbor, which operates a self-storage marketplace, announced Wednesday that it has raised $53 million in a Series B round of funding. Fifth Wall led the financing, which notably also included participation from returning backer Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and new investors DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and StockX CEO Scott Cutler. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Y Combinator’s latest batch — W21 — features 350 startups from 41 nations. 50% of the firms, the highest percentage to date, in the new batch are based outside of the United States. India is the second largest demographic represented in the new batch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With Y Combinator Demo Day kicking off tomorrow morning, startups in the current batch are hurrying to make a little news before they show off their recent growth to investors. The list includes Runway, Mono, Pangea and Flux. Add Chums to the mix. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Teamflow, founded by ex-Uber manager Flo Crivello, has raised an $11 million Series A just three months after raising a $3.9 million seed for its virtual HQ platform. The latest round in the startup was led by Battery Ventures, with Menlo Ventures leading its previous financing event. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s clear that automated workflow tooling has become increasingly important for companies. Perhaps that explains why Camunda, a Berlin startup that makes open source process automation software, announced an €82 million Series B today. That translates into approximately $98 million U.S. Insight Partners led the round with help from A round investor Highland Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Vega, a startup that is building a decentralized protocol for creating and trading on derivatives markets, has raised $5 million in funding. Arrington Capital and Cumberland DRW co-led the round, which also included participation from Coinbase Ventures, ParaFi Capital, Signum Capital, CMT Digital, CMS Holdings, Three Commas and a slew of others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For small and mid-sized restaurants in Nigeria and most of Africa, food procurement can be a complex process to manage. The system is such that a business can easily run out of money or have considerable savings. Most restaurants don’t have access to deal directly with farms to get better deals because they lack the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Existing remote desktop solutions like LogMeIn and TeamViewer can be complicated to set up and use, and can feel dated. A new startup called Cohere, now backed by $3.1 million in seed funding, aims to improve on the remote desktop and screen-sharing experience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Five years ago, entrepreneur Dan Sommer bet big on the adult learning space when he was building out Trilogy Education, an online and in-person bootcamp in collaboration with universities to train workforces on the latest tech skills. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When we think about getting access to an application, we tend to focus on the authentication side — granting or denying people (or devices) entry. But there is another piece to this, and that’s authorization. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It was easy to wonder what would become of Docker after it sold its enterprise business in 2019, but it regrouped last year as a cloud native container company focused on developers, and the new approach appears to be bearing fruit. Today, the company announced a $23 million Series B investment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Noogata, a startup that offers a no-code AI solution for enterprises, today announced that it has raised a $12 million seed round led by Team8, with participation from Skylake Capital. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices