Extra Crunch roundup: ‘Nightmare’ security breach, Poshmark’s IPO, crypto boom, more

The rest of the world may be slowing down as we prepare for Christmas and the new year, but we are not taking our foot off the gas. Alex Wilhelm keeps a close watch on the public markets in his column The Exchange, but this week, he branched out to look at some of the metrics underpinning soaring cryptocurrency prices and turned his gaze on StockX, the consumer reseller marketplace that just raised $275 million in a Series E that values the company at approximately $2.8 billion. “Selling a tenth of your company for north of a quarter-billion may...

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Bumble reportedly filed confidentially for an IPO

Today Bumble, a popular dating-focused startup, was reported by Bloomberg to have filed IPO documents, albeit privately. The news that Bumble is pursuing an IPO is not a surprise. TechCrunch covered the story in September, noting the huge revenues that its rival Tinder has managed to accrete, possibly indicative of a sufficiently large market to support two public dating players. That Bumble has privately filed puts it, along with the crypto-focused Coinbase, as far along the IPO path before we can see their numbers. When they make their S-1 filings...

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Unicorn travel startup Hopper is facing a pandemic-fueled customer service nightmare

Mobile travel app Hopper has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic as consumers canceled their trips and airlines dropped their flights. But the complications around getting airline credits and refunds have since turned into a customer service crisis for the airfare prediction and ticket booking startup, which had been valued at $750 million back in 2018 before reaching unicorn status thanks to an undisclosed round it closed amid COVID lockdowns this year. Currently, hundreds of Hopper customers are trashing the app in their app store reviews,...

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WorkWhile raises $3.5M to bring more flexibility and benefits to hourly work

While there’s been plenty of recent debate around the gig economy, Jarah Euston argued that it’s time to a rethink a bigger part of the workforce — hourly workers. Euston, who was previously an executive at mobile advertising startup Flurry and a co-founder at data operations startup Nexla, told me that although 80 million Americans are paid on an hourly basis, the current system doesn’t work particular well for either employers or workers. On the employer side, there are usually high rates of turnover and absenteeism, while workers have to deal...

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Lt. Gen. John Thompson explains how startups can interact with the Space Force

Space Force’s Lt. Gen. John Thompson spoke at TC Sessions: Space earlier this week. Throughout the wide-ranging interview, General Thompson explained the various ways and means for how private companies like startups should interact with Space Force. Gen. Thompson knows what he’s talking about. As the commander of the Space and Missiles Systems Center, he oversees research, design, development and acquisition of satellites and their associated command and control systems for the U.S. Space Force. His role puts him in direct contact with some of...

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Brazilian lending company Creditas raises $255 million as Latin America’s fintech explosion continues

Creditas, the Brazilian lending business, has raised $255 million in new financing as financial services startups across Latin America continue to attract massive amounts of cash. The company’s credit portfolio has crossed 1 billion reals ($196.66 million) and the new round will value the company at $1.75 billion thanks to $570 million raised in outside financing over five rounds. Creditas is the latest company to benefit from a boom in financial services startup investing across the region. As the year dawned, venture investments into fintech...

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Indian food delivery giant Zomato secures $660 million

Zomato has raised $660 million in a financing round that it kicked off last year as the Indian food delivery startup prepares to go public next year. The Indian startup said Tiger Global, Kora, Luxor, Fidelity (FMR), D1 Capital, Baillie Gifford, Mirae and Steadview participated in the round — a Series J — which gives Zomato a post-money valuation of $3.9 billion. Zomato had previously disclosed a fundraise of about $212 million as part of a Series J round from Ant Financial, Tiger Global, Baillie Gifford and Temasek. Deepinder Goyal, the co-founder...

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How should SaaS companies deliver and price professional services?

Roger Hurwitz Contributor Share on Twitter Roger Hurwitz is a founding partner at Volition Capital. He focuses primarily on investments in software and technology-enabled business services. More posts by this contributor Should SaaS founders be raising capital now? The don’ts of debt for fast-growing startups The global software as a service (SaaS) industry is sustaining its steep growth trajectory, but developing and pricing professional services is oftentimes a difficult proposition for SaaS companies. Gartner recently forecast that...

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Foresight raises $15M for its construction workers’ compensation platform

When an accident on a building site resulted in the death of their friend, the founders of Safesight were inspired to launch the platform to digitize safety programs for construction. The data from that gave birth to a new insurtech startup this year, Foresight, which covers workers’ compensation. The startup has now released, for the first time, news that it raised a $15 million funding round back in May this year, with participation from Blackhorn Ventures and Transverse Insurance Group. To date, it has raised $20.5 million from industrial technology...

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Tap Network raises $4M for its customizable rewards program

Tap Network is providing a new approach to loyalty rewards programs that it describes as “rewards as a service.” You may recognize the Tap Network name, as well as its co-founder and CEO Lin Dai, from Hooch, a startup that offered a drink-a-day subscription service before shifting focus to a broader rewards program. Dai told me he “learned a lot from the Hooch experience” but ultimately “decided that Tap is a much bigger opportunity, we’re really looking at rewards in general.” So Tap Network is a new startup, one that recently raised $4 million...

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Unfold launches lightweight, link-centric profiles called Bio Sites

Unfold, the social media startup acquired by Squarespace last year, is launching a new tool for users to share all the links that are important with them. This is the first step Unfold has taken beyond its story-format authoring tools. Co-founder Andy McCune told me that the team has a bigger vision now — just as Squarespace has become “the all-in-one platform for your web presence,” Unfold aims to become “the all-in-one platform for your social presence.” “We’re both playing in very saturated spaces with a lot of competitors,” McCune said. “We...

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Unfold launches lightweight, link-centric profiles called Bio Sites

{rss:content:encoded} Unfold launches lightweight, link-centric profiles called Bio Sites https://ift.tt/3gXTwPr https://ift.tt/2KieVGT December 18, 2020 at 04:22PM Unfold, the social media startup acquired by Squarespace last year, is launching a new tool for users to share all the links that are important with them. This is the first step Unfold has taken beyond its story-format authoring tools. Co-founder Andy McCune told me that the team has a bigger vision now — just as Squarespace has become “the all-in-one platform for your web presence,”...

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