Crypto’s coming of age moment

This week Danny and Alex and Chris took to Twitter Spaces to chat about the current state of the crypto economy, and hang out with friends in a live Twitter Space. We’re doing more of these, so make sure that you are following the show on Twitter. As a small programming note, I forgot to tell the folks who chimed in during the chat that we were recording it, so we had to cut most the Q&A portion of the show. We got Ezra’s permission, thankfully. The mixup was a bummer as we learned a lot. In the future, we’ll not make that mistake and keep...

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Extra Crunch roundup: 3 lies VCs tell, betting big on Kubernetes, NYC’s enterprise boom

Although older adults are one of the fastest-growing demographics, they’re quite underserved when it comes to consumer tech. The global population of people older than 65 will reach 1.5 billion by 2050, and members of this cohort — who are leading longer, active lives — have plenty of money to spend. Still, most startups persist in releasing products aimed at serving younger users, says Lawrence Kosick, co-founder of GetSetUp, an edtech company that targets 50+ learners. “If you can provide a valuable, scalable service for the older adult market,...

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Growth tactics that will jump-start your customer base

Jenny Wang Contributor Share on Twitter Jenny Wang is a principal investor at Neo and co-host of the “Techsetters” podcast. Five years ago, the playbook for launching a new company involved a tried-and-true list of to-dos. Once you built an awesome product with a catchy name, you’d try to get a feature article on TechCrunch, a front-page hit on Hacker News, hunted on ProductHunt and an AMA on Quora. While all of these today remain impressive milestones, it’s never been harder to corral eyeballs and hit a breakout adoption trajectory. In...

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Growth tactics that will jump-start your customer base

Jenny Wang Contributor Share on Twitter Jenny Wang is a principal investor at Neo and co-host of the “Techsetters” podcast. Five years ago, the playbook for launching a new company involved a tried-and-true list of to-dos. Once you built an awesome product with a catchy name, you’d try to get a feature article on TechCrunch, a front-page hit on Hacker News, hunted on ProductHunt and an AMA on Quora. While all of these today remain impressive milestones, it’s never been harder to corral eyeballs and hit a breakout adoption trajectory. In...

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More companies should shift to a work-from-home model

Karl Laughton Contributor Share on Twitter Karl Laughton is president & COO of Insightly, which makes scalable CRM software that enables companies to go beyond transactions and grow lasting customer relationships. Nearly three in 10 employees (29%) would quit their job if they were told they were no longer allowed to work remotely, according to a recent survey. In addition, a recent Harvard Business Study found that “companies that let their workers decide where and when to do their jobs — whether in another city or in the middle of...

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Kiddom grabs early revenue amid $35M Series C funding

Kiddom, a platform that offers a digital curriculum that fits the core standards required by states, announced today that it has raised a $35 million Series C round led by Altos Ventures, with participation from Owl Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Outcomes Collective. The financing came nearly three years after Kiddom’s Series B, a $15 million round led by Owl. The startup didn’t just raise money, it finally learned how to make some. Founded in 2012, Kiddom was able to raise millions without revenue or a clear business model. But Ahsan Rizvi, CEO...

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Reddit is quietly rolling out a TikTok-like video feed button on iOS

From Instagram’s Reels to Snapchat’s Spotlight, most social media platforms are looking toward the TikTok boom for inspiration. Now, even Reddit, a discussion-based forum, is making short-form video more pronounced on its iOS app. According to Reddit, most iOS users should have a button on their app directly to the right of the search bar — when tapped, it will show a stream of videos in a TikTok-like configuration. When presented with a video, (which shows the poster who uploaded it and the subreddit it’s from), users can upvote or downvote, comment,...

