TechCrunch Startup News

Cockroach Labs, makers of CockroachDB, sits in a tough position in the database market. On one side, it has traditional database vendors like Oracle, and on the other there’s AWS and its family of databases. It takes some good technology and serious dollars to compete with those companies. Cockroach took care of the latter with a $55 million Series C round today. The round was led by Altimeter Cap...

If enterprise software makes your entrepreneurial heart beat faster, you do not want to miss TC Sessions: Enterprise 2019 on September 5 in San Francisco. And if you really want to make your heart sing, buy an early-bird ticket and save $100. But act quickly, because that deal disappears in just 48 hours on August 9 at 11:59 p.m. (PT). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adc...

Shouting out to all the fierce female founders. Have you applied to participate in theAll Raise“ask me anything” (AMA) sessions atDisrupt SF 2019? No? Women, it’s time to act. Apply for an AMA session by the August 30 deadline and you could win a free Expo Only Pass. You heard that right. We have 30 free Expo Only passes, and we’ll give them away at random to women founders who get accepted to the...

We’re still in the hunt for innovative early-stage hardware startup founders. And by that, we mean boundary-pushers, exceptional disrupters and all-around game-changers. If that sounds like you, you still have time to apply to compete in Hardware Battlefield at TC Shenzhenon November 11-12. Don’t miss your chance to compete in our epic, hardware-focused pitch competition. Apply to TC Hardware Batt...

Cybereason, which uses machine learning to increase the number of endpoints a single analyst can manage across a network of distributed resources, has raised $200 million in new financing from SoftBank Group and its affiliates. It’s a sign of the belief that SoftBank has in the technology, since the Japanese investment firm is basically doubling down on commitments it made to the Boston-based comp...

Monzo says it wasn’t storing ‘some’ customer PINs correctly, but has now fixed the bug Monzo, the fast-growing challenger U.K. challenger bank that recently soft-launched in the U.S., is disclosing a potential, albeit relatively limited, security oversight that saw customer PINs stored incorrectly within the company’s internal systems. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adc...

There’s nothing like having a pair of fresh, unique sneakers. Limited-release culture facilitates some of that, but The Custom Movement hopes to make originality and self-expression via sneakers more accessible to the masses. The Custom Movement, a custom sneaker startup backed by Y Combinator, enables independent artists to sell their one-of-a-kind sneaker designs to those who want highly unique...

Secure your seat to Disrupt Berlin now and pay later Sonderangebot! That sounds like a super-cool robotics startup you’d find at Disrupt Berlin 2019, right? But it’s German for special offer — and that’s super cool, too. Our premier tech conference takes place on 11-12 December, and we want to make attending Disrupt Berlin as easy on the budget as possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

Direct-to-consumer plant retailer Bloomscape has raised $7.5 million in Series A funding, with several high-profile D2C startup founders signing on as investors. Founder and CEO Justin Mast told me that his family has five generations of experience as greenhouse owners and operators, and that he first tried to get Bloomscape off the ground more than a decade ago. Since then, Mast has worked at oth...

UrbanClap, a startup that offers home services across India and UAE, has raised $75 million to expand its business. The Series E round for the four-and-half-year-old Gurgaon-based startup was led Tiger Global. Existing investors Steadview Capital, which led the startup’s Series D round, and Vy Capital also participated in the round. The startup has raised about $185 million to date, according to C...

Forget the village, people. It takes an army to make TechCrunch Disrupt the well-oiled experience that savvy start-uppers have come to know and love. And we couldn’t do it nearly as well without our incredible volunteers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Got hardware? Well then, listen up, because our search continues for boundary-pushing, early-stage hardware startups to join us in Shenzhen, China for an epic opportunity; launch your startup on a global stage and compete in Hardware Battlefield at TC Shenzhenon November 11-12. Apply here to compete in TC Hardware Battlefield 2019. Why? It’s your chance to demo your product to the top investors an...

Low code programming is supposed to make things easier on companies, right? Low code means you can count on trained administrators instead of more expensive software engineers to handle most tasks, but like any issue solved by technology, there are always unintended consequences. While running his former company, Steelbrick, which he sold to Salesforce in 2015 for $360 million, Max Rudman identifi...

Launch vehicles and their enormous rocket engines tend to receive the lion’s share of attention when it comes to space-related propulsion, but launch only takes you to the edge of space — and space is a big place. Tesseract has engineered a new rocket for spacecraft that’s not only smaller and more efficient, but uses fuel that’s safer for us down here on the surface. Learn more about your ad choi...

NakedPoppy co-founders Jaleh Bisharat and Kimberly Shenk are an impressive duo. Bisharat, the startup’s chief executive officer, is a commanding presence and a bona fide marketing savant. The perfect compliment to Shenk, a reticent and data-focused chief product officer. Together they’re building a cosmetics startup, NakedPoppy, where people can purchase high-quality “clean” makeup, or sustainable...

Another day, another mega round for a fintech startup. And this one is mega-mega. Brazil-based Nubank, which offers a suite of banking and financial services for Brazilian consumers, announced today that it has raised a $400 million Series F round of venture capital led by Woody Marshall of TCV. The growth-stage fund is best known for its investment in Netflix but has also made fintech a high prio...

Investment and stock trading app Robinhood stored some user credentials, including passwords, in plaintext on internal systems, the company revealed today. This particularly dangerous security misstep could have seriously exposed its users, though it says that it has no evidence the data was accessed improperly. Better change your password now. Sensitive data like passwords and personal informatio...

GDPR, the European data privacy regulations, have been in effect for over a year, but it’s still a challenge for companies to comply. Ethyca, a New York City startup, has created a solution from the ground up to help customers adhere to the regulations, and today it announced a $4.2 million investment led by IA Ventures and Founder Collective. Table Management, Sinai Ventures, Cheddar founder Jon...

Hipcamp uses technology to get people away from technology. The San Francisco-based startup provides a “people-powered platform” that unlocks access to private land for camping, glamping or just a beautiful spot to park your RV, as described by Alyssa Ravasio, founder and chief executive officer. Amid explosive growth in emerging markets, including Florida and Texas, the company has attracted a $2...

Every employee loves receiving their paycheck. It just so happens though that paying employees can be a royal pain, what with incredibly diverse labor laws across all 50 U.S. states. While large, Fortune 500 employers have a bevy of options, from traditional firms like ADP to newer entrants like Workday, small and medium businesses (SMBs) face the brunt of the challenge — too small to be attractiv...

DoorDash CEO Tony Xu announced via Twitter that the company will be changing its model for compensating Dashers (a.k.a. DoorDash drivers and other delivery people). The companyfaced criticism this year its payment policies. Under the current system, a Dasher’s payment consists of a $1 base from DoorDash, the customer’s tip and — when the first two items fall below the guaranteed minimum — an addit...

WeWork chief executive officer Adam Neumann is already rich, but soon all of the early employees and investors of the co-working giant will be too. The business, now known as The We Company, has accelerated its plans to go public, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. WeWork is expected to unveil is S-1 filing next month ahead of a September initial public offering. WeWork declin...

Last call, startuppers! TechCrunch’s Silicon Valley summer soiree — a.k.a. the 14th Annual TechCrunch Summer Party — is nearly sold out. If you want to join the brightest members of the startup community on July 25 and celebrate your intrepid entrepreneurial spirit, you’d best buy a ticket while you can. It’s now o’clock, people! This annual event is a true startup tradition. Learn more about your...

It’s that time of year again. When startup founders fret for weeks on end as the long-awaited Demo Day approaches. Investors pore through lists of startups participating in various accelerator programs and have their associates ping dozens of founders for coffee meetings. Demo Day season is upon us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Serverless development has largely been a lonely pursuit until recently, but Serverless, Inc has been offering a free framework for intrepid programmers since 2015. At first, that involved development, deployment and testing, but today the company announced it is expanding into monitoring and security to make it an end-to-end tool — and it’s available for free. Learn more about your ad choices. Vi...