Is it so bad to take money from Chinese venture funds?

Denis Kalinin Contributor Share on Twitter Denis Kalinin works at venture fund Runa Capital as Asia Business development manager, devoted to connecting the Western and Asian VC worlds and bringing long-term value to both. China is becoming a superpower in the tech industry. According to Straits Times, China is the only place in the world where it takes less than six years for a startup to become a unicorn — it takes seven years in the U.S., eight years in the U.K. and 11 years in Germany. Despite geopolitical tensions and recent amendments...

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What we expect from next week’s Apple event

{rss:content:encoded} What we expect from next week’s Apple event https://ift.tt/2Xc8fAA https://ift.tt/3E7HJcj September 10, 2021 at 11:08PM We’ve been scouring the latest rumors and leaks and playing all of The Mamas and The Papas songs forward and backward to get the best possible picture of what we’re in store for with next Tuesday’s “California Streaming’” event. The invites, which went out a week in advance, don’t appear to give the game away here. There was some extremely cool AR trickery, accessible through Safari on mobile, which could...

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Is India’s BNPL 2.0 set to disrupt B2B?

Anubhav Jain Contributor Share on Twitter Anubhav Jain is co-founder and CEO of Rupifi, India’s first embedded lending fintech. He has more than a decade of experience in credit risk, analytics, customer management and portfolio development. Both as a term and as a financial product, “buy now, pay later” has become mainstream in the past few years. BNPL has evolved to assume various forms today, from small-ticket offerings by fintechs on consumer checkout platforms and marketplaces, to closed-loop products offered on marketplaces such...

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Extra Crunch roundup: China’s new data privacy law, fractional farming, debt vs. equity

China’s first data privacy laws go into effect on November 1, 2021. Will your company be in compliance? Modeled after the EU’s GDPR, the new regulations “[introduce] perhaps the most stringent set of requirements and protections for data privacy in the world,” writes Scott W. Pink, special counsel in O’Melveny’s Data Security & Privacy practice. In a comprehensive overview, he explains its key requirements and compliance steps for U.S.-based firms that service Chinese consumers. “American firms doing business in China or with companies inside...

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Quizlet plans for IPO over a year after hitting unicorn status

Quizlet, a flashcard tool turned artificial intelligence-powered tutoring platform, is planning an initial public offering nearly a year after it was valued at $1 billion. According to people familiar with the matter, Quizlet is considerably far along in the process to go public. A recent job filing shows that it is hiring for senior roles to “help build the financial systems and processes as we move towards an IPO.” In an email to TechCrunch, the San Francisco-based edtech startup declined to comment. Quizlet hasn’t said much about its revenue...

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Advanced rider assistance systems: Tech spawned by the politics of micromobility

The desire to achieve something as simple as keeping shared electric scooters off sidewalks has driven the development of some advanced technology in the micromobility industry. Once the province of geofencing, scooter companies are so eager to get a leg up on the competition that they’re now implementing technology similar to advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) usually found in cars. Operators like Spin, Voi, Zipp, Bird and Superpedestrian are investing in camera-based or location-based tech that can detect and even correct poor rider behavior,...

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WhatsApp will finally let users encrypt their chat backups in the cloud

WhatsApp said on Friday it will give its two billion users the option to encrypt their chat backups to the cloud, taking a significant step to put a lid on one of the tricky ways private communication between individuals on the app can be compromised. The Facebook-owned service has end-to-end encrypted chats between users for more than a decade. But users have had no option but to store their chat backup to their cloud — iCloud on iPhones and Google Drive on Android — in an unencrypted format. Tapping these unencrypted WhatsApp chat backups on...

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Have ‘The Privacy Talk’ with your business partners

Marc Ellenbogen Contributor Share on Twitter As General Counsel of Foursquare, Marc Ellenbogen is responsible for guidance regarding litigation risks, corporate initiatives, risk management, equity, employment, regulatory and all other legal and compliance matters. As a parent of teenagers, I’m used to having tough, sometimes even awkward, conversations about topics that are complex but important. Most parents will likely agree with me when I say those types of conversations never get easier, but over time, you tend to develop a roadmap...

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MaxRewards banks $3M to reveal best payment methods that reap the most rewards

{rss:content:encoded} MaxRewards banks $3M to reveal best payment methods that reap the most rewards https://ift.tt/3hjOZbw https://ift.tt/3yUFo0A September 10, 2021 at 03:00PM When Anik Khan graduated from college, his first job was working on credit cards and business expenses at Accenture. There, he found that someone could bring in a couple of thousand dollars just by having the right credit cards and following the rewards and promotions. It was back in 2017 when he and David Gao got the idea for his company MaxRewards, a digital wallet app...

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Startup insurance provider Vouch raises $90M, now valued at $550M

Vouch, a provider of business insurance to startups and high-growth companies, announced today it has raised $90 million in new funding. The $90 million figure was raised across two rounds: a $60 million Series C co-led by SVB Capital (a subsidiary of Silicon Valley Bank) and Ribbit Capital that values the company at $550 million, and a previously unannounced $30 million Series B1 led by Redpoint Ventures. With the latest financing, San Francisco-based Vouch has now raised a total of $160 million since its 2018 inception. Other investors include Allegis...

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MaxRewards banks $3M to reveal best payment methods that reap the most rewards

When Anik Khan graduated from college, his first job was working on credit cards and business expenses at Accenture. There, he found that someone could bring in a couple of thousand dollars just by having the right credit cards and following the rewards and promotions. It was back in 2017 when he and David Gao got the idea for his company MaxRewards, a digital wallet app that manages credit cards and automatically activates benefits like rewards, cashback offers and monthly credits. It also makes recommendations at the point of purchase on which...

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Amagi tunes into $100M for cloud-based video content creation, monetization

Media technology company Amagi announced Friday $100 million to further develop its cloud-based SaaS technology for broadcast and connected televisions. Accel, Avataar Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners joined existing investor Premji Invest in the funding round, which included buying out stakes held by Emerald Media and Mayfield Fund. Nadathur Holdings continues as an existing investor. The latest round gives Amagi total funding raised to date of $150 million, Baskar Subramanian, co-founder and CEO of Amagi, told TechCrunch. New Delhi-based...

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