TechCrunch Startup News

The Sustainable Ocean Alliance and its Ocean Solutions Accelerator take on the problems facing our planet’s waters, and the latest cohort of companies in the latter show a fresh slate of issues to address and resources to utilize. From reef rehabilitation to a “Fitbit for fishing boats,” they’re trying to fix things up in the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter for your weekend enjoyment. Let’s talk money, startups and spicy IPO rumors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is adding a new way to withdraw funds from your Coinbase account. If you’ve added a compatible debit card to your account, you can transfer USD, EUR or GBP to your bank account nearly instantly. There are some drawbacks, and the main one is that you’ll pay a lot of fees. In […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Braintrust, a network for freelance technical and design talent that launched over the summer, is announcing that it has raised $18 million in new funding. Co-founder and CEO Adam Jackson has written for TechCrunch about how tech companies need to treat independent contractors with more empathy. He told me via email that the San Francisco-based […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastch...

Since 2011, European startup studio eFounders has launched 27 companies with a focus on software-as-a-service companies trying to improve the way we work. Some of them have been quite successful, such as Front and Aircall. And the company is working on its next batch of startups. “We're particularly inspired by the new wave of productivity […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices...

When Vista Equity Partners acquired backup and disaster recovery firm Datto in 2017, it was easy to think that was the end of the company’s story. It would be comfortably absorbed into the private equity portfolio continuing to make money for the firm, but that’s not really the way Vista works. It tends to build […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meet Multis, a French startup that is building business bank accounts, except that it lets you store, send and receive cryptocurrencies. The startup just raised a $2.2 million seed round. Investors in today’s funding round include White Star Capital, Y Combinator, Coinbase Ventures, eFounders, Greenfield One and Digital Currency Group. “It’s very complicated to manage […] Learn more about your ad...

French startup Memo Bank has unveiled three different plans for its new customers. The company is building a business bank for small and medium companies that generate between €2 million and €50 million in annual turnover. Earlier this year, Memo Bank obtained licenses from the French regulator (ACPR) and the European Central Bank to become […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoice...

Shipt shoppers are organizing a handful of actions in protest of Shipt’s new pay structure that began rolling out this month.   The first action is happening from Saturday, Oct. 17 through Oct. 19, when workers are calling on their fellow Shipt shoppers to walk out and boycott the company. Organizers are asking for shoppers not […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoi...

French startup Exotec has raised a $90 million Series C round led by 83North, with existing investors Iris Capital and Breega also participating. Other existing investors include 360 Capital. The company has been working on semi-automated warehouses for e-commerce clients. The system is based on tiny robots called Skypods. They roam the floor and go […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podc...

Fintech startup N26 is announcing some changes in the leadership team with two new C-Level hires. First, Adrienne Gormley, pictured above, is joining the company as chief operating officer, replacing Martin Schilling who left the company in March 2020. Second, Diana Styles, pictured below, will become N26’s chief people officer. Gormley has spent the last […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visi...

This morning, Noyo, a startup that provides APIs that link players in the health insurance space, announced that it has closed a $12.5 million Series A round of funding.   The new capital comes less than a year after the startup disclosed that it had raised around $4 million in pre-seed and seed capital, and that […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Climate change is on everyone’s minds these days, what with the outer Bay Area on fire, orange skies above San Francisco, and a hurricane season that is bearing down on the East Coast with alacrity (and that’s just the United States in the past two weeks). A major — and growing — source of those […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Whitebox, a startup that manages e-commerce logistics and fulfillment for a variety for brands, has raised $18 million in Series B funding. While discussing the new funding, CEO Marcus Startzel repeated a point he made after Whitebox raised its $5 million Series A last year — that the startup is differentiated by combining tools for […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/ad...

Book clubs can be magical. Bring together a group of friends, tear apart a book and all of a sudden the words have a second, paperless, life. But what if the author could join in the banter? Imagine riffing with Roxane Gay, debating with Ta-Nehisi Coates and eavesdropping on Jhumpa Lahiri. The experience would resemble […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Airship is announcing that it has acquired mobile commerce startup ReplyBuy. The startup (which was a finalist at TechCrunch’s 1st and Future startup competition in 2016) works with customers like entertainment venues and professional and college sports teams to send messages and sell tickets to fans via SMS. It raised $4 million in funding from […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastc...

Last week, we talked a bit about how investors are seeking new techniques to bring humanity back to their deal flow and sourcing mechanisms, beyond the boring Zoom call. The newest strategy I’ve seen is PrimeTime VC, a game show that pits venture capitalists against each other to debate on topics like TikTok to Y […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Five years ago, Traefik Labs founder and CEO Emile Vauge was working on a project deploying thousands of microservices and he was lacking a cloud native application proxy that could handle this kind of scale. So like any good developer, he created one himself and Traefik was born. If you go back five years, the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mailchimp may have started out as an easy to use newsletter tool, but that was almost 20 years ago. Today’s company still does email, but at its core, it is now a marketing automation platform for small businesses that also offers a website builder, basic online stores, digital ad support and analytics to make sense […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Electric power only started making sense for land vehicles about ten years ago, but now the technology is ready to make the jump into the water. Pure Watercraft hopes that its electric outboard motor can replace a normal gas one for most boating needs under 50 HP — and it just raised $23.4M to hit […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ride-hailing services around the world have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, and Grab was no exception. The company is one of the most highly-valued tech startups in Southeast Asia, where it operates in eight countries. Its transport business suffered a sharp decline in March and April, as movement restriction orders were implemented. But […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastc...

Playco is a new mobile gaming startup created by Game Closure co-founder Michael Carter and Zynga co-founder Justin Waldron, as well as game producers Takeshi Otsuka and Teddy Cross. Although the Tokyo-headquartered company is only announcing its existence today, it’s already a unicorn — it says it’s raised $100 million in Series A funding, at […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastcho...

The tagline from today’s announcement from the United States Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York says it all: “Adam Rogas Allegedly Raised $123 Million from Investors Using Financial Statements that Showed Tens of Millions of Dollars of Revenue and Assets that Did Not Exist”. Rogas, the co-founder and former chief executive and […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcas...

Impact Creative Systems (formerly Imagine Impact) is bringing a startup accelerator-style approach to finding fresh creative talent, and it announced this morning that, with funding from venture capital firm Benchmark, it’s spinning out from Imagine Entertainment — the production company founded by director Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer. Right after the news broke, the accelerator’s […] Le...

There are many reasons why you could have a good or a bad credit score. But if you’re just entering the job market, you may end up with reliable income and a low limit on your credit card. X1 Card wants to solve that by setting limits based on your current and future income instead […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices