Why you have to pay attention to the Indian startup scene

This is The TechCrunch Exchange, a newsletter that goes out on Saturdays, based on the column of the same name. You can sign up for the email here. Back in August during Y Combinator’s two-day demo extravaganza, TechCrunch noted a number of startups from India that stood out from the batch. Names like Bikayi (e-commerce tools), Decentro (consumer banking APIs), Farmako Healthcare (digital health records) and MedPiper Technologies (helping hire health professionals) joined our list of favorites from the batch. Seeing so many India-focused...

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Was Quibi the good kind of startup failure?

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. Startup failure is easy to hold up as a type of martyrdom for progress, especially if the founders are starting out scrappy in the first place and trying to save the world. But heroic narrative gets complicated when the startup failure involves the biggest names in entertainment, dubious product decisions, and well over $1 billion in losses in an already very competitive consumer tech subcategory. I...

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Boston startups expand region’s venture capital footprint

This year has shaken up venture capital, turning a hot early start to 2020 into a glacial period permeated with fear during the early days of COVID-19. That ice quickly melted as venture capitalists discovered that demand for software and other services that startups provide was accelerating, pushing many young tech companies back into growth mode, and investors back into the check-writing arena. Boston has been an exemplar of the trend, with early pandemic caution dissolving into rapid-fire dealmaking as summer rolled into fall. We collated new...

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OnePlus’s 8T handset brings faster charging and a 120Hz display for $749

{rss:content:encoded} OnePlus’s 8T handset brings faster charging and a 120Hz display for $749  https://ift.tt/3dUbIaR https://ift.tt/3jmGKt5 October 23, 2020 at 08:32PM OnePlus continues its twice-yearly smartphone cycle with today’s arrival of the 8T. The latest device isn’t a huge upgrade over April’s OnePlus 8, but continues the company’s longstanding tradition of offering some of the most solid Android handsets at a reasonable price point. The cost has edged up a bit in recent years, but $749 is still pretty good for what the 8T...

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Financial institutions can support COVID-19 crowdfunding campaigns

Scott Purcell Contributor Share on Twitter Scott Purcell is the CEO and Chief Trust Officer of Prime Trust, an innovative API-enabled B2B open-banking financial solutions provider. The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic adversely affected the financial outlook for millions of people, and continues to cause significant fiscal distress to millions more, but such challenging times have also wrought a more resilient and resourceful financial system. With the ingenuity of crowdfunding, considered to be one of the last decade’s greatest...

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mmhmm, Phil Libin’s new startup, acquires Memix to add enhanced filters to its video presentation toolkit

Virtual meetings are a fundamental part of how we interact with each other these days, but even when (if!?) we find better ways to mitigate the effects of Covid-19, many think that they will be here to stay. That means there is an opportunity out there to improve how they work — because let’s face it, Zoom Fatigue is real and I for one am not super excited anymore to be a part of your Team. mmhmm, the video presentation startup from former Evernote CEO Phil Libin with ambitions to change the conversation (literally and figuratively) about what...

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Here’s how fast a few dozen startups grew in Q3 2020

Earlier this week I asked startups to share their Q3 growth metrics and whether they were performing ahead of behind of their yearly goals. Lots of companies responded. More than I could have anticipated, frankly. Instead of merely giving me a few data points to learn from, The Exchange wound up collecting sheafs of interesting data from upstart companies with big Q3 performance. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday. Naturally, the startups that...

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Nordic challenger bank Lunar raises €40M Series C, plans to enter the ‘buy now, pay later’ space

Lunar, the Nordic challenger bank that started out life as a personal finance manager app (PFM) but acquired a full banking license in 2019, has raised €40 million in Series C funding from existing investors. The injection of capital follows a €20 million Series B disclosed in April this year and comes on the back of Lunar rolling out Pro paid-for subscriptions — similar to a number of other challenger banks in Europe — personal consumer loans, and the launch of business bank accounts in August. The latter appears to have been an instant success,...

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Psykhe secures seed funding to match consumer personalities to fashion products

In an overcrowded market of online fashion brands, consumers are spoilt for choice on what site to visit. They are generally forced to visit each brand one by one, manually filtering down to what they like. Most of the experience is not that great, and past purchase history and cookies aren’t much to go on to tailor user experience. If someone has bought an army-green military jacket, the e-commerce site is on a hiding to nothing if all it suggests is more army-green military jackets… Instead, Psycke (it’s brand name is “PSYKHE”) is an e-commerce...

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President Trump’s Twitter accessed by security expert who guessed password ‘maga2020!’

A Dutch security researcher says he accessed President Trump’s @realDonaldTrump Twitter account last week by guessing his password: “maga2020!”. Victor Gevers, a security researcher at the GDI Foundation and chair of the Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure, which finds and reports security vulnerabilities, told TechCrunch he guessed the president’s account password and was successful on the fifth attempt. The account was not protected by two-factor authentication, granting Gevers access to the president’s account. After logging in, he...

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Quibi’s shortform life

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Myself, along with Danny and Natasha had a lot to get through, and more to say than expected. A big thanks to Chris for cutting the show down to size. Now, what did we get to? Aside from a little of everything, we ran through: The fall of Quibi, and who lost money in the mix. TechCrunch has a bit more on the video service’s downfall here. The Netflix quarter, and why its shares lost ground after...

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Woven adds to its calendar app’s $20/mo premium plan

Productivity software has had a huge couple of years, yet for all of the great note-taking apps that have launched, consumers haven’t gotten a lot of quality options for Google Calendar replacements. This week, Woven, a calendar startup founded by former Facebook CIO Tim Campos, is shaking up the premium tier of their scheduling software, hoping that productivity-focused users will pay to further optimize the calendar experience just as they have paid for subscription email services like Superhuman and note-taking apps like Notion. There’s been...

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