Startups Weekly: The Peloton IPO (bull vs. bear)

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a newsletter published every Saturday that dives into the week’s noteworthy venture capital deals, funds and trends. Before I dive into this week’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about the proliferation of billion-dollar companies. Before that, I noted the uptick in beverage startup rounds. Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets. Now, time for some quick notes on Peloton’s confirmed initial public...

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Maker Faire halts operations and lays off all staff

Financial troubles have forced Maker Media, the company behind crafting publication MAKE: magazine as well as the science and art festival Maker Faire, to lay off its entire staff of 22 and pause all operations. TechCrunch was tipped off to Maker Media’s unfortunate situation which was then confirmed by the company’s founder and CEO Dale Dougherty. For 15 years, MAKE: guided adults and children through step-by-step do-it-yourself crafting and science projects, and it was central to the maker movement. Since 2006, Maker Faire’s 200 owned and licensed...

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FCC passes measure urging carriers to block robocalls by default

{rss:content:encoded} FCC passes measure urging carriers to block robocalls by default https://tcrn.ch/2KwfGKg http://bit.ly/31g8sQq June 07, 2019 at 08:29PM The FCC voted at its open meeting this week to adopt an anti-robocall measure, but it may or may not lead to any abatement of this maddening practice — and it might not be free, either. That said, it’s a start towards addressing a problem that’s far from simple and enormously irritating to consumers. The last two years have seen the robocall problem grow and grow, and although there are steps...

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Economic development organizations: good or bad for entrepreneurial activity?

Bill Baumel Contributor Bill Baumel is Managing Director at the Ohio Innovation Fund. After twenty years in Silicon Valley - 4 public companies and 10 major acquisitions - Bill came home to the Midwest creating OIF, whose 14 companies have attracted partners such as Microsoft, Facebook, SAP, and Sanofi, providing SaaS, cyber, AI/ML and med tech solutions to a majority of the Fortune 500. In developing VC markets such as the Midwest, some may think that funding from the government or economic development organizations are a godsend for local...

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Daily Crunch: Facebook’s cryptocurrency is coming

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. Facebook plans June 18 cryptocurrency debut. Here’s what we know Facebook is finally ready to reveal details about its cryptocurrency, codenamed Libra. It has currently scheduled a June 18 release of a white paper explaining its cryptocurrency’s basics, according to a source. It sounds like Facebook’s cryptocurrency will be a stablecoin, transferable with...

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Weighing Peloton’s opportunity and risks ahead of IPO

Exercise tech company Peloton filed confidentially for IPO this week, and already the big question is whether their last private valuation at $4 billion might be too rich for the appetites of public market investors. Here’s a breakdown of the pros and cons leading up to the as-yet revealed market debut date. Risk factors The biggest thing to pay attention to when it comes time for Peloton to actually pull back the curtains and provide some more detailed info about its customers in its S-1. To date, all we really know is that Peloton has “more than...

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Answers to your burning questions about how ‘Sign In with Apple’ works

{rss:content:encoded} Answers to your burning questions about how ‘Sign In with Apple’ works https://tcrn.ch/2HZPsxX https://tcrn.ch/2Mv6nNg June 07, 2019 at 06:12PM One of the bigger security announcements from Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference this week is Apple’s new requirement that app developers must implement the company’s new single sign-on solution, Sign In with Apple, wherever they already offer another third-party sign-on system. Apple’s decision to require its button in those scenarios is considered risky — especially at a time...

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Why identity startup Auth0’s founder still codes: It makes him a better boss

If you ask Eugenio Pace to describe himself, “engineer” would be fairly high on the list. “Being a CEO is pretty busy,” he told TechCrunch in a call last week. “But I’m an engineer in my heart — I am a problem solver,” he said. Pace, an Argentinan immigrant to the U.S., founded identity management company Auth0 in 2013 after more than a decade at Microsoft. Auth0, pronounced “auth-zero,” has been described as like Stripe for payments or Twilio for messaging. App developers can add a few lines of code and it immediately gives their users access...

