Data scientists: don’t be afraid to explore new avenues

Ilyes Kacher Contributor Share on Twitter Ilyes Kacher is a data scientist at autoRetouch, an AI-powered platform for bulk-editing product images online. I’m a native French data scientist who cut his teeth as a research engineer in computer vision in Japan and later in my home country. Yet I’m writing from an unlikely computer vision hub: Stuttgart, Germany. But I’m not working on German car technology, as one would expect. Instead, I found an incredible opportunity mid-pandemic in one of the most unexpected places: An ecommerce-focused,...

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Extra Crunch roundup: Pre-pitch tactics, Warby Parker S-1, Israel’s fintech ecosystem

Forget what you’ve heard: There are many shortcuts to success. Tapping into someone else’s experience is a tried-and-true method, which is why two-time Y Combinator participant Chris Morton wrote a guest post for Extra Crunch with advice for founders hoping to be accepted by the famed accelerator. Morton, who has also reviewed thousands of YC applications, shares his thoughts on when to submit an application, what to do if you miss the deadline and whether you’ll need to relocate if accepted. “Remember that your application should be good enough...

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The pre-pitch: 7 ways to build relationships with VCs

Evan Fisher Contributor Share on Twitter Founder of Unicorn Capital and Minimal Capital, Evan Fisher's pitching and investor strategy has helped startups raise more than $2.5 billion. More posts by this contributor Don’t send VC a cold deck ever again: Start sending video pitches Most founders fall into an extremely common trap: Just because you produced outstanding results for the last round of investors doesn’t mean new investors will believe you. This new cohort hasn’t seen that performance firsthand, and they have no reason to trust...

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Stipop offers developers and creators instant access to a huge global sticker library

With more than 270,000 stickers, Stipop’s library of colorful, character-driven expressions has a little something for everyone. The company offers keyboard and social app stickers through ad-supported mobile apps on iOS and Android, but it’s recently focused more on providing stickers to developers, creators and other online businesses. “We were able to gather so many artists because we actually began as our own app that provided stickers,” Stipop co-founder Tony Park told TechCrunch. The team took what they learned from running their own consumer-facing...

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Stipop offers developers and creators instant access to a huge global sticker library

With more than 270,000 stickers, Stipop’s library of colorful, character-driven expressions has a little something for everyone. The company offers keyboard and social app stickers through ad-supported mobile apps on iOS and Android, but it’s recently focused more on providing stickers to developers, creators and other online businesses. “We were able to gather so many artists because we actually began as our own app that provided stickers,” Stipop co-founder Tony Park told TechCrunch. The team took what they learned from running their own consumer-facing...

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New Zealand-based Imagr thinks camera-based AI is the future of shopping trolleys

When it comes to contactless, automated supermarket shopping, Imagr is backing a vision-based approach. But unlike Amazon Go stores, which use cameras and sensors to monitor the shopper as they walk in and out without scanning or paying at checkout, this New Zealand-based company thinks the only images that should be captured and analyzed are those of products going into a shopping cart. The early-stage startup has invented tech that attaches to the trolley and uses cameras to detect and label products, adding them to a virtual cart where shoppers...

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Canva CEO Melanie Perkins will tell us about the journey to a $15B valuation at Disrupt

The design space has undergone major changes in the last decade. What once was dominated by a single player in Adobe has now become a burgeoning software landscape, with a handful of major players answering the needs of designers across every industry. One such player is Canva, the startup valued at over $15 billion. The company started out with a consumer-facing product, making design accessible to non-designers. But on the back of launching an enterprise-centric suite of tools, the growth of Sydney-based Canva has been staggering. So it should...

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Twitter experiencing widespread outages

Twitter users in Canada and parts of the U.S. appear to be having trouble accessing the social media platform on Friday morning. Reports from third-party web monitoring service Downdetector indicate the issue is impacting users across Canada and mainly the eastern parts of the U.S. near the Canadian border, though users from more states continue to report outages as well. The outage began at around 8:30 AM ET according to most reports, lasting for upwards of an hour for some users. As of just before 10 AM ET, it appears that service is restored...

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Electric vehicle company Rivian has confidentially filed for an IPO

Rivian, the electric vehicle startup backed by a host of institutional and strategic investors, including Ford and Amazon, has confidentially filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to go public. The size and price range for the proposed offering have yet to be determined. The initial public offering is expected to take place after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions, the brief statement said. The confidential filing comes less than two months since Rivian announced it had closed...

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Sastrify snags $7M to help SMEs manage SaaS buying

With so much startup activity in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) space it can be a challenge for businesses to figure out which of these SaaS (SaaSes?) are actually useful and worth continuing to shell out for. Well, Cologne-based startup Sastrify is here to help — offering what it describes as a “highly automated” platform (covering some 20,000+ SaaS solutions) to help other businesses with procurement and management of third-party services. It may not sound the sexist startup business to be in, but despite only launching earlier this year, Sastrify...

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Find trends, advice and value at these special breakout sessions during TC Disrupt 2021

TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 takes place September 21-23, and we’re here to call out just some of the awesome content we have scheduled over three very busy days. The Disrupt agenda so far features more than 80 interviews, panel discussions, events and breakout sessions that span the startup tech spectrum… with more to come! You gotta pay to play: Buy your pass to Disrupt 2021 here and open a door to opportunity. Let’s talk about the special breakout sessions, which are hosted by our partners. These smaller sessions deliver real value and, according...

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The pure hell of managing your JPEGs

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Natasha and Alex and Grace and Chris were joined by none other than TechCrunch’s own Mary Ann Azevedo, in her first-ever appearance on the show. She’s pretty much the best person and we’re stoked to have her on the pod. And it was good that Mary Ann was on the show this week as she wrote about half the dang site. Which meant that we got to include all sorts of her work in the...

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