TechCrunch Startup News

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines and the COVID-19 pandemic has surged event cancellations across the country. Tech workforces have found ways to stay productive: back-to-back Zoom calls, work-from-home happy hours and more Twitter threads than anyone asked for. But Jason Craparo, the founder of events platform Hio, wants to put organic, face-to-face networking […] Learn more about y...

TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco is known around the world as the place where the early-stage startup community gathers to learn and launch, connect and collaborate. We know COVID-19 has created challenges, but Disrupt SF is still on schedule (keep tabs on our updates here). Like startup founders everywhere, we quickly learn where, when and how […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastch...

Even though this might seem to be the absolute worst time to try to round up funding for a restaurant-related startup, Allset is announcing that it’s raised an $8.25 million Series B. It was not, to be clear, an easy process. CEO Stas Matviyenko (who founded the company with COO Anna Polishchuk) admitted that when […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Substack is taking several steps to support the writers and publications using its newsletter platform. After all, just as writers and newsrooms are starting to build real businesses on Substack, the COVID-19 pandemic is dealing a huge financial blow to the media industry. In response, the startup says it will donate $100,000 in grants — […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.c...

There is a serious flaw in how businesses are funded, and it's the same discussion we had twenty and thirty years ago about who was at the table in managing businesses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’re already entering into a healthcare crisis due to the global coronavirus pandemic, and creative solutions to address shortfalls in supplies, protective equipment and more are being developed to help where possible. A new startup, with a founding team including an emergency room doctor, a crisis response expert and a public health researcher is hoping […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visi...

Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are the landlords. Amidst the Coronavirus economic crisis, startups need a break from paying rent. They’re in a cash crunch. Revenue has stopped flowing in, capital markets like venture debt are hesitant, and startups and small-to-medium sized businessesf are at risk of either having to lay off huge numbers of employees […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podc...

Early this morning, Fast, a startup building platform-agnostic login and checkout services, announced that Stripe has led a $20 million investment into its business. Prior investors Index Ventures and Susa Ventures took part in the round. Susa previously participated in the company’s late-2019 round that Index led. Coming in late March, the new capital is […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visi...

A new app called CatchUp might be useful for anyone who’s struggling to keep up with the latest headlines, podcasts and Netflix shows. CatchUp is the latest offering from Mammoth Media, the startup behind chat fiction app Yarn and social polling app Wishbone. Founder and CEO Benoit Vatere told me that the product started out […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After years of hype, the AR/VR space has certainly grown quieter as of late, but some investors are still coalescing behind a vision that the technologies could one day replace mobile if the technical kinks can be worked out. Creal is a Swiss startup that’s working on some fundamental display technologies that could make VR […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cat Person is a new startup trying to change the way you think of cat people — and hoping to sell that new type of cat owner a whole range of cat products. “We know what the stereotypes are, we just don’t think they’re true,” said CEO Jimmy Wu. “They’re incredibly outdated. We want to […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When designers need to collaborate with other teams, they can currently turn to products like InVision and Zeplin. But Ceros creative director Jack Dixon said there’s a “pretty interesting gap in the market” — once you move beyond prototypes and start working with websites that are either live or in staging, the process starts to […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adcho...

Over-the-top live TV streaming service fuboTV announced today it plans to merge with the virtual entertainment technology company, FaceBank Group. The proposed merger would retain the name fuboTV for the combined company, consisting of fuboTV’s direct-to-consumer live TV streaming platform and FaceBank’s technology IP in sports, movies, and live performances. FaceBank is not a household […] Learn...

Right now the world is at war. But this is no ordinary war. It’s a fight with an organism so small we can only detect it through use of a microscope — and if we don’t stop it, it could kill millions of us in the next several decades. No, I’m not talking about COVID-19, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

28% of a nurse’s time is wasted on low-skilled tasks like fetching medical tools. We need them focused on the complex and compassionate work of treating patients, especially amid the coronavirus outbreak. Diligent Robotics wants to give them a helper droid that can run errands for them around the hospital. The startup’s bot Moxi is […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adc...

Glossier NYC, in normal times, is typically visited by more than 2,000 people every day, with lines of people from all over the world curling out the door. And when you enter, it’s tempting to touch, well, everything. The walls are adorned with flowers, mirrors and giant versions of the makeup company’s flagship product: Boy […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's no secret I'm a fan of the reMarkable, a tablet with a paper-like display that's focused on text and sketching rather than rich media and games. The sequel to the original, announced today, looks to make a good thing even better. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Back in 2017, a formerly hot, formerly profitable company called Blue Apron went public. It didn’t go well. Today as the global stock market continues to fall, shares in the former venture darling are soaring, up more than 140% in midday trading. Before its IPO, the company had to reduce its price range from $15 […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Deepgram, a startup focused on high-quality, real-time speech recognition, announced a $12 million Series A this morning. The startup, founded a half decade ago, according to Crunchbase data, with just a few million in raised capital, is interesting, as its success to date was founded on two consecutive experiments. The first dealing with its technology, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

Addapptation, a startup that wants to build a practical design layer on top of Salesforce and other enterprise tools, announced a $1.3 million seed investment today. 2048 Ventures led the round with participation from East Coast Angles, The Millworks II Fund and additional angel investors from New Hampshire, where the firm is located Co-founder Sumner […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit po...

Monzo, the U.K. challenger bank, is officially launching business bank accounts today, after an extensive trial period over the last 12 months that saw early access given to 2,500 business customers. Perhaps surprisingly, right out of the gate Monzo is offering two versions of its business bank account — which is aimed at sold traders […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/...

Meet Riot, a company participating in Y Combinator’s current batch that wants to help you fight phishing attempts. Riot runs fake phishing campaigns on your employees. For instance, your team members could receive an email saying that their Google account has been deactivated to see if they can spot real email notifications from fake ones. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices...

Startups have done some wild things to get the attention of VCs. In fact, Instacart founder Apoorva Mehta sent YC partner (at the time) Garry Tan a six-pack of beer through the service after missing the deadline for Y Combinator by two months. Yesterday, the ingenuity of startups struck again. Tadabase.io, an enterprise startup that […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/ad...

The European Commission put out a call Friday for startups and small businesses which are developing technologies that could help combat the COVID-19 outbreak to apply for fast-track EU funding. The push is related to a €164M pot of money that’s being made available for R&D via the European Innovation Council (EIC) — a European […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoic...

From long payment cycles to antiquated processes on how to bill workers, the hefty inefficiencies of the construction industry are long overdue for innovation. Enter startups such as the large venture-backed Katerra and recently public companies such as Procore. Still, independent contractors or workers from small family businesses often can’t afford hefty fees from SaaS platforms promising better...