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Saturday, September 14, 2019
Help TechCrunch offer a valuable new tool for startups (by taking this quick survey)
It’s hard to find the expert help you need right at the clutch moment when you’re building your startup. We’re trying to solve that problem through a product we’ve been developing this year, called Verified Experts — and we’d like to get some more input on it from startup people like you.
As in real life, where you ask your professional network for recommendations, we’re asking startup founders to tell us who the lawyers, growth marketers, brand designers and other experts are who have made/are making a big difference for their company. We use...
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startups
Startups Weekly: Part & Parcel plans plus-sized fashion empire
Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about Stripe’s grand plans. Before that, I noted Peloton’s secret weapons.
Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets. If you don’t subscribe to Startups Weekly yet, you can do that here.
Startup spotlight
The best companies are built by people who have personally...
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startups
Friday, September 13, 2019
Cloudflare co-founder Michelle Zatlyn on the company’s IPO today, its unique dual class structure, and what’s next
Shares of Cloudflare rose 20% today in its first day of trading on the public market, opening trading at $18 after it priced its IPO at $15 a share yesterday and holding steady through the day.
Put another way, the performance of the nine-year-old company — which provides cloud-based network services to enterprises — was relatively undramatic as these things go. That’s a good thing, given that first-day “pops” often signal that a company has left money on the table. Indeed, Cloudflare had initially indicated that its shares would be priced...
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startups
MoviePass will shut down on September 14th
MoviePass’ all-you-can-watch movie theater membership always seemed too good to be true. After multiple price hikes, business model changes, temporary shutdowns and raising a mountain of money less than a year ago, the company seems to be calling it quits.
MoviePass has issued an announcement letting customers know that the service will stop working as of September 14th — so, tomorrow — because “its efforts to recapitalize MoviePass have not been successful to date.”
For the past few months, MoviePass had existed in a weird sort of zombie state;...
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startups
Despite tipping policy changes, DoorDash says back pay is not ‘at issue here’
When DoorDash announced changes in its tipping model last month, it was certainly a step in the right direction. Some workers, however, have said it’s not enough. In addition to wanting fair wages, they want back pay.
In light of DoorDash’s announcement, labor group Working Washington said a key question remained: “Will they pay workers backpay for the customer tips the company has been misappropriating since 2017?”
“There’s no ‘back pay’ at issue here because every cent of every tip on DoorDash has always gone and will always go to Dashers,” a...
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startups
India’s OkCredit raises $67M to help small merchants digitize their bookkeeping
OkCredit, a Bangalore-based startup that enables small merchants to digitize their bookkeeping, has raised $67 million in a new financing round to grow its business in the nation.
The Series B financing round for the two-year-old startup was led by Lightspeed and Tiger Global. The new round, which follows the Series A in June, climbs OkCredit’s total raise to $83 million.
OkCredit operates an eponymous mobile app that allows merchants to keep track of their day-to-day purchases and sales. Last month, OkCredit founders told TechCrunch in an interview...
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startups
Calculating sales efficiency in a start-up: The magic number that will help you scale
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startups
Space is the next economic frontier… hear more about it at Disrupt SF
For decades space has been the playplace for world powers, but the advent of (relatively) cheap and frequent rocket launches has opened it up for new business opportunities. But it’s still hard as hell, as early adopters of this orbital economy Tess Hatch of Bessemer Ventures, Swarm’s Sara Spangelo, and OneWeb’s Adrian Steckel can attest. They’ll be on the Extra Crunch stage at Disrupt SF 2019 on October 3rd at 1:40 PM.
Spangelo and Steckel are in the midst of launching what have been termed “mega-constellations,” collections of hundreds or thousands...
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startups
Boston gets a new biotech accelerator with the launch of Petri
As biotechnology becomes more central to new innovations in healthcare, material science, and manufacturing, one of the nation’s research hubs is getting a new accelerator called Petri to launch companies focused on the commercialization of new technologies.
Backed by the Boston-based venture capital firm, Pillar, Petri has a three-year $15 million commitment to back companies developing new biotech applications in food, healthcare, industrial chemicals, and new materials — along with the enabling technologies to bring these products to market.
“We’re...
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startups
24-hour Friday flashback on Disrupt SF passes
We here at TechCrunch love a good flashback, like when Sebastian Thrun’s puppy, Charlie, was in the spotlight during Thrun’s fireside chat at Disrupt SF a few years ago.
Sebastian Thrun (Udacity) at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2017
Since then, the serial entrepreneur and inventor seems to have doubled down on his vision of the future of transportation with his current flying car company, Kitty Hawk Corporation. Thrun is working on bringing two aircraft to market — the one-person Flyer and a two-person autonomous taxi called Cora. He (along with a stellar...
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startups
WeWork and Uber are proof valuations are meaningless
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Kate and Alex were back to cover a lot of late-stage news, which they rounded up with some early-stage notes towards the end. As a reminder, come check out the show at Disrupt SF if you are in town, we’ll be out amongst startups, chatting all things startups and money.
Up top, we dug into WeWork and the latest from the company’s continuing IPO saga. The question regarding the co-working company’s public...
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startups
Element AI raises $151M on a $600-700M valuation to help companies build and run AI solutions
While tech giants like Google and Amazon build and invest in a multitude of artificial intelligence applications to grow their businesses, a startup has raised a big round of funding to help those that are not technology businesses by nature also jump into the AI fray.
Element AI, the very well-funded, well-connected Canadian startup that has built an AI systems integrator of sorts to help other companies develop and implement artificial intelligence solutions — an ‘Accenture’ for machine learning, neural network-based solutions, computer vision...
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startups
Thursday, September 12, 2019
Another high-flying, heavily funded AR headset startup is shutting down
While Apple and Microsoft strain to sell augmented reality as the next major computing platform, many of the startups aiming to beat them to the punch are crashing and burning.
Daqri, which built enterprise-grade AR headsets, has shuttered its HQ, laid off many of its employees and is selling off assets ahead of a shutdown, former employees and sources close to the company tell TechCrunch.
In an email obtained by TechCrunch, the nearly 10-year-old company told its customers that it was pursuing an asset sale and was shutting down its cloud and...
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startups
Simbe raises a $26M Series A for its retail inventory robot
San Francisco-based robotics startup Simbe just announced a $26 million Series A. The round was led by Venrock and features Future Shape, Valo Ventures and Activant Capital. The company is one of several looking to automate the process of providing retail inventory.
Simbe says the funding will go toward growing its headcount, exploring new markets and accelerating the deployment of its existing robots. The news also finds Nest’s Tony Fadell, Venrock’s David Pakman and Pathbreaker Venture’s Ryan Gembala joining the startup’s board.
“Our investors,...
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startups
Sidewalk Labs spins out urban data-gathering tool Replica into a company
Replica, the data-gathering tool created within Sidewalk Labs that maps the movement of people in cities, is now a company.
The newly formed company, which is headed by Nick Bowden, also announced Thursday it has raised $11 million in a Series A funding round from investors Innovation Endeavors, Firebrand Ventures, and Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund. The capital will be used to accelerate Replica’s growth through new hires beyond its existing 13-person staff, expansion to new cities and investment in its technology.
Replica will remain...
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startups
SmileDirectClub makes its debut on the public market
SmileDirectClub rang the opening bell earlier today, marking its first day of trading as a public company. The teeth-straightening company is now trading on the Nasdaq under the symbol “SDC.”
Already, the stock is trading down 11% at $20.36 per share.
SmileDirectClub kicked off its IPO hoping to raise up to $1.3 billion at an offering price of $23 per share, with an expected market cap of around $10 billion. The company originally intended to set its price between $19 and $22 per share.
“We are focused on long term shareholder value – the next...
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startups
Shape Security hits $1B valuation with $51M Series F
Anti-fraud startup Shape Security has tipped over the $1 billion valuation mark following its latest Series F round of $51 million.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company announced the fundraise Thursday, bringing the total amount of outside investment to $173 million since the company debuted in 2011.
C5 Capital led the round, along with several other new and returning investors, including Kleiner Perkins, HPE Growth, and Norwest Ventures Partners.
Shape Security protects companies against automated and imitation attacks, which often employ bots...
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startups
How to stop vanity marketing from killing your startup
Dick Talens Contributor
Dick Talens is a fitness and growth hacker.
In 2014, I got in on the ground floor of what I thought was a rocket ship. Fling was the fastest-growing app in 2014, and I was pulled in as their chief growth officer, with a handsome compensation package — one that in retrospect should have given me pause. Within 24 hours of arriving in London, I was greeted at the door by a Fling-branded Humvee, which wouldn’t even turn out to be the worst use of the company’s money.
Fling’s marketing team consisted of 20 people, or about...
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startups
Voyage raises $31 million to bring driverless taxis to communities
Voyage, the autonomous vehicle startup that spun out of Udacity, announced Thursday it has raised $31 million in a round led by Franklin Templeton.
Khosla Ventures, Jaguar Land Rover’s InMotion Ventures and Chevron Technology Ventures also participated in the round. The company, which operates a ride-hailing service in retirement communities using self-driving cars supported by human safety drivers, has raised a total of $52 million since launching in 2017. The new funding includes a $3 million convertible note.
Voyage CEO Oliver Cameron has big...
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startups
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