TRACED Act signed into law, putting robocallers on notice

{rss:content:encoded} TRACED Act signed into law, putting robocallers on notice https://ift.tt/36dUyk5 https://ift.tt/2ZGUbMc December 31, 2019 at 07:22PM The Pallone-Thrune TRACED Act, a bipartisan bit of legislation that should make life harder for the villains behind robocalls, was signed into law today by the President. It’s still possible to get things done in D.C. after all! We’ve covered the TRACED Act several times previously, as robocalls are, in addition to being horribly annoying, a uniquely annoying high-tech threat. Using clever targeting...

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Counting down Boston’s biggest venture rounds from 2019

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Today, the last day of 2019, we’re taking a second look at Boston. Regular readers of this column will recall that we recently took a peek at Boston’s startup ecosystem, and that we compiled a short countdown of the largest rounds that took place this year in Utah. Today we’re doing the latter with the former. What follows is a countdown of Boston’s seven largest venture rounds from the year, including details concerning what the...

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InsightFinder get $2M seed to automate outage prevention

InsightFinder, a startup from North Carolina based on 15 years of academic research, wants to bring machine learning to system monitoring to automatically identify and fix common issues. Today, the company announced a $2 million seed round. ​IDEA Fund Partners, a VC out of Durham, North Carolina,​ led the round with participation from ​Eight Roads Ventures​ and Acadia Woods Partners. The company was founded by North Carolina State professor Helen Gu, who spent 15 years researching this problem before launching the startup in 2015. Gu also announced...

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Shipfix raises $4.5M seed for its dry cargo shipping platform

Shipfix, a relatively new startup aiming to drag the dry cargo shipping industry into the digital age, has raised $4.5 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Idinvest Partners, with participation from Kima Ventures, The Family, Bpifrance and strategic business angels. The company was founded in December 2018 by Serge Alleyne (CEO) and Antoine Grisay (COO), and launched just two months ago. “We’re trying to fix the email overload for everybody involved in the process of fixing a dry cargo ship by providing a comprehensive market monitor,”...

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In the shadow of Amazon and Microsoft, Seattle startups are having a moment

Venture capital investment exploded across a number of geographies in 2019 despite the constant threat of an economic downturn. San Francisco, of course, remains the startup epicenter of the world, shutting out all other geographies when it comes to capital invested. Still, other regions continue to grow, raking in more capital this year than ever. In Utah, a new hotbed for startups, companies like Weave, Divvy and MX Technology raised a collective $370 million from private market investors. In the Northeast, New York City experienced record-breaking...

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2019 Africa Roundup: Jumia IPOs, China goes digital, Nigeria becomes fintech capital

2019 brought more global attention to Africa’s tech scene than perhaps any previous year. A high-profile IPO, visits by both Jacks (Ma and Dorsey) and big Chinese startup investment energized that. The last 12 months served as a grande finale to 10 years that saw triple-digit increases in startup formation and VC on the continent. Here’s an overview of the 2019 market events that captured attention and capped off a decade of rapid growth in African tech. IPOs The story of the year is the April IPO on the NYSE of Pan-African e-commerce company Jumia....

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Buy your tickets to the 3rd Annual TechCrunch Winter Party

We love parties almost as much as we love startups, but we go absolutely bonkers for a hot startup/party mashup. That’s why we’re returning to host our 3rd Annual TechCrunch Winter Party in San Francisco on Friday, February 7. Even better news, party-goers — additional (the second batch) coveted tickets to this wild winter romp are available now. Better get your tickets while you can. Last year’s inaugural event was a huge success, as nearly 1,000 of Silicon Valley’s brightest minds came to relax, connect and celebrate the entrepreneurial spirit...

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Seed investors favor enterprise over consumer for first time this decade

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. It’s the second to last day of 2019, meaning we’re very nearly out of time this year; our space for repretrospection is quickly coming to a close. Before we do run out of hours, however, I wanted to peek at some data that former Kleiner Perkins investor and Packagd founder Eric Feng recently compiled. Feng dug into the changing ratio between enterprise-focused Seed deals and consumer-oriented Seed investments over the past decade...

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Google Pixel 4A renders include a headphone jack and hole-punch display

{rss:content:encoded} Google Pixel 4A renders include a headphone jack and hole-punch display https://ift.tt/36bWvNM https://ift.tt/2Q8UUTg December 30, 2019 at 04:47PM It’s the slowest week of the year for gadget news. Christmas is in the rearview, and it’s a few days until the new year. After that, it’s a straight shot to CES and then MWC. Meantime, best we’ve got going for us are a handful of rumors, including a peek at what Google’s next budget might could potentially possibly conceivably look like. Per renders from OnLeaks and 91Mobiles, a...

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Grab and Singtel team up to apply for a digital full bank license in Singapore

Grab and Singtel, one of the largest telecoms in Singapore, announced today that they are applying for a digital full bank license together. If approved, the license will allow them to offer simple credit and investment products, before progressing to a full-functioning bank if they meet the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) criteria. Grab will hold a 60% stake in the consortium, with Singtel holding the other 40%. A joint statement said the companies are “committed to contributing to the financial services sector with a differentiated offering...

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Indian tech startups raised a record $14.5B in 2019

Indian tech startups have never had it so good. Local tech startups in the nation raised $14.5 billion in 2019, beating their previous best of $10.5 billion last year, according to research firm Tracxn. Tech startups in India this year participated in 1,185 financing rounds — 459 of those were Series A or later rounds — from 817 investors. Early stage startups — those participating in angel or pre-Series A financing round — raised $6.9 billion this year, easily surpassing last year’s $3.3 billion figure, according to a report by venture debt firm...

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Snapchat will launch Bitmoji TV, a personalized cartoon show

Snapchat’s most popular yet under-exploited feature is finally getting the spotlight in 2020. Starting in February with a global release, your customizable Bitmoji avatar will become the star of a full-motion cartoon series called Bitmoji TV. It’s a massive evolution for Bitmoji beyond the chat stickers and comic strip-style Stories where they were being squandered to date. Creating original in-house shows for its Discover section that can’t be copied could help Snapchat differentiate from the plethora of short-form video platforms out there ranging...

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