When the iconic American power tools company Stanley Black & Decker began looking for ways to improve the pipeline of diverse candidates that the company was reviewing for potential roles, it turned to an Israeli-based startup called Talenya for help. The company wasn’t alone in looking to startups for support in new hiring initiatives. Last […]
What we're looking at here is a fintech unicorn IPO. A great way to kick off the week, to be honest, though I'd thought that Robinhood would be the next such debut.
One the same day as Fortnite maker Epic Games goes to trial with one of the biggest legal challenges to the App Store’s business model to date, it has simultaneously announced the acquisition of the artist portfolio community ArtStation — and immediately lowered the commissions on sales. Now standard creators on ArtStation will see the […]
The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every weekend in your inbox. Hi there, new and returning readers. This is The Station, a weekly newsletter dedicated to all the ways people and packages move (today and in the future) from […]
Education may well be the most important activity we conduct as a society — and it may also be the hardest space to build a startup in. Selling to school districts and universities is notoriously difficult, but enticing consumers is even harder. Learning takes focus, patience, tenacity and resources, and most consumers would prefer to […]
Luis von Ahn, an entrepreneur who has dedicated his career to scaling free education, has probably annoyed you more than once. In fact, you’ve likely been annoyed by his work dozens and maybe hundreds of times over the years. A decade before he co-founded the whimsical and language-learning app Duolingo, one of the most popular […]
Duolingo CEO and co-founder Luis von Ahn was tired of the gray and dreary design aesthetic edtech companies used to emulate universities. Instead, he and the company’s early team sought inspiration from games like Angry Birds and Clash Royale, looking to build a class that screamed more cartoon anarchy than lecture hall. From that frenetic […]
As its meandering route to monetization will demonstrate, Duolingo isn’t mission-oriented, it’s mission-obsessed. Co-founders Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker never wanted to charge consumers for access to Duolingo content, a purpose imbued throughout the company’s culture. For years in order to work at Duolingo, you had to be comfortable with joining a company in […]
Duolingo has been wildly successful. It has pulled in 500 million total registered learners, 40 million active users, 1.5 million premium subscribers and $190 million in booked revenues in 2020. It has a popular and meme-ified mascot in the form of the owl Duo, a creative and engaging product, and ambitious plans for expansion.There’s just […]
With Verizon’s long-anticipated sale of its media business now finally in progress — by way of a deal, announced earlier today, with private equity firm Apollo paying $5 billion for Yahoo, AOL and the many various internet brands and services that are part of the operation (including us, TechCrunch) — the next very likely question […]
Building and sustaining a startup is as challenging as it is fulfilling. Doing it during a global pandemic takes unprecedented (oy, there’s that word again) ingenuity, support and expert insight. You’ll find all of that and more at TC Disrupt 2021 on September 21-23. A shut-the-front-door moment: Want to access all the expert advice, networking, […]
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You […]
Clubhouse, the voice-based networking app that’s now being knocked off by every major tech platform, is bringing its service to Android. The company announced during its weekly townhall event that its Android version has entered beta testing with a handful of non-employees who will provide the company with early feedback ahead of a public launch. […]
In the real world — the world on which the global economy runs — we don’t expose every aspect of our financial activity in public. We want to be able to select which parties can access our financial data and under what circumstances — for example, our credit history or bank transactions. The problem with […]
Zoomo, the Australian startup with a mission to electrify delivery fleets through e-bike subscriptions, announced a $12 million interim capital raise on Monday. The company made a name for itself through partnerships with Uber Eats and DoorDash to help delivery workers access e-bikes through weekly subscriptions at discounted rates. Zoomo then grew to offer monthly […]
The only thing happening faster than tech mobility right now is the speed at which our early bird price for TC Sessions: Mobility 2021 will disappear. You have just four days left to save $100 to our June 9 deep-dive exploration into the current and future state of mobility and transportation. Buy your pass to […]
It’s widely known that Dell has a debt problem left over from its massive acquisition of EMC in 2016, and it seems to be moving this year to eliminate part of it in multi-billion chunks. The first step was spinning out VMware as a separate company last month, a move expected to net close to […]
Remote work is no longer a new topic, as much of the world has now been doing it for a year or more because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Companies — big and small — have had to react in myriad ways. Many of the initial challenges have focused on workflow, productivity and the like. But […]
Following several days of negotiation and rumors, Verizon today announced that it has entered an agreement to sell its media assets to private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $5 billion. Apollo will be paying Verizon $4.25 billion in cash, along with preferred interests of $750 million, and Verizon will keep 10% of the company. […]
Columbus, Ohio-based firm Path Robotics today announced the completion of a $56 million Series B. The round, led by Addition (featuring Drive Capital, Basis Set and Lemnos Lab) brings the robotic welding company’s total funding to $71 million. Adding another piece to the broader automated manufacturing puzzle, the company is focused on robotic welding. The […]
