Montreal-based Heyday announced today that it has raised $6.5 million Canadian ($5.1 million in US dollars) in additional seed funding. Co-founder and CEO Steve Desjarlais told me that the startup’s goal is to allow retailers to support more automation and more personalization in their online customer interactions, while co-founder and CMO Etienne Merineau described it […]
Apple is making a big investment in Germany, Russia takes aim at Twitter and Roblox goes public. This is your Daily Crunch for March 10, 2021. P.S. Don’t forget to sign up for TC Early Stage 2021, a virtual event focused on operations and fundraising that we’re holding on April 1 and 2! Apple announces […]
Last month Jeff Bezos announced he would step down as CEO of Amazon later this year, moving into the executive chairman role, while passing the baton to AWS CEO Andy Jassy. Could Marc Benioff, co-founder, chairman and CEO at Salesforce be the next big-name executive to make a similar move? A Reuter’s story published on […]
The U.S. Department of Defense is setting up a working group to focus on climate change. The new group will be led by Joe Bryan, who was appointed as a special assistant to the Secretary of Defense focused on climate earlier this year. The move is one of several steps that the Biden administration has […]
A newly launched Mac app called Superpowered aims to make it easier to stay on top of all your Zoom calls and Google Meets, without having to scramble to find the meeting link in your inbox or calendar app at the last minute. Instead of relying on calendar reminders, Superpowered offers a notification inbox for the […]
Actor Terry Crews is going in on the blockchain. With the help of social currency startup Roll, Crews is launching his own social currency, $POWER. But first, let’s break down what that means. Anyone can create a social currency, which hundreds of creators have already done via Roll, to change their relationships with fans and […]
Facebook has challenged the FTC’s antitrust case against it using a standard playbook that questions the agency’s arguably expansive approach to defining monopolies. But the old reliable “we’re not a monopoly because we never raised prices” and “how can it be anti-competitive if we never allowed competition” may themselves soon be challenged by new doctrine […]
As we look ahead to a hybrid work world, we must find new ways to continue supporting employee productivity and creativity. It’s only when we’re able to fully realize passive collaboration virtually that we’ll have unlocked the full potential of remote and hybrid work situations.
As Roblox began to trade today, the company’s shares shot above its reference price of $45 per share. Currently, Roblox is trading at $71.10 per share, up just over 60% from the reference price that it announced last night. That effort finally set a directional value of sorts on Roblox’s shares before it floated on […]
British electric vehicle subscription service Onto has partnered with Shell to give its users access to charging stations in preparation for a wave of new EVs coming to market over the next several years. The partnership, which Shell announced Tuesday, will give Onto customers access to more than 3,400 Shell Recharge charge points in the […]
Twitter says it’s running a test with a small subset of iOS and Android users to “give people an accurate preview” of what an image will look like without the trial and error that process involves now. As it stands now, the platform automatically crops images to make them display in a more condensed way […]
This morning Arist, a startup that sells software allowing other organizations to offer SMS-based training to staff, announced that it has extended its seed round to $3.9 million after adding $2 million to its prior raise. TechCrunch has covered the company modestly before this seed-extension, noting that it was part of the CRV-backed Liftoff List, […]
"Today, there is a greater number of mature fintech companies, so this could be slowing down the pace at which seed- or angel-stage fintech companies are forming or receiving funding."
A team of mobile app engineers and designers from companies like Rent the Runway, ClassPass, Kickstarter and others, are now launching their own startup, Runway, to address the common pain points they experienced around the mobile app release cycle. With Runway, teams can connect their existing tools to keep track of the progress of an […]
As the U.S. reportedly readies for retaliation against Russia for hacking into some of the government’s most sensitive federal networks, the U.S. is facing another old adversary in cyberspace: China. Microsoft last week revealed a new hacking group it calls Hafnium, which operates in, and is backed by, China. Hafnium used four previously unreported vulnerabilities […]
Korean e-commerce giant Coupang is expected to hold one of the biggest tech IPOs of the year on March 11. The company disclosed earlier this month that it is seeking up to $3.6 billion at a potential $51 billion valuation on the New York Stock Exchange. Founded in 2010, Coupang is sometimes described as the […]
Apple has announced that it plans to increase its corporate spendings in Germany. In particular, the company wants to set up a new facility in Munich, Germany. Called the European Silicon Design Center, the team will focus on 5G and potentially future wireless technologies. The company said that Munich is already its largest engineering hub […]
On the heels of a heated standoff between platforms and publishers in Australia, U.S. lawmakers reintroduced a piece of legislation that would allow the news industry to collectively negotiate content deals with tech companies. The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act is sponsored in the Senate by Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and John Kennedy (R-LA) and in […]
In recent years, the tech and venture scene in Latin America has been growing at an accelerated pace. More global investors are backing startups in the region and certain sectors in particular, such as fintech, are exploding. Global investors are not only pouring money into companies. They’re also investing in funds. Today, Volpe Capital announced […]
