TechCrunch Startup News

The TechCrunch crew has worked to keep tabs on this year’s startup accelerator classes. Conventional wisdom in startup land states that great companies are founded during more trying economic times. Well, a recession was declared yesterday by the National Bureau of Economic Research. We should, therefore, see some breakout startups in the next few years. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A startup called Portobel is working to help food producers shift their businesses so that they can support direct-to-consumer deliveries. Portobel is backed by Heroic Ventures and led by Ranjith Kumaran, founder or co-founder of file-sharing company Hightail (acquired by OpenText) and loyalty startup PunchTab (acquired by Walmart Labs). Kumaran told me that he and his […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A few days ago, the French government detailed different measures as part of its support plan for startups. France already announced a $4.3 billion (€4 billion) plan back in March. The new announcements are more about refining and adding some additional measures. The French government wanted to act quickly when it made its initial announcement […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Like many parents, Zigazoo founder Zak Ringelstein worries about his children’s screen time. His worries only grew when COVID-19 led to school shutdowns and kids came home to a world of remote learning. Now, as lockdowns extend, Ringelstein is learning to embrace screen time as a way to sneak education and entertainment into his kids’ […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Searchable.ai is an early-stage startup in the alpha phase of testing its initial product, but it has an idea compelling enough to attract investment, even during a pandemic. Today the company announced an additional $4 million in seed capital to continue building its AI-driven search solution. Susquehanna International Group and Omicron Media co-led the round […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Electric-bike maker Cowboy has released a new iteration of its bike, the Cowboy 3. It’s a relatively small update that should make the experience better for newcomers. The first orders will be delivered at the end of July and the Cowboy 3 is now slightly more expensive at €2,290 or £1,990 ($2,500). The bike still […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Spotinst rebranded to Spot in March, it seemed big changes were afoot for the startup, which originally helped companies find and manage cheap infrastructure known as spot instances (hence its original name). We had no idea how big at the time. Today, NetApp announced plans to acquire the startup. The companies did not share […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There is just as much capital ready to deploy, and just as much investor interest, as there was earlier this year, but founders are still adjusting to new market conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lili, a startup building banking products to meet the needs of freelance workers, is announcing that it has raised $10 million in seed funding. The startup takes its name from its founders, CEO Lilac Bar David and CTO Liran Zelkha, who previously founded Israeli challenger bank Pepper. Bar David told me that while many neobanks have […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Overjet, a startup focused on using AI to help dentists and insurance companies understand dental scans, today announced that it has raised $7.85 million in what it describes as a seed round. According to Overjet’s CEO Wardah Inam (an MIT PhD in electrical engineering and computer science), the company raised the funds from Crosslink Capital, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Cisco bought AppDynamics in 2017 for $3.7 billion just before the IPO, the company sent a clear signal it wanted to move beyond its pure network hardware roots into the software monitoring side of the equation. Yesterday afternoon the company announced it intends to buy another monitoring company, this time snagging internet monitoring solution […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When this editor first met Jeremy Conrad, it was in 2014, at the 8,000-square-foot former fish factory that was home to Lemnos, a hardware-focused venture firm that Conrad had cofounded three years earlier. Conrad —Â who as a mechanical engineering undergrad at MIT worked on self driving cars, drones and satellites — was still excited […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fintech’s funding boom for the past decade has led to a flurry of new consumer startups tackling a wide range of money-related issues, from saving apps to investing platforms. Should you download Robinhood, Stash, Public, Acorns, or Truebill? The fintech craze creates confusion for consumers when it comes to figuring out which startup is the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Vast monoculture farms outstripped the ability of bee populations to pollinate them naturally long ago, but the techniques that have arisen to fill that gap are neither precise nor modern. Israeli startup BeeHero aims to change that by treating hives both as living things and IoT devices, tracking health and pollination progress practically in real […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We may be in the thick of a pandemic with all of the economic fallout that comes from that, but certain aspects of technology don’t change no matter the external factors. Storage is one of them. In fact, we are generating more digital stuff than ever, and Wasabi, a Boston-based startup that has figured out […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gogoro, the mobility company best known for its SmartScooters, revealed details about its new ebike brand Eeyo today. Eeyo will launch with two lightweight models, both powered by the SmartWheel, a self-contained hub designed by the company that integrates motors, batteries, sensors and smart connectivity technology. Eeyo is the first product that Gogoro will introduce […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Austin Soldner and Michael Schaecher, the co-founders of the new sunglasses brand Futuremood, met at the newly