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Swiftly raises $10 million Series A to power real-time transit data in your city

Swiftly just raised a $10 million Series A round led by VIA ID, Aster Capital, Renewal Funds and Wind Capital to grow its software-as-a-service business for cities transportation agencies. ly works by helping cities manage their transit systems and identify points in the schedule or route that negatively impact service efficiency and reliability. Swiftly also offers real-time passenger info that will “predict when the bus will arrive in a way that is much more accurate than the current system,” Swiftly co-founder and CEO Jonny Simkin told TechCrunch....

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Unmortgage, the ‘part own, part rental’ housing startup, loses founder and CEO

Unmortgage founder and CEO Rayhan Rafiq-Omar (centre) has departed the companny Unmortgage, the London-based startup that wants to let people buy as little as five percent of a home and rent the rest, has lost its founder and CEO, TechCrunch has learned. According to a regulatory filing on Companies House, Unmortgage’s Rayhan Rafiq-Omar was terminated as a Director on 4th of May, and has been replaced on the board by Unmortgage co-founder and product lead Josef Wasinski. However, sources tell me the board room reshuffle is the result of Rafiq-Omar...

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Depop, a social app targeting millennial and Gen Z shoppers, bags $62M, passes 13M users

The rising popularity of omni-channel commerce — selling to customers wherever they happen to be spending time online — has spawned an army of shopping tools and platforms that are giving legacy retail websites and marketplaces a run for their money. Now, one of the faster growing of these is announcing an impressive round of funding to stay on trend and continue building its business. Depop, a London startup that has built an app for individuals to post and sell (and mainly resell) items to groups of followers by way of its own and third-party...

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FoodShot Global is digging up innovation for soil health as part of its first prize competition

FoodShot Global, a prize platform devoted to transforming the world’s food and agriculture industries, has awarded the first round of prizes for its Innovating Soil 3.0 competition.  Trace Genomics, a startup developing an analytics service for soil health to optimize the use of farmland, has received an undisclosed investment from FoodShot’s investment partner, S2G Ventures. Additional awards of $250,000 were given to Keith Paustian to speed up the global adaptation of his COMET tool systems, which provide farmers with metrics...

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Voatz has raised $7 million in Series A funding for its mobile voting technology

Voatz, the four-year-old, Boston, Ma.-based voting and citizen engagement platform that has been at the center of debate over the merits and dangers of mobile voting, has raised $7 million in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Medici Ventures and Techstars, with participation from Urban Innovation Fund and Oakhouse Partners. Voatz, which current employs 17 people, is modeled after other software-as-a-service companies but geared toward election jurisdictions, working with state and local governments to conduct elections and provide related...

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The Ticket Fairy is tech’s best hope against Ticketmaster

Ticketmaster’s dominance has led to ridiculous service fees, scalpers galore, and exclusive contracts that exploit venues and artists. The moronic approval of venue operator and artist management giant Live Nation’s merger with Ticketmaster in 2010 produced an anti-competitive juggernaut. It pressures venues to sign ticketing contracts under veiled threat that artists would otherwise be routed to different concert halls. Now it’s become difficult for venues, artists, and fans to avoid Ticketmaster, which charges fees as high as 50% that many see...

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The Ticket Fairy is tech’s best hope against Ticketmaster

{rss:content:encoded} The Ticket Fairy is tech’s best hope against Ticketmaster https://tcrn.ch/2XwrLmg https://tcrn.ch/2F7N2vJ June 06, 2019 at 11:45PM Ticketmaster’s dominance has led to ridiculous service fees, scalpers galore, and exclusive contracts that exploit venues and artists. The moronic approval of venue operator and artist management giant Live Nation’s merger with Ticketmaster in 2010 produced an anti-competitive juggernaut. It pressures venues to sign ticketing contracts under veiled threat that artists would otherwise be routed...

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