TechCrunch Startup News

Based in Singapore, ErudiFi wants to help more students in Southeast Asia stay in school by giving them affordable financing options. The startup announced today it has raised a $5 million Series A, co-led by Monk’s Hill Ventures and Qualgro. ErudiFi currently works with more than 50 universities and vocational schools in Indonesia and the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices...

This morning Creatio, a Boston-based software company, announced that it has raised $68 million. Volition Capital, a growth-equity fund, led the round. The deal was a minority investment in the startup. The deal is notable not merely thanks to its sheer size, but because up until today Creatio had bootstrapped. That’s according to founder and […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoi...

Despite the market impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, retail investing is increasing in Indonesia, especially among people aged 18 to 30. Today, investment platform FUNDtastic announced it has raised a $7.7 million Series A to tap into that demand, with plans to launch new products for retail investors, reports DealStreetAsia. The round was led by […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastc...

AccountsIQ, a financial management software (FMS) startup founded by a team of chartered accountants (when accountants want to be entrepreneurs, you know startups are a thing), has raised €5.8 million in funding. Backing the Dublin-based company, which targets mid-sized businesses that operate multi-entities, is Finch Capital, the fintech focussed VC that recently outed its third […] Learn more ab...

Today, that software is offered as a cloud service should be pretty much considered a given. Certainly any modern tooling is going to be SaaS, and as companies and employees add services, it becomes a management nightmare. Enter Torii, an early stage startup that wants to make it easier to manage SaaS bloat. Today, the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Update: There’s an entire second session of this? My lord. Today the House Financial Services Committee dragged the CEO of Reddit, a Cato wonk, social media icon DeepFuckingValue, the CEO of Citadel Kenneth Griffin, a hedgefund bro who got whomped by DeepFuckingValue, and the CEO of Robinhood Vlad Tenev, who got womped when individual investors […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastch...

Massachusetts-based Locus Robotics today announced a $150 million Series E. The round, led by Tiger Global Management and Bond, brings the firm’s total to around $250 to date, and values the robotics company at $1 billion. Locus is notable for a more modular and flexible solution for automating warehouses than many of its competitors (see: […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices...

This morning Ally.io, a software startup with a focus on the OKR (objectives and key results, in case you’ve somehow avoided being exposed) goal-setting technique, announced that it has closed $50 million in new capital. The Series C round was led by Green Oaks Capital, Madrona Capital, and its Series B lead, Tiger Global. Ally […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoic...

Nate Faust has spent years in the e-commerce business — he was a vice president at Quidsi (which ran Diapers.com and Soap.com), co-founder and COO at Jet (acquired by Walmart for $3.3 billion) and then a vice president at Walmart. Over time, he said it slowly dawned on him that it’s “crazy” that 25 years […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The hodl-crew are having quite the moment as bitcoin passed the $50,000 mark earlier today for the first time. Data pegs the peak at just over $50,500. The price of bitcoin, the world’s best-known cryptocurrency, has historically proven a reasonable proxy for consumer interest in the cryptocurrency space, and for trading activity amongst blockchain-based assets. […] Learn more about your ad choice...

Fronted, the London-based fintech aiming to make life easier for renters, including lending the cash needed for a deposit, has finally launched. In March, its founders took the decision to “hibernate” the nascent business after the first lockdown and with the pandemic taking hold. But, now with regulatory approval from the FCA and rents falling […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastch...

GoPuff, the U.S.-based startup that operates its own “microfulfillment” network and promises to deliver items such as over-the-counter medicine, baby food and alcohol in 30 minutes or less, is in talks to acquire the U.K.’s Fancy Delivery, TechCrunch has learned. According to sources, terms of the acquisition are still being fleshed out, and the deal […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit pod...

Notion, the online workspace startup that was last year valued at over $2 billion, is currently offline after a DNS outage knocked the site off the internet. The collaborative online office and document service was not loading as of around 9am ET on Friday, preventing anyone who relies on the service from accessing their cloud-stored […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/a...

Cloud monitoring platform Datadog has announced that it plans to acquire Sqreen, a software-as-a-service security platform. Originally founded in France, Sqreen participated in TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield in 2016. Sqreen is a cloud-based security product to protect your application directly. Once you install the sandboxed Sqreen agent, it analyzes your application in real time to find […] Lea...

This morning Ramp, a startup that competes in the corporate spend market, announced that it has secured a $150 million debt facility with Goldman Sachs. Ramp previously raised a $30 million Series B in late December 2020, after raising a $23 million Series A earlier in the same year. TechCrunch spoke with Ramp co-founder and […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

People don’t often equate gaming with dating, but maybe they should. As gaming continues to grow in popularity, particularly in the wake of the pandemic, a new startup called 2up is launching to help gamers connect both on and off screen. The app was founded by sibling duo Stephanie and Lincoln Smith, who have been […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Monzo, the U.K. challenger bank with just shy of 5 million customers, has recruited a new U.S CEO to head up its efforts states-side, TechCrunch has learned. Carol Nelson, who previously spent ten years as CEO of Cascade Bank and prior to that was a long time senior vice president of Bank of America, will […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meet Powder, a French startup that helps you share video clips of your favorite games, follow people with the same interests and interact with them. The company has raised a $14 million Series A round led by Serena. Powder wants to build the video infrastructure for social gaming. While many communities of gamers already share […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoice...

Fintech startup Klarna is turning its mobile app into a banking app in Germany. Customers living there can now open a consumer bank account and get a Visa debit card. For now, Klarna is launching bank accounts for a limited number of users. The company expects to roll it out more broadly in the coming […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

LiveRamp has acquired DataFleets, a fresh young startup that made it possible to take advantage of large volumes of encrypted data without the risk or fuss of decrypting or transferring it. LiveRamp, an enterprise data connectivity platform itself, paid more than $68M for the company, a huge multiple on DataFleet’s $4.5M seed announced just last […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastc...

This morning Monte Carlo, a startup focused on helping other companies better monitor their data inflows, announced that it has closed a $25 million Series B. The round, which was co-led by GGV and Redpoint, comes mere months after its September Series A that was worth $15 million. Accel led the company’s Series A and […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

InEvent, a startup powering virtual and hybrid events, is announcing that it has raised $2 million in seed funding from Storm Ventures. That’s just tiny fraction of the $125 million that online events platform Hopin raised last fall — in fact, a recent Equity episode suggested that Hopin might be the fastest growth story of […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Harry Stebbings, the podcaster-turned-VC, is stepping down as a partner of Stride, the London-based venture capital firm he co-founded with Fred Destin, formerly of Accel. In a series of tweets, Destin said that Stebbings won’t be involved in Stride’s second fund (though he’ll remain a partner in fund one), and will instead be focusing on […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices....

Consumer payments is by no means a solved problem (I’ll trigger one hundred blockchain people if I say otherwise), but it sure as heck a pretty improved one. Checkout is a breeze with modern tools ranging from Stripe and PayPal to Fast and Rapyd to Apple and Google Pay. If you happen to need financing, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Virtual health and wellness platforms have grown increasingly popular throughout the pandemic, but a new startup wants to focus that effort exclusively on senior citizens. Bold, a digital health and wellness service, plans to prevent chronic health problems in older adults through free and personalized exercise programs. Co-founded by Amanda Rees and her partner Hari […] Learn more about your ad c...