TechCrunch Startup News

“Airbnb’s unit economics are quite legendary — the S-1 is going to be MOST disrupted FASTEST in the next 3 YEARS? Caps for effect.” Who Tweeted that? Initialized Capital’s Garry Tan? Homebrew’s Hunter Walk? Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham? Or perhaps one of the dozens of other venture capitalists active on Twitter . No, it was Parrot. VC, a new Twitter account and website dedicated to making l...

Uberflip is acquiring SnapApp, bringing together two startups that promise help marketers use their content more effectively. President and Chief Marketing Officer Randy Frisch argued that Uberflip focuses on content experience, not content marketing. In other words, it’s not selling productivity and workflow tools for marketers to write blog posts and and create videos. Instead, it helps them pre...

Uniform Teeth, the teeth straightening startup that helped me figure out I needed a root canal, has just raised a $10 million round of funding led by Canaan Ventures. This brings Uniform Teeth’s total funding to $14 million. With the new funding, Uniform Teeth plans to open up two more locations, one in Seattle and one in Chicago early next year. Uniform Teeth currently operates two locations in S...

A lot of companies talk about the value of your data, and about helping you get more control over the information you share, but Toronto-based Delphia is unique in aiming to build a viable, sustainable and scalable way to take a person’s data and turn that into real monetary gain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Accel, one of the world’s most influential venture capitalist firms, is becoming more bullish on India. The Silicon Valley-headquartered firm, which largely focuses on early stage investments, said today it has closed $550 million for its sixth venture fund in India. This is a significant amount of capital for Accel’s efforts in India, where it began investing 15 years ago and has infused roughly...

Back in February, we wrote that Postscript “wants to be the Mailchimp for SMS.” Now they’ve raised $4.5 million to help get it done. This round was led by Accomplice, and backed by Kayak co-founder Paul English, Wufoo co-founder Kevin Hale, Klaviyo co-founder Andrew Bialecki, Drift co-founder Elias Torres, Front co-founder Mathilde Collin and Podium co-founders Eric Rea and Dennis Steele. The Post...

Have we got a Cyber Monday deal for you. TC Sessions: Robotics+AI (March 3) and TC Sessions: Mobility (May 14) are coming back to California in 2020 with early bird tickets starting at $275 and $250 respectively. But if you buy your pass today, you’ll save an extra 15 percent on each event. How sweet is that? Don’t delay, startuppers. Buy your pass to TC Sessions: Robotics & AI and/or TC Sessions:...

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about Airbnb’s issues. Before that, I noted Uber’s new “money” team. Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter@KateClarkTweets. Le...

The New York Stock Exchange filed paperwork this morning with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to allow companies to raise capital as part of a direct listing. Direct listings are a way for companies to go public by selling existing shares held by insiders, employees and investors directly to the market, rather than the traditional method of issuing new shares. Learn more about your ad...

Zebra Fuel, the startup that brought fuel directly to your vehicle, is ‘no longer’ delivering in London Zebra Fuel, the London-based startup that delivered fuel directly to your vehicle — backed by Robin and Saul Klein’s LocalGlobe, Brent Hoberman’s Firstminute Capital and Zoopla founder Alex Chesterman — has told customers it is “no longer” delivering fuel in London. Learn more about your ad choi...

Joe Procopio Contributor Share on Twitter Joe is a multi-exit, multi-failure entrepreneur. Joe is currently building Spiffy, and previously sold Automated Insights, sold ExitEvent, and built Intrepid Media. Find more about Joe at joeprocopio.com or @jproco on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Vivun, a startup that wants to help companies keep better track of pre-sales data announced a $3 million seed round today led by Unusual Ventures, the venture firm run by Harness CEO Jyoti Bansal. Vivun founder and CEO Matt Darrow says that pre-sales team works more closely with the customer than anyone else, delivering demos and proof of concepts, and generally helping sales get over the finish l...

You may have heard the pitch before, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram aren’t homes for your real friends anymore because they’re too big, too commercial and too influencer-y, the result is that your most important relationships have been relegated to the lowest common denominator tool on your phones: your texting app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Product Hunt founder Ryan Hoover has raised another $10 million to invest in nascent upstarts viaWeekend Fund. The news represents the firm’s second fundraise after a $3 million debut angel fund that closed in 2017. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Artiphon, the startup that previously raised more than $1 million on Kickstarter for a device called the Instrument 1, has launched a new campaign for its latest invention, Orba. Co-founder and CEO Mike Butera said the Instrument 1 and Orba share “the same DNA,” namely his vision to help music-making become more accessible to everyone, regardless of training or experience. “I want beginners to fee...

Sign up here to receive Max Q weekly in your inbox, starting December 15. There were lot of highlights in the space industry this past week (even though a rocket launch that was supposed to happened is now pushed to Monday). The biggest news for commercial space might just be that NASA signed on five new companies to its list of approved vendors for lunar payload delivery services, bringing the to...

European private launch startup Orbex is getting ready to start actually launching payloads aboard its own rockets, and it’s pulling back the curtains to give a look at the factory it’s using to build its launch vehicles. The UK-based company is building its rockets from a facility in Scotland, and this virtual tour gives an idea of what they’re doing to make the first rocket field by renewable, c...

Helping out a friend in need online can be surprisingly difficult. While giving cash is easy enough, that’s often not what people need most — so Give InKind aims to be the platform where you can do a lot more than write a check. The idea is such a natural one that the company tripled its goal for a pre-seed round, raising $1.5 million from Seattle investors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

Splice is blowing up like a hit song. The audio sample marketplace has doubled revenue and user count in a year, and now reaches 3 million musicians. 70% of those visit weekly to hunt down the freshest and trendiest sounds that give their tracks that special something, and many pay $7.99 for unlimited access. But words can’t always describe music. Searching by genre and subjective tags can take fo...

If you wander into the Bandit coffee shop in Midtown New York, you won’t be able to just walk up to the counter and order something. Instead, you’ll need to download a mobile app. I experienced it for myself yesterday afternoon, when I — along with several other customers — pulled my phone out, downloaded the Bandit app, then used the app to create a profile, order and pay. A couple minutes later,...

Brava had a lot of things working in its favor as startups go. It was founded in 2015 by serial executive John Pleasants, whose past stints have included as co-president of Disney Interactive Media Group, COO of Electronic Arts, and CEO of Ticketmaster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Growing up, Selcuk Atli spent a good deal of his free time playing video games with his friends. And when I say with his friends, I mean actually with them. They’re called LAN parties, where everyone brings over their consoles and the group gets to play together virtually and in real life, all at the same time. Atli, a grown man now, still loves games, but misses the memories made during LAN parti...

The world has gotten so much faster. Amazon has made two-day shipping the standard and same- or next-day shipping commonplace. And that doesn’t even include the collection of on-demand players that can get us everything from groceries to alcohol to services like concierge storage and in-home cleaning with the press of a button. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices