TechCrunch Startup News

Ryan Hoover Contributor Share on Twitter Ryan Hoover is the founder of Product Hunt and host of Product Hunt Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nearly a year after German fintech startup N26 announced that it would launch its service in the U.K., the company is launching in the U.K. N26 is already quite popular in the Eurozone with over 1.5 million customers. In this new market, it will face tough competition from existing players, such as Revolut, Monzo, Starling and many others. N26 is going to roll out its product in multiple phases. Some lucky few will be able to open an account right away. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

KZen, a company run by former TC editor Ouriel Ohayon, has raised $4 million in seed to build a “better wallet,” obviously the elusive Holy Grail in the crypto world. Benson Oak Ventures, Samsung Next, Elron Ventures invested. Ohayon, who has worked at Internet Lab and founded TechCrunch France and Appsfire, wanted to create an easy-to-use crypto wallet that wouldn’t confound users. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Subscription startup Bespoke Post is creating its own brands and products for men Bespoke Post says it has more than 100,000 subscribers signed up to receive a monthly “box of awesome” (that’s what it calls its bundles of curated men’s products). Next up: Creating brands and products of its own. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

People procrastinate about buying insurance because it’s such a boring and complicated chore to compare policies. But Cover combines plans from 45 insurance companies into a single marketplace so it’s easy to find the best one for your car, home, rental, business, personal property, pets, jewelry and more. Now Cover is building powerful onboarding tricks like a driving school that earns you lower car insurance rates, and a way for Shopify merchants to sell warranties for their items. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ettitude, recently graduated from the ERA accelerator, is looking to ride the growing wave of e-commerce by offering eco-friendly sheets. The company offers bamboo lyocell sheets and pajamas, which feel like a hybrid between silk and cotton, and stay cool longer than cotton or other fabrics. Bamboo lyocell fabric is essentially organic fabric made from weaving together tiny fibers of organic bamboo material or pulp. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Serverless has become a big buzzword of late, and with good reason. It has the potential to completely alter how developers write code. They can simply write a series of event triggers, while letting the cloud vendor worry about providing whatever amount of compute resources are required to complete the job. It represents a huge shift in how programs are developed, but it’s been difficult to find companies who were built from the ground up using this methodology because it’s fairly new. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dressed in a Naruto t-shirt and a hat emblazoned with the phrase “lone wolf,” Ne-Yo slouches over in a chair inside a Holberton Schoolclassroom. The Grammy-winningrecording artist is struggling to remember the name of “that actor,” the one who’s had a successful career in both the entertainment industry and tech investing. “I learned about all the things he was doing and I thought it was great for him,” Ne-Yo told TechCrunch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cryptocurrency speculation is over. That’s why I’m excited to announce that Vinay Gupta will join us at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin to talk about cool use cases that could make blockchain projects useful, beyond financial services. Gupta worked on the initial release of Ethereum back in 2015. He contributed when it comes to project management. He then worked with the Consensys team on other cryptocurrency projects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

WndrCo, the consumer tech investment and holding company founded by longtime Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, has invested $30 million in The Infatuation, a restaurant discovery platform. The Infatuation made waves earlier this year when itpurchased Zagat from Google,which had paid $151 million for the 40-year-old company in 2011. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What happens when you bring together an entrepreneur, a product designer and an investment banker who all really love collector vehicles? You get Rally Rd., an app for buying and selling equity shares in classic cars. Launched in 2016, the company’s SEC-compliant platform lets users purchase shares in Ferraris, Porsches, Lamborghinis and other classic models for as little as $50 per share. The company says it has50,000 members that have invested millions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Six months after completing Y Combinator’s 12-week accelerator program, The Lobbyis announcing a $1.2 million investment. The startup connects job seekers to Wall Street bankers, venture capitalists and other finance“insiders” for advice and personalized career coaching. Founder and former investment banker Deepak Chhugani wants to help people who don’t come from elite backgrounds or have the network of an Ivy League graduate land high-profile finance roles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fast, healthy food is one of those concepts that just seems too good to be true. But Farmer’s Fridge, a Chicago-based startup that recently closed a $30 million Series C round led by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, aims to make that a reality. Farmer’s Fridge retrofits vending machines to serve up healthy foods — salads, sandwiches, granola, etc. — for people on the go, for anywhere from $5 to about $8. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Despite the increase in women in the U.S. workforce and public pledges from several high-profile CEOs to close the gender pay gap, women, especially working mothers, often find themselves without the resources necessary to succeed at work. Maven, a digital health startup and benefits platform focused on improving access to healthcare for women, has emerged specifically to help businesses help their female employees. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, Warby Parker and a long list of other startups of the 21st century have appointed C-level employees to roles focused exclusively on data science. These digital-age companies have established “data cultures,” which provide employees broad access to high-quality data, advocate for data literacy and have data-driven decision-making processes,according to Carl Anderson, who previously led data analytics and data science at Warby Parker and WeWork. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

French startup BlaBlaCar just released some interesting metrics. The company has reached profitability if you look at revenue between January 2018 and today. BlaBlaCar forecasts that 50 million people will book a ride on BlaBlaCar in 2018, which represents a 40 percent increase compared to 2017. BlaBlaCar is a marketplace for long-distance rides. People driving from point A to point B can find riders willing to go in the same direction to share the cost of the ride. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Renaud Laplanche spent ten years building LendingClub. In the process, he created an industry from scratch. Circumventing conventional banking channels for consumer credit began in 1996 when Chris Larsen started E-LOAN, which ultimately led to Prosper Marketplace. But LendingClub, which Laplanche founded in 2007, was and remains the poster child for the business of marketplace lending. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the days leading up to TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018, The Economist published the cover story, ‘Why Startups Are Leaving Silicon Valley.’ The author outlined reasons why the Valley has “peaked.” Venture capital investors are deploying capital outside the Bay Area more than ever before. High-profile entrepreneurs and investors,Peter Thiel, for example, have left. Rising rents are making it impossible for new blood to make a living, let alone build businesses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After repeatedly missing self-imposed deadlines for progress on its wireless charging-at-a-distance phone case, uBeam’s CEO Meredith Perry has decided to shift out of the CEO position and into a board member and senior advisor role. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s never particularly easy to raise a round of venture capital — but I think most experienced founders will tell you its not quite as bad the second or third time around, when you’ve got some experience under your belt and a track record to present to VCs. It helps if you’re male too, at least according to all the data out there on the gender funding gap in VC. The leadership team at OODA Health, a startup developing technology to make the U.S. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Everyone lovesa tale of a bootstrapped startup founder’s journey to an eight-figure exit. The team at Toronto-based Cluep have a good one. The founders of theadtech startup raised less than $500,000 from angel investors before selling their company to Impact Group for $40 million ($53 milllionCAD) this week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Leena AI, a recentY Combinator graduate focusing on HR chatbots to help employees answer questions like how much vacation time they have left, announced a $2 million seed round today from a variety of investors including Elad Gil and Snapdeal co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal. Company co-founder and CEO Adit Jain says the seed money is about scaling the company and gaining customers. They hope to have 50 enterprise customers within the next 12-18 months. They currently have 16. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mabl, a Boston-based startup from the folks who brought you Stackdriver, wants to change software testing using machine learning, and today it announced a $20 million Series B investment led by GV (formerly Google Ventures). Existing investors CRV and Amplify Partners also participated. As part of the deal, Karim Faris, general partner at GV will be joining the Mabl board. Today’s investment comes on top of a $10 million Series A announced in February. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If the whole map is red and it’s a short ride, maybe you’d prefer taking an Uber JUMP Bike instead of an UberX. Or at least if you do end up stuck bumper-to-bumper, the warning could make you less likely to get mad mid-ride and take it out on the driver’s rating. This week TechCrunch spotted Uberoverlaying blue, yellow, and red traffic condition bars on your route map before you hail. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“There’s nothing like it out there,” says Commander Bill “Doc” Shoemaker (Ret.), chief test pilot for Boom Supersonic, the startup aiming to make a passenger airliner for transoceanic flights at speeds (as you might guess from the name) faster than sound. Shoemaker, a former Navy aviator, fighter pilot and aeronautics engineer, will have the daunting privilege of being the first to fly the company’s proof of concept single-seater during tests next year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome back toEquity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. After a long run of having guests climb aboard each week, we took a pause on that front, bringing together three of our regular hosts instead: Connie Loizos, Danny Chrichton, and myself. Despite the fact that there were just three of us instead of the usual four, we got through a mountain of stuff. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Roy Raymond opened a little store called Victoria’s Secret, now one of the most popular lingerie businesses in the world, because he was embarrassed to buy lingerie for his wife in department stores. The brand was founded on the premise that men needed a safe space to buy lingerie for women and women needed a larger variety of sexy, angelic bras and other intimates to wear for men. But it’s 2018. Women, today, buy lingerie for themselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Watching the current price madness is scary. Bitcoin is falling and rising in $500 increments with regularity and Ethereum and its attendant ICOs are in a seeming freefall with a few “dead cat bounces” to keep things lively. What this signals is not that crypto is dead, however. It signals that the early, elated period of trading whose milestones including the launch of Coinbase and the growth of a vibrant (if often shady) professional ecosystem is over. Crypto still runs on hype. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Women in tech are not only significantly under-funded by venture capitalists, but they also often lack access to the early-stage support granted to their male counterparts. To enroll in a startup accelerator like Y Combinator, for example, its expected founders relocate to the Bay Area for three months. Women, who are more often caregivers, might not be able to do that, and even if they can, the program may not cater to their specific needs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Job Today gets a $16M top up as it preps for Brexit bump Accel-backed mobile-first jobs appJob Todayhas pulled in another $16M — an expansion to its November 2016 $20M Series B round. It raised a $10M Series A in January of the same year. The 2015 founded startup offers a mobile app for job seekers that does away with the need for a CV. Instead job seekers create a profile in the app and can apply to relevant jobs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meet Paysend’s global account, a new way to hold, spend and send money in multiple currencies using a mobile app and a card. It looks a lot like Revolut’s basic features. But the company is trying to provide a more focused and robust experience from day one. “We are quite different from both a technical infrastructure and consumer offering viewpoint. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Global M&A activity is flat so far in 2018 U.S. tech companies continue to be the most active acquirers in the world, says a new report from Crunchbase andMind the Bridge. The pair crunched data on 22,000 startup exits since 2010, recording about 4,200 so far this year. U.S. companies, though less active this year than last, have acquired approximately 2x more startups than their European counterparts. Overall, 2018 is a flat year for M&A activity, despite a record-setting 2017. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What happens when you add AI to food? Surprisingly, you don’t get a hungry robot. Instead you get something like PixFood. PixFood lets you take pictures of food, identify available ingredients, and, at this stage, find out recipes you can make from your larder. It is privately funded. “There are tons of recipe apps out there, but all they give you is, well, recipes,” said Tonnesson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Brian Armstrong, the CEO of cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase, wants to take his company public — maybe on the blockchain. Onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018, Armstrong dished on his ambitions for the future of Coinbase. “We are self-sustaining,” Armstrong said. “You know, we’ve been profitable for quite a while. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Branch, the deep-linking startup backed by Andy Rubin’s Playground Ventures, will enter the unicorn club with an upcoming funding round. The four-year-old company, which helps brands create links between websites and mobile apps, has authorized the sale of $129 million in Series D shares, according to sources and confirmed by PitchBook, which tracks venture capital deals. The infusion of capital values the company at roughly $1 billion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Knowing what’s going on in your warehouses and facilities is of course critical to many industries, but regular inspections take time, money, and personnel. Why not use drones? Vtrus uses computer vision to let a compact drone not just safely navigate indoor environments but create detailed 3D maps of them for inspectors and workers to consult, autonomously and in real time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meet PoLTE, a Dallas-based startup that wants to make location-tracking more efficient. Thanks to PoLTE’s software solution, logistics and shipment companies can much more easily track packages and goods. The startup is participating in TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield at Disrupt SF. If you want to use a connected device to track a package, you currently need a couple of things — a way to determine the location of the package, and a way to transmit this information over the air. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ashton Kutcher and Effie Epstein discussed their investment strategy at TechCrunch Disrupt SF. With their VC fund Sound Ventures, they invested in Bird. While they are conflicted on this topic, Kutcher had a passionate answer about scooters. Here’s a video of what he had to say: Ashton Kutcher: It's a better world if scooters like Bird take off #TCDisrupt pic.twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Unity CEO John Riccitiello came to TechCrunch Disrupt SF to give everyone an update on the world’s most popular game engine. You might not be aware that most of the games you’re playing, especially mobile games, are built using Unity. For those not familiar with game engines, Riccitiello started by describing game engines very clearly. Back in the days, “[game developers] would write out a game program that had lots of art assets, lots of animation, lots of sounds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Betaworks this morning revealed this list of six startups participating in its fourth Camp accelerator program. Launched in 2016, the program brings together a collection of young companies united under a single theme. This time out, things are focused on live-streaming, for a program fittingly titled, LiveCamp. Betaworks settled on the topic based on the popularity of apps like Twitch and HQ Trivia. It’s admittedly a bit more nebulous than past topics like BotCamp, VoiceCamp and VisionCamp. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At TechCrunch Disrupt 2018, Uber’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Bo Young Lee will be joining us to talk about the ride-sharing company’s efforts to put detoxify its corporate culture and promote a more inclusive environment for employees. Lee was hired as the company’s first chief diversity and inclusion officer this past January, after leaving insurance company Marsh LLC where she held a similar role. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spotinst, the startup that helps companies purchase and manage excess cloud infrastructure capacity, announced a hefty $35 million Series B today led by Highland Capital. Existing investors Leaders Fund, Intel Capital and Vertex Ventures also participated. Today’s round brings the total investment to over $52 million. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Datree, an early-stage startup based in Israel, wants to help companies create a set of policies for their applications, and apply them in GitHub before a commit goes live. Today, it announced $3 million in seed funding from TLV partners. The check was actually written last September, according to the founders, and they are making the investment public today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sarah Kunst has filed to raise $10 million for her debut venture capital fund, Cleo Capital. According to Axios, the firm will give cash to female entrepreneurs who will act as scouts. Scouts look for viable early-stage startups for firms to invest in and then receive a cut of the profits on the investments. Kunst, pictured above, is a scout for Sequoia; it’s unclear if that will change now that she’s running her own firm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“You can’t hack what isn’t there,” Very Good Security co-founder Mahmoud Abdelkader tells me. His startup assumes the liability of storing sensitive data for other companies, substituting dummy credit card or Social Security numbers for the real ones. Then when the data needs to be moved or operated on, VGS injects the original info without clients having to change their code. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

VMware is hosting its VMworld customer conference in Las Vegas this week, and to get things going it announced that its acquiring Boston-based CloudHealth Technologies. They did not disclose the terms of the deal, but Reuters is reporting the price is $500 million. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In tech circles, it would be easy to assume that the world of high-impact charitable giving is a rich man’s game where deals are inked at exclusive black tie galas over fancy hors d’oeuvre.Both Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Benioff have donated to SF hospitals that now bear their names. Gordon Moore has given away $5B – including $600M to Caltech – which was the largest donation to a university at the time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Moving to a new city can be tough for a number of reasons, but what’s arguably hardest about moving is a competitive and expensive housing market, and lack of a pre-existing social support network. That’s the problem startup Bungalow is trying to solve. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nylas, a startup that helps developers integrate email content into applications via an API, announced a $16 million Series B today led by Spark Capital. Other investors joining in included Slack Fund, Industry Ventures, and ScaleUp along with existing investors 8VC, Great Oaks Capital, Rubicon Capital and John Chambers’ personal fund. Today’s investment brings the total raised to $30 million. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

IoT devices currently lack a standard way of applying security. It leaves consumers, whether business or individuals, left to wonder if their devices are secure and up-to-date. Foundries.io, a company that launched today, wants to change that by offering a standard way to secure devices and deliver updates over the air. “Our mission is solving the problem of IoT and embedded space where there is no standardized core platform like Android for phones,” Foundries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices