Public investors stay in love with tech, as Root and Affirm file to IPO

Editor’s note: Get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7 a.m. PT). Subscribe here. Why are there so many tech IPOs right now? Startups are finding that they can get higher valuations from public markets than private ones these days, because so many public investors want to put serious money in tech. Also, the lure of the future, the benevolence of the Fed, the retail investor boom, the sheer number of unicorns that have been waiting for any decent moment to go, the new ways...

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Dear Sophie: How can employers hire & comply with all this new H-1B craziness?

Sophie Alcorn Contributor Share on Twitter Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Dear Sophie: Is it easier and faster to get an O-1A than an EB-1A? Dear Sophie: Now that a judge has paused Trump’s H-1B visa ban, how can I qualify my employees? Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,”...

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Facebook and Instagram will pin vote-by-mail explainers to top of feeds

Starting this weekend, everyone of voting age in the U.S. will begin seeing informational videos at the top of Instagram and Facebook, offering tips and state-specific guidance on how to vote through the mail. The videos will be offered in both English and Spanish. The vote-by-mail videos will run on Facebook for four straight days in each state, starting between October 10 and October 18 depending on local registration deadlines. On Instagram, the videos will run in all 50 states on October 15 and October 16, followed by other notifications with...

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YCharts sells to PE firm in all-cash transaction as it looks to pass $15M ARR this year

This morning, YCharts, a financial data and charting service, announced that it has been purchased by LLR Partners, a private equity firm. The companies are dubbing the transaction a “growth recapitalization,” indicating that the smaller firm won’t be stripped of its talent in hopes of driving near-term positive EBITDA. The deal was an all-cash transaction, TechCrunch confirmed. Digging into YCharts itself, the company told TechCrunch via email that it expects to “surpass” $15 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) this year, and that it has...

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Join Yext’s Howard Lerman for a Q&A October 13 at 2 pm ET/11 am PT

Heading into the third quarter and earnings season, TechCrunch is excited to announce that Yext CEO Howard Lerman will join us for a live Q&A next Tuesday as part of our continuing Extra Crunch Live series. The series recently hosted pairs of investors from Accel and Index Ventures and has hosted business leaders from Mark Cuban to Roelof Botha. Lerman will be one of the few guests who is the CEO of a public company. But Lerman is no regular public CEO — his company debuted at a TechCrunch event back in 2009, quickly raising capital...

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High-profile startup execs back Indian influencers platform CreatorOS

The advent of low-cost Android smartphones and the world’s cheapest mobile data has paved the way for millions of social media influencers in India to amass a following of tens of millions of users in recent years. These influencers, also known as creators, share their daily vlogs, thoughts on a wide range of issues, and some engage with big brands to help sell their products to niche, loyal audiences. E-commerce giant Flipkart and scores of several other businesses today work with these influencers. But India’s ban on TikTok, the Chinese short-video...

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High-profile startup execs back Indian influencers platform CreatorOS

The advent of low-cost Android smartphones and the world’s cheapest mobile data has paved the way for millions of social media influencers in India to amass a following of tens of millions of users in recent years. These influencers, also known as creators, share their daily vlogs, thoughts on a wide range of issues, and some engage with big brands to help sell their products to niche, loyal audiences. E-commerce giant Flipkart and scores of several other businesses today work with these influencers. But India’s ban on TikTok, the Chinese short-video...

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The Zebra reaches $100M run rate, turns profitable as insurtech booms

From a cluster of insurance marketplace startups raising capital earlier this year, to neoinsurance provider Lemonade going public this summer at a strong valuation, Hippo’s huge new round and Root’s impending unicorn IPO, 2020 has proven to be a busy year for startups and other growth-oriented private tech companies focused on insurance. That news cycle continues today, with The Zebra announcing that it has reached a roughly $100 million run rate, and, perhaps even more notably, that it has turned profitable. TechCrunch most recently covered the...

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Greycroft, Lerer Hippeau and Audible back audio measurement startup Veritonic

Veritonic is announcing that it has raised $3.2 million in Series A funding led by Greycroft, with participation from Lerer Hippeau and Amazon-owned audiobook service Audible. CEO Scott Simonelli, who founded the New York startup with COO Andrew Eisner and CTO Kevin Marshall, told me that his goal is to create a new category of “audio intelligence” — namely, measuring and predicting the effectiveness of any piece of audio content or advertising. The company is focused on marketing initially, with its first product, Creative Measurement, analyzing...

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Delivery startup goPuff raises $380M at a $3.9B valuation

GoPuff is a Philadelphia-headquartered startup that delivers products like over-the-counter medicine, baby food and alcohol (basically, the stuff you’d buy at a convenience store) in 30 minutes or less. Yakir Gola, who serves as co-CEO with his co-founder Rafael Ilishayev, told me their goal is to create “the go-to platform for over-the-counter medicine or household products or baby food or ice cream or even alcohol — goPuff will deliver all these products in under 30 minutes, 24/7.” While the startup has kept a relatively low profile in the media,...

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A developer of therapy devices for athletes is now worth $700 million thanks to superstar backers like Naomi Osaka

A crew of high-wattage celebrity athletes have teamed up to invest $47.8 million into Hyperice, a developer of medical devices designed to help players and fitness buffs recover after workouts or games. Backing the company are some of the biggest names in baseball, basketball, football, surfing and tennis, including: Seth Curry, Anthony Davis, Rickie Fowler, DeAndre Jordan, Jarvis Landry, Patrick Mahomes, Christian McCaffrey, Ja Morant, Naomi Osaka, Chris Paul, Doc Rivers, Ben Simmons, Kelly Slater, Fernando Tatis Jr., J.J. Watt, Russell Westbrook...

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MessageBird, the ‘omnichannel platform-as-a-service,’ raises $200M Series C at $3B valuation

MessageBird, the Amsterdam-headquartered cloud communications company, has raised $200 million in Series C funding in a round led by Silicon Valley’s Spark Capital. The new investment gives 2011-founded MessageBird a whopping $3 billion valuation, and includes participation from Bonnier, Glynn Capital, LGT Lightstone, Longbow, Mousse Partners and New View Capital. Existing investors Accel, Atomico, and Y Combinator also followed on. Notably, MessageBird spent its first six years largely bootstrapped, claiming to have been profitable from day one....

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Headroom, which uses AI to supercharge videoconferencing, raises $5M

Videoconferencing has become a cornerstone of how many of us work these days — so much so that one leading service, Zoom, has graduated into verb status because of how much it’s getting used. But does that mean videoconferencing works as well as it should? Today, a new startup called Headroom is coming out of stealth, tapping into a battery of AI tools — computer vision, natural language processing and more — on the belief that the answer to that question is a clear — no bad WiFi interruption here — “no.” Headroom not only hosts videoconferences,...

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Understanding Airbnb’s summer recovery

New numbers concerning Airbnb’s summer performance were reported this week, with The Information adding to the performance figures that Bloomberg previously detailed earlier this year. Airbnb announced that it filed privately to pursue a debut this August. We have yet to see its public IPO filing, but, all the same, the flotation is coming. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday. If you’re like me, this year’s chaotic news cycles have made it...

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