When you hire a marketing consultant, you don’t necessarily expect to wind up discussing your life’s purpose. Yet, that is what Spanish marketing expert and entrepreneur Alex Barrera often ends up doing with startup founders who hire him to help improve their pitch. They think they are going to get help convincing investors, and they […]
In order to understand the changes that are sweeping fintech and reconfiguring the way that the industry works with small businesses, it’s important to understand open banking.
ServiceMax, a company that builds software for the field-service industry, announced yesterday that it will go public via a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in a deal valued at $1.4 billion. The transaction comes after ServiceMax was sold to GE for $915 million in 2016, before being spun out in late 2018. The company […]
Decisions about protecting your company’s IP can’t wait — founders must start aligning their IP and company strategies as soon as possible, even during the formation of the company itself.
This last weekend featured the much-ballyhooed launch of Virgin Galactic’s first (nonpaying) passengers, with founder and CEO Richard Branson along for the ride. After the festivities, I had the chance to talk with the company’s president, Mike Moses, who seems to be familiar with every detail of the operation and the company’s plans for going […]
Mortgages may not be considered sexy, but they are a big business. If you’ve refinanced or purchased a home digitally lately, you may not have noticed the company powering the software behind it — but there’s a good chance that company is Blend. Founded in 2012, the startup has steadily grown to be a leader […]
Visualping, a service that can help you monitor websites for changes like price drops or other updates, announced that it has raised a $6 million extension to the $2 million seed round it announced earlier this year. The round was led by Seattle-based FUSE, a relatively new firm with investors who spun out of Ignition […]
Pocket Casts will soon have a new home. Automattic, the parent company of Tumblr and WordPress.com, is buyinh the podcast app from a collective of public radio groups, including NPR and BBC Studios.
Rivian is pushing back deliveries of its long-awaited R1T electric pickup truck and R1S SUV several more months due to delays in production caused by “cascading impacts of the pandemic,” particularly the ongoing global shortage of semiconductor chips, according to a letter sent to customers from CEO RJ Scaringe. The R1T deliveries will begin in […]
There are many blockchain platforms competing for investors’ and developers’ attention right now, from the big daddy of them all, Ethereum, to so-called “Ethereum Killers” like Solana, which we wrote about in May. Often, these technologies are seen as so promising that investors are willing to fund not only the blockchains but an ecosystem of […]
Dayna Grayson has been in venture capital for more than a decade and was one of the first VCs to build a portfolio around the transformation of industrial sectors of our economy. At NEA, where she was a partner for eight years, she led investments in and sat on the boards of companies including Desktop […]
A security lapse at insurance technology startup BackNine exposed hundreds of thousands of insurance applications after one of its cloud servers was left unprotected on the internet. BackNine might be a company you’re not familiar with, but it might have processed your personal information if you applied for insurance in the past few years. The […]
India is on pace for a record year of money flowing into its booming startup sector. But as Q3 gets underway, something perhaps even more important is going on in India: public-market liquidity.
Jen Young and Jeff Cavins decided to craft a business around their passion for being in nature. They saw an opportunity in the 20 million RVs in the U.S., most used just a few days a year.
Reliance Retail said on Friday it has acquired a controlling stake in 25-year-old Indian search and discovery firm Just Dial for $469 million. The Indian retail giant, which leads the market, said it has acquired a 41% stake in the publicly listed Just Dial for $469 million and will make an open offer to acquire […]
When it comes to M&A in the chip world, the numbers are never small. In 2020, four deals involving chip companies totaled $106 billion, led by Nvidia snagging ARM for $40 billion. One surprise from last year’s chip-laced M&A frenzy was Intel remaining on the sidelines. That would change if a rumored $30 billion deal […]
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. The whole crew was here this week, with Danny and Natasha and Alex together with Grace and Chris to sort through a very, very busy week. Yep, somehow it is Friday again, which means it’s time for our weekly news […]
Vyrill helps brands discover and leverage video reviews created by authentic customers and users. The company presented its product at TechCrunch Early Stage: Marketing & Fundraising, where it beat out nine other companies, winning the pitch-off. The judges were impressed with Vyrill’s novel approach and innovative technology around discovering and filtering relevant videos. This is […]