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Reddit is quietly rolling out a TikTok-like video feed button on iOS

{rss:content:encoded} Reddit is quietly rolling out a TikTok-like video feed button on iOS https://ift.tt/2VKkHHj https://ift.tt/2Ue2HEf August 13, 2021 at 06:32PM From Instagram’s Reels to Snapchat’s Spotlight, most social media platforms are looking toward the TikTok boom for inspiration. Now, even Reddit, a discussion-based forum, is making short-form video more pronounced on its iOS app. According to Reddit, most iOS users should have a button on their app directly to the right of the search bar — when tapped, it will show a stream of videos...

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Employee talent predictor retrain.ai raised another $7M, adds Splunk as strategic investor

Automation will displace 85 million jobs while simultaneously creating 97 million new jobs by 2025, according to the World Economic Forum. Although that sounds like good news, the hard reality is that millions of people will have to retrain in the jobs of the future. A number of startups are addressing these problems of employee skills, and are looking at talent development, neuroscience-based assessments and prediction technologies for staffing. These include Pymetrics (raised $56.6 million), Eightfold (raised $396.8 million) and EmPath (raised...

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Argentine fintech Ualá lands $350M at a $2.45B valuation in SoftBank, Tencent-led round

The dollars keep flowing into Latin America. Today, Argentine personal finance management app Ualá announced it has raised $350 million in a Series D round at a post-money valuation of $2.45 billion. SoftBank Latin America Fund and affiliates of China-based Tencent co-led the round, which included participation from a slew of existing backers including funds managed by Soros Fund Management LLC, funds managed by affiliates of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Ribbit Capital, Greyhound Capital, Monashees and Endeavor Catalyst. New funds, such as D1...

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Don’t give your weed dealer all your data

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Our beloved Danny was back, joining Natasha and Alex and Grace and Chris to chat through yet another incredibly busy week. As a window into our process, every week we tell one another that the next week we’ll cut the show down to size. Then the week is so interesting that we end up cutting a lot of news, but also keeping a lot of news. The chaotic process is a work in progress, but it means...

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Orchata raises $4M, aims to build a ‘Gopuff for Latin America’

Luis Mario Garcia grew up in Mexico making deliveries for the grocery stores in his neighborhood. After honing his startup skills in San Francisco, he returned to Mexico with the idea of building a software company. That’s when he met his co-founder Javier Gonzalez and the pair started Orchata in 2020, a mobile app enabling consumers to get groceries delivered in 15 minutes, with no substitutes and at supermarket prices. Products delivered include fresh fruit, beverages, bread, medicine and household essentials, Garcia told TechCrunch. Orchata...

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ThirdAI raises $6M to democratize AI to any hardware

Houston-based ThirdAI, a company building tools to speed up deep learning technology without the need for specialized hardware like graphics processing units, brought in $6 million in seed funding. Neotribe Ventures, Cervin Ventures and Firebolt Ventures co-led the investment, which will be used to hire additional employees and invest in computing resources, Anshumali Shrivastava, Third AI co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch. Shrivastava, who has a mathematics background, was always interested in artificial intelligence and machine learning, especially...

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Twitter India head moves to a different role

Manish Maheshwari, the head of Twitter India, has taken a new role at the company and is relocating to the U.S., the latest in a series of developments for the American social giant after a tense stand off with New Delhi this year. Maheshwari is moving on from the high-profile position, a role he assumed in April 2019, at a time when he was personally named in police cases in at least two Indian states — Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh — over complaints that Twitter was allegedly hurting sentiments of people in the South Asian market. The update...

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YC-backed Tablevibe’s customer surveys help restaurants reduce their reliance on delivery apps

Food delivery apps offer convenience for customers, but a host of headaches for restaurants, like commissions as high as 40% and very few tools to build customer loyalty. Based in Singapore, Tablevibe wants to help restaurants reduce their reliance on third-party delivery apps and help them get more direct orders and returning customers. The startup is part of Y Combinator’s current batch, which will hold its Demo Day at the end of this month. Tablevibe’s founding team includes two former Googlers: Jeroen Rutten, formerly head of Google Search’s...

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