formed San Francisco research and development lab created by the high end audio tech developer Bose. The two were tasked with working on Bose’s sunglasses wearable and bonded over a shared interest in sneakers and fashion. Over many […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Student loans are both a trillion-dollar debt category and also one of the most popular mini-verticals out there in fintech startup investing right now. There are dozens if not hundreds of companies in the space, and they all mostly do one of two things: either they help students think through their student loan options before […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As AI has grown from niche to mission-critical technology, the companies that enable it have multiplied and in many cases prospered. A good example of that success is DefinedCrowd, which has gone from the Disrupt stage to globe-spanning AI toolkit to the Fortune 500 in just a couple years. The company just raised a new […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tax-advantaged benefits, like flexible spending accounts, can save employees in the United States thousands of dollars annually, and reduce the amount of payroll taxes companies pay. But those benefits are often underutilized, simply because they can be confusing to navigate. Benepass wants to make the process easier with a mobile app that centralizes all of […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The novel coronavirus disease has reminded millions that handwashing is a great way to avoid preventable diseases. Christine Schindler, the CEO and co-founder of PathSpot, has been preparing for the past three months for the past three years. “I’ve been obsessed with handwashing,” Schindler said, who has a background in biomedical engineering and public health. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Statespace has today raised a $15 million Series A financing round led by Khosla, with partner Samir Kaul joining the board. Existing investors, such as FirstMark Capital, Lux and Expa, also participated in the round, as well as newcomer June Fund. Statespace launched out of stealth in 2017 with a product called Aim Lab, which […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Search-as-a-service startup Algolia is announcing some changes at the helm of the startup. Co-founder and CEO Nicolas Dessaigne is transitioning to a non-operational role at the company. He’ll still be a board member, but Bernadette Nixon is joining the company to take on the CEO position. Algolia is building a search engine API. The company […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Can eVTOL vehicles be green? Specifically, can eVTOL vehicles be more energy-efficient than cars? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When I spoke to Robert Ross, CEO and co-founder at FireHydrant last week, we had a technology adventure. First the audio wasn’t working correctly on Zoom, then Google Meet. Finally we used cell phones to complete the interview. It was like a case study in what FireHydrant is designed to do — help companies manage […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Argent is launching the first public version of its Ethereum wallet for iOS and Android. The company has been available as a limited beta for a few months with a few thousand users. But it has already raised a seed and a Series A round with notable investors, such as Paradigm, Index Ventures, Creandum and […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Notion, a popular note-taking and wiki-creation app, revamped their personal pricing plans today stripping many of the user limitations from the free tier, bringing it on par with the functionality offered by the $5 per month paid plan of yore. The company’s previous free tier had a fairly low usage limit (1,000 “blocks,” which are […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Electric, the platform that puts the IT department in the cloud, has today announced new funding following a continuation of its Series B earlier this year. Dick Costolo and Adam Bain (01 Advisors) and the Slack Fund participated in the $7 million capital infusion. 01 Advisors put up the majority of the financing ($6 million) […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Users are reporting that stock trading platforms Robinhood and Etrade are not working on a day that’s seem stock markets soar. Neither company acknowledged immediate outages with their platforms. Robinhood’s status page says all systems are “operational,” but its website crashed on loading, stating: “An internal error occured! [sic].” After weeks of turbulent markets largely driven […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

French startup Angell has signed a wide-ranging partnership with SEB, the French industrial company behind All-Clad, Krups, Moulinex, Rowenta, Tefal and others. As part of the deal, SEB will manufacture Angell’s electric bikes in a factory in Is-sur-Tille near Dijon, France. SEB’s investment arm, SEB Alliance, is also investing in Angell . The terms of […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Atlassian announced today that it was acquiring Halp, an early stage startup that enables companies to build integrated help desk ticketing and automated answers inside Slack. The companies did not disclose the purchase price. It was a big day for Halp, which also announced its second product today called Halp Answers. The new tool will […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As we move through life in the pandemic, companies are being forced to review and understand how workflows happen. How do you distribute laptops to your workforce? How do you make sure everyone has the correct tool set? FortressIQ, a startup that wants to help companies use data to understand and improve internal processes, announced […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As millions of students and teachers shift to learn from home in response to the novel coronavirus disease, modern-day flashcard business Quizlet has raised $30 million in a Series C round led by General Atlantic. Quizlet’s chief executive officer Matthew Glotzbach said that the new funding values the business at $1 billion, up five times […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

