As we race toward Disrupt 2020, we’re keeping the Extra Crunch Live train rolling with a big entry next week as Twilio CEO and co-founder Jeff Lawson joins us for a chat. Lawson is well-known in the tech industry for helping institutionalize API -delivered digital services, a business model variant that has become increasingly popular in […]
The Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, an asset manager controlling around $311 billion in assets for Canada’s pensioners and retirees, has identified four key industries that are set to experience massive changes as a result of the global economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The firm expects massive changes in e-commerce, healthcare, logistics and urban […]
Following Walmart’s pandemic-fueled earnings beat posted on Tuesday, Target today also handily beat Wall Street expectations to deliver a record-setting quarter across a number of key metrics. The retailer on Wednesday announced its strongest quarter to date for comparable sales, which grew 24.3% in Q2, driving Target’s profit up 80.3% year-over-year to $1.69 billion. Online […]
We can’t help but wonder what the future of work will look like in the wake of this pandemic. That’s the timely topic of today’s interactive webinar, COVID-19’s Impact on the Startup World. The second of three in our free series of interactive webinars — exclusively for founders exhibiting in Digital Startup Alley at Disrupt […]
No company is completely insulated from the macroeconomic fallout of COVID-19, but we are seeing some companies fare better than others, especially those providing ways to collaborate online. Count Atlassian in that camp, as it provides a suite of tools focused on working smarter in a digital context. At a time when many employees are […]
The broader market melt up has helped buoy shares of Apple to new highs this morning. In early trading today, the market capitalization of the tech industry giant and FAAMG member crossed the $2 trillion mark before slipping just beneath the threshold. Shares of Apple have advanced just over 59% in 2020, despite the company’s […]
When you start a company, it can be tempting to keep it simple. You want something that investors and customers can easily understand. While it might be easier to go that route, that is not something that Cloudflare did when it launched a decade ago at TechCrunch Disrupt. Instead, the company decided to go big […]
Instagram has found a new place to display ads: at the end of your feed. The Facebook -owned app in 2018 introduced a feature that will alert users when they’ve scrolled through all the new content in their Instagram feed, with a notice reading “You’re All Caught Up” that appears on the screen. Now, Instagram […]
Thinking back to the last time I accepted a job, I can’t recall actually reading any of the material that was sent over. I think I skimmed some docs to make sure the numbers written down matched what I had been told over the phone, but after that it was a blur of digital signing […]
Finmark, a member of the Summer 2020 Y Combinator cohort, is not your typical YC startup. In fact company co-founder Rami Essaid has already built Distil, a security startup, and saw it through to exit when he sold the company to Imperva last year. As he pondered what to do next, he took a quick […]
After yesterday’s look into the somewhat lackluster pace of investment into e-commerce-focused startups this year, a few VCs sent in notes that added useful context. So this morning let’s discuss why the pace of e-commerce startup fundraising has been so milquetoast in 2020. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. You can read it every […]
Observing the microscopic creatures that fill our oceans is important work, but keeping your eye on one in the wild is practically impossible — and doing so in a dish isn’t the same. This “hydrodynamic treadmill” however provides the best of both worlds: An unending water column for the creatures to swim in, without ever […]
Scotland’s first proposed spaceport has been fully approved to proceed with construction and operation (via The Northern Times). The facility will be built in northern Sutherland on a peninsula that extends into the North Atlantic. This will be the future launch site for Orbex, a startup looking to develop the U.K.’s first reusable orbital launch […]
Facebook’s Portal line didn’t get off to the smoothest start when it launched back in 2018. The company no doubt realized from the outset that it would have a lot to prove on the privacy front when attempting to convince users to essentially invite a Facebook-powered camera into their living quarters. And in the intervening […]
One of the most consistent pieces of advice from health organizations about COVID-19 has been that everyone do their utmost to limit contact with people who may have been exposed to the novel coronavirus that causes the disease. That’s difficult in a hospital setting, where medical professionals regularly have to take patient vital sign measurements […]
The United States is currently in the middle of an affordable housing crisis that’s putting the nation’s most economically insecure citizens at risk of becoming homeless even as a pandemic continues to spread across the country. But one Atlanta startup called PadSplit is using the same model that Airbnb created (which ultimately drove up rental […]
Josh Mendelsohn, the former Bloomberg digital campaign advisor and venture studio founder, thinks that cash-constrained government agencies from the local to the federal level aren’t using technology effectively enough to meet the challenges they face. That’s why the founder of Engine and former managing director of Hattery launched Hangar with a $15 million commitment from […]
A class action style suit has been filed in the UK against hotel group Marriott International over a massive data breach that exposed the information of some 500 million guests around the world, including around 30 million residents of the European Union, between July 2014 and September 2018. The representative legal action against Marriott has […]
Tristan Thomas, Monzo’s long-standing VP of Marketing — who joined the challenger bank almost five years ago when it had less than 15 employees! — has announced internally that he is departing at the end of the year. For the time being, his destination is unknown (even to himself, I gather), and once he’s served […]
