TechCrunch Startup News

Podium, a Utah-based SaaS company focused on small business customer interactions, added payments technology to its product suite today. The move accretes a new income stream to the company’s quickly growing annual recurring revenue (ARR). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

French startup Le Wagon has raised its first round of funding after many years of bootstrapping. The company closed a $19 million funding round (€17 million) a few months ago. Cathay Capital is leading the round with AfricInvest also participating. “We’ve always bootstrapped since 2013 and we’ve always been profitable since day one,” Le Wagon co-founder and COO Romain Paillard told me. Learn more...

mParticle, which helps companies like Spotify, Paypal and Starbucks umanage their customer data, is announcing that it has raised $45 million in Series D funding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

End Game Interactive CEO Yang C. Liu has a refreshingly straightforward description of what he and his co-founder Luke Zbihlyj are up to: “We’re just building games. And to be honest, we don’t know what we’re doing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A new startup called Notivize aims to give product teams direct access to one of their most important tools for increasing user engagement — notifications. The company has been testing the product with select customers since last year and says it has already sent hundreds of thousands of notifications. And this week, it announced that it has raised $500,000 in seed funding led by Heroic Ventures....

A 9-year-old is smashing the shuttle far and wide, and frantically pacing back and forth on the court in Bangalore, India, as her competition refuses to back down. Her rival is not a human. She is playing against a machine that is mimicking the game of badminton legend P.V. Sindhu, toned down a few notches to adjust for the age difference. By the court, her father, Jayanth Kolla, is watching the g...

It’s been a big news day for Salesforce . It announced that Co-CEO Keith Block would be stepping down, and that it had acquired Vlocity for $1.33 billion in an all-cash deal. It’s no coincidence that Salesforce targeted this startup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eagle-eyed readers will recall that we mentioned M1 Finance earlier today in our look at a few trends in the fintech industry. We’re back with the firm this afternoon as it has a bit of news that’s worth discussing. Chicago-based M1 Finance announced today that it has reached the $1 billion assets under management mark, or AUM. Reaching AUM thresholds provides useful milestones that we can use to...

In an early-evening press conference, President Donald Trump tapped Vice President Mike Pence to lead the U.S. response to the COVID-19 outbreak that has spread through Europe, Asia and Latin America. The new coronavirus strain, which has infected about 81,000 people around the world and killed 3,000, has already wrought havoc on the global economy. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention w...

Welcome to the $100 million ARR club, BounceX. This morning (evening, timezone depending), BounceX, a New York-based marketing technology startup, announced that it has reached the $100 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) threshold, adding its name to our running list of companies that have crossed over into nine-figure revenue while remaining private. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit po...

Recapped. Layoffs. Slowdown. CEO transition. Budget cuts. Downsizing. In spite of a spate of massive startup exits the last few months, culminating in fintech’s shining moment yesterday with Intuit’s $7.1 billion acquisition of Credit Karma, it’s been a tough period for the startup world. Layoffs abound, centered perhaps on SoftBank’s Vision Fund portfolio but hardly exclusive to it. Startups, bot...

Fintech startup Revolut is raising a large Series D round of funding. TCV is leading the $500 million round, valuing the company at $5.5 billion. Over the past few years, Revolut has raised $836 million in total. Some existing investors are also participating in today’s funding round, but Revolut isn’t sharing names. Previous investors include DST Global, Index Ventures, Balderton Capital and many...

With cinnamon, fruit and mint-flavored nicotine gum, is LA’s Lucy Goods the next Juul? David Renteln, the Los Angeles-based co-founder of Soylent and the co-founder and chief executive of new nicotine gum manufacturer Lucy Goods, thinks there should be a better-tasting, less-medicinal offering for people looking to quit smoking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Financial services startups raised less money in 2019 than they did in 2018 as VC firms looked to back late stage firms and focused on developing markets, a new report has revealed. According to research firm CB Insights’ annual report published this week, fintech startups across the world raised $33.9 billion* in total last year across 1,912 deals*, down from $40.8 billion they picked up by parti...

Tier, the European e-scooter rentals startup that operates in 55 cities across 11 countries, has topped up its funding for the second time in four months. The Berlin-based company has extended its Series B round to over $100 million, up from $60 million disclosed in October. The additional capital is a mix of equity and debt financing provided by Moscow’s RTP Global, London’s Novator, and an unnam...

Six months ago or thereabouts, a group of engineers and developers with backgrounds from the National Security Agency, Google and Amazon Web Services had an idea. Data is valuable for helping developers and engineers to build new features and better innovate. But that data is often highly sensitive and out of reach, kept under lock and key by red tape and compliance, which can take weeks to get ap...

Before it was worth $7.6 billion, the original idea for Robinhood was a stock trading social network. At my kitchen table in San Francisco in 2013, the founders envisioned an app for sharing hot tips to a feed complete with a leaderboard of whose predictions were most accurate. Once they had SEC approval, they pivoted towards the real money maker: letting people buy and sell stocks in the app, and...

It sounds like Liquid Death has won over investors with its promise to “murder your thirst” — the startup is announcing that it’s raised $9 million in Series A funding. Liquid Death sells water in a tallboy aluminum can, and it’s expanding the lineup with a sparkling water can that it plans to start shipping in March. A 12-pack of either regular or sparkling mountain water currently costs $18.99 o...

BluBracket, a new security startup from the folks who brought you Vera, came out of stealth today and announced a $6.5 million seed investment. Unusual Ventures led the round with participation by Point72 Ventures, SignalFire and Firebolt Ventures. The company was launched by Ajay Aurora and Prakash Linga, who until last year were CEO and CTO respectively at Auroa, a security company that helps co...

Is “Twitter Stories” on the way? Or will we just get tools to send prettier tweets? Well now Twitter has the talent for both as it’s just acquihired Chroma Labs. Co-founded by Instagram Boomerang inventor John Barnett, Chroma Labs’ Chroma Stories app let you fill in stylish layout templates and frames for posting collages and more to Instagram Stories, Snapchat, and more. Learn more about your ad...

Budget-lodging startup Oyo reported a loss of $335 million on $951 million revenue globally for the financial year ending March 31, 2019, and pledged to cut down on its spending as the India-headquartered startup grows more cautious about its aggressive expansion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

PullRequest, a startup that provides code review as a service, announced today that it was buying Moonlight, an early stage startup that has built an online platform for hiring remote developers. The companies did not share the terms. Lyal Avery, founder and CEO at PullRequest, says that he bought this company to expand his range of services. “Our platform is at a place where we’re very confident...

Remember when Zenefits imploded, and kicked out CEO Parker Conrad. Well, Conrad launched a new employee onboarding startup called Rippling, and now he’s going after another HR company called Gusto with a new billboard, “Outgrowing Gusto? Presto change-o.” The problem is, Gusto got it taken down by issuing a cease & desist order to Rippling and the billboard operator Clear Channel Outdoor. Learn mo...

“Not gonna lie. This f*cking sucks. This is the last HQ ever” yelled host Matt Richards . And it just got crazier from there. The farewell game of HQ Trivia before it shut down last night was a beautiful disaster. The hosts cursed, sprayed champagne, threatened to defecate on the homes of trolls in the chat window, and begged for new jobs. Imagine Jeopardy but Trebek is blacked-out. Yesterday HQ T...

HQ Trivia is dead. Today the company laid off its full staff of 25 and will cease operation of its trivia, sports, and word guessing games, a source close to the company confirmed. HQ Trivia had a deal in the works to be acquired, but they buyer pulled out yesterday and investors aren’t willing to fund it any longer, CEO and co-founder Rus Yusupov said in a statement attained by CNN Business’ Kerr...