LeoLabs has been building out its global network of space-scanning radars for the last couple years, leading up to today’s launch of its Collision Avoidance system, essentially satellite-monitoring-as-a-service. It should prove an indispensable asset to startups that don’t happen to have their own state of the art radar setup. Space is full of junk, and […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Target Global is backing a €1 million support fund for tech talent in Spain laid off or furloughed as a result of the coronavirus crisis. The aim is to provide pre-seed financing to help crisis-hit tech workers switch gears and build out a startup concept over the next four to six months, covering living expenses […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alon Gilady, CEO of RenovAI, told me his startup is trying to solve the problem that many of us face when we’re moving into a new home — we aren’t interior designers, but we can’t afford to hire real designers, either. Apparently Gilady’s co-founder and vice president of products Alon Chelben had this issue himself […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The retirement wars are heating up. As millions of baby boomers leave their jobs in the coming years and transition into retirement, there is a huge competition for who will manage their savings. On one hand are traditional wealth managers, firms like Edward Jones, who either employ full-time human financial advisors or empower independent contractors […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After investigative reporting revealed his undisclosed involvement in shooting at a synagogue with KKK members at age 17, the CEO of Banjo will leave the company he founded. In a short blog post, the company announced a “change in leadership” and the resignation of its founder and CEO Damien Patton. The Utah-based company will transition […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’re not letting this pandemic disrupt Disrupt SF 2020. Like any determined early-stage startup founder, we’re adapting and moving forward. Can’t join us in person on September 14 – 16? No problem. Take advantage of Digital Startup Alley, a completely new way to disrupt. Place your startup in front of influential movers and shakers and […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Imagine a model of collaborative research and development among hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, universities and other research institutions where no one shared any actual data. That’s the dream of the new New York-based startup Owkin, which has raised $25 million in fresh financing from investors, including Bpifrance Large Venture, Cathay Innovation and MACSF (the French Pension […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sleuth, an early stage startup from three former Atlassian employees, wants to bring some much-needed order to the continuous delivery process. Today, the company announced it has raised a $3 million seed round. ​CRV led the round with participation from angel investors from New Relic, Atlassian and LaunchDarkly. “Sleuth is a deployment tracker built to […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Savings and investing apps are having a moment. While many startups are struggling in the wake of COVID-19 and its economic impacts, services that help regular folks save a bit more or invest their funds are seeing a demand boom. Coming into 2020 on the back of a huge fundraising year for the fintech cohort, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Assembly” may sound like one of the simpler tests in the manufacturing process, but as anyone who’s ever put together a piece of flat-pack furniture knows, it can be surprisingly (and frustratingly) complex. Invisible AI is a startup that aims to monitor people doing assembly tasks using computer vision, helping maintain safety and efficiency — […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wunderlist is going away, but fans of the productivity app may find some consolation in founder Christian Reber’s announcement that he is launching a new startup called Superlist. “Superlist will be more than just a todo app, but never as bloated as the project management software you loathe to use,” he tweeted. “Slick, fast, and […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Burst Oral Care, a startup that sells an electric toothbrush boasting charcoal bristles and 33,000 sonic vibrations per minute, has raised a Series C of undisclosed size. Although we don’t know the amount of the round, the Series C was led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, and Burst says it more than doubled the valuation […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Treasury Prime, a startup that built software tooling to help banks automate and accelerate routine tasks, announced today that it has closed a $9 million Series A. The new capital was sourced from Amias Gerety of QED, Jason Lemkin of SaaStr, and Hans Morris of NYCA Partners. The capital event is yet another funding round […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cockroach Labs, the NYC enterprise database company, announced an $86.6 million Series D funding round today. The company was in no mood to talk valuations, but was happy to have a big chunk of money to help build on its recent success and ride out the current economic malaise. Altimeter Capital and Bond co-led the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As expected, Robinhood has closed a new round of capital. The late-stage, consumer investing app announced today that it has closed a $280 million Series F funding at an $8.3 billion valuation. This closely tracks prior coverage that the firm was hunting for a nine-figure round at a valuation of around $8 billion. Robinhood raised […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The optimism that confounded many in April may be slipping in May, as stocks fell during Friday’s trading session and are down again this morning. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite is off 0.55% this morning, putting it 13% off its record highs set this year, but also up 29% from its 52-week lows it set directly […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices