TechCrunch Startup News

Caper wants to deliver a major update to the self checkout aisle without keeping its dreaded catchphrases, i.e. “Unknown item in the bagging area,” “Please place the item in the bag.” The New York startup is tapping some of Silicon Valley’s more recognizable VC firms to fund their dreams for a shopping cart of the future that uses computer vision and other sensors to let shoppers quickly scan items as they drop them into their carts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Former New York Yankees all star Alex Rodriguez is racking up quite an impressive batting average in his new career as an investor and has added Fitplan to his roster of portfolio companies. The Los Angeles-based workout app launched by Landon Hamilton and Cam Speck has closed on $4.5 million led by A-Rod and Corazon Capital, and has added new celebrity athlete trainers — including Rodriguez — to cover the needs of would-be sports stars and interested amateurs alike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pagerduty‘s CEO Jennifer Tejada and Box co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie both guided their companies to successful IPOs, with Box going public in 2015 and Pagerduty listing its stocks only a few months ago. Both of them will join us on the first day of TechCrunch Disrupt SF on October 2 to talk about their experiences in getting their companies to this point and managing the changes that come with being a public company. It took both companies about ten years to get to their IPOs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Superside, a startup aiming to create a premium alternative to the existing crowdsourced design platforms, is announcing that it has raised $3.5 million in new funding. It’s also adding new features like the ability to work on user interfaces, interaction design and motion graphics. Co-founder and CEO Fredrik Thomassen said this allows the company to offer “a full-service design solution.” You may have heard about Superside under its old name Konsus . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey European startup fans, Disrupt Berlin 2019 takes place on 11-12 December, but our super early-bird ticket pricing won’t last nearly that long. You have just three days left to save up to €600. Pay close attention to the deadline and buy your Disrupt passes by 11:59 p.m. (CEST) on 6 September. You’ll save even more money if you act quickly enough and combine the super early bird price with our group discounts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is perhaps best known for his acting across films like 10 Things I Hate About You, 500 Days of Summer, and Snowden. But times weren’t always peachy for Gordon-Levitt as a creative. After leaving the movie business to go to college, he realized the limits of the industry on his potential as a creative. He decided he wanted to take his creativity into his own hands and launched a message board where he’d post films, songs, etc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

India’s Oyo said on Monday it has acquired Copenhagen-based data science firm Danamica as the fast-growing lodging startup works to expand its business in Europe. Neither of the parties disclosed financial terms of the deal, but a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that Oyo paid about $10 million to acquire the Danish firm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Juul Labs, the e-cigarette behemoth partially owned by Altria, has today announced a new POS age-verification system that it will require all Juul retailers to comply with by May 2021. The Retail Access Control Standards program, or RACS for short, raises the standard for age-restricted POS systems, automatically locking the POS each time a Juul product is scanned until a valid, adult ID is scanned. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The future is female and all you fierce female founders have one last shot at receiving 30 minutes of face time with some of the industry’s leading female funders. Say what now? We’re talking the All Raise “ask me anything” (AMA) sessions at Disrupt SF 2019 — and applications close tomorrow, August 30. All Raise, a startup nonprofit focused on accelerating female founder success, will host a day-long AMA event on October 3 at Disrupt SF 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At a time when the industry appears to bet that AI will replace most human jobs, starting with the tens of millions currently residing in call centers, one startup is working to use the same technology to empower the jobs it is pegged to displace. VoiceOps, a San Francisco-based startup, today announced it has raised $9 million in a Series A financing round led by Bain Capital Ventures. Existing investors Accel and Y Combinator also participated in the round. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This post goes out to a special group of early-stage hardware startup founders — the procrastinators, the vacillators and the last-minute decision-makers. You have just 24 hours left to submit your application to compete in the Hardware Battlefield at TC Shenzhenon November 11-12. The application window closes at precisely 11:59 p.m. (PT) on August 28. Apply right here, right now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Stylitics, a startup powering outfit-based shopping recommendations for online retailers, is announcing that it has raised $15 million in Series B funding. The company was initially known for ClosetSpace, a mobile app that provided consumers with outfit recommendations and inspiration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

DoorDash announced last month that it would be changing its controversial tipping model. Today it’s revealing the basics of how the new system will work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lasst die Spiele beginnen, startup founders — let the games begin! In case you haven’t heard, the application window for the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt Berlin 2019 is wide open and waiting for you. Don’t miss the chance to launch your early-stage startup on an international stage in front of some of tech’s most influential movers and shakers. Grab this opportunity and apply to compete today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After his tenure as Chief Scientist at Baidu, Andrew Ng, the founder of the Google Brain project and former CEO of Coursera, set up a number of different proejcts that all focus on making AI more approachable. These include the education startup Deeplearning.ai, the AI Fund startup studio for building AI companies and Landing.ai, which helps enterprises (and especially manufacturing companies) use AI. Today, Ng announced that he has opened a second office for these projects in Medellin, Colombia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Superlatives abound at Cerebras, the until-today stealthy next-generation silicon chip company looking to make training a deep learning model as quick as buying toothpaste from Amazon. Launching after almost three years of quiet development, Cerebras introduced its new chip today — and it is a doozy. The “Wafer Scale Engine” is 1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

H20.ai‘s mission is to democratize AI by providing a set of tools that frees companies from relying on teams of data scientists. Today it got a bushel of money to help. The company announced a $72.5 million Series D round led by Goldman Sachs and Ping An Global Voyager Fund. Previous investors Wells Fargo, NVIDIA and Nexus Venture Partners also participated. Under the terms of the deal, Jade Mandel from Goldman Sachs will be joining the H2O.ai Board. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Huron founder and CEO Matt Mullenax is hoping to build a big business around body wash. “For us, the broader mission is A+ personal care for guys everywhere — not just guys in New York or guys in the Bay Area or guys in Los Angeles,” he said. The startup has raised $1 million in seed funding from RXBAR founders Peter Rahal and Jared Smith, CXT Investments, and Lean Luxe founder M. Paul Munford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Is there room for another social media platform? ShareChat, a four-year-old social network in India that serves tens of million of people in regional languages, just answered that question with a $100 million financing round led by global giant Twitter . Other than Twitter, TrustBridge Partners, and existing investors Shunwei Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SAIF Capital, India Quotient and Morningside Venture Capital also participated in the Series D round of ShareChat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, announced today that it will launch an open blockchain project called Venus to develop regional stablecoins pegged to fiat currencies (or traditional currencies usually issued and backed by a government). Based in Malta, Binance launched its decentralized trading service, Binance Chain, earlier this year, and since then has issued stablecoins pegged to Bitcoin and the British pound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

UrbanStems is announcing that it has raised $12 million in Series B funding. CEO Seth Goldman told me the startup has already been using the money to expand nationally. He explained that UrbanStems now has two delivery models — there are bike couriers who deliver plants and flowers within two hours in New York City and Washington, D.C. (where the company is headquartered), and then there’s a third-party shipping partner who offers next-day delivery to anywhere else in the United States. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Holy hardware, startup founders! You have only 24 hours left to apply to the Hardware Battlefield at TC Shenzhenon November 11-12. This hardware-only pitch competition, cousin to TechCrunch’s world-renown Startup Battlefield, is a real game-changer. Got hardware? Want to launch on a world stage? Do. Not. Delay. Apply to compete in TC Hardware Battlefield 2019 before 11:59pm on August 14th. What’s in it for you? Excellent question. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What happens when two former spies meet the startup world? We’re about to find out. We’re pleased to announce former National Security Agency director Adm. Mike Rogers will be at Disrupt SF on October 2-4. The former U.S. intelligence head oversaw the shadowy agency during one of its most tumultuous times in its history in the aftermath of the massive leak of classified documents by whistleblower Edward Snowden. He also oversaw the Pentagon’s cyberwar-fighting division, U.S. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Would you rent out your living room for a few hours? This startup is counting on it Recharge, a startup that tried convincing hotels to let its customers rent their rooms by the hour and even minute, has revamped and rebranded. Now Globe, the company is hoping to convince guests to sign up for short stays instead in people’s homes so that they can kick back between other commitments, and, if the host allows it, to shower and nap. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Postmates plans to make its IPO paperwork public in September, TechCrunch has learned. Despite previous reports indicating the on-demand delivery company is seeking an M&A exit, sources close to the matter say Postmates is on track to go complete an initial public offering this year. With the S-1 dropping in September, San Francisco-based Postmates is expected to debut on the stock exchange by the end of the third fiscal quarter of 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ro, a two-year-old startup known for its online pharmacy of men’s health products, has named BuzzFeed’s Todd Levy its chief technology officer. Levy first joined BuzzFeed in 2014 as the digital media company’s vice president of engineering; he was named CTO in 2016. Prior to BuzzFeed, Levy co-founded and led link management tool bit.ly. Levy begins his new role Wednesday, August 14. We’ve reached out to BuzzFeed for comment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Small satellite launch startup Vector has indefinitely shut down operations “in response a major change in financing,” the company confirmed. Co-founder and CEO Jim Cantrell has also been cut loose as part of the upset. The news comes as a surprise to the space startup community, and apparently to its employees. The company lined up $70 million in funding late last year, and recently was announced as a qualified contestant in DARPA’s Launch Challenge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Considering its unparalleled success, it was only a matter of time before a Brex copycat emerged. Ramp Financial, a new startup led by Capital One-acquired Paribus founders Eric Glyman and Karim Atiyeh (pictured), has raised $7 million, TechCrunch has learned. The capital came from Keith Rabois of Founders Fund, BoxGroup’s Adam Rothenberg and Coatue Management, a hedge fund that recently launched a $700 million early-stage investment vehicle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gaming continues to grow in popularity, with esports revenue growing 23 percent from last year to top $1 billion in 2019. But the metrics by which talent is evaluated in gaming, and the methods by which gamers can train to better hone their craft, are varied and at times non-existent. That’s where StateSpace, and specifically the company’s gaming arm Klutch, come into play. In 2017, Statespace launched out of stealth with their first product, Aim Lab. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cockroach Labs, makers of CockroachDB, sits in a tough position in the database market. On one side, it has traditional database vendors like Oracle, and on the other there’s AWS and its family of databases. It takes some good technology and serious dollars to compete with those companies. Cockroach took care of the latter with a $55 million Series C round today. The round was led by Altimeter Capital and Tiger Global along with existing investor GV. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If enterprise software makes your entrepreneurial heart beat faster, you do not want to miss TC Sessions: Enterprise 2019 on September 5 in San Francisco. And if you really want to make your heart sing, buy an early-bird ticket and save $100. But act quickly, because that deal disappears in just 48 hours on August 9 at 11:59 p.m. (PT). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Shouting out to all the fierce female founders. Have you applied to participate in theAll Raise“ask me anything” (AMA) sessions atDisrupt SF 2019? No? Women, it’s time to act. Apply for an AMA session by the August 30 deadline and you could win a free Expo Only Pass. You heard that right. We have 30 free Expo Only passes, and we’ll give them away at random to women founders who get accepted to the All Raise program at Disrupt SF 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’re still in the hunt for innovative early-stage hardware startup founders. And by that, we mean boundary-pushers, exceptional disrupters and all-around game-changers. If that sounds like you, you still have time to apply to compete in Hardware Battlefield at TC Shenzhenon November 11-12. Don’t miss your chance to compete in our epic, hardware-focused pitch competition. Apply to TC Hardware Battlefield 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cybereason, which uses machine learning to increase the number of endpoints a single analyst can manage across a network of distributed resources, has raised $200 million in new financing from SoftBank Group and its affiliates. It’s a sign of the belief that SoftBank has in the technology, since the Japanese investment firm is basically doubling down on commitments it made to the Boston-based company four years ago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Monzo says it wasn’t storing ‘some’ customer PINs correctly, but has now fixed the bug Monzo, the fast-growing challenger U.K. challenger bank that recently soft-launched in the U.S., is disclosing a potential, albeit relatively limited, security oversight that saw customer PINs stored incorrectly within the company’s internal systems. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There’s nothing like having a pair of fresh, unique sneakers. Limited-release culture facilitates some of that, but The Custom Movement hopes to make originality and self-expression via sneakers more accessible to the masses. The Custom Movement, a custom sneaker startup backed by Y Combinator, enables independent artists to sell their one-of-a-kind sneaker designs to those who want highly unique Nikes, Vans, Timberlands or any other brand of shoe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Secure your seat to Disrupt Berlin now and pay later Sonderangebot! That sounds like a super-cool robotics startup you’d find at Disrupt Berlin 2019, right? But it’s German for special offer — and that’s super cool, too. Our premier tech conference takes place on 11-12 December, and we want to make attending Disrupt Berlin as easy on the budget as possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Direct-to-consumer plant retailer Bloomscape has raised $7.5 million in Series A funding, with several high-profile D2C startup founders signing on as investors. Founder and CEO Justin Mast told me that his family has five generations of experience as greenhouse owners and operators, and that he first tried to get Bloomscape off the ground more than a decade ago. Since then, Mast has worked at other startups, but he said, “Bloomscape was the one that got away. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

UrbanClap, a startup that offers home services across India and UAE, has raised $75 million to expand its business. The Series E round for the four-and-half-year-old Gurgaon-based startup was led Tiger Global. Existing investors Steadview Capital, which led the startup’s Series D round, and Vy Capital also participated in the round. The startup has raised about $185 million to date, according to Crunchbase. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Forget the village, people. It takes an army to make TechCrunch Disrupt the well-oiled experience that savvy start-uppers have come to know and love. And we couldn’t do it nearly as well without our incredible volunteers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Got hardware? Well then, listen up, because our search continues for boundary-pushing, early-stage hardware startups to join us in Shenzhen, China for an epic opportunity; launch your startup on a global stage and compete in Hardware Battlefield at TC Shenzhenon November 11-12. Apply here to compete in TC Hardware Battlefield 2019. Why? It’s your chance to demo your product to the top investors and technologists in the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Low code programming is supposed to make things easier on companies, right? Low code means you can count on trained administrators instead of more expensive software engineers to handle most tasks, but like any issue solved by technology, there are always unintended consequences. While running his former company, Steelbrick, which he sold to Salesforce in 2015 for $360 million, Max Rudman identified a persistent problem with low-code deployments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Launch vehicles and their enormous rocket engines tend to receive the lion’s share of attention when it comes to space-related propulsion, but launch only takes you to the edge of space — and space is a big place. Tesseract has engineered a new rocket for spacecraft that’s not only smaller and more efficient, but uses fuel that’s safer for us down here on the surface. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NakedPoppy co-founders Jaleh Bisharat and Kimberly Shenk are an impressive duo. Bisharat, the startup’s chief executive officer, is a commanding presence and a bona fide marketing savant. The perfect compliment to Shenk, a reticent and data-focused chief product officer. Together they’re building a cosmetics startup, NakedPoppy, where people can purchase high-quality “clean” makeup, or sustainable, ethically-made and cruelty-free products produced without harmful chemicals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Another day, another mega round for a fintech startup. And this one is mega-mega. Brazil-based Nubank, which offers a suite of banking and financial services for Brazilian consumers, announced today that it has raised a $400 million Series F round of venture capital led by Woody Marshall of TCV. The growth-stage fund is best known for its investment in Netflix but has also made fintech a high priority, with over $1.5 billion in investments in the space. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Investment and stock trading app Robinhood stored some user credentials, including passwords, in plaintext on internal systems, the company revealed today. This particularly dangerous security misstep could have seriously exposed its users, though it says that it has no evidence the data was accessed improperly. Better change your password now. Sensitive data like passwords and personal information are generally kept encrypted at all times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

GDPR, the European data privacy regulations, have been in effect for over a year, but it’s still a challenge for companies to comply. Ethyca, a New York City startup, has created a solution from the ground up to help customers adhere to the regulations, and today it announced a $4.2 million investment led by IA Ventures and Founder Collective. Table Management, Sinai Ventures, Cheddar founder Jon Steinberg and Moat co-founder Jonah Goodhart also participated. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hipcamp uses technology to get people away from technology. The San Francisco-based startup provides a “people-powered platform” that unlocks access to private land for camping, glamping or just a beautiful spot to park your RV, as described by Alyssa Ravasio, founder and chief executive officer. Amid explosive growth in emerging markets, including Florida and Texas, the company has attracted a $25 million Series B investment at a valuation of $127 million. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Every employee loves receiving their paycheck. It just so happens though that paying employees can be a royal pain, what with incredibly diverse labor laws across all 50 U.S. states. While large, Fortune 500 employers have a bevy of options, from traditional firms like ADP to newer entrants like Workday, small and medium businesses (SMBs) face the brunt of the challenge — too small to be attractive to the biggest players, but still responsible for following the complexity of U.S. labor law. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

DoorDash CEO Tony Xu announced via Twitter that the company will be changing its model for compensating Dashers (a.k.a. DoorDash drivers and other delivery people). The companyfaced criticism this year its payment policies. Under the current system, a Dasher’s payment consists of a $1 base from DoorDash, the customer’s tip and — when the first two items fall below the guaranteed minimum — an additional payment boost from DoorDash. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices